Daily Inspiration Quote by Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas is doing something slyly radical here: he yokes the authority of law to the authority of reason, then cages both inside a moral job description. Law, in this account, is not whatever the powerful can enforce. It is an "ordinance of reason" aimed at the "common good", and it only counts as law when it is properly "promulgated" by someone charged with the community's care. Each clause is a filter designed to exclude mere coercion, private advantage, and opaque rule by decree.

The subtext is a quiet rebuttal to two temptations of Aquinas's world: brute feudal command and arbitrary ecclesiastical fiat. By insisting on reason, he gives law a public-facing logic that can be evaluated, argued with, and, crucially, found wanting. By insisting on the common good, he treats politics as moral stewardship rather than a marketplace of interests. Promulgation matters because hidden rules are indistinguishable from traps; a law you can't know is just a weapon.

Context sharpens the stakes. Writing in the 13th century, Aquinas is synthesizing Christian theology with Aristotelian political philosophy, producing a framework that can justify obedience while also licensing resistance. If a ruler issues commands that are irrational, self-serving, or detached from genuine care of the community, they drift toward what he elsewhere calls a "perversion of law". The line reads devout, but it plants a time bomb under tyranny: legitimacy isn’t a crown; it’s a standard.