The Natural and Original Condition of Dominium Among Men. Thomas Aquinas between Augustine of Hippo and Neo-Republicanism

Abstract

This paper studies Thomas Aquinas’ teaching in S. th., i, q. 96, a. 4, which discusses the thought of Augustine of Hippo, especially De civitate Dei, xix. 15. Before that, it explores the essential coincidence in the concept of dominium between Neo-republicanism and Ciceronian and Augustinian statements on it. After a core depiction of the Thomistic understanding of dominium between human beings, the argument goes ahead and addresses the issue of its condition: whereas for Aquinas, dominium is something natural and prelapsarian, for Augustine, even keeping some traits of human nature, it is not prelapsarian, but postlapsarian, that is, as a result of the original sin. In this regard, the paper discusses a recent interpretation which cannot help but to conflate Aquinas’ and Augustine’s philosophies of dominium.