The problem that Strauss and Bradley raise concerning the possibility of aphilosophical ethics and political science, a problem that has long been anobject of scholarly debate, admits of a definitive solution on the basis ofAquinas’s texts. Ultimately, the key to realizing how Aquinas can maintainboth that the ultimate end of man as man is supernatural and that politicalscience is genuinely philosophical is recognizing the fact that, in his view,unaided reason can give an account of political happiness that establishesits superordination over other temporal goods without appealing to its rela-tion to human nature’s final end. The primacy of virtuous activity over othertemporal goods derives from the fact that it more fully instantiates the generalattributes of beatitude and thus is more worthy of pursuit than they are. Itdoes not rest on claims about the relation, order, or conduciveness ofearthly happiness to the perfect good of supernatural beatitude, contrary tothe assumption of Strauss, Bradley, and most other scholars. The sciences con-cerning the attainment of temporal happiness by the individual and the polit-ical community are thus philosophical, since the desirability of the end thatconstitutes their first principle and the superiority of this end to other tempo-ral ends can be established without revelation. Of course, temporal happinessis still for Aquinas an imperfect form of beatitude. It does not fully measureup to the definition of beatitude as the perfect and self-sufficient good that ful-fills all human desire, 87 and the philosopher, knowing that natural desirecannot be satisfied by any naturally attainable good, can know the imperfec-tion of the beatitude of the present life. But even in the knowledge of theimperfection of all temporal goods, the philosopher still knows by theunaided light of natural reason that some goods are more perfect thanothers and ought to be pursued as such

Aquinas frequentlyaffirms that the ruler is the “supreme authority” in political matters. 70 Tomaintain, however, that the king is the supreme political authority seemsincompatible with claiming that the political good includes as a constitutiveelement the promotion of eternal beatitude. If promotion of this end werean intrinsic element of the specifically political good, then, contrary toAquinas’s stated position, the Catholic church rather than the king wouldhave final or supreme say in all political affairs, since all political affairswould be reducible to mere means to the supernatural beatitude overwhich the church has ultimate custody. These texts suggest a formal distinc-tion between the political and supernatural goods, between kingly and eccle-siastical office, that does not subordinate the former to the latter in all affairs, aswould be the case if promoting eternal beatitude were an essential part of thepolitical good. Further, Aquinas clearly distinguishes the “earthly city” whichaims at the happiness brought about by naturally acquired virtue from the“heavenly society of Jerusalem”—eternal beatitude—of which man is madea citizen not by acquired virtue but only by supernaturally infused virtue.71The implication is that the two cities and the authorities which govern themhave formally distinct goods and that promoting the beatitude of the heavenlycity does not enter into the task of the earthly city qua earthly city, since pro-gress towards eternal beatitude requires supernatural virtues that politics—which belongs to the natural order—could never produce

If political society is ordained to the higher end of eternal beatitude, thequestion arises whether the promotion of eternal beatitude is an intrinsicelement of the properly political good, such that promoting the supernaturalend enters into the formal specification of the bonum civile that the king quaking is charged with procuring. If the answer is affirmative, then supernaturalrevelation is necessary for politics to carry out its proper task―promotion ofthe civic good―and a philosophical political science is impossible. Later in Deregno, Aquinas appears to conclude that because virtuous living in the polit-ical community is ultimately ordered to a supernatural end, and because onewho has charge over something that is ordained to a further end must ensurethat the thing made is suitable to that end, the king is bound to govern in away that makes citizens fit for the kingdom of God, taking explicit accountof Christian beatitude in his political decision making:Now anyone on whom it devolves to do something which is ordained toanother thing as to its end is bound to see that his work is suitable to thatend. . . . Therefore, since the beatitude of heaven is the end of that virtuouslife which we live at present, it pertains to the king’s office to promote thegood life of the multitude in such a way as to make it suitable for theattainment of heavenly happiness; that is to say, the king shouldcommand those things which lead to the happiness of heaven and, asfar as possible, forbid the contrary.What conduces to true beatitude and what hinders it are learned fromthe law of God, the teaching of which belongs to the office of the priest. . . .Thus the king, taught the law of God [by the priest], should have for his

This shared claim that for Aquinas establishing the goodness and order ofhuman ends requires knowledge of their relationship to the ultimate end ofhuman nature is mistaken. It overlooks the structure of his argument forwhy, even though the ultimate end of human nature is the supernaturalvision of God in the afterlife, naturally acquired virtue is superior to allother natural goods and hence constitutes our temporal happiness.Contrary to the assumption of the scholars we have examined, Aquinas’swritings do not establish the superiority of the activity of naturally acquiredvirtue to other natural goods in the present life by adducing its relationship,order, or conduciveness to the supernatural perfect good. Rather, Aquinasshows this superiority by proving that virtuous activity more fully instanti-ates the attributes generally ascribed to beatitude or happiness, attributessuch as self-sufficiency, continuity, and leisureliness, even if virtuous livingin this life does not perfectly or completely instantiate these attributes. Thisway of establishing the superiority of virtuous activity to other temporalgoods―in effect, by proving that it is the natural good which comes closestto fulfilling the general definition of beatitude―requires no appeal to thesupernatural end even though it is compatible with the assertion that suchan end is the only good that fully perfects human nature. The argumentdoes not rest on revelation, and thus a strictly rational or philosophical justi-fication of the first principle of political science can be given.In several texts Aquinas identifies the general attributes of beatitude andargues that, among temporal activities, the activity of acquired virtue―prin-cipally the contemplative activity of the intellectual virtue of wisdom, andsecondarily the activity of moral virtue32―more fully instantiates these

Vernon Bourke offers another variant of the second solution. 22 He claimsthat for Aquinas only the vision of the divine essence could satisfy ournatural desire for beatitude and that the philosopher can recognize thatsuch a vision is beyond the capacity of unaided nature to attain. Moreover,the philosopher cannot prove that man has been given the grace necessaryto attain this vision, and hence he or she cannot recognize that it is, inpoint of fact, the goal of human life. Nevertheless, although philosophycannot prove that supernatural beatitude is in fact our ultimate end, itwould be reasonable for the philosopher to believe that it is the ultimategoal of human life if he or she can show that, as a matter of empirically ver-ifiable fact, the notion of a supernatural end has brought “rational order” intoindividuals’ lives. 23 History, Bourke continues, proves that the concept ofsupernatural beatitude has indeed brought such order into individuals’lives, specifically in the lives of Christian saints. The philosopher thereforehas a plausible reason to suppose that the vision of God is the ultimate endof human life―even though he cannot prove this definitively―and he istherefore justified in determining what constitutes temporal happiness orthe first principle of ethics and political science based on what is conduciveto supernatural beatitude. For Bourke as for Maritain, the fact that philosophycannot prove demonstratively that our ultimate end is supernatural is noobstacle to asserting the philosophical character of a science of humanaction in this life that presupposes this end as its first principle.

Notwithstanding Aquinas’s seemingly unambiguous affirmation of politi-cal science as part of philosophy, Leo Strauss and Denis Bradley have ques-tioned its philosophical character, suggesting that Aquinas’s understandingof human beatitude makes impossible a genuinely philosophical moral and,by extension, political science. Strauss argues that since, for Aquinas, nonatural good completely perfects human nature and thus constitutes its beat-itude, the end of man as man must be supernatural―the vision of God’sessence in the afterlife―and hence knowable only through divine revelation.In turn, since the end, good, or beatitude that perfects human nature is thefirst principle of natural law and ultimately of political science, scientia politicarequires revelation for a justification of its first principle and is thus not aspecies of philosophy but rather of theology