Aquinas view of kingship and the Aristotelian response....

St. Thomas Aquinas takes many of Aristotle s ideas from The Politics in order to create his idea of the best regime. He revisits the good and bad forms of each type of government Aristotle introduced, and then makes his decision that the best regime is a type of monarchy that he calls kingship. This decision stems from his definition of a king as one who rules over the people of a city or province for the common good (17). Kingship is beneficial because it is the rule of one person. Aquinas states that the correct and most useful way to carry out an objective is when it is lead to its appropriate end (15). The incorrect way would be the opposite--to lead something to an inappropriate end, or not to lead it to an end at all. In light†¦show more content†¦He, however, believes that kingship is so important, that a slight change of the type of monarchy would not be that bad. This is interesting, because Aquinas also says that tyranny is the worst form of government (18) because it seeks only the good of the tyrant, and is therefore further from the appropriate end of government, which is the common good and unity. The reasons Aquinas seems to change his mind about the idea of tyranny seem