GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

13 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THB GREEKS
the aid of many, inasmuch as he needs many things which
no one is able to provide alone * The State, then, and
man's life in the State, is important in and for itself.
Thus, while Dante conceded the primacy of God's
appointed representative, the Pope, over man's spiritual
life, he demurred to St. Thomas's assertion of the com-
petence of the spiritual authority on the temporal plane.
The two planes, the spiritual and the social, were, he
maintained, distinct. Hence Dante repudiated the Pope's
claim to temporal authority, affirming that man's earthly
affairs and, in particular, his civic duties, were the concern
not of the Pope, but of the State. Now the State, Dante
held, must be under the control of a single monarch,
since otherwise the existence of factions will make it
impossible to preserve peace, and in all matters pertaining
to man's welfare here on earth the temporal monarch
should, Dante insists, be free from interference by the
Pope. But the greater the power with which in the interests
of peace it is necessary to endow the monarch, the more
important
For his possession of wisdom and benevolence we can
is it that he should be wise and benevolent.
only trust to God's goodness.
Dante on the World Ruler and the World State.
Not content with making his earthly monarch absolute
in the sphere of the State, Dante sought to extend the
scope of his authority beyond the limits of the State.
Writing as a member of a society torn by factions, in a
world which had yet to escape from the welter of perpetual
fighting which was the Middle Ages, Dante insists again
ami again that the primary need of mankind is peace.
Peace is, indeed, for him the pre-eminent political
good of man's earthly life, if only because it is the indisable
condition of the acquirement and the enjoyment
of all other goods. The activity of the speculative intellect,
for example, which, following Aristotle, Dante valued
above all other earthly activities, can be exercised only
in a secure environment. Hie mystic cannot meditate,