Join the IHE for its second Annual Lecture on Catholic Political Thought. Dr. Gregory M. Reichberg will give this year’s lecture, “Thomism Goes to War.” 

Saint Thomas Aquinas is often credited, alongside Saint Augustine, with being the initiator of what has come to be called the “just war tradition.” Indeed, Aquinas’s short Summa Theologiae article (II-II, q. 40, a. 1) “whether any war is licit,” has spawned many pages of commentary. It remains a key point of reference up to the present day.

Curiously, however, Aquinas had little to say about the wars of his own time. We rarely find him applying his famous three criteria (legitimate authority, just cause, right intention) to assess, for instance, the crusades or other armed initiatives then underway.

Nonetheless the realities of armed conflict were brought very close to home when his older brother Reynaud, a knight at the service of the pope, was executed by the emperor’s troops. This led Aquinas to reflect on whether holy martyrdom could apply to soldiers fallen in battle. Subsequent Thomists have followed his example and brought their thought to bear on concrete matters of war.

Dr. Gregory M. Reichberg will review some of these engagements (vis-à-vis the conquest of the New World, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War) and indicate what lessons can be drawn for us today.

Featuring as respondents: Dr. Andrew Latham, Dr. Valerie Morkevičius, and Dr. Daniel Philpott.

This event is cosponsored by the Thomistic Institute and the Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition.