ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to demonstrate the social assumptions of Aquinas, which, it is claimed, are decidedly absent from modern interpretations of natural law. It outlines the original ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions of Thomas Aquinas in order to move forward and offer a relational, unbounded and open-ended account of politics which highlights a complementary role for traditional relationships of power and authority alongside the non-instrumental relationships of care and love which feature prominently in the quotidian existence of all individuals who are conceptualized as natural law agents. The absolute ends of natural law morality can only be achieved when individuals seek it out in common. The backbone of such an account rests on the morality of natural law understood as both an absolute value and a normative framework within which individuals engage and act as moral and reasonable beings. It concludes with an examination of the Scholastic development of Aquinas's interpretation of natural law.
