Sarasota Socratic Society

We will probably have read the text (although it's not required) and we'll talk about it. The gist of this text is this: Our hero Socrates was in a previous episode condemned to death for introducing foreign gods and corrupting the youth of Athens. In this episode his friends try to persuade him to escape from jail in order to avoid execution. He argues that the individual has no right to flaunt the rule of law in this way even if falsely convicted. He further argues that his example will serve to promote justice in some weird way.

We are going to talk about a text of medival Christian political theory in which St. Thomas defends the use of the Bible as a source of political theory. Even though the politics of the Biblical characters differs significantly from that of his own time, he explains here that it's still a good source of wisdom, especially when supplemented by Aristotle. He then applies this political philosophy to immigration and slavery.

Here's the link to the text:

https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201-2/st1-2-ques105.pdf