Aquinas' Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry)

Aquinas' Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry by John Finnis, first published in 2005 and maintained under SEP's own ongoing revision process, is a scholarly reference article by a philosopher who is himself a major figure in the natural law tradition Aquinas founded, explaining Aquinas's ethical, political and legal thought with the kind of specialist precision SEP's editorial process requires of every entry. Its strength is that dual standing, a rigorously peer reviewed reference work written by an author with genuine authority in the specific tradition being explained, rather than a generalist summarizing secondhand. Its limit is that Finnis writes as a practicing natural law theorist himself, so the entry's framing of Aquinas's continuing relevance carries something of Finnis's own philosophical commitments alongside the historical exposition, and a claim needing a more detached account of Aquinas benefits from checking it against a source without that same investment in the tradition's ongoing validity.