He Became Poor

Drawing deeply on the views of Thomas Aquinas, He Became Poor challenges the modern economic tendency toward the “proprietary self” and calls for a renewed appreciation of the virtues of trusting receptivity and humble awareness of our membership in a larger benevolent order. Christopher Franks reveals how the summons to become poor bestows a new intelligibility on formerly obscure economic teachings. In the course of his discussion Franks juxtaposes Aquinas with Aristotle, John Locke, and Alasdair MacIntyre.

This book makes a provocative case for taking Aquinas’s thoughts on economics more seriously and illustrates how the very market conditions of the modern world cloud any attempt to fully understand Aquinas. Franks offers a convincing argument that questioning market-formed assumptions can actually help us recover the evangelical character of Aquinas’s ethics.