Augustine's Political Thought ed. by Richard J. Dougherty (review)

"Augustine's City of God is not a treatise of political or social philosophy." So begins Christian Tornau's section on political philosophy in his entry on Augustine for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Evident in this remark is the ambivalence with which historians of philosophy have generally treated the political philosophy of the great late antique philosopher of northern Africa. Despite its suggestive title and its extended apologetical attacks on the Earthly City, the City of God is decidedly not a work of political philosophy in the traditional sense: it does not reason about the best form of government; it only rarely functions as a mirror for Christian princes; it recommends no real social or political reforms (e.g. the abolition of slavery); even the cities described have fluid, shifting citizenry of indefinite number (the Earthly City, for instance, turns out to be only loosely composed of earthly patriots—the denizens of the City of God walk in their midst). It is rather intensely protreptic, a proselytizing document that calls for the reader to leave the Earthly City (with its characteristic love, amor sui, viz. love of self) for the City of God (with its characteristic love, amor Dei, viz. the love of God).

Augustine's Political Thought proceeds from different starting points. Inspired by Ernest Fortin, the contributors to this volume search for a political teaching in the work of Augustine that, at times, is implicit or indirect. The City of God, which casts doubts on the efficacy of political theory as a project worthy of Christian attention, thus could be seen as containing a latent pessimistic political teaching. Further, even works not generally considered to be political in the Augustinian corpus—e.g. the Confessions or the early Cassiciacum dialogues—become candidates for political interpretation (see Michael Foley's chapter on the early dialogues and Douglas Kries's on Augustine's Confessions and Plato's Republic). Inspired by Leo Strauss's esotericism hypothesis—that numerous philosophers in (especially) the Platonic tradition have used an esoteric style of writing—contributors to this volume examine Augustine's point of contact with "classical political philosophy" (see especially Thomas Harmon's "The Few, the Many, and the Universal Way of Salvation: Augustine's Point of Engagement with Platonic Political Thought"). In Peter Busch's "Peace in the Order of Nature: Augustine, Giles, and Dante," interest in the supposedly continuous tradition of classical political philosophy extends to an intriguing medieval debate between Giles of Rome and Dante on the temporal and ecclesial-spiritual powers of the Pope.

Strauss's influence is evident in the only clearly explicated methodological commitment of the volume, contained in Dougherty's editorial introduction: "The contributions of this volume all take as a matter of utmost importance the task of understanding St. Augustine on his own terms" (1). Similarly: "The thrust of the essays is not simply putting Augustine into conversation with ancient or modern authors … but rather first coming to know with as much assurance as possible what Augustine thought. … To do so, one must honor Augustine's foundational work as much as one can, following the nuances of his argument and often recognizing the interplay between and among texts" (2). These comments follow Strauss in criticizing the perceived "historicism" of modern-day scholarship, encouraging, rather, close study of the "interplay" between texts in Augustine's corpus—and understanding "Augustine's own argument comprehensively" (2).

The appeal of many essays in this volume will depend on how plausible one finds these background interpretive commitments. Some might be skeptical about attempts to "understand Augustine's own argument comprehensively" (2) through "honor[ing] Augustine's foundational work" (2), while others may doubt just how much of Augustine's political thought can be gleaned from works on topics other than political philosophy. Last, those disposed to view Augustine's thought along roughly developmental lines might find it curious to draw from much earlier works in Augustine's...