Augustine Of Hippo Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This example Augustine Of Hippo Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Aurelius Augustine (354–430), or Saint Augustine, was a theologian and father of the Christian church. His autobiographical Confessions (c. 397) and City of God against the Pagans (413–427) shaped medieval European ideas about political order, freedom, soul, inner life, will, sin, evil, just war, history, time, religion, immortality, love, and God. His thought is influential across all Christian denominations, especially perhaps Calvinism, and extends into the contemporary age even among secular thinkers. Examples of his influence include French philosopher René Descartes’ meditations, the express imitation of Augustine used by French thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau in formulating his own Confessions (1782), the Augustinian overtones in French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville’s diagnosis of the democratic soul, and German-Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the “banality of evil” and of natality.

Augustine was born in the North African town of Thagaste. At age sixteen he was sent to Carthage for a liberal arts education, which included rhetoric. At eighteen he read ancient Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero’s now-lost work, Hortensius, and the evocation of wisdom contained in the text converted Augustine to philosophy. He joined the Manichean sect but eventually left them on account of their lack of philosophical rigor and their understanding of evil as a substance. Augustine famously argued evil is instead a deficient cause. He moved to Rome, Italy, where he embarked on a career teaching rhetoric. There he met Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, and discovered the books of the Platonists. Platonism enabled Augustine to understand scripture, as conveyed through Ambrose’s sermons, in their allegorical as well as literal senses. He no longer considered scripture as simplistic and converted to Christianity in 386.

In 388 Augustine returned to North Africa and became bishop of Hippo in 395. During this time, civil wars convulsed the Roman Empire. Imperial authorities had been enforcing religious conformity as a means of preserving political unity since the Theodosian Code (a legal code) began to be compiled in 312. Augustine was drawn into a conflict between Christians and Donatists, a kind of Puritan sect, which frequently took violent form. He at first opposed banning the Donatists but in 411 changed his mind. Augustine’s justification of the coercion of heretics has led many commentators to regard him as the Inquisition’s first theorist, though more recent scholarship has shown that Augustine considered his decision a prudent response to an emergency situation in which the line between a religious sect and its violent political wing became blurred. In addition, Augustine thought only Donatist bishops should be arrested and that violence should be punished by beatings with wooden rods, the punishment that teachers of the day meted out to students, instead of the death penalty or beatings by iron rods as required by the Theodosian Code.

Alaric, the Visigoth king, entered Rome in 410, which prompted Roman aristocrats to blame Rome’s collapse on Christians whose humility undermined the courage and allegiance to the fatherland. In response, Augustine argued in City of God that Christianity better protects civic virtue because of the importance it places on faith and justice, instead of the “noble lie” of antiquity. Politics not guided by genuine virtue, rooted in faith, is governed by the lust of domination (libido dominandi), which was the real cause of political ruin, including that of Rome. The contrast between faith and libido dominandi marks the difference between the symbols of the city of God and the earthly city. The theme of the two cities asks whether political society is something sacred, something profane, or some intermingling of the two. This is also the central question of contemporary politics when the appropriate relationship of religion and politics is considered, and the degree to which communities of faith can share the same political principles with those outside their communities.

Bibliography:

Confessions, translated by F. J. Sheed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1970.
City of God against the Pagans, translated by R.W. Dyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Arendt, Hannah. Love and Saint Augustine, edited by Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo, rev. ed. London: Faber and Faber, 2000.
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Augustine and the Limits of Politics. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.
Fitzgerald, Allan D., ed. Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999.
Heyking, John von. Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.