Dissertation Fellow 1998-99
John von Heyking (Government)
University of Notre Dame
Augustine's theory of virtue as
a remedy for the deficiencies of technological rationality and liberal
political theory
"Love and Politics: Augustine's Account of the Passions in
Politics"
In this dissertation, I argue that Augustine provides us with a
way of understanding politics that is quite timely. In an age that
can be characterized as technological, where political language
is based on efficiency and on different modes of making, I argue
that Augustine provides a useful counter weight to our inordinate
worldliness by theorizing about political power in a way that provides
a role for religion, or other-worldliness, that still preserves
and affirms the goodness of political and other worldly goods. His
thought provides a substantive account of politics that is fuller
than liberalism, for example, whose emphasis on procedure makes
it vulnerable to the imperatives of technology and the way it transforms
its surroundings. His thought supports political moderation and
for seeing political ends as limited. This means that it provides
for more moderate politics than communitarianism, which evokes the
unity of community but forgets to provide our longings for unity
with an outlet when we discover those longings cannot be satisfied
by politics and, indeed, by worldly things. Augustine's political
thought, then, transcends both legalism and identity politics, the
two primary modes of politics in a technological society.
After an introduction, in chapter two I argue that behind Augustine's
extreme rhetoric lies substantial agreement between his understanding
of virtue and politics with his Roman philosophical interlocutors.
His extreme anti-political rhetoric is meant to tame the lust for
domination of Roman patriots by showing how that lust can never
be satisfied by political goods. By opposing extreme "worldliness"
with extreme "otherworldliness," Augustine appears to
reject politics as a natural good. The rest of the dissertation
attempts to show that this is not the case, but that his teaching
constitutes a substantive political teaching that affirms politics
as a natural good.
In chapter three, I argue that Augustine provides an account of
political rationality based on the priority of prudence, as opposed
to a natural law position. I examine four cases of moral reasoning
in extreme circumstances and show that Augustine adopts a natural
right or virtue style of reasoning in each case. He shows how in
extreme circumstances, the purpose of rule can be fulfilled by the
breaking of a moral prohibition. This understanding of virtue as
ordinate loving then explains how Augustine's understanding of glory
sustains political glory as a necessary good that forms individual
citizen virtue as well as providing the glue that ties society together.
In chapter four, I show how he affirms the social and political
dimension of the love of glory, and shows it to be an appropriate
good for virtuous individuals to pursue.
Having established the ordinate love of glory as a natural political
good, I turn in chapter five to political regimes. I demonstrate
how he affirms the longing on the part of citizens to view political
society as a microcosm or imitation of the whole. Then I show how
Augustine acknowledges the substantive need for political authority
under perfect and imperfect compliance scenarios (for prelapsarian
and postlapsarian human beings), which demonstrates that political
authority secures a real human good, and it not merely for coercing
the wicked. In chapter six, I demonstrate how his reformulation
of Cicero's definition of a republic remains consistent with the
original in maintaining the role that politics plays in securing
the good life for human beings. This reformulation also shows which
types of loves and regimes best secure the good life.
The final two chapters show how religion relates to politics. In
chapter seven, I attempt to demonstrate that religion, and more
specifically the worship of God, is not reducible to a code but
that he theorizes about it in terms of virtue. This suggests that
non-Christians are capable of worship in a manner equivalent to
Christians and can cultivate equivalent political virtues. In chapter
eight, I examine his justification of the coercion of heretics because
this is usually taken as the place where Augustine's
virtue teaching collapses and where Augustine relies on law-abidingness
to preserve order. I argue instead that Augustine's justification
of coercion must attend to the particular circumstance and that
he justifies the coercion for those whose beliefs manifest themselves
in violence (as did those of the Donatists).
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