Welcome back to the new Think Green My name is Dave Barr and with me is always my good friend Alex Preo. How are you Alex? Doing well David, nice to see your hair growing back. Wish I could thank you.
Thank you. He shaded it just to Machu. No, no, it was an act of it was an act of solidarity. I see.
And how are you doing Greg? Do you want to just find? Thank you very much. Good to see you.
It's been a while. Yeah. Today's actually an exciting, uh, I think episode for all of us, we tackled a lot of these Muslim Islamic political philosophers, Jewish political but we haven't had an opt from the Christian world and uh, and we did with Katherine Zukert once a while back and this is our second. Yeah.
Yeah. And this one's because of, yeah, I was just saying we went down because of Alex's fought well against the medieval Christian thinkers. That's right. That's right.
Yeah. Douglas Alex has an, uh, you know, I get told, uh, in his family tree. That's a true story. That is the true story.
Like he's a Franco Persian descent, but but he's currently writing a treatise on the incoherence of the, uh, of the, uh, my podcast host, uh, Calumne against me. But yeah, but we wanted to do some more Christian political thought actually, and your name was very high on the list. So Greg, who's our, who's our guest today? Our guest this evening is my friend Doug Crease.
He's a professor of philosophy at Gonzaga university. That's actually where I met him in the summer of 2014. I was a student in national and dammit for the humanities summer Institute that Doug and a couple of other folks who are also friends of the show helped put on and Doug led or helped to lead the Christian portion of the medieval political thought seminar and Doug is the his book, his, his, his main book is called the problem of natural law. That's with Lexington books.
Um, he's also edited, co-edited and co-translated a Guston's political writings with packet press. His co-editor is Ernest Fordon and his co-translator is co-translator is Michael Tkach. And, uh, tonight we're discussing a piece he wrote in a festerift for Mary and David Nichols. The name of that festerift is democracy and the history of political thoughts edited by a whole bunch of folks, Patrick, Cain, Stephen Sims and Stephen Block.
And we're doing his chapter on Augustine and democracy tonight. So welcome, Doug. It's good to see you. Thank you very much.
I'm very pleased to be here. Yeah, we're pleased to have you. Yeah. So explain for the folks at home who might have heard of the name of Guston and Hippo and thought of this with some strange African hippo farmer or something like that or we call it, we call David David of Hippo, but it's mostly in reference to his form rather than to his locale.
Tell us about it, Dustin. Certainly. Um, Augustine was born in Africa. He was born in what today is Algeria, a very small town.
In 354 AD, he was his mother, it seems, may have been a burger woman, indigenous. His father, presumably sort of small potatoes in the Roman aristocracy. They were landowners. They did have a farm that presumably was thought of, Dustin might someday take over, but they were not particularly wealthy.
They had to save money to ascend a Guston to school. He took the classical course in rhetoric. There he was introduced to philosophy, especially in the form of now lost work of Cicero called the Hortensius. He had trouble with his students.
They were very unruly and they didn't like to pay their fees. So he left Africa for Italy in 383, hoping to find better students. He was in Rome briefly and then on to Milan, where he was an important figure in the Roman government. He once gave up Panagayric for the emperor.
He was a very important person. 386 while he was in Milan, he came across some books, the Libri Platoni quorum, books of the Platonists. They seemed to provide him with the last intellectual tools that he needed to enable a conversion to Christianity. He was baptized at the Easter Liturgy in Milan by no lesser figure than Ambrose, when we know as Saint Ambrose himself in Milan.
He then returned to Africa. A few years later became priest and then bishop at this place called Hippogragius, which was the second most important city in Africa at that time, Second Carthage. After he was in Skanster, he in 410, the barbarian peoples who were invading the Roman Empire. They had crossed the Alps, ravaged Italy, and they actually occupied the city of Rome for three days in the August.
It was of that year, 410. And after three days of raping, pillaging, and burning, Alaric and his Gothic peoples withdrew, and life went on. But that shook the foundations of the ancient world, as we could imagine. And of course, who to blame but the Christians, who had been running things since Constantine, so for maybe a century or last actually, they had been in charge and look what happened.
The eternal city had been sacked. It must be the fault of the Christian God. And the argument seems silly to us. Clearly violates the post-doc, Ergo Proctorhock, fallacy provisions.
But apparently, the argument had some sting to it. And Augustine received a letter from a man named Marcellinus, one of his, it was a co-religionist, a Catholic layman sent from Rome, to try to bring some sort of order to the mad disarray in Africa. It was an enviable job. Marcellinus was in Carthage, and he wrote a letter to Augustine saying, basically, can you help me?
I've got pagans here who are blaming the Christians for the fall. I don't know what are the arguments that I need in order to counteract these claims. Augustine wrote him right back. And then in the letter, he promised that he would write substantial more when the opportunity presented itself.
So in he began his famous city of God against the pagans in 413. The first several books, three, four books, were actually dedicated to Marcellinus. In 413, Marcellinus was arrested, perhaps as a result of Donatost Intrigue. Augustine hustled up to Carthage, had to demean himself, to try to win the release of Marcellinus.
And he thought he'd been successful. In a letter, he describes how he was waiting in his apartments to hear news that Marcellinus had been pardoned. The next day, after all, was the Feast of Saint Cyprium. So everything looked very promising for a pardon and suddenly a servant, a messenger burst into his room and told him that Marcellinus had been beheaded that morning.
He hustled back to Hippo. And he says in the letter describing this, that he thought maybe he could still do something valuable for posterity by finishing his writings. It's still took him until 427. So a total of 14 years, he was interrupted frequently to write this massive work of this.
Do you want to show it through the online? Yeah, I think that will be helpful. I'll just add a quick question. Sorry.
Just I'm struck by how much, I mean, I'm sure it's just a snippet of how much we know about Augustine's. It's not obviously from all from his confessions, but it's mostly just from his surviving letters, because I know his, ooh, is huge, right? Like he has just so many. We know more about Augustine than any other figure in the ancient world.
And by far, we know a lot about Cicero from his letters and so forth. But Augustine, besides his works that were intended for publication, there are all these letters that he wrote hundreds and hundreds. And then all these sermons, he was incredibly, he was said to be an incredible deliverer of sermons. And in fact, it said that the owners of the circuses would postpone their performances if Augustine was preaching, because they couldn't draw a crowd against him.
That has, that sounds like legend, but that's what's said anyway about it. So between the letters, the confessions, we know a lot about him. Interestingly enough, he died in 430 in Hippo. He was sick anyway, and the city was besieged by the vandals.
And he died three days later. The balls of his city were were breached and Hippo was sacked, but somehow his library survived. And that's where he had these letters and sermons and so on and so forth. Thank you.
What is, I mean, what is up with these spiritual fathers, they get a letter from one of their students and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll explain it to you. I mean, they produce something like the city of God and length or the God for the perplex. I mean, wasn't that one of my monodys friends? He's like, hey, quick question, free man.
We're all spread out of small, like theological issues. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm gonna fold him in Chancid Forest for you. So this is just by, can you describe sort of the structure and size of this book?
Because I think when people hear Augustine, they're like, well, the confessions, right? And you read it and you're like, oh, man, you felt that kind of about being a fruit that I'm really host. But I mean, what does this book like in comparison? Right.
Well, first of all, the letters, I mean, Christian bishops at this time, because the imperial government was collapsing, they in effect spent half of their day running court and had to handle all kinds of these sorts of issues. And he had to deal, he was an important bishop and he had to deal with government officials in Carthage and all and so a lot of his letters have very real public implications. And so he would go ahead and take time and write them very carefully. Now the city of God, the 22 books in the city of God it divides into two parts at first, 10 books and 12 books.
The first 10 books are written against the critics of the Christians. So they're a primarily refutation. The first five of the books, Augustine says, is on multiple occasions, are written against those who want the pagan gods to be worshipped were prosperity in this life. Book six to 10 are written against those who want the pagan gods to be worshipped for prosperity in the next life.
And then we have the 12 books on the two cities. The first four of those books are on the origin of two cities, the middle four on their development and the final four on their ends. So that's kind of the first structure of the city of God. The first 10 books, well, the title of the book is the Kittitadhe desi contra paganos against the pagans.
And so those first chapters are very definitely those are the ones that it seems Marcellinus was had asked for, what to say in refutation. The second 12 are more of a positive teaching, if you will, about Christianity and political life. We might add here that well there are a number of audiences, one being of course the pagans that Augustine is trying to refute. But then we shouldn't miss that he's also refuting some of his co-religionists.
So there were some Christians who thought that with the conversion of Constantine to the faith that the the final times were here, that all of the great prophecies of the Old Testament had been fulfilled in our seeing, and that the persecution of the Christians was over forever, and there would be this union of heaven and earth in the person of the Roman emperor. And it was smooth sailing from here on out, as it were. And Augustine takes these people to task in certain places in the second half of the city of God. So there's Christians he's criticizing along with pagans he's criticizing philosophers.
Many, many people were in his sights. Do you think given the size of the book that I often wonder about the audience, and maybe it's just the case that we obviously know the people have longer attention spans in the past, but I mean, who was, you mentioned the various audiences, but who do you think that's right? This book was for the pagans that they would have studied it, or is this for primarily for Christians that he sort of thought this would be something that's read for generations and generations, or this takes, I mean, like I remember studying it in grad school with all my comprehensive exams, and I remember being like, man, I don't have time to, it's so hard and long. And he also is getting in and out, right?
From from right, right, right. Almost like personal advice to you as the reader, and then grand political visions. And so it's even, it's a little bit dizzying sometimes as you proceed, but then also in and out, if that makes sense. Unlike the confessions, which sort of is a kind of a rollicking fun time, I mean, you know what I mean, sorry, I mean, it's a good way to put it this way.
The confessions is probably, I usually tell my students this, and I think it's quite true. It's probably the most beautiful book ever written by a Christian author outside of the New Testament itself. And it's been traditionally read that way, and it's extraordinarily carefully constructed. It, it, Augustine had the wherewithal to write very, very well, very beautifully.
The city of God, you know, it seems like it's all over the place. There's no rabbit that he doesn't chase down its whole. It is unwieldy. So, you know, why did he write it this way?
It does seem to me that he's writing for posterity, that he, he somehow thinks that maybe this book is going to help people in the future. And it did. I mean, this is the book that defined Christian thought generally, but especially about politics for over a thousand years. And books like Montes Cusbuk on the Romans, Machiavelli's book on books on the discourses, books on Liddy, Gibbon, they're all responding to Augustine.
It's sad, and this sounds like legend again, I don't know, but that Charlemagne would have the city of God read to him while he would eat his supper. It was that kind of a book, you know. Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned a thousand years, it was supplanted by Bill Riley's book on Jesus, right?
That became. Should we get into Augustine and democracy a little bit? Yeah, for sure. I just, you know, when I pick up something like this, I try to think like, just just think, what is this going to be about this?
I've never, you know, when I've heard about the city of God, and I've never heard of it as, you know, having sort of long discussions, democracy, and you address that in your piece, but I was finally something like, what would a, you know, thoughtful Christian train on ancient philosophy think about democracy? Because on the one hand, there's some, something that kind of affinity between Christianity and egalitarianism. On the one hand, on the other hand, certainly not the egalitarianism that you see in the critiques of democracy and Plato, for example. So you start with just showing how autonomy is kind of inherently rebellious, and this isn't how he's going to think about it, not in our way.
But then you kind of walk into two different ways in which Augustine approaches democracy. One is, according to the classical scheme, and we can get into this of six types of regimes, but the others in terms of their ends, right? I thought, I thought maybe you could just lay out these two paradigms helpful for us to start navigating them. Okay, well, sure.
The first one, I mean, you gentlemen all know, and then I think your readers, too, is we know it from Aristotle. We can distinguish the regimes according to the number of those who rule the one, the fewer, the many, and then we can also distinguish them according to what they're not, the rulers seek what's in their own best interests for the good of the whole, the common good. So three times two equals six. Aristotle places democracy as he calls it the rule of the many who rule for the sake of the many.
So it's one of the unjust regimes, but perhaps the least unjust of the unjust regimes. And I suggest in the piece that Augustine does know this distinction. He knows, especially from Cicero, that in fact, most actually existing regimes are some sort of mixture of rule by the one, the few and the many. And the mixed regime is how most of them are.
But there's always one art that tends to dominate even in mixed regimes. And so Augustine demonstrates, in this sense, a kind of complete uninterest in the form of the regime. In one text in the city of God, where he kind of addresses it, but still largely impassing, he just says he thinks the best solution would be a group of small kingdoms living peacefully side by side. That's that would be the best that we could really hope for, unfortunately, you know, kingdoms develop imperial ambitions and want to move against their neighbors.
The more interesting argument about democracy and Augustine is the second one, which I kind of ground in light. We all know from book eight of the Republic, okay, so there's the just regime, and then there are the four unjust regimes. So we start with aristocracy, the just regime. It for reasons that are most mysterious disintegrates first into democracy, then oligarchy democracy and tyranny in that order with memory service.
Now, we don't know just what Augustine knew of Plato's Republic. We do think that there were, but that he did not read it in the original or in translation. We do think he probably had synopsies of it, summaries of it, that were used in schools. And so he probably knew that classification of regimes from Plato.
But this is in any case, this is a very Augustinian approach. What do you love? That's Augustine's question. Everybody loves something.
Some people love God. Most people love something God made. There's only two types. And, you know, in the truly just city, the human beings love God.
All of the other cities are unjust to a greater or lesser degree, depending on how high or how low the dominant love in the soul of the citizens is. Democracy has this charm of egalitarianism. And so I suggest that in the piece that, I mean, Augustine never says anything like, I think, democracy's best, okay? But he does like egalitarianism in the sense that, look, all human beings are lost.
They're all sinful. They're all in trouble. And none of them can save themselves. And so we're all basically in the same boat when it comes to the most fundamental predicaments.
Even the philosophers have the same problems as all of the rest of us. So there's a common love of egalitarianism between Christianity and democracy that I think is relevant here. In Plato, I mean, we're quite familiar with the idea that philosophers should rule. Maybe one philosopher or small group or, but the rule of wisdom is key.
And sure, Augustine doesn't, I mean, everybody thinks that it's a wisdom is a good thing. But there's still this love of equality that kind of piques through in Augustine. The philosophers aren't really any better than the rest of us. One example that I sometimes use more with my students is that if you read the Confessions, the hero or heroine of the book is Saint Monica, Guston's mother.
Okay. And if you remember when they're headed back to Africa, they're paused at the ports of Rome at Ostia. The ports since tilted up. But in those days, that was the port and Monica dies there while they're waiting for the boat to take them back to Africa.
But a few days before, there's this scene that's referred to as the vision at Ostia, where Augustine and his mother are both taken up into some sort of a mystical vision and anticipation of salvation and heaven. Now, what's interesting here is that, you know, Monica, we don't even know if she was literate. She's uneducated. She seems like an intelligent person.
But, you know, she has none of the philosophical chops that Augustine has. But they wind up in the same place. And I think that's one way to illustrate this sort of egalitarian impulse in Christianity. But I think David had a question.
Yeah. How far seen do you, what was the regime structure all around Augustine? And do you think he saw it in the same way, he had a premonition of what was the coming the same way that's a tote film, beginning of Democracy in America, saw this new force and he was just trying to advice as well, I had a timer. I don't think it was so clear at the time.
I mean, there was very little government to keep track of. I mean, it collapsed. And these warlords ruled here and there in Africa. And then they once the barbarians crossed from his fanya into Africa, then it was pretty clear that they were going to be able to conquer Africa as well.
And I mean, in antiquity, in Augustine's boyhood, even. So Africa was one of the great churches in the whole Mediterranean basin. It was Africa, there was Gaul, Italy, and then the great churches of the east. The Latin speaking church is of course looking to Rome, the Greek speaking church is looking to Constantinople.
And it was suddenly painfully clear that the Western church, the Latin speaking church was going under. And today, I mean, it was completely wiped out. The vandals sort of came over to a kind of a reticle Christianity, but then they were completely wiped out themselves by the warriors of Islam. And so it's kind of astonishing to think about what happened to that great African church.
But I think Augustine knew that it was coming to an aunt, but he didn't know what was going to happen next. It sometimes said that he was more worried about converting Rome's conquerors than trying to defend the city. Can I circle back to something you mentioned? I think this is the one you're one of the parts in your article that I got most interesting.
And I thought it's probably where through visiting and emphasizing this notion that Augustine is in no way superior to Monica. And just this deep egalitarianism that's sort of running through his thoughts. So I'm just going to quote this is your page 126. Augustine's superior philosophical talents do not place him on a higher plane in the vision.
And then just a couple paragraphs down the philosophers are constantly no longer simply superior to everyone else. And in fact, what once appeared as a justified superiority now looks to be very similar to Prayat, which is a sin. In the confessions, this arrogance of philosophy is a testitude, for example, in book seven, wherein the proud plateness are said to reject the teachings of Matthew 1129 here, you're quoting the Bible. But those who wear the high boots of there's a blind doctrine do not hear him saying, you're quoting him quoting the Bible.
Learn of me, for I am meek and humble heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. Another passage in the confessions where the pride of the philosophers is sailed as in book three. After first coming across Cicero in his course of studies, Augustine says that he approached the sacred scriptures, but was unable to grasp them because of his philosophically rude errands. So not only is there an egalitarianism, but in fact, pride of place, maybe that's not the right term phrase, would actually belong to the non philosophers.
So I just want to circle back to emphasize that egalitarianism. And I also want to use it maybe to segue into Cicero, who seems in your article to be central to Augustine's understanding of politics. And maybe even so there's a way in which Augustine likes to his democratic with scare quotes because he's a egalitarian. There's also the way he's democratic insofar as he actually prefers it or has some bondness for a former government that would actually in some way reflect that.
And the root I think is through Cicero, one final point there is this vision you just mentioned that he has with Monica, you take to be, and this is fairly common, I think actually in literature, to be a kind of retelling of the dream of Scipio at the end of Cicero's, on the Republic. Is that fair? Yes. Yeah.
Okay. So that was a lot of questions built in there, but I didn't know if you want to tackle him. Well, let's start with what you're saying about philosophy and pride. Right, please.
No, I do, I don't want to overstate things. I mean, of course, it's better to be not legible than to be ignorant. I mean, Augustine certainly agrees with that. But the problem is that learning can be a temptation to feelings of superiority in other areas, in all areas.
And this was his concern about the philosophers. One of his favorite passages to quote is from Romans 1. Since the beginning of the world, God has made the things of God have been clear to human beings, he's thinking, especially the philosophers, from the things that are they can argue back to the truths about God, from creation back to creator. And he says the Greeks were, of course, the best at this, the natural philosophers and other Greeks.
But did they give thanks to God? Did they offer him praise and glory? No. Okay.
And instead they became proud in their thoughts. Look at what we figured out. Okay. Sorry.
He published, you know, book on the Parmenides and suddenly he thinks, you know. And so, and so when they're a foolishness, they turned and they wound up as idolaters. Okay, they worship creation rather than the creator. And that's kind of his view of even the best of the philosophers.
The Augustine says, on the one hand, he absolutely says in book seven there from Wentz, a great was quoting, he absolutely says, you know, thank goodness for these plateness, they gave me the key inside I needed to help me at the time. But they were so crowded. And they couldn't help me with that. The philosophers, he says at the end of that book seven, he says, it's like you're standing on a wooded hill.
And you can see, you can get a glimpse, you know, looking through the brosh and the trees and all around it. There it is. Okay, I got a glimpse of where I want to go. But how do you get there?
What's the way the via clueless with respect to that one? The so the philosophy can be helpful, but it can't, but there's some things it just won't it will never teach you Augustine seemed to suggest it could never teach the way the way of humility. And that's the problem with philosophy. Philosophy couldn't really deliver on its promises.
It, it, Augustine says that he, he was good at philosophy, could read Aristotle and didn't need a teacher, and understand it. But so he was still a rotten person. And something beyond philosophy is needed. Go ahead, Alex.
So yeah, in connection with that, I want to talk about how this connects to esotericism, right? Which I think is really related to this point. There is a kind of, and this is related to democracy, where you point out that quote, the love of wisdom appears as the supreme enemy of the love of the quality, because it implies a radical aristocracy as it's obvious to anybody who reads widows. But again, there's the Monica and Augustine, which we'll end up in the same place, despite their vastly different levels of learning.
So you say if common people are able to reach true through accepting faith on the basis of authority of the one preaching faith, then to distance between the philosophically inclined and the believers is considerably narrowed. Faith and revelation offers the multitude of viable means to attain truth, but it's also quite good for the philosophers because they failed to overcome the political problem that has made esotericism necessary. And so you say the goal of philosophy is unattainable for almost everyone, if it can only be achieved through philosophy. The advantage of Christian faith, according to Augustine's argument, is that it bursts open the doors to truth without all may sharing it.
The widespread dissemination of Christian faith is also advantageous to the philosophers themselves, for they no longer need to practice esotericism. You've got a friend, you could say. And then you end with this, this is before you get to a conclusion with this quote from the Confessions, where it said that everyone could read it and read it easily, the scripture. And yet it preserved the majesty of its mystery in the deepest part of its meaning, for it offers itself to all in the plainest words and simplest expressions, yet demands the closest attention of the most serious minds.
So I was left with the question was like, Oh, that sounds lovely. Okay, what's the deepest part of the meaning? Right. So I guess one way to think about this, that you could read this very, very realistically, right?
And say, well, the whole synthesis seems like it's part of the allegorical, like, you know, right in the very ways, the Quran is just allegory for Aristotle. Come on. Right. So there's something similar but different going on here.
I was wondering if you could just maybe share some of your thoughts on this path of questioning. Okay, well, first on the on esotericism itself. So Augustine very clearly knew that the philosophers practiced it, even the Platonists who he thought were the best philosophers by far, they especially practiced it, they especially practiced it because they didn't want the purity of their teaching to be muddied and solid by materialistic philosophers, Stoics and Navicurians and so forth. They wanted to hide their philosophy from these, these would-be philosophers who were false, who weren't yet capable of grasping the truth.
And so Augustine, it's not so much that he says that the philosophers were liars by using this method of esotericism. Or he doesn't really blame them so much. I mean, what were they supposed to do? They didn't have a choice.
Okay, they had to to dissimulate or not share all of the truth with all audiences. Not everybody can understand these things. And so the idea about the same time he was realizing that the academics were employing these techniques in their writings. Augustine also heard from Ambrose about the mystical sense of scripture.
Okay, that it could contain meanings beyond the historical or the what we sometimes call the literary. Now your comment about Verui's is interesting there. Augustine doesn't mean that. And he says in another of his works the Data Train of Christiana on how to Christian teaching, how to read the Bible.
And he's very clear that the mystical senses of scripture always have to be confirmed by the historical or literal sense elsewhere. Okay, so that's his control on how to read, especially the Old Testament. Yes, it can be read mystically, Augustine says. And in and hence, there is the surface message that Greg was talking about that is accessible to all, if you're not too proud.
And then there's the deeper message that is, you know, if you know everything else well will become clear to you. The standard things like passing through the Red Sea being an anticipation of baptism or something like that. He's willing to do that. The New Testament itself does this with the story of never Paul talking about Hagar and Sarah, the free woman and the slave woman and so forth.
So I'll think some more about that and Verui's, Alex, I think that's not Augustine's intention, but I can see why that's worth comparing. Yeah, I'd like to, if you have any more, I really like this, the connection with Inverse, if you have anything more on that, I thought that was kind of interesting just that he had had this sort of, I don't know, intimation of this. And is there any more to that story? It sounds like it was significant in his biography.
Okay, well, the whole idea of seeing the New Testament in the old was, you know, around among the Christian since the beginning. And see, when Augustine says that when he first read the scriptures as a young man, an adolescent, I guess he would have been almost, he was turned off by them because the literary quality was so bad. He was reading them in a Latin translation. Everybody agrees now, it was not very good.
And he just said, compared with Cicero, it looked, you know, it was for simple times. And he said, I didn't realize on the time that it was this deeper meaning. And I was too proud. I was the big man on campus and I wasn't going to read this bad laugh.
And go ahead. Just a small point, this is something that I'll confess I have, maybe it's pride. But when I read the Hebrew Bible Old Testament, I'm amazed sometimes at how wonderful it is and how many levels it seems to work on. But the New Testament strikes me as sort of straightforward narrative for the most part.
And so I often don't necessarily see that. So maybe, I don't know if you want to go, it just takes us too far from the topic at hand. But we hope to see what it does. There's more of a Monica.
Not a Monica. Not a Monica. Anyways, you're safe. Correct.
All right. All right. Thank you. Well, so this reading of the figurative sense of scripture is primarily what Christians would find or claim to find in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible.
And so it's not mystical sense in the New Testament. Let's go. Okay. So there's a frequently questioned of what did Jesus mean with this parable?
And those kinds of things are kind of difficult to understand. But it is written much more straightforward. The first Christians were not sophisticated people. And okay, let's step beyond the New Testament itself.
Christianity spread among the urban masses of the empire. It was for the scum of the empire, slaves, women, the ignorant, the people very definitely on the bottom. It's kind of interesting. Actually, it's so typical.
If you notice the book Nine of the Confessions, where Monica's story is discussed, we read that the Christianity came to her, into her household, through a female slave. And that's so typical of how it would have spread in the centuries prior to Constantine. Now, do you want to go back to Cicero and Greg? Yeah.
Do you don't mind? I mean, I sort of seemed like that was a big part of your first first pretty argument was mostly about the sort of regime type. And it seemed like you were, I was interested in a couple of things, but one was just how much Augustine seemed to be indebted to not indebted to me, but influenced by Cicero and his political thought generally. Yeah.
For instance, something like that Augustine is sort of Cicero adapted to Christian context or something like that. Yeah. Well, I think that's largely true. How did Augustine know so much about ancient political philosophy?
Well, the books that he had were principally Cicero's books. And he was interested in all of them, but in the city of God, Augustine especially relies on Cicero's Republic to help him. And of course, there's this whole discussion of the role of justice in cities in the Republic or what we have on it. And we can see that Augustine loves it.
I mean, Cicero himself says that cities, in order to be true cities, they need justice, but they never have. And so Augustine is very quick to draw the conclusion, well, even Cicero says that there is no such thing as a city based on justice. That's an inter, well, that's a, I guess we could say, somewhat esoteric interpretation of Cicero. He seems to side with justice, but then he tells us about all of the unjust deeds of the great city of Rome.
This seems to be a double message there. And this is typical of Augustine in that the heavenly city does not exist yet on Earth. It exists in heaven. There's a pattern in heaven, and there are pilgrims from that city on Earth.
So it's not quite the same as Plato or Cicero, but there is this sort of damning of the common in light of the highest, the way there is in the Republic, the regime, the perfect regime exists nowhere, yet we can use it to judge actual, actually existing regimes. And in that way, Cicero is indeed Augustine's immediate source for ancient political philosophy. But I think it extends back some of this fundamental theme in ancient political philosophy. Augustine anticipates even from Plato through Cicero, but it extends back to Plato's Republic.
Yeah, I think that's right. I wonder if I have any questions, but I mean, this has been really remarkable. I mean, one thing we could have touched on is his critique of the love of glory, which I thought was interesting because, I mean, one, maybe this is just a general observation, and this might be a good concluding topic that's connected to this, which is that it seems sort of like he's saying the city of God, it's almost like what he says, Plato says of aristocracy in the Republic of the city and speech that it hits all of like, right, the life of the philosopher is the one devoted to wisdom. It is most rational.
It is the one most deserving of honor, and it is the one most rich in gains, right? So it hits the love of gain, right? And the same thing, right, when he's describing the conversion of Victorinas, Augustine says victory over the enemy is greater when we win from him a man who the old's more strongly. So it's a kind of glory found there.
It's, I'm sure Gusson would say that's a second rank, right? It's not of the highest rank, right? That's not a name. It's just a nice consequence, but it does seem like the city of God hits all these ends and in the high-send wisdom, glory, right?
It hits the love of equality and the kind of freedom. But within this overarching sort of love of God or faith, right? I'm not sure if you've any thoughts on that end, but it is sort of neat how that works out. Well, one way to focus on a love of glory itself would be the following.
The first five books, of course, were arguing against those who want to pay in religion to be practiced for prosperity in this world. And okay, so in that part of the book, I mean, let's face it, Augustine is that a big disadvantage because, gee, we've worshipped the pagan gods and we had prosperity. We started worshipping the Christian god. We don't have prosperity.
We want prosperity, temporal prosperity. Well, Augustine doesn't think he can promise that. He knows that we have all on the whole. Maybe the world would be a little better if Christians were ruling, but they don't.
There's a lot of politics that you can't control and that doesn't really guarantee anything. Look at some of the Christians of prospered and some of them haven't prospered, so you can't decide anything, Augustine thinks, on the basis of temporal prosperity. And so, I mean, he goes on and says, well, really, what you guys call temporal prosperity isn't that big a deal. It doesn't matter.
It's not important, but he knows that his adversaries are hopelessly committed to it. So finally, he just addresses the elephant in the room. The Romans had a great empire, it's undeniable that they did this. Their accomplishments were incredible.
And he says, you know, and let's not minimize them. They weren't, you know, they knew Ra was not what the ancient Romans were, the sensualists, people who care only about pleasure, anything. There's no love of pleasure in those ancient Romans. They sacrificed for the common good.
Why did they do it? Because it was glorious, because it was it was honorable to do that sort of thing. And well, did God cheat them? No, God gave it.
I mean, they wanted to be honored. They've got honor. They want glory. They've got it.
Everybody, they got what they want. They have, and he he cites the Sermon on the Mount here, costically, the Gudson. They have their reward. They wanted an empire, a glorious empire.
They got it. No reason to complain. He says that seems to be his final verdict on the empire. So yeah, it touches all of the themes.
You're right, Alex. Yeah, maybe before you segue into your bio, you pass along an essay by Ernest Ford and the end of this essay was really provocative and dwelling on it all afternoon. But this right, this idea that John once one point else reflected says, Oh, folks, and all this is from the book ever ancient ever new. And this is chapter six, the city of God, which is amazingly like a whole, a summary of the entire work in about 10, 20 pages.
So anyway, sorry, your main point. This is by Ernest Ford. Yeah. So he's pointing out that God is governing everything towards a kind of end and there seems to be a kind of progress.
We says, so it follows that the evils of human existence are themselves part of an overall plan that God pursues in this world. To that extent, they may be said to be rational, but the rationality surpasses human reason, right? And we can't know the intervening of human events. To be earthly observer, these events retain their fundamental obscurity, even once they have occurred, considered in this totality, the life of temporal societies appears not as an orderly progression, or creus percursus, toward a determinant end, but as a simple process, excursus, by which the two cities run out their earthly existence, that would be wrong.
This is what we have what you were saying. And he says, with its characteristic blend of successes and failures, but no guarantee of salvation in this world for quote, only in heaven has been promised that which on earth we seek. And I think that ties that together quite well, that there's all of these and somehow find their actual filaments and only in the next world, while in this world, the world is partial and subject to decay. So, so, Fjorden was particularly concerned about an interpretation of Augustine, which suggested that there was a sort of historical necessity in the development of the two cities, sort of this is my way of putting it, reading Hegel into Augustine, into the development of the cities.
Well, the cities, no, they run their course and they might improve, might disagree, and it's obscure to us. Even when I was, I was saying this about Rome, his interpretation of Rome, Augustine says at the end of it, at least this is how it seems to me, if somebody else has a better interpretation. In fact, I hope we graduate them through it. Provost, to see this modern historical consciousness, it, it, Hegel, Marx, these people, history, we can figure it out.
We know what's coming next. We know what's around the band. And some people want to read Christian providence as being analogous to that. And Augustine's quite clear.
I mean, we don't know what the meaning of these events is. It's a doctrine of faith that the omnipotent God cares about human beings and looks out for them. Okay, but that doesn't mean that you're going to have an empire or, or, you know, be safe from the vicissitudes of political life. It's, it's, it's a doctrine of faith.
It's not something that the Christians claim can be observed empirically in historical development. Well, this has been really helpful. And thanks for turning our attention back to Augustine. Might be a good point for us to turn to your own.
So we like to ask this of our guests, folks, just so they can know our audience is interested. But how did you first get interested in political philosophy? Who were your main teachers? Was there a book that turned you a class, teacher?
Did you come out, did you come out and five years old reading the Dustin city of God? And just sort of that's what it was? Or, yeah. No, I was raised in a very small town in central Idaho, public school, student, although looking back on it, I think I got a pretty decent foundation in that high school.
I started in a great books program as an undergraduate at Seattle University. I could never decide whether I wanted to study philosophy or theology. And so in the end, I chose theology because I figured there'd be a lot of philosophy in it anyway. And Seattle University's a Jesuit school and then my Jesuit teachers there wanted me to go to Boston College.
And when I arrived to Boston College, of course, I had no plan. I mean, I meet these students now know who they want to write their dissertation with and the topic. And I was completely clueless, just showed up, bumped into Ernest Fortin immediately. And it wasn't, you know, like the scales just fell from my eyes or anything like that.
It took a long time before I really began to appreciate Fortin. I don't know why I took lots of classes with my kept studying with it, and eventually wrote my dissertation with him. But even then, it wasn't on a guts then. It would somehow been later, as I've gone along, I've been more and more attracted to a best and then things just fell into my lap.
Can you tell the folks at home? I mean, Fortin has a name that some folks will be familiar with and maybe a name that some folks have never heard. Who was he? What was sort of his main contribution to scholarship and teaching?
That sort of thing? Well, he was born in, he was raised at least in Rhode Island, joined the Augustinians of the Assumption and was sent to Europe to study, first at the the Greg, I believe the Gregoriano. You know, he was very bright in multiple languages and was studying patristics. He'd come out of the kind of the Catholic, Thomistic revival of the early 20th century.
And he said he wasn't getting anywhere though on his dissertation. And so he went up to Paris to study and he was taking a course on Plato's laws. And there was another American student in the course, a kid named Alan Bloom. Yeah, I was gonna say this guy Bloom.
And he said Bloom was, Bloom was broke off and he earned it. So I had a little money, a little spending money from his order. And so Bloom had these books by Leo Strauss and he was needed money. So Fortin bought them from him.
Come on. Never heard the story? Yeah, shameful thing to do. But he's so revealed.
And he probably just wasted all on cigarettes and espresso. I know exactly. Well, I don't know about that. But so Ernest just said he was kind of blown away by the idea that he was somebody who knew things that the others didn't know.
He studied with all kinds of very famous European scholars. But this is really curious, especially insofar as Strauss didn't write on a Gustin or Christian thinker so much. No, he didn't. And I'm kind of thinking about that a lot these days working on that.
So I really don't haven't come to any conclusions yet. But I mean, a Gustin is such a central figure in the history of political philosophy and Strauss was such an advocate of reading the history of political philosophy. What are we going to do with that? Well, I mean, I can understand how Strauss, I mean, that Jewish upbringing, he's not going to bump right into Latin, Patristic authors.
But I think see, so we're bloom then introduced Ernest, two Strauss and Ernest at one point, but out the study with Strauss in Chicago a little bit. And I kind of think that Strauss kind of left the August and Ernest to study. And you know, he can't study everybody. And so it was never really his figure.
And then Augustine is, I mean, he's a, I would say he doesn't call himself a theologian, but he's a theologian more than a philosopher. And I mean, depending on how you understood and those terms. And Augustine has a very powerful criticism of philosophy, as we've talked about some this evening. So you can see why maybe Strauss wouldn't be attracted to to Augustine.
I can understand that. I think it's fair to say though, that I mean, as we think of like, Strauss's main students, especially as I try to sort of classify them, it's like, it's okay. So, you know, Mothteus is his main student who went on studies long things. And Fortin is clearly the thinker who went on study Christian things of Strauss.
I mean, he's sort of the main guy, it seems to me. Yeah. Well, when you think about it, I mean, it's kind of astonishing how many Christians, and especially Catholics, read Strauss today. And you know, there's Strauss, he and his own Notre Dame, and Boston College, you know, Christians are very interested in Strauss.
But you, okay, why is that? I mean, it's an interesting question. You kind of, he doesn't come across as being someone who's particularly friendly to Christianity and maybe especially to Thomas Aquinas. But there are these Catholic readers.
I was at a conference not long ago, and James Caesar referred to as faith-based Straussians. And everybody thought that was pretty funny. Yeah. And so, Fortin was one of your teachers and the other major teachers for you?
Yeah. Well, it was Fortin. It was my major teacher. And I say, I didn't connect with him as much at the time as, I mean, he directed my dissertation, and I worked with him.
And certainly, I knew early on that he knew more than the others, or at least I felt that he did. But it's mostly from studying the books he studied, and going back to his essays, because he didn't write many monographs. But he has volumes of collective essays, including essays on Augustine that I think have been very influential on me. As far as a single book, I can remember probably the most influential one was natural right in history.
I just thought that was that really opened up. Oh, sure. Things for me. Yeah.
So, I mean, you speak of the sort of Catholic or Christian interest in Strauss as no buffettled, but I assume you would catch yourself among these people. So, I don't know whether you're confessing the funnel meant to buy your interest or what is it. But I mean, one place, at least with natural history, you think about like Strauss and Vogland is that there's a kind of shared critique of modernity and to rescue something pre-modern. Is that part of your interest or just to return to the biographical portion of what you want?
Well, give us sort of a more general statement of your interest in it. Well, I think coming out of the Catholic milieu, where Thomas Aquinas is, you know, everything. And Strauss makes some pretty, sets of pretty critical things of Thomas. And at first, that's kind of off-putting.
And there are a lot of Catholic Thomists who can't get beyond that. But just for myself, I begin to sense that some of what Strauss was criticizing Thomas War was correct. And that book that you mentioned at the beginning, the problem of natural law, okay, we've got to get beyond natural law in order to talk about some of these political problems. And Strauss helps some of us do that.
So, we can talk about Christianity and political philosophy in terms that don't stem directly from Thomas Aquinas. And that is strangely enough kind of a liberating thing, not so much today, because Thomas Aquinas is not star has sat, it seems, in the Catholic world. But at one point, gosh, we could think about these things differently. That's pretty remarkable.
And for Ernest, it was that that Strauss was able to differentiate between modernity and pre-modernity in ways that other Catholic authors seemed unable to do. So a lot of them were running Catholic natural law theory right into what sounded like Lockean natural rights. And this inability to distinguish between rights and law really undermines the possibility of keeping Catholicism alive as a pre-modern alternative and critique of contemporary politics. I mean, if in the end we all sound like Lockeans or something, then there's no way back.
There's no possibility of considering earlier alternatives. So I think that's a lot of why at least the Catholics are so interested in Strauss. One thing that I know that is fascinating, one thing I know that you've been working on Doug pretty diligently, and one of the things I think that the Straussans have sort of not followed through on as much as I would like to have seen as I know as much as you would like to have seen as, and it really feels like the study of medieval thought is maybe taking off a little now more to a greater degree. Like I mentioned to Baylor and then I know a couple people who've written a PC on it, but there's one area where I would like to have seen more work done.
It's some grateful for the work that you've done and others. Yeah, Josh Perrin's is, I mean he called me one day and talked about teaming up on some of this stuff. He kind of works on the Arabic side. I work on the Latin side and try to get those two groups talking with each other.
And I think it's very helpful. You can learn a lot. I mean, when the Christians, when we think of medieval political philosophy, we immediately think of Thomas Aquinas maybe Augustine, although he's more of an ancient author than a medieval author. But who, you know, Moses, my monadies have been roughed.
I mean, we don't think very much about these people. And we need to do this. I'm teaching Erasmus right now for the very first time ever. I have no idea what I'm doing.
I thought it would be straightforward and it's really complex. Well, you know, Greg, you put him in front of a book if it doesn't have stuff about like, you know, diagrams. Cheers diagrams. Yeah.
The cow goes move. Yeah. Well, there's another, you talk about Erasmus. Oh, goodness.
Thomas Moore. Right. Thomas Moore. The Christians of our reading Thomas Moore more carefully and through a Strausian lens.
Right. And Plato and some good things are happening. I sort of more studies. I was doing Erasmus through as a foil to Machiavellian and I started reading and I thought, Oh, man, it's not as obviously a foil as I thought it was.
I mean, there's I just there's the sniff of esotericism and Erasmus. Yeah, we'll see if I can get to the bottom of it. So yeah, this has been a really great tug. I appreciate your time.
I hope to have you back again sometime to talk about the quinus or something else you'd like to talk about. Is there anything you working on right now you want to talk about for the folks? Oh, I'm working on mostly is this book on Robert Bellerman, a very interesting figure and a great student of Augustine, Patristic Litter generally also new Thomas Aquinas and roughly when is Bellerman alive? He died in 1621, I believe.
Okay. So contemporary of Hobbes. Hobbes writes about how he went to Rome and saw Bellerman. They didn't talk, but well, and if you read the Leviathan, the author that Hobbes really goes after more than anybody is Bellerman, a point by point reputation.
Son, it's there's some good stuff. Well, I look forward to your work on Bellerman. It's been a real treat. Thanks for joining us tonight, Alex, anything else?
Like, read, subscribe. Thank you, Doug. This was eye opening. It makes me excited to one day when I, you know, a free decade to work through this.
Okay. All right, folks, thanks for listening. We'll see you next week on the new Thinkfree. Don't forget as Alex said, like, rate and subscribe.