Augustine and the Limits of Politics

Augustine and the Limits of Politics PDF

Author: Jean Bethke Elshtain

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2018-04-30

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 0268161143

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Now with a new foreword by Patrick J. Deneen. Jean Bethke Elshtain brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers whose thought continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy. What is our business "within this common mortal life?" Augustine asks and bids us to ask ourselves. What can Augustine possibly have to say about the conditions that characterize our contemporary society and appear to put democracy in crisis? Who is Augustine for us now and what do his words have to do with political theory? These are the underlying questions that animate Jean Bethke Elshtain's fascinating engagement with the thought and work of Augustine, the ancient thinker who gave no political theory per se and refused to offer up a positive utopia. In exploring the questions, Why Augustine, why now? Elshtain argues that Augustine's great works display a canny and scrupulous attunement to the here and now and the very real limits therein. She discusses other aspects of Augustine's thought as well, including his insistence that no human city can be modeled on the heavenly city, and further elaborates on Hannah Arendt's deep indebtedness to Augustine's understanding of evil. Elshtain also presents Augustine's arguments against the pridefulness of philosophy, thereby linking him to later currents in modern thought, including Wittgenstein and Freud.

Augustine and the Limits of Virtue

Augustine and the Limits of Virtue PDF

Author: James Wetzel

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992-06-18

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 9780521405416

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This sophisticated analysis of Augustine's thought on virtue and the will makes a notable contribution to Augustine studies, and casts light both on the subject of 'moral luck' and on the relationship between theology and philosophy generally.

Augustine and Politics

Augustine and Politics PDF

Author: John Doody

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 9780739110096

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The essays in this volume take stock of recent scholarly developments and revisit old assumptions about the significance of Augustine of Hippo for political thought. They do so from many different perspectives, examining the anthropological and theological underpinnings of Augustine's thought, his critique of politics, his development of his own political thought, and some of the later manifestations or uses of his thought in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and today. This new vision is at once more bracing, more hopeful, and more diverse than earlier readings could have allowed.

Politics and the Order of Love

Politics and the Order of Love PDF

Author: Eric Gregory

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-08-15

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0226307514

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Augustine—for all of his influence on Western culture and politics—was hardly a liberal. Drawing from theology, feminist theory, and political philosophy, Eric Gregory offers here a liberal ethics of citizenship, one less susceptible to anti-liberal critics because it is informed by the Augustinian tradition. The result is a book that expands Augustinian imaginations for liberalism and liberal imaginations for Augustinianism. Gregory examines a broad range of Augustine’s texts and their reception in different disciplines and identifies two classical themes which have analogues in secular political theory: love—and related notions of care, solidarity, and sympathy—and sin—as well as related notions of cruelty, evil, and narrow self-interest. From an Augustinian point of view, Gregory argues, love and sin constrain each other in ways that yield a distinctive vision of the limits and possibilities of politics. In providing a constructive argument for Christian participation in liberal democratic societies, Gregory advances efforts to revive a political theology in which love’s relation to justice is prominent. Politics and the Order of Love will provoke new conversations for those interested in Christian ethics, moral psychology, and the role of religion in a liberal society.

Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World

Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World PDF

Author: John von Heyking

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0826263712

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Saint Augustine's political thought has usually been interpreted by modern readers as suggesting that politics is based on sin. In Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World, John von Heyking shows that Augustine actually considered political life a substantive good that fulfills a human longing for a kind of wholeness. Rather than showing Augustine as supporting the Christian church's domination of politics, von Heyking argues that he held a subtler view of the relationship between religion and politics, one that preserves the independence of political life. And while many see his politics as based on a natural-law ethic or on one in which authority is conferred by direct revelation, von Heyking shows how Augustine held to an understanding of political ethics that emphasizes practical wisdom and judgment in a mode that resembles Aristotle rather than Machiavelli.

Augustine's Political Thought

Augustine's Political Thought PDF

Author: Richard J. Dougherty

Publisher: Rochester Studies in Medieval

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1580469248

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This important collection reveals that Augustine's political thought drew on and diverged from the classical tradition, contributing to the study of questions at the center of all Western political thought.

The Quotable Augustine

The Quotable Augustine PDF

Author: Saint Augustine (of Hippo)

Publisher: CUA Press

Published: 2016-08-26

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 0813228883

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This book is ideal for those who wish to read some of the wisest and most wonderful sayings of Augustine. It will help all those who wish to pepper a speech, or a sermon, or an essay with the wisdom of Saint Augustine. The book is a valuable resource, too, for anyone who wants to find out "Did Augustine really say that?" and, if he did, in which of his voluminous writings it appeared. Drawn from the internationally acclaimed and successful series, the 'Fathers of the Church,' The Quotable Augustine presents a wide-ranging sample of the writings of a towering figure of the early church.

Christian Body Politic

Christian Body Politic PDF

Author: Christian Kim

Publisher: The Hermit Kingdom Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9780972386449

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"Do you want to find out CHRISTIAN ideas on POLITICS? This book is for you!" CHRISTIAN BODY POLITIC is a book that tackles difficult questions regarding the Christian perspective on the relationship between Church and State. Leading Christian thinkers and activists discuss such questions as: Did Jesus support the Death Penalty? What role should the Church play in government? What does the Bible teach about governing authority's legitimacy? Is democracy the only Bible-approved government? Professor Stephen Joel Garver has been teaching philosophy courses to students at La Salle University in Philadelphia, PA, for a long time, and Prof. Garver shares insightful thoughts on the concept of Jesus as King. What does it mean for our modern society? Professor Cliff Bates, who is teaching political science at the University of Warsaw in POLAND, shares his insights on the concept of the State and Christian responses to it. Prof. Bates discusses the issue of the Holocaust as well. Rev. David Kim, who is a major leader with an evangelical student campus movement, shares his wisdom on the idea of the City of God. If Christians are citizens of the City of God in Heaven, how does that identity relate to Christians' life on earth. Is there a relationship? Does it matter? Rev. Lee Irons, who hosts a Christian think-tank, The Upper Register, gives an informative account of the the current evangelical-reformed discussion on the relationship between Church and State and offers some of his own ideas. The editor of the volume, Christian Kim, presents cogent arguments about Jesus Christ's attitudes about the Death Penalty.

Christianity, Democracy, and the Shadow of Constantine

Christianity, Democracy, and the Shadow of Constantine PDF

Author: George E. Demacopoulos

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2016-11-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0823274217

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Winner of the 2017 Alpha Sigma Nu Award The collapse of communism in eastern Europe has forced traditionally Eastern Orthodox countries to consider the relationship between Christianity and liberal democracy. Contributors examine the influence of Constantinianism in both the post-communist Orthodox world and in Western political theology. Constructive theological essays feature Catholic and Protestant theologians reflecting on the relationship between Christianity and democracy, as well as Orthodox theologians reflecting on their tradition’s relationship to liberal democracy. The essays explore prospects of a distinctively Christian politics in a post-communist, post-Constantinian age.