Augustine and the Limits of Politics

Augustine and the Limits of Politics PDF Author: Jean Bethke Elshtain
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268161143
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
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 Politics

Augustine and the Limits of Politics PDF Author: Jean Bethke Elshtain
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268161143
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Politics and the Order of Love

Politics and the Order of Love PDF Author: Eric Gregory
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226307514
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
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.

Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God

Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God PDF Author: Veronica Ogle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108842593
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
A new reading of Augustine's City of God which considers the status of politics within Augustine's sacramental worldview.

Augustine and Politics

Augustine and Politics PDF Author: John Doody
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739110096
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
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.

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
ISBN: 0826263712
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
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.

Elshtain, Augustine, and Liberalism

Elshtain, Augustine, and Liberalism PDF Author: Wesley Dan Nishiyama
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description


Augustine and the Limits of Virtue

Augustine and the Limits of Virtue PDF Author: James Wetzel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521405416
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
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.

On Augustine: The Two Cities (Liveright Classics)

On Augustine: The Two Cities (Liveright Classics) PDF Author: Alan Ryan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 163149080X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description
No philosopher speaks more immediately to the excesses of our twenty-first-century world and the limits of human reason than Augustine. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the influence of Augustine—the once-hedonistic pagan turned ascetic theologian and defender of the early Christian Church—over all the subsequent history of Europe. Augustine ’s political philosophy is pregnant with arguments that racked not only Christian Europe but also much of the modern world. Whether it was his essential skepticism about the value of earthly politics when contrasted with eternity, the role of a Christian within the State, or the nature of just war and the folly of imperial ambitions, Augustine articulated distinctive and long-lived thoughts on controversial subjects that remain embedded in our political discourse. In On Augustine: The Two Cities Alan Ryan carefully lays out the complicated political, philosophical, and religious context of Augustine and traces the history of his impact on Western thought both within and beyond the Christian tradition. Excerpted here are: The City of God, Confessions.

The Quotable Augustine

The Quotable Augustine PDF Author: Saint Augustine (of Hippo)
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813228883
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
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.

Augustine in a Time of Crisis

Augustine in a Time of Crisis PDF Author: Boleslaw Z. Kabala
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030614859
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
This volume addresses our global crisis by turning to Augustine, a master at integrating disciplines, philosophies, and human experiences in times of upheaval. It covers themes of selfhood, church and state, education, liberalism, realism, and 20th-century thinkers. The contributors enhance our understanding of Augustine’s thought by heightening awareness of his relevance to diverse political, ethical, and sociological questions. Bringing together Augustine and Gallicanism, civil religion, and Martin Luther King, Jr., this volume expands the boundaries of Augustine scholarship through a consideration of subjects at the heart of contemporary political theory.