Please join us to discuss selections from The City of God by St. Augustine.
Find it on page 179 of Imperfect Ideal: Utopian and Dystopian Vision – Great Books Foundation.
Contact me for the Zoom link.
The selection from the early Christian philosopher Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430), taken from Books XIV and XIX of his magisterial work The City of God (413–427), investigates a fundamental problem that arises when a utopian vision is informed by teachings believed to carry divine authority. Since such a vision is generally intended to take hold and lead to the establishment of a political community in the world, the challenge for such proposals is to account for how the religious foundations of such a community can coexist with the harsh realities of governance and remain solid and stable. For Augustine, this was not merely a theoretical problem, but a living reality in the waning days of the Roman Empire as the Christian church struggled to maintain its central place in the political life of an increasingly fragmented world. Augustine asks us to consider the complex and often ambivalent relationship between what he terms the divine City of God and the secular City of Man and to think about what it means to simultaneously be a citizen of both.
