The Augustinian Alternative

Religious Skepticism and the Search for a Liberal Politics

Benjamin J. Wood

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781506432618
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506418841
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This book's central claim is that a close reading of Augustine's epistemology can help political theologians develop affirmative accounts of political liberalism. This claim is set in a scholarly context that is profoundly hostile to constructive theological readings of liberal culture. As a corrective to such antagonism, this book suggests that, far from being natural opponents, Christian communities can work fruitfully with political liberals based on common principles. A key component in this argument is the theological reevaluation of the ancient skeptical tradition. While the ancient skeptics are habitually treated by scholars as minor characters in the story of Augustine's theological development, this volume argues that they played a significant role in shaping both Augustine's theology and the subsequent character of the Augustinian tradition. By placing Augustine's reading of the skeptics in dialogue with contemporary culture, this book constructs a viable form of liberal Christian politics that is attentive both to his sin-sensitive account of public life and his eschatological vision of the church.

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The Liberal State: An Augustinian Defense

Introduction

In the latter part of chapter 2, I noted that rhetoric played a key role in the construction of authoritative accounts of self-knowledge within Roman culture. I pointed to the way in which Augustine’s theological conception of knowledge as a liberating gift presented a fundamental challenge to a form of public sphere that treated knowledge as an end to the exercise of power. In an effort to develop these remarks further, this chapter argues that this peaceful Johannine politics can be applied constructively to the defense of the liberal state.

In his methodical survey of the historical formation of the liberal tradition, the Italian political theorist Norberto Bobbio defines the liberal state as a form of government under two forms of limitation. He notes: “Liberalism refers us to limits in the power and in the function of the state. In respect of the limits of power one speaks currently of the rights-based-state while the term minimalist-state is used in reference to limits in function.”^[1] While aware of the different degrees to which these limitations can be applied in practice, Bobbio locates several key consequences in these commitments for contemporary projects of liberal governance. Firstly, there is the general recognition of specific “rights” that place certain obligations and restrictions on the way agents of the state approach and interact with individual citizens. In structural terms, this manifests as a series of constitutional mechanisms that “obstruct or hinder the arbitrary and illegitimate use of power, and prevent or discourage its abuse or its illegal exercise.”^[2] Secondly, there is recognition that a healthy politics requires a separate realm of private affairs, where citizens are free to pursue moral, material, and personal betterment^[3]. Moving forward with these core themes, I argue that Augustine’s epistemological reflection postulates a vision of public life compatible with these political ambitions. Rejecting the ideology of acquisitive individualism and systematic violence that he perceives to be constitutive of Roman domination, I cast Augustine as a significant precursor in the development of a limited state.

In the previous chapter, Augustine was framed as a critical friend of the Ciceronian tradition, yet in many key respects, Ciceronian thought is at odds with Augustine’s hermeneutical project of love and relationality. In particular, Cicero’s account of the individual citizen legitimizes a politics of brutal autocracy, which is anathema to the character of Augustine’s political ethics. The first part of this chapter considers the roots of these damaging trajectories through a close analysis of Cicero’s engagement with the ancient Stoics. By fusing Stoic models of individualism, voluntarism, and mental interiority with the structures of Roman republicanism, Cicero unwittingly constructed the blueprint for a fundamentally avaricious and antisocial self, which serves as a key inspiration for Augustus’s conception of imperial Rome.

The second part of this chapter considers Augustine’s response to this imperialistic culture through an examination of his intellectual development. While noting his original complicity with Ciceronian patterns of acquisitive individualism, I point to Augustine’s gradual formation of an anti-imperialist consciousness through a distinctly Christian account of self-knowledge. Framing this progression through his close reading of Virgil’s Aeneid, I argue that Augustine rejects key planks of an imperial conception of self. Augustine finds in Virgil’s hero Aeneas the epitome of an alienated and brutal human being. With this in mind, he exposes a nexus of epistemological claims that trap individuals and communities in vicious cultural practices. At the root of such a system, Augustine perceives the mark of Stoicism. Aeneas’s commitment to the ideal of emotional detachment and the supremacy of the will leads Augustine to discern threads of callousness and self-justifying bloodshed at the heart of Rome’s national epic. Yet, if Augustine has an image of distorted human relationships in Aeneas, he also finds in Virgil the embodiment of those who are made victims through imperial expansion in the figure of Queen Dido of Carthage. By spurning the love of Dido for the sake of Roman imperial destiny, Aeneas distances himself from the needs of others. Repudiating these toxic moral legacies, Augustine argues for a politics of care and mutuality. To conclude this discussion, we will consider key convergences between Augustinian politics and the aspirations of the liberal state. Significant in this regard is Augustine’s distrust of an ideologically driven state in favor of social reform that champions the formation of private life. In this respect, Augustine can be seen to offer a potent theological defense of individual welfare against an overly mighty government. Returning to the Ciceronian theme of self-interest, Augustine’s anti-imperialism also stands as a firm rebuke to contemporary liberals who reduce politics to the regulation of selfishness. Extending the confines of the public sphere beyond such narrow tasks, Augustine’s ethic of peaceful advocacy supports neglected parts of the liberal tradition that stress the virtues of community and free association. To open this argument, we will investigate the distinctive elements of Stoic accounts of autonomy that led Cicero to support a self-interested and violent mode of politics. While such an account appears at first glance diversionary, there is a strong link between Cicero’s Stoicism and the development of Augustine’s politics. Much of what appears “liberal” in Augustine’s account of the state is a thoughtful yet impassioned reaction to many of the moral and ideological excesses of Cicero’s own politic project.

Stoic Autonomy: Background and Central Themes

The rise of Greek Stoicism in the second century BCE coincided with the decline of the polis and the rise of monarchy under Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander.^[4] With this major shift in the geopolitics of the ancient world came fresh attentiveness to questions of political freedom and citizenship. With rapidly dissolving ethnic, religious, and political boundaries prompted by Hellenization, it was no longer apparent who was a cultural insider. While, for instance, the old city-state of Athens had once treated foreigners with contempt,^[5] the Alexandrian Empire saw Greeks and barbarians become partners in government as a matter of policy.^[6] This fundamental reversal of outlook is vividly depicted by the Graeco-Latin historian Arrian’s description of Alexander’s feast at Opis:

To mark the restoration of harmony, Alexander offered sacrifice to the gods he was accustomed to honour, and gave a public banquet which he himself attended, sitting among the Macedonians, all of whom were present. Next [to] them the Persians had their places, and next to the Persians distinguished foreigners from other nations; Alexander and his friends dipped their wine from the same bowl and poured the same libations, following the lead of the Greek seers and the Magi. The chief object of his prayers was that Persians and Macedonians might rule together in harmony as an imperial power.^[7]

Such a policy of fusion not only defied traditional cultural loyalties but led to an innovative conception of both the individual and the exercise of personal freedom. In a world where the link between locality and social status was no longer automatic or indeed binding, it was possible to speak of a denatured human being, one abstracted from the conditions of birth, religion, and communal fidelity. Indeed, the removal of cultural context allowed for the development of ethical systems built upon the assumption of personal happiness rather than duty toward one’s community.^[8] Yet, alongside these new forms of mobility, the decline of the city-state also witnessed the consolidations of autocracies throughout the Greek-speaking world, bringing an end to local traditions of political participation.^[9] Consequently, the world after the polis presented an intriguing paradox. While we can detect an increasing emphasis on the individual as opposed to the community, political conditions actively narrowed to curtail individual choices. In a world ruled by kings and stripped of the security of the city-state, how is the individual to be free? The Stoic answer centered on the assertion that while social conditions may be beyond our control, we are nonetheless free. This startling claim stems from Stoicism’s nuanced rejection of two extreme positions on the nature of the will.

In the first place, ancient Stoicism rejected the strict determinist proposition that the individual is merely a puppet of a capricious rule of fate. In protest against the determinism of Homeric theology and its pantheon of manipulative deities,^[10] Stoic philosophy favored a teleological view of the cosmos that sees freedom as the consequence of rational agency.^[11] This theory is preserved in Cicero’s philosophical dialogue The Nature of the Gods. Balbus, Cicero’s spokesperson for the Stoics, argues that suc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Political Liberalism and Its Theological Opponents
• Political Liberalism and the Possibilities of Augustinian Skepticism
• The Liberal State: An Augustinian Defense
• Montaigne and the Notion of “the Secular”: An Alternative to Radical Orthodoxy
• Obeying, Believing, and Rebelling: Montaigne’s Theology as Liberal Christian Politics
• Contemporary Political Landscapes: Augustine against Neoliberalism
• Conclusion: Augustinian Epistemology and the Prospect of Christian Liberalism
• Bibliography
• Index