The Augustinian State

In the background of the formulation of the Augustinian state is Fremantle's characterization of the medieval philosophical period as an age of belief. The religious frame of reference dominated the Middle Ages and even continued into the Renaissance and into humanism. Augustine's philosophy in general provides an introduction to the intellectual history of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, from Augustine to Ockham. Augustine's work in particular launches neoplatonist idealism (some of Augustine) as the dominant philosophical mode of thought reaching to the scholastic synthesis of faith and reason by Aquinas, and beyond that synthesis to Ockham's "razor," which separated purely mental conceptions from plainly physical perceptions (Fremantle passim). What has to be seen is that throughout this period, despite disputes about theology, ethics, morality, or politics to which Paolucci refers (vii-viii), there was a shared vision of the world that was predicated of the Christian and specifically Catholic tradition, yet informed by pre-Christian commentaries, particularly Plato and Aristotle.

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specifically and programmatically disinterested--i.e., reasonable and moderate--governance on one hand and the ethical/philosophical standard of successful governance on the other. In context, he is arguing specifically against an imperialist/conquest philosophy of governance. However, the plain fact is that even where the great states of history have had periods of governance by reason, they have evolved into imperialist aggressor/bandit states. This, according to Augustine, was the experience of Assyria and Rome, both of which were distinguished by their territorialist expansionism and by the emergence of monarchy as the fundamental governing format. Indeed, following a summary of the core argument of Cicero's Commonwealth, which calls for Rome's return to the foundational morality of justice that had informed the establishment of the Roman republic, Augustine says that as a matter of fact "Rome never was a republic, because true justice had never a place in it" (33). He attributes this to the absence of what Cicero suggests was present in the formulation of the Roman republic: divine inspiration and authority. Indeed, Augustine cites the anarchic cooperation in the rape of the Sabine women before and the de facto patrician rule
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Approximate Word count = 1862
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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