Self and City in the Thought of Saint Augustine

Self and City in the Thought of Saint Augustine provides a detailed exegesis of the analogy between the self (as body and soul, always in relation to other such beings) and the city (or political society) in the thought of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). The analogy between the individual human being and the ‘state’ is one of the most important themes in the history of political thought. Attempts have been made to understand the state by examining the soul (since Plato and Aristotle), the body (as in medieval theories of the body politic), and the person (most influentially in Hobbes, surviving to this day in such concepts as international legal personality); and yet, the Augustinian part of the story is not at all well known. This is the lacuna that this book aims to fill. It argues that Augustine develops three analogies between the self and the city as a society ordered by love: self-love in the case of the Earthly City; divided but improving love in the Pilgrim City;and love of others and of God in the City of God. Therefore, it supplies an overview of Augustine’s intellectual ‘system’ as it touches upon theology, ecclesiology, psychology and anthropology, as well as politics. The book also provides a new interpretation of Augustine’s important definition of the republic, which is the aspect of his political theory that is most often discussed by contemporary commentators.