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ABSTRACT
In his monumental study of the history of Western forms of government, Metamorphoses of the City: On the Western Dynamic (2013), Pierre Manent offers his response to the question of modernity’s capacity for virtue. By discussing ancient Rome’s main political virtue—the quest for human excellence and glory—and the tragedy of its loss after the fall of the empire and the rise of Christianity, he expresses his longing for the ancient world and its virtues. Augustine plays an important role in Manent’s lament as a figure who distances himself from the ancient understanding of glory for the sake of Christianity yet longs for the political nobility and beauty of the past. I argue against Manent’s interpretation of Augustine’s position to suggest that, rather than longing for the past, Augustine confidently breaks with one of its most endemic and problematic aspects—its understanding of glory. Yet in doing so, Augustine does not abandon the political or political virtue. Rather, by distancing himself from the distortions of human glory, he creates a space for a serious political commitment and engagement that preserves aspirations to excellence while avoiding its tyrannical pitfalls.
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Notes
1. Manent, Metamorphoses of the City, 217. Hereafter page numbers are cited in the text. There is a growing number of works on the question of the feasibility of modernity’s capacity for virtue, including, among others, Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed; Dreher, The Benedict Option; Faulkner, The Case for Greatness; MacIntyre, After Virtue; MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity.
2. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 485.
3. Manent and Mahoney, Natural Law and Human Rights, 101.
4. It is important to note that Manent does make room for a variety of human conceptions of the just (honest/noble). Rather than the “grass counter” of Rawls’s theory of justice, the person whose endeavor is senseless to most people but meaningful and harmless and therefore permissible as a conception of the just life (Theory of Justice, 379–80), Manent suggests that individuals in each of our various cultures are motivated by what they culturally conceive of as the noble/just/honest (Manent Natural Law and Human Rights, 102).
5. Or alternatively, it seems the “science” of Judaism, which inverts the priorities of Rome: the Israel of the Old Testament is a religious community that is a political community. Conversely, Rome is a political community that is a religious community (Manent, Metamorphoses, 227).
6. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, chap. 11.
7. Manent, Seeing Things Politically, 105
8. Rombs, “Augustine on Christ,” 43–44.
9. Augustine, City of God, 14.4. Hereafter book and chapter numbers are cited in the text.
10. Cf. exposition in Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love, 370.
11. Augustine, “Fifth Homily,” in Homilies, 85–86.
12. See also, Augustine, City of God, 5.17: What does it matter under whose rule a man lives being so soon to die provided that the rulers do not force him to impious acts.”
13. My exegesis of these passages gives one reason to think that Augustine has more serious things to say about politics, but there is always the additional question of his use of rhetorical flourishes. One only need compare chapter 17 of Book 5 within the context of Augustine’s famous passage on friendship in Book 19, where it seems that Augustine is saying that ultimately friendship just leads to sadness because of the friend’s death or betrayal (19.5). Like friendship, politics is the kind of thing that one navigates in the hope that one could move toward the good: Augustine does not think that because friendship can be painful or filled with deceit or loss, it should be avoided or shunned. Rather, it is clear from the context that friendship is one of those things which can bless this “school for eternity.”
14. Keys, “The City of God in the Scholastics’ Reply,” 71.
15. Ibid.; Augustine, City of God, 5.19.
16. For further evidence of the conflation of the church and the City of God, see Manent, Metamorphoses, 280 and 299.
17. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 511.
18. For more on this, see Menchaca-Bagnulo “Deeds and Words.”
19. Augustine, City of God: “What I have said of the Roman people and commonwealth I also say and think of the Athenians and any other Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the ancient Babylon of the Assyrians, and of every other nation, great or small” (19.24).
20. Ibid: “Most glorious is the City of God: whether in this passing age, where she dwells by faith as a pilgrim among the ungodly, or in the security of that eternal home which she now patiently awaits” (I.Preface).
21. This is explained in 19.14, regarding the nature of domestic peace; two chapters later in 19.16, titled “Of Equitable Rule,” Augustine explains that the household is ruled with reference to the city to bring it “into harmony with the city’s peace” and is a “beginning or a little part of the city.”
22. Ogle, “Sheathing the Sword,” 718–47, 727–28, 731, 733–74.
23. Gregory, “Strange Fruit,” 98–110; Von Heyking, “Augustine on Punishment,” 56–73.
24. For a similar passage, see 4.3: “let us imagine two men (for each individual man, like one letter in a text, is, as it were, an element of the city or kingdom, no matter how extensive it is in its occupation of the earth). Let us suppose one of these men to be poor, or at any rate of moderate means, and the other to be very wealthy. The wealthy man, however, is troubled by fears; he pines with grief; he burns with greed. He is never secure; he is always unquiet and panting from endless confrontations with his enemies. To be sure, he adds to his patrimony in immense measure by these miseries; but alongside these additions he also heaps up the most bitter cares. By contrast, the man of moderate means is self-sufficient on his small and circumscribed estate. He is beloved of his own family, and rejoices in the most sweet peace with kindred, neighbours and friends. He is devoutly religious, well disposed in mind, healthy in body, frugal in life, chaste in morals, untroubled in conscience. I do not know if anyone could be such a fool as to dare to doubt which to prefer. As, therefore, in the case of these two men, so in two families, two peoples, two kingdoms, the same principle of tranquility applies; and if we use this principle vigilantly, to guide our search, we shall very easily see where vanity dwells, and where happiness lies.”
25. For an extension of this argument about the nature of the good for Augustine and the role Regulus and Romulus play in his understanding of politics as mercy, see Menchaca-Bagnulo, “Rome and the Education of Mercy.”
26. Cicero, On the Commonwealth, 3.101.
27. Plato, Republic, 362a.
28. See Keys, “Augustinian Humility as Natural Right,” 177–78, for an excellent treatment of the relationship between Augustinian politics and humility 8.
29. Lamb, “Between Presumption and Despair,” 1041, 1046.
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Notes on contributors
Ashleen Menchaca-Bagnulo
Ashleen Menchaca-Bagnulo, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Texas State University in San Marcos Texas, USA. She studies civic republicanism.