Jean Bethke Elshtain brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers whose thought continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy.
What is our business "within this common mortal life?" Augustine asks and bids us to ask ourselves. What can Augustine possibly have to say about the conditions that characterize our contemporary society and appear to put democracy in crisis? Who is Augustine for us now and what do his words have to do with political theory? These are the underlying questions that animate Jean Bethke Elshtain's fascinating engagement with the thought and work of Augustine, the ancient thinker who gave no political theory per se and refused to offer up a positive utopia. In exploring the questions, Why Augustine, why now? Elshtain brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers, one whose thought continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy.
In making Augustine's thought relevant to the contemporary world Elshtain discusses how, for Augustine, wisdom comes from experiencing fully the ambiguity and division that characterized the human condition after the fall, and how human beings are fated to narrate their lives within temporality and to work at gathering together a 'self' and forging a coherent identity. This is the central feature of what Augustine called our business "within this mortal life," and he insisted that any politics that disdains this business, this caring for the quotidian, is a dangerous or misguided or misplaced politics.
Elshtain argues that Augustine's great works display a canny and scrupulous attunement to the here and now and the very real limits therein. She discusses other aspects of Augustine's thought as well, including his insistence that no human city can be modeled on the heavenly city, and further elaborates on Hannah Arendt's deep indebtedness to Augustine's understanding of evil. Elshtain also presents Augustine's arguments against the pridefulness of philosophy, thereby linking him to later currents in modern thought, including Wittgenstein and Freud.
Jean Bethke Elshtain brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers whose thought continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy.
What is our business "within this common mortal life?" Augustine asks and bids us to ask ourselves. What can Augustine possibly have to say about the conditions that characterize our contemporary society and appear to put democracy in crisis? Who is Augustine for us now and what do his words have to do with political theory? These are the underlying questions that animate Jean Bethke Elshtain's fascinating engagement with the thought and work of Augustine, the ancient thinker who gave no political theory per se and refused to offer up a positive utopia. In exploring the questions, Why Augustine, why now? Elshtain brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers, one whose thought continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy.
In making Augustine's thought relevant to the contemporary world Elshtain discusses how, for Augustine, wisdom comes from experiencing fully the ambiguity and division that characterized the human condition after the fall, and how human beings are fated to narrate their lives within temporality and to work at gathering together a 'self' and forging a coherent identity. This is the central feature of what Augustine called our business "within this mortal life," and he insisted that any politics that disdains this business, this caring for the quotidian, is a dangerous or misguided or misplaced politics.
Elshtain argues that Augustine's great works display a canny and scrupulous attunement to the here and now and the very real limits therein. She discusses other aspects of Augustine's thought as well, including his insistence that no human city can be modeled on the heavenly city, and further elaborates on Hannah Arendt's deep indebtedness to Augustine's understanding of evil. Elshtain also presents Augustine's arguments against the pridefulness of philosophy, thereby linking him to later currents in modern thought, including Wittgenstein and Freud.
Jean Bethke Elshtain (1941–2013) was one of the nation's most prominent and provocative thinkers on religion, political philosophy, and ethics. She was the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics in the Divinity School, Political Science, and the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago. She was the author of numerous books, including Sovereignty: God, State, and Self.
Patrick J. Deneen holds the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Chair in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.
"Elshtain brings ancient and modern light to bear on the eternal
question of how to live the good life in a fallen world." —Mary Ann
Glendon, Harvard Law School
“In Augustine and the Limits of Politics (1995), Elshtain engages
in dialogue with a fourth- and fifth-century Christian theologian
to explore issues of limitation and human evil in the political
realm.”—Religious Studies Review
“Elshtain attains rare achievement of a work that is both
creatively erudite, and streamlined. An almost ‘fat-free’ volume,
Augustine and the Limits of Politics is inter-disciplinary enough
to recommend itself to a broad range of people, from political
philosophers, to historians of thought, to theologians.” —Journal
of Religion and Culture
“Augustine provides us, as Elshtain puts it, ‘a complex moral map
that offers space for loyalty and love and care, as well as for a
chastened form of civic virtue’ (p. 91). This is not a guidebook to
Utopia but a solid critical discipline for negotiating the affairs
of the day.” — Academic Press
“Elstain’s hope is to reach those, especially among political
philosophers and theologians, who have rejected Augustinian
philosophy because of what has become the unjust but widespread
tradition that he is a pessimist, a misogynist, a narcissist, and
irrelevant to contemporary problems. With passion, Elshtain argues
that the time is ripe for a reconsideration of Augustine’s
Confessions and City of God.” —Review of Metaphysics
"This very engaging, very philosophical, and yet very personal book
reintroduces Augustine to the heart of modern political philosophy.
. . . All readers seriously interested in Augustine and responsive
to him will welcome Elshtain's book as a refreshing breeze."
—Theological Studies
“Augustine and the Limits of Politics should be required reading
for undergraduates, graduates and scholars interested in Augustine,
the current ‘identity’ debate, or the theory and ethics of war and
peace.” —Journal of Religion and Culture
“[Her] book is engagingly and charmingly written, and gently
provokes the reader to take another look at Augustine.”
—Dialogue
"[This] is a book that does much to rectify the kind of continuous
injustice done Augustine by the modern secular world. People who
have only a passing acquaintance with Augustine, and judge him
mainly by prevailing attitudes, can learn much from Augustine and
the Limits of Politics. . . . It is an intelligent, warm, and
well-informed discussion." —American Political Science Review
"Professor Elshtain has written an engaged, impassioned and highly
personal book chronicling her own engagements with the writings of
St. Augustine, and her own attempts to apply Augustine's political,
social and ethical thought so as to make sense of present-day
crises and anxieties." —International Studies in Philosophy
“Elshtain’s legacy lives on and is more vibrant and pertinent than
ever.” —The Review of Politics
“In a thoughtful, erudite and inclusive work, Jason Blakely offers
a diagnosis of contemporary methodological naturalism, its
implications for political culture and practice, and the challenges
and alternatives to it.” —The Review of Politics
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