Book Review: Incorrectly Political: Augustine and Thomas More

I readily admit that political philosophy or Christian political philosophy have not been great interests of mine. Except for reading Plato's Dialogues and excerpts from the Republic in philosophy classes or Cicero's works in rhetoric classes in college, I haven't delved much into the field. I have read Thomas More's Utopia but not Augustine's City of God. A small group of friends and I have been reading The Consolation of Philosophy, so I've dipped into Boethius's thoughts about philosophers and good men getting involved in government--and Robert R. Reilly's recent book about the founding of the USA has been a big influence on me lately.

While exploring Thomas More's philosophy, wondering if his interest in the New Learning had led him to Nominalism, I noted that he had given lectures on the City of God circa 1501 and thus found this book, Incorrectly Political: Augustine and Thomas More by Peter Iver Kaufman.

Incorrectly Political, a copy of which I purchased--a remainder I presume because of the price--was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2007:

Peter Iver Kaufman explains how and why we have failed to appreciate Augustine’s and More’s profound political pessimism and thereby reintroduces readers to two of the Christian tradition’s most enigmatic yet influential figures. Each knew that government was useful—yet always deceitful. And each wrote a classic widely read to this day, Augustine’s City of God and More’s Utopia, as well as abundant correspondence and polemical tracts to explain why government on earth might be used, though never meaningfully improved.

You may read a sample of it here, via the University of Richmond Scholarship Repository.

The Table of Contents (including subheads):

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Augustine, Ambrose, and Ambition

• Christianity?
• Ambrose and Power
• A Word Peddler's New Purpose
• The Bishop Looks Back
• The Crisis at Calama

2. Limitations

• Augustine's Court
• "In the Face of Evil Days"
• "The Enemies of Grace"

3. Using Government: Augustine and the Donatists

• Secession
• Protection and Correction: Augustine and the Failure of Argument
• Thugs
• That the Government Should Be Used

4. Used But Not Improved: Augustine's "City of God"

• Martyrs
• "Love Not the World"
• Libido Dominandi
• "Mark the Contrasts"
• Other "Beginnings" with Different Ends

5. Thomas More: At Work in the World

• Becoming Useful
• Ambitions and Illusions
• More, Pico, and Erasmus

6. Utopia?

• Hythloday on Power and Integrity
• Wordplay
• Social Control
• Omnia Omnium
• Genuine Justice, Nowhere and Never

7. Crisis

• Promotion and Commotion
• "The Comon Knowen Catholyke Fayth" and the Church
• "Divisions"
• Henry VIII's Matrimonial Matter and God's "Greate Cause"
• Discomfort
• Politics in "This Time of Teares"
• Endgame

Conclusion

Notes

Index

As described in the blurb, Kaufman's main point is that both Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Thomas More acknowledged that public affairs, government administration, and participation in the government and the courts were dangerous, but necessary, to the individual and the community. Saint Augustine served as the bishop of Hippo when the Emperor Theodosius reigned; Roman government was still mixed up with Roman pagan religion even though Catholicism had become the official religion of the State. Pagan rites and feasts were still part of the public life of the Empire and Augustine warned Catholics serving in public office not to participate in those pagan leftovers. But Augustine also wanted the government to defend Catholic teaching, helping him deal with the Pelagian and Donatist heretics--especially to defend Catholic churches the Donatists attacked because they did not accept the succession of the bishops or the ordinations of the priests by those bishops--who were dividing Catholics in his diocese. As a parallel to Saint Thomas More centuries later, Kaufman notes that Saint Augustine's written apologetics for Catholic teaching on grace and forgiveness needed the backing of the State: persuasion only went so far.

There are other parallels between Augustine and More: both were judges--Augustine in his episcopal court; More as Chancellor; both had some ambition to make their mark in the world--Augustine as a rhetorician; More as a lawyer and an official; both indicate ambivalence regarding their active, public lives: Augustine in his long process of conversion and his desire for a contemplative, monastic life; More through his comments to family and friends, his discernment of a religious vocation, and his pattern of meditation, prayer, and asceticism (the famous hair shirt).

As noted above, I've never read the City of God so cannot judge Kaufman's summary and explication of that great work. On the one hand, Augustine wanted to defend Catholics from the pagan attacks that Christianity had weakened Rome leading to its sacking by Alaric and on the other, he wanted to remind Catholics that this world was not their true home. Heaven is their/our true home: however much we participate in this world to try to make it better for others and ourselves, to try to defend true Catholic teaching, etc., we must realize that we should "Love Not the World."

With the chapters on Thomas More, I'm on more familiar ground. In addition to Augustine and More, Kaufman cites both Saint Ambrose of Milan and Erasmus of Rotterdam because of their influences on these two great men. Saint Ambrose because of his (somewhat distant) example; Erasmus because of how he encouraged and supported More's humanistic studies, organizing praise for More's Utopia among other humanists for example (16th century blurbs for that book!). Kaufman sometimes questions Erasmus' analysis of More, however, as when he casts doubts on the Erasmian interpretation of More's discernment of religious life--a misunderstanding that would only increase as More fought heresy and accepted martyrdom. Kaufman takes a nice swipe at Richard Marius, who presented an image of More as a repressed sexual neurotic in his 1983 biography of More when he notes that even though no trace of More's carefully presented lectures on the City of God has survived, Marius knows what influence Augustine had on More's decision to get married!

Describing More's rise in England's public affairs and Henry VIII's court, Kaufman also addresses More's realism about his vulnerability in such positions, like the famous comment to his son-in-law Roper that Henry VIII would have More's head cut off if it would gain the king a castle in France. In both the chapter on Utopia and the chapter on More's last years in Henry VIII's service and then in the Tower, Kaufman emphasizes that More was warning both the international humanist community and the English religious community that things are not as they seemed. Some of the improvements and advancements Erasmus and his followers wanted could only come through great community control and loss of individual freedom. The religious changes urged by Martin Luther and his followers in England and abroad (the supposed moderate Germain, the socially concerned Fish, and the Bible translating Tyndale) would lead to social upheavals that Henry VIII had not imagined and would not approve. More held on to hoping for Henry's understanding of these dangers even after he'd left the king's service and until his imprisonment in the Tower of London. Then he determined as he told Cromwell (and his daughter Meg in the letter he sent her describing one of his interrogations in the Tower) that he would leave off involvement in worldly affairs and think only of the Passion of Jesus Christ and his own preparation for death. Before that he wrote extensive and sometimes exhaustive attacks on Lutheran ideas, Fish's proposals, etc--and he applied the heresy laws of England as Chancellor, trusting for a time that he had Henry's consent and support (silence: Henry never told him to stop: consent).

I found interesting that Kaufman quotes More in 16th century English but does not cite Augustine in 4th/5th century Latin! One of the blurbs for this book in 2007 mentioned its timeliness in view of world affairs at that time; I might also say that it's timely for me to read this book in an election year. As a Catholic Christian, my devotion and assent to Church teaching influences the way I evaluate candidates and especially what they can or should and what they can't or shouldn't do while in office representing me. Augustine and More are still good guides for understanding the limitations and the necessity of government and public administration.