Augustine in His Own Words
On the City of God 357 to endure, are but a part of the ravages of war. I am utterly unable to describe; and even if I should try to begin, where could I end? I know the objection that a good ruler will wage wars only if they are just. But surely if he will only remember that he is a human being, he will begin by bewailing the necessity he is under of waging even just wars. A good person would be under compulsion to wage no wars at all, if there were not such things as just wars. A just war, moreover, is justified only by the injustice of an aggressor; and that injustice ought to be a source of grief to anyone good, because it is human injustice. It would be deplorable in itself, apart from being a source of conflict. Anyone who considers sorrowfully evils so great, such horrors and such savagery, will admit a deep sense of misery. And if there is anyone who can endure such calamities, or even contemplate them without feeling grief, that person's condition is all the more wretched for that. For it is only the loss of all humane feeling that could make anyone call such a life "the happy life."64
Redefining Civil Society
While City of God is not, technically speaking, a work of political theory, it does take up those issues at key points. In the following passage, Augustine famously returns to his discussion in Book 2 (cited above) about whether or not Rome was truly a republic. He returns to Cicero's definition (placed in the mouth of Scipio) and argues that, if one takes it seriously, Rome was never really a "commonwealth" and never really a "republic" because it lacked justice. Augustine goes on to redefine civil society as an association of people bound by common values ("loves" is Augustine's word). From On the City of God, Book 19:
(21) I have arrived at the point where, as I promised in the second book of this work, I will prove, as briefly and clearly as I can, that if we accept the definitions of Scipio (as cited by Cicero in his book On the Republic), there never existed any such thing as a Roman Republic.65 Scipio gives a short definition of a commonwealth as "the wealth and welfare of the people." Now, if this is a true definition, there never was any republic because there never was in Rome any true "wealth and welfare of the people."66 Scipio defines the "people" as a "multitude bound together by a mutual recognition of rights and a mutual co-operation for the common good." As the discussion progresses, he explains what he means by "mutual recognition of rights," going on to show that a republic cannot be managed without justice, for where there is no
64. Civ. Dei 19.7 (CCL 48:671–72); trans. Walsh and Honan, FOTC 24:206–7. 65. "As I promised in the second book": Here Augustine returns to civ. Dei. 2.19–22, cited earlier. 66. Cicero, De re publica 1.25.