terested in comparing the political ideas of St. Augus-
APPENDIX
The Political Ideas of
St. Augustine^
From The Philosophical and Political Backgrounds of The Divine Comedy,^ a series of lectures by Dino Bigongiari, Da Ponte Professor Emeritus of Italian, at Columbia University.
We want to discuss now the by-products—social and political—of the theology of St. Augustine: by-products fully as important as the theological ideas themselves.
The poUtical implications of that theology are not hard to trace. All depends, of course, on the profound pessimism of his theory of predestination, which one cannot dismiss by saying that it is a Lutheran or Jansenist misinterpretation, for it is too clearly present in his own pages. The doctrine hinges on two facts, both very hard to scn^ tinize: one, the contamination of the whole species by one man; the other, the determination of the Creator to save some and not the others. Long
1. Printed with the author's pennission. Readers interested in comparing the political ideas of St. Augustine with those of St. Thomas Aquinas will find Professor Bigongiari's introduction (pp. vii-xxxvii) to The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, New York, 1953, very illuminating.
2. These lectures are currently being prepared for publication.