Augustine and Politics as longing in the World. By John von Heyking. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2001. A book report by Henk Smidstra, June, 2015.
John von Heyking, assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Lethbridge, has in this book presented helpful, alternative reflections of St. Augustin’s perspectives on politics, taken mainly from Augustin’s work, City of God. Von Heyking challenges a traditional literal interpretation of the City of God that has fostered dualistic, anti-political, anti-worldly perspectives, often with an absolute antithesis between the Church, politics, and the world. Von Heyking attributes traditional readings as a misunderstanding of St. Augustin’s rhetorical style (the device of rhetorical excess over excess) in the City of God. The two cities are to be seen as educational hortatory rhetoric, representations of two extremes, the extremes of the worst of Roman society, and of the perfect and Ultimate Good in the Eternal city of God. “Augustine’s excessive rhetoric is meant to reform the inordinate desires of his audience.” It is the populous, a human, organized, political entity that exists in the space between the city of God and the city of man. For Augustine, politics is a natural good, though not ultimate leading to perfection, but he regarded politics to be the,”…natural expression of human beings’ striving to obtain a kind of wholeness, and building a community, as an expression of their loves.”