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St. Augustine's Policies

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St. Augustine's Policies
Question 1:
Augustine’s politics: Church brings people into the city of God. State retrains people in the city of the world. If a person is in the city of God then they honor the state because they can use it for happiness.
Summary of City of God (politics): The idea of the two cities is as follows. The "city of God" consists of those who will enjoy eternal happiness with God in heaven, the "earthly city" of those who will not. The city of God is not identical with the Church, since not all members of the Church will be saved. During this age, before the Day of Judgment, the members of the two cities are mixed in together, no one knows with certainty who are the elect. Although, Augustine sometimes seems to identify Rome as the earthly city, at least in later sections of the book the earthly city is not identified with any particular state. Members of both the city of God and the earthly city will be among the citizens of any particular state. The members of the two cities have different ultimate values but have many intermediate ends in common -- for example, they both desire worldly peace. So far as any particular state serves such common ends it will have the cooperation of members of the city of God. Like Plato and Aristotle, Augustine was no admirer of militarism or empire. Peace is one of his favorite themes. Love of glory or honor is not a virtue but a vice, according to Augustine; yet politically it has similar effects to virtue: love of honor inhibits other vices. In this respect it is an image or imitation or likeness of real virtue. Augustine's philosophy was much influenced by neo-Platonism. Plato distinguished especially between two levels of reality: the Forms, and the things of our experience, which imitate or resemble the Forms in an inferior way. The neo-Platonists extended this to many levels: Reality has many levels, each of which is a reflection or imitation of the level above it. This makes Augustine perhaps surprisingly tolerant of lower
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