This piece is adapted from a paper originally written for a Transformative Ideas course by Luca Adamo. Luca is a sophomore studying political science, philosophy, and classical civilizations. He is interested in Christian theology and political philosophy.
By Luca Adamo
Dante Alighieri and St. Augustine, two prominent thinkers who both avow to be within the bounds of Christian thought, have opposing views on politics and rule. In simplest terms, Dante’s essential claim, articulated in the work De Monarchia, is that rule is inherently natural, whereas St. Augustine argues that rule is an inherently unnatural temporal phenomenon.
In Part I of this piece, I lay out Dante’s political philosophy, as explored in Book I of De Monarchia (or On Monarchy). Dante’s essential claim is that mankind’s ultimate purpose—a form of self-realization—can be only fulfilled through a global peace, which itself can only be facilitated politically by a global monarchy.
Part II will focus on St. Augustine. I will explore St. Augustine’s view on mankind’s purpose, which is opposed to Dante’s. St. Augustine distinguishes two types of peace: that of the City of Man and that of the City of God. Whereas Dante believes that the City of Man can yield a perfect, harmonious peace, St. Augustine (while appreciating earthly peace as a necessary good, if a limited one), points to the purely spontaneous harmony of Eden, unobtainable on earth since the Fall, as the highest ideal.
Therefore, for St. Augustine universal temporal dominion is not the ultimate good in and of itself, because it usurps a task only fit for God, thereby making the conquest that Dante goes on to glorify a prideful endeavor in St. Augustine’s eyes.
After laying out both cases, I will select the viewpoint I believe to be correct, showing what you are all desperate to find out: how to rule the world.
I) Dante on Rule
In De Monarchia, Dante argues in favor of “temporal monarchy,” or “empire”, which he defines as “a single sovereign authority set over all others in time.” In Book I of De Monarchia Dante subjects temporal monarchy to the ultimate test of any political system, whether it is “necessary to the well-being of the world.”
i) Mankind’s Purpose
Dante begins Book I with the fundamental Aristotelian principle that “God and nature do nothing in vain.” This premise posits that the “essential nature” of all things exists for the sake of an “activity [proper] to that nature.” Dante, therefore, surmises that “human society as a whole” has a purpose – in the same way that a person, household, city, or kingdom each has unique purposes which others “can[not] fully achieve” because of the particularities of its scale and constituent components.
So, what is mankind’s purpose? Dante, again in line with Aristotelian metaphysics, states that it is some of form of self-realization, achieving the “highest potentiality of mankind.” Dante explains his vision of that “potentiality” as he lays out his anthropology.
Dante, with views reflective of Aristotle’s De Anima, strikes a clear difference between the purpose of human life compared to all other kinds. It isn’t to “simply exist,” as it is for the “elements”; or to “exist in compound form,” as it is for the “minerals”; or to “exist as a living thing,” as it is for the “plants”; or to “exist as a creature with sense perception,” as it is for the “animals” – mankind, after all, is of a higher order than these things. Man’s purpose is instead to “exist as a creature who apprehends by means of the potential intellect,” a mode of existence that “belongs to no creature (whether higher or lower) other than human beings.”
Therefore, based on the unique ontology that gives special value (and responsibility) to human life, mankind’s collective purpose becomes clear: “constantly to actualize the full intellectual potential of humanity, primarily through thought and secondarily through action (as a function and extension of thought).” Dante has given us his prescription for human flourishing. But we need more. How is this to be achieved? What kind of basic organizational system of society will lead to this mystical “potentiality”?
ii) The Need for Peace & The Need for Rule
Apparently, as Book II explores, it is through a “universal peace.” Dante asserts, citing a “mediaeval commonplace” based in Aristotle’s Physics, that human beings “grow[…] perfect in judgment and wisdom when [they] sit[…] at rest.” Dante backs up this curiously inertial claim using evidence from theology, in which Dante interprets “peace” to mean something like public order. According to the Florentine, “the message which rang out from on high to the shepherds was not wealth, nor pleasures, nor honors, not long life, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty, but peace; for the heavenly host said: ‘Glory to God on high, and on earth peace to men of good will.” The Bible seems replete with evidence that sticks to this claim. After all, Christ used the greeting “Peace be with you,” what Dante called the “supreme salutation” for the “supreme savior.” According to Dante, a peaceful public order in the temporal world occurs when virtuous “judgment controls desire completely and is in no way preempted by it.” Without such control, mankind cannot be free, because “it does not act under its own power, but is dragged along in the power of something else.” But order to attain peaceful, virtuous souls, Dante claims (much like in Aristotle’s Ethics) that the “wills of mortals require guidance on account of […] seductive pleasures” and, therefore, they require rule.
Dante explains that this universal peace is only obtainable through the rule of a temporal monarch. His argument, again based in natural law, states that it is “God’s intention that every created thing should show forth His likeness in so far as its own nature can receive it.” Dante’s merger of Aristotelianism with this notion of mankind made in the image of God yields a fairly clear prescription in the political realm. Insofar as temporal authority (normatively) reflects divine authority, “mankind is most like God when it is ruled by one ruler, and consequently is most in harmony with God’s intention; and this is what it means to be in a good (indeed, ideal) state.”
From the principle of the individual, philosopher-king-like ruler, Dante clarifies how a God-like temporal rule leads to the ideal state of “potentiality.” For Dante, it is “self-evident” that “mankind is most a unity when it is drawn together to form a single entity, and this can only come about when it is ruled as one whole by one ruler.” This rule is needed so that all mankind can exist in “concord,”as is natural for all entities (whether “individual,” “household,” “city,” or “kingdom”), to do in their ideal state—there is no other way to achieve unrestrained actuality of purpose. It must be one and only one ruler, too: splits in rule between multiple agents, even if said agents come to the same conclusions as a monarch, simply imitates the good qualities of unified rule, and is therefore “less perfect” (think of the tetrarchs in the late Roman Empire). Furthermore, given that self-actualization is mankind’s highest and most essential ideal,” a person who wishes to dispose others for the best must himself be disposed for the best.” The ruler and the mortals have a harmony of interests.
Dante views this harmonious political unity, in itself, as a “good,” “pleasant,” and divine thing. Whereas without rule, mankind “strive[s] after conflicted things as a “sick,” “many-headed beast,” rule “breathe[s] [the] sweetness [of] the holy spirit” into mankind, allowing for men to “dwell together in unity.” Remembering for a moment that Dante is a poet (which seems like a fair thing to do) we can be fairly certain how passionately he felt about this. And for good reason. Life in the “potentiality” is basically the opposite of the Hobbesian life that is “nasty, brutish, and short.” Thus, temporal monarchy, in allowing mankind to attain perfection through peace, is a beautiful and holy thing.
II) St. Augustine on Rule
i) Mankind’s Purpose
The difference in anthropology between Dante and St. Augustine can be summarized as follows: Dante’s Aristotelian anthropology views mankind’s ideal as a temporal, after the Fall peace that is necessarily imposed by various levels of government which culminate in monarchy. St. Augustine’s ideal peace, on the other hand, takes its example from before the Fall, thereby making an imposed, earthly peace an unnatural and thus flawed one.
This is a subtle, yet crucial distinction. It’s subtle because Dante and St. Augustine, in a vacuum, define “peace” in a similar way: Dante describes peace as mankind “dwell[ing] together” in a virtuous “unity”, in which “judgment controls desire completely and is in no way preempted by it.” St. Augustine, in line with Dante’s definition, describes the “first, [unfallen] human beings” as “undisturbed” in their “love […] for God and for one another,” and says that in this completely “sin[less]” state, “desire [is] not in opposition to the will,” thereby making virtuous harmony and co-operation completely spontaneous and uninterrupted. However, whereas Dante was firmly rooted in the temporal world (his lifetime in Renaissance Italy, a patchwork of feuding city-states, surely affirmed this appreciation for the life-and-death nature of earthly matters), St. Augustine crucially distinguishes between the “City of Man” and the “City of God.”
ii) The City of Man & The City of God
St. Augustine describes the two Cities as being “created by two loves,” with the City of Man being created “by love of self extending even to contempt of God,” and the City of God “by love of God extending to contempt of self.” This careful phrasing indicates that the City of Man is not a hopeless realm of sin and self-advancement, but St. Augustine does stipulate that earthly love will ultimately lead to “eternal punishment with the devil.” This is a road that can only be taken so far.
The two “Cities’” origins, according to St. Augustine, can be found in the fraternal rift between Cain and Abel. He acknowledges that both “derive their origins from a condemned stock [are Fallen],” and therefore that they are “first necessarily evil and fleshy”; both brothers’ post-Edenic state places them within the bounds of Dante’s anthropology. Given that man’s ideal – and therefore natural – place is that of before the Fall, mankind’s purpose is to return to that harmonious state. However, in order to become “good and spiritual” in this way, the natural predisposition to sin—personified by Cain—must be broken, which is only possible “in Christ” and “through Grace.”
St. Augustine then goes through the two brothers’ different responses to their Fallen state, which map onto the City of God and City of Man. He says that Abel, in becoming a “pilgrim of this world,” embodied the City of God, as in pursuing “the City of Saints […] on high”, he will “be given the promised kingdom, […] world without end” (St. Augustine, 635). Cain, on the other hand, founded the world’s first city (named after his son Enoch), thereby making him a citizen of earth. St. Augustine describes this earthly city as having “two aspects,” which can best be seen in the ideal earthly city, the “Holy City” (represented historically in Jerusalem, whose etymology, according to St. Augustine, is “foundation of peace”). The first aspect of the earthly city is the limited good which it “displays in its own presence.” This is because the Holy City, in pursuing “earthly peace”,” is doing a good of sorts, as “that city is better when it possesses [said goods] as when not.” Thus, virtuous, earthly “victories” are praiseworthy and rightly “deemed glorious.” In this sense, St. Augustine’s Holy City is largely similar in form to Dante’s peace-bringing temporal monarchy.
Where they differ, however, is in function. Dante regards earthly peace as “supreme” (equating it with the “peace” in Christ’s greeting of “peace be with you”), and the temporal monarchy serves to replace the “many-headed beast” with “unity.” In crucial contrast, however, St. Augustine observes that “the good of this world” is never rid of “divi[sion] against itself,” and that therefore, the “earthy city will not be everlasting” – the race is never won, and while earthly gains should be admired, they can never last. This deficiency comes from the fact that earthly peace can only do so much to better the human soul. As we discussed earlier, Dante argues that men “grow[…] perfect in judgment and wisdom when [they] sit[…] at rest.” St. Augustine partially agrees — stating that “the body’s peace might produce peace of the soul” — but he goes on to state that man ultimately needs “divine guidance, which he may obey with confidence” to perfect the soul, as “he is a pilgrim, far from the Lord; and so he walks by faith, not by sight.”
Therefore, man trying to usurp this ultimate task of guidance from God is an unnatural endeavor, because God “did not intend that His rational creature, made in His own image, should have lordship over any but irrational creatures.” Man is stretching too far to think his City of Man could equal the City of God. Therefore, whereas Dante claims that just conquest is conducted “not out of hatred, nor out of love, but solely out of a passionate concern for justice,” St. Augustine would equate this bare “justice” with deficient earthly love. This disordered desire, which St. Augustine calls the libido dominandi, comes ultimately from a place of pride which “lays waste the hearts of mortal men.”
St. Augustine maintains that felicity only comes through the City of God, which reminds rulers that they “are only men,” called to “love and worship God” as humble “pilgrims.” The inherent glory Dante finds in the City of Man – earthly rule, peace, and conquest – is absent in St. Augustine’s view. Rulers are not happy “because they rule[…] for a longer time, or because they die[…] in peace and le[eave] behind sons to rule as emperors, or because they subdue[…] the enemies of the commonwealth, or because they [are] able to avoid and suppress uprisings against them by hostile citizens.” the race towards world conquest, in framing these “earthly goods” as the ultimate finish line, only leaves the racers to be “troubled by fears; [to] pine with grief; [to] burn with greed; [to be] unquiet and panting from endless confrontations with [their] enemies” (St. Augustine, 136). St. Augustine maintains that the race can never be won, for true peace can only be achieved in the City of God.
III) Conclusion: How to Rule the World?
So, if you’ve read this far, presumably you are invested in my esteemed opinion: who is right about how to rule the world? I believe it is St. Augustine, and not just as a relative matter: it’s not that St. Augustine is merely righter. He’s right.
Dante lauds the temporal monarchy as the bringer of true peace, but even a cursory glance at history tells us that it does no such thing. Even in his shining example—Rome under Augustus—mankind by no means dwelt together in the pure, Edenic unity that he envisions – purging of division and strife at any (let alone all) levels of public life is a clear impossibility, even under the most enlightened of temporal rulers. St. Augustine, in distinguishing between the City of Man and the City of God, provides a precise and shimmering explanation as to why that is. He paints a more accurate picture of the limited, earthly peace that temporal power can bring. He therefore shows that he who views conquest as an ultimate good in and of itself serves not to restore the equality of paradise, but instead an unnatural dominion over fellow men – a desire ultimately rooted in pride. This single-minded desire, lived out in the race to world domination, produces strain and misery – a sorry comparison to the felicity of heavenly love and humble pilgrimage.
What is the ideal form of rule, then? St. Augustine, in keeping with his acknowledgement that earthly peace is needed, points to Rome’s Christian emperors, such as St. Constantine and Theodosius Augustus, as rulers who did it right. These emperors abided by the Christian standard of seeking first the Kingdom of God, instead of seeking first earthly dominion, thereby making them Christians first, and emperors second. The Christian emperors were not successful in that “they ruled for a longer time, or because they died in peace and left behind sons to rule as emperors, or because they subdued the enemies of the commonwealth, or because they were able to avoid and suppress uprisings against them by hostile citizens;” world monarchy, in this way, is a mere earthly good, achieved by the good and “worshippers of demons” alike. Rather, rulers can only be truly good if they:
are [not] lifted up by the talk of those who accord them sublime honors or
pay their respects with an excessive humility, but remember that they are only men; if they make their power the handmaid of His majesty by using it to spread His worship to the greatest possible extent; if they fear, love and worship God; if they love that Kingdom which they are not afraid to share with others more than their own; if they are slow to punish and swift to pardon; if they resort to punishment only when it is necessary to the government and defence of the commonwealth, and never to gratify their own enmity; if they grant pardon, not so that unjust men may enjoy impunity, but in the hope of bringing about their correction; if they compensate for whatever severe measures they may be forced to decree with the gentleness of mercy and the generosity of benevolence; if their own self-indulgence is as much restrained as it might have been unchecked; if they prefer to govern wicked desires more than any people whatsoever; if they do all these things not out of craving for empty glory, but from love of eternal felicity; and if, for their sins, they do not neglect to offer to their true God the sacrifices of humility and contrition and prayer.
If you can manage all that, you deserve to rule the world.
