Augustine's City of God: The Critique of Rome

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In this episode of the Philosophy Hour of Literary Tales we explore the magnum opus of Saint Augustine: The City of God. The first half of the City of God is, for a lack of a better word, the first work of systematic cultural critique in the Western World. In it, Augustine deconstructs the "hypnotizing myth of Rome" to "expose its vices" -- in the words of scholars Ernest Fortin and Peter Brown. In this episode, we succinctly cover Augustine's critique of Roman history and mythology as perpetuating the lust to dominate and ends with Augustine's exhortation, ironically quoting Virgil, to reach out to the true heavenly city of love and justice which the Romans foolishly thought their city embodied.
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Paul Krause is the editor-in-chief of VoegelinView. He is a writer, classicist, and historian. He has written on the arts, culture, classics, literature, philosophy, religion, and history for numerous publications in the English-speaking world. He is the author of Finding Arcadia (2023), The Odyssey of Love (2021), and the Politics of Plato (2020); he has also contributed to The College Lecture Today (2019) and Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters (2022).