How to Live in the Earthly City: Augustine on Loves, Lies, and the Politics of Perfection

The Morningside Institute

In this talk, Prof. Veronica Ogle (Assumption University) helps us understand how Augustine sees the earthly city as parodying the city of God, a process that produces illusions and lies that entrap its inhabitants in a nihilistic dreamworld. She explores how Augustine’s critique of the earthly city uncovers the self-love and lust for domination that drove Roman thought and history. But Augustine places his unmasking of Rome’s injustice within a broader framework aimed at reorienting this self-love to a love of God. He argues that we can live in the political sphere without participating in the earthly city—as good neighbors whose purified loves make them better citizens.

Quotes referred to during the lecture:

"We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love, the earthly city was created by self-love reaching to the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self."

Augustine, City of God 14.28

"He refused to be subject to his Creator, and in his arrogance supposed that he wielded power as his own private possession and rejoiced in that power. And thus, he was both deceived and deceiving because no one can escape the power of the Omnipotent. He has refused to accept reality and in his arrogant pride presumes to counterfeit an unreality.

Augustine, City of God 11.13

“Pride is a perverted imitation of God. For Pride hates a fellowship of equality under God, and seeks to impose its own dominion on fellow men, in place of God's rule. This means that it hates the just peace of God and loves its own peace of injustice.”

Augustine City of God, 19.12

“I know how great is the effort needed to convince the proud of the power and excellence of humility, an excellence which makes it soar above all the summits of this world, which sway in their temporal instability, overtopping them all with an eminence not arrogated by human pride, but granted by divine grace.”

Augustine, City of God 1.pr

Veronica Roberts Ogle is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Assumption University. This lecture was presented at the Morningside Institute on April 19, 2022. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.