Politics, Peace and Predestination

• Main Author: Hollingworth, Miles (auth)
• Other Authors: Dupont, Anthony (Editor), Eguiarte Bendímez, Enrique (Editor), Alberto Villabona Vargas, Carlos (Editor)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Editorial Uniagustiniana 2019
• Subjects: Christian theology; History of Western philosophy; Marxism & Communism; Marxism-Leninism; Plato; predestination; rationality; utopianism
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

This chapter is intended to show that Augustine's political philosophy can speak with a radical voice into situations of extreme ideological conflict today-most especially where these involve gross disparities of wealth. The key to allowing this radical Augustinian voice to speak, is first to spend a good deal of time identifying the exact coordinates into which it can speak. These coordinates may surprise us, and they are the chief innovation of this chapter. For convenience sake, I lever the search for these coordinates against the general idea of radical socialism, understood as a philosophy of history. The result of this approach is that it eventually brings us out on Augustine's doctrine of predestination; and allows us to begin to see it as the practical touchstone of a new radical Augustinianism. This new radicalism does not need to make use of the device that liberation theology made use of, viz., a preferential option for the poor. Instead, it moves beyond all such class distinctions to direct itself against the very dynamics which have shaped political logic in the West since Plato.