Peter Busch: Adapting the Household to the City: Augustine’s Teaching on Domestic and Civil Peace in ciu. 19

When Augustine writes, “A man’s household … ought to be the beginning, or a little part, of the city” (ciu. 19.16), he could seem to be reaffirming the Aristotelian teaching that he had received by way of Cicero. Both Aristotle and Augustine teach that the household is situated within a whole of which it is merely a part, and that its end is to be found beyond itself, in the city. Both of them find in this natural subordination a reason for conditionally accepting family relationships that otherwise, in themselves, could not be defended as natural. And both of them linger on the wrenching case of slavery. As I will argue, however, Augustine does not mean exactly what Aristotle did when he declared that the city is “prior by nature to the household and to each of us” (Politics 1253a20). Instead of striking a compromise among considerations of excellence, inclusion, and stability, as one finds in Aristotelian political science, Augustine outlines how the household and its relationships can be suitable (adcommoda) for the civic peace. For as the household is the beginning, not of one city, but of two, its arrangements ought, as much as possible, to direct the loving relationships of heavenly citizens in a manner that upholds the concord of earthly politics.