So in talking about Augustine, I want to actually start quickly by conjuring up Plato again for just a minute for purposes of comparison.

These are two quick texts, not from sections that I sent, but other parts of Plato's laws, book 4, 715A and B.

He's talking about the way politics works typically in conventional,

ordinary cities of the time, as people understood them. And he said this, the Athenian

stranger says, the ruling offices become matters for battle. And those who are victorious take

over the city's affair to such an extent that they

refuse to share any of the rule with those who lost out, with either them or their descendants.

And the two sides live, keeping watch on one another, lest someone ever get into office who might

remember the old wrongs and start a revolt, these we presumably

declare now not to be real regimes, nor do we declare any laws correct that are not laid

down for the sake of what is common to the whole city, where the laws exist for the sake

of some, we declare the inhabitants to be partisans rather than citizens.

That that's what typically goes on and what he's concerned about.

The other one, again, concerns the relationship of the laws to the more perfect kind of city

that is imagined in one respect in the Republic.

And interestingly in the laws in book five, he says that the city there is a second-best city,

second best. In the best city, there would be far more perfect, a far more perfect kind of unity, he goes on to say, where he says this,

739C, if every device has been employed to exclude all of what is called the private from all aspects of life,

if insofar as possible a way has been devised to make common somehow the things

that are by nature private, such as the eyes and the ears and the hands, so that they seem to see

and hear an act in common, if again everyone praises and blames in unison, as much as possible,

delighting in the same things

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