So I was asked to suggest readings and to sort of pick two topics.

And the ones that I've settled on involved Plato, a text that I distributed today for today from Plato's laws and the other from Augustine,

a bit from the city of God and a bit from one of Augustine's letters.

And the theme of this session is what led me to do that,

faith, reason, and the state.

And I want to make a kind of just an introductory remark about

that before i say a little bit about plato and that is this we we've got sort of three things there

faith reason in the state and uh and how that relates to to plato and augustine is is is complicated okay so reason clearly we

have that with Plato one of the greatest and first philosophers in the

Western tradition but but not faith there but simply reason and in the case of Augustine we have faith and reason

but it's the the primacy of faith and that aspect of it that that we look to in

Augustine but we do we have both there because of the influence of philosophy on

Augustine especially platonic and neoplatonic

philosophy it's the third bit that's most problematic however because there's no state

in our sense of the term for either one of them um that term state which we associate with the

political communities that are characteristic of modern

times really since the 16th century didn't exist for either plato or augustine

Plato's writing in the context of the classical greek polis which is a very different kind of

political community far smaller internally less context of the classical Greek polis which is a very different kind of political

community far smaller internally less diverse and less complicated from an

institutional perspective and quite distinctive but also Augustine who lived in an

empire but an empire that was quite far-flung and, again,

...