idealized civil society is rather unlikely to occur because of man’s innate
wickedness. This of course reflects his Christian belief in Original Sin, rather
than a view based on observation, as, for example, in the work ofHobbes.
Nevertheless, Augustine argues that Christians will make better citizens than
pagans.
Like Plato, Augustine sees it as the function of the state to enforce a moral
code, but being a Christian he interprets this role in a subtly but significantly
different way. For Plato, simply doing what is right is what matters. For
Augustine, state coercion cannot really create good people because it can only
direct their external behaviour, whereas it is the desire to be good that marks
out the Christian. Politics, then, is a necessary but negative force. Hence
Augustine’s distinction between the ‘two cities’ in his most famous work,The
City of God. The earthly city is the actual political system in which a person
lives; the heavenly city is the metaphysical unity of all true Christians. The
political relations between these two remain unclear. Indeed Augustine never
does produce any definite theory about the proper relations between the
secular and the spiritual powers in society. As a Roman citizen, and one who
admired much of the past glory of Rome, he would have found this difficult.
Living at a time of political collapse many of his contemporaries believed that
the Christianization of the Empire had contributed to its weakness, and
Augustine is therefore at pains to demonstrate that a Christian could also be
a loyal and effective citizen. Had the power of the centralized Christian church
been more assured at the time, and had Augustine not been so keen to use any
power, secular if necessary, fighting campaigns against heresy, he might have
developed a more satisfactory theory on this matter. However, a more
‘satisfactory’ theory from the viewpoint of the church would not, in all
probability, have been well received at this stage by the political rulers. His
thought, including both his positive ideas and his omissions, was to influence
relations between church and state for centuries.
Authoritarian Personality
The idea of the authoritarian personality was developed by social psychologists
of theMarxistinclined Frankfurt School during the late 1930s and 1940s. The
original researchers, under the leadership of Max Horkheimer (1895–1973)
and Theodor Adorno (1903–69, author of a book calledThe Authoritarian
Personality), emigrated to the USA in 1935 to avoid Nazi persecution. The
theory attempted to explain the ease with which totalitarianismfinds
support, and with which such regimes manage to recruit into even the most
repressive and violent of their institutions. It also has a much wider ranging
application, in understanding the working of almost any highly hierarchically
Authoritarian Personality