Augustine and Aquinas 147of the “Two Cities,” the City of God and the City of Man, is his
interpretation of the history of the world in the light of divine
revelation.
Augustine contends that there are two realms in the world.
One is the world of material, transient, and temporary things
which the damned pursue at all costs. The other is the world of
eternal values, the highest of which is God, which is pursued by
those who wish to be saved and who are loyal to the Church, the
vehicle for salvation. The greatest good is the search for God,
and God is the ultimate truth. The similarities with Plato’s
dualism and the search for knowledge should be apparent.
The Platonic virtues of wisdom, courage, and temperance,
culminating with the concept of justice, are totally accepted by
Augustine. Augustine simply contends that the Platonic idea of
“seeing the light” is incomplete. To Augustine, “to see the light”
is to see God, and to see God is to love Him. Thus the ultimate
goal of all men should be to love God, and through the Platonic
virtues this is possible. With the attainment of the goal, will come
wisdom. Wisdom is simply the ability to know good from evil.
The major difference between Augustine and Plato in this area
is the Augustinian concept of the will. Man is free, says Augus
tine, and freedom entails the concept of choice—thus one can
will to choose evil even though the mind knows the good.
An important problem manifests itself here. If one can know
truth, then truth exists. If one can know God, then God exists.
Plato said, “to know the good is to do it.” If one can choose evil,
then evil must exist, and God the omnipotent, must have created
it along with the good. Not so, says Augustine; God being all
good, could not, would not create evil. Therefore, evil is nothing
more than turning away from the good, the absence of good, a
privation of the good. In a sense, all evil is a turning away from
God, an act of the will. One does not turn to evil; one turns from
good.
This dualism, coupled with the idea of the will, has implica
tions for Augustine’s political philosophy. To Augustine, man
and civil society are inseparable; so, to the extent that man is a
social animal, the state is natural. But since the state began as a
result of man’s choice (the fall of Adam), it is not so much natural
as remedial, a product of divine intervention. Since, after the fall,
man could not have survived without the state, it is through