Lately I have been sharing many mugs of coffee with some great thinkers of antiquity and late antiquity. I dance around these two thinkers quite often, as they are referenced and discussed in many books I read. Rather serendipitously I have been reading them at the same time, almost as if they were speaking to one another, though from different centuries 375 BC to 400 AD.
"...no two of us are born exactly alike. We have different natural aptitudes, which fit us for different jobs."
"We have indeed."
"So do we do better to exercise one skill or to try to practice several?"
"To stick to one," he said.
"He" is Socrates. After Socrates died (executed by the re-instated democracy after an uprising), 30 years later Plato wrote The Republic, putting together conversations including Socrates and friends, to engage in what they would have discussed as philosophers. As they discuss their version of an ideal city if they could build their own, they lay out the dynamics of a society in their terms. An overarching theme of Socrates is unity of the virtues - he believed it wasn't possible to possess one without the others. Embracing good in truth, and what is best for the whole of the community is also mentioned again and again. Things that none of us would have trouble with.
The ancient world of politics of Rome and Greece, however, would be rather disturbing to us today. Equality is not what we view as equality. Justice is not what we would view as justice. Grasping the ideas and society of their pre-Christian era, while full of familiar terms and some similar aspects, seems like a foreign landscape at times. An ancient realm before Christ had no thoughts toward God as we would think of God, in the scope of our post-Christian modern day. But they believed in gods, and sacrificed to them for good fortune.
Plato writes his arguments through Socrates's dialogues that in their created ideal city philosophers would be the rulers. As nobody else is as detached from money, power, and selfish inclinations than philosophers. The Republic is set out to be a sort of "constitution" for this newly established (imagined) city.
Augustine came later, after Christ, and was the Bishop of Hippo (North Africa) for the majority of his life (he lived 354 AD - 440 AD). He knew Plato's writings, indeed, he was a Platonist before he converted to Christianity. He uses Plato's parables in his own teachings. You can sense his prior learning as a philosopher infused in his writings.
No one doubts that we are driven towards knowledge by a twofold force: the force of authority and the force of reason. I am, therefore, resolved never ever to deviate from the authority of Christ, for I find none so powerful. But as to what the most subtle reasoning can pursue - for I am so stirred up that I yearn impatiently to apprehend what the truth is, not only by believing but also by understanding - I am confident at the moment that what I will fund among the Platonists will not be opposed to our sacred mysteries.
Augustine wrote about a different city, The City of God, which is in fact one of his great books (a hefty one as well, over 1,100 pages) in which he targets paganism. He writes human history from the clashing aspects between two cities - the earthly city and the City of God. Or in the Biblical sense - Babylon and Jerusalem. Augustine himself said "Both cities are now mixed up together; at the end they will be separated."
Often authors and thinkers do speak to one another across space and time. Across the ages. Across the room. My Plato book was jumping up from my coffee table to my desk where Augustine was sitting when he heard his name mentioned. How fun it is to be amongst such authors, ready to jump at the chance to dialogue.
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