Abstract

In Exod 18:17-23, Jethro gives Moses some advice: not to tire himself out by judging the whole people, but to choose several judges. In the preface to his De doctrina christiana, Augustine praises Moses for having accepted to respect what a foreigner had told him about governing the Hebrews. This comment implies a distinction between the divine revelations granted to Moses and a specific political realm. Some fifteen years later, in De civitate Dei 5.19, Augustine argues that Christian rulers are the best for human affairs «if they also know the art of governing peoples». He has a concept of an autonomous «political science» that has nothing to do with any religious persuasion. Other texts show Augustine’s idea of a specifically political virtue, his respect for human institutions as resulting from a pact among human beings, and his theory of a possible «harmony» between the two famous cities.