Título: God and the City
Autor: D. C. Schindler
Sinopse: God and the City, based on the Aquinas Lecture delivered at the University of Dallas in 2022, aims to think about politics ontologically. In other words, it seeks to reflect on, not some
political theory or other, nor on the legitimacy of political action or the distinctiveness of particular regimes, but on the nature of political order as such, and how this order implicates the
fundamental questions of existence, those concerning man, being, and God.
Aristotle, and Aquinas after him, identified metaphysics and politics as “architectonic” sciences, since each concerns in some respect the whole of reality, of which the particular
sciences study a part. Chapter one of this book argues that, just as metaphysics, in studying being as a whole, cannot but address the question of God in some respect, so too does politics, the ordering of human life as a whole, necessarily implicate the existence of God. In this regard, the modern liberal project has deluded itself in attempting to render religion a private, rather than a genuinely political, matter. We cannot organize human existence without making some claim, whether implicitly or explicitly, about the nature of God and God’s relation to the world.
The second chapter approaches this theme from the anthropological dimension. As Plato affirmed, the “city is the soul writ large”: if man is religious by nature, he cannot be properly
understood, and the human good cannot be properly secured and fostered, if the “God question” is “bracketed out” of the properly political order. Moreover, if we fail to recognize the
essentially political dimension of relation to God, we will be unable properly to grasp the presence of God in the (ecclesial and sacramental) Body of Christ: God cannot be real in the
Church as Church unless he is also real in the city as city (and vice versa).
In his De regno, Aquinas famously affirms that “the king is to be in the kingdom what the soul is in the body and what God is in the world.” Chapter three offers a careful study of the
body-soul relationship in order to illuminate, on the one hand, the nature of political authority, and, on the other, the precise way that God is present in human community.
Contexto da obra
Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “God and the City”, de D. C. Schindler, publicado pela editora St. Augustines Press, em 2023 e com 215 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.
Editora: St. Augustines Press
Páginas: 215
Ano: 2023
Edição:
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 1587313286
ISBN13: 9781587313288
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora St. Augustines Press convidam a uma imersão no pensamento filosófico e teológico, com foco em temas como virtudes morais, natureza da política e a relação entre fé e razão. A leitura costuma ser densa e reflexiva, com textos que exploram desde disputas medievais até análises contemporâneas da modernidade e da condição humana. O catálogo sugere um diálogo entre tradição clássica e desafios atuais, com narrativas que transitam entre exposições rigorosas e relatos mais pessoais, como memórias e testemunhos. O tom varia do didático e argumentativo ao contemplativo e narrativo, oferecendo um ritmo que privilegia o aprofundamento mais do que a rapidez.
