Religion Commons^™

Sheathing The Sword: Augustine And The Good Judge, Veronica Roberts Ogle

Philosophy Department Faculty Works

In this article, I offer a reading of City of God 19.6 that is consonant with Augustine’s message to real judges. Often read as a suggestion that torture and execution are judicially necessary, I argue that 19.6 actually calls such necessities into question, though this is not its primary purpose; first and foremost, 19.6 is an indictment of Stoic apatheia. Situating 19.6 within Augustine’s larger polemic against the Stoics, I find that it presents the Stoic judge as a man who lacks fellow feeling, and therefore, has only a parodic happiness, costly to himself and those judges. A new …