Abstract

This dissertation advances the thesis that the historical analyses of Michel Foucault can be of use for Christian social ethics when considered from the perspective of an Augustinian political realism. The first chapter responds to the major criticisms of Foucault that, if true, would thwart the possibility of dialogue with Christians. I argue that such critics have misunderstood the scope and purpose of his investigations, and misconstrue the point of his disquieting rhetoric. I begin the second chapter by outlining four different approaches to Augustine's social thought that would vitiate any substantive dialogue with Foucauldians. I then contrast them with my own interpretation of Augustine, which I argue is defensible in its own right and provides the basis for a productive commerce of ideas between the traditions influenced by these thinkers. Focusing on Foucault's Discipline and Punish, chapter three mediates the conversation in terms set by several Augustinian themes. First, I argue that Augustine's description of human relations after the fall, with its inevitably unbalanced, shifting, and insecure processes, provides a broad descriptive category within which to consider Foucault's observations about some modern asymmetrical relations of power. Second, I maintain that a related but distinct path of reflection is opened by Augustine's awareness of the potential ambiguity and frailty of postlapsarian human assessments and judgments. And finally, I contend that Augustine's sensitivity to the indeterminacy of human achievement and his consequent suspiciousness of historical progress provides a Christian point of reference for examining Foucault's restless political criticism. A concern with exploitation and misuse of persons traverses all three of these general topics and ties them one to another. The fourth chapter presents an Augustinian conception of political society that provides a framework within which constructively to appropriate some of Foucault's insights into the complex workings of society. It concludes by exploring the usefulness of Augustine's understanding of habit in the context of moral conflict for elucidating Foucault's remarks about how our social practices and institutions acquire over time a kind of political inertia