The purpose of this article is to explore the meaning of domination and slavery in the political philosophy of Augustine of Hippo (354–430), particularly in the major work of his later years, the City of God. It offers an exploration of this aspect of Augustine's thought in the light of relatively recent scholarship on the meaning of these terms for political philosophy (in particular, the work of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit). It finds that, in Augustine's eyes, the nature of (...) domination or slavery in the political sphere differed from its nature in the domestic sphere. (shrink)

This article scrutinizes the political thought of a twelfth-century Parisian master, Peter the Chanter , with reference to a theme that has been prominent recently in political philosophy. This is the idea that a just government ought to be free from every kind of arbitrary interference in the lives of those “governed,” that is, that no person ought to be governed according to another's unconstrained will.