Who Were the Sea Peoples?

It is well known that perhaps only 10% of the significant manuscripts of the Greco-Roman intellectual world are available to us today: the rest were lost over the intervening couple of thousand years. But such losses can still occur today. I have mentioned this before, but the single manuscript I most miss from the modern epoch is from Michael Oakeshott. Oakeshott's thought does not seem particularly Augustinian on its surface, and yet, he called Augustine the greatest mind who ever lived. But what's more, he had apparently written an entire book on Augustine, which was not published during his life. And the thing is, no one has any idea what happened to the manuscript! His papers are in the LSE library (I have been through them), but not this manuscript. What became of it?

"Further, all men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you." -- On Christian Doctrine

"What is inherently impossible is not morally binding. This means that when scarce goods are involved, loving your neighbor as yourself cannot always mean loving your neighbor equally with yourself. 'Since you cannot do good to all,' wrote Augustine, 'you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.'" -- John D. Mueller, Redeeming Economics , p. 37 And note the interesting similarity of Augustine's phrasing with Hayek's!

"The biblical account of Cain and Abel is surely of great interest for us. Cain represents the ambivalence of human civilization. He is the first to ascend to a cultivated the soil, the first who is said to have become the builder of a city. He was, in short, what we would call a benefactor of humanity and to that extent the first man susceptible of being praised by men. It is he who, properly speaking, begins human history, at least the history of civilization. It is he who puts to best use, in any case to the most active use, the resources he had in hand upon leaving the garden of Eden. At the same time, of course, he represents the violence and murder that come with human civilization. "As for Abel, he was not concerned either to plant or to build. He was a shepherd who pastured small livestock. Where is Cain, farmer and builder, sought to dwell on the earth and settle it, Abel was, Augustine says... like a stranger -- a stranger to the earth, or on the earth. "S...

The doctrine of original sin is obviously one of the more difficult aspects of Christianity for many people: how could it possibly be just to punish someone born today for a sin committed thousands of years ago? Augustine's attempt to explain this is interesting, if I grasp it correctly. (Of course, it may be interesting even if I don't grasp it correctly, but then it would be interesting in a different way.) If I have him right, Augustine views original sin as essentially "cracking the mold" from which human beings are created. Once this mold has this crack in it, naturally every human being produced by using the mold will contain the same crack. Of course, this leaves open the question of why God doesn't simply patch up the crack. Nevertheless, this is a bold attempt on Augustine's part to address the question of justice here. And perhaps as I get deeper into his ideas, I will find that he does indeed address my question.

"what does it matter under whose rule a man lives, being so soon to die, provided that the rulers do not force him to impious and wicked acts?" (Quoted in Manent, p. 257) This would seem to offer us a criterion for when rebelling against a government is acceptable: is the government forcing you into service as a prostitute, asking you to round up a minority group for execution, or forcing you to take part in cattle raids on the neighbors in the next country? Then one may rebel. Is your complaint that the government won't let you chew khat, or won't allow publication of your political tract, or asks everyone to wear blue clothing on Tuesdays? Well then, no one may not rebel. Note: I am not here interested in debating whether Augustine's criterion is a good one. All I am saying here is, "This seems to be what Augustine thought." I am interested in studying the history of notions of proper authority and just rebellion: maybe once my study is done I wil...

Every false doctrine contains a germ of truth, otherwise no one could ever come to believe it. I think Marx's postulate that value is based on labor (it was not a "labor theory of value": he explicitly postulated this) clearly falsifies reality, but its plausibility rests on the fact that labor clearly has some connection to value. Realistic "statists" have always recognized that there is a similarity between the state and a dominant gang, but also that there are many differences as well. Consider the "statist" Augustine : Regimes, including Rome for Augustine, can make at best a partial claim for justice, which makes his own claim that a just war is about punishing a transgressor questionable, or at best tentative, because the identity of the original transgressor, if such an entity can be said to exist, is unclear (something of course he realized, though did not always state explicitly) when political societies are so frequently founded in bl...