Beyond Liberal and Conservative
A Process-Augustinian Approach to Politics
A Process–Augustinian View of Politics
A Process–Augustinian view of politics draws insights from Alfred North Whitehead and Saint Augustine. It begins neither with sovereignty nor with rights, neither with procedural legitimacy nor with ecclesial control. It begins with a metaphysics of desire and a philosophy of love.
From Alfred North Whitehead it receives a relational metaphysics in which the whole of the universe consists of actual entities—concrescing subjects—whose internal constitution is desire: a striving for satisfaction, for fulfillment, however momentary, within the concrete conditions in which they find themselves. Each subject seeks its own realized intensity of experience, its own measure of beauty. Each concrescing subject has its own “subjective aim,” to use Whitehead’s language: an inward orientation toward achieving the richest harmony available to it in that moment of becoming.
We humans are ourselves concrescing subjects—or, more precisely, a living succession of concrescing subjects—and this desire for satisfaction lies at our very core. At every moment we inherit a past, respond to it creatively, and aim at some form of fulfillment. Desire is not an accidental feature of human life; it is constitutive of our being. Political life, therefore, must ultimately be understood as an expression of this deeper metaphysical reality: communities, too, are shaped by what they love and by what they seek to satisfy.
From Alfred North Whitehead it receives a relational metaphysics in which the whole of the universe consists of actual entities—concrescing subjects—whose internal constitution is desire: a striving for satisfaction, for fulfillment, however momentary, within the concrete conditions in which they find themselves. Each subject seeks its own realized intensity of experience, its own measure of beauty. Each concrescing subject has its own “subjective aim,” to use Whitehead’s language: an inward orientation toward achieving the richest harmony available to it in that moment of becoming.
We humans are ourselves concrescing subjects—or, more precisely, a living succession of concrescing subjects—and this desire for satisfaction lies at our very core. At every moment we inherit a past, respond to it creatively, and aim at some form of fulfillment. Desire is not an accidental feature of human life; it is constitutive of our being. Political life, therefore, must ultimately be understood as an expression of this deeper metaphysical reality: communities, too, are shaped by what they love and by what they seek to satisfy.
The Moral Grammar of Disordered Love
From Augustine of Hippo this vision receives a moral grammar: the deepest human problem is not ignorance or inefficiency but disordered love. Amor sui—love of self elevated to ultimacy—displaces amor Dei, the love that orders all other loves. Politics, therefore, is not first a technical enterprise but a drama of desire. Its distortions arise when finite selves, whether individual or collective, claim ultimate status.
For Augustine, human beings are not primarily thinkers but lovers. What we love shapes what we seek; what we seek shapes the institutions we build. If the self becomes the ultimate reference point, then power, recognition, security, and dominance become the hidden aims of political life. Justice becomes a tool of self-advancement. Peace becomes mere protection of one’s own interests. Even noble language—freedom, order, tradition, equality—can mask an underlying curvature inward.
This inward turn can be individual, but it can also be communal. The ego that says “I am ultimate” easily becomes the nation or movement that says “We are ultimate.” In this way, personal disordered love scales up into collective self-assertion. Empires are built, parties harden, identities calcify—not simply because of faulty systems but because love has been misdirected.
The tragedy is not that we love ourselves or our communities. Augustine does not condemn self-love as such. The tragedy is that we love them in the wrong order. When amor sui reigns without reference to amor Dei, finite goods are asked to bear infinite weight. The result is anxiety, rivalry, violence, and eventual disillusionment. A finite center cannot sustain ultimacy.
Thus the aspiration of politics, at its deepest level, is not merely institutional reform but the cultivation of communities centered in rightly ordered love. Only when amor Dei precedes and reshapes amor sui can self-love become rightly ordered—no longer self-enclosed but participatory, no longer rivalrous but relational. Politics then becomes not the arena of ego-assertion but the field in which shared desire is gradually aligned with a greater Love.
For Augustine, human beings are not primarily thinkers but lovers. What we love shapes what we seek; what we seek shapes the institutions we build. If the self becomes the ultimate reference point, then power, recognition, security, and dominance become the hidden aims of political life. Justice becomes a tool of self-advancement. Peace becomes mere protection of one’s own interests. Even noble language—freedom, order, tradition, equality—can mask an underlying curvature inward.
This inward turn can be individual, but it can also be communal. The ego that says “I am ultimate” easily becomes the nation or movement that says “We are ultimate.” In this way, personal disordered love scales up into collective self-assertion. Empires are built, parties harden, identities calcify—not simply because of faulty systems but because love has been misdirected.
The tragedy is not that we love ourselves or our communities. Augustine does not condemn self-love as such. The tragedy is that we love them in the wrong order. When amor sui reigns without reference to amor Dei, finite goods are asked to bear infinite weight. The result is anxiety, rivalry, violence, and eventual disillusionment. A finite center cannot sustain ultimacy.
Thus the aspiration of politics, at its deepest level, is not merely institutional reform but the cultivation of communities centered in rightly ordered love. Only when amor Dei precedes and reshapes amor sui can self-love become rightly ordered—no longer self-enclosed but participatory, no longer rivalrous but relational. Politics then becomes not the arena of ego-assertion but the field in which shared desire is gradually aligned with a greater Love.
What Is the “Dei”?
What is the Dei around which this love is centered? It is not an object among objects in a field of vision, nor a verbalized creed. It is not a “thing” among “things.” God is not one being alongside others, competing for attention within the same ontological space.
Rather, both Whitehead and Augustine envision God as the fullness of Beauty—Love fully realized and perfectly alive.
For Whitehead, God is the living Harmony who gathers the world’s experiences into an ever-enriched unity, the One in whom every achieved beauty is preserved and integrated. For Augustine, God is the supreme Good and radiant Beauty in whom all restless hearts find rest—the source, measure, and fulfillment of all desire.
Both thinkers inhabit what can rightly be called a sacramental universe: a world in which finite realities are not self-enclosed but translucent, pointing beyond themselves. In Whitehead, each concrescing subject contributes to and is embraced by the divine life; in Augustine, creation bears traces of its Creator and participates in divine order. The world is not opaque matter but a field of signs, relations, and participations in a greater Love. To love God, then, is not to turn away from the world but to perceive its depth—to recognize that every finite beauty is held within an infinite Beauty.
Rather, both Whitehead and Augustine envision God as the fullness of Beauty—Love fully realized and perfectly alive.
For Whitehead, God is the living Harmony who gathers the world’s experiences into an ever-enriched unity, the One in whom every achieved beauty is preserved and integrated. For Augustine, God is the supreme Good and radiant Beauty in whom all restless hearts find rest—the source, measure, and fulfillment of all desire.
Both thinkers inhabit what can rightly be called a sacramental universe: a world in which finite realities are not self-enclosed but translucent, pointing beyond themselves. In Whitehead, each concrescing subject contributes to and is embraced by the divine life; in Augustine, creation bears traces of its Creator and participates in divine order. The world is not opaque matter but a field of signs, relations, and participations in a greater Love. To love God, then, is not to turn away from the world but to perceive its depth—to recognize that every finite beauty is held within an infinite Beauty.
Finite Meaning and Ultimate Meaning
Finite meaning is real. Friendship, family, civic belonging, creative achievement—these are genuine goods. In process terms, they are moments of achieved intensity. In Augustinian terms, they are created goods worthy of gratitude. Yet they perish. Each concrescing subject achieves its beauty and becomes objective fact—data for future becoming and contribution to the divine life.
Finite meaning is beautiful but not ultimate. When amor sui reigns, finite goods are treated as final ends. Pleasure becomes salvation. National greatness becomes destiny. The finite self attempts to generate its own ultimacy and collapses under the strain.
Ultimate meaning lies in the ongoing life of God. In Whitehead’s language, every completed subject is taken into the consequent nature of God, where its value is preserved. In Augustine’s language, all created goods find their rest in God. Divine glory is not domination but the radiance of Love that gathers the world’s becoming into an everlasting Harmony.
To love God first, then, is to live in light of this divine integration—to act with awareness that every moment contributes both to the future of the world and to the everlasting life of God. Amor Dei precedes and reorders amor sui. Finite goods are not rejected; they are situated.
Finite meaning is beautiful but not ultimate. When amor sui reigns, finite goods are treated as final ends. Pleasure becomes salvation. National greatness becomes destiny. The finite self attempts to generate its own ultimacy and collapses under the strain.
Ultimate meaning lies in the ongoing life of God. In Whitehead’s language, every completed subject is taken into the consequent nature of God, where its value is preserved. In Augustine’s language, all created goods find their rest in God. Divine glory is not domination but the radiance of Love that gathers the world’s becoming into an everlasting Harmony.
To love God first, then, is to live in light of this divine integration—to act with awareness that every moment contributes both to the future of the world and to the everlasting life of God. Amor Dei precedes and reorders amor sui. Finite goods are not rejected; they are situated.
Beyond Liberalism and Conservatism
This vision moves beyond liberalism’s tendency to treat the individual ego and its preferences as ultimate, and beyond conservatism’s temptation to treat the collective ego—nation, tradition, or cultural identity—as ultimate. Liberalism, at its best, protects dignity and restrains tyranny, yet it can elevate personal preference into final authority. Certain forms of conservatism sacralize communal identity and national destiny. Though different in emphasis, both risk absolutizing a finite center.
A Process–Augustinian politics refuses both. Individuals and communities alike are concrescing subjects within a larger relational order. Rights are honored but not absolutized. Traditions are cherished but not sacralized. Political life is penultimate. Only God is ultimate.
A Process–Augustinian politics refuses both. Individuals and communities alike are concrescing subjects within a larger relational order. Rights are honored but not absolutized. Traditions are cherished but not sacralized. Political life is penultimate. Only God is ultimate.
Authentic Politics as Participation
Authentic politics arises when communal desire is aligned with the deeper Love that holds all things together. It seeks harmony rather than glory. It recognizes that meaning is not self-generated. It refuses to absolutize power. It understands itself as stewardship within a sacramental universe of concrescing subjects.
In this Process–Augustinian vision, politics becomes not an arena of self-assertion but a shared participation in the Harmony of harmonies that is God’s living life. Finite becoming contributes to infinite Beauty. Amor Dei reorders amor sui. And communal life becomes an offering into the divine Love that gathers all becoming—joy and tragedy alike—into everlasting Beauty.
In this Process–Augustinian vision, politics becomes not an arena of self-assertion but a shared participation in the Harmony of harmonies that is God’s living life. Finite becoming contributes to infinite Beauty. Amor Dei reorders amor sui. And communal life becomes an offering into the divine Love that gathers all becoming—joy and tragedy alike—into everlasting Beauty.
The Role of Secularists in a Process–Augustinian Vision
A Process–Augustinian vision of politics does not require that all participants explicitly name God. It requires, rather, that no finite reality be treated as ultimate. The distinction is crucial.
The shared starting point is not dogma but desire. Human beings are lovers before they are theorists. Communities are shaped by what they seek. Political disorder arises when finite goods—self, party, nation, ideology—are absolutized. A secular person can fully affirm this diagnosis without theological language. One need not invoke God to recognize that power should not be sacralized, that no nation is ultimate, that no ideology saves.
From within an Augustinian frame, those who pursue justice, protect dignity, resist domination, or care for the earth are participating—knowingly or not—in goods that ultimately derive from divine Love. From within a Whiteheadian frame, every concrescing subject responds to possibilities of harmony whether or not it consciously names the source of those possibilities. The divine lure does not require explicit acknowledgment in order to be operative.
What this political theology asks of secularists is not theological assent but political humility. It asks that no ideology be treated as salvific, no historical project as final, no collective identity as beyond critique. Many secular philosophies already affirm precisely this restraint. They resist totalizing systems. They defend human dignity without grounding it in nationalism. They uphold pluralism and penultimacy.
There remains, of course, a difference. For believers, ultimate meaning lies in the everlasting life of God—in the consequent nature that gathers all finite becoming into enduring Beauty. For secularists, meaning may remain within immanent horizons. The Process–Augustinian vision does not erase this divergence. It simply insists that political cooperation does not require metaphysical unanimity.
Public life, then, becomes sacramental for believers and humanistic for secularists—but shared in practice. Justice, peace, and humility can be pursued together, even if interpreted differently. In this way, secularists are not outsiders to a Process–Augustinian politics. They are partners in resisting ego-ultimacy and in cultivating communities ordered toward shared goods rather than self-exaltation.
The shared starting point is not dogma but desire. Human beings are lovers before they are theorists. Communities are shaped by what they seek. Political disorder arises when finite goods—self, party, nation, ideology—are absolutized. A secular person can fully affirm this diagnosis without theological language. One need not invoke God to recognize that power should not be sacralized, that no nation is ultimate, that no ideology saves.
From within an Augustinian frame, those who pursue justice, protect dignity, resist domination, or care for the earth are participating—knowingly or not—in goods that ultimately derive from divine Love. From within a Whiteheadian frame, every concrescing subject responds to possibilities of harmony whether or not it consciously names the source of those possibilities. The divine lure does not require explicit acknowledgment in order to be operative.
What this political theology asks of secularists is not theological assent but political humility. It asks that no ideology be treated as salvific, no historical project as final, no collective identity as beyond critique. Many secular philosophies already affirm precisely this restraint. They resist totalizing systems. They defend human dignity without grounding it in nationalism. They uphold pluralism and penultimacy.
There remains, of course, a difference. For believers, ultimate meaning lies in the everlasting life of God—in the consequent nature that gathers all finite becoming into enduring Beauty. For secularists, meaning may remain within immanent horizons. The Process–Augustinian vision does not erase this divergence. It simply insists that political cooperation does not require metaphysical unanimity.
Public life, then, becomes sacramental for believers and humanistic for secularists—but shared in practice. Justice, peace, and humility can be pursued together, even if interpreted differently. In this way, secularists are not outsiders to a Process–Augustinian politics. They are partners in resisting ego-ultimacy and in cultivating communities ordered toward shared goods rather than self-exaltation.
A Process–Augustinian Approach to Ethnic Nationalism
A Process–Augustinian vision of politics does not approach ethnic nationalism first with denunciation, nor with romantic affirmation. It begins, as always, with desire. What is being loved? What is being sought?
Ethnic nationalism often arises from real longings: the desire for belonging, the need for continuity, the fear of cultural erasure, the memory of humiliation, the ache for stability in times of rapid change. These are not trivial motives. In Whiteheadian terms, they are expressions of the drive toward coherence and satisfying intensity within a fragmented world. In Augustinian terms, they are forms of love—genuine but vulnerable to disorder. The Augustinian diagnosis applies here with particular force. When amor sui becomes ultimate, the self curves inward and asks finite goods to bear infinite weight.
The same can occur at the collective level. The ego that once said “I” now says “we.” Language, ancestry, land, and shared memory are treated not as gifts but as sacred absolutes. Historical identity becomes mythic justification. Preservation becomes exclusion. Security becomes domination. At that point, ethnic love has become collective amor sui—a community loving itself as ultimate. Whitehead’s relational metaphysics sharpens the critique. No concrescing subject is self-enclosed; each emerges from relations and perishes into a larger whole. Nations, too, are relational realities. They are constituted by exchanges, influences, migrations, and interdependencies. Ethnic nationalism becomes metaphysically distorted when it imagines itself as self-grounding and closed. A relational universe resists cultural absolutism.
Yet a Process–Augustinian vision does not deny the legitimacy of particular loves. Love of homeland, language, and inherited tradition can be rightly ordered. Augustine does not condemn patriotism as such. Whitehead does not deny the value of patterned inheritance. The issue is not particularity but ultimacy. A love of one’s people may be situated within amor Dei; it becomes disordered when it displaces it. There is also tragedy here. Globalization, economic dislocation, cultural marginalization, and demographic anxiety generate real wounds. A purely moralizing rejection of ethnic nationalism fails to acknowledge these sufferings.
Whitehead reminds us that tragedy has metaphysical weight; Augustine reminds us that earthly cities are fragile and vulnerable. The fears that animate nationalist movements are often rooted in genuine instability. A responsible political theology must respond pastorally as well as critically. The decisive criterion, then, is penultimacy. Does a nation recognize its limits? Does it refuse to sacralize itself? Does it protect the dignity of those beyond its ethnic core? Does it acknowledge participation in a wider human community? If so, what emerges may be a chastened patriotism—particular, but not idolatrous. If not, ethnic nationalism becomes a modern form of collective self-worship.
In a Process–Augustinian vision, love of one’s people is affirmed—but ordered. Nations are penultimate communities within a sacramental universe. They contribute to the ongoing life of the world, and their achievements perish into a larger divine history. They may be cherished, but not worshiped. Love your people. Do not make them ultimate.
Ethnic nationalism often arises from real longings: the desire for belonging, the need for continuity, the fear of cultural erasure, the memory of humiliation, the ache for stability in times of rapid change. These are not trivial motives. In Whiteheadian terms, they are expressions of the drive toward coherence and satisfying intensity within a fragmented world. In Augustinian terms, they are forms of love—genuine but vulnerable to disorder. The Augustinian diagnosis applies here with particular force. When amor sui becomes ultimate, the self curves inward and asks finite goods to bear infinite weight.
The same can occur at the collective level. The ego that once said “I” now says “we.” Language, ancestry, land, and shared memory are treated not as gifts but as sacred absolutes. Historical identity becomes mythic justification. Preservation becomes exclusion. Security becomes domination. At that point, ethnic love has become collective amor sui—a community loving itself as ultimate. Whitehead’s relational metaphysics sharpens the critique. No concrescing subject is self-enclosed; each emerges from relations and perishes into a larger whole. Nations, too, are relational realities. They are constituted by exchanges, influences, migrations, and interdependencies. Ethnic nationalism becomes metaphysically distorted when it imagines itself as self-grounding and closed. A relational universe resists cultural absolutism.
Yet a Process–Augustinian vision does not deny the legitimacy of particular loves. Love of homeland, language, and inherited tradition can be rightly ordered. Augustine does not condemn patriotism as such. Whitehead does not deny the value of patterned inheritance. The issue is not particularity but ultimacy. A love of one’s people may be situated within amor Dei; it becomes disordered when it displaces it. There is also tragedy here. Globalization, economic dislocation, cultural marginalization, and demographic anxiety generate real wounds. A purely moralizing rejection of ethnic nationalism fails to acknowledge these sufferings.
Whitehead reminds us that tragedy has metaphysical weight; Augustine reminds us that earthly cities are fragile and vulnerable. The fears that animate nationalist movements are often rooted in genuine instability. A responsible political theology must respond pastorally as well as critically. The decisive criterion, then, is penultimacy. Does a nation recognize its limits? Does it refuse to sacralize itself? Does it protect the dignity of those beyond its ethnic core? Does it acknowledge participation in a wider human community? If so, what emerges may be a chastened patriotism—particular, but not idolatrous. If not, ethnic nationalism becomes a modern form of collective self-worship.
In a Process–Augustinian vision, love of one’s people is affirmed—but ordered. Nations are penultimate communities within a sacramental universe. They contribute to the ongoing life of the world, and their achievements perish into a larger divine history. They may be cherished, but not worshiped. Love your people. Do not make them ultimate.
A Process–Augustinian Approach to Immigration
A Process–Augustinian vision approaches immigration neither sentimentally nor defensively, but theologically and metaphysically. It asks first: what loves are at work? What fears? What goods are being protected? What goods are being denied?
Immigration places two legitimate loves into tension: love of one’s own community and concern for the stranger. In Augustinian terms, both can be genuine goods. The question is not whether borders may exist, nor whether communities may seek stability. The question is whether these goods are ordered within amor Dei or governed by amor sui.
When immigration debates are driven by fear of cultural displacement, economic insecurity, or loss of identity, these concerns must not be dismissed. They arise from real vulnerability. Whitehead reminds us that every concrescing subject seeks coherence and stability within its inherited conditions. Communities, too, seek patterned continuity. Anxiety in the face of rapid demographic change is not in itself sinful.
The disorder emerges when fear becomes ultimacy—when preservation becomes exclusion without measure, when security becomes dehumanization, when the stranger is reduced to threat rather than recognized as a fellow bearer of dignity. In such cases, collective amor sui governs policy. The community treats its own cohesion as absolute and asks finite stability to bear infinite weight.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, immigration also reveals something fundamental about reality: relational becoming. No community is self-enclosed. Nations are historical processes, not static essences. They are constituted by waves of arrival, exchange, adaptation, and transformation. To deny this relational constitution is metaphysically false. Every society is already the product of migration and interdependence.
From an Augustinian perspective, the stranger cannot be reduced to an instrument or obstacle. The human person is not merely labor supply or demographic statistic. If amor Dei precedes amor sui, then the love of God reorders political deliberation. The stranger is encountered first as neighbor, not as abstraction.
This does not mean that every border dissolves. Augustine is clear that earthly cities require order. Nor does Whitehead deny the importance of structure. Political prudence—laws, processes, limits—remains necessary. But prudence is not ultimacy. The moral measure of immigration policy becomes this: does it reflect a rightly ordered love?
A Process–Augustinian approach therefore seeks:
It recognizes tragedy on both sides: the desperation that drives migration and the strain that rapid change places on receiving communities. It refuses both sentimental universalism and defensive ethnocentrism.
Ultimately, immigration becomes a test of whether a political community understands itself as penultimate. If a nation imagines itself as ultimate, it will close in fear. If it understands itself as a participant in a larger sacramental order—where all peoples exist within a greater divine life—it can practice hospitality without self-dissolution and maintain boundaries without self-worship.
In such a vision, the stranger is neither savior nor invader, but fellow concrescing subject—seeking satisfaction, bearing memory, capable of contributing new forms of beauty to the shared life of a community. Politics, then, becomes the difficult art of ordering love under conditions of finitude, vulnerability, and hope.
Immigration places two legitimate loves into tension: love of one’s own community and concern for the stranger. In Augustinian terms, both can be genuine goods. The question is not whether borders may exist, nor whether communities may seek stability. The question is whether these goods are ordered within amor Dei or governed by amor sui.
When immigration debates are driven by fear of cultural displacement, economic insecurity, or loss of identity, these concerns must not be dismissed. They arise from real vulnerability. Whitehead reminds us that every concrescing subject seeks coherence and stability within its inherited conditions. Communities, too, seek patterned continuity. Anxiety in the face of rapid demographic change is not in itself sinful.
The disorder emerges when fear becomes ultimacy—when preservation becomes exclusion without measure, when security becomes dehumanization, when the stranger is reduced to threat rather than recognized as a fellow bearer of dignity. In such cases, collective amor sui governs policy. The community treats its own cohesion as absolute and asks finite stability to bear infinite weight.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, immigration also reveals something fundamental about reality: relational becoming. No community is self-enclosed. Nations are historical processes, not static essences. They are constituted by waves of arrival, exchange, adaptation, and transformation. To deny this relational constitution is metaphysically false. Every society is already the product of migration and interdependence.
From an Augustinian perspective, the stranger cannot be reduced to an instrument or obstacle. The human person is not merely labor supply or demographic statistic. If amor Dei precedes amor sui, then the love of God reorders political deliberation. The stranger is encountered first as neighbor, not as abstraction.
This does not mean that every border dissolves. Augustine is clear that earthly cities require order. Nor does Whitehead deny the importance of structure. Political prudence—laws, processes, limits—remains necessary. But prudence is not ultimacy. The moral measure of immigration policy becomes this: does it reflect a rightly ordered love?
A Process–Augustinian approach therefore seeks:
- Protection of communal stability without sacralizing cultural homogeneity.
- Legal order without cruelty.
- Realistic policy without dehumanization.
- Compassion without naiveté.
It recognizes tragedy on both sides: the desperation that drives migration and the strain that rapid change places on receiving communities. It refuses both sentimental universalism and defensive ethnocentrism.
Ultimately, immigration becomes a test of whether a political community understands itself as penultimate. If a nation imagines itself as ultimate, it will close in fear. If it understands itself as a participant in a larger sacramental order—where all peoples exist within a greater divine life—it can practice hospitality without self-dissolution and maintain boundaries without self-worship.
In such a vision, the stranger is neither savior nor invader, but fellow concrescing subject—seeking satisfaction, bearing memory, capable of contributing new forms of beauty to the shared life of a community. Politics, then, becomes the difficult art of ordering love under conditions of finitude, vulnerability, and hope.
A Process-Augustinian Approach to Libertarianism
A Process–Augustinian vision approaches libertarianism neither with dismissal nor with uncritical embrace. It recognizes in libertarian thought a powerful moral impulse: resistance to coercion, suspicion of concentrated power, and affirmation of personal responsibility. These concerns are not foreign to this framework. From Alfred North Whitehead it receives a metaphysics in which every concrescing subject has its own subjective aim and exercises real creativity within the conditions it inherits. Freedom is not an illusion; it is constitutive of becoming. From Augustine of Hippo it receives a theological realism that warns against idolatrous states and corrupt earthly powers. No government is ultimate. No political order is salvific.
Yet the Process–Augustinian question is not simply whether freedom matters, but how it is ordered. Whitehead’s relational metaphysics makes clear that no subject is self-enclosed. Every act of freedom emerges from inherited relations and contributes to future relations. Autonomy is always relational autonomy. The individual is not ontologically prior to the web of interdependence that makes individuality possible. Libertarianism, at its most abstract, risks imagining a self-standing individual whose freedom consists primarily in non-interference. A relational universe challenges that abstraction.
Augustine deepens the critique. The fundamental moral issue is not the presence or absence of constraint but the ordering of love. Self-love is not evil in itself; it becomes disordered when it becomes ultimate. Libertarianism, when unqualified, can elevate individual preference to a quasi-absolute status, provided it avoids overt coercion. But the Augustinian question presses further: toward what end is freedom directed? What loves animate the choices protected by law? A society built solely on non-interference may preserve rights while still nurturing disordered desire.
This vision therefore affirms liberty while resisting libertarian ultimacy. It affirms limits on state power, the value of voluntary association, and the dignity of personal agency. But it insists that freedom is penultimate. It must be situated within a larger relational and moral horizon. In a world of interdependent concrescing subjects, choices reverberate. Economic decisions, environmental practices, and cultural habits shape the conditions of others’ becoming. Absolute non-interference is metaphysically incoherent; all action participates in a shared field of consequence.
A Process–Augustinian politics therefore understands justice not merely as the absence of coercion but as the ordering of communal life toward shared flourishing. Freedom becomes the capacity to align one’s subjective aim with deeper harmony, to contribute to the well-being of the whole rather than to isolate oneself from it. Without such ordering, liberty can devolve into collective amor sui—a society of self-asserting agents linked only by contract. With rightly ordered love, freedom becomes creative participation in a larger Beauty.
In this framework, neither state nor market nor individual preference is ultimate. Only God is ultimate. Freedom is a gift within a relational universe, meaningful when oriented toward love and destabilizing when detached from it. Political life, therefore, cannot be grounded in autonomy alone; it must be grounded in the reordering of desire.
Yet the Process–Augustinian question is not simply whether freedom matters, but how it is ordered. Whitehead’s relational metaphysics makes clear that no subject is self-enclosed. Every act of freedom emerges from inherited relations and contributes to future relations. Autonomy is always relational autonomy. The individual is not ontologically prior to the web of interdependence that makes individuality possible. Libertarianism, at its most abstract, risks imagining a self-standing individual whose freedom consists primarily in non-interference. A relational universe challenges that abstraction.
Augustine deepens the critique. The fundamental moral issue is not the presence or absence of constraint but the ordering of love. Self-love is not evil in itself; it becomes disordered when it becomes ultimate. Libertarianism, when unqualified, can elevate individual preference to a quasi-absolute status, provided it avoids overt coercion. But the Augustinian question presses further: toward what end is freedom directed? What loves animate the choices protected by law? A society built solely on non-interference may preserve rights while still nurturing disordered desire.
This vision therefore affirms liberty while resisting libertarian ultimacy. It affirms limits on state power, the value of voluntary association, and the dignity of personal agency. But it insists that freedom is penultimate. It must be situated within a larger relational and moral horizon. In a world of interdependent concrescing subjects, choices reverberate. Economic decisions, environmental practices, and cultural habits shape the conditions of others’ becoming. Absolute non-interference is metaphysically incoherent; all action participates in a shared field of consequence.
A Process–Augustinian politics therefore understands justice not merely as the absence of coercion but as the ordering of communal life toward shared flourishing. Freedom becomes the capacity to align one’s subjective aim with deeper harmony, to contribute to the well-being of the whole rather than to isolate oneself from it. Without such ordering, liberty can devolve into collective amor sui—a society of self-asserting agents linked only by contract. With rightly ordered love, freedom becomes creative participation in a larger Beauty.
In this framework, neither state nor market nor individual preference is ultimate. Only God is ultimate. Freedom is a gift within a relational universe, meaningful when oriented toward love and destabilizing when detached from it. Political life, therefore, cannot be grounded in autonomy alone; it must be grounded in the reordering of desire.
The Common Good in a Process–Augustinian Perspective
In a Process–Augustinian vision, the common good is neither the mere aggregation of private interests nor the absorption of individuals into a collective whole. It is a relational harmony—a shared ordering of life in which diverse persons and communities can realize their distinctive goods within a larger field of mutual flourishing. It begins not with contract or control, but with desire rightly ordered.
From Alfred North Whitehead comes the insight that reality itself is relational becoming. Every concrescing subject seeks satisfaction, yet no subject becomes in isolation. Each inherits a past, responds creatively in the present, and contributes to the future of the world. In such a universe, the good of any one is inseparable from the relational field that makes that good possible. The “common” is not an external addition to individual flourishing; it is its condition. The common good, therefore, is the quality of the shared relational environment within which subjective aims unfold.
From Augustine of Hippo comes the moral grammar that a people is defined by what it loves. Political communities are united not merely by law or territory but by shared objects of desire. When amor sui dominates—when a community elevates its own security, wealth, or prestige to ultimate status—the common good shrinks into collective self-interest. But when amor Dei precedes and reorders communal desire, shared life is oriented toward peace, justice, and rightly proportioned goods. The common good becomes the social expression of ordered love.
This perspective avoids two distortions. It resists aggregationism, the idea that the common good is simply the sum of private preferences. And it resists collectivism, the absorption of persons into an undifferentiated whole. Whitehead’s metaphysics preserves individuality; each concrescing subject retains its distinctiveness. Augustine preserves hierarchy of love; unity arises from ordered desire, not uniformity. The common good is neither atomized nor monolithic. It is a patterned harmony among distinct participants.
Because reality is dynamic becoming, the common good is not static equilibrium but moving harmony. It includes material conditions—security, sustenance, stability—but also moral and spiritual conditions—truthfulness, trust, humility, hope. It is sustained when institutions enable persons to flourish without absolutizing themselves, when economic systems promote participation rather than domination, and when public culture resists the sacralization of power.
A Process–Augustinian vision also acknowledges the tragic dimension of political life. Discord, conflict, and loss are inevitable in finite history. The common good is always partial and fragile. Yet efforts toward it are not meaningless. In Whitehead’s terms, every act of justice contributes to the future of the world and is gathered into the consequent nature of God. In Augustine’s terms, rightly ordered love participates, however imperfectly, in divine peace. No genuine contribution to shared flourishing is lost.
Ultimately, the common good is political life ordered by love: freedom exercised relationally, diversity integrated without erasure, finite goods situated within ultimate Love. It is not self-generated, nor reducible to procedure. It is cultivated through the ongoing reordering of desire, as communities learn to seek satisfaction in ways that deepen rather than fracture the Harmony that holds them all.
From Alfred North Whitehead comes the insight that reality itself is relational becoming. Every concrescing subject seeks satisfaction, yet no subject becomes in isolation. Each inherits a past, responds creatively in the present, and contributes to the future of the world. In such a universe, the good of any one is inseparable from the relational field that makes that good possible. The “common” is not an external addition to individual flourishing; it is its condition. The common good, therefore, is the quality of the shared relational environment within which subjective aims unfold.
From Augustine of Hippo comes the moral grammar that a people is defined by what it loves. Political communities are united not merely by law or territory but by shared objects of desire. When amor sui dominates—when a community elevates its own security, wealth, or prestige to ultimate status—the common good shrinks into collective self-interest. But when amor Dei precedes and reorders communal desire, shared life is oriented toward peace, justice, and rightly proportioned goods. The common good becomes the social expression of ordered love.
This perspective avoids two distortions. It resists aggregationism, the idea that the common good is simply the sum of private preferences. And it resists collectivism, the absorption of persons into an undifferentiated whole. Whitehead’s metaphysics preserves individuality; each concrescing subject retains its distinctiveness. Augustine preserves hierarchy of love; unity arises from ordered desire, not uniformity. The common good is neither atomized nor monolithic. It is a patterned harmony among distinct participants.
Because reality is dynamic becoming, the common good is not static equilibrium but moving harmony. It includes material conditions—security, sustenance, stability—but also moral and spiritual conditions—truthfulness, trust, humility, hope. It is sustained when institutions enable persons to flourish without absolutizing themselves, when economic systems promote participation rather than domination, and when public culture resists the sacralization of power.
A Process–Augustinian vision also acknowledges the tragic dimension of political life. Discord, conflict, and loss are inevitable in finite history. The common good is always partial and fragile. Yet efforts toward it are not meaningless. In Whitehead’s terms, every act of justice contributes to the future of the world and is gathered into the consequent nature of God. In Augustine’s terms, rightly ordered love participates, however imperfectly, in divine peace. No genuine contribution to shared flourishing is lost.
Ultimately, the common good is political life ordered by love: freedom exercised relationally, diversity integrated without erasure, finite goods situated within ultimate Love. It is not self-generated, nor reducible to procedure. It is cultivated through the ongoing reordering of desire, as communities learn to seek satisfaction in ways that deepen rather than fracture the Harmony that holds them all.
A Process–Augustinian Approach to Liberal Democracy
A Process–Relational approach to liberal democracy begins neither with procedural neutrality nor with sovereign will, but with a relational metaphysics and an ethic of responsive becoming. From Alfred North Whitehead it receives the conviction that reality is composed of interdependent concrescing subjects—each inheriting a world, responding creatively, and contributing to the future. Political life, therefore, is not the management of inert units but the coordination of living centers of experience. Democracy becomes intelligible not merely as a system of voting, but as a structure that honors the creativity and dignity of subjects-in-relation.
Liberal democracy, at its best, protects freedom, secures rights, and limits concentrated power. A Process–Relational vision affirms these achievements. Because each subject has a subjective aim—a drive toward realizing its own measure of harmony—coercive domination violates the very structure of reality. Political institutions should therefore create conditions in which diverse persons and communities can pursue meaningful lives. Rights are not arbitrary conventions; they safeguard the creative agency intrinsic to relational being.
Yet this framework also deepens and corrects liberalism’s tendencies. When liberal democracy reduces the political order to the aggregation of preferences, it risks fragmentation. If individuals are imagined as self-contained choosers, democracy becomes a marketplace of competing wills. A relational metaphysics challenges this abstraction. No subject is self-enclosed. Every choice reverberates through networks of relation. Thus freedom must be exercised with awareness of interdependence. Democratic life requires not only rights but responsibility.
A Process–Relational democracy therefore emphasizes dialogue over monologue. Because reality itself is an ongoing process of integrating multiple influences, political deliberation should mirror that structure. Public reasoning becomes a shared concrescence—a collective effort to integrate diverse perspectives into workable harmony. Majority rule remains necessary, but it is tempered by respect for minority voices, for the aim is not victory but richer integration.
This approach also reframes the role of institutions. Government is neither savior nor enemy; it is a penultimate instrument within a larger relational order. Its task is to maintain conditions under which subjects can flourish together: safeguarding justice, mitigating harm, and fostering cooperative problem-solving. Markets, civil society, and voluntary associations likewise participate in this relational ecology. None is ultimate; each contributes to the ongoing weaving of common life.
Importantly, a Process–Augustinian liberal democracy acknowledges tragedy. Conflict, error, and loss are unavoidable in finite history. Democratic outcomes will sometimes be unjust or shortsighted. Yet because reality is creative advance, democracy remains open-ended. It allows for revision, repentance, and reform. Policies can change. Structures can adapt. No decision is metaphysically final.
Ultimately, a Process–Augustinian approach envisions liberal democracy as a dynamic harmony among diverse subjects—freedom exercised within interdependence, pluralism integrated without erasure, and power limited in recognition of the intrinsic worth of every participant. It seeks not uniformity but coordinated creativity. Democracy becomes not merely a procedure for managing disagreement, but a shared practice of becoming together.
Liberal democracy, at its best, protects freedom, secures rights, and limits concentrated power. A Process–Relational vision affirms these achievements. Because each subject has a subjective aim—a drive toward realizing its own measure of harmony—coercive domination violates the very structure of reality. Political institutions should therefore create conditions in which diverse persons and communities can pursue meaningful lives. Rights are not arbitrary conventions; they safeguard the creative agency intrinsic to relational being.
Yet this framework also deepens and corrects liberalism’s tendencies. When liberal democracy reduces the political order to the aggregation of preferences, it risks fragmentation. If individuals are imagined as self-contained choosers, democracy becomes a marketplace of competing wills. A relational metaphysics challenges this abstraction. No subject is self-enclosed. Every choice reverberates through networks of relation. Thus freedom must be exercised with awareness of interdependence. Democratic life requires not only rights but responsibility.
A Process–Relational democracy therefore emphasizes dialogue over monologue. Because reality itself is an ongoing process of integrating multiple influences, political deliberation should mirror that structure. Public reasoning becomes a shared concrescence—a collective effort to integrate diverse perspectives into workable harmony. Majority rule remains necessary, but it is tempered by respect for minority voices, for the aim is not victory but richer integration.
This approach also reframes the role of institutions. Government is neither savior nor enemy; it is a penultimate instrument within a larger relational order. Its task is to maintain conditions under which subjects can flourish together: safeguarding justice, mitigating harm, and fostering cooperative problem-solving. Markets, civil society, and voluntary associations likewise participate in this relational ecology. None is ultimate; each contributes to the ongoing weaving of common life.
Importantly, a Process–Augustinian liberal democracy acknowledges tragedy. Conflict, error, and loss are unavoidable in finite history. Democratic outcomes will sometimes be unjust or shortsighted. Yet because reality is creative advance, democracy remains open-ended. It allows for revision, repentance, and reform. Policies can change. Structures can adapt. No decision is metaphysically final.
Ultimately, a Process–Augustinian approach envisions liberal democracy as a dynamic harmony among diverse subjects—freedom exercised within interdependence, pluralism integrated without erasure, and power limited in recognition of the intrinsic worth of every participant. It seeks not uniformity but coordinated creativity. Democracy becomes not merely a procedure for managing disagreement, but a shared practice of becoming together.
Forward to God
A Process–Augustinian political vision, however serious about institutions and history, does not end with politics. It ends beyond politics. Worldly affairs matter deeply—laws, justice, ecological repair, education, family, democracy. These are not trivial. They are arenas in which love is ordered or disordered. Yet they are penultimate. Their ultimate meaning does not lie in their success or failure within history.
From Augustine of Hippo comes the sobering reminder that no earthly city is final. Empires rise and fall. Movements succeed and decay. Even the most just political order remains marked by fragility and ambiguity. The human heart remains restless. From Alfred North Whitehead comes the complementary vision that every concrescing subject, once achieved, perishes into objective fact and is taken into the consequent nature of God. Nothing beautiful is lost. Nothing tragic is ignored. All is gathered.
The ultimate meaning of a life, then, does not lie in worldly acclaim, political victory, or institutional endurance. It lies in how one’s becoming contributes to the glory of God—understood not as domination but as the radiance of Love fully realized. Each act of justice, each moment of compassion, each refusal of ego-ultimacy becomes part of the divine Harmony. Even suffering, borne faithfully, is woven into that greater Beauty.
To live “forward to God” is to situate every finite aim within that larger horizon. It is to act in history while knowing that history is not ultimate. It is to pursue the common good without imagining it as salvation. It is to work for ecological healing, democratic integrity, and cultural renewal—yet to entrust their final meaning to a Love greater than the world.
Redemption, in this vision, is not escape from finitude but participation in divine glory. In Augustine’s language, our loves find their rest in God. In Whitehead’s language, our achieved intensities are preserved within the everlasting life of God. We contribute to that life; we are also upheld by it. We are not the authors of ultimate meaning. We are participants in it.
Thus politics, rightly ordered, becomes offering. Every policy debated, every classroom taught, every family nurtured, every stranger welcomed, every injustice resisted—each becomes material for divine integration. The measure of a life is not simply what it accomplishes in public history, but how it is woven into the larger Love that sustains all being.
Forward, then—not into triumphalism, not into despair, but into participation. Forward to God, whose Beauty gathers every fragment of history into an everlasting Harmony, and whose glory redeems even what we cannot repair.
From Augustine of Hippo comes the sobering reminder that no earthly city is final. Empires rise and fall. Movements succeed and decay. Even the most just political order remains marked by fragility and ambiguity. The human heart remains restless. From Alfred North Whitehead comes the complementary vision that every concrescing subject, once achieved, perishes into objective fact and is taken into the consequent nature of God. Nothing beautiful is lost. Nothing tragic is ignored. All is gathered.
The ultimate meaning of a life, then, does not lie in worldly acclaim, political victory, or institutional endurance. It lies in how one’s becoming contributes to the glory of God—understood not as domination but as the radiance of Love fully realized. Each act of justice, each moment of compassion, each refusal of ego-ultimacy becomes part of the divine Harmony. Even suffering, borne faithfully, is woven into that greater Beauty.
To live “forward to God” is to situate every finite aim within that larger horizon. It is to act in history while knowing that history is not ultimate. It is to pursue the common good without imagining it as salvation. It is to work for ecological healing, democratic integrity, and cultural renewal—yet to entrust their final meaning to a Love greater than the world.
Redemption, in this vision, is not escape from finitude but participation in divine glory. In Augustine’s language, our loves find their rest in God. In Whitehead’s language, our achieved intensities are preserved within the everlasting life of God. We contribute to that life; we are also upheld by it. We are not the authors of ultimate meaning. We are participants in it.
Thus politics, rightly ordered, becomes offering. Every policy debated, every classroom taught, every family nurtured, every stranger welcomed, every injustice resisted—each becomes material for divine integration. The measure of a life is not simply what it accomplishes in public history, but how it is woven into the larger Love that sustains all being.
Forward, then—not into triumphalism, not into despair, but into participation. Forward to God, whose Beauty gathers every fragment of history into an everlasting Harmony, and whose glory redeems even what we cannot repair.
Augustine’s Aspirational Imperfectionism:
What Should We Hope for from Politics?
By Jesse Covington, Director, Augustinian Scholars Program and Associate Professor of Political Science
In politics, we often think of liberals as optimists and conservatives as pessimists. Liberals can be ever-hopeful, aiming to improve society through government efforts to help communities enjoy greater justice, equality, freedom, health care, security, prosperity, etc. In contrast, conservatives can be wary of state powers to make things better, counseling a politics of restraint and limits instead.
In short, Augustine points us to political faithfulness in light of the full scope of redemptive history. Our hopes for politics include pursuing real goods (could love of neighbor counsel anything less?), but with the recognition that these goods remain tempered, limited, and proximate inside of time. We might describe this as the drive of liberals and the expectations of conservatives. For Augustine it is captured by the image of the pilgrim or sojourner who invests deeply in his current context, but without mistaking it for home.
- Jesse Covington
Summary of Covington's Argument.
Click here for Covington in his own words.
Creation Is Good and Earthly Peace Matters
Augustine begins not with despair but with affirmation. Creation is objectively good, and the material and social conditions of life—bodily health, social harmony, access to basic goods, and a measure of order—are genuine goods. In City of God, he urges Christians to seek the “earthly peace” that political communities can provide, even when those communities are governed imperfectly. Politics is not merely a holding action against chaos; it can contribute to human flourishing. Earthly peace, though not ultimate, is real and worth pursuing.
Political Communities Can Improve
Augustine does not assume all political arrangements are morally equivalent. Commonwealths can be better or worse depending on their “shared objects of love.” When a people’s loves are better ordered, their political life improves. This implies that reform is meaningful. Political life can strive toward justice, greater moral clarity, and conditions conducive to the common good. Augustine’s vision therefore includes aspiration: politics can achieve genuine, though limited, goods.
Sin Endures and Politics Has Limits
Yet Augustine refuses political perfectionism. Humanity is divided between the City of God, defined by love of God, and the earthly city, defined by love of self. These differing ultimate ends prevent politics from achieving final justice within history. Sin distorts rulers and citizens alike. Coercion may be necessary to restrain wrongdoing, but it is always morally fraught and imperfect. Political justice remains proximate, never complete. No regime can eliminate the deep fractures of fallen human nature.
Living in the “Already and Not Yet”
Augustine situates politics within redemptive history. Christians live between Christ’s resurrection and the final consummation. This “already-but-not-yet” tension shapes political expectations. We can and should pursue real goods in the present, but ultimate peace lies beyond history. Political hopes must be disciplined by eschatological realism.
Aspirational Imperfectionism
Taken together, Augustine offers what may be called aspirational imperfectionism. He rejects both utopian optimism and fatalistic pessimism. Christians are called to aspire toward justice, peace, and rightly ordered love in public life. At the same time, they must recognize the enduring presence of sin and the limits of political achievement. This stance calls for humility, prudence, incremental reform, and a refusal to idolize political outcomes.
In Augustine’s account, politics matters —but it is not salvation. Christians engage public life as pilgrims: investing seriously in earthly peace while remembering that their ultimate home lies beyond it.
Whitehead's Notion of God
Whitehead did not develop a systematic political philosophy. Yet Augustine’s distinction between the City of God and the earthly city (often called the City of Man) finds an intriguing parallel in Whitehead’s vision of reality. For Whitehead, the World and its ongoing history, and God with God’s own ongoing history, are intimately connected yet not identical. Whitehead speaks of the primordial nature of God as non-temporal (akion to Augustine's eternity) and what he calls the consequent nature of God as everlastingly temporal, without beginning or end. The World, for Whitehead, possesses a fundamental goodness—indeed, a beauty—but it is also marked by incompatible goods, suffering, discord, and tragedy. God, by contrast, in God's consequent nature, is everlasting and characterized by perfect love and beauty. God is a Harmony of Harmonies, whose very essence is tender care that nothing be lost. My suggestion is that we think of the World as the earthly city and, for that matter, the entire universe, and the consequent nature, with its everlasting love, as the City of God.
To be sure, when Augustine speaks of the earthly city and the City of God, he refers not merely to two realms but also to two fundamental orientations of love. Those who set their hopes on the City of God love God as the central organizing principle of their life and seek to order their desires accordingly. Those oriented toward the earthly city prioritize self-love over divine love. These two dispositions coexist within history and remain in tension, even conflict.
In what follows, I offer a Process-Augustinian theology that explores how such an Augustinian framework might be conjoined with Whitehead’s metaphysics and brought to bear on political life.