Fraternal Correction as Democratic Discipline: An Augustinian Account

The health and preservation of democratic institutions relies on pervasive practices, formal and informal, of social criticism and civic accountability. Such practices are necessary but prone to incur “characteristic damages,” often hardening polarization through cycles of confrontation, denunciation, and backlash. This paper proposes a way of conceptualizing and disciplining the work of democratic accountability through the theological notion of fraternal correction. I draw on Augustine’s account of fraternal correction as a work of mercy and an act of spiritual friendship, performed among social equals and ordered toward healing, rather than retribution or self-assertion. Augustine’s acceptance of the “rougher magics” of political coercion is well-known, but alongside this paternalist, hierarchical model of political rule he recognized a place for a distributed, fraternal mode of accountability, independent of formal office-holding, whose medium was the word, not the sword, and which cut across gradients of social status.