The existence and continuity of Chinese civilization disproves Augustine’s “City of Man vs City of God” dynamic.
>>18515321Elaborate
>>18515337China’s millennium-spanning continuity disproves Augustine’s binary framework by demonstrating that a civilization does not require Abrahamic foundations or divine grace to achieve enduring moral order and political longevity. While Augustine viewed history as a linear march toward judgment and characterized secular empires as flawed "Cities of Man" doomed by original sin, Chinese political philosophy integrates the sacred and secular through the cyclical Mandate of Heaven, achieving social cohesion via humanistic Confucian ethics rather than a theology of salvation. By repeatedly regenerating itself through dynastic cycles completely outside of Western Christendom, China serves as a powerful historical counterexample proving that state legitimacy, moral virtue, and societal resilience can thrive independently of the Western spiritual dynamic.
>>18515321Basic reasoning also disproves Augustine's "city of man vs city of God" dynamic. Augustine was a moron.
>>18515369>China’s millennium-spanning continuityChina isn't millenium spanning.>Abrahamic foundations or divine grace to achieve enduring moral order and political longevity.Considering the average lifespan of empires, the latter probably couldn't hurt.
>>18515369>Mandate of HeavenChinese populations were just repackaging >divine grace
>>18515369>China’s millennium-spanning continuityThe fact that there's always been a country called "China" occupying that particular bit of land doesn't mean there's any meaningful civilizational continuity. China has collapsed into periods of chaotic balkanization numerous times, including as recently as 100 years ago, and has been reconstituted under various different regimes that bore no connection to one another.Saying that Mao's version of China was the same as Qin Shi Huang's version of China is a bit like saying that Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's version of Persia was the same as Cyrus the Great's version of Persia. Same name, but different system of government, different economy, different religion, etc.
>>18515397>China has collapsed into periods of chaotic balkanization numerous timesAnd they also came back how they were before because guess what, real history is cyclic not linear. This was literally the universally-accepted position in the west prior to Christianity and will be again when Christianity dies out.
>>18515375His polemic against Roman history is literally just one whataboutism and strawman after another and it pulls from a shockingly shallow number of sources. His arguments against paganism conveniently ignore Pax Deorum and it's strange that despite acknowledging the Aeneid as poetry, he seems to treat it as history given how frequently he cites it as evidence of the evils of paganism. But what's stranger is that he focuses just on the kingdom and republican history, completely ignoring what should have been very fertile ground of imperial history to back up his argument that pagan Rome was hardly the glorious past some anti-Christians valorized it as. He has nothing to say about Nero? Really, nothing at all? Nothing to say about the crisis period? Was it problematic for him, I wonder, to acknowledge this because it all happened after the appearance of Christ, and he could not explain in his system why the world had remained shit after the supposed savior arrived?Also ironically, the idea of the “City of God vs the City of Man” mirrors the Manichaean duelism he condemned.
>>18515384MoH predates abrahamic divine grace
>>18515369>China’s millennium-spanning continuity??????
>>18515575You have no idea what you're even talking about.
>>18515577No, you don't. By your retarded logic, Italy is also a "Millennium-Spanning Continuity" which isn't really true for them either no matter how many of them want to LARP as Romans
>>18515577>Don't you know that China is actually 5,000 years old you filthy Gweilo
America is a millennium-spanning continuity because where my house is used to be the site of a Tongva Village....Good logic!
>>18515588Modern China has more cultural and political lineage to their ancient forefathers than any European has. The Chinese are taught to understand the works of Confucius in their original language, meanwhile your average Englishman can’t even read Beowulf
>>18515593>Modern China has more cultural and political lineage to their ancient forefathers than any European has.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Revolution?????????????
>>18515409>real history is cyclic not linearLollmao even
>>18515601You know I’m right, cope
>>18515588>mutt can't into ethnolinguistic perseverancefigures
>>18515608>ethnolinguistic perseveranceBut...that doesn't even apply to China either, the vast majority of Chinese didn't even speak Mandarin until more recently and China for most of its history was full of non-mutually intelligible languages and competing ethnic groups. The only difference between Europe and China is framing
