ABSTRACT
In Tocqueville's view, democratic citizenship in the age of liberalism could no longer derive from noble sentiments. The fundamental liberal principle of the separation of church and state, of religion and politics, would at first seem to push us in the same direction, toward a theory of autonomous political values from which may be deduced a moral obligation of citizenship. The key to the underlying moral obligation of citizenship in the classical Greek tradition is enlightened self-interest. So long as classical Greek political philosophy controls the idea of citizenship, therefore, performance of its duties remains the only path, short of divine understanding, to self-fulfillment. Historically speaking, the theology of liberal political thought is Augustinian in the earliest major attempts to incorporate elements of the radically different Hebraic and Greek traditions into one doctrine while reflecting and giving meaning to the inherent conflict between the two.
