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Arendt and Augustine: More Than One Kind of Love
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-17, 17:05 authored by Tatman, LucyAlthough Hannah Arendt is not usually read as a philosopher of religion, her political philosophy is noticeably filled with references to religious figures and thinkers, including Jesus of Nazareth, Augustine and Duns Scotus. Also notable is the implicit centrality in her thought of amor mundi, or love of the world. The difficulty is that although she spoke to her students about it, she rarely wrote about amor mundi. In this article, I seek to provide a plausible explanation of the meaning of amor mundi in Arendt’s thought, drawing in particular upon the influence of Augustine on Arendt’s unique development of the ethical and political principle of love for the world. Specifically, through a close reading of Arendt’s doctoral dissertation, Love and Saint Augustine, I identify the relationship between Augustine’s conception of cupiditas and Arendt’s conception of amor mundi.
History
Publication title
SophiaVolume
52Issue
4Pagination
625-635ISSN
1873-930XDepartment/School
School of HumanitiesPublisher
SpringerPlace of publication
DordrechtRights statement
Copyright 2013 Springer Science+Business Media DordrechtRepository Status
- Restricted