Love and Saint Augustine

by Arendt, Hannah; Scott, Joanna Vecchiarelli; Stark, Judith Chelius

• ISBN13: 9780226025964
• ISBN10: 0226025969
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Hannah Arendt began her scholarly career with an exploration of Saint Augustine's concept ofcaritas, or neighborly love, written under the direction of Karl Jaspers and the influence of Martin Heidegger. After her German academic life came to a halt in 1933, Arendt carried her dissertation into exile in France, and years later took the same battered and stained copy to New York. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, as she was completing or reworking her most influential studies of political life, Arendt was simultaneously annotating and revising her dissertation on Augustine, amplifying its argument with terms and concepts she was using in her political works of the same period. The disseration became a bridge over which Arendt traveled back and forth between 1929 Heidelberg and 1960s New York, carrying with her Augustine's question about the possibility of social life in an age of rapid political and moral change. InLove and Saint Augustine, Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark make this important early work accessible for the first time. Here is a completely corrected and revised English translation that incorporates Arendt's own substantial revisions and provides additional notes based on letters, contracts, and other documents as well as the recollections of Arendt's friends and colleagues during her later years.

Table of Contents

Preface: Rediscovering Love and Saint Augustine	vii
Acknowledgments	xix
LOVE AND SAINT AUGUSTINE
Introduction	3	(6)
PART I Love as Craving: The Anticipated Future	9	(36)
The Structure of Craving (Appetitus)	9	(9)
Caritas and Cupiditas	18	(18)
The Order of Love	36	(9)
PART II Creator and Creature: The Remembered Past	45	(53)
The Origin	45	(32)
Caritas and Cupiditas	77	(16)
Love of Neighbor	93	(5)
PART III Social Life	98	(115)
REDISCOVERING HANNAH ARENDT
Introduction: ``New Beginnings''	115	(27)
``Thought Trains''	142	(31)
Heidegger: Arendt between Past and Future	173	(25)
Jaspers: Arendt and Existenz Philosophy	198	(15)
References	213	(4)
Index	217