To redeem what could be redeemed. A vitalistic interpretation of Hannah Arendt’s doctoral thesis ‚On the concept of love in Augustine’.

Abstract

This article is a presentation of Hannah Arendt’s doctoral thesis publishedin 1929 and devoted to the notion of love in Augustine (Der Liebesbegriff beiAugustin). Its aim is to demonstrate the originality of Arendt’s work towards hermajor influence and object of criticism – the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Herconcept of natality, derived from Augustinian thought, opposes to being-towards--death. This movement makes a different conception of subjectivity possible: Heideggerianegocentrism can be substituted by a plurality. Vitalism (as proposed by AgataBielik-Robson) is noticeable in the interpretational efforts of Arendt and defendsa particular subjectivity against dissolution of any kind into Wholeness. Simultaneously,a vision of a community is formed – the community of equals constructedthanks to the recognition of contingency in conditio humana. In other words, herargument overcomes claims to absolute freedom. Reflections from the “pretheologicalsphere” (Arendt) take the form of philosophical anthropology, crucial to subsequentArendtian thought. Speculations concerning a notion of God are linkedwith the dissimilar approaches to a neighbor’s love. This is reflected in the problemof the constitution of dependent subjectivity, the main feature of which is a dialecticallyunderstood gratitude: the recognition of one’s dependence is a first step toovercoming it. It corresponds with a complicated attitude towards modernity farfrom simple resolutions: a sense of historicity builds a strategic position as a conditionof successful emancipation.

Keywords

• Arendt
• Augustyn
• Bielik-Robson
• nowoczesność
• emancypacja
• kontyngencja