Now published in English for the first time, Arendt's 1929 doctoral
dissertation offers insights into her later political and
philosophical constructions. A German-Jewish refugee from Hitler's
Europe, Arendt wrote Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), an
instrumental text in framing political discourse during the Cold
War over the nature of totalitarian regimes. She is also best known
for her New Yorker article that was eventually published as
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1961). Her
doctoral dissertation was a three-part examination of St.
Augustine's conception of caritas: the first analysis seeks to
define it as "craving," or appetitus. The second analysis focuses
on the commandment to "love thy neighbor as thyself." Arendt then
turns to the question of the relation between Creator and Creature,
and how neighborly love is possible in the face of the overwhelming
presence of the Creator. The work stands in the tradition of German
doctoral dissertations; i.e., it is dense and difficult terrain.
Throughout, there is the overshadowing figure of Martin Heidegger,
arguably the most important philosopher of the 20th century. Under
his influence, Arendt utilized the concepts of natality, memory,
and phenomenology. Yet her focus on Augustine's self-reflective
imperative ("I have become a question to myself") reflects her debt
to another teacher, Karl Jaspers, the director of her dissertation.
In Arendt's treatment of Augustinian concepts such as memory,
caritas, cupiditas, and especially the civitas terrena, or "the
earthly city," we realize that these are perennial philosophical
concerns. Scott (Political Science/Eastern Michigan Univ.) and
Stark (Philosophy/Seton Hall) provide two interpretive essays
arguing that the dissertation is the "missing link" in Arendt
scholarship and that none of the later works can be understood
apart from it. In all her later writing, they argue, Arendt,
following Augustine, addressed the problem of social and political
action in an imperfect world. A revelation that may force us to
reconsider the traditional interpretation of Arendt's work. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Hannah Arendt began her scholarly career with an exploration of
Saint Augustine's concept of caritas, 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. In Love 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.
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