The Political Meaning of Natality: Arendt and Augustine

Abstract

My purpose in writing this paper is to discuss Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of Augustine’s work, taking as a starting point her doctoral thesis entitled The Concept of Love in Augustine (Der Liebesbegriff im Augustin). There, the author holds that Augustine’s concept of love involved a conflict between the love of God and the love of one’s neighbor. Arendt argued that it is not possible to love one’s neighbor without, at least to some degree, also loving the world. Concerned with the status of the human presence in the world, Arendt finds in Augustine’s work the concept of amor mundi, which depends upon humanity’s capacity to trigger new events in the world. In Arendt’s analysis, this ability to commence things translates the political meaning of human freedom that is ontologically anchored upon human natality. The paper, then, seeks to reach an understanding of the political meaning of natality in Arendt’s work.