Mia: Okay, so I was just reading this article the other day, and it totally blew my mind. It was all about Hannah Arendt – you know, the political philosopher – but it focused on her surprisingly deep dive into love, specifically through the lens of Saint Augustine. Who knew?
Mars: Oh, absolutely! It's such a wild pairing, isn't it? I mean, Arendt, the queen of cool, analytical thought, especially with her work on totalitarianism. And then you hear 'love,' which we usually think of as this super messy, irrational force? It just doesn't compute at first glance. Totally striking.
Mia: Exactly! So, given Arendt's whole reputation, what was it about Augustine's philosophy of love – a topic that feels anything but rational – that just totally hooked her?
Mars: Oh, it was *no* casual fling. We're talking her doctoral thesis here, which became her very first book, *Love and Saint Augustine*. And she didn't just write it and dust her hands off; she apparently obsessed over it, revising and annotating it for literally half a century. It was her lifelong project. As the article put it, Augustine was like the perfect whetstone for her to really sharpen her own ideas.
Mia: Alright, let's dig into that initial paradox then, because it's a doozy. The article starts with this Augustine quote: 'Love, but be careful what you love.' How does that seemingly contradictory advice, you know, set the whole stage for Arendt's deep dive?
Mars: That quote is just brilliant, isn't it? It perfectly captures the central tension. On one hand, love feels like this overwhelming, almost involuntary force, just sweeps you off your feet. But then Augustine's over here saying, 'Hey, pump the brakes, be prudent, make a rational choice about what you give your heart to.' And Arendt, who practically lived and breathed reason, was just captivated by how to even navigate that. How do you apply reason to something that so often feels like, as the author says, 'a straitjacket of irrationality'?
Mia: And then, how did this early deep dive into Augustine actually become that 'whetstone' for her? Like, how did it fundamentally shape her later, more famous ideas about politics?
Mars: It was absolutely foundational, seriously. It's in her study of Augustine that she first picked up the phrase *amor mundi*, or 'love of the world,' which, get this, became a central pillar of her entire philosophy. She really saw this dangerous disconnect between philosophy and politics, which basically allowed ideologies like totalitarianism to just rise up by making human beings totally irrelevant. And she just kept returning to Augustine, like a compass, to find the antidote, which she identified, over and over again, as love.
Mia: So, understanding her initial entry point into Augustine's thought is super crucial, right? Let's unpack Augustine's fundamental definition of love as a 'craving' and how Arendt interprets this whole 'directional desire' idea.
Mars: Augustine actually uses the Latin word *appetitus*, which, surprise surprise, is the root of our word 'appetite.' He puts it pretty simply: 'to love is indeed nothing else than to crave something for its own sake.' And Arendt totally picks up on this idea of a directional desire. It's not just some vague, floaty feeling; it's a very specific motion *toward* something, a good that we know we want but just don't have yet.
Mia: So, if love is fundamentally this 'craving,' as Augustine suggests, how on earth does Arendt explain that really unsettling shift from the pure joy of acquiring what we desire to, like, the immediate anxiety of desperately holding onto it?
Mars: This is where her analysis takes this super critical turn. She basically points out that the craving itself is sparked by a specific object. The whole desire is just to possess that good. But here's the kicker: what happens once you actually *have* it? Arendt observes, 'Once we have the object our desire ends, unless we are threatened with its loss. In that case the desire to have turns into a fear of losing.' So, the very act of fulfillment, ironically, plants the seed of fear. It's kind of a gut punch.
Mia: Wow, that's a powerful thought, and honestly, a little bleak. So, if love is this journey towards a desired good, what kind of 'baggage' does Arendt suggest we inevitably pick up along the way, especially once we've, you know, 'arrived'? Could you throw in an analogy to really make this shift clear?
Mars: Oh, absolutely. Let's go with this: Imagine you've spent years, literally years, searching for this incredibly rare and absolutely stunning crystal vase. The hunt, that craving, it's just all-consuming. Then, one glorious day, you finally find it. That moment of acquisition? Pure, unadulterated joy. But almost immediately, this new, insidious feeling just creeps in. You place it carefully on the shelf, and suddenly every footstep, every loud noise, every single visitor who walks through your door becomes a potential threat. The sheer joy of having that vase is completely replaced by this constant, nagging fear of it shattering. That, my friend, is the baggage. The desire to have transforms into the fear of losing.
Mia: That transformation from desire to fear of loss really does shed so much light on this pervasive human condition, doesn't it? It just hits home. So, that leads us right into the next point: how does this constant, underlying fear really impact our experience of the present moment?
Mars: Arendt argues it's just devastating, truly, to our experience of the present. She writes, 'So long as we desire temporal things, we are constantly under this threat... And so, the future destroys the present.' Think about it: because we're so hyper-focused on this future where we might lose whatever we have, we just can't actually enjoy the present moment. We completely strip it of its calm and its own intrinsic value. It's heartbreaking.
Mia: Arendt says that constantly living with this fear just 'strips each present moment of its calm.' Can you really paint a picture for us of what that 'living death' actually looks like, especially when the ultimate fear, the biggest one, is death itself?
Mars: It's this state of constant, low-grade anxiety, you know? You're just never truly at rest. The happiness of having something is always, always shadowed by the fear of losing it. And when you extend that to the ultimate loss – death itself – it just becomes even more profound. Arendt actually says that in fearing death, we paradoxically begin to fear life itself, because it's a life that is, ultimately, doomed to die. The object of our fear, in a super twisted way, becomes fear itself. We just get totally trapped in worry.
Mia: Wow, that really does sound like a trap: we crave, we possess, we fear. But Arendt, thank goodness, offers a way out, or at least a new goal. How does she manage to pivot so powerfully from this pervasive fear to suggest that 'fearlessness' is love's ultimate quest, even when, you know, everything is 'doomed to die'?
Mars: She argues that love, when it's just constantly frustrated by the sheer impermanence of everything on earth, eventually, like, does this complete U-turn. It finally realizes that no temporal object, no *thing*, can ever provide lasting security. So, its goal totally shifts. The object of love actually becomes a negation. It stops seeking things, and instead, it seeks a state of being. As Arendt so beautifully puts it, 'Fearlessness is what love seeks. Love as craving is determined by its goal, and this goal is freedom from fear.' It's pretty profound.
Mia: This pursuit of fearlessness really implies such a profound relationship with time, doesn't it? So, let's shift gears a bit and talk about how Arendt and Augustine actually grapple with the paradox of love existing in this temporal, fleeting world, and the massive significance of the 'Now'.
Mars: Alright, this is where it gets really, really mind-bending, I'm not gonna lie. They both totally recognize that our lives are just constantly in flux. Augustine famously says, 'life is always either no more or not yet.' The past is gone, the future isn't here. So, how on earth can we even experience something as profound as love, which Tolstoy, mind you, called 'a present activity only'?
Mia: So, how can we possibly reconcile that idea of love as a 'present activity' with our everyday experience of time? What exactly did Augustine and Arendt mean by the 'Now' being, like, the *only* valid tense?
Mars: They propose that the Now is something totally different. It's not just a little tick mark on a timeline. Arendt describes it as being, 'strictly speaking, not time but outside time.' It's this incredibly fleeting moment where the past and future actually meet. And it's in this present moment, this 'Now,' that we can hold both our memories of the past and our expectations for the future. Arendt even says memory is the storehouse of time, and it's by calling the past and future *into* the present that time even exists for us at all.
Mia: The article actually mentions the writer Margaret Fuller, who said, 'The union of two natures for a time is so great.' How does Arendt's concept of the 'Now' – as this fleeting moment where past and future meet – help us understand that 'transcendent transience' of love, rather than just, you know, despairing over its impermanence?
Mars: It's such a beautiful way to reframe everything, truly. Instead of seeing love's finiteness as this huge tragedy, the concept of the Now actually allows us to see it as a series of eternal moments. Each present moment of genuine connection is, as Augustine would say, a taste of eternity. It's not about how long it lasts on some linear timeline, but about the sheer depth and reality of that connection *in the Now*. The real triumph is in fully inhabiting that transient moment with courage, rather than constantly fearing its inevitable end.
Mia: This exploration of time really brings us right to Arendt's ultimate conclusion about human nature, doesn't it? So, let's dive into her really powerful assertion that man's essence is actually a 'lack of self-sufficiency,' which, in turn, drives him towards love to escape isolation.
Mars: This, right here, is the culmination of the entire argument, honestly. Arendt concludes, drawing heavily from Augustine, that if humans even *have* an essential nature, it's that we are fundamentally not self-sufficient. We are, essentially, incomplete on our own. And this inherent lack, this gaping hole, is precisely what drives us to break out of our isolation through love. Augustine famously wrote, 'Such is each as is his love.' And Arendt takes this even further, stating, 'Strictly speaking, he who does not love and desire at all is a nobody.' Talk about a mic drop.
Mia: Arendt powerfully states, and I just love this line: 'For the lover is never isolated from what he loves; he belongs to it.' Can you illustrate for us how this 'belonging' through desire actually transforms both the lover *and* the beloved?
Mars: Desire, in her view, is literally the force that just annihilates the distance between a person and the world. When you genuinely love something, you're no longer just this isolated subject observing an external object from a distance. You actually become part of it, and, in turn, it becomes part of you. Your very identity, who you are, is shaped by the object of your love. You are defined not by your isolated self, but by what you reach for, by what you connect with.
Mia: This idea of love as breaking isolation has such profound implications, doesn't it? So, how does Arendt connect this deeply personal need for connection to her later, more famous work on political oppression, especially where isolation itself becomes, like, the ultimate 'weapon of totalitarianism'?
Mars: It's such a direct and incredibly powerful line, isn't it? Decades after writing this thesis, she would famously analyze how totalitarian regimes actually operate. And she realized their primary weapon is precisely enforcing isolation. By systematically destroying the private and public spheres where people naturally connect, they effectively break the bonds of love and solidarity. They literally turn people into nobodies by denying them the ability to love, to desire, and to belong to something outside themselves. Totalitarianism is, in essence, a direct assault on this fundamental human need to escape isolation.
Mia: Wow, it's just incredible to trace that line of thought all the way through, isn't it? It really seems like her early work on love provided this profound lens to understand not just our personal lives, but truly, the very fabric of a healthy society.
Mars: Exactly! For Arendt, the personal is just so deeply political. Her entire journey through Augustine's philosophy really reveals that our most intimate human experiences – craving, fear, connection – are the very things at stake in our political lives. It genuinely suggests that perhaps the most potent antidote to the fear and isolation that oppressive systems breed is, quite simply, love. A love for each other, and of course, that *amor mundi* – a love for the world itself.
