Love and Saint Augustine
By: Hannah Arendt ; edited and with an interpretive essay by Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark.
Contributors: Scott, Joanna Vecchiarelli.; Stark, Judith Chelius.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Chicago,Ill; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 233
Subjects: Augustine, -- Saint, Bishop of Hippo.; Love (Theology) -- History of doctrines -- Early church, ca. 30-600.
Work titles: Liebesbegriff bei Augustin.
Description: 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 dissertation 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 213-215) and index.

Translation of Liebesbegriff bei Augustin.