On Arendt’s Concept Of Love Of Neighbour

Hannah Arendt is one of the most influential political theorists of the contemporary era.As a witness and survivor of World War II and Nazi totalitarianism,her experience was undoubtedly exceptional.As a scholar with unique insights into philosophy and politics,she was also highly original.Her early academic career was the starting point for all this.Arendt inherited the main ideas of her two mentors Heidegger and Jaspers,and reconstructed Augustine’s concept of love systematically in her doctoral dissertation “The Concept of Love in Augustine”.She eventually found her own path.In it,she used phenomenological tools,borrowed and developed the concept of “love of neighbor”,and endowed social life with possibility through “pre-existing historical reality” at the philosophical level.This attempt had a profound connection with the fundamental logic of her later works.The premise for realizing “love of neighbor” that she derived from it became a powerful tool for analyzing the crisis of modernity and criticizing totalitarianism.The way to realize “love of neighbor” was also a reference for how to build a political community in her ideal.In comparing this concept with emotions such as “charity”,“compassion”,etc.,Arendt analyzed the limitations of private emotions and the best way for “love” to enter the political field as a force.These thoughts derived from “love of neighbor” ultimately laid the core foundation for her political theory.Augustine admonished Christians to be proud of a life separate from the world and to regard the pursuit of eternity as the true meaning of existence in the world.Arendt’s political theory regards the common political life in the world as the true source of freedom and human meaning.In the process of inheriting and reversing Augustine’s philosophy,the originality of Arendt’s thought is fully revealed.