Arendt and Augustine: A Pedagogy of Desiring and Thinking for Politics (Transforming Political Theologies)

This book addresses a lacuna in scholarship concerning Hannah Arendt’s Augustinian heritage that has predominantly focused on her early work. It de-canonises the sources that political theology has appealed to by shifting the interpretive focus to her mature treatment in The Life of the Mind. Arendt’s initial criticism of Augustinian desiring is that it generates 'worldlessness'. In her later works, Arendt develops a more nuanced reading of the movements of thinking, desiring, and loving in her engagement with Augustine. This study attends to these movements and inspects the spatio-temporal framework which structure Arendt’s conception of the political. The author assesses the claim that Arendt’s conception of the political is drawn from a pedagogy of desiring and thinking from Augustine severed from his mystagogy. Although respecting the method of political theory, the author contends that Arendt’s severing of Augustinian pedagogy from mystagogy brings her to an insurmountable aporia. Instead, the author embeds these pedagogical practices within Augustine’s theology and suggests how that aporia might be overcome and used to develop a mystagogy for contemporary political life. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of political theology, as well as political theory, and political philosophy. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Preface I II III IV Notes Acknowledgements Abbreviations a. Augustine b. Hannah Arendt Introduction Note Chapter 1: What Does It Mean to Be Political?: Arendt’s Augustinian Odyssey and Its Significance for Theology 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Homo Spatialis and Homo Temporalis 1.2.1 Homo Temporalis 1.2.2 Homo Spatio-temporalis 1.3 The Theological Significance of the Political Notes Chapter 2: A Taxonomy and Trajectory of Desire: Hannah Arendt’s Early Reading of Augustine 2.1 Introduction 2.2 A Taxonomy and Trajectory of Desire 2.2.1 Craving (Appetitus) in Its Future Orientation 2.2.2 Desire and Memory in Its Orientation to the Past 2.2.3 Social Life 2.3 Conclusion Notes Chapter 3: Hannah Arendt’s Criticism of Augustinian ‘Worldlessness’ 3.1 Introduction 3.2 ‘Worldlessness’ in The Origins of Totalitarianism 3.3 Epistemological ‘Worldlessness’ and the Reflexivity of Thinking 3.4 Volitional ‘Worldlessness’ in Christian Love 3.5 What Is Epistemological and Volitional ‘Worldlessness’? 3.6 Amor Mundi Notes Chapter 4: Movements of Thinking and Loving in Augustine: Rereading Augustine in the Light of Hannah Arendt 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Critical Apparatus 4.3 Two Models of Answering the Question on Standpoint 4.3.1 Static Model – Interpreting Uti and Frui 4.3.2 Diastolic Movement – Movements of Knowing and Desiring/ Loving in De Trinitate 4.4 Critical Evaluation Notes Chapter 5: A Grammar for a Political Mystagogy: Re-reading Augustine’s City of God with Arendt’s Concept of Time 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Refining the Critical Apparatus 5.3 Politics as ‘Theologically Neutral’: Robert Markus’ Saeculum 5.4 Applying the Critical Apparatus Theologically 5.5 In, But Not of the World 5.6 The Two Cities as an Improvisation in Time Notes Chapter 6: Mystagogy for Political Life: Tracing the Influence of Augustine’s City of God in Arendt’s Conception of the ‘Political’ 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Interpretive Framework 6.3 Three Models of Arendt's Reception of Augustine 6.3.1 Inverted Augustinianism 6.3.2 Transposed Augustinianism 6.3.3 Worldly Augustinianism 6.4 Mystagogy as Initiation into Mystery Notes Chapter 7: ‘Christian Harps on Babylonian Willows’: An Augustinian Ecclesiology in Response to Arendt 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Loneliness as the Limit-Situation of Thinking 7.3 Augustine on the Good Samaritan 7.4 Learning to Think from the Standpoint of Another in the Saeculum Notes Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index