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The title of our collection is owed to Hannah Arendt herself. Writing to Karl Jaspers on August 6, 1955, she spoke of how she had only just begun to really love the world and expressed her desire to testify to that love in the title of what came to be published as The Human Condition: "Out of gratitude, I want to call my book about political theories Arnor Mundi. "t In retrospect, it was fitting that amor mundi, love of the world, never became the title of only one of Arendt's studies, for it is the theme which permeates all of her thought. The purpose of this volume's a- ticles is to pay a critical tribute to this theme by exploring its meaning, the cultural and intellectual sources from which it derives, as well as its resources for conte- porary thought and action. We are privileged to include as part of the collection two previously unpu- lished lectures by Arendt as well as a rarely noticed essay which she wrote in 1964. Taken together, they engrave the central features of her vision of amor mundi. Arendt presented "Labor, Work, Action" on November 10, 1964, at a conference "Christianity and Economic Man:Moral Decisions in an Affluent Society," which 2 was held at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.
List of contents
The Faith of Hannah Arendt: Amor Mundi and its Critique-Assimilation of Religious Experience.- Labor, Work, Action.- Collective Responsibility.- The Deputy : Guilt by Silence?.- Enspirited Words and Deeds:Christian Metaphors Implicit in Arendt's Concept of Personal Action.- Elusive Neighborliness: Hannah Arendt's Interpretation of Saint Augustine.- Contemplative in Action.- Natality, Amor Mundi and Nuclearism in the Thought of Hannah Arendt.- Hannah Arendt's Constitutional Thought.- The Banality of Virtue: Reflections on Hannah Arendt's Reinterpretation of Political Ethics.- About our Contributors.
