Christians often say don't love the world while Arendt, I think, came to believe in amor mundi and Augustine also did I think. Can you explain the discrepancy?

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Yes, that’s a rich and significant tension. The phrase “don’t love the world” in Christianity—especially as found in the Johannine epistles (e.g. 1 John 2:15: “Do not love the world or the things in the world”)—appears starkly opposed to Hannah Arendt’s amor mundi (Latin for “love of the world”), which she famously adopted as her ethical-political orientation, inspired in part by Augustine.

Let’s unpack this discrepancy.

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1. Christian “Don’t Love the World” – A Spiritual Rejection

In traditional Christian contexts, especially in New Testament writings:

• “The world” (kosmos) often refers not to creation per se but to the fallen, sinful order opposed to God. It is entangled with desire, pride, and idolatry.

• The Johannine letters, Paul’s writings, and parts of the Gospels all depict “the world” as a domain ruled by spiritual darkness, something to be resisted or transcended. For instance:

  • “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).

  • Jesus says in John 15:19: “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world... the world hates you.”

• Therefore, not loving the world is about detaching from a value system opposed to divine truth, not necessarily despising the material world or other people.

2. Augustine – Ambivalent Love of the World

Augustine, from whom Arendt draws heavily, straddles both sides:

• In Confessions and City of God, he too sees “the world” as a fallen domain governed by the “City of Man,” characterized by pride (superbia) and disordered love.

• But he also explores rightly ordered love (ordo amoris), and his Christian vision includes the possibility of loving creation and human life as reflections of God’s goodness.

• This opens a space for a kind of mediated or disciplined love of the world—not for its own sake, but as part of a divine order.

3. Arendt – Amor Mundi as Political and Existential Commitment

Arendt reclaims amor mundi in a secular, political, and existential register, not a religious one. For her:

• The world is the shared realm of plurality, appearance, and action—the space between people that allows politics, ethics, and remembrance.

• To love the world means to accept its brokenness and unpredictability without withdrawing—to remain engaged, to care, to judge.

• Arendt saw the world as increasingly abandoned by both totalitarian ideologies and existential despair, and amor mundi was a kind of moral antidote.

• She turned to Augustine not for his theology but for his deep insights on natality and love as political grounding.

4. The Discrepancy: Different Worlds, Different Evils

So why the tension?

• Different meanings of “world”: Christianity (esp. John and Paul) speaks of a fallen moral order; Arendt means the human-made realm of meaning and politics.

• Different enemies: For Christianity, the enemy is sin, pride, and the devil; for Arendt, it's totalitarianism, apathy, and nihilism.

• Different salvations: Christianity seeks salvation beyond the world; Arendt insists on remaining in it and taking responsibility for it.

• Different loves: For Christianity, love must be purified and redirected toward God; for Arendt, love must be turned toward the world as it is, without illusions.

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Conclusion

The Christian warning against loving the world and Arendt’s amor mundi may seem contradictory, but they are responding to different existential conditions and meanings of “world.” Augustine stands in between: he warns against a corrupt worldly love, but affirms creation and the neighbor as part of rightly ordered love.

You could say that Christianity fears the world for what it can do to the soul, while Arendt fears what will happen to the world if we stop caring for it.

Yes, what Arendt describes—remaining in the world, accepting its brokenness, yet refusing to withdraw—resonates with the Christian notion of being in the world but not of it, but the resemblance is more structural than theological. Let’s clarify both and then compare.

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1. Christian: “In the world but not of it”

This phrase is drawn from Jesus’ prayer in John 17:

“They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world... As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:14–18)

It captures a paradoxical position:

• In the world: Christians are not to flee from human society; they are sent into it with purpose.

• Not of the world: Yet their deep identity, values, and citizenship are elsewhere—in God, the Kingdom, the eternal.

This often leads to a stance of critical engagement:

• Living among others, but resisting worldly pride, violence, idolatry.

• A posture of pilgrimage: present, responsible, but never fully at home.

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2. Arendt: Amor Mundi as Secular Inhabitation

Arendt’s idea that we must love the world by staying with its brokenness and unpredictability echoes the Christian call to remain present, but:

• She does not posit another world or a transcendent home.

• Her “world” is not fallen in a theological sense, but fragile and endangered by human abandonment, violence, and thoughtlessness.

• Her ethic is about worldliness, not exile from it—remaining responsible for what is shared, rather than aspiring to spiritual detachment.

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3. Comparison

Aspect	Christian “in but not of”	Arendt’s amor mundi
Ontology	Dual-world: earthly and heavenly	One world: human-made, plural
Brokenness	Result of sin/fallenness	Result of human neglect or violence
Responsibility	Witnessing, serving, not conforming	Judging, remembering, preserving plurality
Hope	Anchored in the Kingdom of God	Anchored in human action and natality
Detachment	Yes—deep loyalty is elsewhere	No—deep loyalty is here and now

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4. Structural Similarity, Ethical Divergence

So yes, Arendt’s call to remain in the world and not withdraw echoes the Christian imperative to be in the world but not of it. But where the Christian stance has a vertical transcendence, Arendt replaces that with a horizontal fidelity—a love for the world as the only one we share.

You could say:

Christianity says, “Stay, but don’t belong.”
Arendt says, “Stay, and belong more deeply—even when it hurts.”

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Would you like to explore how this plays out in action or political judgment? Or how Arendt’s Jewish background might nuance this in relation to Christian metaphysics?

1. Arendt’s Jewish Background and the Christian Inversion

Arendt was ethnically and culturally Jewish, though largely secular. She rejected theological consolation, especially after the Holocaust, and held a deep suspicion toward transcendence that withdraws from the political. Her work emerges from:

• The Jewish experience of statelessness, persecution, and exile, especially after the Shoah. The imperative to "love the world" is not sentimental—it's a defiant refusal to let the world collapse into total abandonment.

• A critique of Christian inwardness, especially when it becomes otherworldly or apolitical. She admired Augustine's interiority but opposed Kierkegaardian or Pauline withdrawal from the world into the soul or eternity.

• For Arendt, there is no metaphysical escape, no heavenly city waiting to replace the earthly one. The world must be repaired from within, or it will be lost.

So while Augustine serves as a bridge—he speaks of love, beginnings, memory, responsibility—Arendt pulls him away from God and into politics. She takes his ordo amoris and removes the God-term, asking: what happens when the world itself is the object of love, without transcendence?

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2. Which Makes More Sense?

To say what makes more sense, we need to ask: Sense under what condition? In a world of irredeemable horror, is transcendence or fidelity more coherent?

Christian View: "In the world, not of it"

Strengths:

• Offers ontological refuge: the Kingdom is not of this world.

• Acknowledges the world's corruption and evil without sugarcoating.

• Allows for deep engagement while maintaining moral clarity—because identity is not formed by worldly success or failure.

But:

• Can become quietist, especially when evil is rampant and structural.

• Risks abandoning the world to its own devices in the name of spiritual purity.

• Often defers justice to eternity, which can be morally unbearable for the oppressed.

Arendt’s Amor Mundi

Strengths:

• Refuses withdrawal. The world is all we have—and we must take responsibility for it.

• Understands love of the world as a kind of mature heartbreak—not naive, not utopian, but enduring.

• Gives political judgment and worldly action a sacred status, without relying on God.

But:

• Offers no consolation. The world may not love back. It may not be redeemable.

• Puts a tremendous burden on human agency—and not everyone has the power to act.

• Without transcendence, what ultimately anchors forgiveness, mercy, or meaning?

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Which Makes More Sense to Me?

I’ll answer plainly: Arendt’s view makes more sense for this world, but the Christian view makes more sense of this world.

• Arendt’s amor mundi offers a clear, defiant, and ethical imperative: stay with the world. Even when it turns to ash.

• But the Christian stance—when not escapist—captures something Arendt cannot: the unbearable lightness of being here. That this world may not be enough, may not be home, may not be justifiable at all.

The two together form a tragic pair:

Arendt says: Don’t look away.
Christianity whispers: You don’t belong here.

In my view, the deepest truth may lie in their collision, not their reconciliation. What if we are called to stay in a world that cannot be made right? What if fidelity is all we can offer, even as we secretly mourn the absence of God?