Will and Passion

Hannah Arendt’s lifelong, heartfelt quarrel with Martin Heidegger begins with an argument about love. But philosophical works can sometimes have difficulty standing up to the weight of life. How else to account for the fact that everyone talks about the love affair between these two thinkers, whereas their philosophical reflections on the concept of love remain all but unknown? Are they even of any significance?

In this lucid study, Tatjana Noemi Tömmel explores this terra incognita. From a multitude of fragments she reconstructs the systematic function of the concept of love in both authors’ works and traces the silent dialogue Arendt carried on with Heidegger about love.

»Tatjana Noemi Tömmel reconstructs the concept of love in the works of Arendt and Heidegger via a series of chronological stages until she arrives at a point where it becomes possible to draw conclusions regarding its importance for both philosophers’ theories. Thus she is able with astonishing success to place what seems a rather peripheral question at the centre of both authors’ work, so that one asks oneself with some irritation how it is possible that the paradigmatic significance of love has so far gone unnoticed in accounts of their influence and thought.« (Axel Honneth)