Asking for freedom
The impasse of the will in The life of the mind
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47456/sofia.v14i2.49842Keywords:
will, freedom, metaphysical fallacies, moral issue, traditionAbstract
We propose to explore Hannah Arendt's concept of will and its relationship to freedom. We return to Tassin's distinction between the ‘philosophical genealogy’ and the ‘political genealogy’ of the concept of freedom, in order to reflect on Arendt's critique of the philosophical tradition. We argue that Arendt does not preserve one and reject the other. This involves detecting the ‘metaphysical fallacies’ of tradition and analyzing the experiences they conceal, without attempting to refute them as mere logical or scientific errors. We recover the theoretical productivity of the concept of will in Arendt's analysis of Augustine. We discuss the redemption of the will through love of the world. We conclude that the concept of will indicates that, thanks to the tensions it engenders, we can ‘not-will’; non-will indicates the possibility of resisting a given order and things and disposes us to change; the redemption of the will through love, as proposed by Augustine, can be understood, in a reinterpretation by Arendt, as redemption through love of the world. This is possible if we understand the articulation between the concept of initium and principium and the concept of the world understood as the lovers of the world who co-constitute it.
References
DE HIPONA, Agustín. “Del Espíritu y de la Letra”. En Obras de San Agustín. Tomo VI: Tratados sobre la gracia. Madrid: Biblioteca de autores cristianos. 1956. p. 675 a 815.
ARENDT, Hannah. La vida del espíritu (Trad. F. Birulés y C. Corral). Barcelona: Paidós. 2018.
ARENDT, Hannah. “¿Qué es la libertad?”. En: Entre el pasado y el futuro (Trad. A. Poljak). Buenos Aires: Ariel. 2016. p. 227 a 268.
ARENDT, Hannah. Sobre la revolución (Trad. Pedro Bravo). Buenos Aires: Paidós. 2014.
ARENDT, Hannah. “Sócrates”. En: La promesa de la política. Barcelona: Paidós. 2005. p. 43 a 75.
ARENDT, Hannah. El concepto de amor en San Agustín. Barcelona: Ediciones encuentro. 2001.
ARENDT, Hannah. From Machiavelli to Marx (Subject File, 1949-1975). Curso dictado en Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1965. The Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress, nº 023453. Disponible en: https://www.loc.gov/item/mss1105600965 Acceso: 17/07/2025.
BEINER, Richard. “Ensayo interpretativo”. En: Arendt, Hannah, Conferencias sobre la filosofía política de Kant (Trad. Carmen Corral). Argentina: Paidós. 2003. p. 157 a 270.
COSTAMAGNA, Ari. “Initium y principium: resonancias del Concepto de amor en San Agustín en La vida del espíritu”. En: MILOTICH, Alejandro y CHIRINO, Maximiliano, En la lengua materna. Ensayos sobre la vida del espíritu de Hannah Arendt. Córdoba: Colecciones del CIFFYH. 2023. p. 107 a 126.
GRAY, J. Glenn. “The abyss of freedom–and Hannah Arendt”. En: HILL, Melvyn (Ed.), Hannah Arendt: The recovery of the public world. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1979. p. 225 a 244.
JACOBITTI, Susane. “Arendt and the will”. Political Theory, 16(1), 53-76. 1988.
LAFER, Celso. “Hannah Arendt y la afirmación de la libertad humana: el pensar, el querer y el juzgar en el pluralismo del ‘cogito’ arendtiano”. En: La reconstrucción de los derechos humanos. Un diálogo con el pensamiento de Hannah Arendt. Buenos Aires: FCE. 1991. p. 323 a 335.
MULLER, Maria Cristina. “Hannah Arendt, Leitora De Agostinho de Hipona”. Em: André Luiz Borges da Silva e Josi Joaquim Pereira Melo (Organizadores), Agostinho em Diálogo: Filosofia, Teologia, História e Educação. São Paulo: Fonte Editorial. 2019. p. 63 a 94.
TAMINIAUX, Jacques. “The Kehre and the Conflict between Thinking and Willing”. In: The Thracian maid and the professional thinker: Arendt and Heidegger. United States of America: Suny Press. 1997. p. 140 a 167.
TASSIN, Étienne. “El pueblo no quiere”. Al Margen. nº 21-22. p. 106- 119. 2007.
VECCHIARELLI SCOTT, Joanna & CHELIUS STARK, Judith. “Preface: Rediscovering Love and Saint Augustine”. En H. Arendt, Love and St. Augustine. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1994. p. 7 a 20.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Ari Angelina Costamagna Fernández, Maria Cristina Müller
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Given the journal's open access policy, the use of published texts is free of charge, with the obligation to acknowledge the original authorship and first publication in this journal. The authors of the published contributions are entirely and exclusively responsible for their content.
I. The authors authorize the publication of the article in this journal.
II. The authors guarantee that the contribution is original and assume full responsibility for its content in the event of third-party claims.
III. The authors guarantee that the contribution is not under evaluation by another journal.
IV. The authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
V. The authors are authorized and encouraged to disseminate and distribute their work online after publication in the journal.
VI. The authors of approved works authorize the journal to distribute their content, after publication, for reproduction in content indexes, virtual libraries, and similar platforms.
VII. The editors reserve the right to make adjustments to the text and adapt the article to the journal's editorial standards.
