Strategien des Begehrens

Liebe und Konflikt bei Augustinus

Remo Bodei

pp. 67-78

in: Paul Sars, Chris Bremmers, Koen Boey (eds), Eros and Eris, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

Starting from Augustine, the author outlines a particular aspect of a possible logic of desires i.e., passionate desires for happiness, oriented towards the future. Since passions are seen simply as entailing temporary madness, loss of liberty and self-control, from Plato onward, an insuperable enmity between passions and reasons has been declared. Only Augustine, like Spinoza and unlike the Stoics, did not attack frontally passions, but tried rather to change their direction, and aimed — through love and memory — at the very end of conflicts and entanglements of will and at that kind of happiness which only eternal life in paradise can offer to men.

Cited authors

Plato

Augustinus Aurelius