Love as a Political Concept: Hannah Arendt, Martha Nussbaum and Hegel's Affective Recognition

Recent developments within political thought have sought to examine the role of emotions in politics. Part of these endeavours has focused on love. This thesis is situated within such attempts which have tried to uncover love’s politicality and more specifically it examines love as a political concept in the works of Hannah Arendt, Martha Nussbaum, and G. W. F. Hegel. It is argued here that in Arendt and Nussbaum we find political notions of love that either exclude or undermine love as an intersubjective quality in politics. These take the form of love of the world or amor mundi in Arendt and patriotic love in Nussbaum. The thesis argues that this ‘repressed intersubjectivity’ of love creates problems for both Arendt and Nussbaum and at the same time deprives political thought of valuable resources in thinking about politics. In turning to Hegel, the thesis discovers a political conception of love that is grounded within thick-affective practices of recognition where love involves a response of affective solidarity toward the other. The thesis contends that in Hegel we find a radical political concept of love for a re-humanising politics. At the same time, love, as the ‘neglected corner’ of Hegelian philosophy, brings about a plastic metamorphosis from within Hegel and opens his philosophy to the future.