Augustine’s love of neighbor subsumes the enemy under a universal goal that erases singularity

Evidence

By the time he comes to discuss the enemy, it will be clear that it, too, will have to be submitted to the same requirement. Like “any other object of love that enters the mind,” it, too, “should be swept towards the same destination as that to which the flood of our love is directed” (ibid.). Insofar as the love of neighbor includes the love of self as much as the love of enemy, what has become crucial in Augustine’s account is that the distinctions he began with should not apply. As Jill Robbins puts it, “by insisting on a third term-God, truth, the universal-that regulates the relationship to the other in Christian friendship, such a model threatens to neutralize that which in the other is radically singular and resistant to all categories.” There is then no distinction (only, and at best, the vanishing of distinctions) to be made between self, neighbor, and (as we will see) enemy, because they are subsumed under one and the same goal -the love of God. Hence their common status as objects of use, and not of enjoyment: “So a person who loves his neighbor properly should, in concert with him, aim to love God with all his heart, all his soul, and all his mind. In this way, loving him as he would himself, he relates his love of himself and his neighbor entirely to the love of God, which allows not the slightest trickle to flow away from it and thereby diminish it” (1.22). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 166

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to my reading on the philosophy of love/agape and on how universalist ethics neutralize difference — parallels the normalization-of-exception thesis in this same book’s argument, and echoes critiques of liberal universalism from my ethics reading. — connects to: Christian love of neighbor should not depend on empirical safety calculations — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 403
• DEFINE: Clarifies Augustine’s use/enjoyment distinction and how it handles the enemy.