Augustine universalized love of enemy while Aquinas made it abstractly impossible

Evidence

Schematizing the changes to which we have been trying to attend, one could say that whereas Augustine abolished the differences between God, neighbor, and enemy from the perspective of love (thereby generalizing love-as love of God-to include all spheres oflife, whether hostile or not, and thus dispensing with the need to discuss the enemy and the love of the enemy as a concrete or particular issue), Aquinas divorced love, that is to say, perfect love, from the realm of concrete possibility. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 191

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Maps the Augustinian vs. Thomistic split: Augustine erases enemy/neighbor distinctions, Aquinas removes perfect love from concrete reach.

Related

• Augustine generalized love across spheres while Aquinas exiled perfect love from concrete possibility. (similarity 0.96)
• Aquinas reversed Augustine’s dismissal of enemy-neighbor distinctions. (similarity 0.83)
• Augustine’s love of neighbor subsumes the enemy under a universal goal that erases singularity (similarity 0.81)
• Augustine’s just war theory works because love erases the self-neighbor-enemy distinction (similarity 0.80)
• Love of enemies is oddly absent from Augustine’s treatment of war (similarity 0.80)
• For Augustine the enemy must be loved and used no differently from anyone else (similarity 0.79)
• Theological reflection defines the enemy through the lover, not the enemy himself (similarity 0.79)
• Loving the enemy becomes impossible when that enemy is God’s enemy (similarity 0.79)
• For Augustine the enemy, like the self, is only a means toward loving God (similarity 0.78)