Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss

“Fearlessness is what love seeks,” Hannah Arendt wrote in her superb early work on love and loss. “Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected of the future… Hence the only valid tense is the present, the Now.”

Well now really when we go back into falling in love. And say, it’s crazy. Falling. You see? We don’t say “rising into love”. There is in it, the idea of the fall.

And it goes back, as a matter of fact, to extremely fundamental things. That there is always a curious tie at some point between the fall and the creation. Taking this ghastly risk is the... See more