Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism has said that those who have lost their place in a community - politically or legally - can only articulate themselves in the private sphere and are at the mercy of friendship, sympathy and the "great and incalculable grace of love" which says "I want you to be". When I feel at a loss I to turn to my friends and those friends, who are sometimes also my enemies, are my books. Yet strangely, rather than encouraging me to withdraw further into myself - with the attendant danger of becoming Hegel's 'beautiful soul' - who is not beautiful at all - I find myself again.
TBC
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