Use and Enjoyment

One of Gregory’s contributions is to show the central relevance of Augustine’s distinction of use and enjoyment to political thought. He notes early on that “Arendt recognizes that Augustine’s greatest question may not be that he became a question to himself. Rather, the ‘magna quaestio’ he asks is ‘whether humans should enjoy one another or use one another, or both’ – or put differently, ‘whether one person should be loved by another on his own account or for some other reason.’”