I came across this term in ‘Turning the tide’, a 2019 book by writer and philosopher Joke J. Hermsen about the inspiring political and economic thinkers Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt. Two women who were already writing analyses on the excesses of capitalism and individualism at the beginning of the 20th century that are spot on. They could have been written today.
‘I feel at home everywhere in the world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears,’ Rosa Luxemburg wrote from prison in 1916 She had been locked up for her call for resistance to the impending war. She sees this ‘amor mundi’ as a remedy against what she calls impending ‘worldlessness’ (when fewer and fewer people care about society) – and the violence that ensues.
Joke J. Hermsen describes Luxemburg’s and Hannah Arendt’s vision as follows: ‘Without love and shared responsibility for the world, there cannot be sufficient counterbalance to AMOR SUI, selfishness, which counts as the primacy of capitalism. We become free only when we dare to set aside our private interests and turn towards the politico-cultural world that brings us together. We must learn to ask not only the question ‘what is good for me?’ , but also the question ‘what is good for the world?’