Teaching as Amor Mundi
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088220969713 |
| Author | Natasha Saunders |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Roundtable on Patrick Hayden |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220969713
Journal of International Political Theory
2021, Vol. 17(1) 7 –8
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088220969713
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Teaching as Amor Mundi
Natasha Saunders
University of St Andrews, UK
“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume
responsibility for it. . .” (Arendt, 1961: 196).
I often find myself thinking about the quote above from ‘The Crisis in Education’. To
love the world, Hannah Arendt said, is a difficult task. To love the world is to try to
understand it, to reconcile ourselves to it (neither of which should be mistaken for resig-
nation), and to care for it – to care for its future and the possibilities that it opens for us.
While the latter will often involve acting with others in pursuit of common goals and
animated by principle, understanding and reconciliation are just as important if the world
is to remain a home fit for the lives of human beings in our plurality. But in order for us
to engage in understanding and reconciliation, we must slow down, find some critical
distance from what is happening around us, and ‘think what we are doing’ (Arendt, 1998:
5). This isn’t about figuring out, or being taught, what to think, but about how to engage
in thinking – it is about cultivating ourselves, and others, as thinking, engaged citizens,
without requiring that those others think and engage in the same way that we might
ourselves.
I knew Patrick, first, as a teacher. I took an undergraduate class with him in 2007 on
Human Rights in Theory and Practice, and it was during a week on refugees and state-
lessness that I first came across the work of Hannah Arendt. Her thought would go on to
play a central role in my doctoral research, which Patrick supervised. I couldn’t help
feeling that there was, therefore, something poetic about sharing the seminar room with
him again, in his final semester before retirement, exploring the work of Hannah Arendt.
This time, however, 13 years since we met, we were in the room as co-teachers, as col-
leagues and as friends.
Patrick not only guided me through the doctoral process with care, attention and
patience – to my project and to me – but he has also taught me how to be a teacher. This
isn’t teaching grounded in knowledge of theories of learning, guided by a curriculum, or
bearing any professional accreditation – as with many aspects of contemporary academe,
Corresponding author:
Natasha Saunders, University of St Andrews, Arts Faculty Building, The Scores, St Andrews, KY16 9AX,
UK.
Email: negs@st-andrews.ac.uk
969713IPT0010.1177/1755088220969713Journal of International Political TheorySaunders
review-article2021
Roundtable on Patrick Hayden
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