It´s not a secret that the holocaust consisted of horrible actions. One fascinating thing is how two female writers, Etty Hillesums and Simone Weil, was able to express something very different in the face of this terrible time. That’s why this essay provides some answers to the question, what understandings of love are expressed in letters from Hillesums An Interupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941 – 1943 and Simone Weils Waiting for God? Both authors wrote their letters with an emphasis on God and that God is necessary for love. They also quite agreed that within every human being there is a core. The core for both Hillesum and Weil is either love or needs love and giving attention to or taking care of your own or others core is an act of love. At last, both describes without doubt love as something relational that always needs more than one part. Despite the similarities in the understandings of love expressed in the letters they have several interesting differences. This essay focuses on the relational perspective of love together with three Greek terms; agape, eros and philia and relates them to the understandings that appear in the letters. Sometimes these understandings of love are very much alike and other times not. The main question and its answers challenge us to ask another question to get a holistic understanding of the expression of love found in the letters. How can these understandings of love be understood in relation to overarching themes such as the conception of God and the essence of human beings? By reading and reflecting on these issues based on the letters, it becomes clear that Hillesum and Weil gets to write their own stories and tell something about mankind, God and love in a context marked by unimaginable evil.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-446372 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Nilsson, Simon |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Systematisk teologi med livsåskådningsforskning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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