#20 / Beloved World

United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has written a personal biography, which she has entitled, Beloved World. Here is a link to an article about the book, and another link to a review. 

I want to comment on the title. That title is not so different, it seems to me, from the title of Alice Munro's most recent book of stories, Dear Life. The title story in Munro's book is one of four stories that are "autobiographical in feeling, though not, sometimes, entirely so in fact." In a little explantation called "Finale," Munro says that the final four stories in Dear Life, including the title story, which is the last story in the book, are the "first and last - and the closest - things I have to say about my own life." 

The Sotomayor title also resonates with the title of a biography of my favorite political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, For The Love of the World. 

It is, in the end, our love of this world that mobilizes the action that allows us to create the world itself - that "human world" that we most immediately inhabit. This human world, our "political" world, is the "beloved world" that blesses us, and that is our blessing to our children, and their children, who come after us, and who then must mobilize such love again.

Image Credit:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324595704578239760608699742.html?mod=googlenews_wsj