TITLE:
From Fiction to Life: An Analysis of Moments of Justice through Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Love in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves
AUTHORS:
Yi Wang (Catherine)
KEYWORDS:
Craving, Faith, Hannah Arendt, Human Development, Justice, Love, Virginia Woolf
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.13 No.11,
November
26,
2025
ABSTRACT: This paper advances the thesis that to love rightly entails a commitment to fostering a just world while renouncing evil. It elucidates this claim through an analysis of Virginia Woolf’s concept of human development, examining four distinct moments of justice in The Waves and engaging with Hannah Arendt’s political-philosophical framework of love. The argument culminates in the contention that Woolf’s concept of human development—rooted in the intersection of self and world—empowered her as a woman writer to embody a form of love that fully encompassed herself and the world. This concept of human development unfolds across four stages—childhood, youth, middle age, and later years—each endowed with a unique conception of justice and that of love. When love during childhood has to be about craving for the everlasting by forgetting the idea of the living self, childhood is about being immersed in moments of flow through one’s talent; guided by known happiness toward the discovery of new joys, one does justice to childhood when one recognizes that children should learn through playful engagement with their natural abilities, rather than through formal lessons alone. When love during youth means craving for the inner God who helps one understand oneself, one does justice to youth by incorporating Percival, the inner God that represents diversity, into one’s own essence for understanding and enjoying oneself. When love during middle age means referring back to one’s own absolute past’s memories of happiness for one’s pursuit of new happiness, one does justice to middle age—a time of encountering loss—by reconstructing the origin of love—or of human eternal existence—through recollection of Percival, the inner God, dreaming of Percival, yearning for him, and engaging in magical thoughts about him after his physical death. When love during the later years means faith, one does justice to later years by maintaining the courage to save others from their sins through believing that God is in others, just as God is in oneself.