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Massimo Cacciari is one of the sharpest theorists of that cultural crisis from which Postmodernism is originated. Throughout the various forms that the twentieth-century thought has taken he recognises the fundamental idea that reality is composed by antinomies. No dialectical "synthesis" can overcome them. From a moral and political point of view, this means that different subjects can live together only if they maintain their difference and their opposition. Harmony with the others cannot be imposed from above. Harmony lies in the opposition itself and therefore needs difference. Cacciari is certainly right in claiming the value of difference, although this should not imply the reality of contradiction, which is impossible both from a logical and from an ontological point of view.

The paper compares chapter 6 of H. Arendt's The Life of the Mind with H. Jonas's first book, concerning Augustine and the Pauline Problem of Freedom. Arendt follows Jonas's interpretation of st Paul's Epistle to the Romans, ch. 7, but her judgment on st Augustine's relationship with Paul is quite different. According to Jonas, during the Pelagian controversy Augustine lost the Pauline concept of the antinomical nature of the will; in Arendt's opinion, on the contrary, Augustine was the first one who stated Paul's "discovery" of the will in philosophical terms, and in the City of God he realized the principle of "natality", which is the real solution to the problem of freedom both in anthropology and politics.