Augustine distinguished between love as desire and love as fact， defining the latter as a core component of his concept of inner life. In Book XI of

The City of God

， he advanced the proposition of “I love” as a determinate claim， thereby proposing a conception of emotional certainty. Love as fact， as a complement to love as desire， enriched the classical understanding of love， enabling it to preserve the richness and complexity of human life and to maintain a transcend

ent attitude toward emotions. The modern world， beginning with Descartes， replaced classical love with intellectual love， subsuming the certainty of “I love” into the certainty of “I think”. Whether primacy belongs to “I love” （amor） over “I think” （cogito）， and to the practical life over the theoretical life — this very question has come to constitute the fundamental criterion by which Augustine’s philosophical project is to be situated either within the classical worldview or within the emerging horizon of modernity.