This paper considers how both Levinas and Løgstrup seek to explain how love of the neighbour is possible. It focuses on a criticism of Levinas made by Merold Westphal, which follows Kierkegaard in arguing on Lutheran grounds that such love first requires a relation to God as a “middle term,” but that Levinas cannot appeal to this relation to account for neighbour love, as for him the God relation itself arises through love of the neighbour. In response, the paper explores (...) how Løgstrup, while working in a Lutheran tradition, like Levinas also sees neighbour love as arising without any prior God relation, showing how the accounts that each offer of how this is possible serve to complement each other. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that there is a connection between love and death. But what can be said philosophically about the nature of that connection (if indeed it exists)? Plato's Symposium suggests at least three possible ways in which love and death might be connected: first, that love entails (or ought to entail) a willingness to die for one’s beloved; second, that love is a desire for (or perhaps itself is) a kind of death; and third, that love is linked (...) to human mortality and the desire for immortality. I argue that each of these three suggestions is problematic, and should not be accepted at face value. I am ultimately skeptical as to whether any one, overriding connection—be it moral or causal or metaphysical—between love and death exists. At the very least, the matter deserves more nuanced and multi-faceted reflection than what we find in the Symposium. (shrink)

Although recent scholarship in diverse professional areas shows an ongoing interest in the application of agape - the New Testament's term for the highest order of self-giving love - no published work has made an in-depth exploration of agape in relation to journalism. This article explores what agape can contribute to media theory and practice. After explaining what distinguishes agape from other concepts of altruism and how agape can complement other approaches to compassion or minimizing harm, the analysis turns to (...) three questions raised by applying agape to mainstream journalism: (a) Does agape have a place for self-interest? (b) What does agape imply for notions of journalistic neutrality? (c) Can agape speak to journalists who don't accept its religious roots? Agape provides a test case for the application of religiously based ethical perspectives to journalism. (shrink)

Abstract Scholarship on the Symposium is dominated by a debate on interpersonal love started by Gregory Vlastos in his article, `The Individual as an Object of Love in Plato.' This paper argues that this debate is a misguided one, because it is not reflective of the central concerns of this text. Attention needs to be turned to the broader ethical questions posed about the ends of life, the nature of human happiness, and contemplation. Failure to do so will mean that (...) the Symposium continues to be eclipsed as a key resource in central debates in Platonic ethics. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show that Bernard Mandeville's primary purpose in The Fable of the Bees was to historicize the concept of self?love (amour?propre) articulated by seventeenth?century French Jansenists and moralistes; that in doing so Mandeville constructed a theory designed to explain the inter?subjective constraints and forces of social discipline which characterize commercial societies; and that a full understanding of Mandeville's achievement depends upon an appreciation of the way in which pride in his theory becomes socialized into hypocrisy at a (...) decisive moment in the civilizing process, a moment after which, Mandeville argues, cultural institutions themselves can contain that unfettered self?interest which his contemporaries fearfully associated with the triumph of commerce. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper identifies two central paradoxes threatening the notion of amor fati [love of fate]: it requires us to love a potentially repellent object (as fate entails significant negativity for us) and this, in the knowledge that our love will not modify our fate. Thus such love may seem impossible or pointless. I analyse the distinction between two different sorts of love (eros and agape) and the type of valuation they involve (in the first case, the object is loved (...) because we value it; in the second, we value the object because we love it). I use this as a lens to interpret Nietzsche's cryptic pronouncements on amor fati and show that while an erotic reading is, up to a point, plausible, an agapic interpretation is preferable both for its own sake and because it allows for a resolution of the paradoxes initially identified. In doing so, I clarify the relation of amor fati to the eternal return on the one hand, and to Nietzsche's autobiographical remarks about suffering on the other. Finally, I examine a set of objections pertaining both to the sustainability and limits of amor fati, and to its status as an ideal. (shrink)

This essay focuses on personal love, or the love of particular persons as such. Part of the philosophical task in understanding personal love is to distinguish the various kinds of personal love. For example, the way in which I love my wife is seemingly very different from the way I love my mother, my child, and my friend. This task has typically proceeded hand-in-hand with philosophical analyses of these kinds of personal love, analyses that in part respond to various puzzles (...) about love. Can love be justified? If so, how? What is the value of personal love? What impact does love have on the autonomy of both the lover and the beloved? (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers often construe mercy as a supererogatory notion or a matter of punitive leniency. Yet it is false that no merciful actions are obligatory. Further, it is questionable whether mercy is really about punitive leniency, either exclusively or primarily. As an alternative to these accounts, I consider the view offered by St. Thomas Aquinas. He rejects the claim that we are never obligated to be merciful. Also, his view of mercy is not restricted to legal contexts. For him, mercy's (...) scope is considerably broader, as it concerns a wide range of needs and hardships to which human beings are vulnerable. Such a view, I submit, affords a kind of normative depth lacking in many contemporary accounts. Unlike those views that construe mercy as either a supererogatory or legal concept, Aquinas's account illuminates mercy's obligatory nature and encourages us to make mercy a more salient fixture of our moral lives. (shrink)

Alain Badiou in his philosophy on ethics underscores four fields of truth procedures—love, politics, art, and science—that seek to break with the existing order or conventional flow of things. These four fields indicate both collective (politics, art, and science) as well as individual (love) instances of the subject’s relationships and actions. The individual realm of ‘love’, which is the central focus of this study, however, as a generic, complex category does not clearly explicate the significance of the associated concept, friendship. (...) Akira Kurosawa’s filmography is illustrative as it opens up a possibility for disentangling the concept of friendship from love along with making significant contributions to the ethics of truth, particularly with respect to the “friendship event”. His films vividly capture some of the essential themes of Badiou’s philosophy of truth ethics, including “break”/“encounter”, referred to as ‘event’, “keep going”/“perseverance”, and “fidelity”. Even if the philosophers Badiou and Kurosawa do not make direct references to each other’s works, this research reveals significant parallels between cinephilosophy created through “cine-images” and the written philosophy. By analyzing Kurosawa’s films in the light of Badiou’s philosophy of truth ethics, and vice versa, this study embarks on exploring the complementarities between the works of the two. The study showcases how love and friendship as truth procedures are formed in particular contexts in Kurosawa’s filmography, and how they intersect with other truth events, particularly politics. Most importantly, this study does not view Badiou’s “truth events” such as love, friendship, and politics as mutually exclusive categories; rather, they are seen as complementary in practice. (shrink)

The intersection between virtue and care ethics is underexplored in contemporary moral philosophy. This thesis approaches care ethics from a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethical perspective, comparing the two frameworks and drawing on recent work on care to develop a theory thereof. It is split into seven substantive chapters serving three major argumentative purposes, namely the establishment of significant intertheoretical agreement, the compilation and analysis of extant and new distinctions between the two theories, and the synthesis of care ethical insights with neo-Aristotelianism (...) to generate a virtue ethical theory of care. In the first two chapters, I outline virtue ethics and care ethics, and argue for considerable agreement over central premises. Chapter 2 summarises the foundational commitments of care ethics, focusing particularly on their relational ontology and its links to the other ethical claims care ethicists universally ascribe to, namely particularism, partialism, the moral salience of emotions, and the rejection of hard public/private distinctions. Chapter 3 lays out the central concepts in neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, including eudaimonism, virtue, and character traits, and drawing a number of comparisons between virtue and care ethics specifically with regard to relational ontology and the meta-ethical commitments it underpins. In addition to doing the necessary expository work for the remainder of the thesis, Chapters 2 and 3 also argue that care ethics and virtue ethics have much more in common than is typically acknowledged – the first major contribution of this thesis to the literature. Chapters 2 and 3 to provide at least a prima facie justification for pursuit of the questions I confront in the remainder of the thesis. In Chapter 4, I ask what differentiates these two ethical theories. I survey some of the differences which philosophers in either camp have identified and offer some of my own. I suggest that several of those differences either rest on misunderstandings of one ethic or the other, or that in erecting a divide between virtue and care ethics they also disunify ethics of care. I do, however, identify two differences which seem defensible. Specifically, they are that virtue ethics seems to lack an account of care, which I define minimally as a response or responsiveness to need, and that virtue and care ethics organise their meta-ethical and normative concepts differently. This chapter thus presents a second contribution to the literature: a study of the differences between virtue ethics and care ethics. It also serves to set the trajectory for the remaining chapters, where I respond to the claim that virtue ethics lack an account of care. I spend the remainder of the thesis constructing what I take to be a satisfying foundation for a virtue ethical theory of care. In Chapter 5, I offer three initially viable means of incorporating care into virtue ethics, all of which treat care as a virtue. These are the analogical approach, according to which care is analogous to an existing virtue; the additive approach, according to which care is a novel virtue; and the bundling approach, according to which care is a bundle of virtues. I also offer and evaluate reasons to reject the claim that care is a virtue, concluding that the claim is indeed a viable one so long as the concept of care is sufficiently thick, and I contend that analogical approaches, and particularly analogies with charity, outperform the others. Chapter 5 therefore serves two ends. First, it proffers a novel meta-analysis of concepts of care as a virtue, and thus makes a third contribution to the literature. In doing so, it makes an inroad into the second: the development of a neo-Aristotelian theory of care. Chapter 6 continues this project. I attempt to show how care can be construed as an act-type and a practice. I argue in this chapter that practices are a subcategory of actions, and that care qualifies as an Anscombean act-type which aims at the meeting of needs relating to the care-recipient’s flourishing. I go on to consider the implications of this account for ethics which deploy care as a moral concept, maintaining that it not only offers a better account of consequences than theories of care which include success criteria, but also that it affords us interesting insights into the distinction between ‘caring about’ and ‘caring for’ which allow us to make sense of certain tenets of neo-Aristotelianism. This represents a contribution to both discourses, since neither care nor virtue ethicists working at the intersection of their respective normative theories have delved very deeply into the philosophy of action. Chapter 7 discusses caring relations, suggesting that a virtue ethical theory of caring relations can lean on the work care ethicists have done, and adding some necessary refinements, such as a distinction between ideal and non-ideal caring relations, and a theory of caring relations as reasons for action. This final chapter also draws these three concepts of care together by arguing that virtuous caregivers who are invested in the flourishing of those for whom they care are also sensitive to the relations those care-recipients bear to their institutional environment. I argue that because they are caring participants in caring relations, virtuous agents are characteristically motivated by states of need and dependency to engage in certain sorts of conventionally political practices. In other words, the virtue or virtues of caring characteristically manifest in certain sorts of political or social practices, relating specifically to those areas of moral life. This allows us to build upon recent work in feminist virtue ethics of the sort offered by Tessman and Friedman. I also offer a novel analysis of migration, suggesting that the account of care presenting here is analytically useful both when it comes to historical cases of migration such as the underground railroads and escapes from Nazi-occupied Europe, but also for contemporary issues such as the migrations occurring in the Southern United States and in much of Europe. I thus conclude not only that virtue ethicists ought to incorporate care into their normative framework, and that the theory of care presented here is a coherent one, but that this leads us naturally into applied topics such as virtue politics. I conclude the thesis by considering some its implications and by identifying some further avenues for research. (shrink)

Second/foreign language teaching has been found as one of the most emotional professions worldwide. To generate optimal academic outcomes and run an effective education, teachers and students’ emotions and feelings must be positively cared for. Given the significance of emotions in L2 education, many studies have followed positive psychology and examined various positive constructs. Nevertheless, love, as a PP variable, has been ignored in education due to its cultural/religious sensitivities. Trying to dispel the myths, recently, a new trend called a (...) “loving pedagogy” has started to find itself a place in second language acquisition research and practice. Yet, proposing a model of its application and an agenda for its research has been overlooked by scholars in this domain. Motivated by this lacuna, this research article provided the conceptualization, definitions, research bases, practical models, and implications of a loving pedagogy for SLA practitioners and future researchers. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of sovereign agency in Nygren’s agapic theology. I argue that Nygren’s theology is structured by a voluntarist-inspired idealization of sovereignty that in effect precludes a viable agapic theory of alterity. ‘Otherness’ plays no essential role in Nygren’s subject-centred ethic. George Grant’s profound meditations on ‘otherness’ in Technology and Justice and other late works will provide the critical perspective for my reading of Nygren and agapist theology in general.

Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 49, Issue 4, Page 715-738, December 2021.

Dieses Heft beinhaltet philosophische Perspektiven der Debatten der personalen Identität und der Liebe. Neben der Darstellung der Kerninhalte der beiden Debatten wird die Frage „Wen liebe ich?“ philosophisch problematisiert. Dabei soll aufgezeigt werden, was unter einer philosophischen Herangehensweise zu verstehen ist und wie sich dies konkret im Fall der angeführten Frage niederschlägt.

A comprehensive examination of Kristeva's work from the seventies to the nineties.

Recent readings of Kierkegaard's Works of Love have admirably shown how his apparent reservations about romantic love can be deflected on his own terms by imbuing them with some of the moral rigor of neighbor‐love. This paper argues however that these readings must be complemented by the reverse argument, which would show how some of the qualities of romantic loves are in fact preserved in neighbor‐love. By drawing on his dialectics of sensate love, psychical love, spiritual love, and self‐love, I (...) show how Kierkegaard believes neighbor‐love should be impartial and yet exhibit some of the character of preferential romantic loves. (shrink)

In the last part of Ethics Spinoza introduces the doctrine of the intellectual love of God: God loves himself with an infinite intellectual love. This doctrine has raised one of the most discussed puzzles in Spinoza scholarship: How can God have intellectual love if, as Spinoza says, God is Nature itself? After examining existing.approaches to the puzzle and revealing their failures, I will propose a Neo- Confucian approach to the puzzle. I will compare Spinoza's philosophy with Neo-Confucian philosophy and argue (...) that we can develop a new approach to the puzzle by appealing to the comparison. I conclude that the intellectual love of God can be properly understood from different perspectives. From God's perspective it is understood as the creative power of God. From an individual's perspective it is understood as the essence of this very individual. Moreover, once we combine these two perspectives we can reach what I consider to be the correct interpretation of Spinoza' s view: Given that intuitive knowledge and action are one and the same the intellectual love of God should be comprehended not only as man's final fulfillment of freedom through intuitive knowledge, but also as man's self-cultivation in practice. I maintain that a free man, as Spinoza endeavors to become, is equivalent to a Neo-Confucian sage. (shrink)

Love, Friendship, and the Self presents a reexamination of our common understanding of ourselves as persons in light of the phenomena of love and friendship. It argues that the individualism that is implicit in that understanding cannot be sustained if we are to understand the kind of distinctively personal intimacy that love and friendship essentially involve. For love is a matter of identifying with someone: sharing for his sake the concerns and values that make up his identity as the person (...) he is. Moreover, in friendship the friends share not only a concern for each other but also their activity, their lives, and even potentially their selves. By providing a detailed analysis of these notions, Bennett Helm argues for an understanding of persons as essentially social. (shrink)

In Justice in Love, Nicholas Wolterstorff argues for a unique ethical orientation called “care-agapism.” He offers it as an alternative to theories of benevolence-agapism found in Christian ethics on the one hand and to the philosophical orientations of egoism, utilitarianism, and eudaimonism on the other. The purported uniqueness and superiority of his theory lies in its ability to account for the conceptual compatibility of love and justice while also positively incorporating self-love. Yet in attempting to articulate a “bestowed worth” account (...) of human dignity—in which dignity is given by divine love and respected in acts of justice—Wolterstorff leans on an unstable characterization of how love and the good are conceptually interwoven. As a result, his reader cannot be sure about the theoretical superiority of care-agapism. Moreover, Wolterstorff's attempt to value self-love and at the same time reject eudaimonism depends on a dubious interpretation of Augustine carried over from Justice: Rights and Wrongs, which itself further depends on a mischaracterization of the possible varieties of eudaimonism. This mistake is unfortunate because, on a closer reading of Augustine, one finds an agapistic account of eudaimonism that could have significantly helped Wolterstorff's overall account of the complementary relation of love and justice. (shrink)

The Quietist affair at the end of the seventeenth century has much to teach us about theories of the will in the period. Although Bossuet and Fénelon are the names most famously associated with the debate over the Quietist conception of pure love, Malebranche and his erstwhile disciple Lamy were the ones who debated the deep philosophical issues involved. This paper sets the historical context of the debate, discusses the positions as well as the arguments for and against them, and (...) opens up investigation of important material that is all but ignored in the English literature and only incompletely addressed in the French. (shrink)

On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I (...) suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

Jeffrey Tillman is perceptive in noticing that certain Protestant theologians have used evolutionary theory to become more sympathetic to Roman Catholic views of Christian love. But he is incorrect in saying that these formulations deemphasize a place for self-sacrifice in Christian love. Christian love defined as a strenuous equal-regard for both other and self also requires sacrificial efforts to restore love as equal-regard when finitude and sin undermine genuine mutuality and community.

The paper offers a critical perspective on some modern studies of Plotinus’ doctrine of Love, which interpret his Eros as more than a guide, leading the soul to the intelligible world and above, to the first Principle, or directing its gaze to the sensible world. They consider Love to be the driving force behind generation from the One and even identify it with the One itself, basing most of their arguments on rare instances of Eros’ appearance at levels above the (...) soul and using an emphatically erotic terminology that is alien to Plotinus. (shrink)

Origen of Alexandria uses the language of ἔρως to explain God’s desire to be with humanity. However, Plato’s classic definition of ἔρως as a mix of poverty and plenty seems to be at odds with Origen’s commitment to classical theism. This article explains why Origen does not consider this attribution to contradict his theological commitments. It starts with a discussion of Origen’s theory of divine attributes, the ἐπίνοιαι Χριστοῦ. Next, Origen’s doctrine of passio caritatis, which states that God can actively (...) will to be passive, is explained. Then, Origen’s familiarity with Plato’s Symposium is demonstrated. The article then considers Origen’s attribution of ἔρως to God, and its context, in the Commentarium in Canticum Canticorum; it emerges that the Incarnation is, for Origen, God’s most erotic act. The final section shows that Origen maintains his understanding of God’s erotic, incarnational movement towards fallen humanity in works other than the Commentarium in Canticum Canticorum. (shrink)

Much has been written about the general moral duty to love one’s neighbors. In this article, I explore the specific application of this moral duty in the work setting. I argue from a secular perspective that individuals have the moral duty to love their stakeholders. Loving one’s stakeholders is an affective valuing of the stake-related values these stakeholders pursue and as such is the real recognition of one’s stakeholders as stakeholders and of oneself as a stakeholder of one’s stakeholders. This (...) moral concept of stakeholder love offers promising contributions to stakeholder theory, leadership theories, and ethical theories in general and business ethics theories in particular. (shrink)

It is often held that Plato did not have a viable account of interpersonal love. The account of eros—roughly, desire—in the Symposium appears to fail, and, though the Lysis contains much suggestive material for an account of philia—roughly, friendship—this is an aporetic dialogue, which fails, ultimately, to provide an account of friendship. This paper argues that Plato's account of friendship is in the Phaedrus. This dialogue outlines three kinds of philia relationship, the highest of which compares favourably to the Aristotelian (...) notion of love for another ‘for their own sake’. In contrast to the account of eros in the Symposium, this gives Plato an account of interpersonal love that meets some of the requirements laid down by Gregory Vlastos for a satisfactory account of interpersonal love. (shrink)

There is an increasing awareness that we are living in a global village, which demands a global ethics. In this article, I shall explore what contributions Confucianism, particularly its conception of love, can make. It has often been claimed that Confucian love is love with distinction, as a natural feeling, and as merely human love and so it is inferior to the Christian love, which is universal, commanded, and based on divine love. Drawing on the resources of the Cheng brothers' (...) neo-Confucianism, I shall explore how Confucianism can make creative responses to such criticisms and thus make a unique Confucian contribution to the emerging global ethics. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Christian ethicists should not think of themselves as religious ethicists. I defend this claim by arguing that the concept of religious ethics, as it has come to be understood as a discipline that is distinct from secular ethics, is incoherent. In part one, I describe the fraught attempts by theologians in the 20th century to identify the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. In part two, I argue that certain accounts of natural law unwittingly reinforce a (...) problematic conception of secular ethics. Part three examines some trends in religious studies and comparative religious ethics to highlight problematic conceptions of religion. Drawing together these strands of inquiry, I contend that that the secular‐religious dichotomy in contemporary ethics should be rejected, but by the same token, I suggest that comparative ethics remains a worthwhile enterprise. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Romantic love and its predecessor eros have both been characterized as forms of egoistic love. Part of this claim is concerned specifically with the relation between love and knowledge. Real love, it is claimed, is prior to knowledge and is not motivated by it. Romantic love and eros according to this view are egoistic in that they are motivated by a desire for knowledge. Agapic love characterized by bestowal represents a true form of love unmotivated by selfish desires. I (...) argue that such an emphasis on bestowal at the expense of knowledge or appraisal of the beloved is problematic. The knowledge dimension of romantic love, rather than contributing to selfishness, can be a means of freeing us from egoism when we understand identity in its relational or social form.RÉSUMÉ: L'amour romantique et son prédécesseur, Éros, sont tous deux considérés comme des lormes d'amour égoïste. Une partie de cette prétention concerne spécifiquement le lien entre l'amour et la connaissance : l'amour véritable précède la connaissance et n'est pas motivé par elle. Selon ce point de vue, l'amour romantique et Éros sont égoïstes parce qu'ils sont motivés par le désir de connaître. L'amour agapique d'autre part se caractérise par le don; il représente une forme d'amour véritable que ne motive aucun désir égoïste. Cet accent mis sur le don au détriment de la connaissance ou de l'appreciation de l'être aimé se révèle pourtantproblématique. La connaissance, qui caractérise l'amour romantique, représente un moyen de nous libérer de l'égoïsme au lieu de l'alimenter, lorsque nous acquérons une compréhension de l'identité sous sa lorme relationnelle et sociale. (shrink)

Is romantic love a particularly Western and modern phenomenon, as many social theorists argue, or a universal experience, as sociobiologists claim? This article argues that both these approaches err in taking sexual attraction as the essential characteristic of romance, whereas historical and personal accounts stress idealization of a particular other. Romantic love is properly defined as an experience of transcendence and is elaborated in cultural configurations of three basic types. The first is in hierarchical and internally competitive societies where marriage (...) is a political matter and romantic relations are always adulterous and often non-sexual; the second is in individualistic, fragmented and fluid societies where love and marriage go together; the third is in highly structured disharmonic societies where romantic ties between youth are severed by arranged marriages. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the theoretical foundations of collective interest in the sufferings of strangers. Concern with the suffering of others, accompanied by the urge to help, is compassion. This study develops the social and historical conditions under which public compassion emerges. Two broad interpretations of these developments are suggested. The democratization perspective suggests that with the lessening of profoundly categorical and corporate social distinctions, compassion becomes more extensive. A second perspective is linked to the emergence of market society. By defining (...) a universal field of others with whom contracts and exchanges can be made, market perspectives extend the sphere of moral concern as well: however unintentionally. Public compassion is part of the language of modernity. This gives compassion the possibility to be also part of a newly emerging ‘Second Modernity’. (shrink)

Introduction Man’s request for God’s revelation, His visibility, a direct connection to Divine angels or at least, being shown with more experiential evidence by God has been one of man’s historical demands from Divine prophets. Human beings’ great inclination to make idols or choosing totems rises from this very demand for the tangibility and visualization of gods. John Schellenberg, an analytic philosopher, taking inspiration from this historical demand, for the first time in 1993 presented the Divine Hiddenness Argument as a (...) reason for the inexistence of God. According to him, one of the requisites of Divine absolute love is that God is not indifferent to His enlightened, sincere seekers and in case they are unable to find convincing evidence, He would deal responsibly regarding their fate by presenting them with more evidence and prevent their tending towards atheism; however, God failed in this regard and proof of that is the existence of logical unbelievers or agnostics. Therefore, through a deductive argument, one can consider Divine hiddenness as a contradiction to Divine absolute love and ultimately, as proof of the inexistence of God. Summary Schellenberg’s supposition in his argument is the absoluteness of the attribute of God’s love. If one is able to challenge this foundation of his argument in terms of the extent of absoluteness and that Divine absolute love is not absolute in the action aspect, his argument, in order to reach his sought conclusion, would fail. The goal of this study is to respond to the following questions: how is Schellenberg’s approach in understanding the meaning and instance of Divine absolute love? Are Divine essential attributes absolute in the action aspect and in relation to creation? Has Schellenberg paid attention to the distinction between God’s essential and action attributes in presenting his argument? By adopting an analogous view in understanding the attribute of Divine love, Schellenberg has considered Divine love to be an absolute form of human love and he believes their difference to only be quantitative. Accordingly, he believes that since in human love, the perfection of the beloved is the manifestation of responsible behavior and is because of a commitment to the sincere expression of the love of his lover and he too must seek to establish a relationship with his lover; therefore, God must also deal responsibly in regards to His lovers and sincere seekers and by presenting more evidence, seek to establish a relationship with them. Since between the two forms of love – agape and eros – the best state is love without expectations, i.e. agape; Schellenberg considers God’s love to be agape. This is while the necessity of establishing a relationship is not one of the requisites of agape love. Therefore, the lack of establishing a relationship on God’s part with His sincere seekers – even in case of the validity of Schellenberg’s claim – is not a proof of a contradiction in Divine love. It seems Schellenberg has confused the two forms of love to adopt an analogous view. One of the classifications of God’s attributes is the division of His attributes into essential and action attributes. Essential attributes are the sources of the action attributes; God’s action attributes derive from a position of action and in respect to being attached to material existents which form one side of the association, they are bound to temporal and locative conditions; even though in respect to being attached to God who is the other side of the association, they are free of such limits and conditions. It seems that Schellenberg has not paid heed to the receptive limits of existents. Another matter that has caused these attributes to be limited is the simultaneous application of these attributes in regards to existents, which has caused these attributes also to limit each other. However, among Divine action attributes, wisdom – the manifestation of the essential attribute of knowledge – is dominant over His other attributes and is the constrainer and guarantor of God’s absolute perfection. Therefore, one can consider Divine hiddenness to be a manifestation of His wise love and present defenses based on man’s free will - in the two areas of cognition and action – from in. (shrink)

`From Aristotle to Us', the conference held at La Trobe University in May 2007, names a powerful and highly influential Romantic trajectory, one which posits a particular conception of the ancients, a particular conception of the moderns, and a complex conception of the relationship between the two. Using the modern Olympic Revival as a case study and a case in point, this article argues that such `exercises' in Greek appropriation always operate with largely unstated assumptions about the nature of the (...) present's relation to the past, and the enormously complex quality of the Greek past. In becoming self-critical about such appropriations of the Classical legacy, contemporary critics are forced to contend with the spectre of religion, a topic that `Greek exercises' almost inevitably carve in high relief. The article concludes with an historiographic meditation on varying images of `paganism' in contemporary culture, images that link the Greeks to athletics to such modern and post-modern `revivals'. (shrink)

In the nursing literature, a number of qualities are associated with loving care. Reference is made to, among other things, humility, attentiveness, responsibility and duty, compassion, and tenderness. The author attempts to show that charm, in the Marcelian sense, also plays a central role. It is argued that the moral foundation of charm is a unity of agape and eros. An impartial giving of the self for others is clearly of fundamental importance in an ethic of care. Including charm in (...) the discussion points to the fact that eros also plays a crucial role. Eros produces a passion for people and for life. It is a physical and spiritual energy that animates a person in all facets of her life, including her caring work. (shrink)

In the West, the term ‘tender, loving care’ (TLC) has traditionally been used as a defining term that characterizes nursing. When this expression informs practice, it can comfort the human spirit at times of fear and vulnerability. Such notions offer meaning and resonance to the ‘lived experience’ of giving and receiving care. This suggests that, in a nursing context, TLC is rooted firmly in relationship, that is, the dynamic that exists between carer and cared for. Despite this emphasis on relationship, (...) there is a scarcity of literature that draws a connection between TLC and the moral challenge that is so much a part of human interaction. In this article we will address this deficit and present a narrative that places TLC at the centre of moral engagement between nurse and patient; in essence, we offer an alternative means of viewing relational ethics. (shrink)

Protestant Christian ethicist Timothy Jackson and secular feminist philosopher Eva Feder Kittay each explore the relationship between love or care and justice through the lens of human dependency. Jackson sharply prioritizes agape over justice, whereas Kittay articulates a more complex and integrated understanding of the relationship of care and distributive justice. An account of Christian love and its relation to justice must account for the gratuity, mutuality, and reciprocity that pervade human existence. Such an account must integrate provision for another's (...) basic needs, a feature of agape, with a distributive justice that fairly allocates the material prerequisites of care and the burden of caring labor. Kittay's treatment of care and justice is more adequate to the realities of human embodiment and the social organization of care than Jackson's, but neither offers a fully adequate ground for the moral personhood of all human beings, including deeply dependent persons. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMartin Luther famously denounced Pseudo-Dionysius as ‘downright dangerous; he Platonizes more than he Christianizes.’ In this 500th year of the Reformation I critically examine Luther’s judgement firstly by exploring the Neoplatonic background to ritual in Dionysius, secondly by presenting a Reformed critique of this background and finally by arguing for a distinctively Christian Dionysius who survives this critique.

Speaking roughly, there are two competing accounts of the basis of love. First, the appraisal view: love is based in reasons derived from the valuable properties of the beloved. Second, the bestowal view: love is not based in reasons derived from the valuable properties of the beloved, but love is based in the lover, who then bestows value onto the beloved. While both models deserve due attention, the bestowal model is of present concern. Despite numerous virtues, the bestowal model faces (...) trenchant objections. In this paper, I outline and defend a version of bestowal love, according to which bestowal love is based in the lover’s motivating reasons, and which preserves the virtues while overcoming the difficulties facing bestowal love. (shrink)

We claim that divine command metaethicists have not thought through the nature of the expression of divine love with sufficient rigor. We argue, against prior divine command theories, that the radical difference between God and the natural world means that grounding divine command in divine love can only ground a formal claim of the divine on the human; recipients of revelation must construct particular commands out of this formal claim. While some metaethicists might respond to us by claiming that this (...) account leads to an inability to judge between better and worse constructions of the commanded life, we propose that an analysis of the human response to divine love--theological eros--can be the basis for an articulation of a philosophical theology (in our case, negative theology) that can guide the religious believer toward generating particular principles for ethical action that are grounded in an account of divine action. By linking divine command to imitatio Dei, the believer can have confidence that her imitative acts of God are not inaccurate constructions of the commanded life. (shrink)

I argue that Christians have at least two reasons to reject eudaimonism, interpreted as the view that attaining eudaimonia—or happiness—is what fulfills the moral life. First, I contend Christian conceptions of eudaimonia should encompass more than realized moral excellence and its requirements. Second, I claim Christians should construe the love at the heart of their moral life as fully realizable even if it is not evidently reciprocated. Both affirmations contradict eudaimonism by implying that eudaimonia depends on more than fulfilling the (...) moral life—the former by rendering eudaimonia more subject to luck than eudaimonists can allow, the latter by depicting the moral life as less subject to luck than eudaimonists can accept. These affirmations also enable Christians to regard God’s love integral to eudaimonia apart from its role in realizing moral excellence and to deny all inability to attain eudaimonia manifests moral failure. (shrink)

The place of eros in Christian theology has always been a contested one, not least because it is positioned as being at odds with agape, the kind of love that embodies gospel ethics. Matthew 25:31–46 calls us to “feed the hungry,” “quench the thirsty,” “shelter the homeless,” “clothe the naked,” and “visit the imprisoned” as emblematic examples of agapic love. This essay shows how a queer act, specifically that of a woman breastfeeding a starving man as depicted in the tradition (...) of Caritas Romana, can fulfill the ethical demands in Matthew's pericope. It demonstrates how the action first narrated by Valerius Maximus and then represented by Paul Peter Rubens beautifully fulfills the Matthean agapic demands, and concludes that queer practices have the potential to fulfill the gospel demands, situating the erotic at the core of the agapic. (shrink)

This paper argues that the phenomenon of globalisation can be best understood as the secularisation and widespread extension of a particular type of life?conduct that originated in Western monasticism. This concerns not substantive content but modality and form, like the self?sustaining methodical regularisation of the everyday conduct of life in closed and partitioned space aiming at rationalisation and perfection. This type of inner?worldly asceticism was a successful response to the challenge of chaotic ?liminal periods of transition, following a wholesale dissolution (...) of order. However, the solution represents a generalisation of liminality into a permanent condition, explaining both the innovativeness and creativity of modern societies, but also their characteristic tempo of hectic change that disrupts stable human relationships and the coexistence with animals and plants, losing balance and measure. (shrink)

Scholars of religion and science have generated remarkable scholarship in recent years in their explorations of love. Exactly how scholars involved in this budding field believe that love and science should relate and/or be integrated varies greatly. What they share in common is the belief that issues of love are of paramount importance and that the various scientific disciplines—whether natural, social, or religious—must be brought to bear upon how best to understand love. I briefly introduce the emergence of the love‐and‐science (...) research program and note that scholars have not done well defining what they mean by love. I suggest that the present surge in love scholarship will fail to produce the positive results that it otherwise might if love is not defined well. I provide and defend a definition of love adequate for those doing love‐and‐science research: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well‐being. To explain better what this simple definition entails, I explore its three main phrases. Love is said to have many forms, but agape is the form to which the love‐and‐science literature most commonly refers. I comment briefly on the debates about how to best understand agape, noting sixteen different definitions proposed by major scholars. I identify weaknesses in many of them and then offer what I argue is a more adequate definition of agape as intentional response to promote well‐being when confronted by that which generates ill‐being. In short, agape repays evil with good. While research on love and science requires much more than adequate definitions, I believe that the definitions I proffer can prove useful in furthering the love‐and‐science research program. (shrink)

The essay examines the Underground Man's ambivalent position in Dostoevskij's hierarchy of values in light of the Nietzschean concept of ressentiment To elucidate the problem of free will in Notes from Underground, I propose to supplement Nietzsche's theory with the concept of ressentiment as developed by Max Scheler, whose endorsement of Christian love as a means of overcoming ressentiment suggests an affinity with Dostoevskij's own deeply religious worldview. With the help of Schelerian phenomenology, I read the novel as an early (...) statement of the problem of Christian freedom in Dostoevskij's oeuvre. Like the "Pro and Contra" section of The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from Underground turns our attention to the "costs" of the Christian ideal: in a world exposed to the ultimate horizon of desire through Christ, those lacking the serenity of faith may be doomed to the merciless torment of ressentiment. (shrink)

This essay evaluates Jean-Luc Marion’s claim in The Erotic Phenomenon that eros and agape are “two names selected among an infinity of others in order to think and to say the one love” (221). I will defend his attempt to unite agape and eros against Jacques Derrida’s claim that we must love without any desire for reciprocity. Additionally, I will indicate what implications Marion’s account of love has for a discussion of love and its reasons. Marion correctly identifies the paradox (...) at the heart of love: that in order to truly love, I must give up my demand for assurance, although I may still maintain the hope that another will love me. While Marion offers an important corrective to Derrida’s account of pure agape, I will argue that his account of love that includes both eros and agape ultimately resembles Derrida’s pure agape too closely because Marion does not sufficiently acknowledge the role of reciprocity in love. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a piece of natural theology, whose pro tanto conclusion is the existence of god-the-artist, that is a lower case “g” god, a creator who creates for the sake of beauty, but who is not worthy of worship, a god who can be admired but should not be loved. I then consider some only partially successful responses to this dismal conclusion. Finally, I show to reconcile the idea of a god motivated by love of beauty with (...) the religious tradition of an upper case “G” God, who is not merely to be worshiped but loves us and invites a loving response. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCommentators have commonly noted the metaphysical role of participation in Richard Hooker’s Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity: participation both describes how creation is suspended from God and also how believers share in Christ through grace. Yet, the role in Hooker’s thought of the attendant Platonic language of ‘between’ and ‘desire’ has not received sustained attention. Metaxu describes the ‘in-between’ quality of participation: the participant and the participated remain distinct but are dynamically related as the former originates from and returns (...) to the perfection of the latter. Within this metaxological dynamic, desire acts as the physical and psychic motor driving the move between potentiality and perfect actuality, that is to say from multiplicity to divine unity: desire aims at goodness and so ultimately tends towards that which is goodness itself, namely God’s nature. For Hooker, desire becomes couched in amorous affectivity and has an erotic register. This essay explores, then, how Hooker appeals to a language of ‘between’ and ‘desire’ within his accounts of participation. First, it examines how human beings exist between the footstool and throne of God in Hooker’s legal ontology. Here, angelic desire acts as a hierarchical pattern of and spur to erotic participation in the divine nature. Second, this essay examines how theurgy transforms desire in Hooker’s account of liturgical participation as a redemptive commerce between heaven and earth. Here, angels still act as invisible, hierarchical intermediaries within earthly worship, but soon give way to immediate grace through participation in Christ within the sacraments. (shrink)

The topic of sociobiology and ethics opens up a range of questions that have to do with important relationships: between the history of nature and human being, between biological evolution and psychosocial evolution, between is and ought, between language usages in one domain and another. The task of ethics is properly to discern what sociobiology has to tell us about the fundamentals of life and persuasively to direct our actions in accord with those fundamentals, in a manner that is consistent (...) with our essential humanity. From the theological perspective all of this transpires within the creative will of God. (shrink)