This study is the most comprehensive account to date of modern treatments of the love commandment. Gene Outka examines the literature on agape from Nygren's Agape and Eros in 1930. Both Roman Catholic and Protestant writings are considered, including those of D'Arcy, Niebuhr, Ramsey, Tillich, and above all, Karl Barth. The first seven chapters focus on the principal treatments in the theological literature as they relate to major topics in ethical theory. The last chapter explores further the basic normative content (...) of agape and discusses some of the most characteristic problems. "The book is in my judgment the best recent work in religious ethics. Outka brings together analytic moral philosophy and theological ethics, providing a masterly survey of views and issues arising in the past forty years.... I can think of few books of interest to scholars in both philosophy and theology, but Outka's is one. Unlike some scholars who are at home in continental theology, Outka is also at home in secular analytic philosophy; he brings them together in a mutually illuminating way."--Donald Evans "Outka has mastered this vast literature on love, and has brought a critical and clarifying analysis to bear upon it. This is a most important book on a most important subject, and brings the whole discussion into a new phase."--John Macquarrie "The first thing to be said about Outka's book quite simply is that it is excellent; in fact, it is probably the very best available book about contemporary Christian ethical theory."--The Humanities Association Review. (shrink)

A theory of punishment should give some account of mercy and yet it is true to say that very little has been said about it at all. It is commonly regarded as a praiseworthy element in moral behaviour—something to be practised occasionally both for the good of the one who punishes and the one who is punished. The suffering that punishment involves is unpleasant for all concerned, and if it is possible to avoid it or lessen it without moral injustice, (...) then it is desirable to do so. We condemn as hard and unbending the judge who never shows mercy and the suggestion is that the poor unfortunates whose lot it is to be judged by him are poor unfortunates indeed. This is reflected in the fact that the opposite of merciful—merciless—means cruel. Presumably there are occasions when it is appropriate to show mercy to an offender, and other occasions when it is not. What are the conditions for the appropriate exercising of mercy, how do we decide how much mercy is appropriate, and when is a judge morally obliged to be merciful, if ever? (shrink)

This book analyzes the moral confusion of contemporary society, relating rival conceptions of morality with a wide variety of views about the nature and predicament of man. Mitchell argues that many secular thinkers possess a traditional "Christian" conscience which they find hard to defend in terms of an entirely secular world-view, but which is more in line with a Christian understanding of man.

Mercy is a form of charity towards wrongdoers that justifies punishing them less severely than they deserve according to justice. Three main objections to mercy, or its exercise by organs of the state-that it is irrational, unjust and procedurally unfair-are addressed in the course of defending mercy as a value that has a place in deliberation about criminal punishment. The paper draws on both the communicative theory of punishment and aspects of existing legal practice in mounting this defence.

This thought provoking book uncovers a crisis in the political imagination, a wide-spread failure to provide the passionate sense of community "in which our need for belonging can be met." Seeking the answers to fundamental questions, Michael Ignatieff writes vividly both about ideas and about the people who tried to live by them—from Augustine to Bosch, from Rosseau to Simone Weil. Incisive and moving, The Needs of Strangers returns philosophy to its proper place, as a guide to the art of (...) being human. (shrink)

This book focuses on the degree to which certain moral and legal doctrines are rooted in specific passions that are then institutionalised in the form of criminal law. A philosophical analysis is developed of the following questions: when, if ever, should hatred be overcome by sympathy or compassion? What are forgiveness and mercy and to what degree do they require - both conceptually and morally - the overcoming of certain passions and the motivation by other passions? If forgiveness and mercy (...) indeed are moral virtues, what role, if any, should they play in the law? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DE ORDINE CARITATIS: CHARITY, FRIENDSHIP, AND JUSTICE IN THOMAS AQUINAS' SUMMA THEOLOGIAE JEAN PORTER Vanderbilt Divinity School Nashville, Tennessee IS IT POSSIBLE to identify the :lioundational or characteristic content of Christian love? According to Gene Outka, the normative content most often ascribed to Christian neighbor-love, or agape, is equal rega.rd.1 On this aiooount, agape commits us to aot at all times out of a regard for the neighbor that (...) is stable and independent of a particular response from the other. Each individual is to he valued simply as a human person, and not on the basis of his or her particular merits, attractiveness, or functional value to others. In short, the qualities of the other that are of primary significance in determining how that person should be treated are those that he or she has in common with everybody else, and not those that set him or her apart. This view is well expressed by Kierkegaard: The category neighbor is just like the category human being. Every one of us is a human being and at the same time the heterogeneous individual which he is by particularity; but being a human being is the fundamental qualification... No one should be preoccupied with the differences so that he cowardly or presumptuously forgets that he is a human being; no man is an exception to being a human being by virtue of his particularising differences, He is rather a human being and then a particular human being.2 An Outka describes it, the claim that Christian ethics is grounded in a commitment to equal regard is a substantive 1 Gene Outka, Agape:.4.n Ethical Analysis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), p. 260. 2 Quoted by Outka, p. 15. 197 198 JEAN PORTER claim, in that it is meant to identify the core content of a particular ethical tradition. But this substantive claim raises an historical question: Has Christian neighbor love actually been understood in this way, at least by some major Christian thinkers? Obviously, the substantive aµd historical questions raised by Outka's normative analysis of agape are interrelated. At least, it would be difficult to defend the claim that Christian neighbor love enjoins equal regard in the face of evidence that great numbers of Christians ha.ve not actually understood their fundamental commitments in this way. By the same token, the ca:se for interpreting the second great love commandment as enjoining equal regard would be strengthened if it could be shown that some segments of the Christian tradition, or some of its leading expositors, have held substantially the same view. Nonetheless, I do not know of any attempt to examine in detajl the ethical thought of an important classical figure in light of Outka's searching normative analysis of the different interpretations that have been given to agape. This essay is a modest attempt to begin to fill that gap through an examination of Thomas Aquinas' account of charity in the Summa Theologia.e. But my purpose in this essay is not limited to answering the question," Did Thomas understand charity as equal regard?" As we will see, that question can be answered all too quickly. Once it has.been answered, however, it provides an unexpected entree into Thomas' remarkable concept of charity. And by spelling out some of the implications of this concept, we learn something, not only about Thomas, but about the nature of Christian neighborlove as well. I. De ordine caritatis At the outset, it will be helpful to summarize the main points in Thomas' acoount of charity. Along with faith and hope, charity is one of three theological virtues that directs the human person to God as the supernatural fulfillment of human life (ST la2ae 62.l, 3; 110.3. All further references to Aquinas THE ORDER OF CHARITY IN AQUINAS 199 are to the Summa Theologiae). It is the greatest of the theological virtues because it directs the human person to friendship with God (2a2ae 23.1), That is, it directs him or her to union with God as he is in himself, and not simply as the source of a.II created good, or even as the author... (shrink)