Abstract

The confrontation between the pagan conception of eros and the Christian concept of caritas highlights the motives that make both realities incompatible between themselves. The first, founded on egoism and the glorification of the disordered passions, seeks to create in man the illusion that happiness is attained by concession to the vices and moral degradation. In the opposite sense, caritas, the model according to the teachings of the Divine Master, opens him to the love of neighbour. For the Christian, caritas is not a gesture of a merely humanitarian character, but, above all, is the essence of the Creator Himself ? Deus caritas est. Since He is the only Being capable of giving sense to human existence and guides it along History, makes the inconsistency of eros evident, and at the same time, shows that the practice of true charity encompasses the sense of holocaust