This article is intended to examine and then compare ci bei in the Lotus S?tra and ren in the Analects of Confucius. Despite many similarities, compassion and benevolent love have shown a difference between Mah?y?na Buddhist ethics and the Confucian moral system. This difference is revealed in the content and meaning of compassion and benevolent love, but more importantly through the ways they are practised, followed and expanded. Through different ways or paths, compassion and benevolent (...) love have nevertheless established two different and yet mutually supplementary ideals that guide the spiritual and moral world of China and other parts of East Asia. (shrink)

‘Impartial benevolence and partial love’ contributes, like the other essays in the edited collection ‘The Problem of Moral Demandingness’, to the discussion of that problem. Its contribution is to offer a phenomenological exploration of the place that these two ideas/ ideals actually have in our ethical life and experience. On the basis of this exploration I argue that neither ideal, neither impartial benevolence nor partial love, comprehensively “trumps” the other — both are important, and more to the point, (...) simply different. Hence there is no general algorithm for deciding which counts for more. (shrink)

Kant claims that love ‘is a matter of feeling,’ which has led many of his interpreters to argue that he conceives of love as solely a matter of feeling, that is, as a purely pathological state. In this paper I challenge this reading by taking another one of Kant’s claims seriously, namely that all love is either benevolence or complacence and that both are rational. I place Kant’s distinction between benevolence and complacence next to the historical inspiration (...) for it, namely Francis Hutcheson’s very similar distinction, in order to argue that love is rational, for Kant, in that it requires certain rational capacities on the part of the agent. I conclude by illustrating that this has important implications for how we understand Kant’s conception of love more generally. (shrink)

This essay details the history of an important debate in American evangelical Christianity over the problem of disinterested benevolence, the common expression for Christian love during the early decades of the nineteenth century. It focuses on the thought of Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Hopkins, who differed significantly in their opinions regarding the degree to which Christian love requires self-denial. Some concluding remarks will underscore the persistence of this debate in the wider historical tradition of American theological ethics, as (...) well as its normative importance. (shrink)

Confucianism defined benevolence with “feelings” and “ love.” “Feelings” in Confucianism can be mainly divided into three categories: feelings in general, love for one’s relatives, and compassion. The seven kinds of feeling in which people respond to things can be summarized as “likes and dislikes.” The mind responds to things through feelings; based on the mind of benevolence and righteousness or feelings of compassion, the expression of feelings can conform to the principle of the mean and reach the (...) integration of self and others, and of self and external things. The “relations between the seven kinds of feelings and the Four Commencements,” however, was not developed into a theoretical idea in Confucianism. After Confucius, the relationship between the universality of natural sympathies and the gradation of love for relatives gradually became an important subject in Confucian ideas of benevolence and love. By “refuting Yang Zhu and Mozi,” Mencius systematically expounded on this issue. Love had two ends: self- love and natural sympathies, between which existed the love for relatives. These two ends were not the two extremes of Yang’s self-interest and Mozi’s universal love. Love for relatives not only implied a gradation, but also contained universality and transcendence that came from self- love. Love for relatives, natural sympathies and self- love had a kind of tension and connectivity between two dynamic ends. The Confucian idea of benevolence and love hence demonstrated differences and interconnectivity. An accurate understanding of such “feelings” and “ love ” is important for us to grasp Confucian thoughts on benevolence and its realization. (shrink)

IN HIS CRITICAL METAPHYSICS OF MORALS, Kant insists on keeping the purely rational concepts, laws, and principles of moral philosophy strictly separate from the empirical elements of practical anthropology. This is not to say that he treats the a priori part of the doctrine of morals in isolation from empirical psychological concepts and observations about the special nature of human beings. He allows that such elements are necessarily brought into the formulation of the system of pure morality. Still, he maintains (...) that their integration with this system cannot detract from the purity of the highest principles and fundamental a priori concepts of morality themselves, or cast any doubt on the a priori origin of all practical laws in pure reason alone. Within the system of the metaphysics of morals, the pure part of moral philosophy must therefore be logically dissociated from any particular theory of human nature that includes the principles of a specifically human moral psychology. This measure is mandatory if moral philosophy is not to rely on species-dependent presuppositions when, on the basis of its pure part, it plays its distinctive legislative role for humans as rational beings. As Kant states in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten of 1785, “all moral philosophy rests wholly upon its pure part, and, when applied to the human being, it borrows not the least thing from the knowledge of that being, but rather gives to the human being, as a rational being, laws a priori.” Accordingly, the foundational task of the metaphysical theory of morals must be to investigate the “ideas and the principles of a possible pure will, and not the actions and conditions of human willing [Wollen] as such, which for the most part are drawn from psychology.”. (shrink)

Confucianism defined benevolence with “feelings” and “love.” “Feelings” in Confucianism can be mainly divided into three categories: feelings in general, love for one’s relatives, and compassion. The seven kinds of feeling in which people respond to things can be summarized as “likes and dislikes.” The mind responds to things through feelings; based on the mind of benevolence and righteousness or feelings of compassion, the expression of feelings can conform to the principle of the mean and reach the integration (...) of self and others, and of self and external things. The “relations between the seven kinds of feelings and the Four Commencements,” however, was not developed into a theoretical idea in Confucianism. After Confucius, the relationship between the universality of natural sympathies and the gradation of love for relatives gradually became an important subject in Confucian ideas of benevolence and love. By “refuting Yang Zhu and Mozi,” Mencius systematically expounded on this issue. Love had two ends: self-love and natural sympathies, between which existed the love for relatives. These two ends were not the two extremes of Yang’s self-interest and Mozi’s universal love. Love for relatives not only implied a gradation, but also contained universality and transcendence that came from self-love. Love for relatives, natural sympathies and self-love had a kind of tension and connectivity between two dynamic ends. The Confucian idea of benevolence and love hence demonstrated differences and interconnectivity. An accurate understanding of such “feelings” and “love” is important for us to grasp Confucian thoughts on benevolence and its realization. (shrink)

It is important to decide between morality as caring and morality as universal benevolence. The latter has a distinctive conception of social justice that is more plausible, intuitively, than what utilitarianism says about justice, but there are reasons to think that the impartialism inherent in universal benevolence does not allow us to do justice to the value we place on love and loving relationships. For this and other reasons, we should prefer a virtue ethics of caring as the grounding (...) basis for individual and political morality. (shrink)

This essay deals with the question of what really makes human beings exceptional. It is argued that it is a special kind of love that ultimately distinguishes humans from other animals. Although other kinds of considerations, preferably cognitive ones, have most often been invoked to make such a distinction, these might eventually be found to be, at least in part, a matter of degree and not something qualitatively different, as argued here with respect to this type of love. (...) Arguments from both scientific and philosophical sources are brought to bear on the question. (shrink)

In order to sketch an account of a moral commitment to persons as such, the essay examines empathy, sympathy, and benevolence as they arise first in special relations and then are reconstructed to include the stranger under the rubric of "extensive benevolence" or "universal love." The account, the author argues, must deal with conceptual empowerment and authorizing reasons, weakness and evil, normative conflict, and the relation of benevolence to justice.

Some Christian theorists define love in terms of benevolence, or benevolence plus some minor addition. Here I rely on a thought experiment involving a fully benevolent human, dubbed “Benevolent Billy,” to show that benevolence accounts of this kind are insufficient as a distinctly Christian account of love. This is because those who exemplify ideal Christian love for another must be intrinsically motivated to form or maintain caring, reciprocal relationships with those loved ; yet there is (...) nothing about Billy’s perfect benevolence that so motivates. (shrink)

Analyzing Love is concerned with four basic and neglected problems concerning love. The first is identifying its relevant features: distinguishing it from liking and benevolence and from sexual desire; describing the objects that can be loved and the judgements and aims required by love. The second question is how we recognize the presence of love and what grounds we may have for thinking it present in any particular case. The third is that of relating it to (...) other emotions such as anger and fear, and, more generally, deciding where love stands in the contrast between emotions and attitudes. Finally, the book examines how we justify our loves: can we have, and do we need, reasons for loving? What types of judgement are appropriate to love? Can we criticize a lover for his or her choices? (shrink)

This cluster of essays by Julia E. Judish, John P. Reeder Jr., Donald K. Swearer, and Lee H. Yearley considers benevolence as a virtue construed in various ways in different traditions. The essays explore: the roots of benevolence or caring, especially towards strangers; the normative issue of the relation between universal love and concern for particular others in special relations; and the question of possessions, in particular the ideal of voluntary poverty. A theme that runs throughout the essays is (...) the relation of benevolence to religiously interpreted transformations of the self. (shrink)

The first premise of J. L. Schellenberg’s Hiddenness Argument equates God’s love with a positive relationship to human beings. To illustrate this relationship, the human model of parental love is used, based on the standards of the modern American liberal world, not on the biblical standard. As a result, we attribute to God a narrowly understood horizontal relationship towards people, which is completely alien to the understanding of love developed in the Christian tradition. When we refer to (...) the classical theism that recognized love as the central attribute of God, we will see that it should be understood in a vertical model, consisting in the offering of good and mercy. This understanding undermines the benevolent theism and replaces it with the merciful theism or theism of mercy. Ultimately, this makes the first premise of the Hiddenness Argument very questionable and the whole argument calls for a significant revision. (shrink)

IntroductionThis paper employs Confucianism to illustrate a kind of differential or benevolent love, which people give in accordance with their relations and roles. In this sense, Confucian benevolent love is more of a duty to create mutual belonging than an emotion of solidarity.1 This benevolent love contrasts with the universal love of liberalism and the resultant solidarity that those who express this form of love feel for one another—these people often being the (...) distant and unacquainted—whose presence would puzzle Confucian leaders in terms of their roles and duties. Confucian roles are, in comparison, contextual, evolving, and reciprocal in order to cope with encountered strangeness. The liberal belief in everyone being ontologically equal and free de-emphasizes the relevance of experiencing the other’s strangeness. As a result of this, a Confucian’s and liberal’s love for one another may ironically cause, in both, a moral outrage qua deprived belonging.2. (shrink)

Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) is a popular contemplative mental practice. Its purpose is to cultivate feelings of compassion, love, and prosocial motivation, typically through inner visual imagery and benevolent intentions. Previous studies have revealed evidence for various constructive effects of LKM. It remains an open question, however, whether the effects of LKM are exclusively positive in all practitioners. To tackle this question, we collected 55 microphenomenological interviews (MpIs) reflecting subjective experiences during LKM. Furthermore, we obtained psychological and biological (oxytocin, (...) cortisol) inter-individual difference measures during a nine-month, longitudinal, mental training study. LKM was predominantly described in positive affective terms and associated with cortisol decrease in accordance with the natural diurnal decline, which reflects its generally non-stressful nature. However, five participants reported experiences such as panic, sadness, and fear. Emotional challenge, as indicated by negative word use during MpIs, was linked to lower scores of self-kindness and higher scores of selfcompassionate mindfulness. (shrink)

The study focuses on the debates on self-love in early 18th - century British moral philosophy. It examines the intricate relations of these debates with questions concerning human nature and morality in five central authors : Anthony Ashley Cooper the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville, Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Butler and Archibald Campbell. One of the central claims of this study is that a distinction between five different concepts of self-love is necessary to achieve a clear understanding of (...) the debates on self-love. Thus, egoistic self-love, self-love as love of praise, self-love as self-esteem, self-love as excessive pride and self-love as self-respect are distinguished. The role of these different concepts is analysed in the mentioned authors ’ theories of human nature and morality, and the relations between the concepts of self-love and other essential concepts of moral philosophy such as benevolence, pity and virtue are examined. This study highlights the importance of the widely discussed claim that self-love is the only motive for human agents and shows that the moral rehabilitation of self-love becomes an important issue for the period. Commentators generally agree on the importance of the notion of self-love for the period’s moral philosophy, yet little attention has been paid to the different concepts of self-love. Present-day philosophy’s tendency to equate self-love with egoism is too simplistic, and the insufficient recognition of the vagueness of the notion of self-love is shown to be an impediment to an appropriate reconstruction of important arguments in the debates on self-love. The framework suggested in this study thus enables a better comprehension of the different accounts of self-love in the selected authors ’ moral psychologies, and of their views of the moral value of self-love. This facilitates the shedding of light on central aspects of moral philosophy at the beginning of the 18th century. (shrink)

Many Christian theorists notice that love should contain, in additional to benevolence, some kind of interpersonal or unitive component. The difficulty comes in trying to provide an account of this unitive component that is sufficiently interpersonal in other-love and yet is also compatible with self-love. Eleonore Stump is one of the few Christian theorists who directly addresses this issue. Building upon the work of Thomas Aquinas, Stump argues that love is constituted by two desires: the desire (...) for an individual’s good and the desire to be united to that individual. Stump further develops the desire for union within this Thomistic understanding of love, and she maintains that her developed account not only captures the robustly interpersonal nature of one’s love of another but is also compatible with the love of oneself. Unfortunately, Stump’s way of making sense of this latter claim introduces a significant inconsistency in her analyses of the desire for union in self-love and other-love. Nevertheless, the most important features of Stump’s Neo-Thomistic account are salvageable. For there is a way of understanding love’s desire for union that emerges out of Thomas’s views on love and is compatible with the desiderata suggested by Stump, only does not have the same difficulties that beset Stump’s account. What is offered, then, is a modification of Stump’s account that might better serve her purposes. The resulting view of love, however, is one not only relevant to Stump. Rather, the view that emerges is a broadly Thomistic conception of love that is plausible in its own right and captures a certain biblical emphasis on the relational or interpersonal nature of love. (shrink)

The teaching of mediation in Islamic tradition refers to a person requesting forgiveness of another and in the Christian tradition apart from forgiveness includes the bestowal of goodness to another as well. Motahhari and Brümmer consider the acceptance of mediation to be faced with the problem of superiority of the mediator’s mercy as compared to God’s mercy and the limitedness of God’s benevolence. Motahhari believes the answer to this problem to be in the attention to the hierarchy in the world’s (...) system and the bestowal of good to creation in the form of a linear system; mediation is not the existential cause for forgiveness but rather the preparatory cause for the bestowal of forgiveness from God. As a reply to this problem, Brümmer addresses God’s permission for man’s participation in spreading good to others in the form of prayers. According to Brümmer, God has made the world such that through prayers – while establishing a loving relationship with God – man can also have an active participation with God’s power in the acceptance of prayer. In this way, Motahhari and Brümmer with their answers consider mediation and God’s absolute benevolence to be consistent with one another. According to both, the world has an order in which man can play a role in spreading good to others with God’s permission. (shrink)

This paper explores the value of benevolence as a cardinal virtue by analyzing the evolving history of virtue ethics from ancient Greek tradition to emotivism and contemporary thoughts. First, I would like to start with a brief idea of virtue ethics. Greek virtue theorists recognize four qualities of moral character, namely, wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice. Christianity recognizes unconditional love as the essence of its theology. Here I will analyze the transition within the doctrine of virtue ethics in the (...) Christian era and afterward since the eighteenth-century thinkers are immensely inspired by this Christian notion of love consider universal benevolence as the cardinal virtue. Later, Hume introduces an emotivist turn by considering the moral worth of sympathetic emotions in his ethical doctrine. In this paper, I aim to discover the cardinality of the virtue of benevolence following the evolutionary history of virtue ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 304-317 [Access article in PDF] Sovereign Love and Atomism in Racine's Bérénice Ellen Mcclure ALTHOUGH CRITICS HAVE NOTED links between the new science of the seventeenth century and the works of La Fontaine and Molière, 1 a similar influence of Epicureanism or even Cartesianism upon French classical tragedy is harder to trace. No two areas of seventeenth-century cultural life would seem farther apart (...) than the emerging science, with its rejection of Aristotelian categories as inadequate to experienced reality, and classical French tragedy, with its antimaterialism and claims to universal truth often bolstered by references to none other than Aristotle himself. Yet René Pintard reminds us that the 1660s and 1670s—the period when many of the tragedies we regard as "classical" were written—saw a strong renewal of interest in the philosophies articulated in the first half of the century. 2 So widespread was this interest that Pierre Gassendi's friend and follower Bernier was able to publish an edition and translation of the philosopher's works in 1674-1675 which proved to be a resounding success. It is hard to believe that the much-discussed new science somehow missed writers of tragedies, especially given the extensive contacts between Molière, La Fontaine and Racine.In this article, I demonstrate this influence by positing that Racine's play Bérénice, ostensibly a reworking of a well-known love story that Corneille was also producing on the Paris stage at the same time, is in part a reflection on the pressing question of what holds the universe together. Through his exploration of the possibility of satisfactory love between two independent sovereigns, Racine explores issues that the revival of Epicureanism had brought into the philosophical foreground. This reading of the play brings into focus the incredibly [End Page 304] important, yet too-often neglected, 3 role of Antiochus, the character whom Racine invented for his version of the play. I will show that his tragic in-betweenness offers a necessary alternative to Titus' and Bérénice's valorization of self-contained sovereignty. I Before embarking on a close reading of the play itself, however, I would like to offer a brief survey of the debate to which I believe Racine refers. Both Michel Foucault and Timothy Reiss have identified the seventeenth century as a transitional period between the age of correspondences exemplified in Aristotelian philosophy and the age of representation and quantification that characterized eighteenth-century thought. 4 This transition, however, was far from smooth, as philosophers sought to articulate a universe whose separate and radically de-hierarchized elements remained somehow joined together.For most seventeenth-century philosophers, the sacrifice of Aristotelian categories and scholasticism in no way lessened the imperative for a sense of divine order and causation. Gassendi's often self-contradictory efforts to reconcile Epicurus and Christianity provide perhaps the most striking example of this transitional struggle. The atomism posited by Epicurus through Lucretius posed particular difficulties for a Christian worldview. A world governed by the chance interactions of atoms eliminates any sense that things happen for a purpose; God cannot be the benevolent author and overseer of the universe. Gassendi's equal respect for atomism and for Christianity should be read as evidence of the profound struggle between separateness and interconnection (or, as Gassendi would call it, harmony) taking place during this period. 5 For, as Bloch points out, although Gassendi partially reconciled the demands of the two systems by situating atoms in an uncreated, infinite, and contiguous space and time, he continued to hold to the profoundly troubling existence of the void in the universe. Once again, the chief objection to the void implicit in atomism was religious, since if God is everywhere, the void cannot exist, and likewise, God cannot create nothing. The revival of stoicism supplied instead a vision of the universe ultimately comprised and held together by an ethereal pneuma that some neo-Stoics did not hesitate to identify as a sort of divine presence. 6 Descartes himself made heroic attempts, in his Principes... (shrink)

Gratitude to others is typically understood as a response to good things people give to us or do for us. Occasionally, though, we thank people for things other than gifts or actions. We sometimes thank people for being there for us, for instance, or for loving us, or for being good parents or teachers, or for believing in us. In this article, I develop a set of considerations to help determine whether gratitude to others for being, loving, or believing can (...) be fitting in any of these cases. I begin by arguing that when it is appropriate for a beneficiary thank a benefactor for ϕ-ing, the beneficiary’s gratitude to the benefactor for ϕ-ing is fitting only insofar as the benefactor ϕ-ed out of benevolence, care or concern for the beneficiary. I then show that thanking can express attitudes other than gratitude, thereby highlighting the thanks-gratitude fallacy: the mistake of inferring the fittingness of one person’s gratitude to another from the fact that it would be reasonable for the former to thank the latter. These considerations imply that gratitude for being there for us, gratitude for believing in us, and gratitude for being a good professional can sometimes be fitting, while gratitude for loving us and gratitude for being a good intimate generally are not. (shrink)

: In neocolonial contexts of globalization, the epistemological terrain of radical diversity poses significant ethical challenges to transnational feminisms. In view of historical associations between knowledge and discourses of love which were conditioned by imperialist brands of humanism and benevolence under colonialism, this paper argues for a deconstructionist approach to conceptualizing love in relation to knowledge and for an ethics that severs the association with benevolence, instead making alterity the basis for its account.

Although a safe, effective, and licensed coronavirus vaccine does not yet exist, there is already controversy over how it ought to be allocated. Justice is clearly at stake, but it is unclear what justice requires in the international distribution of a scarce vaccine during a pandemic. Many are condemning ‘vaccine nationalism’ as an obstacle to equitable global distribution. We argue that limited national partiality in allocating vaccines will be a component of justice rather than an obstacle to it. For there (...) are role-based and community-embedded responsibilities to take care of one’s own, which constitute legitimate moral reasons for some identity-related prioritisation. Furthermore, a good form of vaccine nationalism prioritises one’s own without denying or ignoring duties derived from a principle of equal worth, according to which all persons, regardless of citizenship or identity, equally deserve vaccine-induced protection from COVID-19. Rather than dismissing nationalism as a tragic obstacle, it is necessary to acknowledge that a limited form of it is valuable and expresses moral commitments. Only then can one understand our world of competing obligations, a world where cosmopolitan duties of benevolence sometimes conflict with special obligations of community membership. Once these competing obligations are recognised as such, we can begin the work of designing sound ethical frameworks for achieving justice in the global distribution of a coronavirus vaccine and developing practical strategies for avoiding, mitigating or resolving conflicts of duty. (shrink)

This essay seeks to start a dialogue between two traditions that historically have interpreted the economy in opposing ways: the individualism of classic economic liberalism (CEL), represented by Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, and the communitarianism of Catholic social teaching (CST), interpreted primarily through the teachings of popes and secondarily the U.S. Catholic bishops. The present authors, an economist and a moral theologian who identify with one or the other of the two traditions, strive to clarify objectively their similarities and (...) differences with the opposing perspective. Section one focuses on each position''s perspective of love of self and love of others. We find both CEL and CST saying that self-love, rightly understood, constitutes a moral good and that the love of others serves as an important principle in the political economy. We find less agreement in section two regarding justice and rights, but even here, we discover a few surprises. Both traditions uphold justice (giving to each party what is due) as essential to the political economy, and recognize some similarity in that type of justice called commutative. We note, however, substantial differences regarding a second type of justice that we call "public justice." First, they differ over the extent to which government should be involved. Here the meaning of rights, especially that of individual freedom, arises. Secondly, the traditions diverge over whether benevolence as a motivator ought to serve as a partner for public justice. Thirdly, CEL in general opposes CST''s emphasis on social justice that calls upon institutions to be proactive in helping citizens and groups to become active participants in the economy. We conclude our essay by summarizing our discoveries and by suggesting areas for further dialogue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 304-317 [Access article in PDF] Sovereign Love and Atomism in Racine's Bérénice Ellen Mcclure ALTHOUGH CRITICS HAVE NOTED links between the new science of the seventeenth century and the works of La Fontaine and Molière, 1 a similar influence of Epicureanism or even Cartesianism upon French classical tragedy is harder to trace. No two areas of seventeenth-century cultural life would seem farther apart (...) than the emerging science, with its rejection of Aristotelian categories as inadequate to experienced reality, and classical French tragedy, with its antimaterialism and claims to universal truth often bolstered by references to none other than Aristotle himself. Yet René Pintard reminds us that the 1660s and 1670s—the period when many of the tragedies we regard as "classical" were written—saw a strong renewal of interest in the philosophies articulated in the first half of the century. 2 So widespread was this interest that Pierre Gassendi's friend and follower Bernier was able to publish an edition and translation of the philosopher's works in 1674-1675 which proved to be a resounding success. It is hard to believe that the much-discussed new science somehow missed writers of tragedies, especially given the extensive contacts between Molière, La Fontaine and Racine.In this article, I demonstrate this influence by positing that Racine's play Bérénice, ostensibly a reworking of a well-known love story that Corneille was also producing on the Paris stage at the same time, is in part a reflection on the pressing question of what holds the universe together. Through his exploration of the possibility of satisfactory love between two independent sovereigns, Racine explores issues that the revival of Epicureanism had brought into the philosophical foreground. This reading of the play brings into focus the incredibly [End Page 304] important, yet too-often neglected, 3 role of Antiochus, the character whom Racine invented for his version of the play. I will show that his tragic in-betweenness offers a necessary alternative to Titus' and Bérénice's valorization of self-contained sovereignty. I Before embarking on a close reading of the play itself, however, I would like to offer a brief survey of the debate to which I believe Racine refers. Both Michel Foucault and Timothy Reiss have identified the seventeenth century as a transitional period between the age of correspondences exemplified in Aristotelian philosophy and the age of representation and quantification that characterized eighteenth-century thought. 4 This transition, however, was far from smooth, as philosophers sought to articulate a universe whose separate and radically de-hierarchized elements remained somehow joined together.For most seventeenth-century philosophers, the sacrifice of Aristotelian categories and scholasticism in no way lessened the imperative for a sense of divine order and causation. Gassendi's often self-contradictory efforts to reconcile Epicurus and Christianity provide perhaps the most striking example of this transitional struggle. The atomism posited by Epicurus through Lucretius posed particular difficulties for a Christian worldview. A world governed by the chance interactions of atoms eliminates any sense that things happen for a purpose; God cannot be the benevolent author and overseer of the universe. Gassendi's equal respect for atomism and for Christianity should be read as evidence of the profound struggle between separateness and interconnection (or, as Gassendi would call it, harmony) taking place during this period. 5 For, as Bloch points out, although Gassendi partially reconciled the demands of the two systems by situating atoms in an uncreated, infinite, and contiguous space and time, he continued to hold to the profoundly troubling existence of the void in the universe. Once again, the chief objection to the void implicit in atomism was religious, since if God is everywhere, the void cannot exist, and likewise, God cannot create nothing. The revival of stoicism supplied instead a vision of the universe ultimately comprised and held together by an ethereal pneuma that some neo-Stoics did not hesitate to identify as a sort of divine presence. 6 Descartes himself made heroic attempts, in his Principes... (shrink)

A common theme in twentieth century Christian ethics was that the agapic love for the neighbor that Jesus commands is to be understood as gratuitous benevolence, and that love, so understood, is in tension with justice. The author argues that this is a misinterpretation of Jesus’ love command, and that when agapic love is rightly understood, there is no conflict between love and justice. Jesus’ second love command is a quotation from Leviticus 19. When (...) we look at the context of the command in Leviticus, we see that doing justice is not pitted against love but is instead an example of love. The author concludes by proposing that agapic love be understood as care rather than gratuitous benevolence. When we care about someone, we see to it that they are treated justly. (shrink)

In the Doctrine of Virtue Kant stipulates that ‘Love is a matter of feeling, not of willing . . . so a duty to love is an absurdity.’ Nonetheless, in the same work Kant claims that we have duties of love to other human beings. According to Kant, the kind of love which is commanded by duty is practical love. This paper defends the view that the duty of practical love articulated in the Doctrine (...) of Virtue is distinct from the duty of beneficence and best understood as a duty of self-transformation, which agents observe by cultivating a benevolent disposition and practical beneficent desires. (shrink)

Gratitude is usually conceived as a uniquely appropriate response to goodwill. A grateful person is bound to reward an act of goodwill in some appropriately proportionate way. I argue that goodwill, when interpreted as love, should require no reward. Consequently, the idea of gratitude as a proportionate response to love is not intelligible. However, goodwill can also be understood merely as a disinterested concern. Such forms of goodwill are involved in reciprocal relationships. But gratitude has no place in (...) these relationships either. (shrink)

Christian teaching about creation out of nothing appears to evacuate creatures of intrinsic worth. A theological‐spiritual response to this anxiety outlines the elements of the doctrine: understanding creation requires the direction of intelligence by divine instruction; God alone is cause of being to other beings, by his power, will and goodness; the act of creation is ineffable, instantaneous, without movement, supereminent, and without material cause; created things have being by divine gift; the relation of creator and creatures is mixed, the (...) creator not being constituted by creatures. Does this entail a metaphysics of creaturely privation in which creatures are permanently indigent? The creator is benevolent and, with no self‐interest, gives life, and so moves creatures to activity that the non‐reciprocal character of the creator‐creature relation is not malign but the principle of creaturely perfection. (shrink)

According to a popular view charity is reduced to mercy and benevolence. Through an exploration of traditional, Christian, charitable acts -- both corporeal and spiritual in nature -- I set out to develop an alternative view. Why, for example, is the simple act of laying the dead to rest considered an act of charity? Feelings of pity and commiseration offer an insufficiently firm basis for justifying such an attribution. By adopting the burial of the dead as a sort of touchstone, (...) I suggest that the indigent other finds him- or herself in need of charity at the precise moment that he or she loses the ability to react as a person. Sometimes being charitable comes to expression in relinquishing one’s demands that the other behave as morally responsible people ought to behave. Charity involves the question of how to bear the other’s ”transcendence’. (shrink)

This essay examines the place of love in grief, staging a relation between a mourner and her lover. Taking as its point of departure Freud's observation that mourning leads to a ‘loss of the capacity to love’, it considers the effects bereavement might have on the bereaved's relations with those that love them, and the possibilities, pitfalls and ethics of care in such a context. This is explored largely through a reading of Roland Barthes's late work, as (...) well as ideas drawn from Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Sara Ahmed, Hamlet and personal observation. Love and care are thought through alongside notions of ‘tact’, ‘benevolence’ and ‘parrying against reduction’ in late Barthes. (shrink)

Consider this propositional function which includes the dyadic predicate “loves”: “X does not love Y unless Y loves X” (or “if Y does not love X”). This function may be treated in four ways. (1) If universally quantified, it states a (purported) conceptual truth about “love” or the nature or essence of love. Love is necessarily reciprocal. (2) If universally quantified, it may alternatively be a nomological generalization stating an empirical or factual truth about human (...) nature, i.e., about a pattern of reciprocity that occurs among people who are independently identified as lovers. (3) If instantiated with constants, it is an empirical proposition about the attitudes or behaviors of particular individuals (a, b, c). Finally, (4) the function may be treated axiologically; it expresses a normative judgment about what love ought to be or what lovers ought to feel or do. Other propositional functions may be constructed for the constancy, exclusivity, and benevolence of love. This essay investigates the implications of these understandings of the function and how they are logically related to each other. (shrink)

유학의 도덕철학은 혈연에 기반을 둔 효를 도덕성의 출발점으로 한다. 이 특징으로 인해 유학의 도덕철학은 두 가지 질문을 필연적으로 수반할 수 밖에 없다. 첫째, 과연 사적 관계의 덕목인 효에서 보편적 도덕원리가 생성되고 함양될 수 있는가? 둘째, 사적 관계의 덕목인 효와 공공성 혹은 보편적 도덕원리가 충돌한다면, 과연 양자 중 어느 것을 선택하는 것이 옳은가? 이 두 가지 질문은 상호 긴밀하게 연결되어 있다.BR 이 논문에서는 둘째 문제에 집중하고자 한다. 이를 위해 주희가 선진유학에서 논의된 이 문제를 인(仁)에 대한 체용론(體用論)적 해석을 통해 해결해가는 과정을 분석할 (...) 것이다. 주희의 인(仁)과 애(愛)를 체용론으로 해석하는 이론적 특징은 세 가지 측면에서 접근할 필요가 있다. 첫째, 주희의 체용론이 선진유학의 ‘효(孝)와 사회적 규범[義]이 충돌할 경우 효라는 사적 관계가 우선하는가, 아니면 사회적 규범이 우선하는가?’라는 주제와 어떤 연관성을 가지고 있는가? 둘째, 선진유학 시기 여러 학파의 사상가들은 유학의 도덕이론이 사적 관계에 치우쳤다고 비판했는데, 주희의 체용론은 이에 맞서 유학의 논리를 옹호할 수 있는가? 셋째, 주희의 체용론이 주희 당대의 도덕성-인(仁)에 대한 여러 이론가들의 논의에 대해 어떤 입장을 보여주고 있는가? (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)

We seek to bring Black bodies and lives into full view within the enterprise of Indigenous health research to interrogate the unquestioned good that is taken to characterize contemporary Indigenous health research. We articulate a Black bioethics that is not premised upon a false logic of beneficence, rather we think through a Black bioethics premised upon an unconditional love for the Black body. We achieve this by examining the accounts of two Black mothers, fictional and factual rendering visible the (...) racial violence Black bodies have been subjected to. We call for a Black bioethics that reimagines the Black body as beautiful and belonging—to both someone and somewhere. (shrink)

The view that charity consists in an expansion of existing interpersonal relations is rather misleading. We need to see it as a radical transformation, of existing relations, even if this suspension is only temporary. In charity we see a person as someone who is no longer capable of reacting appropriately. Someone who is no longer capable of behaving as a „person‟ nevertheless continues to be a person. She does not lose her personal sanctity or dignity even if she has lost (...) a practical grasp on controlling and guiding the course of her life. Today we often tend to reduce charity to a compassionate form of helping, or aid-giving, such as when materials, doctors and psychologists are sent to regions that are torn apart by war or famine. It is much easier to understand charity when it can be measured against the reduction of physical and emotional distress. It is much more difficult to understand charity in cases where aid proves to be powerless, when there is no measurable return or change that is brought about. While ethics cannot teach us what to do once compassion, benevolence and forgiveness fail to make any difference, prayer can help us to move forward. Praying for others, more specifically, the long-suffering involved in prayer, is a particularly important form of charity. It has the power to lift us above our inability to do anything helpful. We pray at the very moment when we experience our powerlessness to help. (shrink)