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Today, friendship, love and sexuality are mostly viewed as private, personal and informal relations. In the mediaeval and early modern period, just like in ancient times, this was different. The classical philosophy of friendship (Aristotle) included both friendship and love in the concept of philia. It was also linked to an argument about the virtues needed to become an excellent member of the city state. Thus, close relations were not only thought to be a matter of pleasant gatherings in privacy, but just as much a matter of ethics and politics.What, then, happened to the classical ideas of close relations when they were transmitted to philosophers, clerical and monastic thinkers, state officials or other people in the medieval and early modern period? To what extent did friendship transcend the distinctions between private and public that then existed? How were close relations shaped in practice? Did dialogues with close friends help to contribute to the process of subject-formation in the Renaissance and Enlightenment? To what degree did institutions of power or individual thinkers find it necessary to caution against friendship or love and sexuality?
Thirty-five years ago Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue established virtue ethics as a major challenger to competing visions of morality, but there is still considerable disagreement concerning which version of virtue ethics provides the best approach. The Supremacy of Love describes and advocates an agape-centered vision of Aristotelian virtue ethics that portrays love as the most important moral virtue, and the goals of love as a partial constituent of every genuine virtue. This structural improvement to Aristotelian virtue ethics—found originally in the ethics of Thomas Aquinas—enables this account to address several controversial topics in contemporary virtue ethics, including why the virtues cannot be used badly, in what sense is there a unity between the virtues, how the virtues benefit the virtuous person, and how virtues provide action guidance. Eric J. Silverman demonstrates how and why a distinctly love-centered approach to virtue ethics should make the view widely attractive in comparison to alternative accounts of virtue ethics, duty based deontological theories, as well as results-based consequentialist views.
This well-researched and accessible book explores the experience of unrequited love in light of the biblical witness to God's love for humanity.
Winner of the 2008 Grawemeyer Award in Religion This long-awaited book by one of American Christianity's foremost ethicists proposes a framework for sexual ethics whereby justice is the criterion for all loving, including love that is related to sexual activity and relationships. It begins with historical and cross-cultural explorations, then addresses the large questions of embodiment, gender, and sexuality, and finally delineates the justice framework for sexual ethics. Though Just Love's particular focus is Christian sexual ethics, Farley's framework is broad enough to have relevance for multiple traditions. Also covered are specific issues in sexual ethics, including same-sex relationships, marriage and family, divorce and second marriage.
Although the two great commandments to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves are central to Christianity, few theologians or spiritual writers have undertaken an extensive account of the meaning and forms of these loves. Most accounts, in fact, make love of God and love of self either impossible or immoral. Integrating these two commandments, Edward Vacek, SJ, develops an original account of love as the theological foundation for Christian ethics. Vacek criticizes common understandings of agape, eros, and philia, examining the arguments of Aquinas, Nygren, Outka, Rahner, Scheler, and other theologians and philosophers. He defines love as an emotional, affirmative participation in the beloved's real and ideal goodness, and he extends this definition to the love between God and self. Vacek proposes that the heart of Christian moral life is loving cooperation with God in a mutually perfecting friendship.
The goal of the present study unfolds in the following four ways. First, in analyzing Pauline writings (primarily Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians) it can be demonstrated that the Apostle can be described as an ethicist. The hypothesis operative here is that in the sources, despite their occasional and situational character and their epistolary form, one can recognize a coherent system of grounds for behavior (i.e., ethics). I call this recognizable ethics “implicit ethics.” Secondly, this work pursues an explicit ethical interpretation of Paul’s writings. What does it mean to read these texts through an ethical lens? I here offer an approach with which one can decipher the ethical content of a historical text. This methodology for ethical analysis (so called ‘organon’) is not only applicable to Paul’s writings, but can also provide an impetus for the ethical interpretation of other NT texts and even for the literature of early Christianity and the Bible more generally. The variety of forms and the complexity of the reflection in Paul’s letters can, in a third point, enrich the discourse of theological ethics. It will be seen, that the rationale for his ethics is pluralistic and simply cannot be described in a one-sided manner as simply being a “deontological ethics of norms.” Along these lines, a fourth element is found in stimulating interdisciplinary debates concerning ethics. If one is able to examine and describe the norms and grounds of justification in Biblical ethics using the language and forms of description utilized in modern ethical theory, biblical ethics could once again gain a voice that can be taken seriously in the modern discussion of values. The point is not to have Scripture per se join the discussion but for these texts to function as a “laboratory” (Paul Ricoeur) in which ethical speech and thought relevant for contemporary concerns can be inspired and encouraged. In a concluding chapter this dialogue is already started by describing specific aspects of Pauline ethics against the background or moral philosophical debate, e.g. “bodily ethics – beyond hedonism”, “ethics of relinquishing – beyond contractual ethics” or “ethics of love beyond Eudaimonian ethics”.
At the heart of Christian ethics is the biblical commandment to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself. But what is the meaning of love? Scholars have wrestled with this question since the recording of the Christian gospels, and in recent decades teachers and students of Christian ethics have engaged in vigorous debates about appropriate interpretations and implications of this critical norm. In Love and Christian Ethics, nearly two dozen leading experts analyze and assess the meaning of love from a wide range of perspectives. Chapters are organized into three areas: influential sources and exponents of Western Christian thought about the ethical significance of love, perennial theoretical questions attending that consideration, and the implications of Christian love for important social realities. Contributors bring a richness of thought and experience to deliver unprecedentedly broad and rigorous analysis of this central tenet of Christian ethics and faith. William Werpehowski provides an afterword on future trajectories for this research. Love and Christian Ethics is sure to become a benchmark resource in the field.
Feminist icon bell hooks reminds us of the full spectrum of feeling we spend in love through her inspiring collection of love poetry, with a new introduction by Cole Arthur Riley, author of Black Liturgies. Written from the heart, When Angels Speak of Love is a book of fifty love poems by bell hooks, one our most beloved public intellectuals, and author of over twenty books, including the bestselling All About Love. Poem after poem, hooks challenges our views and experiences with love—tracing the links between seduction and surrender, the intensity of desire, and the anguish of death. “Love must clean house, choose memories to keep, and memories to let go,” she writes. These verses are expansive yet accessible—encompassing romantic love, to love of family, friends, or oneself. In any iteration, these poems remind us of both the beauty and possibility of love.
"If you want to learn about or sort out the confusing ethical issues that arise when clients are working in profound states of consciousness, this book provides unique help to volunteer and professional caregivers (therapists, bodyworkers, hospice volunteers, ministers, etc.) Many books have been written on ethics, but this is one of the few that addresses the ethical challenges inherent in doing spiritual or transpersonal healing work or work that involves profound experiences. Thousands of copies of this book have been sold to schools and practitioners. As a textbook or personal resource, The Ethics of Caring clarifies the counter-transference and transference issues in seven life areas including love, truth, insight, and oneness as well as the more well-known areas of ethical issues: money, sex, and power."--Pub. website.
The Ethics of Love reads the entire output of James Joyce, from Chamber Music to Finnegans Wake, in the perspective of the Irish author's wish to celebrate secular love as the all-pervasive power that can be experienced in a "post-metaphysical" world. Boysen grounds his outstanding essay on the table-turning thesis that, far from abolishing the power of love, the "death of God," this essential staple of twentieth century continental philosophy, makes mutual love all the more necessary to us; it warrants, in fact, the universality of our encounter with the Other. -- Gian Balsamo, author of Joyce's Messianism: Dante, Negative Existence, and the Messianic Self (2005) and Rituals of Literature: Joyce, Dante, Aquinas, and the Tradition of Christian Epics (2004) *** An avid student of literature and thought from Antiquity over the Middle Ages and Renaissance down to the present, Dr. Benjamin Boysen, in The Ethics of Love, brings stupendous erudition to bear, with immense verve, on the entirety of the great Dubliner's creative works and critical utterances. The "essay," a courageous exercise on a scale that honors its subject, brings a parade of original and authoritative insights, as well as constructive adaptations of other scholars' views. Virtually half of Boysen's hefty volume is devoted to the Wake, and in his intensity and meticulousness as an informed analyst, Boysen proves to surpass himself in his amazing mastery of Joyce's difficult final masterpiece. The intellectual power of Boysen's book on the complex ethics of love in Joyce significantly advances our understanding of why Joyce has become canonical in world literature. It also signals the appearance of a young rising star in comparative literary studies. -- Gerald Gillespie, former president of International Comparative Literature Assn. and author of Proust, Mann, Joyce in the Modernist Context (2010) and Echoland: Readings from Humanism to Postmodernism (2005) (Series: University of Southern Denmark Studies in Literature - Vol. 59) *** "The study will prove interesting to seasoned Joyceans and new readers alike, as it includes both theoretical chapters and persuasive individual readings of Joyce, and offers an original way of unifying Joyce's work. Highly recommended." - Choice, Vol. 51, No. 03, November 2013