Beyond the Four Loves

Abstract

By looking at C.S. Lewis's book The Four Loves through the critical lens of the work of Julia Kristeva, this paper considers how love can be defined and delimited through language and discourse, and how such limitations may be broken down. It examines how Lewis constructs a framework around which various loves are valorized, and how this leads to sexuality and physicality being pushed to the margins—leaving the ‘higher’ loves, such as friendship, safe and manageable. Kristeva's work is used to highlight the way in which Lewis treats the physical and the sexual as ‘abject’, and to explore some of the broader implications that this has in respect of language, culture and gender. Her understanding of love, with its roots in the psychoanalytic tradition, challenges Lewis by insisting on the connection between love, language and the body—and therefore suggests ways in which discourses about love, such as those offered by Lewis, can be disrupted and challenged, enabling us to move beyond The Four Loves towards a multiplicity of loves.     

SELF‐SACRIFICE TO SAVE THE LIFE OF ANOTHER IN JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS1

Although both the Jewish and Christian traditions permit and even valorize self‐sacrificial death for the sake of God (martyrdom), and for other people, they diverge on the issue of self‐sacrificial death for the sake of a single individual. The Jewish tradition prohibits such self‐sacrifice on the basis of the principles that (1) God owns the body and that (2) one cannot exchange one's life for another's. Christian ethics, in contrast, permits sacrificing one's life to save a single person based on the model of Christ's self‐sacrificial love. This ethical disagreement exposes a fundamental theological disagreement between the two traditions concerning what constitutes the imago Dei.     

SHOULD MARITAL RELATIONS BE NON‐HIERARCHICAL?

The paper explores an egalitarian norm widely accepted today, which I call the Marital Non‐Hierarchy Standard. According to this standard, marital relationships should be non‐hierarchical; neither partner may be more dominant than the other. The Marital Non‐Hierarchy Standard is exceptional: in almost all associations, including many financial, professional, educational and recreational ones, in almost all spheres of life, some hierarchies, within certain limits, are widely believed to be morally legitimate. I argue that in marital relations, too, some hierarchies should be accepted as morally legitimate. It might be argued that marital relations should be loving, and love requires that lovers will have the same degree of power. However, contemporary analyses of love show that love is consistent with (some) hierarchies. It might also be argued that justice requires that lovers will have equal power. However, theories of distributive justice such as Rawls's, Sen's, Dworkin's, and almost all others allow some marital hierarchies. Thus, both the love requirement and the justice requirement allow some hierarchical marital relationships and conflict with the Marital Non‐Hierarchy Standard. Until other justifications for this standard are presented, it is unclear why it should be endorsed.     

‘The Extremely Difficult Realization That Something Other Than Oneself Is Real’: Iris Murdoch on Love and Moral Agency

Abstract: In the last few years, there has been a revival of interest in the philosophy of Iris Murdoch. Despite this revival, however, certain aspects of Murdoch's views remain poorly understood, including her account of a concept that she famously described as ‘central’ to moral philosophy—i.e., love. In this paper, I argue that the concept of love is essential to any adequate understanding of Murdoch's work but that recent attempts by Kieran Setiya and David Velleman to assimilate Murdoch's account of love to neo‐Aristotelian or neo‐Kantian theories of moral agency are misconceived. We will not understand what Murdoch is trying to do unless we understand her position as a radical alternative to such theories. Here, I present a reading of Murdoch's account of love as a form of Platonic eros directed toward two objects: the Good and the particular individual. It is in navigating the tension between these two objects that we find ourselves facing what Murdoch famously described as ‘the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real’. When properly understood, Murdoch's account of love opens up conceptual space for an alternative approach to some of the central questions in contemporary moral theory.     

What Love Is Not: Lessons from Martin Luther King,Jr.

Focusing on the concept and practice of love sheds light on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s negative political theology. King was fundamentally concerned with what love is not, and it is this negation that colors his political vision. I do not take King’s political theology to be either primarily derivative of American liberal Protestantism or primarily derivative of folk African American religion, or of some syncretism of these. Rather, I take King to be participating in a tradition of negative theology that pairs the critique of idolatry with attention outward and inward, to the marginalized and to spiritual life.     

The Erotic and the Mystical in Postmodernity

Abstract

There has always been a close connection between divine and erotic love in the Western mystical tradition, from the Pseudo-Dionysius to St John of the Cross, and it is found also in poets such as John Donne and George Herbert. It is a tradition returned to in Ron Hansen's novel Mariette in Ecstasy (1991) in which Mariette, though banished from her convent, remains a stigmatic and Christ's ‘lover’. The essay concludes with a brief review of the postmodernity that entertains both the erotic—dangerous sex—and the love of God in true hospitality.     

The Eschatical Perfection of the World in God

This article introduces the distinction between pre‐eschatical and eschatical horizons as the basis for the criteria of Christian ‘future‐talk’. Whereas pre‐eschatic horizons are constituted by everyday experience on the logic of extrapolation, eschatical horizons are constituted by the experience of the self‐disclosure of the triune God as the ultimate, as the eschatoi. Different types of concepts in the tradition to grasp the future have to be valued as pre‐eschatical. However, eternity has to be identified eschatically with the inner‐trinitarian relationships of the love and life of the triune God. The ultimate future of human beings consists in becoming included in the inner‐trinitarian relationships in a direct manner. The natural world will also partake, but to an unknown extent.     

THE HISTORICAL CONNECTION BETWEEN THE GOLDEN RULE AND THE SECOND GREATEST LOVE COMMAND

The golden rule, perhaps the most recognizable moral maxim in Western culture, is an inadequate basis for morality. In light of its flaws as a precept and its apparent lack of moral content, it is initially perplexing that the historic Judeo‐Christian tradition has often linked the golden rule with the second greatest command to love one's neighbor as oneself. However, after examining the presuppositions behind this link and investigating the biblical context of these sayings, it is clear that the Judeo‐Christian tradition is justified in making this connection. Although the golden rule and the love command should not be conflated and their distinctions should not be abandoned, the biblical intention of the golden rule can only be understood and properly practiced in connection with the love command.     

AQUINAS'S ARGUMENT AGAINST SELF-HATRED

Aquinas's argument against the possibility of genuine self‐hatred runs counter to modern intuitions about self‐hatred as an explanatorily central notion in psychology, and as an effect of alienation. Aquinas's argument does not deny that persons experience hatred for themselves. It can be read either as the claim that the self‐hater mistakes what she feels toward herself as hatred, or that, though she hates what she believes is her “self,” she actually hates only traits of herself. I argue that the argument fails on both readings. The first reading entails that all passions are really self‐love, and so is incompatible with Aquinas's own “cognitivist” view of what it is that distinguishes specific passions in experience. The second reading entails that persons have no phenomenal access to “self,” rendering self‐reference—how it is that the self can be an intentional object of conscious mental states—a mystery. Augustine's claim, which Aquinas accepts on authority, that all sin originates in inordinate self‐love seems to entail the impossibility of genuine self‐hatred because both thinkers fail to distinguish between two distinct forms of self‐love: amor concupiscentiae and amor benevolentiae.     

THE LOVE RACKET: DEFINING LOVE AND AGAPEFOR THE LOVE‐AND‐SCIENCE RESEARCH PROGRAM

Abstract. 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.     

Adolescent narcissism and interpersonal trust: A cross‐lagged study

In recent years, narcissism has been attracting considerable interest by researchers because of its enigmatic constructs. To enhance our understanding of narcissists’ psychosocial functioning, considering the relationship between narcissism and interpersonal trust is crucial. This study aimed to investigate how narcissistic admiration and rivalry are associated with interpersonal trust. To gain a more nuanced understanding, a cross‐lagged design was conducted at two time points that were six months apart. In total, 357 adolescents (M_age = 16.33 years) completed the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ) and the Interpersonal Trust Scale. The results showed that narcissistic admiration positively predicted interpersonal trust while narcissistic rivalry negatively predicted interpersonal trust at the second time point. However, interpersonal trust did not predict subsequent levels of narcissistic admiration and rivalry. These findings enhanced our understanding by showing that narcissistic admiration and rivalry have different effects on interpersonal trust, and that they remain relatively stable during a six‐month period.     

With a Sword Pointing to the East,West, South,and North

In his In Defense of War, Nigel Biggar argues for an account of war based in Christian love. In the process, he opposes Christian pacifists, the British Left, liberal accounts of just‐war, and accounts of just‐war based on self‐defense. Although framed in terms of love, his account pivots around punishment, which is further explicated by a thorough review of the recent war in Iraq, the invasion of which he deems justified. This review compares Biggar's monograph to prior iterations of a love‐based approach to just war by Paul Ramsey and Oliver O'Donovan. Biggar's contributions regarding love, punishment, and policy analysis are recognized, as well as his attempt to carry on the tradition of the ‘mournful warrior’. As a model for the kind of scrutiny that Christian ethicists should bring to bear on serious social issues, Biggar's monograph is excellent. However, the political stance and – largely implicit and unstated – political theology operating behind this book are, in the end, disconcerting.     

New Foundations for Imperative Logic I: Logical Connectives,Consistency, and Quantifiers*

Imperatives cannot be true or false, so they are shunned by logicians. And yet imperatives can be combined by logical connectives: “kiss me and hug me” is the conjunction of “kiss me” with “hug me”. This example may suggest that declarative and imperative logic are isomorphic: just as the conjunction of two declaratives is true exactly if both conjuncts are true, the conjunction of two imperatives is satisfied exactly if both conjuncts are satisfied—what more is there to say? Much more, I argue. “If you love me, kiss me”, a conditional imperative, mixes a declarative antecedent (“you love me”) with an imperative consequent (“kiss me”); it is satisfied if you love and kiss me, violated if you love but don't kiss me, and avoided if you don't love me. So we need a logic of three‐valued imperatives which mixes declaratives with imperatives. I develop such a logic.     

Poaching,promiscuity, and deceit: Combatting mating rivalry in same‐sex friendships

If humans faced recurrently over evolutionary history the adaptive problem of competition with same‐sex friends for mates, they may have evolved psychological mechanisms designed to prevent and combat mating rivalry with same‐sex friends. Four studies were conducted to test hypotheses about the design of these mechanisms. In Studies 1 and 2 (N= 406 and N= 342, respectively) we found that, as predicted, people experience more upset in response to imagined rivalry from a friend than from a stranger. In Study 3 (N= 455), in which a between‐subjects design was utilized, we found that women's, but not men's, willingness to become friends with a member of the same sex is lower when the person is described as sexually promiscuous. In Study 4 (N= 169) we found that people report being deceived by friends about mating rivalry more often than they themselves report engaging in deceit about rivalry, and women more than men deceive each other about how sexually experienced and promiscuous they are. Discussion addresses implications of the findings and the use of an evolutionary approach for understanding conflict in same‐sex friendship.     

A SACRAMENTAL JOURNEY TO THE BEATIFIC VISION: THE INTELLECTUALISM OF PIERRE ROUSSELOT1

This essay traces the intellectualist position of Pierre Rousselot (1878–1915) as he developed it in reaction to neo‐Thomist scholasticism, and argues that at the heart of Rousselot's approach lay a sacramental ontology. Rousselot's 1908 dissertations on St. Thomas's intellectualism and on love in the Middle Ages are best understood in the context of the 1907 condemnations of Modernism. Rousselot questioned the firmly entrenched rationalist approach of the neo‐Thomist revival. While continuing in the Thomist intellectualist tradition, he argued for a chastened epistemology in which the intellect aimed beyond discursive knowledge at union with God. The implication, for Rousselot, was that in its current condition, the human intellect could arrive at knowledge only in an indirect fashion. Accepting Thomas's view of the unity between love of desire and love of friendship, Rousselot emphasized the continuity between nature and the supernatural. Furthermore, his insistence that rational judgements of credibility were powerless without corresponding ‘eyes of faith’ implied a sacramental view of the natural order as pointing to the supernatural end of the beatific vision. His moderated intellectualism, with its implied sacramental ontology, would prove an attractive paradigm for the later movement of nouvelle théologie.     

Blurring the Dichotomy of Good and Evil: The Idiosyncratic Helping Strategies Associated with Unmitigated‐Agentic and Unmitigated‐Communal Personalities

We theorized that unmitigated‐agentic personality constructs (UAPs)—prioritizing 'getting ahead’ over 'getting along’—and unmitigated‐communal personality constructs (UCPs)—prioritizing getting along over getting ahead—are associated with distinct affect‐regulatory helping strategies. In Study 1 (N = 179), UAPs, on average, related to greater negative‐affect versus positive‐affect induction helping tactics. In two experiments, UAPs, on average, related to a greater likelihood of selecting anger‐inducing versus love‐inducing or sadness‐inducing songs to help a target overcome a breakup (Study 2; N = 313) and greater selection of anger‐inducing and hubris‐inducing messages versus authentic‐pride‐inducing and love‐inducing messages to help a teammate struggling in a game (Study 3; N = 246). UCPs manifested the opposite patterns. Generally, these associations corresponded with helping‐strategy utility beliefs and were robust to moderators of helping target (self or other; Study 2) or altruistic versus selfish motives (Study 3). Study 4 (N = 205) provided some evidence of ecological validity in contexts of recalled everyday helping. Associations between personality constructs and relative helping strategies were about moderate in size (rs ~ .20) across these four studies. Findings suggest that UAPs are associated with helping strategies believed to promote ‘contemptuous’ self‐enhancement relative to ‘innocuous’ self‐enhancement and self‐transcendence, and vice versa for UCPs. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

The contemporary development of a Neo‐Confucian epistemology

Until recently epistemology in the Western sense was never a central issue in Chinese philosophy. Contemporary Chinese neo‐Confucian philosophers, however, realize that in order to reconstruct some of the important traditional philosophical insights and make them meaningful in the present time, certain methodological and epistemological considerations are indispensable. The present paper undertakes to examine some of these efforts. Since most neo‐Confucian philosophers today have been influenced by Hsiung Shih‐li, in one way or another, his epistemological theory is presented first. Then the further development of a neo‐Confucian epistemological system in Mou Tsung‐san's thought is discussed. Hsiung Shih‐li has made an important distinction between what he calls the hsing‐ehih and the liang‐chih. The former may be translated as the original wisdom and is what we rely upon to grasp ontological reality; the latter may be translated as the measuring wisdom and includes both our commonsensical and scientific ways of understanding which postulate a real, external world. A dialectical relation holds between the two. Mou Tsung‐san further develops a comprehensive epistemological system which confirms the basic insights of Hsiung Shih‐li. He has attempted a synthesis of the philosophical insights which he learns from Kant in the West and the Confucian tradition in China.