Love of Self as the Condition for a Gift of Self in Aquinas

• Authors: Flood Anthony T.
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The author attempts to contribute to the debate about the value of Aquinas’s account of love to philosophical personalism. He argues that to understand adequately Aquinas’s account of love in general and the aspect of the gift of self in particular, we must appreciate the importance of his account of appropriate self-love; moreover, self-love and love as a gift of self constitute two foundational poles on which we should base any development of a theory of love within Thomistic personalism. First, the author offers brief overviews of Wojtyla’s concept of love as a gift of self and Waldstein’s comparative study of Wojtyla and Aquinas on this issue. Second, he examines Aquinas’s notion of self-love, distinguishing between the good and bad kinds of self-love. Finally, he shows how self-love actualized in self-friendship creates the possibility for friendship with others.

Keywords

EN

Aquinas; Wojtyla; Waldstein; Thomistic personalism; philosophical personalism; love; self-gift; self-love; self-friendship; friendship

• Publisher: International Étienne Gilson Society
• Journal: Studia Gilsoniana
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 419-435

Dates

published

2018-09

Contributors

author

Flood Anthony T.

• North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA

References

• Aquinas, Thomas. Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, translated by C. I. Litzinger, O.P. Chicago, Ill.: Henry Regnery Company, 1964.
• Aquinas, Thomas. On Love and Charity: Readings from the “Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard,” translated by Peter Kwasniewki, Thomas Bolin, O.S.B., and Joseph Bolin. Washington, D.C: Catholic University of America Press, 2008.
• Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica, translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York, NY: Benziger Brothers, 1948.
• Crosby, John. The Selfhood of the Human Person. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press of America, 1996.
• Flood, Anthony T. “Aquinas on Subjectivity: A Response to Crosby.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 69–83.
• Gallagher, David. “The Desire for Beatitude and the Love of Friendship in Thomas Aquinas.”Mediaeval Studies 58 (1996): 1–47.
• Hayden, R. Mary. “The Paradox of Aquinas’s Altruism: From Self-Love to Love of Others.”Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 63 (1989): 72–83.
• John Paul II. Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, translation, introduction, and index by Michael Waldstein. Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006.
• Osborne, Thomas M. The Love of Self and the Love of God in Thirteenth-Century Ethics. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.
• Salas, Elizabeth. “Person and Gift According to Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 99–124.
• Waldstein, Michael. “John Paul II and St. Thomas on Love and the Trinity.” Anthropotes 18 (2002): 113–38 (first part) and 269–86 (second part).
• Wojtyla, Karol. Love and Responsibility, translated by H. T. Willetts. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1981.

Notes

EN

SELECTED PAPERS OF THE SOCIETY FOR THOMISTIC PERSONALISM Guest Editor of the Issue: R. Mary Hayden Lemmons

Identifiers

ISSN

2577–0314

ISSN

2300–0066

DOI

10.26385/SG.070320