In Christian literature (particularly in popular theological publications, on Christian web sites, and also in homilies) the threefold differentiation of love, referring to the ancient Greek linguistic reality, frequently appears: it is said that the lowest, self-interested love corresponds to the Greek term of eros, the higher love based on mutual sympathy corresponds to the term philia, and the highest, selfless, unconditional love was allegedly called agape by the ancient Greeks. The article refutes this myth and presents the Greek words of “love“ and “to love“ as they were used by non-Christian writers and the Church Fathers. The subsequent article will compare these findings with the situation in the Septuagint and the New Testament.
In 2021 was published a unique monograph on the interpretation of the evocation of Ignatius of Antioch, “My Eros”, presenting research from the beginning of Christianity (the letters come from the beginning of the 2nd century) to our times. It is a book by Krzysztof Abucewicz entitled The Crucified “Eros” of Ignatius of Antioch (Katowice 2021, 676 pages). The book is unique due to the wide scope of research and the extremely high competency of its author. The extensive amount of the work put into the research is awe-inspiring. The aim of the article is to show the content and main qualities of the book and to critically analyze of the conclusions drawn by Krzysztof Abucewicz. This article tries to clarify answers to the question about the possibility of establishing unequivocal conclusions, which researchers of history, literature and theology come to, regarding the interpretation of the evocation of Ignatius of Antioch. In this sense, the article is polemical in nature, aimed at encouraging theologians to read the discussed monograph and use it in their own theological research.
The starting point of this paper is represented by the research carried out by the study group of Social-One (Iorio, 2014; 2015; Araújo et al., 2015; Araújo et al., 2016; Martins, Cataldi, 2016), which recognised a public dimension and not only the intimate and personal dimension of love in today’s society. Taking as a reference point the work of Luc Boltanski, L’amour et la justice comme competences (1990), the research of the study group has proposed to widen the circle of sharing to go beyond the input from classic sociologists with a new conceptual category of love linked to agape. This path has actually already been begun by some well-known scholars – including Simmel (1907; 1921; 1989; 2001), Sorokin (1954), Giddens (1992), Luhman (1987) and Honneth (1990) – on the shoulders of whom it has already been possible to see the historical path of the transformation of the concept. However, the “agape” action brings something new to the social sciences: agape, in fact, introduces emerging characteristics, which at the same time, is linked to and transcends the way love is understood as “eros” and “philia”, defining itself as a key to gaining insight into a primarily empirical social reality, based on unconditional love of one’s neighbour. On this basis, the paper traces the path that the concept of love has had in the history of sociological thought, enlightening its public and social characters and proposing a research project based on love as agape.
PL
Punktem wyjścia niniejszego artykułu są badania przeprowadzone przez grupę badawczą Social-One (Iorio, 2014; 2015; Araújo i in., 2015; Araújo i in., 2016; Martins, Cataldi, 2016), które uznały publiczny, a nie tylko wewnętrzny i osobisty wymiar miłości we współczesnym społeczeństwie. Mające za punkt odniesienia pracę Luca Boltanskiego, L'amour et la justice comme competences (1990), badania doprowadziły do wypracowania propozycji poszerzenia kręgu dzielenia się poprzez wskazanie nowej kategorii konceptualnej miłości jako agape, wychodząc tym samym poza ujęcia klasycznych socjologów. Drogę tę wyznaczyli już niektórzy znani uczeni – między innymi: Simmel (1907, 1921, 1989, 2001), Sorokin (1954), Giddens (1992), Luhman (1987) i Honneth (1990) – w odwołaniu do których można dostrzec historyczną ścieżkę transformacji koncepcji. Mimo to miłość jako agape wnosi coś nowego do nauk społecznych: agape wprowadza cechy, które z jednej strony są powiązane, a z drugiej wykraczają poza rozumienie miłości jako „eros” i „philia”, a jej ujęcie staje się kluczem do uzyskania wglądu w poznawaną empirycznie rzeczywistość społeczną, opartą na bezwarunkowej miłości bliźniego. Na tym fundamencie artykuł prezentuje drogę pojęcia miłości w historii myśli socjologicznej, podkreślając jej publiczny i społeczny charakter, a także przedstawiając propozycję projektu badawczego odwołującego się do miłości jako agape.
The aim of this paper was to analyze a motivating aspect of love in Buddhism. As the most comprehensive analysis of the Buddhist love in the Polish literature is the work of H.deLubac, hence the focus on his research, supplemented by observations of contemporary theologians. First shown understanding of the term „love” in Buddhism, referenced in order to analyze the three terms: majtri (kindness), dana (excellence based on the generosity and assistance), karuna (pity, compassion). Then the paper analyzed the relationship of Buddhist love to the love of Christianity and drew attention to the fact that Buddhism has been switched relationship between love and compassion (in Buddhism, compassion is born of love, in Christianity it is inversely). Buddhist charity does not have also a community dimension, so characteristic of Christianity. Results of this study was that supernatural love in Buddhism is present in the same extent that it is the divine revelation in the creatures and by creatures, and in the same way it lends credibility. Love in Buddhism does not have full incentive asset due to alack in her the aspect of the Trinity, the ecclesial and sacramental (they strictly specify the Christianity). As a result of this has been demonstrated that Christianity offers the deepest shot of motivating aspect. Love in Christianity is in fact linked to the full and most perfect revelation of Christ.
The term love appears to be one of the most often used and abused as well. Franciszek Sawicki, one of the most important Polish philosophers, noticed this fact almost a century ago. The article presents his analyses embracing the nature of love as an act in which human person in whole its integrity gets involved, indicating at the same time the inseparable bond between love and truth.
PL
Słowo „miłość” wydaje się być jednym ze słów najczęściej używanych, a zarazem nadużywanych. Na fakt ten zwrócił uwagę już przed blisko wiekiem wybitny pelpliński filozof ks. Franciszek Sawicki. Artykuł prezentuje przeprowadzone przez niego analizy, zmierzające do ujęcia istoty miłości jako aktu angażującego całość osobowości człowieka, w spełnianiu którego człowiek zobowiązany jest kierować się obiektywną prawdą o dobru.
For the God of self-giving, kenotically-donated love, the decision to express love at all times comes first. In my conception, “full-Oorded” love would encompass what is ordinarily contained within the definition of agape love, but it would also include “eros love”, for the latter is the love of co-laborment. In my appropriation has of this terminology of eros love, it would be the type of love that the desires to, e.g., expand one’s territory or one’s domain, which makes it applicable to the modern theory of evolution by natural selection. Evolution – i.e., “descent with modification”, to invoke a Darwinian phrase – then, recognizes self-giving love, and the goodness thereof, in that species regularly undergo commensalist symbiotic relationships in nature, whereby one is aided by the other, while the “other” is neither “aided” nor “harmed”. This is self-giving love in its entirety, and a proper demonstration of it. My understanding of necessarily-expressed, “full-Oorded” love also includes dimensions of philia love. Philia could be akin to the symbiotic relationship known as mutualism in biology, especially since philia love has historically been associated with friendship or the interrelatedness of the natural world. Notably, Aristotle indicates that even nonhuman animals can express philia love . The relationships marked by philia, then, could be identified by mutuality, reciprocity, and cooperation , which fits the above biological connotation well. While agape or eros might benefit from cooperation, reciprocity, and mutuality, those two forms of love do not require any of those three nouns. Philia does. I contend, in fact, that the kenosis of the Spirit into creation amounts to self-giving, betrothed love through self-donation. The union, then of agape, eros, and philia love could be expressed as mutual aid, or full-orbed, or even as I like to say, “full-Oorded” love. Flourishing lives – be they human or some other mammal – I aver, consistently and necessarily express “full-Oorded” love. Oord suggests that Process philosophy can aid one to see that full-orbed love – that which I have designated “full-Oorded” love – plays an important part in the work to increase the common good of society as a whole. Indeed, “full-Oorded” love would repay evil with good as agape would; such a “full-Oorded” love would additionally welcome the intrinsic value and beauty in others, just like eros love does; and “full-Oorded” love would also recognize the import of friendship and mutuality as does philia love. Following Oord and Wojtyla again, since God commands that we show necessarily “self-giving”, “self-donating” love, we therefore indeed have the ability to love others as kenotically-donating entities, just as the creating Spirit does. When we act as a genuine conduit and amplifier of the creating Spirit’s self-donating and self-giving love, we can truly and entirely and infinitely love others, just as God does. Of course, we cannot expect that we humans will always love alike unto how God does because we do not have an eternal and unchanging nature that is necessarily inclined toward love , but we are at least always able to do it.
This article engages Friendship: A Central Moral Value by Michael H. Mitias. It questions Mitias’ distinction between friendship as a moral and theoretical concern as opposed to a practical one. It distinguishes the narrow from the wide meanings of philia in Aristotle’s approach. It looks at the resonances of classical approaches in later theories of friendship, while also attending to the innovations of later thinkers. It suggests that the moral paradigms Mitias delineates might not be as hegemonic nor as hermetically sealed as he suggests. Mitias’ contribution is better understood as an addition to moral philosophy than to friendship studies.
In my article I present two concepts of love. One is developed by Anders Nygren, and it rejects any human needs from the space of love. The second tries to defend human needs as an important background of human relations. My own thesis underlines the possibility of understanding love as accepting human needs. I am defending the vision of human nature which includes needs, like sense of security, acceptance, freedom, autonomy or sense of life. On this ground I try to show that human fundamental needs are conditions of love.
The article presents the subject of God’s love in J. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s interpretation. The theme of God’s love, according to Ratzinger, is not to be reduced to one of the many theological issues to be discussed. Pope puts the love of God at the center of the Christian life as a principle and interpretative key. It is no coincidence that the first encyclical Deus caritas est, inaugurating his pontificate, begins with the words which are the profession of faith in the name of God who is Love. This agapetological feature of the Papal reflection sets the frame of his theology and points at the sphere where it reaches its essence and consummation. The subject of God’s love is discussed in two parts of the article: the first one consists of the analysis of the three terms: eros, agape and caritas, which are the three aspects of love. The philosophical and biblical analysis of these expressions made by Benedict XVI allows him to extract the essence of divine love. In the second part of the present article, the three moments reflecting the whole dynamics of love in the teaching of the Pope will be discussed: the source of love in the Triune God (1), the concretization and the fullest revelation of love in the person and work of Jesus Christ (2), and the relationship between the love of God and the love of man (3). The latter ultimately becomes a human response based on the primacy of God’s love, and turns into a divine-human love.
The article, taking into account the essence of love and its meaning for personal development, explains the diversity of forms of love and indicates that the attitude of love is based upon kindliness, goodness, forgiveness, tolerance, overcoming weakness and upon hope. The attitude of love is geared to creation of good, waiving offences and drawing conclusions from every difficult or unpleasant situation. Thanks to love a man transgress himself, his world grows and he develops himself spiritually. The paper also emphasizes that the ability to love and the need of love are one of the deepest, most primal human needs and the transmission of feelings of love on different stages of human's development, starting from childhood, is the most common human experience. The carried out analysis also stresses that the process of the upbringing to love cannot be left to its fate, but to loving and correctly formed family. The author of the paper, making use of many years’ standing research on the legacy of John Paul II, outlines his understanding of love and tasks that arise from the relation to this important value and attitude, for married couples and families. The parenthood and upbringing are depicted as the communio personarum and family as the place of upbringing to love and live in the community of persons. Writing about types and the essence of love author apart from Karol Wojtyła, quotes views of other thinkers: St. Thomas, rev. F. Sawicki and contemporary philosopher G. Reale. She emphasizes that love is a personal relation that we learn in family. The article provides the detailed description of tasks for individual family members in the process of shaping the attitude of love and indicates on family as the most important and irreplaceable environment.
To evoke poetic writing is, more often than not, to bring to memory a sum of artistic conventions established from age to age through genres, currents and conceptions of poetry. Thus, in spite of the revolutions and upheavals that have taken place, the poetic art is difficult to separate from generic and theoretical partitions, at the very least, watertight. However, the topicality of French literature reveals that some texts of the second half of the 20th century seem to grant a sort of ‟vacancy” to poetry, so that it may be more active in language autonomy. Denis Roche’s Éros énergumène illustrates fundamentally this aptitude of poetic writing to ‟see oneself” as such and to dematerialize oneself in a perspective altogether spiritualist. Roche’s poem can be understood as a way of accessing a form of intellectual play where the informed reader is finally engulfed in the whirlwinds of a language that has no other stake than an absolutely ‟liberated” freedom.
FR
Évoquer l’écriture poétique consiste, le plus souvent, à faire resurgir à la mémoire une somme de conventions artistiques établies d’âge en âge à travers les genres, les courants et les conceptions de la poésie. Malgré les révolutions et les bouleversements intervenus, l’art poétique se départit difficilement des cloisons génériques et théoriques pour le moins étanches. Cependant, l’actualité de la littérature française révèle que certains textes de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle semblent accorder une sorte de « vacance » à la poésie afin qu’il lui soit loisible de s’investir davantage dans l’autonomie langagière. Éros énergumène de Denis Roche illustre fondamentalement cette aptitude de l’écriture poétique à « se voir » comme telle et à se dématérialiser dans une perspective, somme toute, spiritualiste. Le poème de Roche s’appréhende, de ce fait, comme une voie d’accès à une forme de jeu intellectuel où le lecteur averti se retrouve englouti finalement dans les tourbillons d’un langage qui n’a d’autre enjeu que la liberté absolument « libérée ».
Przedstawiona w biblijnej Pieśni nad pieśniami miłość, która łączy mężczyznę (oblubieńca) i kobietę (oblubienicę), stanowi ideał, wolny od negatywnych faktorów zniekształcających lub wręcz przekreślających tę relację. Wydarza się ona między nimi jako realizacja podstawowego powołania, które otrzymali w momencie stworzenia „mężczyzną i kobietą”. To dlatego miłość ta stanowi wyzwanie i szczęście zarazem; ona nadaje najgłębszy sens ich życiu, czyni je pełnym blasku i radości. Oblubieniec i oblubienica przeżywają miłość w trzech wymiarach: oczarowania (zakochania się), erosa i agape. Autor artykułu wydobywa z Pnp to wszystko, co pokazuje ważność każdej z tych sfer oraz ich ponad-naturalne źródło i ukierunkowanie. Ma świadomość, że miłości te wzajemnie się przenikają i niejako stopniowo na siebie się nakładają. Są organicznie ze sobą zintegrowane. W każdej z nich na pierwszy plan wysuwa się właściwy jej dynamizm i odpowiedzialne zań komponenty cielesno-duchowej osoby oblubieńca i oblubienicy. Odkrywając je, możemy dostrzec to, co może rzeczywiście chronić oblubieńczą i małżeńską miłość w czasach współczesnych przed największymi zagrożeniami.
EN
The love presented in the biblical Song of Songs, which unites a man (the bridegroom) and a woman (the bride), is an ideal situation free of negative factors that distort or even delete this relationship. It occurs between them as the realization of the basic vocation which they received at the time of their creation as “man and woman.” That is why this love is a challenge that at the same time brings them happiness; it gives their lives deepest meaning, making them fully shine with joy. The bridegroom and the bride experience love in three dimensions: enchantment (falling in love), eros and agape. The author of the article takes from the Song of Songs everything that shows the importance of each of these spheres with their their supernatural source and orientation. He is aware that these types of love interpenetrate and gradually overlap each other. They are organically integrated with each other. In each of them, the proper dynamics and responsible components appear, which concern the bodily and spiritual functions of the bridegroom and bride. By discovering these, we can see what can actually protect spousal and marital love in modern times from its greatest threats.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.