Love and Christianity

0. [Notes to self: Check attendance. And do evaluations at end.]

1. I will schedule extra office hours between now and exam. Friday, 12/7, 4:30 pm (where?) I will email you some definitions for the exam.

2. Last time, I talked about Camus’ and Russell’s non-religious approach to the meaning of life. I’d like to close the course by looking at a directly religious approach to ethics, the approach of the Christian Scriptures.

• The ethics of the New Testament appears to be founded on love. Jesus affirms that if you love God with all your self and your neighbor as yourself (note the distinction), then “you will live”. Paul says that “love is the fulfilling of the law.”
• One’s relationship with God and one’s love for others are seen as tightly intertwined, especially in the first letter of John. “[L]et us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.” More generally, the first letter of John implies that one loves God if and only if one loves neighbor.
• This creates a puzzle. Does this mean that an atheist does not love anyone?
• The claim that one loves God if and only if one loves neighbor can be read with two different emphases:
• The people we call atheists are not really atheists if they love neighbor.
• How could this be? Well, perhaps they love something like the source of all goodness, but do not know that this source is God. Thus, they love God, but do not know that it is God that they love. This is like someone in a Shakespeare comedy who is in love, but because of mistaken identity, it is not clear whom he is in love with.
• The atheists do not really love neighbor.
• How could this be? Well, perhaps without God’s help, our relationship to other people is always ultimately selfish? Or maybe to love someone, you need to recognize what she is like—otherwise you are not really loving her. But if God exists, then the atheist misunderstands all people, because she fails to understand the most crucial fact about all people, namely that they are creatures of God.
• Another puzzle. Don’t people do bad things in the name of love? Think of parents who coddle their children not allowing them to become individuals. Or think of stalkers.
• Presumably, if the New Testament ethic of love is correct, these are either not examples of love, or deficient examples of love—examples where there is some love, but not enough.
• Love is tied to the reality of the person whom we love. The more we know about the person we love, the better we can love her. Moreover, if we misunderstand that person, or misrepresent her to ourselves (in relevant respects), then to that extent, we are not loving her but a fiction. Of course because we also know many other things about her that are indeed so, we also love really her, but our love in such a case is not pure, because it gets wrong a (relevant) truth about the beloved. The parent who does not let grown children spread their wings is someone who loves adults as if they were mere children. Thus, the grown children are not loved for being who they really are. An important aspect of them—their autonomy—is not loved. Thus, such a parent is falling short in love.
• Similar things, but even to a greater extent, can be said about the stalker. If this is love, rather than lust, at all.
• Love, thus, requires knowledge.

3. Can a philosophical argument be given for the duty to love neighbor? Maybe. Start by observing that love focuses one on lovable qualities in the person we love. The recognition of such lovable qualities seems essential. Surely we love people for their lovable qualities. Love is responsive: it rejoices in the good things it sees in the beloved.

• Yet at the same time, we tend to recognize that the best kind of love is unconditional. But if it is unconditional, then it cannot be justified by qualities of the beloved that could come and go. Thus, an unconditional love for someone cannot be based on her sense of humor or her intelligence or even her virtue—for all of these things can come and go.
• Our attitudes should correctly match that which they are attitudes to. If something is lovable, it seems the appropriate attitude is love. If something is hateful, the appropriate attitude is hatred.
• Now, if love for any one person can be unconditional, then the qualities that ground this love must be qualities that cannot come and go. They cannot be qualities like humor, or intelligence, or virtue. What kinds of qualities are left? Only very general qualities, like being human or being a person or being a creature of God. But if it is this kind of quality that is what ultimately grounds lovability, then everyone is lovable, and unconditionally so. If the appropriate attitude to something or someone lovable is love, then one should love everyone.

4. For Aquinas, love includes the following two aspects: Knowledge and good will. These result in union between the lover and the beloved. If I have love for someone, this is not some abstract benevolence like in utilitarianism. Rather, in love I see things from the point of view of the person I love, I think about my beloved, I want good things for my beloved, and I feel about things happening to my beloved like they happened to me.

• Aquinas distinguishes "love of concupiscence" (desire) from "love of friendship".
• Can we have love of friendship for God? Problem: How can we benefit God?
• Aquinas' solution: We can indirectly benefit or harm someone by benefiting or harming those that the person loves (with a love of friendship). God loves everyone. Hence, by benefiting fellow human beings we indirectly benefit God, and so we can express a love of friendship for God by benefiting God.