Secular Agape: The Limits of Love in Botton and Rorty
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
The desire for cohesive communities marked by love seems to be latent in the human condition. The revolution brought about by the Judeo-Christian proposal seems to initiate a process in which this desire is realised. The inseparability of love of God from love of neighbour (Luke 10:27) makes agape-love, an inescapable attribute of God, a visible and operative reality. However, outside of the Christian believing community, this dimension and vital force, which brings communities together and unifies them, seems to be diluted. As a result, thinkers such as Alain de Botton and Richard Rorty try to propose secular forms of agape or love, with the aim of achieving the same result as Christian communities. However, as this article will show, these are nothing more than ways of distorting the concept of agape, ultimately resulting in the falsification or mechanisation of communities.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
The works published in this journal are subject to the following terms:
1. Carthaginensia retains the patrimonial rights (copyright) of the published works, and favors and allows the reuse of the same under the license of use indicated in the following point.
2. The works are published in the electronic edition of the journal under a Creative Commons By (CC By) License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/. They may be copied, used, disseminated, transmitted and publicly exhibited, provided that: i) the authorship and the original source of publication (journal, publisher and URL of the work) are cited; ii) they are not used for commercial purposes; iii) the existence and specifications of this license of use are mentioned.
References
Angulo Ordorika, I. «Una fe que ama, un amor que cree. El amor en la primera carta de Juan». Ciudad de Dios, vol. 233, nº. 2 (2020): 339-364.
Aristotle. Nicomachean ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Bento XVI. «Encyclical Letter Deus caritas est». https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est.html.
Botton, A. de. Religion for atheists. A non-believer’s guide to the uses of religion. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012.
Plato. The Symposium and the Phaedo. Wheeling: Harlan Davidson, 1980.
Porcel Moreno, M. «Jean-Luc Marion y la teología. La donación como alternativa al ser». Carthaginensia, vol. 40, nº. 77 (2024): 87-115. DOI: https://doi.org/10.62217/carth.434
Porcel Moreno, M. and Angulo Ordorika, I. «Jesucristo como fenómeno saturado. Un acercamiento fenomenológico al Evangelio de Juan a partir del pensamiento de Jean-Luc Marion». Perseitas, nº. 10 (2022): 495-526. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21501/23461780.4417
Porcel Moreno, M. and Córdoba Salmerón, M. (eds). Del Logos al Agapè. En torno al giro teológico de la fenomenología. Granada: Facultad de Teología de Granada, 2020.
Rorty, R. «The decline of redemptive truth and the rise of a literary culture». Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai: Studia Europaea, vol. 46, nº. 1 (2001): 19-36.
Rorty, R. «Who are We? Moral Universalism and Economic Triage». Diogenes, vol. 44, nº. 173 (1996): 5-15. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/039219219604417302
Rorty, R. Achieving our country. Leftist thought in twentieth-century America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Rorty, R. An ethics for today. Finding common ground between philosophy and religion. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
Rorty, R. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173643
Rorty, R. Philosophy and social hope. London: Penguin Books, 1999.
Rorty, R. Philosophy as cultural politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812835
Rorty, R. Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511625404
Rorty, R. and Vattimo, G. The future of religion. New Yok: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Shuster, M. «Rorty and (the politics of) love». Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, vol. 40, nº. 1 (2019): 65-78. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/gfpj20194014
Vilas Boas, S. «¿Regalos para Navidad o la Navidad como regalo? Desafíos pastorales para el mundo contemporáneo». Sal Terrae, nº. 111 (2023): 1011-1023.
Wagoner, R. E. The meanings of love: An introduction to philosophy of love. Westport: Praeger, 1997.