M. Jamie Ferreira
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195130256
- eISBN:
- 9780199834181
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195130251.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
The sharp distinction between preferential love (erotic love and friendship) and love of one's neighbor (agape) is mitigated by the claim that neighbor‐love should be preserved in erotic love and ...
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The sharp distinction between preferential love (erotic love and friendship) and love of one's neighbor (agape) is mitigated by the claim that neighbor‐love should be preserved in erotic love and friendship. Neighbor‐love is a commitment to equality, which involves a kind of moral blindness, and is best understood, in comparison with the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, as responsibility to others.Less
The sharp distinction between preferential love (erotic love and friendship) and love of one's neighbor (agape) is mitigated by the claim that neighbor‐love should be preserved in erotic love and friendship. Neighbor‐love is a commitment to equality, which involves a kind of moral blindness, and is best understood, in comparison with the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, as responsibility to others.
Roger Scruton
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195166910
- eISBN:
- 9780199863938
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195166910.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
A tale of forbidden love and inevitable death, the medieval legend of Tristan und Isolde recounts the story of two lovers unknowingly drinking a magic potion and ultimately dying in one another's ...
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A tale of forbidden love and inevitable death, the medieval legend of Tristan und Isolde recounts the story of two lovers unknowingly drinking a magic potion and ultimately dying in one another's arms. While critics have lauded Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for the originality and subtlety of the music, they have denounced the drama as a “mere trifle”—a rendering of Wagner's forbidden love for Matilde Wesendonck, the wife of a banker who supported him during his exile in Switzerland. The book explodes this established interpretation, proving the drama to be more than just a sublimation of the composer's love for Wesendonck or a wistful romantic dream. It attests that Tristan and Isolde has profound religious meaning and remains as relevant today as it was to Wagner's contemporaries, offering also a keen insight into the nature of erotic love, the sacred qualities of human passion, and the peculiar place of the erotic in our culture. It is an argument which touches on the nature of tragedy, the significance of ritual sacrifice, and the meaning of redemption, providing a fresh interpretation of Wagner's masterpiece. This account of Wagner's music drama blends philosophy, criticism, and musicology in order to show the work's importance in the 21st century.Less
A tale of forbidden love and inevitable death, the medieval legend of Tristan und Isolde recounts the story of two lovers unknowingly drinking a magic potion and ultimately dying in one another's arms. While critics have lauded Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for the originality and subtlety of the music, they have denounced the drama as a “mere trifle”—a rendering of Wagner's forbidden love for Matilde Wesendonck, the wife of a banker who supported him during his exile in Switzerland. The book explodes this established interpretation, proving the drama to be more than just a sublimation of the composer's love for Wesendonck or a wistful romantic dream. It attests that Tristan and Isolde has profound religious meaning and remains as relevant today as it was to Wagner's contemporaries, offering also a keen insight into the nature of erotic love, the sacred qualities of human passion, and the peculiar place of the erotic in our culture. It is an argument which touches on the nature of tragedy, the significance of ritual sacrifice, and the meaning of redemption, providing a fresh interpretation of Wagner's masterpiece. This account of Wagner's music drama blends philosophy, criticism, and musicology in order to show the work's importance in the 21st century.
ROGER SCRUTON
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195166910
- eISBN:
- 9780199863938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195166910.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
This chapter argues that in Tristan und Isolde Wagner wished to reawaken in us the knowledge that the erotic is fundamental to the human condition, an aspect of our freedom, and an avenue to ...
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This chapter argues that in Tristan und Isolde Wagner wished to reawaken in us the knowledge that the erotic is fundamental to the human condition, an aspect of our freedom, and an avenue to redemption. The structure of his drama is dictated by this goal: the lovers are cut off from marriage; and already, at the outset of the drama, it is too late for renunciation. All they can do is confront the sacred moment, to acknowledge that their love must find its goal and its vindication here and now or not at all. In confronting the moment, they prepare themselves for death.Less
This chapter argues that in Tristan und Isolde Wagner wished to reawaken in us the knowledge that the erotic is fundamental to the human condition, an aspect of our freedom, and an avenue to redemption. The structure of his drama is dictated by this goal: the lovers are cut off from marriage; and already, at the outset of the drama, it is too late for renunciation. All they can do is confront the sacred moment, to acknowledge that their love must find its goal and its vindication here and now or not at all. In confronting the moment, they prepare themselves for death.
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226811383
- eISBN:
- 9780226811376
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226811376.003.0009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Ethical Issues and Debates
This chapter draws on recent reinterpretations of Plato's Symposium to argue for a contemporary critical reappropriation of Platonic erotic love of less powerful persons, minus its androcentrism and ...
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This chapter draws on recent reinterpretations of Plato's Symposium to argue for a contemporary critical reappropriation of Platonic erotic love of less powerful persons, minus its androcentrism and its era's sexualization of inequality and of eroticism. It theologically elaborates the reflections on desire, sin, and grace. Moreover, it addresses the contemporary recoveries of Plato's Symposium and the account of desire that has affected so much of Western thought, Christian and secular. The Symposium was nothing if not an illustration of the seduction that wise, self-possessed men work on younger men in pursuit of knowledge or pleasure. It formulated a vision of ideal erotic love from the point of view of the lover. Edward Vacek believed that hope in the genuine affirmation that comes from being loved back is normally a part of the motivation. Vacek overcame the Platonic dualism that produces a barrier between physical and spiritual eros.Less
This chapter draws on recent reinterpretations of Plato's Symposium to argue for a contemporary critical reappropriation of Platonic erotic love of less powerful persons, minus its androcentrism and its era's sexualization of inequality and of eroticism. It theologically elaborates the reflections on desire, sin, and grace. Moreover, it addresses the contemporary recoveries of Plato's Symposium and the account of desire that has affected so much of Western thought, Christian and secular. The Symposium was nothing if not an illustration of the seduction that wise, self-possessed men work on younger men in pursuit of knowledge or pleasure. It formulated a vision of ideal erotic love from the point of view of the lover. Edward Vacek believed that hope in the genuine affirmation that comes from being loved back is normally a part of the motivation. Vacek overcame the Platonic dualism that produces a barrier between physical and spiritual eros.
Linnell Secomb
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623679
- eISBN:
- 9780748671854
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623679.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter explores Emmanuel Levinas' ethics of love along with a reading of Marguerite Duras' Hiroshima, mon amour. Hiroshima, mon amour affixes Levinas' ethics. Levinas recognizes the ...
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This chapter explores Emmanuel Levinas' ethics of love along with a reading of Marguerite Duras' Hiroshima, mon amour. Hiroshima, mon amour affixes Levinas' ethics. Levinas recognizes the significance of erotic love for the subject and ultimately for inter-human relations. His description of erotic love indicates an interlacing of egoistic pleasure and selfless engagement with the other in the sexual relation. In Alain Resnais' and Duras' film, Hiroshima, mon amour, it is the experience of passionate, obsessional, devoted love for a particular other that grounds and informs the selfless ethical love of every other. It has become clear that the feminine other of the erotic relation (in Time and the Other) offers a model or a prototype for the alterity of the other of the ethical relation (in Totality and Infinity).Less
This chapter explores Emmanuel Levinas' ethics of love along with a reading of Marguerite Duras' Hiroshima, mon amour. Hiroshima, mon amour affixes Levinas' ethics. Levinas recognizes the significance of erotic love for the subject and ultimately for inter-human relations. His description of erotic love indicates an interlacing of egoistic pleasure and selfless engagement with the other in the sexual relation. In Alain Resnais' and Duras' film, Hiroshima, mon amour, it is the experience of passionate, obsessional, devoted love for a particular other that grounds and informs the selfless ethical love of every other. It has become clear that the feminine other of the erotic relation (in Time and the Other) offers a model or a prototype for the alterity of the other of the ethical relation (in Totality and Infinity).
Robert C. Solomon
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195134674
- eISBN:
- 9780199833733
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195134672.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
Spirituality requires passion and engages the emotions. However, emotions are not dumb feelings. They are or can be insightful, caring engagements with the world. Love, erotic love, lies at the heart ...
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Spirituality requires passion and engages the emotions. However, emotions are not dumb feelings. They are or can be insightful, caring engagements with the world. Love, erotic love, lies at the heart of spirituality and serves as a secular model. Reverence, which is more than respect but less than worship, is an ancient virtue that brings together many of the passions of spirituality.Less
Spirituality requires passion and engages the emotions. However, emotions are not dumb feelings. They are or can be insightful, caring engagements with the world. Love, erotic love, lies at the heart of spirituality and serves as a secular model. Reverence, which is more than respect but less than worship, is an ancient virtue that brings together many of the passions of spirituality.
Robert C. Solomon
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195368536
- eISBN:
- 9780199852031
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368536.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter turns to perhaps the most overdiscussed emotion: love. It focuses on eros, which is the word Plato uses. It is erotic or sexual, or what we now (since the romantic period) call ...
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This chapter turns to perhaps the most overdiscussed emotion: love. It focuses on eros, which is the word Plato uses. It is erotic or sexual, or what we now (since the romantic period) call “romantic” love. What all forms of love share is a peculiar intentional structure, the conception of one's self as intertwined and fused with another. In parenthood, one loves what is quite literally a part of one's own identity. In friendship—true friendship, that is—one comes to think of one's friend as inseparable from oneself. But it is in erotic love, which tends to be exclusive, that this “merging” of selves is most profound.Less
This chapter turns to perhaps the most overdiscussed emotion: love. It focuses on eros, which is the word Plato uses. It is erotic or sexual, or what we now (since the romantic period) call “romantic” love. What all forms of love share is a peculiar intentional structure, the conception of one's self as intertwined and fused with another. In parenthood, one loves what is quite literally a part of one's own identity. In friendship—true friendship, that is—one comes to think of one's friend as inseparable from oneself. But it is in erotic love, which tends to be exclusive, that this “merging” of selves is most profound.
Alvin Plantinga
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195131932
- eISBN:
- 9780199867486
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195131932.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
According to the model I proposed in Ch. 8, Christian belief is produced in the believer by the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit; the result of this work of the Holy Spirit is faith. In Ch. 8, ...
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According to the model I proposed in Ch. 8, Christian belief is produced in the believer by the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit; the result of this work of the Holy Spirit is faith. In Ch. 8, I explored the cognitive aspects of faith, but faith is more than just belief; in producing faith, the Holy Spirit does more than produce knowledge in the believer – the Holy Spirit also seals this knowledge to our hearts, which is to say that the Holy Spirit begins to cure our misdirected wills, producing in us the right sorts of affections. In this chapter, I explore the affective side of faith, turning first to the work of Jonathan Edwards in order to examine the nature of religious affections. In doing so, I address the issue of the relationship between intellect and will (and belief and affection) in the process of acquiring faith. I then turn to that most important of religious affections, the love of God, exploring the nature of this love and arguing that it is, in part, an erotic love, figured or imaged in the phenomenon of human erotic love.Less
According to the model I proposed in Ch. 8, Christian belief is produced in the believer by the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit; the result of this work of the Holy Spirit is faith. In Ch. 8, I explored the cognitive aspects of faith, but faith is more than just belief; in producing faith, the Holy Spirit does more than produce knowledge in the believer – the Holy Spirit also seals this knowledge to our hearts, which is to say that the Holy Spirit begins to cure our misdirected wills, producing in us the right sorts of affections. In this chapter, I explore the affective side of faith, turning first to the work of Jonathan Edwards in order to examine the nature of religious affections. In doing so, I address the issue of the relationship between intellect and will (and belief and affection) in the process of acquiring faith. I then turn to that most important of religious affections, the love of God, exploring the nature of this love and arguing that it is, in part, an erotic love, figured or imaged in the phenomenon of human erotic love.
Robert C. Solomon
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195134674
- eISBN:
- 9780199833733
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195134672.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
For most of my life, I have been dismissive of both spirituality and religion. I say this to make clear the perspective and the starting point of this book, this search. No doubt, many of my readers ...
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For most of my life, I have been dismissive of both spirituality and religion. I say this to make clear the perspective and the starting point of this book, this search. No doubt, many of my readers will think of me as simpleminded, trying to recover what I should have learned had I been rightly raised in the matrix of religion, ritual, and belief. Others, my friends from the field of science and most of my political friends, will think that I am benighted, or perhaps something of a sell out, for giving up my lifelong down‐to‐earth scientific, and admittedly hyperrational way of thinking about things. But if the very idea of spirituality seemed to me to be contaminated by sectarian religion and by uncritical and antiscientific thinking, my view of life, which manifested in my becoming a philosopher (it did not come from philosophy) pointed to something else. Spirituality is not just organized religion. Nor is it antiscience, unnatural or supernatural. There is a naturalized spirituality that I have always had a glimpse of, and this is what I want to pursue in this book.Less
For most of my life, I have been dismissive of both spirituality and religion. I say this to make clear the perspective and the starting point of this book, this search. No doubt, many of my readers will think of me as simpleminded, trying to recover what I should have learned had I been rightly raised in the matrix of religion, ritual, and belief. Others, my friends from the field of science and most of my political friends, will think that I am benighted, or perhaps something of a sell out, for giving up my lifelong down‐to‐earth scientific, and admittedly hyperrational way of thinking about things. But if the very idea of spirituality seemed to me to be contaminated by sectarian religion and by uncritical and antiscientific thinking, my view of life, which manifested in my becoming a philosopher (it did not come from philosophy) pointed to something else. Spirituality is not just organized religion. Nor is it antiscience, unnatural or supernatural. There is a naturalized spirituality that I have always had a glimpse of, and this is what I want to pursue in this book.
Robert C. Solomon
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- November 2004
- ISBN:
- 9780195145502
- eISBN:
- 9780199834969
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019514550X.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy has as much to do with feelings as it does with thoughts and thinking. It requires sensitivity and a kind of devotion as well as curiosity about the world and a critical spirit. It is a ...
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Philosophy has as much to do with feelings as it does with thoughts and thinking. It requires sensitivity and a kind of devotion as well as curiosity about the world and a critical spirit. It is a fascination not only with abstract ideas and logically possible worlds but with concrete and very real human concerns and engagements, “the human condition” To be a philosopher is to be steadfastly attentive to what it means to be human, to the passions as well as to much-celebrated “rationality” It is to be concerned with what it means to “exist,” to the satisfactions and worries and real life joys and confusions that affect us all. That is why one of the canonical exhortations in philosophy, inherited from the Delphic Oracle via Socrates, has always been “know thyself,” for it is through unusually rigorous self-examination that we come to know not only ourselves but our Selves, our deepest feelings, fears, and hopes. Philosophy, accordingly, in its concern for feelings, requires not only emotional sensitivity but an understanding of the emotions, not as curious but marginal psychological phenomena but as the very substance of life. And yet, philosophy and philosophers have much more often than not shunned the emotions and defined their profession and themselves strictly in terms of reason and rationality. In the history of philosophy sensitivity is often dismissed as mere “sentimentality.” Sentiment and sentimentality are to be avoided. In this book I am concerned to defend sentimentality and the emotions–at least, some emotions–as essential to life. Foremost among the essential emotions are the sentiments of love and compassion. Not all of the sentiments are so kindly, however. Accordingly, I discuss not only such “moral sentiments” as sympathy and compassion but also grief, gratitude, love, horror, and even vengeance. All of these have suffered from considerable abuse, though from different quarters, but all of them play a central if not essential role in our experience and our lives.Less
Philosophy has as much to do with feelings as it does with thoughts and thinking. It requires sensitivity and a kind of devotion as well as curiosity about the world and a critical spirit. It is a fascination not only with abstract ideas and logically possible worlds but with concrete and very real human concerns and engagements, “the human condition” To be a philosopher is to be steadfastly attentive to what it means to be human, to the passions as well as to much-celebrated “rationality” It is to be concerned with what it means to “exist,” to the satisfactions and worries and real life joys and confusions that affect us all. That is why one of the canonical exhortations in philosophy, inherited from the Delphic Oracle via Socrates, has always been “know thyself,” for it is through unusually rigorous self-examination that we come to know not only ourselves but our Selves, our deepest feelings, fears, and hopes. Philosophy, accordingly, in its concern for feelings, requires not only emotional sensitivity but an understanding of the emotions, not as curious but marginal psychological phenomena but as the very substance of life. And yet, philosophy and philosophers have much more often than not shunned the emotions and defined their profession and themselves strictly in terms of reason and rationality. In the history of philosophy sensitivity is often dismissed as mere “sentimentality.” Sentiment and sentimentality are to be avoided. In this book I am concerned to defend sentimentality and the emotions–at least, some emotions–as essential to life. Foremost among the essential emotions are the sentiments of love and compassion. Not all of the sentiments are so kindly, however. Accordingly, I discuss not only such “moral sentiments” as sympathy and compassion but also grief, gratitude, love, horror, and even vengeance. All of these have suffered from considerable abuse, though from different quarters, but all of them play a central if not essential role in our experience and our lives.
