Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch

Description

In an age of self-affirmation and self-assertion, 'selfless love' can appear as a threat to the lover's personal well-being. This perception jars with the Biblical promise that we gain our life through losing it and therefore calls for a theological response. In conversation with the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich and the atheistic moral philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch enquires into the anthropological grounds on which selfless love can be said to build up, rather than undermine, the lover's self. It proposes that while the implausibility of selfless love was furthered by the modern deconstruction of the self, both Tillich and Murdoch utilize this very deconstruction towards explicating and restoring the link between selfless love and human flourishing. Julia T. Meszaros shows that they use the modern diagnosis of the human being's lack of a stable and independent self as manifest in Sartre's existentialism in support of an understanding of the self as relational and fallen. This leads them to view a loving orientation away from self and a surrender to the other as critical to the full flourishing of human selfhood. In arguing that Tillich and Murdoch defend the link between selfless love and human flourishing through reference to the human being's ontological selflessness, Meszaros closely engages Søren Kierkegaard's earlier attempt to keep selfless love and human flourishing in a productive, dialectical tension. She also examines the breakdown of this tension in the later figures of Anders Nygren, Simone Weil, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and addresses the pitfalls of this breakdown. Her examination concludes by arguing that the link between selfless love and human flourishing would be strengthened by a more resolute endorsement of a personal God, and of the reciprocal nature of selfless love.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Other editions

• 

  Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris...

  • 2016-03-03
  • 240 pages
  • Paperback
  • Oxford University Press

Similar books

• 

  An American Carpenter's Story: One baby boomers life changing spiritual journey

  By William Darroch

  After just a year or so, my father saw several lots for sale in the small village of Timberlake, Ohio, just thirty minutes from Cleveland.

• 

  Fear of the Other: No Fear in Love

  By Bishop William H. Willimon

  “Barack Obama,” “Hillary Clinton,” “Britney Spears,” and “Justin Timberlake” found their places somewhat to the left of the really, really good “Teresa” and ...

• 

  Running With The Horses: Living The Gospel

  By William Mitchell

  ... Gregory Pritchard, Robert Clarke and Donald Wester of philosophy; from the religion faculty, James Timberlake, Rowena Strickland, Dan Holcomb, ...

• 

  Darkness is as Light

  By EDITH ADHIAMBO, ANDREA BAILEY, CHRISTINA BAKER

  walked over the frost-brittled grass, my long skirt swishing it dryly. I'd come to weep below the willows, to let the sound of the stream carry my lament ...

• 

  Women in New Religions

  By Laura Vance

  Frost, Gavin, and Yvonne Frost. The Good Witch's Bible. 7th ed. ... Gordon, Lynn D., ed. Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era.

• 

  The Making of a Mature Disciple

  By Kenneth S. Todd

  Kenneth S. Todd. Reasons. to. Obey. God. Let's discuss four reasons why we should obey God. The first two deal with how we personally deal with God.

• 

  Being God's Man by Pursuing Friendships

  By Stephen Arterburn, Kenneth L. Luck, Todd Wendorff

  God's word is clear about the importance of godly friendships. This edition shows men how valuable those friendships are to spiritual growth.

• 

  English Ministry Crisis in Chinese Canadian Churches: Towards the Retention of English-Speaking Adults from Chinese Canadian Churches through Associated Parallel...

  By Matthew Richard Sheldon Todd

  In 2011, Thom S. Rainer published some research project results in a volume ... projecting the top challenging issue they deal with in bicultural settings ...

• 

  Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Non-Profit

  By John Pearson

  " Based on Pearson's 48-hour Management Buckets Workshop Experience, Mastering the Management Buckets offers detailed implementation tools, including 99 practical takeaways that a leader could implement immediately, plus nine management ...

• 

  Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Non-Profit

  By John Pearson

  " Based on Pearson's 48-hour Management Buckets Workshop Experience, Mastering the Management Buckets offers detailed implementation tools, including 99 practical takeaways that a leader could implement immediately, plus nine management ...