In the Light of Agape
Moral Realism and Its Consequences
- Philosophy
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2024
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Publisher's Description
We see children squealing with delight in new-fallen snow. We see shocked survivors of the tsunami hugging broken bodies. We are not at first objective, detached, or neutral. Instantly we are joyful or horrified. A singular force fuels our joy and our horror: agape. Agape is as palpable as gravity. As weight is to gravity, so good is to agape (or, in violation, so evil is to agape). Predominant Western rationalities preclude theorizing of agape. So secular intellectuals, awakened to agape but conceptually hobbled, lament a "crisis of foundations" in ethics and a "legitimization crisis" in political theory. In the light of agape, however, there is no question about any sovereign's basic ethical responsibilities nor about myriad ethical issues (the evils of pedophilia, rape, slavery, racism, exploiting illness for profit). Thus, agape can ground ethics globally. Moreover, insofar as "faithful" signifies not propositional assent but living fidelity to agape, agape can ground interfaith spiritual consensus. Engaging intellectuals from Augustine and Dostoevsky to Emmanuel Levinas and Peter Singer, tackling issues from animal rights and the essence of spirituality to the passion of Torah and interfaith relations, Greenway demonstrates the spiritual fecundity and real-world ethical potentials that flow from philosophical exploration of agape.
Endorsements (3)
“With insight and passion, William Greenway awakens us to the wondrous force of agape within and around us. Countering the spiritual and moral poverty of our age, this collection of essays ignites a response to suffering and injustice with its rich and multifaceted depiction of how agape—’the very force of God insofar as God is love’—permeates all aspects of our lives.”
“William Greenway’s In the Light of Agape is a compact treasure—a forceful and persuasive defense of moral realism rooted in agape, understood as a genuine moral power which is as real and efficacious as gravity. Traversing a wide terrain including philosophy of religion, ethics, and theology, in conversation with Levinas, Heidegger, Augustine, and others, this is an indispensable book for a wide readership committed to affirming that love is no mere sentiment but a force grounding the possibility of ethical life.”
“Why be moral? Faced with this foundational question in ethics, In the Light of Agape does not so much answer as deconstruct it, exposing the built-in assumption of an unencumbered and autonomous moral selfhood morality self that is guided by the Western ideal of objective, disengaged, and neutral—and hence sociopathic—rationality. Written with flair, insight, and heart, In the Light of Agape offers a powerful argument for the undeniable moral reality of agape, which it defines as our having always already been seized by the sympathetic and passionate concern for another.”
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