Love Disconsoled: Meditations on Christian Charity: 7 (Cambridge Studies in Religion and Critical Thought, Series Number 7) - Softcover

Jackson, Timothy P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521158788 ISBN 13: 9780521158787

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Few concepts are more central to ethics than love, but none is more subject to false consolation. This 1999 book explores several theological, philosophical and literary accounts of love, focusing on how it relates to matters such as self-interest and self-sacrifice, and invulnerability and immortality. Timothy Jackson first considers key aspects of what the Bible says about love, then he further examines the meaning of love and sacrifice through a close reading of novels by Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Lastly, he evaluates how love constrains, and is constrained by, other traditional moral concepts. Throughout, Jackson defends the moral priority of what the Christian tradition calls 'agape'. He argues that a proper understanding of agapic love rejects both moral relativism and the comfort of believing that good people cannot be harmed, or that God causally necessitates every historical action and event. When love is thus disconsoled, it neither fears death nor despises life.

About this title

Book Description:

Few concepts are more central to ethics than love, but none is more subject to varying interpretation. This 1999 book explores several theological, philosophical and literary accounts of love. Throughout, Timothy Jackson defends the moral priority of a distinctive type of love ('agape'), and argues for a realistic ethic of love.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0521158788
• ISBN 13: 9780521158787
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 268