Charitable Love: bearing the other's transcendence
According to a popular view charity is reduced to mercy and benevolence. Through an exploration of traditional, Christian, charitable acts - both corporeal and spiritual in nature - I set out to develop an alternative view. Why, for example, is the simple act of laying the dead to rest considered an...
| Published in: | European journal for philosophy of religion |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Innsbruck in cooperation with the John Hick Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham
[2016]
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| In: |
European journal for philosophy of religion
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Nussbaum, Martha Craven 1947-, Upheavals of thought
/ Mercy
/ Mitleidsethik
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| RelBib Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AG Religious life; material religion |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) Volltext (teilw. kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | According to a popular view charity is reduced to mercy and benevolence. Through an exploration of traditional, Christian, charitable acts - both corporeal and spiritual in nature - I set out to develop an alternative view. Why, for example, is the simple act of laying the dead to rest considered an act of charity? Feelings of pity and commiseration offer an insufficiently firm basis for justifying such an attribution. By adopting the burial of the dead as a sort of touchstone, I suggest that the (corporeally or spiritually) indigent other finds him- or herself in need of charity at the precise moment that he or she loses the ability to react as a person. Sometimes being charitable comes to expression in relinquishing ones demands that the other behave as morally responsible people ought to behave. Charity involves the question of how to bear the others transcendence. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: European journal for philosophy of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.24204/ejpr.v8i2.64 |