By Jules J. Toner
Read or Download Love and Friendship: Book 1, Experience of Love, Book 2, Personal Friendship: The Experience and the Ideal PDF
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Extra resources for Love and Friendship: Book 1, Experience of Love, Book 2, Personal Friendship: The Experience and the Ideal
Sample text
For he is sometimes interpreted as identifying love with desire. And he does give some grounds for such an interpretation in a num- 3 ~ Love As Source of Desire & Joy or As Object of Desire 41 ber of passages on love as also by the ambiguity of the word he uses to express the basic meaning of love in his thought, a “weight” (pondus) (Augustine 1943, bk. 13, ch. 9; 1950, bk. 11, ch. 28). One of the most famous interpretations of Augustine in this way can be found in Anders Nygren’s study, Agape and Eros.
In his essay on “The Features of Love,” he says that he wants to “enumerate the most general and abstract characteristics” of the act of love, any act of love whatsoever (Ortega 1957, 14). And in his essay of “Love in Stendahl,” he 3 ~ Love As Source of Desire & Joy or As Object of Desire 53 further seeks to find the “one identical ingredient” in all love which alone deserves the name love, a “common denominator” of every love for persons or for things (Ortega 1957, 45, 47). Before studying these passages, a word of warning is in order for those having some familiarity with Ortega’s work on love.
For this reason Augustine speaks of his love (amor) as his weight (pondus) in the Confessions. Fire tends upward, a stone downward. By their weights they are driven, they seek their own places…. Not perfectly placed in the order of things, They are restless; put in order, they are at rest. My love is my weight; by it I am borne wherever I am borne (trans. from Augustine 1962, XIV, 440). ” But closer inspection in the light of what is said in the literal statements of The City of God (see bk. 14, ch.
