As the ideal of agape begins its third millennium its challenge is vast and exciting. It met the ideal of Platonic eros with Augustine and the caritas synthesis gave direction to western culture for 1000 years. The ideal of Aristotelian philia gave it new direction with Aquinas. The protestant reformation brought forth the new task of combining affection friendship, Eros and agape especially within marriage. Today agape is being fertilized by and is fertilizing the traditions of Jewish Hesed, Islamic Ramah, Hindu Bhakti, Buddhist Karuna, Confucian Jen and the Taoist Tao.
This collection of essays is the proceedings of The Brock University Philosophical Society's seventh Conference on 2000 years of agape. It brings together the ideals of Jen, Agape and Tao in reflection upon their ways of loving each other. It most happily centers around, in a postmodern decentered, way the thinking of Tu Wei-Ming, the greatest neo-Confuc ianist today.
Contributors: Martin Andic, Charles Burton, Philippa Carter, Chan Wing-cheuk, Julia Ching, David Goicoechea, Jonathan Herman, Michael Kalton, Oaksook Kim, Alexander Lomanov, Tim Madigan, John R. A. Mayer, Robert Neville, William Yau-Nang Ng, Young-Chan Ro, T.W. Selover, Johanna Tito, Tu Wei-Ming, Mary Evelyn Tucker.
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