The Nature of Love
Course description:Love plays a central role in human life. It is both our origin and our ultimate end. All desire it, and no one can be happy without it. But what exactly is it? How do we recognize and attain it? What are the different kinds of love? How can we distinguish between a genuine love and its many look-alikes or corruptions? How does Christianity change our understanding of love? And how is love related to sexuality, and to new life? It is with questions like these that we will be concerned in this course. We will begin by considering love in general, and the many forms that it takes, and then focus on spousal love in particular, as the highest (natural) form of love. Per session topics:
Readings will be taken from the following books:
Jules van Schaijik was born and raised in The Netherlands. Originally planning a career in business, his interest in philosophy was awakened at Franciscan University through the discovery of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s thought in the areas of love, marriage and ethics. His MA and PhD are from the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein. He has taught in the Netherlands, Austria and the U.S. He and his wife, Katie, are co-founders of the Personalist Project. |
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning |
