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Political Agape: Christian Love and Liberal Democracy

2016; Oxford University Press; Volume: 58; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jcs/csw008

2040-4867

Luke Bretherton,

Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy

This interconnected series of thirteen essays explores how a Christian understanding of love can frame the conditions and possibilities of living in a pluralistic liberal democracy. The book is divided into three parts. Part I, entitled “Liberalism and Agape” is programmatic. Consisting of three essays, it defines and delineates “prophetic liberalism” (which in Jackson's lexicon is a synonym for “political agape”). Part II, entitled “Replies to Contemporary Liberals and Antiliberals,” places Jackson's constructive conception of the role of agapic love in politics in dialogue with what he sees as the primary challenges to his account among contemporary political philosophers and theologians, namely, John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin (representing different strands of deontological thought), Peter Singer (representing utilitarianism), Richard Rorty and Jeffrey Stout (representing different strands of pragmatism), and Stanley Hauerwas (representing what he calls, following Stout, “neotraditionalism”). Part III, entitled “Love, Law and Modern Moral Issues,” seeks to deploy the author's framework in relation to a variety of contested contemporary public policy issues, notably, euthanasia, capital punishment, same-sex marriage, and adoption. Of these, the discussion of adoption is the most fully developed and innovative. The concluding essay shows how Martin Luther King Jr. exemplifies and embodies the kind of prophetic liberalism that Jackson advocates.