Weaver – Self Love and Christian Ethics

Darlene Fozard Weaver.0-511-06124-2

Self love is an inescapable problem for ethics, yet much ofcontemporary ethics is reluctant to offer any normative moralanthropologies. Instead, secular ethics and contemporaryculture promote a norm of self-realization which is subjectiveand uncritical. Christian ethics also fails to provide easy ordirect resources to address this problem, because it tends toinvestigate self love with respect to conflicts between the self ’sinterests and those of her neighbors. Self Love and ChristianEthics explicates and defends right self love by casting it asa problem of proper self-relation that intersects with lovefor God and love for neighbor. This book argues that rightself love entails a true self-understanding that is embodiedin the person’s concrete acts and relations. In making thisargument, it calls ethics to revisit ontological accounts of theself and to devote more attention to particular moral acts.