JPI 553/763
Being as Gift: Philosophical Foundations
This course elucidates the constitutive elements of a metaphysics of love necessary to undergird John Paul II's nuptial anthropology. John Paul II's anthropology, to which his interpretation of Gaudium et spes 22 and 24 in terms of nuptial mystery witnesses, is rooted in the perception that being (both God and man) is gift. Through readings of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Bruaire, F. Ulrich, Balthasar, and John Paul II, the course revisits main philosophical themes—nature, substance, relation, the transcendentals, childhood, and causality—in light of an ontology of gift. In so doing, the course seeks to illustrate the intrinsic relation between theology and philosophy as presented in John Paul II's Fides et ratio.
