Revista da Abordagem Gestáltica
Print version ISSN 1809-6867
Abstract
RAMOS, Daniel Rodrigues. Love and finitude: a dialogue between Augustine of Hippo and Max Scheler. Rev. abordagem gestalt. [online]. 2018, vol.24, n.spe, pp.449-466. ISSN 1809-6867. https://doi.org/10.18065/RAG.2018v24ne.4.
Prioritizing the guiding thread of the relationship between love and finitude, the discussion establishes a constant dialogue between Augustine's philosophical-theological thinking and Scheler's phenomenology. Firstly, it clears the horizon in which Scheler's phenomenology visualizes the Augustinian thought considered from the perspective of the experiential and fundamental structure of Christian living. Demonstrating the idea of ordo amoris, the harmony of this structure is shown in the change of the concept of Christian love, signaled by Scheler as the emergence of the understanding of a loving God. In order to do so, the traits of the Augustinian hermeneutics of the Christian life are discussed, until it reveals caritas as being the love that answers the intentionality of the structure of human existence as a whole according to its essential dynamism. From the point of view of this central function of charity, it concludes by indicating the need to consider the interdependence between living and dying, in order to better understand the sense of the structuring of human existence from the idea of ordered love.
Keywords : phenomenology; affections; ordo amoris; charity.