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Goicoechea explains Nietzsche's thesis that the agapeic love of Jesus is humankind's highest affirmation, even for sinners like the author's father, Joe Goicoechea, who lived it out existentially. Already before the Q scholars, Nietzsche saw this love as the essence of the Sermon on the Mount and based his philosophy upon it. Throughout the Catholic tradition agape fulfilled the affection of Empedocles, the eros of Plato, the friendship of Aristotle, and the agape of Plotinus. While, as Anders Nygren shows, modernists protested such syntheses, now postmodernists once again let agape and the four loves contribute to one another.

Goicoechea shows how the three traits of personhood–that all persons are equal in dignity, that each is unique, and that all persons are interpersonal–is rooted in that love which is agape. This love between the three persons of the One God is examined existentially as mother lived it out in her love and personal growth. It is examined philosophically with Kierkegaard as he explains the logic of reconciling love, which can happen when I love the other, even my enemy, as more important than myself. The logic of reconciling love is then examined in Paul's seven authentic letters. The history of how humans became seen as persons and how this idea developed in the West is then examined through nine moments of history.

Consider intense moments when you have been seized by joy or, in different contexts, by anguish for another person, or a cat or dog, or perhaps even for a squirrel or possum struck as it dashed across the road: whether glorious or haunting, these are among the most profound and meaningful moments in our lives. Agape Ethics focuses our attention on such moments with utter seriousness and argues they reveal a spiritual reality, the reality of agape. Powerful streams of modern Western rationality reject the idea of agape. This has created a crisis of foundations in modern ethics and alienated us from love for all creatures. Working wholly within the bounds of reason, Agape Ethics joins an increasingly vibrant struggle to legitimate the spiritual reality of agape, to awaken people to its power, to clarify its ethical implications, and to validate our spiritual communion with all creatures in all creation. The result is a powerful, inclusive, and wholly reasonable defense of moral realism that should speak to all who are passionate about creating a maximally loving and good world.

David L. Goicoechea presents his fourth volume in a series on agape. The book focuses on the complementarity of agape (Christian love) and bhakti (Hindu love). First, he shows how the Jesuit Spirituality at Loyola in Chicago and the Franciscan Spirituality at St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois, helped him to appreciate mystical love. Secondly, he shows how agape with all nine of its characteristics is central to the Gospel of Mark. Then, especially with the help of the work of Dr. Raj Singh, he shows how bhakti developed throughout the history of India. Finally, Goicoechea shows how Georges Bataille, especially with the help of St. John of the Cross, looks deeply into the Inner Experience of the Mystical Ways.