David L Goicoechea – författare

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.

In this new book, Marko Zlomislić argues that Slavoj Žižek''s work does not contain any sort of radical emancipatory project, especially as it passes through the ideology of communism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The evidence for the failure of communism is vast and includes the more than six hundred mass graves recently located in Žižek''s homeland of Slovenia. Zlomislić demonstrates that the way out of the capitalist dilemma is not a repetition of communism but a return to the late medieval notion of haecceity or "individual thisness" that was rejected by modernity. Haecceity, or the indescribable and indefinite here and now of the person, shows that the late medieval Franciscans were already "postmodernists." It is no wonder that the totalitarianism of the modernist Hegel is embraced by thinkers such as Žižek, Badiou, Hardt, Negri, and Laclau and was already rejected by Leibnitz, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Levinas, Deleuze, and Derrida. This important book shows that Žižek''s work must be rejected because it does not uphold the dignity, worth, and uniqueness of the person.

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.

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.