On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:37:26 +0200, Martin J. Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Stuff Kant & Descartes, Erminia. As an atheist Christian (like Shelley) I
>would remind (you, me, everyone) that Jesus of Nazareth (or someone else
>with the same name) said
>>Love thy neighbour as thyself.<
It is true that the Christian imperative states “alla lettera” "Love your
neighbour as you love yourself". …but isn’t this a double edged blade. In
spite of all the immense and incommensurable love I have for Our Lord
Jesus, as a pre-catholic promoter of some basic principles that regulate my
ethos, I would feel very exposed , had I to lay my life bare in the hands
of my neighbours, had I to place my safety in the unpredictable and
erratic notion of their self-love and self-esteem which could well be, in
fact, self-hatred ness, or self-despise.
Our Lord Jesus was a little bit adventurous in this particular idea, as
well in his suggestion to offer the other cheek.
In many people experience, the kind of love that they get from general
neighbourhoods (the other in the sense of someone not belonging to one’s
direct family of parents and children) most often is a love reflecting
the other person’s libido , a kind of love that objectified the person
to the limit of dehumanising their existence as creatures.
That love does not count so much, is Narcissus mirroring himself and can
lead to any consequence of unhappiness and disappointment.
Uhm… a good way of loving one’s neighbour maybe is to go and join in the
Red Cross, as Samuel Beckett did. This probably is a good action.
I do not have any kind of idea of what remedy could be found to this state
of things. I would limit myself to the basic principle of never never never
causing harm, in other words Jesus’ more reasonable suggestion : "Do not
do to others what you do not wish others to do to yourself". Although, to
be honest, also this is sometimes difficult to put in practice in a
straightforward way.
(Erminia)
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