By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Maurice speaks typically of God's being, or being motivated by, "perfect self-sacrificing love," oblivious of the implicit inappropriateness, not to say, meaninglessness, of such talk.
Perfect love neither would nor could be "self-sacrificing," for the very good reason that any love that would be properly self-sacrificing neither would nor could be "perfect," self-sacrifice being a possibility/responsibility of an imperfect agent only. Only where there would not be a complete coincidence between the good of the agent and the good of the others affected by the agent's action—as there could not conceivably be in the case of the perfect agent—could "self-sacrifice" be a possibility/responsibility.
24 May 2001
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