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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