Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth-century Ethics Book

"Twenty-first-century readers are likely to be more interested in the love of self than the love of God. They may be surprised to find how much the understanding of each of these loves can teach us about the other. Thomas Osborne's excellent book makes thirteenth-century ethics highly relevant to twenty-first-century readers." â?"Alasdair MacIntyre, University of Notre Dame "This book is a model of clarity. It introduces readers to views on Christian love that range from the Golden Age of the patristic period to the beginning of the fourteenth century, and will occupy an important place in the reconstruction of the debates between realists and conceptualists that have dominated the Christian appropriation of classical pagan ethics." â?"Romanus Cessario, O.P., Saint Johnâ??s Seminary "This book is solidly historical, its feet firmly planted in the relevant medieval texts. And yet its arguments could not be more relevant to contemporary Christian theology, so marked as it is by the debate over the natural desire for beatitude." â?"Kevin L. Flannery, S.J., Pontifical Gregorian University In this book, Thomas M. Osborne, Jr., covers an important, but often neglected, aspect of medieval ethics, namely the controversy over whether or not it is possible to love God more than oneself through natural powers alone. Osborne provides a history of this debate, based on a close analysis of primary texts, clarifies the concepts most important for understanding eudaimonism, and argues that the central difference between the ethical theories of such great thinkers as Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus is not morality and self-interest, but rather the relationship between ethics and natural inclination.Read More