Love as Actus Humanus in Love and Responsibility (I)

Abstract

There are very few statements about methodology in Love and responsibility. Still, it progresses completely within the framework of experiences where ethical objectivity can be attained thanks to truth. Phenomenic or nominalistic experience had no theoretical resources except to provide a foundation for sensual love. The theoretical elevation of this love to affective love goes hand in hand with a new approach to experience which might be called phenomenological. But both are “psychological” loves. Still unexplored are the experience profiles required for a third level: the practical ethical love. Those experiences are not limited to what happens to the person in the fulfilment of the act. The living experience of the person as subject of ethical value is on a par with experiencing the being of the person who is the source of that value through causality. This third type of love, “ethical” and effective, represents the highest level of causality, and corresponds to an act of moral objectivity, which will be studied in another paper.