Why should I follow agape?

1. Equality and Justice

Each other person, like you and me, has a life, memories, traumas, joys, sadness, experiences those emotions day to day, engages in relationships with others, has dreams and fears and projects and hopes. Why would mine be worth any more than those of others? I am not different in terms of this ability to experience, so how could I be worth more than others? So each person’s experiences and well-being is worth equally, and I must care for the well-being of all (for a philosophical explanation of some of this reasoning, see Gene Outka, 1972, p. 199-200).

Connected to this are the justifications for an egalitarian justice which strongly overlaps with agape: everything other than individuals can only have value for individuals. Individuals are valuable in themselves irreducibly, and there is no way of grading them as individuals. There are no superior or inferior individuals as such (one can be superior at being a tennis player, for instance, but not superior as an individual). Therefore, one’s well-being is as valuable as another’s (Outka, 1972, p. 202).

Recognizing that everyone's well-being is equally valuable is a basis of agape, since agape calls us to care for the well-being of all 💚

2. Shared characteristics among sentient beings

While non-human animals may not reason in the same manner than us, most sentient beings will have to various degrees, like me, a life, memories, traumas, joys, sadness, will experience those emotions day to day, engage in relationships with others, have dreams and fears and projects and hopes. Why would mine be worth any more than those of others? They are all valuable, the violation of any of them is immoral.

William Greenway (2016) makes a distinction between the moral and the ethical. The moral is agape, our being seized by love for all others, our care for their wellbeing. The ethical is how we use our reasoning to best care for the wellbeing of all, particularly when the wellbeing of different sentient beings conflict and that, whatever we do, one will be harmed; where we are therefore forced to violate one.

Perhaps as a human I may experience some of those things in larger or stronger degrees than other animals. This is why if a deer and a human were both about to die and that we could only save one, Greenway says we should save the human (according to the ethical, despite the fact that the deer's death remains immoral: there was an ethically right choice but no moral solution). But we must uphold and work on improving the life and wellbeing of all, and aside from this kind of scenario which requires an immoral choice, none is to be left to die or suffer.

3. The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule is widely acknowledged throughout spiritual and philosophical traditions across the world. It goes along with the recognition of equality and shared characteristics: when I would like others to do something for me (or act in a certain way with me), how could I not do it (or act in this way) with others? Similarly, when I fear something and wouldn't want others to do it to me, how could I do it to them?

4. Compassion or Empathy

Compassion or empathy are less of a rational justification for agape, and more of an emotional motivator. Agape does go beyond compassion or empathy in that it is a care for the well-being even of those whom we may not see, relate with, and feel any compassion or empathy for. But similar to compassion or empathy, William G. Maclagan explains that the justification for agape comes in the very experience of agape. Agape itself is the recognition that others are as valuable as me, and the response to this recognition (see Outka, 1972, p. 201).

5. Relationality

Philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and William Greenway explain that before even a self is constituted, there is the other, and my very sense of self depends on the other. The ‘Face’ of the other demands me not to harm them, and demands me to take care of them. I am response-able and responsible for them. I can choose to ignore this, but not responding to the Face of the other is thus a choice and follows after the reality of undergoing this call. The only way to live is in relation with the other, responding to their call; respecting and caring for them… that is, following agape.

Mutuality is also an important characteristic of social relations. Outka expresses: “agape furnishes a comprehensive ideal of social cooperativeness. [Humans] are reciprocally connected with larger groups and attention must be given to collective welfare. Those actions are loving which create and sustain community. Within and between groups, and in the social order as a whole, one ought to struggle for a progressive realization of harmony and brotherhood.” (1972, p. 177).

6. The virtuous life is the best life

Virtue ethics is the idea that instead of deciding what to do according to a set of rules or the expected consequences of an act, one should focus on developing and embodying certain virtues, certain character traits, such as moderation, prudence, empathy, justice, et cetera.

There is a long tradition in virtue ethics, be it in Aristotle (IV Century B.C.), in Aquinas, or in contemporary agape author Eric J. Silverman, saying that the virtuous life simply is the best life. In Aquinas or Silverman's cases, this means more specifically that the agapic life is the best life (see Silverman 2009 & 2019). If that is true, then we all have selfish reasons to follow agape, in addition to whatever other reason there may be.

And there is in fact a lot of evidence for the agapic life being the best life (which doesn't mean that a life lived agapically would necessarily be happier regardless of circumstances, but that the life virtuous from agape practice flourishes one the most), from psychology studies on the benefits of agape-type love styles within relationships, to the importance of relationships and friendships within life (Outka even talks about friendship as the ultimate value of human life, isee 1972, p. 178) and how agape helps develop deep and meaningful friendships.

Gérard Gilleman even claims: “the essentialist tendency of man is love” (1961, p. 160). The idea is that we do not choose this tendency but are “only free to live in accordance with it and attend to its implications; or to try – with consequences which are ultimately self-defeating – to deny it” (Outka, 1972, p. 182).

Bibliography

Gilleman, Gérard. 1961. The Primacy of Charity in Moral Theology, translated by William F.

Ryan, S.J., and André Vachon, S.J. Westminster: Newman Press.

Greenway, William. 2016. Agape Ethics: Moral Realism and Love for All Life. Eugene, OR:

Cascade Books.

Outka, Gene. 1972. AGAPE: An Ethical Analysis. New Haven and London: Yale University

Press.

Silverman, Eric J. 2009. The Prudence of Love: How Possessing the Virtue of Love Benefits

the Lover. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Silverman, Eric J. 2019. The Supremacy of Love: An Agape-centered Vision of Aristotelian

Virtue Ethics. Lanham and London: Lexington Books. Kindle.