Love and Goodness
摘要
This chapter explores love, understood as a loving responsiveness, as goodness. As the one who lovingly responds to another does not perceive the goodness of their own love, the focus of the discussion shifts from the perspective of the responder to that of the witness. Through a reimagination of the parable of the Good Samaritan, it is shown that while an open responsiveness to love of a striking purity elicits wonder at its goodness, indifference and denial likewise presuppose an understanding that the love witnessed is good. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Barabas’s claim that goodness is perceived as extraordinary.