Content area
Full text
HILDEBRAND, Dietrich von. The Nature of Love. Translated by John F. Crosby with John Henry Crosby. Introduction by John F. Crosby. Preface by Kenneth L. Schmitz. South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2009. xxxvi + 395 pp. Cloth, $40.00- The first English translation of this remarkable book, originally published in German as Wesen der Liebe in 1971, makes available the great depth of Hildebrand's phenomenological approach to love. Begun in 1958, this work reveals important similarities to Karol Wojtyla's Love and Responsibility (originally published in PoUsh in 1960), Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body beginning in 1979, and Pope Benedict's Encyclical Deus caritas est, promulgated in 2005.
The titles of the Chapters in The Nature of Love are the keys to opening and understanding of Hildebrand's approach to the subject: 1) Love as Value-Response; 2) Love in Distinction to Other ValueResponses; 3) The "Gift" of Love; 4) Love and Transcendence; 5) Value and Happiness; 6) Intentio Unionis; 7) Intentio Benevolentiae, ValueResponse, and Super Value-Response; 8) The Different Kinds of "Mine"; 9) Eigenleben and Transcendence; 10) The Happiness of Love; 11) Caritas; 12) Love and Morality; 13) Faithfulness; and 14) Ordo Amoris.
In each chapter, Hildebrand describes both the distortions associated with the topic and what he considers to be the best approach to love from his phenomenological, and at times, ontologica! and ethical principles, hi his introduction, he sets forth his approach: "The way to an adequate knowledge...