Agape and what it has lost

Keegan Ruddy
Topic of Choice
Agape: post enlightenment

Agape is a word, a word defined differently by many, and misunderstood by even more. In Stephen Post's A Theory of Agape, Post emphasizes agape as a communal love. As he progresses through the discussion of why this is, he gets into where agape was lost in translation. He plans philosophers of the enlightenment such as Immanuel Kant. He blames them for the idea that agape could ever be a secular idea. In Post's opinion agape love comes from the Love of God, man can only show it when accepting God's Love of him or herself. The world today is attempting to secularize many things in an attempt to make those who are not believers more comfortable. The truth of it is, believers are more offended by the secularization than atheists are by things continuing the way they are or even reverting to older traditions of a less secular world. That is one big generalization, yes, but on the whole I would say it would be hard to argue against. Maybe I am wrong, but I think I may just be right. Regardless, the point is that the secularization of a word that stems from religious ideas is a bit out there. Agape has Greek origins and could potentially have been used from the time of the Greek empire, perhaps earlier, and onward. It is a rather old world, that although defined many times, always has ties to the divine. No matter the religion, it is clearly something that is above human understanding. While I am not a classical studies scholar, I would be curious to know if agape is within the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible, because if it is found in there an argument against its secularization gets a whole lot easier. While the argument is already strong now.