QD Vol. 3, No. 2-Dvh

Quaestiones
Disputatae
Selected Papers on
The Philosophy of
Dietrich von Hildebrand
John Henry Crosby, Special Guest Editor
Selected Proceedings from two International Conferences:
The Philosophical Legacy of Dietrich von Hildebrand

Hosted by Franciscan University of Steubenville, Oct. 12–13, 2007
&
The Christian Personalism of Dietrich von Hildebrand:
Exploring his Philosophy of Love
Hosted by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Rome, Italy, May 27–29, 2010
Presented by the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project

Cosponsored by the MA Program in Philosophy at
Franciscan University of Steubenville
2
Quaestiones Disputatae
Vol 3, No. 2 Spring 2013
Introduction
Introduction to The Philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand

John Henry Crosby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Biography of Dietrich von Hildebrand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Dietrich von Hildebrand in Dialogue
An Ontology of Love: A Patristic Reading of Dietrich

von Hildebrand’s The Nature of Love†
His Eminence John Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
The Phenomenology of Body and Self*

Ann-Therese Gardner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
The Non-Violence of Love: A Hildebrand-Girard Encounter†

Brian Sudlow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Dietrich von Hildebrand and Paul Ricoeur:

Eidetic and Hermeneutic Phenomenology‡
David Utsler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Principium Versus Principiatum: The Transcendence of Love

in von Hildebrand and Aquinas*
Francis Feingold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
What Makes Experience “Moral”?

Dietrich von Hildebrand vs. Max Scheler‡
Philip Blosser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3
The School of Dietrich von Hildebrand
Dietrich von Hildebrand on Benevolence in Love and Friendship:

A Masterful Contribution to Perennial Philosophy†
Josef Seifert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Dietrich von Hildebrand on the Heart‡

Robert E. Wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Self-Regarding and Non-Self-Regarding Actions, and

Comments on a Non-Self-Regarding Interest in Another’s Good‡
Fritz Wenisch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Dietrich von Hildebrand on the Role of the Heart and the Will in Love‡
Stephen D. Schwarz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Dietrich von Hildebrand and the Birth of Love as an I-Thou Relation†

Paola Premoli De Marchi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Dietrich von Hildebrand on Particular Questions
Love and the Will in Dietrich von Hildebrand’s The Nature of Love‡
Stephen Phelan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Humility in Dietrich von Hildebrand’s The Nature of Love †

Mary M. Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Universalism, Particularism, and Subjectivity—Dietrich von Hildebrand’s

Concept of Eigenleben and Modern Moral Philosophy†
Mathew Lu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
†
Indicates that the paper was originally presented in 2010 at the Pontifical University
of the Holy Cross in Rome.
‡
Indicates that the paper was originally presented in 2007 at Franciscan University
of Steubenville
* Indicates that the paper was originally submitted to the graduate essay contest
sponsored by the Legacy Project in 2010.
4
Introduction to The Philosophy of

I am grateful to Dr. Paul Symington, Editor of Quaestiones Disputatae, for the

invitation to serve as guest editor of this volume of essays on The Philosophy
of Dietrich von Hildebrand. Not since 1992, when the journal Aletheia published
a special issue on von Hildebrand,1 has there been a collection of scholarly
papers dedicated exclusively to developing, amplifying, comparing, and cri-
tiquing the various strands of von Hildebrand’s philosophical contributions.
The publication of this volume marks the latest chapter in a fruitful
and ongoing partnership between the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Proj-
ect and Franciscan University of Steubenville. Indeed, the Legacy Project’s
existence owes much to Franciscan University which, in the Project’s crucial
early years, emerged as one of its first significant benefactors.
Material support took the form of partnership in 2007 when the
Legacy Project and Franciscan University’s MA Program in Philosophy co-
sponsored the first major international conference on Dietrich von Hilde-
brand since centenary celebrations were held in honor of his birth in 1989.
(Franciscan University, in fact, organized its own commemoration, A Centen-
nial Celebration in Honor of Christopher Dawson and Dietrich von Hildebrand.)
Our conference in 2007 was entitled, “The Philosophical Legacy of
Dietrich von Hildebrand.” We chose this theme because we knew that von
Hildebrand’s reputation today is primarily based on his numerous books on
Catholic themes, notably Transformation in Christ (1940)2 and The Trojan Horse
in the City of God (1967).3 Only a small subset of his readers are truly aware
of the seminal philosophical spirit of von Hildebrand—a philosophical spir-
it, by the way, which suffuses his religious writings and without which they
would lose their distinctive stamp of “faith seeking understanding.”
Von Hildebrand is himself partly responsible for being overlooked
as a philosopher on account of the way he professes his faith in the midst of
1
Josef Seifert, ed., “Truth and Value. The Philosophy of Dietrich von Hil-
debrand,” special issue, Aletheia 5 (Bern: Peter Lang Verlag, 1992).
2
Dietrich von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ, 1st ed. (New York-Toron-
to: Longmans, Green, 1948); originally published under the pseudonym “Peter Ott”
as Die Umgestaltung in Christus, 1st ed. (Einsiedeln-Köln: Benziger & Co., 1940).
3
Von Hildebrand, The Trojan Horse in the City of God, 1st ed. (Chicago: Fran-
ciscan Herald Press, 1967); published in German translation as Das trojanische Pferd in
der Stadt Gottes, 1st ed. (Regensburg: Josef Habbel, 1968).
5
his philosophical writings. Although he carefully distinguished between his
strictly phenomenological investigations and his faith-based reflections, he
may still give the impression of obscuring the distinction by the way that, for
instance, he employs Scripture, papal addresses, and the saints in his philo-
sophical writings. Many modern philosophers, having no idea of the power
of Christian faith to open new philosophical perspectives, or of the power of
philosophy to open a path to Christian faith, suppose that thinkers of strong
faith must inevitably suffer as philosophers. Thus it is often thought that von
Hildebrand was not fully committed to philosophy proper. Von Hildebrand’s
teacher Husserl seems to have labored under this prejudice. There are few
extant sources documenting Husserl’s view of von Hildebrand’s conversion,
but one can well interpret a letter of Husserl to express his disappointment:
“[Dietrich von Hildebrand] is a Catholic convert and his interests are now
restricted to the religious-ethical sphere.”4
This perception of von Hildebrand was perpetuated and amplified
by Herbert Spiegelberg in his influential two-volume study, The Phenomenologi-
cal Movement: A Historical Introduction.5 Spiegelberg portrays von Hildebrand as
a brilliant member of Husserl’s Göttingen circle, who, following his conver-
sion, moved away from philosophy into the study of religious questions. He
suggests that von Hildebrand’s philosophical works are dominated by his
religious views and, therefore, that their relevance to philosophy is minimal.6
It is not hard to see expressed a typical modern estrangement of faith from
reason at work here in Spiegelberg.
And yet, an ever-increasing interest in von Hildebrand’s philosophi-
cal work—which the Legacy Project is in a uniquely privileged position both
to witness and to support—bespeaks a growing consensus that his thought
is not reducible to theology but is in fact eminently philosophical. Indeed, the
essays contained in this very volume testify to the immense philosophical
vitality of von Hildebrand’s thought. While some authors approach von Hil-
debrand in a strictly philosophical manner, others treat him as a “Christian
philosopher,” in the sense that they see in his thought a fecund mutual influ-
ence of faith and reason.
Whereas our 2007 conference aimed at rehabilitating von Hilde-
brand’s status as philosopher, our next conference in 2010 sought to enrich
the age-old philosophical investigation of human nature through a consid-
4
“[Hildebrand ist] katholischer Konvertit und in seinen Interessen aufs Religiös-Ethische
beschränkt.” As documented by Karl Schuhmann, quoting from a letter of Husserl to
Paul Natorp, “Husserl and Hildebrand,” in “Truth and Value,” 32.
5
Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction
(Dordrecht, London, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994).
6
For Spiegelberg’s treatment of von Hildebrand, see Spiegelberg, Phenomeno-
logical Movement, 235–37.
6
eration of von Hildebrand’s philosophy of love. The year 2009 had seen the
long-awaited publication of an English translation of The Nature of Love,7
and so the 2010 conference, entitled, The Christian Personalism of Dietrich von
Hildebrand: Exploring his Philosophy of Love, was designed to introduce this im-
portant yet little known work to the world. Such an ambition called for a
truly international setting, and so we partnered with the prestigious Pontifical
University of the Holy Cross in the Eternal City, where we gathered for three
glorious Roman summer days (May 27–29).
There was good reason to expect great things from The Nature of
Love. To begin with, von Hildebrand himself regarded it as his philosophi-
cal magnum opus. What is more, von Hildebrand has for decades been widely
known for his original reflections on conjugal love, notably through two in-
fluential books, In Defense of Purity (1927)8 and Marriage (1929).9 But if these
smaller works brought von Hildebrand’s penetrating phenomenological gaze
to bear on questions of love, they did not yet amount to a comprehensive
treatment of the nature of love in its total spectrum, including love between
friends, between parents and children, the love of neighbor, and the love of
God. For this greater task, one has to consult The Nature of Love, which, since
its publication in 1971, had only been accessible to German readers.
It is hard to overstate the significance of love in von Hildebrand’s
understanding of the human person. For von Hildebrand, love is the central
and the decisive human reality. Only through the prism of love can we un-
derstand ourselves and others. And only in love can we find our vocation,
our destiny. The investigation of the nature of love, von Hildebrand would
say, is therefore the highpoint of philosophical anthropology—or, to speak the
7
Von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, trans. John F. Crosby with John Henry
Crosby (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009); originally published in German as
Das Wesen der Liebe (Regensburg: Josef Habbel, 1971).
8
Von Hildebrand, In Defense of Purity, 1st ed. (London: Sheed & Ward, 1931);
originally published in German as Reinheit und Jungfräulichkeit (Köln-München-Wien:
Oratoriums Verlag, 1927).
9
Von Hildebrand, Marriage, 1st ed. (New York/London: Longmans, Green,
1942); originally published in German as Die Ehe (München: Verlag Ars Sacra, 1929).
A fruitful area for further exploration would be to study the extent of von Hilde-
brand’s influence on subsequent Catholic teaching on love and marriage. See Joseph
Sommer, S.J., Catholic Thought on Contraception Through the Ages (Liguorian Pamphlets
and Books, 1970), 53, which argues that In Defense of Purity influenced Pius XI’s 1930
encyclical, Casti Connubii. For more on the reception of von Hildebrand’s thought
on love and marriage by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, see Rolando B.
Arjonillo, Conjugal Love and the Ends of Marriage: A Study of Dietrich von Hildebrand and
Herbert Doms in the Light of the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes (Bern: Peter Lang
Verlag, 1998).
7
language of Aristotle and St. Thomas—the teleological key to understanding
the “end” of all human acting and striving.
When in 2007 nearly 150 attendees gathered from around the United
States and even from places as far away as Austria, Poland, the Ukraine, and
Australia, I thought it quite likely to be the largest gathering ever convened
in honor of von Hildebrand; but in the 2010 meeting, there could be no
doubt that with nearly 300 participants, we had indeed surpassed any previ-
ous Hildebrand-inspired gathering.
The Rome conference saw a robust participation by graduate stu-
dents, thanks to the first-ever essay contest sponsored by the Legacy Project.
Given the high quality of the more than twenty submissions we received,
we were disappointed that our resources only permitted awarding five all-
expenses paid trips to Rome, thus enabling the winners to present their pa-
pers in sessions alongside established academics in the field. Beyond these
graduate participants, we invited the remaining contestants to come at their
own expense, and, incredibly, ten of them obtained their own funding and
also delivered their papers. The present volume features the essays of two of
these graduate students.
One last but significant note: both the 2007 and 2010 conferences
sought not just to solicit papers from known “Hildebrand scholars,” includ-
ing from among the small yet vibrant group of still-living students of von
Hildebrand, but also to invite newer novel perspectives. The Legacy Project
aims not just to “promote” Hildebrandian ideas but above all to encourage
a truly philosophical reception of his work—which is to say, a reception which
weighs von Hildebrand’s theses, arguments, and formulations with the central
question of philosophy: “Is it true?” For this reason, we invited papers from
both distinguished and emerging scholars who were new to von Hildebrand’s
thought. I would here call particular attention to the lead essay in this volume
by His Eminence John Zizioulas, the Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan of
Pergamon, which offers an illuminating reading of von Hildebrand’s per-
sonalism in light of the Greek Fathers who have shaped Orthodox theology
(and anthropology). Beyond this lead essay, readers will find other fascinating
studies, too, setting von Hildebrand in dialogue with such diverse thinkers as
Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, René Girard, and Paul Ricoeur.
In offering the papers of this volume, I hope not only to showcase
some of the finest fruits of the conferences in Steubenville and Rome, but
above all, to build on the momentum of the “Hildebrand renaissance” cur-
rently underway and to invite philosophers everywhere to read von Hilde-
brand for the first time, or, for those laboring under the misdirection gen-
erated by Spiegelberg and others, to return to von Hildebrand for a closer
appraisal of his philosophical work.
8
* * *
Finally, let me offer a word on the process by which the papers in the pres-
ent volume were selected. Between the two conferences in 2007 and 2010, a
total of eighty-five papers were presented. Well over half were submitted for
review in hopes of being collected here in this volume. These submissions
in turn were distributed for blind review by scholars with an expertise in the
thought of von Hildebrand.
Though only fourteen papers appear in the present volume, many
of the remaining papers submitted, and indeed an array of articles and es-
says on von Hildebrand, appear on the website of the Legacy Project (www.
hildebrandlegacy.org). The Legacy Project is the principal publisher of both
printed and digital editions of von Hildebrand’s work. Additionally, we main-
tain an online bibliography, which can be updated by users who either have
written about von Hildebrand or whose study of his work have led them to
discover sources not included in the bibliography.
I would be failing in my obligation of gratitude if I did not express
my deepest thanks to the individuals and institutions whose support made
possible these conferences and the preparation of this volume. Here I must
especially acknowledge Franciscan University and then-Vice President for
Academic Affairs, Dr. Max Bonilla, who agreed to host the 2007 conference
and who championed the University’s robust support of the 2010 conference
in Rome. I am also delighted to thank Dr. Mark Roberts, then-chair of Fran-
ciscan University’s MA Program in Philosophy, for his invaluable assistance
in designing the 2007 conference.
Special thanks are due to the School of Philosophy at the Pontifical
University of the Holy Cross in Rome, which hosted and cosponsored our
2010 conference in Rome. Here I must express my deepest gratitude to Fr.
Robert A. Gahl and Fr. Rafael A. Martínez, both of the School of Philoso-
phy, who facilitated the countless financial and logistic acts of support we re-
ceived from the Pontifical University. Finally, I would like to thank Kathleen
McCann, Andrew Semler, Justin Keena, Dylan Naegele, and Christopher T.
Haley for their many administrative and editorial contributions which en-
sured that this volume would see the light of day.
There would have been no conference in Rome were it not for the
munificence of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Our Sunday
Visitor Institute, Franciscan University of Steubenville, the Europäisches In-
stitut, the Earhart Foundation, and Gratia International. I would especially
like to thank Dr. Daniel P. Schmidt of the Bradley Foundation, and Dr. In-
grid A. Gregg of the Earhart Foundation, who eloquently conveyed the im-
port of the Rome conference to the trustees of their respective foundations.
To all associated with these institutions, my warmest possible thanks.
9
Lastly, I owe a special word of thanks to Dr. John F. Crosby, co-
founder of the Legacy Project, founder of Franciscan University’s MA Pro-
gram in Philosophy, and wise advisor on every aspect of the Project. As
might be surmised, Dr. Crosby is indeed my father, and the far more distin-
guished member of a very happy and productive father-son team.
—John Henry Crosby

Founder and Director,
Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project
10
Dietrich von Hildebrand was born in Florence on October 12, 1889, the
son of the German sculptor, Adolf von Hildebrand. He began his univer-
sity studies in Munich in 1906. His close association with Max Scheler dates
from this time. Between 1909 and 1911 he spent several semesters studying
with Edmund Husserl in Göttingen, where he also studied with Husserl’s
assistant, Adolf Reinach, whom he always venerated as his real teacher in
philosophy. In 1912 von Hildebrand received his doctorate in Göttingen with
a dissertation, written under Husserl’s direction, on the nature of moral ac-
tion. In 1914 von Hildebrand converted to Catholicism, partly under the
influence of Scheler. In 1918 he completed his Habilitation on moral value
blindness at the University of Munich, and in 1919 he began teaching at that
university, where he remained until he fled Hitler’s regime in 1933. During
these years he published his well-known books on man and woman and on
marriage, as well as his work, The Metaphysics of Community. Between 1933 and
1938 he lived in Vienna, where he was mainly active as an opponent of Nazi
Germany, but was also professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna
from 1935–38. After fleeing Austria in 1938, he escaped to the United States
in 1940. He accepted a professorship at Fordham University, where he taught
until his retirement in 1960. His major works in ethics were published in the
1950s, most important of which is his Ethics. After his retirement he wrote
The Nature of Love, Aesthetics, and Moralia. He died in New Rochelle, New
York on January 26, 1977.
About the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project
The Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project was founded in 2004 to raise
awareness of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s seminal philosophical writings. To-
day, the Project is dedicated to the whole of von Hildebrand’s legacy, with a
particular emphasis on his contributions in aesthetics, ethics, and epistemol-
ogy; in theology and spirituality; in politics and public witness; and in beauty,
art, and cultural renewal. The Project’s mission is realized through a portfolio
of initiatives, principally through translation of von Hildebrand’s numerous
German writings into English; by publication of these translations; by (re)-
publication of important titles by von Hildebrand in English and numerous
other languages; by conferences, symposia, and summer seminars; by gradu-
ate student internships; and by a website which is the acknowledged leader
in sources (written, video, and audio) by and about von Hildebrand (www.
hildebrandlegacy.org).
11
Contributors
Philip Blosser, PhD, is Professor of Philosophy at Sacred Heart Major Sem-

inary. He has held teaching posts at Duquesne University, Harlaxton College
(UK), and Lenoir-Rhyne University, before his current appointment. His re-
search focus has been on Max Scheler and related phenomenologists, but he
has also worked more broadly in ethical theory, philosophy of religion, and
Asian philosophy. He is the recipient of multiple academic awards and the
author of four monographs, including Scheler’s Critique of Kant’s Ethics (1995).
John Henry Crosby is Founder and Director of the Dietrich von Hilde-
brand Legacy Project. He undertook undergraduate and graduate studies in
philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Together with John F.
Crosby, he is the co-translator of the English edition of Dietrich von Hilde-
brand’s The Nature of Love (2009); he also edited a reissue of von Hildebrand’s
book, The Heart (2007). His translation of von Hildebrand’s anti-Nazi papers
is forthcoming with Random House in the spring of 2014.
Ann-Therese Gardner, PhL, is a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow

at the Catholic University of America, in Washington D.C. She focuses on
modern and contemporary German philosophy, exploring the themes of
time, the history of philosophy, categorical intuition, and the imagination.
Francis Feingold is a graduate student in philosophy at the Catholic Univer-

sity of America in Washington, D.C. His primary interests lie in Thomistic/
Aristotelian ethics, especially in questions such as inclination theory, eudae-
monism, freedom of the will, and the common good; they also include issues
in metaphysics (divine simplicity, divine naming, and substantial composi-
tion) and aesthetics.
Mary M. Keys, PhD, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Uni-

versity of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana. She received her PhD in 1998
at the University of Toronto. She works in the field of political theory with
special interest in virtue ethics, legal philosophy, and the history of political
thought. She is the author of Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common
Good (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and of articles published in the
American Journal of Political Science, History of Political Thought, and Perspectives on
Political Science.
12
Mathew Lu, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of
St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He writes mostly on normative ethics and
much of his recent work has focused on abortion, including “Aristotle on
Abortion and Infanticide,” forthcoming in the International Philosophical Quar-
terly, and “Abortion and Virtue Ethics” in Persons, Moral Worth, and Embryos
(2011).
Paola Premoli De Marchi, PhD, Dr. habil., is Lecturer in Ethics at the

University of Padua and at the University A. Avogadro in Novara, Italy. She
studied realist phenomenology at the International Academy of Philosophy
in Liechtenstein, and she is the author of a book on the philosophical anthro-
pology of Dietrich von Hildebrand (1998). She is also the editor of Italian
translations of von Hildebrand’s What is Philosophy? (2001) and The Nature
of Love (2003), as well as of Max Scheler’s On the Eternal in Man (2009). Her
work focuses on the person, action theory, business ethics, and medical eth-
ics.
Stephen Phelan is the Director of Communications for Human Life Inter-

national, based in Front Royal, Virginia. He holds an MA in philosophy from
Franciscan University of Steubenville. Most of his recent work in writing and
editing is directed toward the defense of life and family, and to the integra-
tion of pro-life advocacy with the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, in
light of the magisterium of Pope Benedict XVI.
Stephen D. Schwarz is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University

of Rhode Island, where he taught from 1963 to 2007. He is a godson, and
was a student and close personal friend, of Dietrich von Hildebrand. He is
the son of Balduin Schwarz, who was also a student and close personal friend
of von Hildebrand. He is the author (with Kiki Latimer) of Understanding
Abortion: From Mixed Feelings to Rational Thought (2012).
Josef Seifert, PhD, Dr. habil., is Founding Rector of the International Acad-
emy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein (IAP), and presently
full Professor of Philosophy and chair-holder at the IAP—El Instituto de
Filosofía “Edith Stein” in Granada, Spain. A student and close friend of
Dietrich von Hildebrand, he has published more than twenty books and 350
articles in seven languages in almost every classical field of philosophy. He is
founding editor of the international philosophical journal, Aletheia, and, with
Giovanni Reale, of the series, Studies in Phenomenological and Classical Realism.
13
Brian Sudlow, PhD, is Lecturer in French with Translation Studies at Aston
University in Birmingham, England. He is a cultural and intellectual historian
and his most recent work has begun to explore themes such as technology,
the post-secular, and the post-human. He is the author of Catholic Literature
and Secularization in France and England 1880–1914 (2011).
David Utsler is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy and Re-

ligion Studies at the University of North Texas. He is co-editor of the book
Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics, forthcom-
ing from Fordham University Press in the fall of 2013.
Fritz Wenisch, PhD, is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rhode

Island, where since 1971 he has taught courses in philosophy and religious
studies. A student of Dietrich von Hildebrand, he received his PhD in phi-
losophy at the University of Salzburg in 1968. He has published several ar-
ticles and books, including Die Philosophie und ihre Methode (1967) and Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam: Differences, Commonalities, and Community (2011).
Robert E. Wood, PhD, is professor of philosophy in the Institute of Philo-

sophic Studies at the University of Dallas. He is past president of the Ameri-
can Catholic Philosophical Association and editor of the American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly from 1989–2009. He has authored and edited a dozen
books and over 80 articles in aesthetics, anthropology, and metaphysics. His
Placing Aesthetics: Reflections on the Philosophic Tradition received a Choice Out-
standing Academic Award in 2000.
His Eminence John Zizioulas is the Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan of

Pergamon, Ecumenical Patriarchate. A distinguished theologian and philoso-
pher of worldwide renown, he is also at the forefront of dialogue between
the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. He is a prolific au-
thor, known especially for his books, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood
and the Church (1997) and Communion & Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood
and the Church (2007).
An Ontology of Love:
A Patristic Reading of Dietrich von
Hildebrand’s The Nature of Love
His Eminence John Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon
Abstract
Dietrich von Hildebrand’s treatise, The Nature of Love, is set in re-
lation to the theological personalism of the Cappadocian fathers
of the Church, and to my own earlier work done in this tradi-
tion. Several points of divergence are explored, especially points
concerning von Hildebrand’s claim that love exists as a response
to the beauty of the beloved person. God’s love for human be-
ings does not always seem to fit the paradigm of value-response;
His love seems rather to be creative of beauty in us rather than
to respond to already existing beauty. But at the same time, the
deep kinship of von Hildebrand’s personalism with that of the
Cappadocian fathers is stressed; he is at one with them in affirm-
ing the heart as distinct from the intellect, in affirming love as the
supreme act of the person, and in affirming the place of beauty
in the existence of persons.
Introduction
I regard it as a great privilege to be invited to offer some reflections on the

thought of the late Dietrich von Hildebrand. I fully share the conviction of
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, expressed when he was still a cardinal, that
von Hildebrand’s place in the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in
the 20th century will be a prominent one when this history is written.
I happen to belong to a theological tradition which in many respects
approaches theological and philosophical questions in a way different from
that to which von Hildebrand belonged. As an Orthodox, I am shaped intel-
lectually by the thought of the Greek Fathers rather than that of St. Augus-
tine or Thomas Aquinas, who lie behind von Hildebrand’s intellectual forma-
tion. And yet at this ecumenical age in which we live, Eastern and Western
© John Zizioulas, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)

His Eminence John Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon 15
traditions are no longer indifferent to each other. In our effort to restore
full communion as one and undivided Church we are becoming more and
more aware of the need to ask ourselves how we view not only our past but
also the fundamental existential questions preoccupying human beings at all
times. Philosophers such as von Hildebrand and the questions they discuss
are of ecumenical significance today. They are important for Catholics and
Orthodox alike, just as they are for every person seeking illumination and
deeper understanding of their human condition.
My acquaintance with the thought of von Hildebrand has arisen out
of my preoccupation with the personalism of Patristic thought, particularly
of the Greek Fathers. It has been by no means a deep acquaintance, as it is
essentially limited to his book on The Nature of Love,1 but it has been suf-
ficient to arouse in me a great interest and fascination leading to an attempt
to compare his views with those of Greek Patristic thought which remains
always my personal intellectual ground.
Thus, in the present paper an attempt will be made to present the
Greek Patristic concept of the person with a view to the personalism of Di-
etrich von Hildebrand. Some of von Hildebrand’s ideas will be picked up in
order to indicate common ground as well as points of divergence. It is hoped
that in this way von Hildebrand’s thought will be placed in a broader ecu-
menical context and its relevance may become apparent beyond the bounds
of Catholic thought.
Person as an Ontological Category
One of the fundamental contributions of the Greek Fathers to personalist

thought is the elevation of the concept of the person to the highest ontologi-
cal level. In the ancient world, both Greek and Roman, the idea of the person
lacked ontological content. For the ancient Greeks of the classical period
πρόσωπον (prosōpon) was a term associated with the theater and indicated the
mask worn by the actors on the stage. There was also an understanding of
the term in its anatomical sense; that is, as the part of the face just beneath
the eyes or the cranium, as we find it in Aristotle’s History of Animals and in
Homer’s Iliad. But even in Aristotle himself the term πρόσωπον (prosōpon)
or προσωπεı̃ον (prosōpeion) very soon came to be used in the theatrical sense
which has prevailed ever since in classical antiquity. A πρόσωπον (prosōpon)
is not what someone really is but rather what one wishes or pretends to be.
Πρόσωπον (prosōpon) indicates a tragic existence, and does not have the meta-
Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, trans. John F. Crosby with John
1
Henry Crosby (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009).

16 An Ontology of Love
physical quality of being qua being which Aristotle and Greek philosophy in
general reserved exclusively for the notion of ου̕σία (ousia or substance).
A similar connotation was given by the Romans to the Latin equiva-
lent of πρόσωπον (prosōpon)—namely, persona. The origins of this term are
still a matter of dispute. If the prevailing theory associating the origin of the
word with the Etruscan phersu found in funerary representations is accepted,
the original connection of the term with theatrical use would appear to be
plausible. As the term finally established itself in Latin literature, it became
more and more clear that the Romans used this term in a way not very differ-
ent from that of the Greeks, namely in the sense of the role one plays in his
or her social life, particularly in one’s relation with the state.2
It was, in fact, with the Greek Fathers that the term πρόσωπον
(prosōpon) acquired an ontological meaning. This happened in connection
with the discussions concerning the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in the
fourth century when the Cappadocian Fathers for the first time in the his-
tory of Greek thought identified the term πρόσωπον (prosōpon) with that of
hypostasis (ὑπόστασις); that is, with a term used more or less as equivalent (or
at times identical) with ου̕σία (ousia) or substance. With the formula proposed
by these Fathers and used ever since in the theology of the Church (“God is
one substance, three persons or hypostases”) the term “person” was raised to
the highest ontological level: being a person no longer means wearing a mask
and “acting” or playing a role in society. By being used to indicate God’s very
being, the notion of the person acquired the highest and fullest ontological
(or metaphysical) significance.
Now, in reading von Hildebrand one is struck by a similar insistence
on the ontology of personhood. On the very first page of his Introduction
to The Nature of Love, he writes:
Personal being stands incomparably higher than all impersonal
being, and…in doing justice to the distinctive character of per-
sonal being, one penetrates much deeper into the realm of being
and of metaphysics.3

It is noteworthy that in insisting on the ontological character of the
person von Hildebrand contrasts this with what he calls “mere ‘psychology.’”4
This is a most welcome contrast, which, I think, coincides with the Greek
Patristic view of the person. According to the Cappadocian Fathers, the Per-
sons of the Holy Trinity are not to be understood in psychological terms
2
Even today we use the expression personne morale, or “legal person,” to indi-
cate an institution or identity which has no real ontological content, but is a relational
identity vis-à-vis the state.
3
Von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 1.
4
Ibid., 1.
(i.e., as centers of consciousness, will, etc.) since all psychological categories,
including will and consciousness are applicable to all three Persons, being
properties of Their common ousia: all three Divine Persons possess the same
will, and if we wish to use anachronistically a modern term, the same “con-
sciousness.” Psychology and ontology are to be clearly distinguished.
But although von Hildebrand seems to say precisely this, a careful
reading of his analysis suggests that he understands psychology—and the
person—in a way different from that of the Greek Fathers. Here the diver-
gence between the Greek Patristic and Latin-Augustinian view of the person
is probably at stake.
Augustine, as we know, illustrates the Persons of the Holy Trinity
by using such terms as ‘memory’ for the Father, ‘knowledge’ for the Son and
‘will’ for the Spirit. These terms he borrows from Platonic or Neoplatonic
psychology. Following this, Western personalism from the Middle Ages to
modern times has understood the person as a thinking subject, conscious of
itself and other beings, the key-notion for personhood being that of conscious-
ness. Von Hildebrand seems to follow the same tradition. In explaining what
he means by personal beings he equates them with “conscious beings.” And
yet in a puzzling way he writes that “it is obviously nonsensical to regard the
consideration of consciousness as trailing off into psychology.”5 Apparently
for him, terms such as “consciousness, willing, loving, rejoicing, mourning
and repenting” are not to be regarded as merely psychological. He speaks of
the “essence” of all these things,6 thus ontologizing in some sense what is
commonly regarded as psychological.
This view is crucial, as it enables von Hildebrand to work out an
ontology of love. Love, according to him, appears to be psychological only
if we begin with the observation of our feelings and use them as analogies
by which to understand what love really is. If I understand him well, there is
an “essence” in things such as will, love, etc., which in a sense is given to us,
and we do not arrive at it by ascending from the lower to the higher. These
are extremely important points to which we shall come back later, but for the
moment let us note the difference between the view von Hildebrand has of
psychology from that of the Greek Fathers. For the latter, the person cannot
be defined with terms such as ‘will,’ ‘consciousness,’ etc., or even ‘love.’ Love
is common to all three Persons of the Trinity; it is neither a “hypostatic” nor
personal quality. For what distinguishes the person from the nature or sub-
stance of God is absolute uniqueness, to the point of making it impossible
for us to indicate the difference of one Person from Another except by re-
ferring to the way He derives ontologically (the tropos hyparxeos): the Father is not
5
Ibid., 1.
6
Ibid., 1.
the Son because He is not begotten but the Begetter, and He is not the Spirit
because He does not proceed, and vice-versa. The language we can apply to a
person is purely ontological; it refers exclusively to the “way of being” τρόπος
ὑπάρξεως (tropos hyparxeōs). Other than that, the person remains a mystery, an
apophatic notion.
All this brings von Hildebrand very close to the personalism of the
Greek Fathers and at the same time distances him from them. His insistence
on avoiding the use of analogy ascending from lower to higher levels in or-
der to arrive at the essence of personhood is most welcome from the point
of view of Greek Patristic thought: personhood is given, not arrived at from
lower or instinctive experiences by way of analogy. But the essence of what
is given as personhood is not “translatable” in psychological terms of any
kind. It remains simply a tropos hyparxeōs; that is, a way of being. The real issue
between the personalism of Augustine and that of the Greek Fathers has to
do precisely with the question whether in order to be a person you need to
possess any quality other than being yourself; that is, being truly, and being
unique and irreplaceable. I leave aside the question whether consciousness,
will, etc., cannot in fact be found also in impersonal beings, such as animals,
which would make the consciousness of the human person a matter of de-
gree; that is, of a qualitative and not of a radical difference.
The difficulty with von Hildebrand’s association of the notion of
consciousness with that of personhood makes itself apparent when we apply
the idea of person to God: can we speak of the Divine Persons as three cen-
ters of consciousness? Perhaps for von Hildebrand—and this is our funda-
mental difference—the idea of person is not derivable from the revelation of
divine personhood. It is not an accident that he makes almost no reference to
the Holy Trinity in dealing with personhood. In fact, he carefully distinguish-
es divine Love from human love, the former having “an all-encompassing
character, which infinitely separates it in a categorial respect from any human
love.”7 For our philosopher, the mysteries of faith “cannot be the object of
philosophical analysis.”8 We cannot love as God loves. It seems that theologi-
cal personalism and philosophical personalism can never merge or coincide
in von Hildebrand’s concept of love.
Person as a Relational Category
Person is for the Greek Fathers as well as for Augustine a relational category;
it is described as σχέσις (schesis) by the Cappadocians, and as relatio by Augus-
7
Ibid., 249.
8
Ibid., 251n.
tine. One person is no person; you have to exist in relation to someone else
in order to be called a person.
Von Hildebrand seems to hold the same view. In fact he repeatedly
refers to the I-Thou structure borrowed apparently from Martin Buber and
Gabriel Marcel, as the fundamental structure of personal existence.9 For von
Hildebrand, too, the person is a relational category. But it would be instruc-
tive to take note of the nuanced way in which he distances himself from both
Buber and Marcel.
In the first place, while accepting Buber’s I-Thou structure he re-
fuses to accept Buber’s position that in a dialogical situation the other is taken
entirely as subject and in no way as object. Equally, Gabriel Marcel’s distinc-
tion between “je” and “moi” which, again, results from a clear and strong con-
trast between subject and object, does not seem to meet fully with von Hil-
debrand’s approval. Von Hildebrand is anxious to defend the subject-object
structure while maintaining that of the I-Thou. In a long excursus in his The
Nature of Love10 he states the view that there is an unacceptable way of un-
derstanding “object” by which we “neutralize” the other (as, for example, in
science), which, however, must be distinguished from the “primary datum”
that the other stands on the other side of myself.
Even in the interpenetration of looks that expresses love, this
duality has a central position; the consciousness of my own self
and of the other person to whom I am directed, to whom my love
refers, to whom I look and to whom I give myself, is in a purely
formal respect a subject-object situation, different as it may be
from other subject-object situations.11
Why is von Hildebrand so anxious to defend the subject-object
structure? I believe that he is so for two reasons: (a) because he wants to pre-
serve at all costs the idea of person as individual; and (b) because he operates
with the notion of consciousness as a fundamental dimension of personhood.
The subject-object structure, purified from all negative nuances of “objecti-
fication” understood as “neutralization,” serves as a guarantee that these two
dimensions of personhood, namely individuality and consciousness, will be
preserved.
Von Hildebrand’s concern shows that he belongs faithfully to the
personalistic tradition inaugurated by Augustine and Boethius in the 5th cen-
tury and established firmly ever since in Western thought. Augustine, as we
know, on one hand, was perhaps the first Christian writer to lay so much
stress on consciousness, as it is evident particularly in his Confessions. Boethi-
9
Ibid., 240.
10
Ibid., 145ff.
11
Ibid., 146.
us, on the other hand, seems to have been the first philosopher in the West
to give us a definition of the person as an individual endowed with rationality:
persona est naturae rationalis individua substantia. Von Hildebrand, faithful to this
tradition, argues that in love:
The union of persons is all the deeper for the very reason that
as persons they cannot lose their individual existence…. It is
also much deeper because it is a conscious experience of union,
whereas all union in the non-personal world is a non-conscious
and non-experienced union.12
I leave aside once more the question whether such a statement would do
justice to all impersonal beings, for example to animals, which as Darwin has
demonstrated do not lack consciousness at all in their relational existence.
The problem on which I should like to focus our attention is the philosophi-
cal one. And it is in this that a certain divergence between von Hildebrand
and the Greek Fathers would emerge.
As we have already indicated, for the Greek Fathers, too, the person
is a relational, and at the same time, hypostatic entity, which means, in a sense,
“individual”; that is, unique, unrepeatable, distinctly “other.” In any form of
union between persons, therefore, especially in love, there is no amalgama-
tion or absorption involved, as von Hildebrand would also insist. But there is
a fundamental question that ought to be asked: is the individuality or uniqueness
of the person established before or after the union (or relationship)? Do we first exist
as persons and then relate? Is the person an entity (i.e., a personal identity
distinct from other entities) already before he or she enters into the loving
relationship? Does a person love another person, or does one become a person
by loving another person? Is there an ontological dependence of the person
on his or her relation with another person in the sense that my being a person
depends on the other and not on myself ?
Von Hildebrand seems to tackle these questions, albeit in a very indi-
rect way. He discusses at length all conceivable ways of relating and being in
union between persons ranging from the level of community which he had
already explored in his Die Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft to those of sexual, mari-
tal, neighborly and even, briefly, ecclesial relations. In all these discussions I
cannot help but detect the view that, in answer to the questions I just raised,
for von Hildebrand the person exists as person already before he or she en-
ters into relationship with another person. Love is not ontologically constitutive
of the person. What constitutes the person ontologically is individuality and
consciousness, not love. You still are a person, albeit imperfectly and unhap-
pily, even though you do not love.
12
Ibid., 125.
This observation brings to the fore two aspects of the theme of
love which also form part of von Hildebrand’s investigations. The first is the
relation of love to knowledge, and the other is the love of self. With regard
to the first question von Hildebrand would appear to me to follow again the
traditional Western view that knowledge precedes love (as both Augustine
and Thomas Aquinas would insist making this axiom also the ground of the
idea of Filioque). In a nuanced presentation of von Hildebrand’s thought,
John F. Crosby would prefer to say that for our author “the relation between
love and knowledge is a mutual relation.”13 But I personally find it difficult
to grasp this mutuality without presupposing the existence of the person as
person before the loving relationship appears. For how could an exchange of
priorities between love and knowledge ever take place without the identity
of the knowing subject having been established already before the loving
relationship? The “self ” and the “other” may affect each other, but they do
so only because they already exist as individual entities.
Von Hildebrand understands love as self-transcendence. But he is
quick to add that, as again John F. Crosby remarks, “a human being is con-
structed as person not just in the moment of self-transcendence, but also in
the moment of relating to himself.”14 At this point von Hildebrand introduc-
es his idea of Eigenleben which is rendered by Crosby with the English term
‘subjectivity.’ An analysis of this idea shows clearly, I think, the indebtedness
of von Hildebrand to the tradition which identifies person with conscious
individual and establishes the ontological identity of the person prior to its
relationship of love. For him there are two errors that one may commit in
dealing with love and the person. One is to deny self-transcendence and thus
reduce me to the biological (a plant or animal). The other is to rob me “of my
character as a full subject and [to] destroy the personal in me by exaggerating
the objective to the point of dissolving that which makes [me] subject.”15 In
short, a person is capable of transcending itself; but it is so through its capac-
ity of being conscious not only of the other but also of itself as subject. A
person, therefore, is a being that, thanks to its endowment with conscious-
ness, can both transcend and assert itself as subject. The bipolarity and mu-
tuality between the self and the other, between knowledge and love, is only
an apparent one. In fact, everything springs from the self as everything hangs
on the consciousness of an (already) existing self as well, of course, as of an
(already) existing other.16
13
John F. Crosby, introduction to The Nature of Love, xxxiii.
14
Ibid., xxvii.
15
16
It would seem as though there are two “others” already established here
ontologically.
This is further illustrated by the idea of love of self, which occupies
considerable space in von Hildebrand’s discussion of love. The idea of Eigen-
leben is developed in order to stress the importance not only of subjectivity
as consciousness but also of subjectivity in terms of love. A fully altruistic
love which has no desire for self-interest, no aspiration for its own happiness,
lacks Eigenleben and implies a deficient personhood. Only a combination of
self-transcendence with Eigenleben can do justice to full and true personhood.
This is why von Hildebrand rejects any religiously driven altruism which
seeks only the good of others and does not care for being loved and enjoying
happiness.
Now, if we place all of this in the light of Greek Patristic thought,
how would it appear? The answer has to be carefully worked out, for there is
not a clear “yes” or “no” to such complex issues as love and personhood.
The person, for the Greek Fathers, is clearly a distinct identity which
in no way can be amalgamated, confused with the other, or absorbed in a
relationship of love. In this respect there is full appreciation for von Hilde-
brand’s personalism. But the question whether this distinct identity precedes
or follows upon the relationship of love requires careful explanation. Drawing
from Trinitarian theology, the Greek Fathers would insist that personal iden-
tity and distinctiveness are inconceivable prior to relation and communion: I
am other because I am in communion with someone other than myself. This
means that I am not a person until I relate to someone else; my identity is
established only through love; there is no “I” until there is communion with
a “Thou.” My personal distinctiveness and “individuality” (hypostasis) is not an
a priori datum but a gift of the Other. My self-transcendence is not so much
an effect or an achievement that comes from me as it is a call and a gift from
one who loves me and calls me out of anonymity and similarity with other
beings to the uniqueness implied in the name of ‘Thou.’ Until this happens I
am not a person. I may be a conscious individual, but I am not an individual
in the personal sense.
This may sound like Buber’s or Marcel’s dialogical structure of ex-
istence but it is not quite so. For with these authors personhood is born out
of relationality while in our case it is not from, but through, relationality
that the personhood emerges; the real source of otherness is not relation as
such but an “other” other than myself. In terms of Trinitarian theology this
means that the Persons of the Trinity do not derive from the relationship
(the “between” of Buber) but the Father, Who generates the Son and brings
forth the Spirit. Persons are “caused” ontologically not by love as such but
by another Person. Love mediates but does not cause. There is always an
asymmetry in love alongside with a mutuality and response: love always flows
originally from the other towards me, not from me towards the other. In love
there is always a call and a response to a call. The importance of the other as
the initiator of love is far more crucial and decisive in the emergence of love
than response and reciprocity. This is evident in the fact that there can be love
even if there is no response or mutuality. We can see this in the case of love
of enemies, which Christ exalts as the highest form of love, or even in the
love of God Himself towards human beings and creation.
It is of course true, as von Hildebrand points out, that in every form
of love, including God’s love for us and for creation, there is an expecta-
tion and desire for response. Von Hildebrand is right when he criticizes as
deformed love an extreme altruism that declares itself as totally uninterested
in response and mutuality. Love always and by nature seeks response. But it
is still alive and in full strength even when it is met with indifference or even
hatred. What one misses in von Hildebrand’s notion of love is the cross. It
is on the cross that love seeking response meets with rejection and hatred.
Painful as it is for love, the cross does not manage to annihilate it. On the
contrary, according to St. John’s Gospel, the cross is the glory of love, the
glorification of love. While, therefore, it is right to say with von Hildebrand
that an altruistic love that denounces any claim to reciprocity is not true to its
nature, it would be wrong to imply by that, that the lack of response deforms
love and affects its very nature. In fact, love being, as we said earlier, by na-
ture asymmetrical as it originates from a call from the other, always involves
an asymmetrical response. The cross, therefore, as the suffering imposed on
love by lack of response (or by deficient response) is part of any definition
of love: it belongs to love’s very nature.
The Person as an Ethical Category
Von Hildebrand’s interest in ethics is known from his earlier work on this
subject. It was, therefore, to be expected that in dealing with love he would
also introduce the ethical dimension into personalism. This happens with his
idea of “value-response.” The way he treats and analyses this idea is worthy
of special discussion.
The most important aspect of his analysis of the idea concerns his
endeavor to personalize ethical concepts such as “value.” Thus he is particu-
larly interested to dissociate value in the case of love from the Platonic view;
namely, that values such as Goodness and Beauty respond to a need which
is fulfilled by love: I love the other not for his or her goodness or beauty
but for his or her own sake. He carefully avoids any reduction of goodness
or beauty, etc. to a value in itself and on its own. The individual person is
always “thematic”—his favorite term—to any value: it is not the goodness
or beauty found in the person that draws me to him or her, and my love is
not a response to these values as such but to those values as they exist in this
particular person.
I have called this “personalization” of ethics, because traditionally, at
least since Kant, ethical values tend to be approached as categorical impera-
tives possessing their moral authority regardless of the person they can be
found in. Von Hildebrand does not totally depart from this tradition, even in
certain cases of love, such as love of neighbor, in which the value of good-
ness or beauty is not a condition for a loving response. But in some cases,
such as friendship or love between man and woman, this condition applies
fully and should never be dissociated from the individual person itself.
I leave aside a host of questions that come to mind with regard to
the legitimacy of bringing together two concepts into one (value and per-
son) without allowing for the possibility—the risk—that a mutual exclusion
between them may arise (e.g., value and person may well be in certain cases
mutually exclusive), and I concentrate on the question whether and to what
extent love in its nature can be tied up to value of any kind.
I begin with a theological point arising again from Trinitarian the-
ology, which is the starting point of Patristic personalism (both Latin and
Greek). If a person is unique in an absolute metaphysical sense, any at-
tachment to it of a moral quality would diminish or put to risk its absolute
uniqueness. Values such as goodness, beauty, etc. can be applied to more than
one person. This is the case with the Persons of the Holy Trinity (all three
equally good, just, omniscient or, if you wish, beautiful), and the same is true
of human beings as well. If my love for one particular person is defined as
a “value-response,” why limit my love to this particular person and not ex-
tend it to the rest? If the answer to this question is that I freely choose this
particular person and not the others, although the same value is to be found
in them too, this means that my love is not in truth a response to the value
of the person but to the person as such. This would mean logically that it is
conceivable that love may or may not depend on value. To join the person
to a category that could be found in another person as well would mean put-
ting to risk its absolute metaphysical uniqueness. (In other words, making the
person “thematic” in the case of love as value-response, as von Hildebrand
would like to do, is to impose on two concepts—one denoting uniqueness
and another generality—a co-existence and a co-habitation that would run
against each other’s metaphysical essence and peculiarity.)
In reflecting as deeply as possible on von Hildebrand’s insistence
that there should always be a quality, a value, in the person we love, I have
come to the conclusion that this insistence is closely associated with—if not
due to—the understanding of person as an individual; that is, as an entity
established already, as I have said earlier, before the relationship of love, and
not as an identity emerging through this relationship. This conclusion is con-
firmed by what John F. Crosby writes in response to Jean-Luc Marion’s view
that love should never have sufficient reason. I quote this response as it is
found in the introductory study to The Nature of Love:
We conclude by observing that it would seem to be of no little
importance for the phenomenology of love to acknowledge with
von Hildebrand this role of beauty of the beloved in awakening
love. For one could well wonder if the beloved person will really
feel loved if the lover advances towards her entirely on his own
initiative and is already fully constituted as lover prior to being
drawn by her…. Will she not feel somehow ignored as person if
she provides no part of the reason for the advance of the lover?17
The ontological implication is quite clear: in love the lover as well as the be-
loved must necessarily be somehow constituted as individuals before the lov-
ing relationship takes place. Any assumption that love may bring about new
personal identities is to be excluded as making phenomenologically no sense.
All this leaves me puzzled as a theologian. What can I make of my
faith in God as Creator out of nothing? Did he not create out of love, and
was this love conditioned by a beauty already existing in what apparently did
not yet exist? When he declared His creatures very good, was this a response
to a beauty of creation or a gift to creation? If God’s love can bring about new
entities and endow them with beauty, this means that beauty does not pre-
exist as a condition of personal love; it rather follows upon it.
Now, I admit that this is a question of a theologian. The philoso-
pher may bypass it by calling it love at another level (I have noticed that von
Hildebrand often resorts to this distinction). But when I come to Christ and
the kind of love that he not only reveals to me but demands of me, I find
it difficult to make a sharp distinction between theology and philosophy. To
what sort of beauty does Christ respond when he loves the sinner? Not far
from the place of this meeting there is a painting by Caravaggio depicting
Christ’s call to Mathew, the publican.18 Every time I look at it I am captured
by Mathew’s surprise that Christ calls him: “What did he find in me?” Mathew
seems to wonder. There is not simply an insufficient reason in love, as Mar-
ion would put it, but quite often in the love revealed in Christ, there is no
reason at all. As soon as this sort of love is demanded also of me the idea of
value-response, proposed by von Hildebrand, becomes for me problematic
both theologically and ethically.
John F. Crosby, introduction to The Nature of Love, xxxvi.

17
Michelangelo Merisi da Carravagio, “The Calling of St. Matthew,” oil on

18
canvas, 1600 (San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome).

Conclusion
In this paper, I have discussed von Hildebrand’s view of love in the light of
Patristic thought. This has inevitably involved me in a theological critique
of someone who insists on being a pure philosopher, because the Fathers
were primarily theologians. While admitting that there is a difference between
theology and philosophy I find it difficult to dissociate these two approaches
when it comes to subjects as personhood and love. This is so, not only for
historical reasons, since as I have already remarked, the idea of person origi-
nally emerged from theological pre-occupations, but also for profound ex-
istential ones: for the philosopher as well as for the theologian, personhood
implies transcendence (as von Hildebrand would also say), and thus gives rise
to the question of how this transcendence is conceived and lived in ordinary
existence.
In my presentation I have stressed points of disagreement more
than convergences. I should like to finish on a more positive tone. I have
read The Nature of Love with great interest, and I have finished reading it with
the impression that I have read one of the most important books I have
come across in my life. In addition to the intellectual depth and analytical
vigor of his thought I have particularly appreciated what he has to say to us
on what I regard as the central theme in any dialogue between theology and
philosophy; namely, the concept of the Person. Here are the points I wish to
underline, particularly from the perspective of Eastern Orthodox tradition:
1. The person is “thematic” to all relations involving values of
any kind. All values are centered on the concrete person and ac-
quire their meaning for us only via the person. This is a major
shift in the way ethics has been presented since Kant (and per-
haps earlier) and constitutes in my view an important step toward
a rapprochement between Eastern and Western personalist thought.
2. Love alone brings the human being into full awareness of his
personal existence. This seems to challenge the traditional view—
since Descartes at least, and to a great extent also current—that
personal fulfillment is to be found in the development of man’s
intellectual capacities, and in this respect constitutes a major cri-
tique of today’s culture.
3. Love involves a transcendence of the human being from his
self-centeredness toward the other. This transcendence is not an
achievement of the self but results from an encounter with the
other who provokes the self-transcendence. There is a great deal
of discussion in philosophy in our time of the importance of
the Other, with figures such as Buber, Levinas, and others being
the most prominent ones. I have myself tried to contribute to
this discussion from the Greek Patristic perspective. I believe that
what von Hildebrand has to say on love is particularly relevant to
this discussion, as he tries to work out a balance between eude-
monism and altruism.
4. Beauty is important for love and personhood. Beauty is a con-
cept that usually is reserved for the realm of aesthetics rather
than ontology. Von Hildebrand’s appreciation of this concept in
relation to personalism reminds us of Dostoyevsky’s famous dec-
laration, “Beauty will save the world.” It is an idea which remains
still unexplored by theology, and von Hildebrand’s association of
it with the concept of love is most suggestive. Something of the
significance of this association may emerge, if it is used in the
theology of the Icon on which the Orthodox Church lays special
emphasis. This is an area which still awaits our investigation.
5. Finally, I should like to stress the importance of von Hilde-
brand’s emphasis on the role of the heart in the experience of
love. In the Orthodox tradition going back to the Desert Fathers
the heart is understood as the center of love because in it obedi-
ence is experienced. But in the Western tradition a dichotomy
has at some point occurred between will and heart, and von Hil-
debrand’s insistence on the role of the heart can serve as a way
of liberating ethics from its bondage to the will as sheer praxis
deprived of any aspect of affectivity.
These are just a few points which reveal the great potential for both theology
and philosophy to be found in von Hildebrand’s rich and profound thought.
It is a potential also for the theological dialogue between the two main tra-
ditions of Christian theology, the Eastern and the Western, as they try to
understand each other more deeply and in relation to the existential needs
of human beings. We cannot but be profoundly grateful to the Dietrich von
Hildebrand Legacy Project for bringing this potential to our attention.
The Phenomenology of Body and Self
In Dietrich von Hildebrand
and Edmund Husserl
Ann-Therese Gardner
Abstract
Dietrich von Hildebrand was a student of Edmund Husserl, the
father of phenomenology; but the former’s phenomenology does
not entirely correlate with that of the latter. Von Hildebrand does
not have the overarching phenomenological perspective of re-
duction that Husserl does, but engages in a more regional ap-
plication of phenomenology. That there is also a real difference
between their notions of phenomenology is manifest when we
look at their characterizations of the body in relation to the self.
For Husserl, it is precisely on account of the way he defines phe-
nomenology that the body remains exterior to the self (where
self is understood as Transcendental Ego). For von Hildebrand,
the body is more closely related to interiority. We see this in his
account of marriage, the exemplar of love, where the body is
necessary for the perfect expression of spousal love; this indicates
that the body is a constitutive part of the person as such. After
drawing this distinction between Husserl and von Hildebrand on
the notion of self, I formulate a more general account of von
Hildebrand’s phenomenology through his understanding of giv-
en-ness. What von Hildebrand preserves of Husserlian phenom-
enology is a method of taking things as they appear. Love is given
in ourselves and in the other, and the inter-personal nature of
given-ness lets love appear in essential completeness to us.
* * *
Edmund Husserl, the director of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s doctoral disser-

tation on the problems of moral action, is universally acknowledged as the
founder of phenomenology. As a student of Franz Brentano, Husserl ap-
propriated the scholastic category of intentionality and adapted it according
© Ann-Therese Gardner, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)
Ann-Therese Gardner 29
to the demands of the modern neo-Kantian problematic of knowledge. The
result was a recovery of the Greek commitment to being, mixed with a criti-
cal awareness of the subjectivity of the thinking subject—the great discovery
and preoccupation of modern thought. Husserl in fact does a careful dance
with the father of that modern tradition, Descartes, and his method of radi-
cal doubt. According to some, Husserl falls into his own brand of Cartesian
reduction of being to subjectivity, even while emphasizing the relatedness of
thought to reality.1
We do not intend to investigate the claims concerning Husserl’s ulti-
mate status as a realist or otherwise. We are concerned here with the student
whose dissertation Husserl described as drawing on “the deep sources of
phenomenological intuition.” Though von Hildebrand considered himself
a disciple of Adolf Reinach and was highly influenced by his friend Max
Scheler, there is no question that the peculiarly phenomenological character
of his philosophy is indebted in large part to the tutelage of Husserl.2 Hus-
serl himself was impressed with von Hildebrand’s early work, which sought
phenomenological insight into moral acts, something Husserl never made
thematic in his works.
Nevertheless, the image of von Hildebrand as Husserl’s disciple is
potentially misleading if we do not clarify that the former implicitly develops
the notion of phenomenology that he originally inherited from the latter.
Since von Hildebrand is not a theorist of phenomenology like Husserl (who
seeks to define the method itself), but rather practices the phenomenological
method by concentrating on certain phenomena, von Hildebrand’s devel-
opment of the notion of phenomenology remains implicit in his writings.
This paper will make explicit the differences in the two philosophers’ no-
tions of phenomenology, and show how these differences have important
consequences for what we can know about ourselves and about others. Von
Hildebrand’s unique understanding of phenomenology can be seen espe-
cially in his consideration of what is one’s own (the body), and therefore what
one can legitimately “give” to another (love as a physical act of surrender in
marriage), as well as what can be cognitively received from another in the
experience of being loved (an intuitive grasp of the nature of love).
1
Husserl “never abandons the fundamental insight of Cartesianism into the
nature of subjectivity as a self-enclosed, absolute sphere of being.” James Dodd,
Idealism and Corporeity: An Essay on the Problem of the Body in Husserl’s Phenomenology,
(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), 6.
2
Husserl maintained that the study of phenomena leads not only to an analy-
sis of appearance, but true knowledge. Thus, phenomenology posits that beings
appear to us as they are. Against the Kantian framework, Husserl held that the condi-
tions of the appearance of things to us are also the conditions for objective knowl-
edge of things.
30 The Phenomenology of Body and Self
An examination of the sphere of “ownness” will show how von Hil-
debrand essentially modified the Husserlian phenomenological approach to
the world, bringing it close to the realism of Gabriel Marcel. In order to draw
this comparison, we will focus on von Hildebrand’s understanding of the
self ’s relation to the body. Von Hildebrand’s insistence that one cannot know
sexuality without looking at love encourages us to ask about the metaphysics
of the body and the meaning of interiority in his magnum opus on the most
important of personal acts, The Nature of Love.3 There we find a notion of
one’s body as part of the integral unity of the self, giving love a way of ap-
pearing immediately in action and gesture, through, and in, the body in a way
precluded by the philosophies of Descartes, Kant, and even Husserl.
A little background to the problem of the body may be helpful.
Descartes banishes the body from all intimacy with the ego or self, by mak-
ing the latter equivalent to pure thinking.4 Kant reduces the body to a mere
phenomenon, constituted by the synthetic action of reason on unintelligible
sense-data. The body becomes for him a mere appearance that we cannot get
beyond. Husserl accepts the Cartesian notion of the Ego as purified from na-
ïve world-belief and straightforward involvement in the world, but preserves
an intrinsic relatedness of thought to the world through intentionality. This
relatedness allows Husserl to interpret the phenomenon of bodiliness as
something constituted, in a special way, within the transcendental Ego.5 The
body thus has a certain priority over other objects of knowledge, and other
members of the world. However, the psycho-physical man is not the same as
the transcendental Ego, but rather something constituted within it, as what
it thinks about and intends. The transcendental reduction is a philosophi-
cal maneuver which elevates the philosopher above everyday involvement in
life to the possibility of true reflection on it. Husserl’s phenomenology sees
the world as both reality and appearance: it appears to us as it is. Husserl at-
3
Henry Crosby (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009), 10: “The essence of the
sexual sphere, of sensuality, can only be understood if it is analyzed in the light of
love.”
4
“This ‘I’ that is, a soul through which I am what I am, is entirely distinct
from the body . . . and even if there were no body, the soul would not cease to be all
that it is.” René Descartes, Discourse on Method, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Company, 1980), 17–18.
5
The “Transcendental Ego” is Husserl’s name for the philosophical self: “It
[the ego] is the agent of truth, the one responsible for judgments and verifications,
the perceptual and cognitive ‘owner’ of the world. When considered in this manner,
it is no longer simply a part of the world; it is what is called the transcendental ego.”
Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 112.
tempts, in his transcendental philosophy, to maintain a sense of the objectiv-
ity of reality, while appreciating its mode as appearance to us.
How does this Husserlian understanding of the self relate to the
body? The transcendental reduction (taking on the philosophical perspective
that transcends the straightforward intending relationships of consciousness)
is performed by a subject essentially distinct from the “world,” who is not
therefore, as transcendent, a part of it. The psycho-physical Ego (what we
would normally refer to as our selves, as members of the world), even though
a totally unique member of the world, still belongs to it. Body, soul, and
personal Ego belong to the world that the transcendental Ego distinguishes
from itself by reflection. Thus, the innermost core of self is this philosophi-
cally aware Ego that only knows the body as a member of the world that it
understands; the body does not belong to that understanding self that tran-
scends the world.
Von Hildebrand’s phenomenology of love implies a different consti-
tution of the self. We can approach this self by looking at the way in which
von Hildebrand analyzes the constitution of the personal act of love, specifi-
cally in the context of marriage. The immanent act of love requires, in von
Hildebrand’s description, two major components: the “voice of the heart,”
which he describes as an affective value response, and the sanction that origi-
nates in what he calls the “free personal center.”6 The former movement,
that of the heart in response to value, is a way of being moved on a higher
level than that of the passions, which Hildebrand calls “dark.” The affectivity
involved in love is a way of being moved as a person, not just as desirous (de-
sires can be held by animals and by children before gaining the ability to rea-
son). Rather, a response is evoked from us that is both beyond our control (in
the sense that it cannot originate from us, though we can deny this response
in certain circumstances), and yet still participates in rationality and nobility.
The other component of the complete act of love is the sanction, the “yes,”
that we give to this being moved and to the response that it spontaneously
evokes from us. That place in which these two aspects are most fully present
is in the love between a man and a woman.7
One of von Hildebrand’s stated goals in his philosophy of love is to
manifest why, according to the Song of Songs, love is stronger than death.8 If
we include the indissolubility of marriage among the phenomena to be ob-
6
Von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 55: “An affective value-response has the
character of a valid stance of the person only if it is ‘sanctioned’ by my free personal
center.”
7
Ibid., 54: “Love is an affective value-response and not a value-responding
act of will. While this holds for every kind of love, it stands out most clearly in the
case of spousal love.”
8
Ibid., 374.
served in philosophy, as von Hildebrand does, then nowhere is that strength
more manifest than in the nature of this bond.9 Though von Hildebrand
considers this bond to be a sacrament, involving the movement of grace, it is
nonetheless motivated by the personal acts of love of the spouses. Looking
at our participation in this sacrament, von Hildebrand notes that it cannot
be completed in such a way as to guarantee indissolubility without the bodily
participation of the spouses in this promise: the promise is not complete un-
less made by body and spirit.
This necessity of the body participating in the marital bond indicates
to von Hildebrand how the human person is metaphysically constituted. “For
really being in love entails an understanding for the depth and mystery of
bodily union, for the sphere of sensuality [der sinnlichen Sphaere].”10 Bodily
love is not merely consequent upon spousal love, but is part of its mystery.
The absorption of sensuality into love indicates that the body is part of the
person in a way that makes bodily acts expressions of the whole person. The
intermingling of body and the free personal center happens via the affec-
tive nature of the person. Affectivity is illuminated by reason, but also has a
kind of intrinsic communion with the body, since we are first moved by the
beloved through sense, through outward appearance.
The precise nature of this bodily union, according to von Hilde-
brand, is not so much the embrace itself as the concomitant surrender of
the body, the gift of ceding control over one’s own body, in some way, to
the other. This mutual surrender fosters unity. That unifying end is bound
up, according to von Hildebrand, with the procreative purpose of marriage.
That procreation is an end of the marital embrace means that the couple
submit their bodies to the influence of a higher power that can produce new
life through them.11 Thus the two ends of the marital act are unified in their
nature as surrender.
Moreover, this understanding of the nature of the marital act as
primarily an act of surrender of control gives us a way of analogically under-
standing the bodily nature of every other kind of love, even when it does not
involve such a radical physical union. In the religious life, for instance, the
whole person is involved, and we can characterize the bodily involvement as
one of surrender, even though there be no embrace. Even in friendship, the
9
Von Hildebrand does not present a philosophical argument for the indis-
solubility of marriage, but accepts it as part of Revelation.
10
Von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 341–42.
11
This aspect of von Hildebrand’s phenomenological account of the sacra-
ment of marriage has much to offer to a metaphysics of gender, where the nature
of the submission of the body to God’s influence is radically different for the man
and woman, resulting in unique kind of experience of the sacramental grace and
conformity to Christ’s self-sacrifice.
friends make themselves and their resources available to the other, so that
in a certain sense, their bodies are at the ready to help the other, are at the
behest of the friend. If my friend asks of me a favor, say, to help him move,
and there is no obstacle or contravening prudential judgment, I am positively
obliged to help him. My body, in a certain sense, is subject to his command
in this case, though that submission is freely made by me.
For von Hildebrand, the marital embrace is not only the sign but also
the reality of surrender, primarily to God’s providential influence, but also to
the other as a gift of self. This bodily surrender can only truly be a gift of self
if the body is not external to the self, but included therein. This makes it clear
why the bodily aspect is required for the permanence of marriage: the actual
surrender of the person to the other and to God cannot happen without the
body, for it is through the body that God has chosen to work.12
It is clear then that von Hildebrand’s metaphysics of the body al-
lows for the body to participate in the interior realms of affectivity and
acts of will. From this it should be plain that the phenomenological at-
titude that von Hildebrand develops does not require a reduction of the
world to what is thought by the Ego. The body is not only “meant” and
“constituted” by the Ego, but is somehow part of it, though mysteri-
ously so. How can we characterize von Hildebrand’s version of phenom-
enology? First, we can point out that, though he took much from Hus-
serl, he did not follow exactly his path of transcendental reduction, which
would exclude the body from the innermost realm of self. However, it re-
mains to describe positively what phenomenology is for von Hildebrand.
Von Hildebrand states that the phenomenology of love lets “love
as such appear in our range of spiritual vision.”13 This statement about the
way that love appears highlights an important feature of von Hildebrand’s
phenomenology, since it indicates that we can intuit personal attitudes such
as love not only in ourselves, but in others as well. These attitudes, as given
in another person, allow us an unmediated grasp of anger, joy, love, hatred,
etc., as expressed in the person’s face, demeanor, and words. How is it that
von Hildebrand considers these attitudes, if mediated by expressions and
words, as “given to us immediately and primordially?” The answer to this
question has to do with what von Hildebrand defines as epistemologically
“given” to us in experience. His notion of givenness in turn characterizes his
understanding of the essence and task of phenomenology.
12
We are speaking here of the category of spousal love as including bodily
union. Not every marriage must have this aspect, nor must any marriage have it for
its duration. The inner act of love becomes a semi-permanent state, characterizing
all of the person’s behavior.
13
Von Hildebrand provocatively suggests that higher-order phenom-
ena, such as the more complex realities that involve both visible and invisible
aspects (e.g., love), are given to us primordially. “Love is given…immediately
in its distinctive character, and…the beauty of love and the immeasurable
gift of love unfold before the mind’s eye.”14 Without denying that knowledge
comes through the senses, von Hildebrand indicates the presence of an intui-
tive kind of knowledge when we encounter another’s love. The point seems
to be that we do not infer the existence of love based on the more certain
sensory data of facial expressions, etc., but intuitively and immediately grasp
the essence of this love through, or with, these outward expressions. Von
Hildebrand is aware of how widely he departs from tradition on this point,
and forestalls an epistemological justification of the noetic insight he propos-
es.15 However, even without the epistemological treatise that would be behind
his claims, we can use them to characterize von Hildebrand’s understanding
of reality.
According to the Aristotelian tradition, an immanent act is the most
hidden. Inner movements are not subject to immediate introspection, as Des-
cartes thought, but have to be inferred by their effects, sought out through
careful analysis and philosophical reasoning. Thus even our own immanent
acts are hidden, as are, a fortiori, those of other people. As Goethe put it,
“The heart of another is a dark forest.” But von Hildebrand is not suggesting
that we can read souls. He is rather claiming that we immediately see the unity
of various externally visible acts as that of a coherent inner state. When I see
someone smile, I do not see first and foremost a facial gesture, but rather
the expression of an emotion. It is not a contradiction to this theory to say
that one does not see the emotion itself, something invisible and interior.
It is enough that there is no experience of a mere facial expression, but the
expression is always already experienced in the context of, and as part of,
something else—for example, a smile experienced in the context of, or as an
expression of, joy.
The ability to see that someone is happy requires manifold cognitive
processes, and certain conceptual activity; it is not like a sense-datum. That is,
in order to even have the experience of seeing someone happy, we need to be
actively involved in interpreting various phenomena into a unified whole. But
this requirement would not deter von Hildebrand from claiming an immedi-
acy for love, since the immediacy that he points to is not a temporal one, nor
14
Ibid., 12.
15
Ibid., 11: “We are not able here to inquire in greater detail into this impor-
tant epistemological problem of how other persons and their attitudes are given to
us in experience; it is enough to call attention to it. For our purposes the important
thing is to see that the essence of love is not only given to us when we ourselves love;
it is also given to us immediately and primordially in the love of others.”
one of metaphysical simplicity. Such experiences have rather a primacy in the
sense that all personal and inter-personal acts have a priority of importance
for us and determine the way we go about thinking and knowing and even
sensing in the first place. That education, language, experience, habits of
interpretation, and so on, go into a complex experience of interacting with
another person does not mean that, when it does happen, it is not somehow
immediate.
There is a need to do much more in terms of an epistemological and
metaphysical analysis of emotion and emotional experience and introspec-
tion in von Hildebrand’s work on love. But for now we can say that von Hil-
debrand wants to characterize what is experientially immediate as phenom-
enologically given: in his metaphysics, the experiences to which we ourselves
contribute significant formal as well as material elements are nonetheless ob-
jectively there to be grasped and understood.
For von Hildebrand, the essence of love is something able to be
communicated prior to an explicit understanding of its inner structure. The
availability of the nature of love has much to do with von Hildebrand’s char-
acterization of conscious life as relational and open: “It is a widespread, pro-
found error to believe that our own personal attitudes are given to us only
in our own experiencing and not also given to us in other persons.”16 For
von Hildebrand, the realm of interiority is open not only to the body, but
even in a sense to the conscious life of others. We would not want to carry
this too far, into a substantial intersubjectivity, but there are elements of von
Hildebrand’s philosophy that even suggest a certain priority of the presence
of another’s immanent acts to my own psychic life.17 It is exactly this inter-
personal element of his anthropology that allows for the kind of phenom-
enology characterized by the givenness of higher-order movements of an
immanent and personal nature. “We will therefore take both the givenness of
love in other persons as well as our own experience of loving as the basis and
starting point for our analysis of love.”18
We now have a clearer picture of how von Hildebrand’s phenom-
enology departs from that of Husserl. Whereas the latter takes the phe-
nomenological attitude to entail a reduction of the world to the intentional
correlate of consciousness (thus making objects literally what appears:
“phenomena”), von Hildebrand uses the term phenomenology to describe
knowledge through intuitive given-ness as opposed to analogy or philosophi-
cal induction. One of the things intuitively given is the experience of being
16
Ibid., 11.
17
Ibid., 11: “Virtues are in fact primarily given to us in other persons. What
humility is can only be grasped in another person; kindness is primarily given to us in
others.”
18
Ibid., 13.
loved, thus allowing von Hildebrand to focus on the relation of person to
person as a source of phenomenological knowledge. Von Hildebrand’s phe-
nomenology is consequently characterized and defined by the role he gives
to personal relationships in the acquisition of knowledge. And whereas bodi-
liness remains somewhat problematic for Husserlian phenomenology, von
Hildebrand’s version of phenomenology allows for an understanding of the
human person as truly hylomorphic, even in the depths of the philosophi-
cal self. It has been helpful to set von Hildebrand against his most famous
teacher in order to see both the influence that Husserl had upon him and also
where he parted ways with the grandfather of Continental philosophy and
the founder of phenomenology.
I conclude by pointing out some areas of possible further research.
In connection with the above reflections, a full epistemological account of
intersubjectivity in von Hildebrand is called for, and necessary, if his claims
about intuitively given knowledge are to be philosophically justified. Another
avenue opened up by the foregoing is an ontological account of bodiliness.
The metaphysics of gender is another area where von Hildebrand’s unique
characterization of the inner structure of the human person and her acts
could be very fruitful.
—Catholic University of America

Brian Sudlow 37
The Non-Violence of Love:

A Hildebrand-Girard Encounter
Brian Sudlow
Abstract
If love is a social as well as a personal reality, it could be fruitful
to compare von Hildebrand’s understanding of love and desire
with that of cultural anthropologist René Girard. Girard depicts
love and desire as a triangular process which arises from imita-
tion, rather than the result of auto-generative affection. In this
sense, Girardian theory would seem to convict von Hildebrand
of what is called the “romantic lie” wherein desire is thought to
arise through the mutual appreciation of two subjects. However,
in The Nature of Love von Hildebrand shows awareness of the
possibility that love can be awakened by imitation. Moreover, the
lack of a sufficient reason in Girardian theory for avoiding vio-
lence can be answered by turning to von Hildebrand’s apprecia-
tion of the ontological basis for desire.
* * *
If the notion of love is central to communal living, whether in its differing

degrees for friends, neighbors or spouses, then Dietrich von Hildebrand’s
The Nature of Love cannot but be relevant to reflection on the structure and
dynamics of the social sphere, and of human culture in general.1 The value
responses of every individual, which inform von Hildebrand’s understanding
of love and of ethics in general, are educed within a community also shaped
by values, goods and social relations. As von Hildebrand observed in an early
work, the community too has its own metaphysics.
We can wonder what correlations, or indeed tensions, can be iden-
tified between von Hildebrand’s view of love, and love as framed by the
anthropological and cultural theories of René Girard. Girard, a now-retired
1

© Brian Sudlow, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)
38 A Hildebrand-Girard Encounter
professor who taught at Stanford University for many years, established his
reputation on the back of the following three major theories: first, the imi-
tative or mimetic origin of human desire; second, the universal tendency
of human societies to purge themselves of desire-driven conflict through
the process of scapegoating; and third, the unique character of Christianity,
which parodies the scapegoating process in the Crucifixion, but yet resolves
conflicts through non-retaliation, forgiveness, and renunciation. If we con-
sider that Girard places love at the heart of this last theory, the interest in fa-
cilitating a Hildebrand-Girard encounter becomes more tangible. Of course,
we are dealing with two bodies of thought that express quite different in-
tellectual perspectives and convictions and since no critical work has been
conducted so far in this area, this paper is itself entirely exploratory. Still, so
influential have these thinkers been in reflecting on “the human” that some
comparison is quite in order and potentially fruitful for Hildebrandians and
Girardians alike.
In confronting Girard’s thought with that of von Hildebrand, we
could consider a range of concerns, but this investigation will focus on just
two. First, we ask to what extent von Hildebrand’s description of love falls
afoul of Girard’s criticism of desire as auto-generative, or originating in the
subject. If, as Girard believes, an object’s desirability is grasped only through
our perception of others’ desires, what becomes of the “I-Thou” axis which
is so central to von Hildebrand’s understanding of love? Second, we can ask
whether Girard’s insistence on the avoidance of violence relies on a volunta-
rist reading of action; a reading which, unlike von Hildebrand’s, neglects the
metaphysical plane almost entirely. Hildebrandians and Girardians are under-
standably protective of their masters’ legacies, but in this writer’s opinion,
this is an even greater reason to subject such legacies to robust and fearless
discussion. Von Hildebrand and Girard surely deserve nothing less.
Desire and Love: von Hildebrand’s

Acknowledgement of Imitation
Girard’s initial achievement in the realm of cultural studies was to develop a

theory of literature which sought to attack what he called the “mensonge roman-
tique”—the “romantic lie.” The romantic tradition interpreted desire and love
as the fruit of a binary encounter between choosing-subject and chosen-ob-
ject. The themes of romantic desire evoke the supremacy of personal choice,
the power of the subject’s desire, the embodiment of that desire through
passion, and a restricted focus on the individual’s agency. Nineteenth-century
questioning of this tradition is usually located in the emergence of literary
naturalism and realism which sought to objectify experiences related through
Brian Sudlow 39
literature. In the work of novelists such as Émile Zola, for example, theories
of heredity called into question whether the individual, his inclinations and
his choices, could ever be free from the physiological and psychological influ-
ences of his forbearers; desire for Zola was not so much the exercise of the
individual’s free subjectivity as the moral fallout of his psychological, physi-
ological, and environmental conditions. Subsequent theories of psychology,
such as that of Sigmund Freud’s, likewise questioned the somewhat simplistic
model of an all-conscious self whose desires were literally monarchical—ruled
by the authentic “one.” In other words, by the time Girard came to question
the romantic lie in his first book, Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, it
had already been well tested by artists and theorists, even if it lived on—and
continues to live on today—in popular culture.2
Girard’s questioning of the romantic lie took, however, a distinctive
shape. In studying a number of major European novelists, notably Stendhal,
Dostoyevsky, and Proust, he remarked that at a certain point their works
began to portray desire not as a binary process but as the result of imita-
tion. For Girard, desire is to be distinguished from appetite or need, both
of which are binary. (We can note here in passing the correlation between
Girard’s thought and that of von Hildebrand’s, which carefully distinguishes
between the biological and instrumentalist purposes of sensible or utilitarian
goods, as opposed to things that represent a value in themselves.) Now, since
biological need and instrumentalism can be found in the animal kingdom,
desire is a peculiarly human phenomenon, according to Girard. And yet, he
observes, desire (as opposed to need or appetite) seems to be aroused not by
the direct perception of something as a value or good, but by the perception
that something is desirable because it is the object of another’s desire. In any
given situation, another’s desire for some object, value, or person unveils to
me its very desirability. Girardian desire, therefore, is not a binary encounter
between choosing subject and chosen object, but a triangular process—Gi-
rard even calls it “le désir triangulaire”—in which the subject imitates a model’s
desire and in which desirability is thus mediated rather than immediate.
Now, imitation has of course long been recognized as an essential
aspect of human education: anima quaedamodum omnia, as the Scholastics used
to say. Girard’s originality, however, lies in identifying how a certain canon of
authors—those who produce what he calls “vérité romanesque” or “novelistic
truth”—have depicted imitation or modeling as an essential process within
the generation of human desire and choice. Such imitation can be mediated
through a living person with whom the subject can potentially come into
René Girard, Mensonge romantique et vérité Romanesque (Paris: Grasset, 1961),

2
published in English as Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965).
conflict, but it can also, as in the case of Don Quixote, be the result of read-
ing or some other cultural experience. As children we learn through imitation
what is desirable—witness the dispute between two children over one toy
when the nursery is packed with toys—but, according to Girard, even our
adult desires tend to follow this triangular dynamic. As a corollary of this
triangulation, and in later works such as La Violence et le Sacré, Girard would
come to regard as mythological all cultural narratives which portray desire as
a binary encounter between choosing-subject and chosen-object.3 Cultural
narratives become mythological insofar as they veil the mediated or imitative
processes which engender desire, hide the source of conflict which arises
from our wanting what our neighbor wants, and veil its violent resolution.
If, for the time being, we allow Girard’s theory to stand, it is clear
that it poses problems for a Hildebrandian view of love which is rooted in
value-response. Von Hildebrand does not of course consider love as a cat-
egory of desire, but love must necessarily involve the moral process which
encompasses the freely chosen association of lover and beloved. Indeed,
many of von Hildebrand’s descriptions and distinctions appear to indicate
that in his view both desire and love are not mediated but binary in character.
For example, love arises when the other person’s being and existence become
fully thematic for the subject and elicit a person-focused value response. In
Chapter 1 of The Nature of Love, von Hildebrand argues that love involves a
perception of the overall beauty and preciousness of a person, even if those
value qualities surpass our value concepts.4 For von Hildebrand, the patholo-
gies of love concern mostly its confusion with needs and appetites, rather
than the conflicts which can arise from triangulated desire. We find the same
binary understanding of love and desire in Chapter 6 of The Nature of Love
which studies the intentio unionis. Here the binary character of love is rein-
forced as a reciprocal and mutual value response. There is an interpenetration
of looks between the lovers who participate in, and enrich, each others’ hap-
piness; there is a reciprocal self-donation which, at the same time, does not
annihilate but rather reinforces the self as person.5 Thus von Hildebrand’s
description of love, from initiation to fulfillment, sits apparently within the
tradition which understands desire as a binary process of choosing subject
and chosen object. That von Hildebrand defends the right of the beloved
not to be objectified or instrumentalized is arguably tangential to von Hil-
debrand’s binary understanding of desire. The beloved is still ontologically
the direct object of the lover’s value response, regardless of how much their
3
René Girard, La Violence et le Sacré (Paris: Grasset, 1972), published in Eng-
lish as Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).
4
5
Ibid., 126–30.
Brian Sudlow 41
mutual value responses become perfected in the intentio unionis, with all that it
represents.
If we look at von Hildebrand’s analysis in light of the Girardian
theory of desire, should we conclude that von Hildebrand’s description and
analysis of love are guilty of the romantic lie? As we have shown above, by
romantic lie Girard does not mean the selfishness, instrumentalization, or
objectification to which lovers are subjected by pathological versions of love
(and all of which von Hildebrand is more than well aware of), but rather
Girard has in mind a model of love which does not acknowledge or disclose
the imitative character of desire; a model of love which elides the process by
which value comes to be perceived as desirable.
Such a conclusion would, however, be precipitous and tendentious.
We should, in fact, refrain from accusing von Hildebrand of the romantic lie
for two reasons: First, in the introduction to The Nature of Love von Hilde-
brand does in fact acknowledge a certain form of mimesis or imitation in the
moral life:
Virtues are in fact primarily given to us in other persons. What
humility is can only be grasped in another person; kindness is
primarily given to us in others…. For our purposes the important
thing is to see that the essence of love is not only given to us
when we ourselves love; it is also given to us immediately and
primordially in the love of others.… How often has someone who
was never in love been awakened to such a love by the spousal
love of another person for him.6
Von Hildebrand’s insistence on imitation (observe in the Crosby translation
the use of adverbs such as ‘primarily’ and ‘primordially’) is more honored in
the breach than in the observance in the development of von Hildebrand’s
subsequent analysis, but its importance is clearly acknowledged in the above
cited passage. The vital difference between Girard and von Hildebrand on
this point is that Girard tends to make all desire dependent on imitation,
while von Hildebrand acknowledges this imitative process in describing the
initial genesis of some value response.
Von Hildebrand and Girard thus share the observation that love
and desire are potencies actualized from without. For neither theorist can
desire be merely auto-generative; and for von Hildebrand the binary pro-
cess of love appears (“how often,” he says) to find its psychological roots in
the moral awakening provided mimetically by encountering values in others.
Some might advance the objection that here von Hildebrand is only evoking
imitation as a purely epistemological phenomenon, such that we can learn
what is desirable in a general sense through imitation (which procures for us
6
Ibid., 11–12.
intellectual insight) but that our desire in any particular and concrete case is
not thus conditioned. Such an objection, however, would fail to account for
the process of love having been “awakened”—surely descriptive of an actual
moral affection—to which von Hildebrand alludes. The argument is not that
von Hildebrand thinks all desire is generated mimetically but rather that he
concedes the possibility that it can be. When interpreting the Hildebrandian
“I-Thou” axis one would do well to be aware of this possibility. To argue the
point per absurdum: denying that von Hildebrand concedes the possibility of
desire through imitation would lead us to assume that he holds envy or jeal-
ousy to be impossible!
Why Avoid Violence? Girard’s Need for Ontology
The second reason for exonerating von Hildebrand from the accusation of
the romantic lies in a logical problem inherent in Girard’s theory: if all desire
is imitative or mediated, then we have a perpetual chain of learned desire
(which is neither need nor appetite) going back ad infinitum. In other words,
how has anyone ever desired anything in the first place without someone
from whom they could learn the desirability of what they would then come
to desire? This is not to say that the process of mimesis identified by Girard
should not retain its recently acquired foothold in the analysis of culture.
Still, this question indicates one of the fundamental problems with Girard’s
thought: that in making all desirability the result of human acculturation—of
our learning from others what is desirable—it subtly renders occult the exis-
tence of a transcendent and ontological good or value to which our wills are
ordered intrinsically.
In order to unpack the consequences of this problem it is useful to
dwell for a few moments on the problem of objectification and consider the
differences between von Hildebrand’s and Girard’s criticism of it; for, in this
difference lies an illustration of Girard’s weakness and the potential useful-
ness of an application of von Hildebrand’s ethics to Girard’s anthropology.
According to chapters two and three of The Nature of Love, objecti-
fication is said to arise when the value response to a person has been substi-
tuted by the drive to satisfy a need. What is thematic is no longer the person
encountered, but the satisfaction of some desire within the desiring subject.
It is important to distinguish here between von Hildebrand’s use of the word
‘desire,’ which is always associated with appetitus, and Girard’s use of the word
‘desire’ which means either (a) a legitimate longing acquired through imitation
or (b) a longing which vies with another for the object that both desire. For
example, according to von Hildebrand, objectification leads the legendary figure
of Don Juan to forget the themacity of his beloved, to focus instead on the
Brian Sudlow 43
satisfaction of his desire. According to Girard, in contrast, objectification leads
the subject to forget the nature of what he (perhaps) legitimately desires, and
to turn his attention to any rival who threatens his possession or enjoyment
of it. While for von Hildebrand objectification results from the themacity of
self-satisfaction in the subject’s perception, for Girard objectification arises
when the rivalry between subject and model becomes thematic, relegating
the object to being merely an instrument of their rivalry. In Chapter 6 of
The Nature of Love, von Hildebrand observes that even the intentio unionis can
become vitiated by possessiveness and selfishness. For Girard, on the other
hand, the vitiation of desire lies always in rivalry, in the conflict it produces,
and eventually in the outbreak of violence. At this point, says Girard, the ri-
vals forget about the object they are fighting over and focus all their energies
on their rivalry, while at the same time the logic of imitation turns them into
monstrous doubles of each other.7
Thus far, both critiques of objectification express vitiations of hu-
man conduct, be that through self-centered substitution of desire for value
response, or in the turning of desire into a pretext for conflict. Still, the prob-
lem with Girard’s theory becomes all the clearer in his justification for turning
away from mimetic rivalry. Girard’s second book, La Violence et le Sacré, was an
immense study of primitive religion and of the mechanism of the sacrificial
scapegoat which it theorized as a universally attested means of purging com-
munities of latent violence (violence being the result of rivalry induced by
mimetic desire). Subsequently, however, in his Des Choses cachées depuis la fonda-
tion du monde, Girard identified in Christianity a different way of dealing with
violence.8 In the Crucifixion, says Girard, Christianity parodies the sacrificial
scapegoat mechanism of purgation in other religions, but short-circuits its
logic by seeing in this act the refusal of God to retaliate for his Son’s death.
According to Girard, this non-violence on the part of God makes Christian-
ity unique, for through it Christ lived out the very fullness (“la plenitude”) of
love.9 In Christianity, therefore, there lies a different solution to the dangers
of mimetic desire and conflict: in love and self-renunciation the threat of
latent violence can be avoided and the Kingdom of God established. Such
was Girard’s conclusion in Des Choses cachées, though under the influence of
Raymund Schwager, SJ, Girard would later correct his denial of the sacrificial
character of Christ’s death. Originally, Girard had wanted to exclude from his
account of Christianity readings of the Crucifixion which see it as an act of
7
Girard pursues this line of argument in La Violence et le Sacré.
8
René Girard, Des Choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde (Paris: Grasset,
1978), published in English as Things Hidden from the Foundations of the World (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1987).
9
Girard, Des Choses cachées, 295.
punishment or anger directed against Christ by God the Father.10
Arguably, however, this was not the only error in Des Choses cachées.
For not only did this work misinterpret the concept of Christ’s sacrifice,
but entirely failed to provide a sufficient reason to avoid violence in the first
place (by violence, let us understand here not only force but all self-interested
manipulation of circumstances, whether by physical, psychological or com-
municative means). In The City of God, St. Augustine claims that all men want
peace, and that those who fight are only looking for the peace that comes
after fighting. But is this really true? On the contrary, people are violent be-
cause it procures for them the things that they desire. People are violent
because on a physiological and psychological level they enjoy the adrenalin
rush which violence and power bring. Neither of these benefits are available
to those who renounce violence. Girard’s theories warn us admirably against
violence, but do not tell us why we should not take the world by force.
Here is where von Hildebrand’s ethics can arguably come to the res-
cue. For Girard, violence is something principally that we do to each other.
For von Hildebrand, violence is no doubt something that we can do to each
other, but it is also something that can be done to objects, goods, or values
by our failure to recognize them for what they are or to treat them with due
dignity. In von Hildebrand’s concept of value response, we find not only an
explicit ethic of conduct (which is what Girard’s advocacy of non-violence
depends on) but an ontological theory which looks to the being of things in
their true character and which illumines our moral reaction to them. Con-
duct, after all, is not merely about the avoidance of evil—as Girard inadver-
tently implies—but about the pursuit of the good. Girard has perhaps been
so preoccupied with the mechanism, or the how, of desire that he has not
found room in his doctrine for the what of desire. In von Hildebrand’s value
response, however, we find not only a guide to conduct (“avoid violence
through restraint”) but an acknowledgement of its ontological roots. We can
extrapolate, moreover, from such ontological insights the reason why peace is
not merely the absence of violence, but the recognition and appreciation of
some order of being, the highest of which elicits love from the lower orders.
We can conclude that without understanding the very violence which desire
can inflict on the order of being (whether through objectification or instru-
mentalization), no sufficient reason can be given for rejecting violence in the
first place.
If we ask why Girard’s theories fail in this regard, the answer might
lie in the fact that anthropology is primarily a discipline of observation. That
is, a discussion of the what of desire might raise questions that are too ab-
10
Raymund Schwager, SJ, Must there by Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the
Bible, trans. Maria L. Assad (New York: Gracewing, 2000).
Brian Sudlow 45
stract for any anthropology to contemplate. In coming to this conclusion
we must not ignore for a moment the threat that evoking the specter of
essentialism poses to a large section of the academy. And yet naming and
identifying things—escaping from a logic which was first mooted in nominal-
ism—might ultimately be the only sufficient reason not to succumb to the
attractions of violence and power.
In any case, the moral corollaries which Girard undoubtedly draws
from his anthropological account of Christianity are on uncertain ground
without some ontological anchor that explains not only the value of the non-
violence of love, but why that non-violence is proportionate to the goods,
values, and ultimately, the persons which we learn to desire by mimetic be-
havior. If von Hildebrand’s concept of value response can supply for this
lacuna, it will not be the least of its achievements.
—Aston University
and Paul Ricoeur:
Eidetic and Hermeneutic Phenomenology
David Utsler
Abstract
Dietrich von Hildebrand and Paul Ricoeur share the same philo-
sophical roots in the early phenomenology of Edmund Husserl.
Ricoeur went beyond Husserl to develop his own unique version
of hermeneutics. Although Ricoeur rejected Husserl’s idealist
version of phenomenology, Ricoeur never rejected the earliest
interpretation Husserl gave to his own phenomenology. Von Hil-
debrand, although contributing insights of his own, identified his
own phenomenology as that of the phenomenology explicated in
Husserl’s Logical Investigations. In this paper I will look at aspects
of Ricoeur’s account of the “mutual belonging” of phenom-
enology and hermeneutics. Assuming the affinity between von
Hildebrand’s phenomenology and that of Husserl’s, I will apply
Ricoeur’s analysis more closely to von Hildebrand. My thesis is
that the mutual belonging shared by phenomenology and herme-
neutics forms a basis to bring Dietrich von Hildebrand and Paul
Ricoeur into dialogue. While their philosophies are markedly dif-
ferent, they both share a deep respect for the meaning of being.
* * *
Dietrich von Hildebrand and Paul Ricoeur have at least one thing in com-
mon: their philosophical roots both lie in the early phenomenology of Ed-
mund Husserl. Von Hildebrand, besides having studied under Husserl, ex-
plicitly identifies his own phenomenology as that which was explicated by
Husserl in the first edition of the Logical Investigations.1 Von Hildebrand went
1
Dietrich von Hildebrand, What is Philosophy? Studies in Phenomenological and
Classical Realism, ed. Josef Seifert and Giovanni Reale (New York: Routledge Press,
1991), 223 (henceforth, WP).
© David Utsler, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)
David Utsler 47
on to develop his own insights and make original contributions, but his fun-
damental methodology never really strayed from the earlier, pre-transcen-
dental, non-idealist Husserl—what I will refer to in this paper as eidetic phe-
nomenology. For von Hildebrand, phenomenology (and philosophy itself) is
primarily concerned with “the intuitive analysis of genuine highly intelligible
essences.”2 Von Hildebrand says, further, that the “principal aim” of philoso-
phy is a priori knowledge.3
Paul Ricoeur’s early work, such as Freedom and Nature, provides a
clear example of Husserlian eidetic phenomenology. By the 1960s, however,
Ricoeur moved away from eidetic phenomenology and began to develop a
hermeneutical philosophy.4 Ricoeur did not consider hermeneutics, as David
Kaplan explains, “a break from phenomenology” but rather “an extension
and transformation of it.”5 For Ricoeur, “hermeneutics is erected on the ba-
sis of phenomenology and thus preserves something of the philosophy from
which it nevertheless differs.”6 Even though phenomenology is the “place”
that hermeneutics had “left behind,” hermeneutics still “comes out” of phe-
nomenology and is still “‘having it out’ with Husserlian phenomenology.”7
Ricoeur explicitly designated his version of hermeneutics as a “hermeneutic
phenomenology.”8 Ricoeur rejected Husserl’s later “idealist” interpretation
of his work and asserted that in order to establish a “genuinely ‘dialecti-
cal’ relation between” phenomenology and hermeneutics, it is first necessary
to adopt an “antithetical” approach to Husserlian idealism.9 With regard to
Husserl’s idealism, Ricoeur and von Hildebrand are precisely in agreement.
Both reject idealism as completely contrary to the goal of phenomenology to
disclose meaning.
My intention for this paper is briefly to explain, in part, Ricoeur’s
own account of what he calls the “mutual belonging” of phenomenology
2
Von Hildebrand, WP, 223.
3
Ibid., 63.
4
Ricoeur’s “hermeneutic turn” is generally recognized with the publication
of The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967).
5
David M. Kaplan, Ricoeur’s Critical Theory (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2003), 17.
6
Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics & the Human Sciences, ed. and trans. John B.
Thompson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 101.
7
Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, trans. Kathleen
Blamey and John B. Thompson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991),
xiii.
8
See Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, 114; Ricoeur, “For a Hermeneutical Phenome-
nology,” in From Text to Action, 25–89; cf. Don Ihde, Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The
Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and
Existential Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971).
9
Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, 105.
48 Eidetic and Hermeneutic Phenomenology
and hermeneutics. Assuming the affinity between the early phenomenol-
ogy of Husserl and that of von Hildebrand, I will apply Ricoeur’s analysis
throughout specifically to some aspects of von Hildebrand’s thought. While
acknowledging undeniable differences between their philosophies, I argue
nonetheless that the “mutual belonging” of phenomenology and hermeneu-
tics holds true in the case of von Hildebrand and Ricoeur as well.
In addition, my purpose is not to propose a “synthesis” of their
thought. I do intend to bring them into dialogue in the same spirit with
which Ricoeur frequently approached differing philosophies. Ricoeur self-
consciously avoided subsuming philosophies into what he called a “super-
system.” He often contended that differing philosophies are simply that—
differing. If two philosophies are engaged in two different things, he saw
no need to either synthesize them or determine which one was right and
which one was wrong. Yet, while speaking from a “different place,” two phi-
losophies could “recognize the other, not as a position which is foreign and
purely hostile, but as one which raises in its own way a legitimate claim.”10 It
is in this spirit that I proceed.
By the “mutual belonging” of phenomenology and hermeneutics,
Ricoeur means that “phenomenology remains the unsurpassable presupposition of
hermeneutics. On the other hand, phenomenology cannot constitute itself
without a hermeneutical presupposition.”11 He goes on to say that explication (by
which he means interpretation) is necessary to the fulfillment of the philo-
sophical project of phenomenology. Phenomenology is the foundation of
hermeneutics, but without hermeneutics phenomenology cannot fulfill its
aim. Thus, Ricoeur proceeds with establishing the “possibility” of a herme-
neutic phenomenology.12
What are the phenomenological presuppositions of hermeneutics?
Ricoeur outlines four. For the purposes and scope of this paper, I will ad-
dress the first three. The first presupposition of hermeneutics is that any
question of any sort of “being” (or we could say any object of philosophical
inquiry) “is a question about the meaning of that ‘being.’”13 Von Hildebrand
seems to agree when he says that the philosopher “freed from all preoccupa-
tions which do not originate from the objective meaning and essence of the
being…looks at the being and takes it seriously for what it is and means in
itself.”14 Ricoeur says that the ontological question is the phenomenological
question; it becomes a “hermeneutical problem only insofar as the meaning
is concealed, not of course in itself, but by everything which forbids access
10
Ricoeur, From Text to Action, 294–95.
11
Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, 101 (italics in the original).
12
Ibid., 114.
13
Ibid.
14
Von Hildebrand, What is Philosophy?, 197 (italics mine).
David Utsler 49
to it.”15 Being, or the meaning of being, is not in itself inaccessible, but we
do not approach being from nothing. Further, intuition into an essence does
not imply that the fullness of its meaning or its potential several layers of
meaning are disclosed in a single perceptual totality. Another function of
hermeneutics is to interrogate the “surplus of meaning”16 in an object.
It is appropriate here to note a significant, if not key, difference be-
tween phenomenology and hermeneutics. David Kaplan puts it well:
What distinguishes hermeneutics from phenomenology is the
[former’s] rejection of any claim to immediate, intuitive knowl-
edge of the world grounded in subjective self-certainty. Herme-
neutics distances itself from the claims of phenomenology to im-
mediacy and full presence. Understanding is always perspectival,
limited, prejudiced, linguistic, and historic.17
Ricoeur does not deny that we can arrive at the “eidetic structures of con-
sciousness,” but, as Don Ihde describes Ricoeur’s methodology, it is “only
by a series of detours that [man] learns about the fullness and complexity of
his own being and of his relationship to Being.”18 The detours can include
such things as symbol, metaphor, language, narrative, and so on, where each
has the capacity to reveal meaning that might otherwise remain obscure. The
hermeneutical point is that we have access to being, but always from a place
of human finitude. Although von Hildebrand’s philosophy holds to a more
direct and unmediated contact with essences, the notion of the complexity
of being is certainly not foreign to his thought.
Is this a point of irreconcilable opposition between Ricoeur and von
Hildebrand? Von Hildebrand speaks of direct access to “highly intelligible es-
sences” while Ricoeur offers an indirect, detour/return approach. While von
Hildebrand says that the mind can grasp essences intuitively,19 hermeneutics
deciphers distortions in “apparent meaning” and works to unfold “levels of
meanings implied in literal meaning.”20 This notwithstanding, there may be a
way to look at the relation between hermeneutics and phenomenology that
does not set them in absolute opposition to each other but rather puts them
each in their own context so that they may be seen as complementary.
Let us say that phenomenology, and in particular von Hildebrand’s
conception of it, is chiefly concerned with the intuition of essences. Von
15
16
Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort
Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976).
17
Kaplan, Ricoeur’s Critical Theory, 8.
18
Ihde, Hermeneutic Phenomenology, 7.
19
Von Hildebrand, What is Philosophy?, 97–131.
20
Kaplan, Ricoeur’s Critical Theory, 21.
Hildebrand, in a discussion of the difference between a priori and empiri-
cal knowledge, is clear that the a priori depends on an “essence structure”
or, we could say, an eidetic structure. For knowledge of this structure, von
Hildebrand says that “our attention is centered on the such-being of the
object, not its actual existence.”21 The intuition is based on the experience of
the “such-being” of the object. Hence, the orientation of phenomenology
is toward experience of a universal nature. Hermeneutics, on the other hand,
is oriented to uncover the meaning of being in the particular and historical.22
Hermeneutics is very much about the encounter; that is, hermeneutics is con-
cerned with how Being manifests itself in individual and particular experi-
ences. Understood this way, it is necessary neither to attempt to reconcile von
Hildebrand and Ricoeur nor to place them in opposition. Each, as Ricoeur
would say, raises a legitimate claim. And both, I would add, philosophize with
a deep reverence for the depth and mystery of being.
Hermeneutics considers the eidetic structure of being as it is meaning-
ful within the experience of it in our own historical “situatedness.” Ricoeur’s
hermeneutical project is to continue “to do philosophy” with Heidegger and
Gadamer, “and after them—without forgetting Husserl.”23 Ricoeur resists
the simple reformulation of phenomenology in its Heideggerian form (as
merely replacing Husserl) and rejects only the idealistic interpretation Hus-
serl, ostensibly, gave to his later work. Ricoeur preserves the original legiti-
mate insights of Husserl’s early phenomenology, many of which are shared
by von Hildebrand. He is able to do philosophy who remains faithful to the
original phenomenological impetus toward being while fulfilling the project
of phenomenology (the explication of the meaning of being) by means of a
philosophical hermeneutics. Von Hildebrand and Ricoeur can be understood
as complementary only if the temptation to either synthesize or oppose them
is resisted. That is to say, each speaks from a different place and address dif-
fering, although related, aspects of philosophy, but they both share the same
philosophical roots in phenomenology and the same goal of the interroga-
tion into the meaning of being.
The second phenomenological presupposition of hermeneutics—
the way “hermeneutics comes back to phenomenology,”—is the “recourse
to distanciation.”24 Ricoeur states that hermeneutic distanciation is somewhat
related to the epoché interpreted in a non-idealist sense. Distanciation is the
hermeneutical act of stepping back or stepping out of the lived experience
“in order to signify it.”25 The epoché involves that very moment of stepping
21
Von Hildebrand, What is Philosophy?, 96.
22
Cf. Kaplan, Ricoeur’s Critical Theory, 28.
23
24
25
Ibid.
David Utsler 51
out of the particularity of the experience “as purely as simply adhered to” in
order to become an “aspect of the intentional movement of consciousness
toward meaning.”26 Essentially, we distance ourselves from experience in or-
der to signify its ontological meaning, such as, perhaps, the object’s essential
or eidetic structure. Through distanciation, we seek to distance ourselves from
those things encountered in the experience of the object that, while connect-
ed to it, are not strictly speaking a part of its essence; or, as von Hildebrand
might say in describing Ricoeur’s notion of distanciation, is that what we dis-
tance ourselves from is that which is not the main thematic knowledge of the
object. In fact, von Hildebrand speaks of distance in a way fully compatible
with the hermeneutic principle of distanciation. Moreover, von Hildebrand’s
view of distance is one in which the hermeneutical principle of appropria-
tion, of which I will speak in a moment, can be very much at home.
First, von Hildebrand notes that “of all knowledges, philosophical
[knowledge] is the least one-sided, least limited, and least pragmatic. It is the
knowledge most purely and exclusively determined by the complete such-
being of an object, for it is always directed toward that essence.”27 Philo-
sophical knowledge, in contrast to other forms of knowledge, is directed to
the principal theme of the object.28 “Philosophy occupies a position removed
from actuality” (the moment of distanciation for Ricoeur) although not a dis-
tance that removes us “from a lived contact with the object. It means, rather,
a distance which enables us to approach the object in the way objectively
determined by the main theme.”29
What von Hildebrand is doing in this passage is contrasting an au-
thentically philosophical distance from a more disinterested “laboratory” dis-
tance of empiricism or pragmatism, but it parallels quite well with Ricoeur’s
explanation of distanciation and appropriation. The key fact which distin-
guishes the authentic philosophical distance from other kinds of distance is
that it is not removed from the “lived contact with the object.” Von Hilde-
brand says that we do not distance ourselves in abstract concepts, but delve
into the “reality of [the object’s] full existential flavor” and that to isolate
ourselves in abstract concepts “is in itself contrary to the very meaning and
genius of philosophy.”30
Von Hildebrand’s analysis of distance seems to obtain in the her-
meneutical function of distanciation and subsequent appropriation. While
distanciation involves a distance from the “lived experience” of the object
(i.e., distanciation as an act follows the event upon which one reflects), it is
26
Ibid.
27
28
Ibid., 197.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid.
not a distance from the “lived contact” with the object in its such-being in
the von Hildebrandian sense. The laboratory distance von Hildebrand cri-
tiques is not Ricoeur’s distanciation. Distanciation in the Ricoeurian sense is
to “disappropriate myself ” from the object so that the essence of the object
is not wrongly interpreted as being constituted by the self—that is, by the
subject in the idealist sense. Ricoeur says that “[t]his final and radical form
of distanciation is the ruin of the ego’s pretension to constitute itself as the
ultimate origin.”31 Appropriation subsequently occurs when we “make what
was alien” our own.32 In the von Hildebrandian sense, the essence or eidetic
structures of being that exist in themselves are disclosed to us in a more per-
fect way through maintaining intimate contact with the object. This is very
much what Ricoeur means be appropriation.
The relationship of distanciation and appropriation to intentionality
makes this all the more clear. According to Ricoeur, Husserl’s idealism, in
which the meaning of the object is constituted in consciousness, is a betrayal
of the very discovery from which phenomenology arose—namely, “the uni-
versal character of intentionality.”33 The heart of the discovery of intention-
ality is that “the meaning of consciousness lies outside of itself.”34 Herme-
neutics recovers for itself Husserl’s original meaning of the intentionality of
consciousness. Whereas Husserlian idealism would make subjectivity the first
category of understanding, Ricoeur would move it to a more modest role
of being the final category of understanding. Understanding is not initiated
in subjectivity but is terminated in subjectivity by appropriation. Explaining
appropriation in terms of a theory of the text, Ricoeur says that subjectivity
does not in any way constitute the meaning of the text but “[r]ather it responds
to the matter of the text, and hence to the proposals of meaning which
the text unfolds.”35 Simply insert the words ‘being’ or ‘object’ here in place
of ‘text’’ and Ricoeur’s broader meaning is easily grasped. We appropriate
meaning by responding to being in all the ways it might disclose itself to us.
Appropriation is understood to be the final moment of the intentional act.
Another way to state Ricoeur’s point here is that in the intentional re-
lationship of the subject and object there is something “given” in experience
by the object to which the subject “responds.” Knowledge in the philosophi-
cal sense is receptive, as von Hildebrand argues vigorously throughout his
book What is Philosophy?. And although intentionality isn’t really mentioned in
What is Philosophy?, it is assumed on nearly every page, and is, of course, the
31
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid., 112.
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid., 113 (italics in the original).
David Utsler 53
foundational principle upon which von Hildebrand constructed his original
theory of value response in his ethical philosophy.36
Ricoeur’s hermeneutics remains fully on the phenomenological
foundation of intentionality in conscious experience. Setting aside as beyond
the scope of this paper a more complete discussion of “bracketing”—the
epoché, or phenomenological reduction in intentionality—it is safe to say that
von Hildebrand and Ricoeur share fundamentally the same ground here.
That is, the subject does not constitute the being or meaning of the object,
but the philosophical act is one of openness to being as it would disclose
itself to us. Further, however, the subject appropriates what is given in the
object, making “what was alien become one’s own.”37
As noted above, von Hildebrand’s idea of distance and lived con-
tact fits very well with the hermeneutical principles of distanciation and ap-
propriation. There is one final point that we can draw out of this analysis.
Von Hildebrand speaks of the philosopher’s “close existential contact with
reality.”38 The philosopher must maintain intimate contact with the object to
avoid simply dwelling in abstract principles and concepts. On the contrary,
the philosopher must maintain the “always fruitful link between our mind
and the world of being, soaked in infinite and mysterious plenitude.”39 Is not
this “plenitude” what Ricoeur means when he speaks of the “proposals of
meaning” that is unfolded from the text?
One may object at this point that a theory of texts has no application
to the world of being spoken of by von Hildebrand. However, to the extent
that we use language to signify the truth of being the interpretation of texts
does not have its end in the text but toward being. Moreover, it is well known
among those who study Ricoeur that his hermeneutics, and philosophical
hermeneutics generally, expands well beyond texts. Hermeneutics, broadly
construed, simply means “interpretation.” Interpretation itself is an inescap-
able human act. We construe the world around us constantly. The philosoph-
ical act is very much a hermeneutic enterprise insofar as it involves delving
into, and explicating, the meaning of being. A hermeneutic philosophy stud-
ies the act of interpreting, principles of interpretation, and those things that
can either limit or even distort interpretation, which in turn prevent access to
being.40
36
Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Value Response,” in Ethics (Chicago: Franciscan
Herald Press, 1953).
37
38
39
Ibid., 197, 198.
40
To speak of distortions in interpretation is to move to the notion of a criti-
cal hermeneutics, which is to refer to hermeneutics in dialogue with critical theory. In
addition to David Kaplan’s Ricoeur’s Critical Theory, see also John B. Thompson Critical
Why is this true? and How does this further demonstrate the fruitful
relationship between eidetic phenomenology and hermeneutics? This brings
us to the third phenomenological presupposition of hermeneutics. For
Ricoeur, the “reference of the linguistic order back to the [eidetic] structure of
experience…constitutes in [his] view, the most important phenomenological
presupposition of hermeneutics.”41 Hermeneutics and phenomenology both
hold to the thesis of the “derivative character of linguistic meaning.”42 Eidetic
structures possess a pre-linguistic character and, thus, are not constituted
or produced by language. Yet, the intuition into a highly intelligible essence
(as von Hildebrand would put it) is signified in philosophy by the use of
language. This is evident, for example, by the fact that we exchange philo-
sophical ideas through papers, books, colloquia, and other linguistic means;
the point being that philosophical knowledge is mediated concretely in the
historical-temporal sphere (where we live) hermeneutically through language.
As such, the world of being discloses itself to us and we seek to understand
and explicate its meaning by language, whether written or spoken. It should
be noted at this point, that our understanding of language also informs and
shapes our perception and interpretation of the object. It is one thing to say
that language does not constitute the such-being of the object and yet anoth-
er to say that language is what we bring to the object or the means through
which we come to the object.
Language, Ricoeur says, is characterized by polysemy and the surplus
of meaning. In terms of a text, for example, words always bear meaning
apart from the intention of the author. Thus, in philosophy we speak of “un-
packing” the ideas of a given philosopher. We do this because we believe that
truth is greater than the ideas of the thinker. This means that language has
the capacity to bear meaning beyond that which was intended by the author.
So beyond grasping the truth that a thinker may be writing or speaking about
we once again make recourse to distanciation to distance the text from the
author in order to explore the truth of being more deeply. We do not choose
between the original intention of the author and other potential meanings
as if we must opt for one or the other. The hermeneutical point is that be-
yond the original intent of the author language can contain other meanings.
The distanciation of text from author is not to discard the intentions of the
author but rather to open the way to see other valid meanings not originally
envisioned by the author.
So, to conclude, whether we use the more poetic language of
Hermeneutics: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981) and Ricoeur “Hermeneutics and the Critique of
Ideology,” in From Text to Action.
41
42
Ibid., 117.
David Utsler 55
von Hildebrand about the “infinite and mysterious plenitude” of being or
Ricoeur’s notions of the polysemy of language and the surplus of meaning,
we can draw the same conclusion; namely, that an insight into an essence or
a grasp of an eidetic structure by no means exhausts the philosophical fullness
or richness of its meaning that can be further explored with a theory of inter-
pretation. A hermeneutics that presupposes phenomenology can then in turn
be a hermeneutics that can complete the phenomenological project of the
explication of the meaning of being in all of its layers and plenitude. In light
of this, Dietrich von Hildebrand and Paul Ricoeur may not only speak each
from his own place, but may also address themselves to one another. Such a
dialogue between Dietrich von Hildebrand and contemporary hermeneutics,
I contend, is one valid and fruitful way to bring the philosophy of von Hil-
debrand back into the conversation from which it has largely long been away.
—University of North Texas

Principium Versus Principiatum:
The Transcendence of Love in
von Hildebrand and Aquinas
Francis E. Feingold
Abstract
This paper seeks to defuse the claim, made by von Hildebrand
and his followers, that Thomism has no place for a transcendent
love whose principium would lie truly in the beloved, rather than
ultimately in the needs and desires of the lover; it also seeks to re-
fute the Thomist objection that von Hildebrand lacks a sufficient
understanding of nature and its inherent teleology. In order to ac-
complish this, I distinguish between different kinds of principium
or “for-its-own-sakeness.” Using St. Thomas’s theory of friend-
ship-love, I show how every affective movement not only can but
must have two different principia of two fundamentally different
sorts: an “end-desired,” and an “end-for-whom” the former is
desired. It is then noted that the key terms ‘value’ and bonum hon-
estum are both used to describe both types of “worthiness,” and
that this lack of distinction has led to much confusion between
Thomists and followers of von Hildebrand; for, while the latter
seem to tend to confer the higher “worthiness” of the “end-for-
whom” also on inanimate objects like sunsets, the former often
tend to classify even the beloved under the lower “worthiness”
of the “end-desired,” both of which are untenable positions. It
is shown, however, that for St. Thomas it is the higher and more
ultimate sense of “worthiness” that is at stake in friendship-love
and that it is a truly “transcendent” or “ecstatic” phenomenon.
Two objections are then addressed: (1) St. Thomas’s claim that
substantial unity is the greatest cause of love, and (2) his claim
that man’s primary end is Vision. With respect to both of these
claims I maintain that Aquinas’s position needs correction but
that neither should be taken to imply that for Aquinas man is his
own center or his own chief “end-for-whom.” Finally, it is shown
that while von Hildebrand decries positing natural teleology as
the explanation for man’s transcendence (a Thomistic position), I
© Francis E. Feingold, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)
Francis E. Feingold 57
argue that this is only due to a confusion regarding the kind of ex-
planation that nature is being invoked to serve: namely, von Hil-
debrand sees nature invoked as the final cause whereas Thomists
actually invoke it as simply the formal cause of our love for our true
Final Cause.
* * *
Perhaps one of the most beautiful and central aspects of love that von Hil-
debrand brings out in The Nature of Love is the aspect of “transcendence,”
which involves the aspect of self-forgetful gift that ensues from being fo-
cused entirely on the beauty of the beloved. Though no altruist (the delicate
balance between transcendent self-gift and one’s personal happiness, or Ei-
genleben, and their inextricable interweaving and interdependence, are among
the book’s main themes), von Hildebrand is nonetheless very clear that the
transcendent value-response must always be the primary element in love. It
would be an intellectual sin to reduce love to an “immanent striving” or ap-
petitus.
Now, this aspect alone might seem to put von Hildebrand in conflict
with the Thomistic tradition inasmuch as that tradition holds it as axiomatic
that every nature (including rational nature) necessarily strives for its own
perfection and flourishing, and indeed pursues all its ends precisely under
this aspect of “happiness.” Is this not the very reduction to “immanent striv-
ing” that von Hildebrand condemns so forcefully? To reconcile this apparent
contradiction would require two things: On the one hand, one would have
to show (1) that the Thomistic theory of bonum does indeed have a concept
equivalent to that of Hildebrandian value, which (2) would be carefully dis-
tinguished from the Hildebrandian “beneficial good,” and which (3) would
play the primary (though not sole) role in true friendship and spousal love.
On the other hand, one would have to show that von Hildebrand’s theory is
compatible with the teleology of Thomistic nature. This is the reconciliation
toward which I hope to sketch a path.
As a preliminary note, we must observe that von Hildebrand’s term
‘happiness’ does not actually correspond to St. Thomas’s beatitudo, but rather
to his delectatio, since it is consistently used to mean not the actual attainment
of the good-for-me, but rather the experience of bliss that follows necessarily
thereupon.1 This is important because Thomists agree with von Hildebrand
1
Henry Crosby (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009), 103, 116, 123; cf. also von
58 The Transcendence of Love in von Hildebrand and Aquinas
that “happiness,” in this sense of delectatio, must be essentially secondary.2
Nonetheless, the real difficulty, as John Crosby has pointed out, is for the
Thomist to additionally show that his system is not limited to the “beneficial
good” either but also has a place for “the good in itself.”3 In other words, for
von Hildebrand the principium of our value-response can be neither delectatio
nor our self-perfection; rather, the essence of value is precisely that the prin-
cipium of our inclination towards it is always its own intrinsic importance.
This is what distinguishes it from the categories of the “beneficial good”
and the “subjectively satisfying,” the importance of which is not the principium
but rather the principiatum of our needs and of our desires, respectively.4 This
distinction further implies that where the latter two categories have the indi-
vidual aspect of “for me,” of being tailored to my own circumstances, needs,
and inclinations (thus listening to a Beethoven symphony may be something
good or pleasant for me to do on some occasions but bad or unpleasant on
others), the importance of value is universal, it is “precious in itself.”5 The
same awe and admiration is “due” to the symphony from me regardless of
whether it is beneficial for me right now precisely because it is not my cur-
rent needs but the beauty of the symphony itself that is the principium of my
value-response to it.6
Hildebrand, “The Modes of Participation in Value,” International Philosophical Quarterly

1 (1961): 61–63.
2
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 2, art. 6, ad. 1 (henceforth, ST): “But if it
[the preposition ‘for’] denotes the formal or rather the motive cause, thus delight is
desirable for something else, i.e. for the good, which is the object of that delight, and
consequently is its principle, and gives it its form: for the reason that delight is desired
is that it is rest in the thing desired.” St. Thomas gives a concise version of his views
on this matter in I-II q. 4, art. 2: “For delight consists in a certain repose of the will.
That the will finds rest in anything, can only be on account of the goodness of that
thing in which it reposes. If therefore the will reposes in an operation, the will’s re-
pose is caused by the goodness of the operation. Nor does the will seek good for the sake
of repose; for thus the very act of the will would be the end, which has been disproved
above: but it seeks to be at rest in the operation, because that operation is its good.
Consequently it is evident that the operation in which the will reposes ranks before
the resting of the will therein.”
3
John F. Crosby, introduction to The Nature of Love, xix–xxx, esp. nn. 4 and 5.
4
Von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 29. Cf. also Dietrich von Hildebrand,
Christian Ethics (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1953), 34–38; John F. Cros-
by, “The Idea of Value and the Reform of the Traditional Metaphysics of Bonum,”
Aletheia 1, no. 2 (1978): 273–75.
5
John F. Crosby, “Are Being and Good Convertible?,” The New Scholasticism
57, no. 4 (1983): 468.
6
Von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 148–50, esp. 150: “Value in principle
addresses every person in the same way, whereas the objective good for the person
A problem arises here, however. Of the four kinds of beneficial
goods that von Hildebrand outlines, the lower two (those that bestow le-
gitimate pleasure and those that fulfill my objective needs7) do indeed have
their principium within me rather than in themselves. Such beneficial goods are
good because, and just insofar as, they answer my desire or need. But we must
inquire further into the higher two beneficial goods that are explicitly based
upon value-response—either possessing value oneself (e.g., moral virtue), or
contemplating it (such as in the event of a sunset, or in the Beatific Vision).
Is it not their very beauty and value that is the principium of my inclination
towards them? Indeed, von Hildebrand not only classifies both of these as
value responses but furthermore insists that their specific goodness for me
lies precisely in the fact that they are value responses.8 Nevertheless, qua benefi-
cial good, the principium of their “importance” cannot be in the object but
must be in myself. How then can my consideration of the beneficiality of
my value-response “shift” the principium into myself without destroying the
essence of the value-response and hence also its very beneficiality?
The only alternative to this is to say that there must somehow be two
principia for my attitude towards one and the same thing. But are these two
principia of the same “kind” and simply related as primary and secondary,9
or are they actually of different kinds? Here a clarification of the notion
of “for its own sake” might be helpful. Consider again the case of listening
to a Beethoven symphony. On the one hand, I can say that I love it “for its
own sake,” simply on account of its intrinsic perfection and value. This kind
of end is known in the Scholastic tradition as the finis cuius gratia or “end-
desired,”10 which stands to the bonum utile precisely as the end to the means.
addresses in each case a particular person. This is why one and the same event can be
an objective good for one person and an objective evil for another.” Cf. also Crosby,
“Are Being and Good Convertible?,” and Crosby, “The Idea of Value and the Re-
form of the Traditional Metaphysics of Bonum,” 287.
7
One could make a good case that this distinction corresponds fairly closely
with the (rightly ordered) bonum delectabile and the (rightly ordered) bonum utile.
8
For a further discussion of this topic, see von Hildebrand, The Nature of
Love, 152.
9
This former alternative seems to be von Hildebrand’s position; cf. von Hil-
debrand, The Nature of Love, 149. The argument, as I understand it, is that when a
value-bearing thing is considered as a beneficial good, it is approached from my (or
my friend’s) point of view as opposed to from a “universal” point of view. The in-
dividual beneficiary’s unique personal “center” becomes the principium of the value-
bearer’s aspect of beneficiality, which is added to, but should remain secondary to,
the value-bearer’s goodness-in-itself, which is the principium of our attitude of value-
response.
10
Cf., e.g., Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 1, art. 8. This literally (and unilluminatingly)
means simply the “end for whose sake.” Normally I translate this as the “end-de-
This, however, is clearly not the ultimate level of “for-its-own-sakeness”; for,
it is clear that I can love the symphony for someone—either for myself or for
a friend—and that in this scenario it is I and/or my friend who is most truly
being considered as “for-his-own-sake.” In Scholastic terminology, I and my
friend would be the fines cui or the “ends-for-whom” a participation in the in-
trinsically valuable thing is desired. It is clear that this is a very different type
of end from the former.
Even more importantly, it is impossible to have either kind of end without the
other. To clarify this point, let us turn to a beautiful article in the Prima Secundae,
where “love of friendship” is distinguished from “love of concupiscence.”11
The first thing Aquinas notes is that the “movement” of love necessarily tends
not to one thing, but to two. It is not only false but meaningless to say that I
love a friend without desiring his good and his happiness (von Hildebrand’s
intentio benevolentiae), just as it is meaningless to say that I love food but not in
a way that involves its being eaten by anyone. St. Thomas calls the “tendency”
towards the good of the beloved “love of concupiscence” and names the
“tendency” towards the person for whom the thing is loved “love of friend-
ship.” The former is directed toward the “end-desired,” whereas the latter is
directed towards the “end-for-whom.”
Aquinas then establishes a priority between these two “tendencies.”
The object of love-of-friendship, the “end-for-whom,” is loved simpliciter et
per se, whereas the “end-desired,” the object of the love-of-concupiscence,
is loved not “simply and for itself ” but rather amatur alteri—“is loved for an-
other.” The love of the object of the love-of-concupiscence “inheres,” so to
speak, in my love for the friend (or myself). Parallel to this distinction Aqui-
sired,” to be distinguished from the “end as attainment” of the desired object (finis
quo), and from the “end for whom” that object is desired (finis cui). But since in the
present context the use of the term “desire” might involve too many yet-to-be-
proven presuppositions, I shall leave the expression in its Latin form.
11
Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 26, art. 4: “As the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 4), ‘to love
is to wish good to someone.’ Hence the movement of love has a twofold tendency:
towards the good which a man wishes to someone (to himself or to another) and
towards that to which he wishes some good. Accordingly, man has love of concu-
piscence towards the good that he wishes to another, and love of friendship towards
him to whom he wishes good. Now the members of this division are related as
primary and secondary: since that which is loved with the love of friendship is loved
simply and for itself, whereas that which is loved with the love of concupiscence
is loved not simply and for itself but for something else. For just as that which has
existence is a being simply, while that which exists in another is a relative being, so,
because good is convertible with being, the good, which itself has goodness, is good
simply, but that which is another’s good is a relative good. Consequently, the love
with which a thing is loved, that it may have some good, is love simply, while the love
with which a thing is loved, that it may be another’s good, is relative love.”
nas draws another one, dividing goodness into “absolute goodness,” bonum
simpliciter, and “relative goodness” for-another, bonum secundum quid. A thing
is loved as an “absolute good” when it is the object of love-of-friendship; it
is loved as a “relative good” when it is the object of love-of-concupiscence.12
When it is loved in the second way the “movement” of man’s love is imma-
nent. When the object is loved in the first way, however, his love is transcen-
dent, it “goes out from itself simply.”13
Now let us turn back for a moment to the example of the Beethoven
symphony. Does the fact that the symphony is desired for someone, and hence
is being taken as a secundum quid good, mean that it ceases to be for-its-own-
sake?—that its beauty is no longer the principium but rather just a “means” to
human self-perfecting? Absolutely not! A means as such (bonum utile) derives
its goodness from the goodness of its goal. But to “order” a symphony to my
contemplation is not to derive its goodness from my contemplation but rath-
er involves exactly the opposite: the only reason it is good “for me” to con-
template the symphony is because it is already good “in itself.”14 The crucial
point here is that we are dealing with principia on two fundamentally different
planes, and with two completely different types of final causality.15 This is
12
St. Thomas points out that this division is analogous to the division of be-
ing into being-in-itself (substance) and being-in-another (accident).
13
Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 28, art. 3.
14
Cf. Michael Waldstein, “Dietrich von Hildebrand and St. Thomas Aquinas
on Goodness and Happiness,” Nova et Vetera 1, no. 2 (2003): 403–64, esp. 424, 429–
31, 434, and most of all 444–49. For von Hildebrand’s own excellent description of
different kinds of “being-ordained,” cf. von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 35–39.
15
It is in this sense that Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics II.4.1105a33) and Wald-
stein (“Goodness and Happiness,” 445 and 447) can maintain that virtue can truly
be sought for its own sake and yet that its performance necessarily involves a self-
referential aspect. A difficulty with Waldstein’s thesis, however, is his use of the ex-
ample of justice. The ordering of my passions in temperance, say, is indeed simply a
good for me and should be sought as such. But justice is primarily about giving others
their due and so it would seem that the chief finis cui of our action (after God) ought
to be our action’s beneficiary, or (as in the case of paying taxes) the order of society
at large. St. Thomas himself holds in ST II-II, q. 58, art. 12, that there is a clear
distinction between the virtues (such as temperance) that govern our own good and
virtues that have to do with the good of others: “The other virtues are commendable
in respect of the sole good of the virtuous person himself, whereas justice is praiseworthy
in respect of the virtuous person being well disposed towards another, so that justice is
somewhat the good of another person, as stated in Ethic. v, 1. Hence the Philosopher
says (Rhet. i, 9): ‘The greatest virtues must needs be those which are most profitable
to other persons, because virtue is a faculty of doing good to others. For this reason
the greatest honors are accorded the brave and the just, since bravery is useful to oth-
ers in warfare, and justice is useful to others both in warfare and in time of peace.’”
why there is no contradiction between saying that, on one level, the beautiful
thing is the principium of our desire in itself, and that on another level it is we
who are the principia. For this reason, we can say that the sunset, beautiful and
complete as it is in itself, nonetheless remains in a different sense incomplete
until it is contemplated—or “given its due” by a rational agent—for until
then it has not yet achieved its God-given end.16 The friend, however, has his
end within himself. Hence for Aquinas, his “worthiness” is the principium of
our love in a different and much deeper sense than the sunset’s beauty.17
It is important to keep these distinctions in mind when discussing
the key notions of the bonum honestum and “value,” because I contend that
both of these notions encompass both “relative” and “absolute” goods with-
out distinction. Thus, for Aquinas, the bonum honestum category contains both
God (the supreme “absolute good”) and moral virtue (which can only be a
“relative good”). Similarly, Hildebrandian “value” encompasses beauty and
nobility both as found in God and in a blade of grass. This is completely
understandable, for it is after all the very same perfection that makes a beau-
tiful soul uniquely worthy of both the intentio benevolentiae and of the intentio
unionis. Far from there being a contradiction between the two, it seems clear
16
John McCarthy has a beautiful article on this topic: “How Knowing Com-
pletes the World: A Note on Aquinas and Husserl,” Proceedings of the American Catholic
Philosophical Association 67 (1993): 71–85.
17
This point might become clearer if we put it in the context of St. Thomas’
triple division of perfection (Aquinas, ST I, q. 6, art. 3). The first corresponds to
“ontological value” and consists in the perfection of a thing’s simply existing as the
kind of thing it is, having the nature of “sunsetness”(cf. Aquinas, ST I, q. 5, art. 1;
for von Hildebrand’s discussion of this same distinction, see Christian Ethics, 145ff).
The second kind, corresponding to “qualitative value,” is what is normally meant by
a thing’s perfection: the perfect disposition of a thing’s accidents, allowing it to per-
form its proper operation (in a sunset’s case, the brilliance and vividness by which it
can most perfectly “radiate”; in a human’s case, above all the disposition of mind and
heart that allows him to exercise charity and wisdom). Yet there is also a third level:
the perfection of a thing’s attaining the end for which it was created. I would contend
that, whereas the principium of the second-level perfection of the sunset or the sym-
phony is within themselves, the principium of their third-level perfection lies chiefly
within the rational beings capable of perceiving them; that while they themselves are
truly “for-their-own-sake” in the sense of finis cuius gratia, they are “for-another” in
the sense of finis cui since their end lies outside themselves. A person, on the other
hand, is (at least partly) “for-himself,” having the principium of attaining his end to a
degree within himself. This is why we can have love-of-friendship for a person but can-
not have such a love for a sunset, beautiful as it may be. Also, this explains the sense
in which we can say that a human being desires to contemplate for the sake of his
own perfection; for, in this sense “perfection” is being considered not in the second
but in the third sense, inasmuch as the human being is made to contemplate beauty,
and would be failing in his God-given task if He did not.
that the most excellent “absolute goods” are, by virtue of that very fact, also
the greatest “relative goods” to us (such as God or my spouse).
Nevertheless, I believe that the von Hildebrand-Aquinas debate per-
taining to these issues has been overly complicated because this distinction
has been absent to it. For one thing, this oversight has allowed Thomists
to over-emphasize the relative and perfective aspect of goods that are in
themselves absolute (such as persons), thereby clouding an appreciation for
their deeper “for-their-own-sakeness.” On the other hand, it has allowed
Hildebrandians to sometimes extend the qualities of friendship-love to the
value-response aimed at merely “relative” goods, thus obscuring the fact that
“worthiness” is predicated of a person and of a sunset in two fundamentally
different—and hierarchically ordered—ways18; for a sunset simply cannot be
the “end-for-whom” of my contemplation. Now in fairness to von Hilde-
brand, there is indeed a sense in which we may have love-of-friendship even
for a sunset, inasmuch as we desire it to continue to exist and are glad of its
existence apart even from its being viewed by anyone.19 After all, even for
Aquinas, creatures glorify God not by being “contemplated” by Him but sim-
ply because their existence is a sharing in His goodness in His superabundant
generosity He wills them to exist truly “for their own sake.”20 But the point
remains that neither my contemplation of a sunset nor my performing a just
act can be ordered to the objects of those acts as “ends-for-whom,” simply
because neither is capable of receiving such a “gift.”
We have shown, then, that St. Thomas has a place for “transcen-
dent” love, and that, moreover, he calls it love in its most full and proper
sense: love simpliciter et per se. However, two objections may still arise. (1) Aqui-
nas claims that unity is the cause of love and that my substantial union with
myself is the strongest kind of unity, whereas love-of-friendship for another
is based merely on unity of likeness.21 If this is so, an important question fol-
18
Thus von Hildebrand thinks that “in value-response the object and its im-
portance is itself the theme: I ought to give it an adequate response for its own sake” (Von
Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 36; emphasis mine). It is true that it should not be
regarded as a bonum utile whose only goodness derives from the end it is ordered to
(say, my delight), but it would be equally, and obviously, false to say that my contem-
plation of the sunset is a “gift” to the sunset.
19
Cf. Von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 102–7.
20
Though, of course, they are “worthy” of existence only insofar as they par-
ticipate in Him. Cf. Aquinas, ST I, q. 44, art. 4; Aquinas, ST I, q. 19, art. 2, ad 3; and
especially ST II-II, q. 132, art. 1, ad 1. Cf. also Cajetan’s illuminating commentary on
the last-named passage highlighted in Thomas Osborne, Love of Self and Love of God
in Thirteenth-Century Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005),
104.
21
lows: how can man love anyone—even God—more than himself ? (2) How
can man’s “vocation” to transcendence be reconciled with his primary ulti-
mate end (viz., the Beatific Vision) being a “good-for-him” rather than the
“good-for-God” that we accomplish by ordering ourselves to Him through
charity?22
Regarding the first objection, von Hildebrand’s great fear is that
Aquinas’ claim reduces the beloved to an “extension of my ego.”23 Now,
when Aquinas says that the union brought about by love-of-friendship “is
likened to” substantial union,24 I believe he means simply that my value-re-
sponding love-of-friendship allows me to do for another what—before my
perception of and response to value—I could only do for myself, which is
to will the beloved’s good. Von Hildebrand is right, however, to point out
that there does remain an important difference in the basis of “solidarity
with myself ” vis-à-vis love-of-friendship/intentio benevolentiae. Whereas the
latter is founded upon value-response (which for Aquinas would be “uni-
ty of likeness,” inasmuch as our intellects are “fitted” to see the beloved’s
beauty—hence, a person with a brutish, vicious heart will fail to see that
beauty), the former requires no rational perception of my own “worthiness.”
Nonetheless, while this inclination to my own good is not caused by reason, it
remains subject to my reason, which can indeed weigh my own “worthiness”
against that of others and find it less in comparison. It is this fact, I believe,
that allows me to love others—such as God, or our Lady—truly more than
myself.25 Hence, I would argue that St. Thomas is mistaken to make “sub-
22
Cf. von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 115; see also von Hildebrand, “The
Modes of Participation in Value,” 70.
23
Cf. von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 8–9, 159, 162, among others.
24
Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 28, art. 1, ad 2.
25
It is important to keep in mind that for Aquinas “more” may be said of
loving in two fundamentally different ways, as is clear from ST II-II, q. 26, art. 7–8.
On the one hand, “more” may refer to the magnitude of the good which we will for
the beloved; and in this sense Aquinas happily concurs that in charity we love those
closer to God (e.g., our Lady) more than ourselves (i.e., by wishing a greater glory
for them than what we wish for ourselves). On the other hand, “more” may refer to
the magnitude (or, in Aquinas’s preferred vocabulary, “intensity”) of the act by which
we will the good (whatever it may be) for the beloved. In this second sense Aquinas
does not think that we can love any mere individual more than ourselves. Admittedly,
Aquinas is not entirely clear what the concrete measure of “intensity” might be. The
idea, however, seems to be that “if push came to shove” I would choose my pos-
session of my own (lesser) good over our Lady’s possession of her (greater) good. I
think it is in the “intensity” sense that Aquinas claims, in ST I-II, q. 27, art. 3, that “a
man loves himself more than another because he is one with himself substantially,
whereas with another he is one only in the likeness of some form.” It is this “inten-
sity” sense of the claim that I wish to dispute.
stantial unity” the strongest and overriding cause of love; for though it may
be a “tighter-knit” unity than “unity-of-likeness,” such a unity is on a lower,
infra-rational order. However, St. Thomas does indeed hold that we none-
theless love God, at least, more than ourselves.26 The reason for this seems
to be that, if a thing is defined above all by its parthood in a whole, it has a
kind of “supra-substantial” union with that whole that is tighter even than its
substantial unity with itself. But in what sense is a creature a “part” of God?
Although St. Thomas himself does not take this route,27 the only satisfactory
Aquinas, ST I, q. 60, art. 5; ST II-II, q. 26, art. 3, esp. ad 2 (and see also art.
26
2).
27
The route that St. Thomas does take to attempt to reach this conclusion is
his theory of the common good—a route which is notoriously difficult to pin down.
There are, I think, two main ways of reading Aquinas’s position on this. On the one
hand, one could take him to be making an argument founded on the claim that the
intrinsic common good of the universe (taken as the whole vast, beautiful order of
mutual hierarchical complementarity and support that binds its parts together, the
noblest component of which would be the hierarchical friendship among its rational
members) is a whole which is more beautiful than any mere individual and which
it is our highest perfection to constitute a part of. By this argument, we could (a)
love our neighbor with a greater intensity than ourselves insofar as he has a greater
contribution than we to offer to this emergent common good, and we could (b) love
God (the universe’s extrinsic good) with an even greater intensity than we love the
universe itself insofar as all its order and beauty belongs to Him per se. (This argu-
ment has its roots in a famous passage of Aristotle’s Metaphysics XII.10.1075a10–15;
for St. Thomas’s adoption of it, see especially QD de car. 4 ad 2, De spiritualibus creaturis
8, and De ver. 5.3, which make up a strong case for interpreting the more famous ST
I, q. 60, art. 5 and II-II, q. 26, art. 3 in this light). By this view, we would be “parts”
of God insofar as we are parts of His masterwork, which derives all of its goodness
and beauty from Him.
There are two difficulties with this, however: (a) it would seem to mean that
we love God only insofar as we love the universe which He creates, which would
seem to subordinate an infinite good to a finite good; and (b) the order of the uni-
verse (unlike the rational beings which are its principal parts) is an end-desired, not
an end-for-whom, and to have friendship-love for an end-for-whom (either God or
neighbor) for the sake of an end-desired is to subvert the basic structure of love.
Alternatively, one could take Aquinas to be claiming that the starting-point
of the argument is not the intrinsic common good (the universe’s order) but rather
the extrinsic common good (God). By this view, what we love primarily is God’s
goodness precisely as common (i.e., precisely as too great to be adequately reflected
by any finite participation); we would be “parts” of His “whole” just insofar as we
require the complementary contributions of others to reflect Him adequately. To
love Him would just mean to desire the actual diffusion of His inherently common
goodness to its intended participants (this being the universe’s intrinsic common
good), and this would also be the way in which we might love our more excellent
neighbor’s participation more intensely than our own. Perhaps the chief exponent
way to explain this seems to be that the creature’s own (absolute) goodness is
but a limited share of what God has in full. This line of reasoning could then
easily be extended to include those whose “share” is perceived to be greater
than our own.28 Thus man is saved from being his own primary “end-for-
whom,” and transcendence is maintained.
In answer to problem (2) above, I think Aquinas is simply mistak-
en—mistaken in the sense that his conclusion does not fit with his own prin-
ciples. Essentially, his argument rests on the (correct) premise that the unio
secundum rem—the union sought by love-of-concupiscence—cannot itself be
an act of our affectivity; but he simply fails to consider the case of love-of-
friendship, which does not seek its unio affectionis with the Beloved but rather
constitutes it.29 How can Aquinas have forgotten what he himself calls the most
important side of love, and as a result effectively make man himself be his
own primary, and not merely secondary, “end-for-whom?” I believe that Aqui-
nas draws this conclusion because in the Treatise on Happiness the whole
object of inquiry is what is beneficial for us; that is, we are being considered
here as our own (legitimate) “ends-for-whom.” It is, then, perhaps forgivable
that Aquinas failed here to observe the paradox that the greatest good-for-us
is not, in fact, the act that unites us to God qua good-for-us (Vision), but the
one that unites us to Him qua absolute-good (Charity).
Yet I believe St. Thomas was at least inconsistent in his opinion. In
the first place, he maintains in the Treatise on Love that the unio affectionis
of this interpretation is Charles de Koninck in his The Primacy of the Common Good
(Quebec: Éditions de l’Université Laval; Montreal: Éditions Fides, 1943) and his “In
Defence of Saint Thomas,” Laval théologique et philosophique 1 (1945): 8–109. The main
difficulty here is that the argument hinges on making commonness itself into a kind
of lovability, equating the commonness of God’s goodness with its supremacy rather
than deriving it therefrom (a move which is nonetheless necessary if the measure of
our love’s intensity is held to be something other than simply the intensity of our
perception of the beloved’s absolute goodness, which would give the personalist all
that he asked for). For a much fuller treatment of this subject and its difficulties see
my “Is to Love the Whole More Than to Love Its Members? The Primacy of the
Inclination to Love the Common Good in Aquinas” (master’s thesis, The Catholic
University of America, 2012).
28
Though Aquinas’s rejection of this possibility seems to follow Aristotle’s
position in Nicomachean Ethics IX.8, Aristotle himself argues elsewhere (Nic. Eth.
IX.4) that a man may come to hate himself and to lose even his “natural solidarity
with himself ” when he perceives his own lack of goodness. Further on (Nic. Eth.
IX.9), he states that a good man loves himself because he perceives his own “worthi-
ness.” From this it would seem to follow that one should, in principle at least, be
able to recognize that others may simply be more worthy than oneself and adjust the
intensity of one’s love accordingly.
29
between lover and beloved is closer even than the unio secundum rem produced
by “knowledge” or “possession,” which is akin to substantial union by virtue
of the “identification” it produces between my happiness and that of my
beloved (this being the source of the “indirect beneficial good” that von
Hildebrand speaks of).30 If union with God is the attainment of our end,
then clearly charity rather than vision would be the most perfect attainment
thereof. In addition, this point is indeed borne out in several places in the
Treatise on Charity where the unio affectionis of the act of charity is character-
ized as being man’s final end, even more properly than the union with God
secundum rem sought by love of concupiscence.31
Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that von Hildebrand saw this
truth—that, essentially, we find ourselves only in forgetting ourselves—with
a unique, profound clarity, and that this recognition is perhaps among von
Hildebrand’s greatest philosophical contributions. At the same time, his very
insistence on this truth brings us to our last point: namely, that von Hil-
debrand actually does share the fundamental Thomistic understanding of
nature. He tells us that “the fact that we are made for transcendence does not
make transcendence something immanent.”32 Yet to speak of a creature’s be-
ing “made for” something is precisely what Thomists mean when they speak
of a nature’s “striving for its flourishing,” and seeking everything else under
the aspect of that flourishing! Why then would von Hildebrand call such a
striving “immanent?”33 I believe there is a confusion here between “end”
and “source”: between final cause and formal cause. To say that the primary
“end-for-whom” of an agent’s operation is himself (or his nature) does in-
deed make that operation an “immanent” one. But to say that the agent’s
ability to make God his chief “end-for-whom” has its source in the “form”
or “structure” of his nature is not to make the act of charity immanent, but
30
Cf. Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Intentio Benevolentiae, Value-Response, and Su-
per Value-Response,” in The Nature of Love, esp. 151–52.
31
E.g., Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 27, art. 6, esp. ad 3: “For the interior act of char-
ity has the character of an end, since man’s ultimate good consists in his soul cleaving to God.” Cf.
also II-II, q. 23, art. 6, where Aquinas explains why charity is supreme over faith and
hope because the union of friendship-love is the truest kind of attainment. Cf. also
II-II, q. 26, art. 3, where St. Thomas says that “we love God with the love of friend-
ship more than with the love of concupiscence because the Divine good is greater
in itself; than our share of good in enjoying Him. Hence, out of charity, man simply
loves God more than himself,” thus making man’s chief finis cui to be not himself but
God. See also II-II, q. 27, art. 1.
32
Von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 228 (emphasis mine).
33
Ibid., 38–39; cf. von Hildebrand, Christian Ethics, 221; and Josef Seifert,
“Karol Cardinal Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) as Philosopher and the Cracow/Lublin
School of Philosophy,” Aletheia 2 (1981): 170, cited in Waldstein, “Goodness and
Happiness,” 434.
simply points out that God Himself “directed” our natures outward to Him-
self, and that to frustrate this “directedness” is to frustrate our very being. To
affirm this is not to affirm blind self-love. Rather, it affirms the transcendent
perfection of God’s handiwork, which was von Hildebrand’s life-work and,
most especially, the whole thrust of The Nature of Love.
Thus, it seems clear that Hildebrandian “value” does indeed have
a counterpart in the Thomistic bonum simpliciter; that the latter is carefully
distinguished from the aspect of beneficiality (the bonum secundum quid) and
that Thomistic love between persons is defined by responding to the beloved
under the former rather than the latter aspect, in love of friendship. More-
over, von Hildebrand too would gladly admit that the reason I love even God
as “end-for-whom”—purely for His own sake—is because it is my nature
and my flourishing to do so, since God “made me for” precisely this. The dif-
ferences between the two schools, then, may not after all be as deep as they
appear.
—The Catholic University of America

Philip Blosser 69
What Makes Experience “Moral”?

Dietrich von Hildebrand vs. Max Scheler
Philip Blosser
Abstract
In this paper I examine two problems in Scheler’s ethics to which
I believe von Hildebrand provides a solution: his (1) identification
of moral value with the positive or negative response value that
appears as a by-product of personal agency directed at realizing a
non-moral value; and (2) the lack of any clear distinctively moral
antithesis between good and evil in personal agency. In response
to (1), I enlist von Hildebrand’s distinction between morally rel-
evant and irrelevant values and his observation that not all value-
responses are morally good/evil, and I illustrate the existence of
specifically non-moral kinds of good/bad, such as the aesthetic.
In response to (2), I enlist von Hildebrand’s distinction between
the “subjectively satisfying” and “intrinsically important.” As von
Hildebrand demonstrates, Scheler fails to see that this is not a
distinction between ranks of values but rather is a distinction be-
tween views of importance in our motivation and importance
of objective value independently of any motivation whatsoever.
These solutions are elaborated vis-à-vis Peter Spader’s attempted
defense of Scheler against von Hildebrand.
Introduction
In this paper, I intend to discuss two problems in Max Scheler’s ethics to

which I believe Dietrich von Hildebrand provides a solution. These problems
are both related, in my opinion, to Scheler’s failure to adequately distinguish
moral from non-moral experience. The first problem lies is his identifica-
tion of moral value with whatever good or bad response value appears as a
by-product of personal agency directed at realizing a non-moral value. For
example, by means of balancing my checkbook, I not only realize a math-
ematical or economic value, but also, as a by-product, a moral value.1 The
To be precise, what is realized—“brought into being,” or “brought about”—

1
© Philip Blosser, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)

70 What Makes Experience “Moral”?
problem here is not only that such personal agency can hardly be conceived
as always having a moral significance, except in some extraneous way, but
also that by collapsing the significance of moral agency into any agency at all
Scheler empties the unique significance of moral significance. If all experi-
ence of personal agency is moral in Scheler’s sense then no experience is
distinctively moral.2
The second problem is that Scheler’s lacks any clear distinctively mor-
al antithesis between good and evil agency. Scheler does, however, endeavor
to account for this antithesis, and does so in two ways: first, by describing it
strictly in terms of choices of higher or lower values, and, second, by reduc-
ing it to a matter of differently configured perspectives and capacities for
correctly apprehending the essential relations between values in what he calls
the ordo amoris—the order of a person’s loves and hates. The problem here
is that both that his phenomenology of values offers no way of accounting
for why someone might choose lower values at the expense of higher ones
(such as choosing sensual indulgence at the expense of character-building
self-discipline) and his theory of the ordo amoris effectively excuses such a
choice on the grounds of the relative value-blindness of the agent.3
Scheler’s most important phenomenological works were published
during the prolific middle period of his career—during the second decade of
the twentieth century—when he and von Hildebrand came to know each other
in Munich. The most important of Scheler’s ethical works is his magnum opus,
Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (1913–1916), which is his
seminal critique of Kant’s ethics and outline of his own phenomenological
ethics based on a theory of values.4 Another important work is his 1916 essay
is a good that serves as a “bearer” of the value, which can only exist, strictly speaking,
within some other being.
2
For a further discussion of this problem, see my “Moral and Non-moral
Values: A Problem in Scheler’s Ethics,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 48,
no. 1 (Sept. 1987): 139–43; my Scheler’s Critique of Kant’s Ethics, Series in Continental
Thought 22 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1995), 84–88; and my “The ‘Cape
Horn’ of Scheler’s Ethics,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79, no. 1 (Winter
2005): 121–43.
3
See Philip Blosser, “Scheler’s Ordo Amoris: Insights and Oversights,” in
Denken des Ursprungs / Ursprungs des Denkens: Schelers Philosophie und ihre Anfänge in Jena,
ed. Christian Bermes, et al. (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1998), 160–71;
and Blosser, “The ‘Cape Horn’ of Scheler’s Ethics.”
4
Max Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, ed. Maria
Scheler [Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values], vol. 2 of Gesam-
melte Werke (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1980); translated into English by Manfred Frings
and Roger L. Funk as Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973). Henceforth this work will be cited by the
abbreviations “GW II, 1/F 2,” where “1” is the page reference of the German origi-
Philip Blosser 71
Ordo Amoris, which develops his Pascalian conception of a faculty of cogni-
tive feeling independent of reason which apprehends a hierarchical array of
values in its pure incontrovertible immediacy.5 Von Hildebrand’s most impor-
tant works relevant to the topic at hand are his early seminal works, Die Idee
der sittlichen Handlung (1916) and Sittlichkeit und Ethische Werterkenntnis (1921);
as well as Sittliche Grundhaltungen (1933) and particularly his Ethics, sometimes
entitled Christian Ethics (1953),6 which we will be focusing on here.
Scheler’s Ethical Theory
Scheler’s ethics is based on his phenomenology of values. Rejecting the pri-

macy of logical-theoretical reason in Kant and Husserl, Scheler insisted on
the primacy and autonomy of affective—even subliminal—modes of value-
apprehension, claiming that they have a Pascalian “logic” of their own in-
dependent of reason—a logic of the heart. He insisted that values are the
primordial phenomena of consciousness: “A value precedes its object; it is
the first ‘messenger’ of its particular nature.” 7 The thesis that man, before he
is an ens cogitans or an ens volens, is an ens amans, remains a leitmotif throughout
his work.8 He went so far as to insist that genuine philosophical knowledge
nal (Gesammelte Werke, II) and “2” is the page reference of the English translation
(Formalism).
5
Max Scheler, “Ordo Amoris,” in Schriften aus dem Nachlass, I: Zur Ethik und
Erkenntnislehre [Posthumous Works Vol. 1: On Ethics and Theory of Knowledge],
ed. Maria Scheler, vol. 10 of Gesammelte Werke (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1957); trans-
lated by David R. Lachterman as “Ordo Amoris,” in Max Scheler, Selected Philosophical
Essays, trans. David R. Lachterman, Northwestern University Studies in Phenom-
enology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
1973). Henceforth this work will be cited by the abbreviations “GW X, 1/OA 2,”
where “1” is the page reference of the German original (Gesammelte Werke, X) and
“2” is the page reference of the English translation (“Ordo Amoris” by D.R. Lachter-
man).
6
Dietrich von Hildebrand, Die Idee der sittlichen Handlung (Darmstadt, Wis-
senschaftliche Buchgesellshaft, 1969), originally published in Jahrbuch für Philosophie
und phänomenologische Forschung, Bd. 3 (Halle a. d. S.: M. Niemeyer, 1916), 126–251;
Von Hildebrand, Sittlichkeit und Ethische Werterkenntnis: eine Untersuchung über ethische
Strukturprobleme, 3rd ed. (Vallendar-Schönstatt: Patris, 1982), originally published in
Jahrbuch für Philosophie, Bd. 5 (Halle a. d. S.: M. Niemeyer, 1921), 463–602; Von Hilde-
brand, Sittliche Grundhaltungen (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1933), trans. Alice
M. Jourdain as Fundamental Moral Attitudes (New York: Longmans, Green, 1950); Von
Hildebrand, Ethics (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1953).
7
Scheler, GW II, 41/F 18f.
8
Scheler, GW X, 356/OA 110f.
has “moral prerequisites” such as love, humility, and self-control—qualities
which he personally lacked in notorious ways.
Kant rightly insisted that moral obligation could not be defined in
terms of empirical goods (objects of desire) without subordinating it to the
relativizing contingencies of particular whims, ends, and purposes. But Kant
did not recognize the distinctive nature of values (Werte) as pure “qualities”
or “essences” (Wesen) distinct from any empirical objects of desire (Ziele) or
goods (Güter) that may serve as their “bearers.” Just as colors can be conceived
independently of any colored surfaces (“bearers”), values can be intuited as
pure independent “essences.” Furthermore, values exhibit an objective order
of rank, furnishing a material (as opposed to Kant’s “empty,” formal) a priori
basis for ethics. Scheler distinguished four classes of values corresponding to
the affective intentionalities by which they are apprehended. From highest to
lowest, these values include the (1) religious (sacred and profane); (2) cultural
(geistige) (true, right, and beautiful); (3) vital (noble and common); and (4)
sensory (pleasant and painful).9 Scheler’s criteria for this classification, con-
figured in terms of levels of value-apprehending “value-feelings” (Wertnehm-
ungen), included categories reminiscent of Jeremy Bentham’s hedonic calcu-
lus, such as relative duration, depth of satisfaction, etc. He also held that this
ranking reflects an a priori “logic of preference” according to which values
can be shown to exhibit themselves in an objective a priori order of relation-
ships possessing all the characteristics necessary for a rigorously grounded
ethics.
The First Problem:

The Unspecified Nature of MoralValues in Scheler
In Scheler’s theory, as in teleological ethical theories generally, moral value

is understood to be realized as a by-product of realizing non-moral values.
More precisely, moral value is realized “upon the back” (auf dem Rücken) of
acts of willing or aiming to bring about some other, non-moral good.10 Prac-
tically, this means that whenever I try to bring about some positive good—
some goal—such as balancing my checkbook, I also realize the by-product
of a moral value that attaches to my willingness to undertake the endeavor.
Hence, non-moral values are realized by my bringing about the existence of
9
Manfred Frings discerns a fifth rank of values (values of utility), which he
locates between the levels of vital and sensory values. See Manfred S. Frings, The Mind
of Max Scheler: The First Comprehensive Guide Based on the Complete Works (Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 1997), 28–29.
10
Scheler, GW II, 48/F 27.
Philip Blosser 73
something that bears those non-moral values, but a moral value is also realized
as a by-product of my willing attempt to do so.
On the one hand, Scheler seems clearly to be right in insisting that
when a person aims to realize some end, such as balancing a checkbook,
some other value is realized in addition to the non-moral value in question,
such as the mathematical or economic value of balancing the checkbook. On
the other hand, I wonder whether calling this other value “moral” does not
restrict too narrowly the nature and range of the value that attaches to per-
sonal agency. I think I understand why Scheler takes this value to be “moral,”
since, unlike mathematical, economic, aesthetic, or other non-moral values, it
attaches immediately to a person’s attitudes and acts. In fact, I think that the
inclination to call this value “moral” stems from an undeniable insight into
the moral dimension of personal agency. But I wonder whether Scheler is not
mistaken in insisting that this value is in every case “moral,” because I think
that there are dimensions of personal agency that are clearly not morally sig-
nificant.
Certainly the act of balancing a checkbook can be described in some
way as good. It brings into being various positive values. But would we be right
in calling it morally good? It seems to me that an adequate description of the
good that is realized in such a case requires more distinctions than Scheler
offers at this point. All things being equal, when I balance my checkbook I
bring about something of mathematical and economic value, a mathemati-
cal and economical good. Quite apart from this, however, is the question of
the value attaching to my agency in realizing that good. Was I diligent in my
bookkeeping? Was I careful to avoid mistakes? Did I double-check my fig-
ures? If so, this results in the realization of another value besides the positive
mathematical and economic values of the completed undertaking, namely,
the value attaching to my personal agency, which Scheler would call moral.
But the term ‘moral’ does not seem quite right here. I could have
been diligently keeping books for a drug smuggling operation, and as such
it could hardly be regarded as morally commendable. It seems that if moral
values were under consideration here then a whole new dimension of seem-
ingly extraneous interpersonal questions would have to come into play. Why
did I balance the checkbook? Was it from a simple mundane sense of respon-
sibility for my family? Was it because I was expecting an IRS audit and was
scrambling to give my chaotic bookkeeping the appearance of order? Was it
merely to elicit the approval and admiration of my wife or father-in-law? Was
it to make sure my drug smuggling operation was clearing a profit? Clearly
these kinds of inter-personal intentions bring into play a number of obvious
moral considerations. But apart from such questions of interpersonal rela-
tions—where I am to take the good or bad of another as my good or bad, as
Sokolowski suggests11—I do not see how the value attaching to my attitude
or action could be described properly in terms of moral good or bad. Of
course, I may have been responding to undoubted mathematical values—
calculating, puzzling over, and double-checking various figures; and, in this
case it might be possible to describe the value of my agency in terms of its
normative response to perceived mathematical demands. That is, it may be that
I was responding positively to mathematical insights, or even a felt “math-
ematical ought” of some kind. And this might be commendable, as such; but
I do not see how it could be called morally commendable.
Von Hildebrand’s Solution:

Moral and Non-moral Categories
Von Hildebrand clearly allows that not all good and not all obligation is mor-
al, even if it may indirectly have moral significance. For example, in his Ethics
he distinguishes between non-moral and moral good, and states that not all
positive value-responses are specifically morally good:
It is easy to see that [a] difference between morally relevant and
morally irrelevant values exists. Enthusiasm for a great work of
art is a praiseworthy value response, but still it is not morally good
in the strict sense of the term.12
Again:
Morally good acts are always value responses, though not all value
responses are specifically morally good.13
Moreover, he argues for a type of normativity (or even “obligation”) govern-
ing our value responses which is distinct from specifically moral obligation:
Every good possessing a value imposes on us, as it were, an obli-
gation to give to it an adequate response. We are not yet referring
to the unique obligation which we call moral obligation and which
appeals to our conscience. This [latter] obligation issues from cer-
tain values only. Here we are thinking of the awareness which we
have as soon as we are confronted with something intrinsically
11
Robert Sokolowski, Moral Action: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 1985), 156. I discuss the question as to whether this
transactional criterion for moral action is adequate to serve for moral obligations to
oneself, to non-human animals, or to one’s natural habitat in my “The ‘Cape Horn’
of Scheler’s Ethics,” 139.
12
Dietrich von Hildebrand, Ethics, 279.
13
Ibid., 393.
Philip Blosser 75
important, for instance, with beauty in nature or in art, with the
majesty of a great truth, [etc.].14
Likewise, he distinguishes two different kinds of norms that demand we con-
form to them: “factual” ontological laws, such as the “laws of mechanics,”
which are a matter of reason, and norms that “impose themselves on our
conscience,” which are a matter of moral obligation. Our responses to on-
tological norms (e.g., repairing an instrument, learning a language correctly,
driving a car well) are morally indifferent, even though they can take on moral
relevance indirectly by being brought into relation to a morally relevant end.15
Furthermore, von Hildebrand distinguishes moral values from mor-
ally relevant values in a helpful manner; and while he allows that morally
relevant values cannot be said to constitute a proper domain of values, he
nevertheless insists that moral values as such constitute such a distinct value
domain, in contrast to Scheler. Von Hildebrand again:
All moral values are morally relevant, but not all morally relevant
values are moral values…. [M]orally relevant values neither form
a specific value domain nor are they centered around the onto-
logical value of one being. The mark of moral relevance is not
such that it would suffice to form one value domain.16
However:
There exist different value domains or value families which are
distinguished not only by their rank but also by their profoundly
different themes: moral values, intellectual values, aesthetic val-
ues, and others.17
Accordingly, von Hildebrand offers a framework for clearly articulating the
difference between moral and non-moral experience, moral and non-moral
values, and value responses.
The Second Problem:

The Absence of Moral Antithesis in Scheler
The second problem in Scheler’s ethics is his lack of any clear notion of a
distinctively moral antithesis between good and evil agency. To the extent
that Scheler adverts to this antithesis, as we noted earlier, he does so either by
describing it strictly in terms of preferences for higher or lower values or by
14
Ibid., 38.
15
Ibid., 182, 184n8.
16
Ibid., 280.
17
Ibid., 129.
reducing it to a question of differently configured perspectives and capacities
for accurately apprehending the essential relations between values (what he
calls the ordo amoris). The problem, of course, is that this does little to help us
understand why someone might choose a lower value over a higher one, and
it also seems to exculpate persons of moral responsibility.
Von Hildebrand’s Solution:

A Fundamental Distinction
In his Ethics, von Hildebrand developed a distinction between the “subjec-

tively satisfying” and the “intrinsically important,” which he claimed Scheler
overlooked; a distinction that serves to provide what is missing in Scheler’s
ethic. In developing von Hildebrand’s distinction we shall make use of sev-
eral extensive quotations from his Ethics. What, exactly, is the nature of his
distinction? Von Hildebrand uses two examples:
In the first, let us suppose that someone pays us a compliment.
We are perhaps aware that we do not fully deserve it, but it is
nevertheless an agreeable and pleasurable experience. It is not a
matter neutral and indifferent to us as in the case where some-
one tells us that his name begins with a T…. It presents itself as
agreeable and as possessing the character of a bonum, in short, as
something important.
In the second, let us suppose that we witness a generous action, a
man’s forgiveness of a grave injury. This again strikes us as distin-
guishable from the neutral activity of a man dressing himself or
lighting a cigarette. Indeed, the act of generous forgiveness shines
forth with the mark of importance, with the mark of something
noble and precious…. We are conscious that this act is something
which ought to be, something important.
If we compare these types of importance, we will soon discover
the essential difference between them. The first, that is, the com-
pliment, is merely subjectively important; while the latter, the act
of forgiving, is important in itself. We are fully conscious that the
compliment possesses a character of importance only insofar as
it gives us pleasure. Its importance is solely drawn from its rela-
tion to our pleasure—as soon as the compliment is divorced from
our pleasure, it sinks back into the anonymity of the neutral and
indifferent.
Philip Blosser 77
In contrast, the generous act of forgiveness presents itself as
something intrinsically important. We are clearly conscious that
its importance in no way depends on any effect which it produces
in us. Its particular importance is not drawn from any relation to
our pleasure and satisfaction. It stands before us intrinsically and
autonomously important, in no way dependent on any relation to
our reaction….
The intrinsic importance with which a generous act of forgive-
ness is endowed is termed “value” as distinguished from the im-
portance of all those goods which motivate our interest merely
because they are agreeable or satisfactory to us.18
This distinction is used by von Hildebrand, accordingly, to highlight the es-
sential nature of values, which he identifies with the intrinsically important, as
over against the subjectively satisfying. Further, he believes that Scheler over-
looks the distinction and its significance and attempts unsuccessfully to ac-
count for it simply by means of an appeal to distinctions in ranks of values:
The difference between…value and the merely subjectively sat-
isfying has sometimes been interpreted as simply a difference in
rank. It has been assumed that the difference between the intrin-
sic importance of justice and the merely subjective importance
of something agreeable (for instance, the agreeable quality of a
warm bath or a pleasant game of bridge) consists only in the fact
that the former ranks higher than the latter. This indeed was the
opinion of Max Scheler.19

After developing at some length why he believes his distinction is
essential, von Hildebrand returns to his critique of Scheler:
The reason why Scheler overlooked the essential difference be-
tween the value and the subjectively satisfying rests in the fact that
he did not clearly separate the question concerning the different
points of view of importance in our motivation, from the question
concerning the importance which the object possesses independent-
ly of any motivation. The fact that no being is completely deprived
of all value may divert us from insight into the essential differ-
ence between the two points of view. Yet the category of the
subjectively satisfying is not directed toward certain things which
in themselves would possess no other importance, but toward the
point of view under which we approach these things. Thus the ar-
gument which says that the amusing social affair also has a value,
18
Ibid., 34–35.
19
Ibid., 39–40.
only a lower one, is pointless. In a case where I have to choose
between attending the amusing social affair and assisting a man
in great moral danger, the conflict is not between the value of as-
sisting this man and the value of attending this party. The conflict
is rather between two heterogeneous points of view. In choosing to go
to the amusing party, the point of view under which this deci-
sion is made is definitely the merely subjectively satisfying. But in
the case of the opposite choice in which I decide to assist a sick
person, the point of view of my choice is definitely the value.20
Von Hildebrand believes not only that Scheler’s appeal to an objec-
tive hierarchy of values fails to explain this distinction, but that his appeal to
“preference” fails as well:
Any attempt to explain the morally wrong attitude as the pref-
erence for a good having a lower value to a good possessing a
higher one is doomed to fail. In the first place, it is impossible
to interpret every action as being rooted in an act of preference.
There exist many cases in which an end is chosen by disregarding
a value without respect to any preference; for instance, somebody
avenges himself in killing his enemy, and in so doing he ignores
the high value of the life of a human being. Obviously it would
be a completely artificial and wrong interpretation to say that this
man prefers the satisfaction of his revenge to the life of his en-
emy. No conscious comparison, no conscious pondering of two
goods, is here in question. Instead there is a simple decision to
satisfy his desire for revenge, without in any way bothering about
the value of a human life.21

The true meaning of preference, as von Hildebrand proceeds to
clarify, involves conscious deliberation and choice. He then writes:
An ordinary theft is not based on a preference for the value of
possessing money over the sacred character of property rights,
but is based rather on…indifference toward the point of view of
value as such, which conditions an indifference toward the value
of property coupled with an unhampered pursuit of something
subjectively satisfying. In the case of a conflict in which a man
wavers between a temptation toward theft and the voice of con-
science exhorting respect for the property of his fellow men and
warning against the injustice of theft, there can be no weighing
of both possibilities from the same point of view, no comparison by
20
Ibid., 43 (emphasis mine).
21
Ibid., 43–44
Philip Blosser 79
a common denominator, but only an outspoken clash of two different points
of view: the two directions of life of which St. Augustine speaks in
De Civitate Dei (XIV, 3).
Moreover, if it were true that in preferring a lower good to a high-
er good the choice would be based on a common denominator,
namely the point of view of their value, it would be impossible
to explain why one could choose the lower instead of the higher.
So long as one and the same point of view is really at stake, there
must be a reason why that which is inferior from this point of
view is nevertheless preferred.
Every time someone approaches two possibilities from one and
the same point of view (for instance, where one chooses the low-
er of two salaries offered for the same kind and amount of work),
we try to find out what other point of view could explain such
a choice. We take it for granted that one could not choose from
the same viewpoint and by the same measure that which is less, if
there were not the possibility of approaching this lesser one from
another viewpoint or, as we can put it, if another point of view
were not responsible for turning the scale.22
Peter Spader’s Defense of Scheler
Peter Spader, an eminent Scheler scholar, undertakes to defend Scheler

against von Hildebrand’s criticism above in his excellent book, Scheler’s Ethical
Personalism: It’s Logic, Development, and Promise.23 Spader acknowledges von Hil-
debrand’s claim that Scheler overlooks his fundamental distinction; a distinc-
tion, according to von Hildebrand, indispensable not only for understanding
values but for understanding why people sometimes choose “lower” values
over “higher” ones. Spader believes that von Hildebrand’s distinction is a
“useful” one, and that it deserves “consideration and development.”24 He
concedes that if von Hildebrand is right, then Scheler’s ethics would be in
serious trouble. However, he takes issue with von Hildebrand and makes
bold to claim that Scheler, rather than overlooking von Hildebrand’s dis-
tinction, serves to make it understandable by means of his theory of the ordo
Ibid., 44–45 (emphasis mine).

22
Peter H. Spader, Scheler’s Ethical Personalism: It’s Logic, Development, and Promise
23
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2002).

24
Ibid., 269.
amoris.25 First, he thinks von Hildebrand is mistaken in assuming that morally
evil choices cannot be understood on the basis of different ranks of values,
as claimed by Scheler. Second, he thinks von Hildebrand is also mistaken
in assuming that his distinction between the subjectively satisfying and the
intrinsically important is needed in order to understand the choice of lower
over higher values.
Spader begins his defense by arguing that Scheler’s understanding of
the nature of preference is different from von Hildebrand’s. First, he says that
for Scheler preference is a cognitive act, but not a conscious choice. Second, he
says that for Scheler the ultimate roots of the choice of a lower over a higher
value are to be found finally, not in a “consciously chosen” preference, but in
the ordo amoris—the primordial loves and hates that open or close a person’s
awareness of the hierarchical ranks of values and the place of a given value
within that hierarchy. Thus, the ordo amoris establishes the horizon of values
perceptible to a particular person and delimits what is seen as the highest
value in a given situation.
In Spader’s opinion, Scheler is amply able to account for the choice
of a lower over a higher value not only by reference to an objective order
of hierarchically ranked values, but by means of his insightful analysis of
the ordo amoris and its possible deformations in particular individuals. Since
Spader believes von Hildebrand misunderstands Scheler, he says he finds it
“ironic” that his efforts to account for the person who chooses the lower of
two salaries comes close to Scheler’s insight of a person’s ordo amoris. The es-
sential thing, Spader suggests, is to understand a person’s point of view:
We must understand what love and hatred allow the person to see
of the realm of values. Only then will we also see why that person
chose to realize an “objectively” lower value, because only then
will we see the limited range of the hierarchy of values which
that person’s stunted heart allowed, or the inverted values seen
through the eyes of ressentiment, or the negative values now made
attractive through hatred. Only if one grasps the level at which
the ordo amoris operates and the true complexity of the realm of
feelings (and of values) will one finally see how a person can, in
the confines constructed by his or her loves and hates, see a value
as the highest value when it is, objectively, a very low value, or in
the distortion of hatred see a value as high and positive when it is
objectively low and negative.26

In fact, Spader says that Scheler, far from missing the importance
of von Hildebrand’s distinction as a way of answering the classic question
25
Ibid., 255–56.
26
Ibid., 270–71.
Philip Blosser 81
of how people can choose lower values, gives us a way of understanding
why people sometimes fall prey to seeking the subjectively satisfying over
the intrinsically important. He endeavors to demonstrate this by means of
von Hildebrand’s own examples. In his example about a murder of revenge,
von Hildebrand claims that one cannot account for the seeking of personal
satisfaction in revenge by appeal to the ranking of values. However, Spader
counters by suggesting that persons under the spell of hatred have such a
distorted vision of the hierarchy of values that it is quite possible for them
to prefer the value of revenge above that of the life of their enemy. Again, in
the example contrasting the pleasure of attending a party with the value of
assisting a person in great danger, Spader says that “if I am trapped in an ordo
amoris that places such selfish pleasures as supreme, I may well see the value
of the party to be higher than that of the life of a person in peril.”27 Finally, in
the example of the thief, says Spader, it is not that the thief is ignoring values
when he places the value of money he steals over the value of the rights of
the victim. His “point of view” simply differs because of the deformation of
his ordo amoris.
Spader says that the problem we may face in recognizing that such
acts reflect an ordo amoris, and not simply a difference between the subjec-
tively satisfying and the intrinsically important, may be that an ordo amoris
that would so radically elevate selfishness “is so foreign to our own (or to
the ethos of our culture) that we have trouble seeing through the eyes of
a person with such a ‘point of view.’”28 To claim that one cannot account
for such moral behavior on the basis of an objective order of hierarchically
ranked values, Spader suggests, is to miss entirely the subtlety and power of
Scheler’s insights. Scheler’s work on the orders and disorders of the heart, he
says, reaches a depth that von Hildebrand fails to appreciate, and which, if
understood, helps to illumine von Hildebrand’s own insights.
My Defense of von Hildebrand
I see several problems here. I wonder whether it is really von Hildebrand

who misses the significance of Scheler’s value theory here, rather than Spader
missing the significance of von Hildebrand’s fundamental distinction. Before
delving into a study of von Hildebrand’s distinction for myself, I assumed
that Spader would be right in his defense of Scheler here, as he usually is; but
a more careful examination of von Hildebrand has led me to call into ques-
tion that assumption.
First, notice how Spader simply reconfigures von Hildebrand’s dis-
27
Ibid., 271.
28
Ibid., 271–72.
tinction between the subjectively satisfying and intrinsically important into
a different kind of distinction between higher and lower values. Spader is
simply following Scheler here. Both of them, I think, miss the significance of
von Hildebrand’s distinction. The point is not that the subjectively satisfying
cannot be analyzed from the perspective of values. Von Hildebrand plainly
recognizes this. A chapter of his Ethics is devoted to “Legitimate Interest in
the Subjectively Satisfying,” and he states that when we say that “the delight
which we feel in hearing a symphony of Haydn is something higher than the
pleasure good food can give us,” we are obviously engaged in a judgment
concerning the two experiences from “the point of view of value,”29 and
no longer from the point of view of the merely subjectively satisfying. Von
Hildebrand’s point is that the distinction between the subjectively satisfying
and intrinsically important represents a fundamental antithesis in the moral
and spiritual comportment of the person. It is a difference in orientation
between (1) what is important for me merely because I find it agreeable, as
opposed to what has value in itself independently of me; (2) a pleasure that is
sought only for its subjective gratification, like the pleasure of eating sought
by the Roman bulimics for whom gluttonous pleasure alone determined the
importance of food as opposed to the delight elicited as a by-product of
something else of objective worth valued for its own sake, such as the repen-
tance of a sinner; (3) the obtrusive call of pleasure, which addresses us as a
temptation to cast away our freedom of choice and allows instinct to govern
our behavior, as opposed to the unobtrusive call of value, which addresses
us by way of obliging invitation to freely respond; and (4) the Gollum-like
self-absorption and self-confinement of the will’s narcissistic incurvatus in se,
as opposed to the self-forgetfulness and self-abandonment found in an en-
thusiastic response to something of objective value, such as a heroic moral
act.30 Von Hildebrand’s distinction, then, points to fundamentally antithetical
moral orientations in the spiritual axis of human life. Any attempt to reduce
this antithesis to a distinction between higher and lower values, it seems to
me, entirely misses von Hildebrand’s point.
Second, notice how Spader’s reconfiguration of von Hildebrand’s
distinction into a distinction between relative ranks of values apprehended
by a particular person with a particular ordo amoris or even within a particular
cultural ethos, serves, however inadvertently, to remove from the table the
question of personal responsibility and freedom of choice in value-response,
which is the crux of von Hildebrand’s distinction. If the thief or murderer
or hedonist is simply “trapped” in his ordo amoris, as Spader suggests, then he
has no responsibility for his distorted perception of the objective order of
29
Von Hildebrand, Ethics, 41.
30
Ibid., 35–39.
Philip Blosser 83
hierarchically ranked values. He cannot help preferring the value of revenge
to that of his victim’s life, or the value of a party to that of helping someone
in moral danger, or the value of stolen money over that of his victim’s rights.
This would constitute an example of what Scheler calls “value-blindness.”
Scheler says that value-blindness is a result of a distortion in the order of
one’s loves and hates—in what he calls the ordo amoris.
Von Hildebrand acknowledges that value-blindness plays a signifi-
cant role as a root of moral evil, and that it is, in fact, the basis of many
preferences of a lower over a higher good. However, von Hildebrand goes
substantially farther here than Scheler does by providing his assertions with
qualifying limiting conditions. Von Hildebrand writes: “If it were a blindness
like color blindness, the result of a mere natural disposition, no one would
be responsible for being value blind and for acting in a morally wrong way”;
but this is not “the kind of ignorance which makes an action involuntary.”
Rather, he says, “Value blindness is in no way the result of mere tempera-
mental disposition, but rather of pride and concupiscence.” This is so be-
cause a point of view antithetical to that of values dominates the approach
to reality here—“the point of view, namely of what satisfies our pride and
concupiscence: we are therefore blinded to certain values.”31
In other words, von Hildebrand’s category of the subjectively sat-
isfying is not concerned with addressing certain lower values in relation to
other higher ones but with addressing why anyone would choose a lower
value in the first place. Von Hildebrand is touching here upon the profound
problem ordinarily addressed philosophically under the rubric of evil. Theo-
logically speaking, he is touching here upon the deep spiritual problem of
sin. Scheler’s analysis of the objective order of hierarchically ranked values
may offer helpful tools for investigating various preferences, but this ranking
itself offers no account of why lower values may be preferred over higher
ones. While his theory of the ordo amoris may go some way towards describ-
ing various deformations in the perception of values, including certain types
of value-blindness, Scheler nevertheless offers no help in understanding how
one person may come to be blind to the values perceived by another, let alone
how one may be morally or spiritually culpable for his value-blindness. Von
Hildebrand’s distinction offers what is missing in Scheler.
Third, notice how Spader tries to render Scheler’s account of the
“lower” choice more plausible by distancing our own experience from the
ordo amoris of the thief, murderer or hedonist. Perhaps, he suggests, an ordo
amoris that would so radically elevate selfishness “is so foreign to our own (or
to the ethos of our culture) that we have trouble seeing through the eyes of
31
Ibid., 46–47.
a person with such a ‘point of view.’”32 But the problem is not that radical
selfishness is alien to our experience. It is not. The problem is that a person’s
ordo amoris neither explains nor excuses such selfishness.
Finally, notice how Spader dismisses von Hildebrand’s claim that one
cannot account for preferences of lower over higher values on the basis of
hierarchically ranked values by suggesting that von Hildebrand misses entire-
ly “the subtlety and power of Scheler’s insights.” Scheler’s work on the orders
and disorders of the heart, he says, “reach a depth and level [(earlier he also
suggested complexity in its analysis of the realm of feelings and values)] that
von Hildebrand fails to appreciate, and which, if understood, help to illumine
his own insights.”33 I think it may be said, without prejudice to the profound
insights to be found in Scheler, that such criticism misses entirely the subtlety
and power of von Hildebrand’s insights here.
Conclusion
In sum, while there is much more that could be said here,34 the time has
clearly come for a considered retrieval and reassessment of the contributions
of von Hildebrand. I know I would have profited immeasurably by exposure
to his work much earlier in my academic career. Only lately have I come to
him, but it is with great appreciation and gratitude that I have done so.
—Sacred Heart Major Seminary
32
Spader, Scheler’s Ethical Personalism, 271–72.
33
Ibid., 272.
34
In particular, I call the reader’s attention to the valuable essay by John F.
Crosby entitled “Dietrich von Hildebrand on the Fundamental Freedom of Per-
sons” in chapter 9 of his book, Personalist Papers (Washington, DC: Catholic Univer-
sity of America Press, 2004).
Josef Seifert 85
Dietrich von Hildebrand on

Benevolence in Love and Friendship:
A Masterful Contribution to
Perennial Philosophy
Josef Seifert
Abstract
One of the deepest contributions of Dietrich von Hildebrand
towards a philosophy of love is the ingenious chapter seven of
his book The Nature of Love on the intentio benevolentiae of love (the
“intention of benevolence”). According to von Hildebrand, the
intention of benevolence constitutes in some sense the inner core
of love and its goodness and should always, as he explains, take
priority over that other most distinctive trait of love, the intentio
unionis, the “desire for union.” This paper shows that von Hilde-
brand’s distinction between the three “categories of importance”
(of the “good”) allows us to understand the benevolent intention
and desire for the happiness of the beloved person in a deeper
way than was possible ever before. This benevolent intention en-
ables the loving person to see and experience the objective goods
for the beloved person from within. The loving person partakes
in his affective and free response of love in the innermost and
unique center of the beloved person to whom the objective good
for him or her is directed. In the intentio benevolentiae, however, the
objective good for the beloved person is desired and willed by the
loving person not only inasmuch as it is endowed with intrinsic
value, but also insofar as it addresses itself to the unique center of
consciousness of the beloved person. This applies to all catego-
ries of love, even the love of an enemy. Above and beyond this,
however, in the love of friendship and in spousal love, in parental
love, etc., the objective goods and evils for the other person are not
only desired and rejoiced in under the point of view that they are
goods for the beloved person, as also in the love of neighbor.
Rather, because they are goods and evils for the person beloved in friend-
© Josef Seifert, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)

86 Benevolence in Love and Friendship
ship or spousal love, they also become (indirect) objective goods for
the friend or spouse. The paper ends with a comparison between
some of the texts of Saint Anselm on heaven and von Hilde-
brand’s chapter, showing that what Anselm says in a sublime text
on heaven (that in heaven we will not rejoice more over our own
good and blessedness than over that of the beloved persons, and
even will rejoice in the beatitude of God more than in our own)
can only be truly understood by analyzing it in the light of von
Hildebrand’s insights and sharp distinctions. Thus von Hilde-
brand makes a decisive contribution to the clarification of a cen-
tral topic in the philosophia perennis: the benevolence of love.
* * *
Dietrich von Hildebrand was especially pleased with chapter seven on the
intentio benevolentiae (the “intention of benevolence) of his book The Nature of
Love. So pleased was he with this chapter that he told me (illustrating to me
his outstanding love of truth, even when he spoke of his own work, and with
some childlike and humble joy over the gifts God had given him—and, more-
over, on account of the especially thorough elaboration of this chapter),1
“das ist sozusagen mein Kabinettstück” (“this is, so to speak, my showpiece, my
masterstroke”).
Thinking that this remark is simply true, and seeing that this chapter
deals with a central feature of love while also touching several other impor-
tant contributions of von Hildebrand to the philosophia perennis, I want here to
expound the insights developed in this chapter.
The term ‘benevolence,’ which is often used as just another name
for love,2 constitutes in some sense the inner core of love and its goodness
and should always, as von Hildebrand explains, take priority over the other
1
During one of the many conversations I was granted to have with Dietrich
von Hildebrand, from the time of my early youth (twelve years) onwards. This par-
ticular conversation occurred while on one of several joint summer vacations with
him, his wife, and my family in Bocca di Mare in the Province of La Spezia at the
Italian Riviera near Carrara, when he hand-picked the best peaches from a street
vendor—a time we always used to philosophize in German about the nature of love,
to the undoubtedly great astonishment of the bystanders.
2
One coined the term amor benevolentiae (meaning true love) as opposed to
amor concupiscientiae, which some identified with a kind of egocentric, untrue love. See
also the book by Robert Spaemann, Glück und Wohlwollen. Versuch über Ethik (Stutt-
gart: Klett-Cotta, 1990).
Josef Seifert 87
most distinctive trait of love, the intentio unionis, the “desire for union.”3 We
should not forget that interest in the happiness and ultimate well-being of
the beloved person always takes priority over our union with her and the
happiness that flows from this. But the fact that the intentio benevolentiae takes
priority over the intentio unionis in no way implies that the intentio unionis has no
element of self-donation all its own that cannot be replaced by anything else.
The masterful analysis of the benevolence of love by von Hilde-
brand has become possible through his discovery, itself a major contribution
to the perennial philosophy, of three fundamentally different categories of
importance and motivation. By “importance” von Hildebrand means that
quality or characteristic of things by which they distinguish themselves from
what is neutral; the neutral exemplified by the question whether or not a little
pebble on the street is to the right or left of millions of other virtually identi-
cal ones. By being important and not neutral—for example, a delicious and
juicy peach, or, at an incomparably higher level, a human life—something
becomes capable of motivating meaningful acts of the will and affective ex-
periences.
Now what is important can distinguish itself from the neutral (i.e.,
what is incapable of motivating any meaningful human act) in two directions:
it can be positively important and it can be negatively important, good or
bad, pleasant or unpleasant, beautiful or ugly, a source of happiness or pain.
If we call “good” anything that in some sense of the term is posi-
tively important, von Hildebrand argues that we use the term in an extremely
abstract and even ambiguous sense, whose further clarification and differen-
tiation shows that the Aristotelian-Thomistic thesis that all men desire the
good and cannot even act except for the sake of a real or apparent good, is
true only in an extremely vague sense, and is indeed false when “good” is
understood as having one and the same basic meaning in all cases. On the
contrary, says von Hildebrand, there are in fact three quite different senses
of “good,” three kinds of positive importance that can motivate us indepen-
dently of each other. It is entirely possible to act for the sake of a subjec-
tive pleasure without asking at all whether our act possesses intrinsic value.
(This does not exclude the fact that we are often motivated simultaneously by
different categories of importance and that objectively many relations exist
between them: for example, what is an objective good for a person may also
bear an intrinsic value). Here I can only summarize this discovery which, in
my opinion, is among the most important of all time for ethics, metaphysics,
and philosophy of man, and which offers a profound critique of Socrates’s
3
See Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, trans. John F. Crosby with
John Henry Crosby (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009), 132. On the priority
of the intentio benevolentiae in each love, see also ibid., 141n13.
view that “no one does wrong willingly and knowingly,”4 and of the above-
mentioned thesis that all men desire the good and act for the sake of what is
good or believed by them to be good.5
Now it is certainly true that only something that presents itself as
“good” (in the sense of possessing some positive importance) can present a
meaningful motive for a human person to desire, will, or love (nobody will
desire something purely and exclusively negative from all points of view). But
while this no doubt is true, “good” in this broad sense can be of at least three
quite different species or kinds. It can have, like the value and dignity of a
person, an entirely objective character, being an intrinsic positive importance that
is quite independent from, and prior to, our experiences or reactions. This
intrinsic positive importance and preciousness of something von Hildebrand
refers to as “value.” Its opposite is “disvalue,” which is an intrinsic negative
importance, such as that which belongs to something ugly or to a foul mur-
der. Intrinsic value plays a crucial role in love; for we can love a person only
when we grasp that the person possesses intrinsic value. And this intrinsic
preciousness which enkindles love belongs to the person qua person, not
merely to valuable qualities such as being intelligent or being a great singer.
We love a person in virtue of the high value and dignity that makes her pre-
cious as this unique person, worthy not only of respect but also of love. And
this value is majestically objective, remaining the same whether or not we
recognize it or even if we take displeasure in it.6
In contrast to the intrinsic value of persons (as well as other beings),
there are many things whose positive importance is relative to us and would
collapse if they could not provide us with some form of subjective satisfac-
tion or pleasure. This quality of what von Hildebrand calls the “subjectively
satisfying” depends on our pleasures or displeasures. As soon as a cigarette
is not attractive to us and begins to offend our smell and taste, it loses its
positive importance for us and can even assume a negative one. If somebody
likes chocolate or cheese, eating them is satisfying, while if another person
hates these same flavors, the positive importance of these things is lacking
entirely.
A second difference between these two kinds of importance lies in
the fact that objective value calls upon us and our freedom to give them an
4
In the Platonic dialogues we do not find this statement verbatim but only
passages that might imply it in Apology 25e, Crito, Protagoras, and others. Aristotle at-
tributes this sentence to Socrates.
5
See Dietrich von Hildebrand, Ethics, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald
Press, 1978); Dietrich von Hildebrand, Etica, trad. Juan José García Norro (Madrid:
Ediciones Encuentro, 1983), chaps. 1–3, pp. 17–18, 29. See also Plato, Gorgias.
6
See von Hildebrand, “Love as Value-Response,” chap. 1 in The Nature of
Love, 15–40.
Josef Seifert 89
appropriate response of will or heart. In many cases, this call is so strong that
it is a strict obligation. The purely subjectively satisfying chocolate, however,
does not address such a call to us to conform our will and heart to it but
leaves us quite free and our will uncompelled. If we like chocolate (and our
wives are not watching our weight) we may eat it without fulfilling any ought
or obligation. If we do not want to consume it, we can choose not to eat it,
foolish as that might seem to a connoisseur of Swiss or Belgian chocolate.
This holds true of any legitimate pleasure.
A third and intimately connected difference between these two kinds
of “goodness” or positive importance concerns our respective responses to
them. Confronted with an intrinsically valuable being, we ought to affirm it
for its own sake, to surrender or even give ourselves to this good, endowed
as it is with intrinsic preciousness. In the case of a person, this culminates in
love when the perception of the unique preciousness of a person enkindles
our love, which encompasses both an affirmation of the other person propter
seipsam; that is, for her own sake, and also an element of self-donation to the
other person. In the face of the purely subjectively satisfying, such as the
chocolate, it would be absurd to speak of a “surrender” or “self-donation
and subordination” of ourselves to the chocolate. On the contrary, here we
subject the chocolate to ourselves, eating and enjoying it. Von Hildebrand
shows that to treat another person in this way would be antithetical to love
and is the underlying reason why a hedonistic conception of love as the mu-
tual giving of pleasure misses the entire point of the giving of one’s self to
the other person. This is a point also forcefully stressed by Karol Wojtyla.7
This leads us to a fourth fundamental distinction between these two
senses of “good” which allows us to understand love better. While some de-
gree of joy or happiness is to be found both in the authentic love of a woman
and in the mere pursuit of a woman for her sexual charms, in each case the
joy and happiness is so different that one cannot even properly apply the
same name to them. On the one hand, we find an empty, self-centered satis-
faction in the man who consumes women and sees them as mere sex-objects,
ignoring the intrinsic value of a woman’s person; on the other hand, we find
an authentic happiness which is a gift that presupposes our not using the
other person as a mere means to our pleasure, or even to our happiness, but
rests on the fact that happiness is not the primary point or reason of loving
a person. It is not the end and the beloved person as a mere means to obtain
it; rather, this true happiness of love is a noble gift that is a consequence of
7
Only when the objective good for the other person is seen does the tran-
scendent step towards the other person become possible, but within the purely
subjectively satisfying it remains impossible; these insights are very similar to Karol
Wojtyla’s critique of Hedonism in Love and Responsibility, trans. H.T. Willetts (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993).
embracing and affirming the other person for her own sake because of her
intrinsic beauty and value. This true happiness results from our self-donation
to the other person for her own sake, and therefore von Hildebrand calls it a
“superabundant gift”; that is, a gift which is not the motive of our love, or at
least not the primary motive, but flows from the value-responding affirma-
tion of a person for her own sake. Von Hildebrand shows that without this
value-responding love for the other person, sexual pleasure is also far less
attractive and meaningful because it does not reveal its true and noble “face”
as an expression and gift of love; instead, degrading the other person to a
mere means for our pleasure, it shows an ugly, impure, gross, even demonic
“face,” such as in certain forms of pornography, rape, or sadistic-masochistic
practices and sex-games.
Fifth and finally, the two sorts of positive importance differ in their
respective modes of gradation. Pleasures differ from one another in inten-
sity, in quality, in the ease or difficulty of obtaining them, and in duration.8
These differences, which were already catalogued by the famous hedonist
Aristippus, are basically mere quantitative differences of degree and amount.
Intrinsic values, however, differ from each other in a completely new way. In
the realm of value, we find an entirely different kind of gradation: namely,
that of hierarchy, in which some values rank higher and others lower.9 Animals
possess a far lower value than human persons endowed with the sublime
value we call dignity. We can also distinguish the lower dignity of human per-
sons from the infinitely higher dignity of God, the lower value of a brilliant
chess game played by William Steinitz from the far higher moral values of a
person, and the lower moral value of diligence in work from the far higher
one of justice or mercy.
Of special importance for our topic, however, is a third kind of
positive importance that is neither the merely subjectively satisfying nor in-
trinsic value, but what von Hildebrand called the “objective good” for the
person—that is, a good which is not simply good in itself but good for a unique
person, and indeed objectively good for her. Such objective goods for a person
do not, like intrinsic values, address themselves to every person they are in-
stead directed to the center of a unique individual person, a center that is
radically different in each person; they are good for him or for her. It is both
the individual person-directedness of these goods and the way they are objec-
tively ordered to the true interest of a person that characterizes them.
8
Expressed in McDonald’s new advertisement of the hamburger of the day
as “el placer del momento.”
9
On this, see also Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Das Wesen der Hierarchie,” in Re-
habilitierung der Philosophie: Festgabe für Balduin Schwarz zum 70. Geburtstag, hrsg. Dietrich
von Hildebrand (Regensburg: Josef Habbel, 1974), 13–29.
Josef Seifert 91
Now it is this objective good for the other person that plays a unique
role in the intentio benevolentiae of love. In order to understand the benevolence
of love, we must understand the great difference it makes whether we are in-
terested only in objective goods for our own person, or also in objective goods
for other persons. Otherness versus ownness makes a tremendous difference here;
for while sheer egoism compels us to seek at least some objective goods for
our own person, desiring the objective good of another person is at least a
modest victory of love, and, where it means sacrificing our own happiness, a
glorious one.
It is quite comprehensible that a person would be concerned for her
own objective good—though this need not be the case, given that a person
can pursue a life of pleasure while grievously neglecting her true happiness
or eternal salvation. Nevertheless, to the extent that a person realizes that
x is good for her, we expect that, if the person is not crazy or depressed or
depraved, she will desire her own good.
It is much less understandable that a person would give an adequate
response to objective values, for this is an entirely unselfish gesture of ob-
jectivity that constitutes a radical break with the life of egocentricity and
involves a readiness to conform oneself to things of intrinsic worth. Nev-
ertheless, once we understand the call of values to give them the response
that is due to them—to admire what is admirable and to love what is lovable,
etc.—it is not difficult to understand that it does not matter whether these
values are in ourselves or in another person because, insofar as we are aware
of their intrinsic worth, we should have for them the same interest regard-
less of whether they have their being in us or in another person. Once they
are understood in their majestic significance in themselves, they of course
require the same recognition, whether they exist in me or in another person,
precisely because the intrinsically good or beautiful object addresses itself
equally to every person. This is true even though there are, of course, impor-
tant differences between the responsibility I have for realizing moral values
and certain other values in my own life and the merely indirect way in which
I can contribute to realizing moral values in other persons’ lives.
What is far more mysterious, therefore, and in fact a unique achieve-
ment of love (though it is prefigured in sympathy), is one person’s interest
in another’s objective good for her, and their adequate response to it under the
aspect of its being an objective good for her. The affirmation and provision of objec-
tive goods for other persons entails a kindness that the same interest in our
own good and even the interest in intrinsically valuable goods do not entail.
To serve the beloved person’s good in our deeds, in our wishes, in the inmost
spirit and breath of kindness and love, and in our loving embrace of the
other person; in seeking her good and rejoicing in it: all this possesses quite
another moral quality and warmth than the same interest for our own good.
This interest in the good for the beloved person cannot be derived at all from
self-love or from my interest in my own objective good, or even from a pure
value response. For this reason, Fritz Wenisch has called the objective good
for the other a fourth category of importance.10 I would note that this is not
true when considered purely objectively as a category of importance, for it
is the same category of importance regardless of for whom it is an objective
good; but it is quite true when considered as a category of our motivation,
and therefore entails the entirely distinct relations that the objective good for
the other person has to her and to us, and when we consider the abyss that ex-
ists in this respect. For while a value response is presupposed by the benevo-
lence of love, nonetheless, the benevolence of love goes beyond the value
response and is what von Hildebrand terms a “super value response.” The
intentio benevolentiae is always preceded by the affirmation of the other person
in a pure value response; but, as a matter of fact, the intentio benevolentiae is one
of several extensions of value response (an Überwertantwort or “super value
response”); a going beyond the value response due to the other person, and,
more precisely, a going beyond it in the particular direction of benevolence.
There are many other relations between values and the objective
good for the person and also the benevolence of love. For example, when ap-
proaching another person, intrinsic values and goods are the deepest source
of objective goods for a person. Intrinsic values also play other roles in con-
nection with the intentio benevolentiae and the objective good for the person.
For example, our interest in goods for the beloved person herself bears a
high intrinsic value. Likewise, discriminating between higher and lower objec-
tive goods for the person presupposes an understanding of higher or lower
values, etc.
Also, distinguishing legitimately agreeable and pleasurable things—
which are themselves objective goods for persons, so that wishing them for,
or even bestowing them upon, others forms part of the intentio benevolen-
tiae—from illegitimate pleasures, which we must never wish for the beloved
person, is only possible through recognizing different intrinsic values and
disvalues.11
We could not characterize this better than von Hildebrand himself
does when, in chapter seven of The Nature of Love, he introduces the notion
of intentio benevolentiae:
10
Seifert here refers to the paper by Fritz Wenisch, “Self-Regarding and
Non-Self-Regarding Actions, and Comments on a Non-Self-Regarding Interest in
Another’s Good,” in the present issue of Quaestiones Disputatae, 120–32.—Ed.
11
Von Hildebrand has elaborated this in his Ethics, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Francis-
can Herald Press, 1978), and in an article on three forms of participation in values:
“The Modes of Participation in Value” International Philosophical Quarterly 1, no. 1
(1961): 58–84.
Josef Seifert 93
From this we have to distinguish another essential trait of love
proper to all the categories of love between human beings. When
I love I consider all that happens to the beloved person not only
under the aspect of value and not only under the aspect of the
objective good for me, but also under the aspect of the objective
good or evil for the beloved person. And I do not just consider
it under this aspect; everything affects me under the aspect of
the objective good or evil for the beloved person. I who love re-
joice because the other experiences something that is gladdening
for him, and I suffer when the other suffers. That seems at first
glance to be so obvious that the reader may wonder why it is here
introduced as a distinct mark of love. One is perhaps inclined
to say: it is obvious that when I love someone, I am concerned
that he is happy and prospers. We all take it for granted that I
am affected by the objective goods and evils for him. But that
is a false impression. In reality this interest in all that befalls the
beloved person under the aspect of the objective good or evil
for him, is something extraordinary, an entirely new dimension
of the transcendence of love, surpassing all the previously men-
tioned ones. It is altogether worthy of marveling, it is something
we must approach with the wonder that is indispensable for the
philosopher.12
Compare this with a similar text in which von Hildebrand first introduces the
intentio benevolentiae in Chapter 2 of The Nature of Love, and makes the point
we just have been making:
Intentio benevolentiae [sic] consists in the desire to make the oth-
er happy; it is above all else a real interest in the happiness, the
well-being, and the salvation of the other. We find here in the
nature of love a unique sharing in the other person, in the other’s
happiness and destiny. Of course, this mark of love also is found
in a particular way in spousal love and it expresses itself there in
the wish to confer benefits unceasingly on the beloved person.
But in some form or other the intentio benevolentiae [sic] is an
essential trait of every love.
The fact that we desire happiness for ourselves is not the result
of self-love; it is rather an obvious trait of any human being, an
unavoidable desire. But that we are concerned with the happiness
of another is by no means obvious; it is rather a consequence of
love. This solidarity is a fruit of love, which is not an effect exist-
12
ing apart from love but is rather something that arises in love and
inheres in it. Indeed this deep interest for the happiness of the
other cannot be separated from love.
But the intentio benevolentiae [sic] is far more than the desire to
make the beloved person happy; it is far more than a deep inter-
est in his well-being and happiness. It is a certain goodness felt
toward the other, the breath of goodness [Güte].13
Thus the intentio benevolentiae implies primarily a genuine interest in
the objective good for the beloved person, and not just under the aspect that
this objective good for the other person possesses an intrinsic value, but under
the aspect of her happiness and other objective goods for the other person be-
ing goods for her.
To understand the great achievement of love that lies therein, it is
necessary to see the full extent of the difference between desiring a good for
the other person and desiring it for myself. This overwhelming difference is tied
to the tremendous general difference between our relation to ourselves and
to other persons. Think, for example, of moral values, whose possession is
in one sense a far higher good for the person who possesses them than for
anyone else: only she becomes good by attaining them. But in another sense
they are far more properly objective goods for other persons. They are a
gaudendum et fruendum, “a thing to be rejoiced in and enjoyed,” only for some-
one who loves the virtuous person. For the virtuous person herself, her own
virtues are not objects of delight and joy (except insofar as an unthematic
inner peace and joy results from their possession); for the person who pos-
sesses moral virtues, these are not thematically experienced objective goods.
If the completely different attitudes I should take towards my own moral
values and the good of their possession and those of the other person were
reversed, such that I myself would delight in my moral virtues, this would re-
sult in a profound perversion. The same response of admiration, veneration,
and delight that is very noble when directed to the moral virtues of another
person, would be conceited or vain if directed at my own moral values and
incompatible with my own moral life and humility. While being a particular
manifestation of the tremendous difference of our relation to others and to
ourselves—very different from that manifestation in the relation to objec-
tive goods for ourselves and for the other person—these examples help us
to understand both the fact that, and the reason why, the interest in another
person’s happiness can in no way be derived from my interest in my own ob-
jective good and contains a note of kindness that is largely absent from my
interest in my own happiness (even though true self-love, in which we accept
13
Ibid., 51.
Josef Seifert 95
and affirm our own God-given value and seek our true happiness, also pos-
sesses a high moral value).
At this point another important dimension of love comes to light.
While the benevolent affirmation of the beloved person’s objective good and
evil for her sake characterizes all authentic love and is the secret of its kindness,
we find in spousal love, the love of one’s children, and love in friendship, a
further trait linked to benevolence. This trait is not so much a higher degree
of benevolentia as one that derives from a special dimension of the gift of self
to the beloved person, through which the beloved person as it were enters
the intimacy of my own life, my Eigenleben. If our spouse or a dear friend is
happy, his or her happiness becomes what von Hildebrand calls an “indirect
objective good” for us as the loving person.14 If the beloved person suffers,
these sufferings also become ours, not directly but because they are objective
evils for him or her. Thus, an objective good for the beloved person, for no
other reason than being an objective good for her, becomes an indirect objec-
tive good for us; the same holds for objective evils for the beloved. This is
a very new step found in the benevolence of love, which von Hildebrand
relates especially to the natural categories of love (such as spousal love and
friendship) and to the love of God.
In other categories of love (for example, in the love of neighbor or
an enemy), the kindness that prevails is one of pure interest in the objective
good for the other person without his joy becoming ours; that is, without
the objective goods for him and the sources of his happiness becoming ours.
In the love of an enemy or a neighbor whom we do not know, we step as it
were “outside” the sphere of what belongs to our own personal happiness.
Thus, the love of an enemy and the pure love of neighbor are characterized
by a unique form of self-donation in which the benevolence consists entirely
in thinking only of the person’s good without his good or happiness also
becoming ours. Von Hildebrand writes:
We want to bring this book to a conclusion by pointing out the
three kinds of self-donation [Hingabe] found in the realm of love.
The first is stepping out of my own world [Eigenleben] in the man-
ner proper to love of neighbor. In this kind of self-donation my
own world, my subjectivity [Eigenleben] is not abandoned, but it
keeps silent, so to speak. I leave it behind, as can be seen from
the fact that my own happiness is in no way thematic. Such com-
mitment has nothing to do with my happiness: the other is exclu-
sively thematic. But it has to be stressed that my own world, my
14
Ibid., 151–52.
subjectivity is not thrown away in this love; rather, one steps out
of it.15
By contrast, we find a second type of self-donation in friendship, in
spousal love, and in the love of parents, each of which is characterized by
the fact that not only do the other person and the objective goods for her
become a direct source of our own happiness, but that they also become
indirect objective goods for us, because they are goods for the beloved person.
Lastly, we have a third type of self-donation, which von Hildebrand
describes in the following way:
[The] third kind of self-donation…clearly differs from the pre-
vious two. This is the donation of the heart, of my subjectiv-
ity [Eigenleben], in the sense that the beloved person becomes the
center of my life and the source of my most personal happiness,
for which I depend on the beloved person. This kind of self-
donation is found in its highest form in the love for God, but
it is also found in spousal love. It is found in some way in every
deep and intense natural love. It characterizes any love, whatever
its category, in which the beloved person stands at the center of
my life. This self-donation cannot be separated from the intentio
unionis [sic], which is necessarily included in it.16
In order to penetrate more deeply into the indirect objective good for the
person, we must distinguish it from the many respects in which the other per-
son and any values in her become a direct objective good for me. The beloved
person’s beauty, intelligence, virtue, or happiness, are also direct gifts and
objective goods for me. I rejoice in them; they are daily a new gift for me. Of
course, the beauty, and especially the health, of a person are in the first place
objective goods for her; but when I love her, they also become direct gifts, di-
rect goods for me, who stand in a personal contact with the beloved person.
But this differs profoundly from the indirect objective good and
evil for me, which results from something being an objective good for the
beloved person. We may express this entirely new phenomenon by saying:
“what a gift for me that you are happy, what a blessing for me that you are
relieved from your pain, because I love you!”
Of course, in friendship or spousal love these two ways in which
values and objective goods for the beloved person can become both direct
and indirect objective goods for me interpenetrate each other and are imbued
by the pure value response to the beloved person whom I love because she
ought to be loved and her precious value calls me to love her. Many of her
15
Ibid., 373.
16
Ibid., 373–74.
Josef Seifert 97
valuable properties and likewise many objective goods for her are simultane-
ously direct objective goods for me, such as her health or beauty. In love the
value response to the beloved person, the kindly interest in her happiness
under the very aspect of its being her happiness, the gift she is for the one
who loves her, and the high indirect objective good for him that her objec-
tive good, because it is an objective good for her, also constitutes for him,
interpenetrate each other and are intimately connected parts of love.
It is of great importance to see the difference between the ways in
which the beloved person, her existence, her beauty and goodness, and most
of all her love, are direct objective goods for me,17 and the indirect objective
good for me that becomes an objective good for me only via the beloved per-
son to whom it is addressed.18 It becomes my good only through her heart, so
to speak, through becoming hers first, and, therefore, unlike the direct objec-
tive good for me, the indirect one presupposes the intentio benevolentiae: it is a
fruit thereof (and also of the logos of friendship and other forms of love).
This indirect objective good for me reaches me only through the
beloved person and is in this sense an indirect objective good for me. When
a love is strong, however, this indirect objective good for me is not a lesser,
but can perhaps even be a greater, good for me than those that reach me
directly. It is indirect not in the sense of being secondary in importance, nor
in the sense of affecting me less, nor (of course) in the sense of being a mere
means to my objective good and happiness, as Aristotle might have assumed
and certainly has suggested.
No, the intentio benevolentiae never regards the other person as a mere
means; it always takes the other person seriously in herself and affirms with
the whole warmth of our heart the other’s objective good and happiness for
her sake and not just for mine. While this is true of all love, in the love of a
friend or a spouse, and also in parental or filial love, we affirm the objective
good for the other person so much, in such a personal way, and so ardently
for the other person’s sake, that her good becomes an objective good for us
solely because it has first become the beloved person’s.
To understand this better, we must also understand the difference
between a shared joy and a joy in the joy of a beloved person. It is, of course,
often the case that parents experience suffering over the death or life-threat-
ening disease of their beloved child jointly: they are sad together over the
same sickness, and they rejoice together in the child’s recovery. But here both
parents are directly reached by the same goods and evils; therefore, their
shared joy or suffering is a quite different thing from one’s being overjoyed
by perceiving the beloved person’s good or being saddened by learning of
17
These address themselves directly to me.
18
The indirect objective good for me does not address itself directly to me.
evils for her. In our example, this occurs when the husband is not only sad
with his wife because of the child’s disease but is also sad because of the pain
this illness and suffering causes his wife, so much so that her pain becomes
(indirectly) his own. Likewise, it occurs when both parents suffer because of
the illness and eventual anguish of death which their child must endure.
To improve our understanding of all this, we should note that the
joy or pain in response to the happiness or suffering of the beloved person
is profoundly different in nature and quality from the experience which the
other person herself has of the very same goods and evils for her. Let us
consider more closely the sharp distinction between these two experiences.
When objective goods and evils for the other person become for this very
reason goods and evils for me, my experience is quite different in nature and
quality from that of the beloved. If she suffers excruciating headaches, our
head does not ache, but we do feel a spiritual pain; if a beloved friend is loved
by his spouse, we are not therefore loved by her; we do not have the same
experience of her love that he has, nor is her love a gift for us in the same way
as it is for him.19
This can best be seen in the case of the great objective evil for a
beloved person that results from her committing morally evil deeds. In this
case, the objective evil for the beloved person, her guilt, in no way becomes
19
It goes without saying that indirect objective evils for the person who loves
are quite different from inadequate and external responses to the objective evils of
others, such as when the poverty of another person annoys us. For example, in the
scene of a comedy by Ferdinand Raimund, the rich protagonist asks his friends to
throw a beggar (who enters the joyous party room) down the staircase because the
sight of him and his poverty “breaks his heart.” This obviously has nothing to do
with benevolence. Of course, when I learn that a beloved person is grieving the
death of her mother, the intentio benevolentiae can sometimes evoke in me analogous
feelings of sorrow or mourning; but this sorrow nonetheless is very different from
the grief the beloved person feels, especially if I do not know or love her mother.
We must likewise distinguish clearly indirect objective goods and evils from
the case in which the joy or anger of another person may produce similar feelings
in us as an effect of mere “psychological contagion,” which often occurs in cases of
mass hysteria, but can also happen between just two persons. This phenomenon dif-
fers from the indirect good and evil that is a fruit of the intentio benevolentiae: First, it
lacks the meaningful intentional relation to the pain or anger of the other: it results
from an irrational psychological causality that is completely absent in the case of
compassion for the beloved person, which stems from the intentio benevolentiae and
leads a person to respond so deeply to the objective goods and evils for the beloved
person that they become goods and evils for her. Second, in the case of psychologi-
cal contagion, experiences very similar to those expressed by a person are generated
in the victims of such contagion—for example, anger. In the case of the intentio
benevolentiae, however, this is rarely the case.
Josef Seifert 99
guilt in the loving person, nor does the latter feel the pangs of conscience
or repentance. Rather, it is a profound sadness and concern for the beloved
person, even a sense of being wounded by the knowledge of this evil, which
is an enemy to the soul of the beloved.20
The kind of solidarity of love which lets the lover experience all
goods and evils for the beloved as goods and evils for himself out of love
is also wholly different from another case in which, when superficially con-
sidered, a similar phenomenon seems to be found. Think of the master or
father who has no love at all for his servant or child but feels profoundly hurt
by any offense directed against them. Von Hildebrand calls this phenomenon
an “extended ego.” It can likewise result from a real, objective relation I have
to my wife, to my servant, my emissary, or any other person closely linked
to me by parentage, friendship, service, or representation, such as King Lear,
who felt insulted when Kent was put in the stocks.21 When a master feels of-
fended by attacks against his servant, this can, but does not have to, spring
from pride, which is an attitude and stance opposed to love. An outstanding
student of the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of
Liechtenstein and at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago,
Eduardo Fuentes, makes an interesting distinction between two senses of
“extended ego”: first, one can speak of an ethically neutral or even posi-
tive phenomenon based on a special objective relation between two persons,
which, while it can arise independently of love, is quite compatible with it;
second, one can also speak of a phenomenon which is the fruit of an ego-
centric attitude incompatible with love and constituting a kind of extended
egoism. However, this phenomenon of the “extended ego,” even when not
in any way the result of pride or other attitudes incompatible with love, re-
mains essentially different from the indirect objective good that is character-
istic of love; it lacks the entire warmth, transcendence, and kindness found
there.22
20
The difference between the two experiences bears some similarity to the
object of the excellent critique C. S. Lewis makes of the view that the aesthetic quali-
ties of nature or art are just projections of our feelings. Lewis points out that, for
example, the perception of the sublime beauty of a waterfall does not correspond to
sublime feelings in us but rather to feelings of veneration. See C. S. Lewis, The Aboli-
tion of Man (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1970), 14ff.
21
King Lear’s emissary Kent (incognito) is punished by being put into the
stocks by Lear’s daughter and her husband, thereby offending King Lear, their father.
See William Shakespeare, King Lear, act 2, scene 4.
22
In a similar way, von Hildebrand shows that Hume’s theory of sympathy is
based on an entirely different phenomenon and is a purely constructed theory when
applied to explaining the indirect objective good and the intentio benevolentiae.
The intentio benevolentiae itself is a tremendous gift for the beloved
person, and the warmth and kindness in it are wholly lacking in the person
who, due to an extended ego, experiences any harm done to a third person as
an insult or harm done to herself.
Likewise, the phenomenon of empathy, of understanding the other
person from within, placing ourselves in some sense in her shoes, is entirely
different from the indirect objective goods or evils for the person which
flows from love, which can easily be recognized from the fact that the sadist
torturer also experiences some type of empathy, but gives a response to for-
eign suffering diametrically opposed and antithetical to that of love and the
intentio benevolentiae. Only an adequate and sympathetic interest in the good
and evil for the beloved person contains the transcendence of the intentio benevo-
lentiae.
Even positive feelings of sympathy, however, which involve wishing
others well and are therefore in some ways similar to love, do not rise to the
level of a truly loving interest in goods or evils for the other person, and even
less to the point at which these become indirect objective goods and evils for
the lover. Von Hildebrand expresses this very clearly:
We should also not confuse wishing others well, which charac-
terizes all positive affective value-responses to persons, with the
intentio benevolentiae [sic] that is essential to love. This wishing
others well is distinguished from the intentio benevolentiae [sic]
by the fact that it involves no deep solidarity with them, no deep
interest in and concern for their well-being, and no act of making
their well-being our own concern. Nor is it a gift full of goodness,
a stream of goodness surrounding the other, a spiritual embrace
of the other with goodness.23
Indirect objective goods are also quite characteristic of friendship,
and especially the way in which the friend becomes an alter ego (“another self ”).
The friend’s being an alter ego presupposes, but does not explain, love—a fact
that seems to have been misunderstood even by Thomas Aquinas, when he
says that we love God or our spouse to the degree to which they are united
with us and thus partake in our self-love; a thesis which von Hildebrand
counters with various penetrating arguments.24
23
24
Von Hildebrand refers to a similar view of Thomas Aquinas when he
speaks of the love of God and writes in “Value and Happiness,” chap. 5 in The Na-
ture of Love, 121: “For love is by its essence a value-response and the fact that God is
the absolute good for me and the source of my experienced personal happiness has
here an entirely different ground, which cannot be understood as long as one fails
to acknowledge love as a value-response. St. Thomas Aquinas seems to run this risk
Josef Seifert 101
when he says that we could not love God if He were only the absolute good in itself
and were not also our absolute good. [121n9: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica,
II-II, q. 26, a. 13, ad 3.] He is of course right that being our absolute good belongs
essentially to the full love for God; but unfortunately he takes as the basis of love
what is in reality the consequence of it. God need not be understood as objective
good for me in order to ground our love for Him; rather love as a value-response to
God as the absolute good in itself lets Him be experienced as the absolute good for
me. The value-response here goes so far, the participation in the divine glory goes so
far, that in my love for Him He is experienced as my absolute objective good. In this
sense, St. Augustine says: God is the absolute good in itself and He is my absolute
good.”
Von Hildebrand refers to a similar view of Saint Thomas on spousal love,
and writes on this in “Ordo Amoris,” chap. 14 in The Nature of Love, 365: “We cannot,
however, conclude our discussion of the question of the primacy of spousal love
without pointing out the strange justification of the primacy of marital love in St.
Thomas. It seems to us to contain several weighty errors. St. Thomas says in regard
to the love of a husband for his wife that he should love her above all other persons
because she is a part of his body. In the first place, the classical motivation of mar-
riage is here ignored. The other, after all, becomes a part of my body because I love
him or her. St. Thomas assumes that this primacy of love only begins in marriage;
being married to the other person is seen as a motive for marital love rather than
seeing consent and consummation as consequences of the fulfillment of spousal love.
According to this conception, there would be no reason to love the other person in
a special way before he or she is married to me. [356n10: What sometimes underlies
this tendency to derive love from unity is the idea that love can only be taken seri-
ously when one is obliged to it. Marital love, for example, is only taken seriously if
I am obliged to it on the basis of the act of marrying. The spousal love which pre-
cedes marriage, which in truth ought to be the reason for the act of marrying, is not
taken seriously by many. Since the idea of obligation predominates, one takes one’s
cue from cases in which a unity between persons already exists for one or another
reason—yet without asking whether this unity was perhaps first constituted through
love. Thus it is that one speaks of marital love as a love which is the result of an act
of marrying, because it is obligatory in a new way as a result of marrying. In truth,
the meaningful motivation for the act of marrying is spousal love, which in its cat-
egorial nature as love is identical with marital love.] But there is here yet another error
in addition to the mistake which lies in failing to understand that a requirement of
primacy already lies in spousal love, and also in addition to the mistake which lies in
seeing marital love exclusively as a result of consent and bodily union. The error is
not only the reduction of the priority in the ordo amoris to the consent and consumma-
tion, to the act of marrying, while failing to see the obligation which is already rooted
in spousal love as such. The bond which arises from the consent and consummation
of marriage is, after all, not presented as the reason for love but the fact that the
spouse is a “part of my body.” It is assumed that the love of my body is extended
to the other person, that it is here a matter of an extension of self-love. We already
saw earlier how impossible it is to derive the love of other persons from the love of
Being affected by the beloved’s objective goods and evils and ex-
periencing them “as if they were done to me” is absolutely irreducible to
self-love; on the contrary, it is a triumph of the transcendence of love. Par-
ticularly in friendship, it is evident that seeing a beloved person as an alter
ego is not the reason for but the effect of love. I do not love my friend because I
consider him an alter ego. Rather, because I love him, he becomes my alter ego.
An important question is whether all, or only some, categories
(forms) of love contain an intentio benevolentiae. In addition, we can also pose
another question: what different forms does the intentio benevolentiae take with-
in the different categories of love? The intentio benevolentiae is obviously quite
pronounced in parental love, where it even precedes the existence of the
child and where the child, especially during its first years of life, is depen-
dent on the countless benefits and services it receives from its parents. Now,
while the intentio benevolentiae is also, together with a strong intentio unionis, to
be found in spousal love and the love of friendship, which entail a mutual
exchange of gifts and benefits, the intentio benevolentiae seems to recede into
the background or even to be absent from other forms of love, in which the
beloved person is not much or not at all dependent on our gifts. As a matter
of fact, it might seem that, to make sense, benevolence presupposes some
need and some dependence on benefits in the beloved person.
Now it is no doubt true that a situation in which the beloved person
needs us and depends on all kinds of gifts and benefits renders possible a
particularly striking form of benevolence—so very striking that we may con-
clude the intentio benevolentiae is absent from other forms of love. But delving
more deeply into the essence of love, we recognize that the intentio benevo-
lentiae is an indispensable element in all forms of love, even (and most pro-
foundly) in the supreme form of the love of a person who does not need us
at all and does not depend on any benefits from us: namely, God. But while
it is fully present in our love of God, there the intentio benevolentiae takes on a
very different form, as von Hildebrand has shown in his chapter on Caritas25:
the man who loves God first of all wishes to please God in all things; he de-
oneself. Yet here the ultimate degree of intimacy with another person, the “becom-
ing one flesh” and the ultimate in being-close, is seen as the motive and primacy of this
love. Here the confusion of cause and effect is taken to an extreme. This closeness,
this intimacy is after all the fulfillment of an existing love and is in no way its motiva-
tion. It is because I love the other with spousal love that I want to be so close to him
or her. Being-close would not be a basis for loving the other. It is the result of the
love and it loses its true, divinely ordained unitive meaning as soon as one sees the
other person as an extended ego. Any kind of attachment which originates in the fact
that I view the other as an extended ego is, after all, not a real love but something
completely different, as we already saw above.”
25
Von Hildebrand, “Caritas,” chap. 11 in The Nature of Love, 235–73.
Josef Seifert 103
sires with zeal that God be glorified by him and by all other persons. Another
profound dimension of the intentio benevolentiae in the love of God consists
in one’s joy on account of the divine Blessedness. In the Christian’s love of
God there are also other dimensions of the intentio benevolentiae. That is to
say, our love of Christ, the incarnate Word of God, makes possible a kind
of benevolence impossible towards a God who was not made man: namely,
consoling Him in the passion He suffered in His human nature, in which He
exposed Himself to suffering and death, and the kind of loving participation
in God’s desire for souls that led to the Incarnation and passion of Christ.
This specifically Christian form of the intentio benevolentiae in the love of the
God-man prompts us also to hand over to God our own soul, to accept His
love and mercy towards us, and to work for the salvation and conversion of
other souls which He redeemed at such a dear price, and for whose sake He
became man (propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis et incar-
natus est). He so much desires that each soul becomes, as it were, an infinitely
precious gift and indirect objective good for God Himself, for Christ who
thirsts for souls.26
These are no doubt mysterious dimensions of the intentio benevolentiae
in the Christian love of God, which mystics and poets have written about
and which transcend our full comprehension. Yet Jewish and Muslim believ-
ers too can agree that even in our love of God, where in some ways a pure
value response to God and an intentio unionis prevail, and where the intentio
benevolentiae in some sense coincides or merges with the value response, there
is no reduction of the intentio benevolentiae to a pure value response; the ardor
and warmth of the intentio benevolentiae is also, and even in its supreme form,
truly present.
Von Hildebrand lays special emphasis on another point, namely, that
the love of God is required for, and grounds, the full and most perfect intentio
benevolentiae that exists in the love of caritas towards all other human per-
sons. Caritas, which dwells in the love of neighbor, but also transforms and
perfects spousal love and friendship without changing their specific nature,
contains a certain “substantial kindness” and lovingness toward the person
which cannot be simply derived from a value response to a beloved human
person but has its roots in the love of God.27
26
In this fashion, at least in the mystery of Christ, the loving self-giving,
gratitude, and benevolence of men towards God, though He does not need us, nev-
ertheless becomes an objective good and gift for God, or at least an indirect objective
good for God because of His desire for the good of all of us.
27
See von Hildebrand, “Intentio Benevolentiae, Value-Response, and Super
Value-Response,” chap. 7 in The Nature of Love, 165–66: “If someone says, “I am
glad that God is glorified, but I am indifferent to what it means for this person and
his ultimate well-being,” he would not really love God. He would at the most have
I wish to conclude these reflections on von Hildebrand’s insights
into the intentio benevolentiae with some magnificent passages from St. Anselm
about heaven. These passages bear a deep kinship to von Hildebrand’s in-
sights into the intentio benevolentiae and, most of all, his insights into the indi-
rect objective good for the person and the fact that through love objective
goods for the beloved person can become objective goods for us because
they are goods for the other person. Anselm says that, because we shall love
God more than ourselves and beyond all other beings, our joy in the divine
Blessedness in heaven will be incomparably greater than all our immense
joy in our own blessedness; that our joy in the blessedness of each other
inhabitant of heaven will equal that in our own beatitude; and that the joy in
the blessed life of persons more perfect than our own will even be greater.
In other words, heaven will be the perfect confirmation of the truth of the
tremendous contribution to the philosophia perennis contained in Chapter 7 of
von Hildebrand’s The Nature of Love!
Let me therefore quote the words of St. Anselm of Canterbury, who
is very likely the greatest Christian thinker of the eleventh century, and for
whom von Hildebrand had a special love, as he often told me.28 I wish to set
an attitude of reverent obedience to God. He would be glad that what happens is

objectively right and gives God His due. Although not morally negative, this attitude
would still be morally imperfect because of its coldness. But as soon as someone re-
ally loves God, the aspect of “for his sake” becomes important in relation to every
human being; it flows organically from the love for God and is a decisive factor in the
love of neighbor (or charity) that is grounded in the love for God.”
See also “Caritas,” chap. 11 in The Nature of Love, 239ff., especially 241–42:
“The substantial goodness and kindness of the whole person, the actualization of
the reverent and loving center in myself, my full participation in the kingdom of
holy goodness, is here a fruit of the value response to God. In addition, the intentio
benevolentiae [sic] takes on a character completely different from what is found in all
loves directed to a creaturely person (this includes love of neighbor): it has the char-
acter of burning for the honor of God; an absolute interest in the glorification of
God forms here the unquestionably central concern. Very prominent is the adoring
affirmation of God, along with the absolute giving of myself to Him. This is why the
intentio unionis [sic] occupies a central place, as does happiness, even if in a second-
ary way. Obviously none of this is found in the love of neighbor, which has an an-
ticipatory character that is not born purely of the value of the beloved person. This
holds all the more for the substantial goodness and kindness of the one who loves
and for his participation in the kingdom of holy goodness. These are not the fruits
of the value-response to my neighbor; it is rather the case that this value-response
presupposes them. The value-response to my neighbor is a manifestation of the holy
goodness that is born of the love for God.”
28
Anselm wrote about heaven in a way in which I see an ultimate theological
verification of von Hildebrand’s philosophy of love as value response, and particu-
Josef Seifert 105
Anselm’s sublime text at the end of my lecture, not only because I am confi-
dent that von Hildebrand himself already enjoys this heavenly confirmation
of his philosophy of love, but because I see many further elements in this
text that are strikingly akin to von Hildebrand’s philosophy of love29:
But what, or how great, is the joy, where such and so great is
the good! Heart of man, needy heart, heart acquainted with sor-
rows, nay, overwhelmed with sorrows, how greatly wouldst thou
rejoice, if thou didst abound in all these things! Ask thy inmost
mind whether it could contain its joy over so great a blessedness
of its own.
Yet assuredly, if any other whom thou didst love altogether as
thyself possessed the same blessedness, thy joy would be dou-
bled, because thou wouldst rejoice not less for him than for thy-
self. But, if two, or three, or many more, had the same joy, thou
wouldst rejoice as much for each one as for thyself, if thou didst
love each as thyself. Hence, in that perfect love of innumerable
blessed angels and sainted men, where none shall love another
less than himself, every one shall rejoice for each of the others as
for himself.
If, then, the heart of man will scarce contain his joy over his own
so great good, how shall it contain so many and so great joys?
And doubtless, seeing that every one loves another so far as he
rejoices in the other’s good, and as, in that perfect felicity, each
one should love God beyond compare, more than himself and
all the others with him; so he will rejoice beyond reckoning in the
larly of love as “super-value-response” in virtue of the intentio benevolentiae.

29
A few points of contact between Anselm and von Hildebrand in these pas-
sages are the following:
1. Anselm’s conception of heavenly bliss not chiefly as the fulfillment
of the intellect’s life in the visio beatifica, but as the perfection of love
whose degree is the only measure for the degree of heavenly bliss;
2. His emphasis on the full affective nature of joy and love;
3. His reasons why the joy of heaven cannot enter a human heart, but
the blessed enter into the joy of heaven;
4. His magnificent thought on the multiplication of the joys of heaven
through the other person’s blessedness becoming no lesser source
of joy for us than our own, which seems to be a perfect expression
of what von Hildebrand calls the indirect objective good for the
person.
felicity of God, more than in his own and that of all the others
with him…30
Doubtless they shall rejoice according as they shall love; and they
shall love according as they shall know. How far they will know
thee, Lord, then! and how much they will love thee! Truly, eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart
of man in this life, how far they shall know thee, and how much
they shall love thee in that life.31
— International Academy of Philosophy

El Instituto de Filosofía Edith Stein (IAP-IFES), Granada, Spain
30
Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, in Proslogium; Monologium; An Appendix in Be-
half of the Fool by Gaunilon; and Cur Deus Homo, trans. Sidney Norton Deane (Chicago:
Open Court, 1903), chap. XXV, accessed May 19, 2010, http://oll.libertyfund.org/
title/1033/94635. Here is the original Latin, from Anselm of Canterbury, Proslo-
gion und Ad Proslogion, in S. Anselmi Opera Omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt
[Stuttgart-Bad-Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann/Günter Holzboog, 1968], 1:89–139:
“Deus meus et dominus meus, spes mea et gaudium cordis mei, dic animæ meæ, si hoc est gaudium
de quo nobis dicis per filium tuum: “petite et accipietis, ut gaudium vestrum sit plenum.” Inveni
namque gaudium quoddam plenum, et plus quam plenum. Pleno quippe corde, plena mente, plena
anima, pleno toto homine gaudio illo: adhuc supra modum supererit gaudium. Non ergo totum il-
lud gaudium intrabit in gaudentes, sed toti gaudentes intrabunt in gaudium. Dic, domine, dic servo
tuo intus in corde suo, si hoc est gaudium, in quod intrabunt servi tui, qui intrabunt “in gaudium
domini” sui. Sed gaudium illud certe quo gaudebunt electi tui, “nec oculus vidit, nec auris audivit,
nec in cor hominis ascendit”….”
31
Ibid., chap. XXVI. Here is the original Latin, taken from Proslogion und Ad
Proslogion, capitulum XXVI: “An hoc sit “gaudium plenum,” quod promittit dominus ….
Nondum ergo dixi aut cogitavi, domine, quantum gaudebunt illi beati tui. Utique tantum gaud-
ebunt, quantum amabunt; tantum amabunt, quantum cognoscent. Quantum te cognoscent, domine,
tunc, et quantum te amabunt? Certe “nec oculus vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in cor hominis ascendit”
in hac vita, quantum te cognoscent et amabunt in illa vita….”
Robert E. Wood 107
Dietrich von Hildebrand on the Heart
Robert E.Wood
Abstract
Dietrich von Hildebrand’s compressed treatment of the life of
feeling is contained in his work, The Heart: An Analysis of Human
and Divine Affectivity, originally titled The Sacred Heart. This work
focuses upon the “core” of the author’s written corpus. It at-
tempts to place the phenomena of the heart on a plane co-equal
with intellectual and volitional phenomena and to rescue devotion
to the Sacred Heart from its tendency to mawkish sentimentality.
This paper will focus upon a summary of the phenomenological
description of affective life. Von Hildebrand sets himself against
a dominant tendency in the philosophic tradition to downplay
the role of the heart, though he explores the reasons for that ten-
dency in the skewing of one’s judgment by emotionality or senti-
mentality. He explores the hierarchy of feelings and pays special
attention to “spiritual feelings” in the religious, aesthetic, moral,
and intellectual life. He also examines ways in which the heart is
underdeveloped by the hypertrophy of intellectual, pragmatic, or
volitional modes; also ways in which one cancels out altogether
the work of the heart in the state of heartlessness; again, ways in
which the heart becomes tyrannical and blocks the capacity for
intelligent self-assessment. Properly developed, the heart “has its
reason of which reason knows nothing”—a famous saying of
Pascal that the author qualifies by viewing reason here as the kind
of abstract reason that operates in logic, mathematics, and natural
science. The alertness associated with the heart is that of “the
whole man,” and not some separate aspect. The last part of the
essay appends a friendly criticism of von Hildebrand’s tendency
to “substantialize” the powers of the mind and what I take to be
a misreading of Plato and Aristotle. Finally, the phenomena of
the heart are located within a bipolar view of the field of human
awareness, rooted in the sensory and open to the totality via the
notion of Being.
© Robert E. Wood, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)

108 Dietrich von Hildebrand on the Heart
Exposition
Dietrich von Hildebrand’s treatment of the phenomena of the heart appears

his little book, The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine Affectivity. This
book is the first volume published by the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy
Project, which is dedicated to making his full literary corpus—books, pa-
pers, and letters—available to the reading public.1 The book has a dialectical
structure: its first part presents a phenomenology of the heart that follows
the trail blazed by von Hildebrand’s friend, Max Scheler; the second part
deals with the Sacred Heart through exegesis of select episodes and parables
from the Gospels; and the third part is concerned with a transformation of
the human heart through following the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The original
introduction, now an epilogue, called attention to Leo XIII’s consecration of
the world to the Sacred Heart at the urging of a mystic whose visions called
for the establishment of the feast of the Sacred Heart. Actually, the title of
the first edition was The Sacred Heart. The aim of the work was, among other
things, an attempt to free the notion of the Sacred Heart from all the mawk-
ish sentimentality expressed in prayers and hymns that have clustered around
it since the inception of that feast.2
Pertinent to the philosophical focus and the way philosophy gains
important clues from revelation, the author maintains that “attention to the
Sacred Heart dispels all attempts to reduce love to obedience [i.e., to an act
of the will, and] the plenitude of the heart to reason and will….” In the latter
case, we are confronted with a dichotomy: “The role of the heart in man’s
life, in the Liturgy, and in the Holy Scriptures, on the one hand, and the heart
and the affective sphere in the world of philosophical theory, on the other:
two different worlds!”3 After all, Christianity does proclaim the centrality of
love,4 and in the Old Testament the heart stands for the entire interiority of
man.5 We are asked to love God with our whole heart, soul, and strength.
Von Hildebrand’s aim is to bring the philosophical world in conformity with
the world revealed in human practice by re-examining the role of affectivity
in human life.6 In what follows, we shall pay basic attention to the philosophi-
1
Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine Af-
fectivity, ed. John Henry Crosby (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007). The first
part of this paper was published as a book review in the American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 83, no. 2 (2009), and is reprinted with permission.
2
Von Hildebrand, The Heart, 135.
3
Ibid., 134–35, 21n1.
4
Ibid., 18.
5
Ibid., 20n1.
6
Ibid 137: The editor appends a significant note at the end on the life of the
author, pointing out the permanent effect of his work on affectivity upon the Roman
Robert E. Wood 109
cal portion of this work (found in the first sixty-seven pages, or about half
of the work’s 136 pages).
What I shall do in the main part of this paper is to present von Hil-
debrand’s analysis of the phenomena of the heart, restricting myself to what
he says in the book. I shall add a few minor critical remarks on his tendency
to substantialize the faculties as well as what I think is his misreading of
Plato and Aristotle. Finally, I shall sketch the general structure of the field of
awareness and the place of the heart in it.
The chapter headings of the first part of the book show the range
of his treatment: (1) The Role of the Heart; (2) Non-Spiritual and Spiritual
Affectivity; (3) Tender Affectivity; (4) Hypertrophy of the Heart; (5) Affec-
tive Atrophy; (6) Heartlessness; (7) The Tyrannical Heart; and, finally, (8) The
Heart as the Real Self.
In the first chapter he boldly announces his central theme: “it is high
time we lifted the ban on the affective sphere and discovered its spiritual
role. We must acknowledge the place which the heart holds in the human
person—a place equal in rank to that of the will and the intellect.”7 Unfortu-
nately, according to the author, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, the phe-
nomena of the heart were relegated to the lowest level of human aware-
ness. Even Augustine, whose Confessions underscore the restless heart, when
it came to his treatment of the human soul as Imago Dei, selects intellect, will,
and memory, while leaving out the heart, even though the center of the Trin-
ity is the Spirit of Love.
Von Hildebrand identifies reasons for discrediting the heart: one
reason for doing so is the methodological shift of attention in philosophical
thought from the character of the objects of awareness to the state of the
subject, which is linked to the contrast of objectivity with affective subjectiv-
ity where objectivity is viewed as the exclusive work of the intellect.8 Among
the phenomena that lead to the discrediting of the heart, the author speaks
of sorrow, despair, agitation, or fear, reaching a hysterical state no longer cor-
respondent with its object.9 He speaks also of false readings on the part of
one who follows his feelings, for example, in feelings of guilt where no ob-
jective guilt is present.10 There is also the phenomenon of enjoying oneself
enjoying where one attends to one’s own emotional state rather than to the
character of the object evoking that state. One finds this in an especially clear
way in sexual relationships. One might also think of developing a devise that
Catholic magisterium’s twentieth century shift in focus, making the unitive character
of the marital act co-equal with its procreative character.
7
Von Hildebrand, The Heart, 16 (italics mine).
8
Ibid., 6.
9
Ibid., 14.
10
Ibid., 7.
would give a person the feeling aroused by music without any music arousing
it. Is that what we seek in listening to music? Doesn’t the peculiarly satisfying
state of mind follow from focusing intently upon the music and not upon the
satisfaction? Is that not the case with response to value generally?
A further reason for discrediting the affective life is the counterfeit-
ing of emotional life by rhetorical inauthenticity and sentimentality.11 One
thinks of certain preachers who work themselves up into a fury. As the au-
thor notes, the church becomes a place for emotional indulgence.12 One en-
joys one’s piety. In the case of sentimentality, one thinks of the Mafia don
weeping over the playing of an Italian opera. The phenomenon of sentimen-
tality is one of the blocks in seeing clearly a properly developed emotional
life. Sentimentality is out of balance with the kind of responses proper to
a comprehensively developed heart. This is what leads many to consider a
clear, cold analysis and iron-willed determination as the basic features of a
proper response to life-situations.
Moving on to consider phenomena supporting a positive role for the
heart, von Hildebrand notes that the real antithesis to sentimentality is the
genuine feeling of a noble and deep heart.13 Such a heart has allowed itself
to be moved by love or sublime beauty in nature or in art or by some moral
value, like chastity or humility, and to be penetrated by the inner light of these
values.14 The preconditions for such being moved are habitual reverence, hu-
mility, and tenderness that allow the higher values to be properly perceived.
But being moved is itself a gift. Indeed, that is the character of happiness
itself: being moved in such a way as to feel oneself fulfilled.
The second chapter deals with non-spiritual and spiritual affectiv-
ity. Like his friend Max Scheler, von Hildebrand distinguishes a hierarchy
of states of feeling.15 He points out that there are experiences ranging from
bodily feelings to the highest spiritual experiences of love, holy joy, or deep
contrition.16 At the lowest level are bodily feelings that are linked to a spe-
cific bodily locus that brings about pleasure and pain. Like Hegel, he notes
that, although they would seem to be common to humans and animals, in us
bodily feelings take on a different coloration because they belong to a field
of awareness that is fundamentally spiritual.17 Next, there are psychic feel-
11
Ibid., 6–10.
12
Ibid., 13.
13
Ibid., 15.
14
Ibid., 10.
15
See Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, trans.
M. Frings and R. Funk, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 253–64.
16
17
G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind: Part Three of the Encyclopaedia
of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), trans. William Wallace, together with the Zusätze in
Robert E. Wood 111
ings or pervasive moods like vitality, joviality, anxiety, depression and the like.
Their distinguishing feature is their lack of specific intentionality. They can
ultimately be explained causally. Bodily states might be entirely responsible
for certain psychic moods. Unlike such psychic states, spiritual states are con-
sciously motivated.18 This is a fundamental feature of distinctively spiritual
feelings like joy or sorrow, love or compassion: they are intentional; they
have definite objects to which appropriate emotional responses are due. Von
Hildebrand further claims that, though spiritual feelings can affect bodily
repercussions, the reverse is not true: no bodily state can generate a spiritual
feeling.19
However, genuinely spiritual experience is not simply intellectual and
volitional. We already noted a peculiar mode of vision that belongs particu-
larly to the heart: for example, seeing the splendor and glory of the cosmos, its
mysteries and tragedies, its character as a vale of tears.20 Such seeing involves
the whole person and not simply an abstractive intellect. Such seeing is the
stuff of poetry. One could speak here of a vision. In fact, the arts at their
best are the locus of the expression of such vision. One could consider here
the thought of one’s own mortality in the following way: All men are mortal;
I am a man; hence, I am mortal. Such a syllogism is as solid as almost any you
can get both in its formal and material aspects. On the basis of such reason-
ing, one might then resolve to change one’s way of conducting oneself; doing
x and avoiding y. But there is such a thing as a moment of vision spoken of
by Heidegger where one’s own death becomes a presence involving a sight
that is one with a serene acceptance and a deep realization that ordinary
awareness is, by comparison, like a dream. Here is a seeing that touches and
transforms.
In the preface to his Phenomenon of Man entitled “On Seeing,” Teil-
hard de Chardin speaks of the development of new senses based upon mod-
ern science: a sense of the immensity of space and time, of the complexity
that underlies the least thing, of the interrelatedness of all things.21 Here the
universality involved in intellectual apprehension enters into our relation to
the sensory-immediate and transforms our sense of things. The locus of
such seeing is the heart as the center of the person.
Von Hildebrand further distinguishes psychic moods from the pas-
Boumann’s Text (1845), trans. by A.V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), §403,
94–95 and §447, Zusätze, 194–95.
18
19
Ibid., 26.
20
Ibid., 58.
21
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, trans. B. Wall (New
York: Harper, 1950), 31–36.
sions.22 Passion has a more intense and encompassing character than mood.
One has to distinguish an irrational state of being overcome by passions and
a rational state of passionately losing oneself in a cause.23 In the former case,
one is passive, being carried by the impetus of anger or lust. In the other,
one is self-directive with fully concentrated intensity, drawing upon one’s gifts
like an athlete who totally identifies with his spontaneous reactions that fully
correspond to the needs of the situation. But there are also negative states
of passion that do not interfere with the keenness of pragmatic intelligence:
Richard III, carried by pride, had a powerful capacity to arrange things to
suit his ends. But being carried by such passion diminishes one’s capacity to
perceive objective values. Spiritual feelings can only occur when we clear a
space for them by overcoming the despotic tendencies of psychic feelings, of
moods, and negative passions.
In the chapter on the atrophy of the heart, the author points to
various situations within which the heart wastes away because of hypertro-
phy, the imbalanced development of other aspects of experience.24 Late in
his life, Darwin lamented how dedication to his work made him unable to
appreciate the sort of things of which poetry speaks. A detached intellect
flourishes while the heart withers up. Darwin’s case follows the hypertrophy
of the intellect. The dominance of instrumental reason in today’s world has
stunted the capacity to see spiritual values as anything but a matter of per-
sonal preference. The will too can become overly dominant to such an extent
that feeling is despised and apathia (feelinglessness) or ataraxia (unruffled-
ness) becomes the ideal, as in ancient Stoicism.
The heart can whither up to such an extent that one reaches the state
of heartlessness. The author examines various such states.25 One is the case of
being so dominated by pride, like Richard III, or by concupiscence, like Don
Giovanni, that moral considerations play no part in their lives. One simply
uses others without compunction. A second state of heartlessness is that of
the hyper-refined aesthete, such as appears in Kierkegaard’s Diary of a Se-
ducer who savors his own cleverness in using others to attain to the complete
surrender of his victim. As soon as he attains to that total commitment he
abandons her, with or without sexual consummation.26 The third state is that
of the fanatical puritan who burns witches or heretics with no sense of the
violation of their humanity. A fourth state is that of the embittered person
who reacts to disappointments in life with the loss of all sympathy or appre-

22
23
Ibid., 30.
24
Ibid., 55–58.
25
Ibid., 59–63.
26
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin
Swenson (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1959), 1:297–440.
Robert E. Wood 113
ciation of others and a complete collapse of all positive values in the field of
awareness. In contrast to these four types where heartlessness is a feature of
their character, there is also the passing state of yielding to certain passions
in a situation where one totally disregards the moral requirements of that
situation.
The author gives special attention to two modes of affectivity: what
he calls energized affectivity and tender affectivity. Proponents of the former stress
its virility, dynamism, and grandeur, in contrast to what appears to be the
weak sentimentality of the latter. It is the former that Hegel underscores in
his claim that nothing great is achieved without passion. However, it is what
von Hildebrand calls tender affectivity that reveals the higher values. The term
‘tender’ may not be the most felicitous since it seems to exclude emotional
strength. The equivalent of tender affectivity is also involved in the focused
passion of the warrior filled with love of his country. But here the term
surely seems a misnomer, even if what he is after in using the expression is
a core phenomenon in all due responses to value. However, an occupational
hazard of the warrior lies in the possible neglect of those values that require
not simple patriotic heartiness, but the gift of the heart in love and in the
appreciation of beauty. That is why music must balance gymnastic in the
training of Plato’s warriors, described in the Republic, whose education culmi-
nates in the appreciation of beautiful things. Perhaps a better expression than
‘tenderness’ might be affective openness since the author is underscoring the dis-
position proper to the perception of what he would call the objectively valu-
able that may require a vigorous as well as a tender disposition. Elsewhere he
speaks of the preparation of the heart for due respect.
The section on the tyrannical heart attends to cases where, as the
author says, the heart refuses to let the intellect decide.27 This seems to be
equivalent to the chapter on the hypertrophy of the heart where the heart
usurps the rightful place of intellect and will. Von Hildebrand speaks, first
of all, of disordered benevolence involving an inability to say no. One does
not properly distribute one’s efforts in view of the total demands of one’s
situation. Second is the case of a mother who harbors partiality for one of
her children. Her judgment of justice is skewed by her heart’s preference.
Then there are various phenomena of what he terms “mediocrity” based,
again, upon refusing intellectual assessment. He lists sentimentality, where
the response does not fit the object; petty egocentrism, based upon a dispro-
portionate self-love; the desire to be loved that overrides actual deservability
or attractiveness; hypersensitivity to offenses that calls for disproportionate
redress. These are called phenomena of mediocrity because being dominated
by them makes one incapable of any greatness of soul. Being tyrannized by
27
Von Hildebrand, The Heart, 64–66.
the heart is a tendency that occurs in psychic states as such and is realized
most fully in being governed by negative passions.
The heart is the battleground where intellect, will, and appetite
struggle. But it is not simply the case that cool intellection or iron volition is
awarded the palm. The author maintains that the heart is the real self.28 It is
in the heart, he says, that the secret of the person is to be found. But there
are some situations in the moral order where intellect and will must domi-
nate, where one must act in spite of how one feels, though in many cases this
would seem to indicate a not fully integrated sensibility. However, in the case
of Abraham, it would have been monstrous if he heard with glee God’s com-
mand to sacrifice his son Isaac.29 Contrary to Kant, it is far better to do good
to others with joy than without it.30 When it comes to the highest values, it is
the disposition of the heart that allows the values to be seen. Here intellect,
will, and heart are fused in a vision that touches the whole person.
The heart in its deeper sense is above affective phenomena follow-
ing from the body, above psychic feelings, above passions in the negative
sense. In its deepest sense, the heart attains a spiritual giftedness that does
not obliterate but solicits one’s free cooperation. In fact, in all giftedness,
from the talented athlete to the genius composer and the saintly mystic, one
has to prepare for and cooperate with one’s peculiar gift before it can come
to fruition. Where heart and will and intellect seem to coalesce is the state
of genuine love. Here one does not abstract from understanding, as if love
were blind. In certain respects, it is love that makes us clairvoyant. One could
rightly say that an intellectual or volitional act or an emotional state are mat-
ters of emphasis within an essentially unitary field of awareness. But there
are states where one is carried away without reflection and choice, and saints
do speak of the dark night of the soul. But one is still aware of one’s state,
is responsible to assesses it, and to choose how to respond to it. In any case,
for von Hildebrand, the heart is the deep self, the real person whose disposi-
tion plays dialectically with intellect and will. It is the heart that is the scene
of human happiness as the sense of completion.
Pascal has famously remarked that the heart has its reasons of which
reason knows nothing.31 However, for von Hildebrand, this is true only of
fully abstractive reason, as in mathematics, in science, and in the instrumen-
tal employment of reason. The reasons of the heart are not blind feelings
incapable of being assessed. The heart is clear-sighted with respect to the
discernment of higher values. The heart is the locus of a vision that touches
28
Ibid., 58.
29
Ibid., 116.
30
Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. L. Beck (In-
dianapolis: Library of Liberal Arts, 959), 43 (Akadamie, 425).
31
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, IV, §277.
Robert E. Wood 115
and transforms. It is the work of the unified person. The heart is the fully real
person.
Critique
My critical remarks do not touch the rich phenomenological analysis, but, in

the first place, his tendency (and it is not peculiar to him but part of ordinary
philosophic language) to substantialize the faculties. For example, he says
that “the heart, instead of cooperating with the intellect and the will, either
attempts to replace what the intellect alone can rightly accomplish or refuses
to grant to the will its specific mission.”32 We know what is intended here, but
the truth of the matter is that neither the heart nor the intellect nor the will
strictly speaking does anything. They are not related like the physical heart,
the stomach, and the lungs, each of which clearly does something different
and is clearly external to, though organically linked with, the others. The three
so-called faculties of the mind are three interpenetrating aspects of human
awareness involved together through the way that a person relates to what is
present in any given situation. John Dewey describes things correctly when
he says that intellectual or volitional or affective acts are matters of emphasis
within a single, flowing, interpenetrating conscious field.33
My second criticism concerns von Hildebrand’s view of Greek phi-
losophy. He places the blame for what he calls the “ostracism of the affective
sphere” by Greek philosophy on its source in Plato and Aristotle.34 He sees
Plato’s tripartite division of the soul in the Republic, with eros at the lowest
level, as the basic source. But he fails to heed Plato’s warning in that very con-
text where there might be something we do with the whole soul that would
require reworking the whole matter of how we understand the tri-partite
soul.35 And it turns out that he does rework the whole matter by introducing
the philosopher-king as a peculiar lover of Beauty itself that is a manifesta-
tion of the final Good.36 Von Hildebrand mentions the Phaedrus on types of
madness but does not mention the Symposium, both of which must be related
to the reworking at the middle of Republic. Plotinus saw clearly that this in-
volved a higher Dionysian aspect. And this did not go unnoticed in view of
the mystical tendencies in Plotinus. The light of the truth is Beauty radiating
out from the One and evoking the deepest human eros.37
32
33
John Dewey, Art and Experience (New York: Capricorn, 1934), 125–26, 175.
34
Von Hildebrand, The Heart, 3–4, 19.
35
Plato, Republic IV, 436B and 437A.
36
Ibid., V, 476A.
37
Plotinus, Enneads II, 9, 16.
And we must not forget that for Aristotle hedone, or satisfaction, is
the bloom on activity and is thus different in different activities.38 It is even
a feature of the Unmoved Mover as Noesis Noeseos.39 Furthermore, for Aris-
totle, ethics is a matter of “feeling delight and love and hatred rightly.”40 He
says a man who does not enjoy doing noble actions is not a good man at all.41
Such feeling is a matter of having a good heart, though Aristotle does not
use any term for the heart as such. But he does use the term ethos for disposi-
tion. It is the disposition of due response to all instances of good and bad.
He likewise finds music imitating ethos or inner disposition by producing a
surrogate of feelings aroused in real situations. That is why one should take
care in allowing music into the soul because it sinks most deeply and affects
the disposition to behave.42 Here he is following Plato, who saw changes in
political regimes following changes in musical forms.43 Von Hildebrand him-
self speaks of ethos in precisely the terms used by Aristotle: namely, in the
different forms of ethos found in the characters of Don Giovanni and Don
Ottavio in Mozart’s opera.44
He mentions Augustine and Pascal as exceptions to the typical ten-
dency, but he should also have included Hegel whose whole system is built
around the principle of identity-in-difference found centrally in love and ex-
emplified most fundamentally in the Trinity. For Hegel, authentic existence
is the unity of heart and head.45 Also in the Aristotelian aspects of Thomas
Aquinas we do find notions like affective connaturality that belongs to the
habituated will at the core of ethical life.46
The practice of phenomenological description is an indispensable
basis for philosophical development, particularly in its point of departure,
ground, and point of return in all its speculative ventures; nonetheless, if it is
not supplemented by the careful study of the masters of thought, one misses
out on much that classic works can teach.
Assimilation
As my final remarks, I offer a framework for assimilating the penetrating
38
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1174b33.
39
Aristotle, Metaphysics 1072b and NE 1154b26.
40
Aristotle, Politics VIII, 1340a15.
41
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1099a15, 1104b5.
42
Aristotle, Politics 1340b11.
43
Plato, Republic IV, 424C.
44
45
Hegel, Philosophy of Mind, §445, 188.
46
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 45, a 2.
Robert E. Wood 117
things that von Hildebrand has to say about affective phenomena. I suggest
that his descriptions be placed within the most fundamental context: the
structure of the field of experience. That field is bi-polar: at one pole there
are the phenomena rooted in the body (modes of manifestation correlated
with organic need); at the other pole is our relation to the Totality grounded
in the notion of Being. The Here-and-Now of our bodily encounters stand
in tension with our relation to the always-and-everywhere. But the latter is,
to begin with, empty reference, having to be filled-in by inference and con-
struction starting from the sensory pole. By reason of the operation of the
notion of Being in us, we exist, Heidegger says, as the question of Being. On
account of this, certain questions necessarily emerge, usually hovering in the
background of our focal attention in everyday life: What is the Whole? What
is our proper relation to the Whole?47
Answers to such questions play in relation to questions like, How
can we get enough to eat? How can we protect ourselves against the ele-
ments? How do we care for the results of our mating? These questions play
in tandem with questions whose answers establish an umbrella of meaning
for the biologically rooted questions and answers. The interplay between the
answers to each set of questions fills the initially empty space of meaning as
the coming into being of a culture.
Each individual, having the bi-polar structure indicated, is given an
initial determination by the genes inherited from its parents. At the same
time, the primary caregivers provide a second stamp to that individual by me-
diating the culture that focuses the concrete possibilities for development. In
the interplay between genes and culture, and following the emergence of the
ability to make judgments, a third stamp is given: that of the personal history
of one’s choices. These three together constitute the determinate “Me”—
whatever of myself I can in principle objectively consider, what, right here
and now, I cannot not be. And at the center, the core of the individual sub-
ject, they form what we have come to call the heart as the sedimented resultant
of the interplay of those three determinants.
Involved in this is the question of whether the term ‘heart’ is used
equivocally when we refer to the blood pump in the center of the chest and
when we use it in the sense employed in the present discussion. Let me just
note that affective states are intimately linked to the pump that is burning
with rage, leaping for joy, skipping a beat in the presence of the beloved,
crushed with anguish, pounding with fear, broken with sorrow. These are not
simply metaphors but refer to the felt response of the pump to situations
evoking strong emotional responses. The heart as the observable pump ap-
See my “Being Human and the Question of Being: On the Unitary Ground
47
of Cultural and Individual Pluralism,” The Modern Schoolman (November, 2009).

pears in the sensory field that presents only individual actuality relative to the
filtering apparatus that yields the peculiarities of the visual field; sensory ob-
servation cannot apprehend potentialities and the concrete universality each
involves. Each power is open to all the individual things that fall under that
power. It is not only individual but also universal in orientation. Might the
invisible potentiality of the heart involve states of mind as its interior? This
would suggest redrawing the conceptual map that, at least since Descartes,
separated mind and body as two substances. We might follow the direction
given by Schelling for whom mind/body dualism is the condition for the
possibility of the manifestation of mind/body unity-in-difference, not only in
the case of human beings but of the entire cosmos as well.48
The inside of the heart is correlated with a set of magnetic attractors
in the environment and produces a set of spontaneous responses whereby I
am moved or repelled without having to think about it. A set of significant
presences and a set of spontaneous proclivities to respond co-emerge. Our
life is, to a large extent, carried by those proclivities. One lives out of one’s
heart; the heart is the locus of distinctively human life.
I note in passing that, if the term ‘heart’ is not used metaphorically
in the case of the pump and of the affective life, since it is not based upon
external resemblance, it is, by nature, a symbol; that is, that which by nature
is sym-bollon, cast together: the outside and the inside of affective life. Heart
is the physical and affective center of the human being. In the case of the
Sacred Heart, it is fitting as an object of devotion as no other physical organ
would be. It would not be suitable to develop a devotion to the Sacred Brain
as primary physical expression of the Logos, which I as a young religious
seriously suggested, having been repelled by the sugary sentimentality sur-
rounding devotion to the Sacred Heart. I was happy to find the same senti-
ment as the motivation behind von Hildebrand’s book.
But by reason of being projected toward the totality, the “I” stands
at an infinite distance from all determinants and is condemned to freedom,
forced to choose among the possibilities as he or she understands them. On
account of this one always has to ask, Where is my heart? is it where it ought
to be? where ought it to be? And it is in this direction that we might be able to
think the notion of one’s heart of hearts, the founding depths that are rest-
less until they rest in relation to the Fullness of Being. It is the human task
to align one’s concreted heart, the heart as we find it at any given time (and
this is only to say that it is ourselves that we find at any given time)—to align
Friedrich Schelling, System der transzendentalen Idealismus, Schriften von 1799–

48
1801 (Darmstadt: Wissenschafltliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982), 607. Schelling held

that mind-body dualism is the condition for the possibility of the manifestation of
mind-body unity.
Robert E. Wood 119
oneself with the orientation of our heart of hearts. The work of Dietrich
von Hildebrand points us in that direction.
* * *
As a concluding note, I want to acknowledge that, actually, my own decisive

philosophical orientation came from a reading of von Hildebrand’s Liturgy
and Personality almost fifty years ago before I was exposed to any strictly philo-
sophical work.49 What impressed me most deeply was his focus upon the
kind of attitudes prerequisite for the value-responses called for in the Mass.
People many times remark that “The Mass is boring and I get nothing out
of it.” This has led at times to turning worship into, as one farmer of my ac-
quaintance put it, “a dad-burned jamboree.” Von Hildebrand called attention
to how one overcomes this tendency and the sense that elicits it. His implicit
question was, What do you bring to the Mass? The prerequisites are part of
the fabric of our life in response to everything that exhibits significant value.
I am enduringly grateful to von Hildebrand for this decisive orientation and
for his development of the phenomenonology of the heart—this led me to
Buber, Marcel, Scheler, and Kierkegaard; it led me to Augustine and, further
back, to Plato; it led me finally to Hegel as he gathers up the major themes in
Western thought and, in spite of Kierkegaard’s almost violent critique, finds a
central place for the human heart. For Hegel, the heart is the place of radical
subjectivity, the most intimate part of the individual person. It plays in tan-
dem with the development of Reason so that we are invited to move beyond
heads without hearts and hearts without heads, and into authentic human
existence. To the understanding and living of such an existence Dietrich von
Hildebrand has made a significant contribution.
—University of Dallas
49
Dietrich von Hildebrand, Liturgy and Personality (Baltimore: Helicon Press,
1960).
Self-Regarding and
Non-Self-Regarding Actions,
and Comments on a Non-Self-Regarding
Interest in Another’s Good
FritzWenisch
Abstract
One of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s most significant contributions
in his Ethics is the distinction between three “categories of im-
portance,” three types of motives for human actions as well as
voluntative and affective responses. They are the “subjectively
satisfying,” the “objective good for the person,” and “value” (in
the sense of the important in itself). Although the second is called
“objective good for the person,” von Hildebrand understands it as
the good for the agent or the person responding. Thus, this category
comprises those objects which are truly in the agent’s (or respond-
ing person’s) interest (rather than what is only satisfying or pleas-
ing for the moment, but possibly opposed to one’s true interest).
In his Moralia, von Hildebrand presents the objective good for an-
other as an additional “source of morality” (as he calls it). There,
he argues, however (as he does in his book The Nature of Love in
which he discusses that source in detail), that the interest in an-
other’s good is an outgrowth of love. Contrary to that, I intend
to show that in human motivation, a concern for another’s good
may exist prior to and independently of love as von Hildebrand
understands it; that acting out of a sincere concern for the well-
being of others can occur on behalf of those persons of whom
the agent would not be prepared to say that he loves them. I fur-
ther intend to show that this motive is to be distinguished from
intending to do what one understands to be right (which includes
cases in which one wishes to act in accordance with one’s duty), as
well as from aiming at the realization of a value. Thus, human ac-
tions are to be divided into self-regarding and non-self-regarding
ones. The first comprise those aiming at the subjectively satisfying
and those aiming at the (objective) good for the agent; the second
© Fritz Wenisch, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)

Fritz Wenisch 121
comprise those aiming at the (objective) good for someone other
than the agent, those aiming at conforming one’s conduct to what
one understands to be right, and those aiming at the realization of
an object that is important in itself.
Introduction to the Introduction
This paper has two introductions (three if you count this sentence): one for
Thomists and one for Hildebrandians.
An Introduction for Thomists
One of my Thomist friends maintained recently that humans always choose

necessarily what rightly or wrongly appears to them, at the moment at which
the choice is made, as the greatest good among the alternatives considered,
and that acting immorally consists in preferring a lower good to a higher
one. I pointed out that this leads to the following two consequences: First, it
would mean that humans would not be free in the sense of being able to act
otherwise. He agreed that such a consequence does follow but asserted—an-
ticipating and attempting to counter further objections—that this would not
rule out human freedom since one would still have to engender or initiate the
action which necessarily aims at what one sees—rightly or wrongly—as the
higher good among the alternatives before one’s mind.
As a second consequence of his position, I pointed out that if we
necessarily choose what appears to us as the higher good among the alter-
natives before us, it becomes difficult to explain the difference between the
following two cases involving choice: The first involves preferring a lower
to a higher good on the basis of thinking sincerely but mistakenly that the
good one prefers ranks higher, which does not seem immoral; the second
involves failing to choose the higher good in a morally reprehensible way. He
did not have a satisfactory answer. To my knowledge, he is still “grappling”
with that problem. (This does, of course, not mean that there might not be a
response.)
As I reflected on that conversation, I realized anew the significance
of a distinction which Dietrich von Hildebrand explains in his Ethics under
the heading of “categories of importance,”1 for this distinction could have
helped my friend resolve the issue.
1
See Dietrich von Hildebrand, Ethics (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press,
1972), see esp. chap. 3, “The Categories of Importance.”
122 Non-Self-Regarding Actions
Recall that “The Philosopher” defined the good as that at which all
things aim, and that he identifies happiness as the only good people aim at as
their final end.2 This has become also fundamental for Thomists. It takes the
word “good” (in the sense of final end) as univocal. Thus, there is suppos-
edly one and only one type of object which humans can aim at—arrived at
through various means, both appropriate and inappropriate. This one object
is happiness.
In contrast, the distinctions which von Hildebrand introduces show
that the Aristotelian-Thomistic definition of “good” is incorrect if the word
“good” is taken univocally. There are several different types of objects at
which humans can aim through their actions. Instead of “good,” von Hilde-
brand uses the term ‘positive importance’; he would agree with Aristotle and
the Scholastics to the extent of maintaining that humans can be motivated to
act only by something which they see as endowed with positive importance.
He proceeds, however, to distinguish three different types of importance
which cannot be reduced to one another: the “subjectively satisfying,” the
“objective good for the person,” and the “important in itself,” as he calls
them. Von Hildebrand maintains the thesis that it is possible to choose be-
tween each type of importance so that, according to him, there are three
different types of final ends at which we may aim through our actions.
Further, wrongdoing does not primarily consist in preferring a lower
good to a higher one but in allowing oneself to be motivated by one type of
end—the subjectively satisfying, for example—when another type of end
ought to be aimed for. Often, wrongdoing does not at all involve aiming at an
end deserving to be called a good. Imagine someone saying uncharitable, of-
fensive things to another, taking malicious pleasure in the other’s hurt. When
told that doing so is not even in his own best interest, he might say, “I do not
care in the least.” In this case, no good—not even a lower one—is preferred
to a higher one, as it would be when someone prefers a superficial amuse-
ment to a superb performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Rather, that the
uncharitable person takes malicious pleasure in the other’s hurt is an evil, as
is the other’s being hurt.3 Ordinarily, the uncharitable person will know that
both the malicious pleasure and the hurt are evils. Thus, when motivated to
make uncharitable remarks, the person lacking charity does not mistakenly
consider his or her own malicious pleasure and the other’s hurt as goods;
he knows them to be evils. There is no lower good which is preferred to a
higher one; rather, the uncharitable person does not look at what is good, but
is interested only in what is satisfying, to the exclusion of the perspective of
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I.

2
This comment opens another “can of worms” relating to the Thomist ex-
3
planation of evil as the absence of good.

Fritz Wenisch 123
the good, even to the exclusion of what would contribute to his or her true
happiness.
No self-respecting Thomists will, of course, allow themselves to be
convinced by this short introduction; but nevertheless, let me move to the
main body of the paper which contains further arguments in support of the
thesis that there are different types of final ends.
An Introduction for Hildebrandians
Usually, papers of this nature begin with framing the issue—which in my

case would be formulating the point with respect to which I disagree with
von Hildebrand—and what the position is I am going to defend. What, how-
ever, if I can present my side in such a way that there does not even seem
to be a controversy possible about it, and introduce the disagreement or
potential disagreement only after that presentation? This may be a sneaky
way of going about it; but certainly, being sneaky and being unethical are not
coextensive.4
Two Types of Self-Regarding Actions
Actions Aiming at the Subjectively Satisfying
Let me begin with the following example inspired by some of the persons I
must regularly interact with as a part of my “day job.” Suppose that a student
who has failed to study has done poorly on all tests prior to the midterm
exam. The midterm exam is tomorrow, and it is important for him to do
well on it. For this reason, he decides to study diligently. After he has begun
studying, one of his friends enters the room, tells him about a party which is
going on next-door, and invites him to come along. While the friend is still
speaking, a second friend arrives, begins to rave about a funny movie being
played in a local movie house, and urges the student to watch it with her. This
student is in a position of having to choose between three courses of action:
To stay in his room and study, to go to a party, or to go to the movies. It is
obvious that the second and the third choice have much more in common
with one other than each of them does with the first one.
Suppose that the student chooses to attend the party or to go to the
movies. It is likely that he knows these choices not to be in his best interest
and that at one point he might have to pay for having made them. But to
stay in one’s room and study may be boring although it might be in his best
Christ’s words, “Be shrewd as serpents” (See Mt 10:16), come to mind.

4
interest. When he chooses to go to the party or to the movies, he is not con-
cerned with his true interest; rather, he is concerned only with his momentary
pleasure, or with his subjective satisfaction, as von Hildebrand calls it. Thus,
the action he is performing belongs to a type to be designated as “actions
through which one aims at one’s subjective satisfaction.” Such an action is
performed only or mainly because one believes that it leads to pleasure or to
the avoidance of displeasure; one disregards whether or not what is being
done is in one’s best interest.
Two additional comments on such actions are to be made. First, as
the explanation given above makes clear, this class of actions is not limited
to those through which one aims at positive satisfaction, but it includes those
through which one aims at the avoidance of dissatisfaction. Thus, avoiding a
distasteful but probably helpful confrontation with an advisor belongs to this
group, as well as walking out of a boring lecture. Second, it is not necessary
for an action actually to lead to satisfaction or to the avoidance of dissatisfac-
tion for it to belong to the class of actions considered at present; it is enough
for those performing such actions to be convinced that their conduct will
lead to satisfaction or to the avoidance of dissatisfaction, and that they act
without regard to their true interest. Thus, if a teenage boy smokes for the
first time, this is an action through which he aims at his subjective satisfaction
even if it makes him feel ill.
Actions Aiming at the Good of the Agent
Suppose now that the student confronted with the three possible courses of
action chooses to forgo both the party and the movie and to stay in his room
to study. He might tell his friends, “I would like to come along, but unfor-
tunately I cannot.” In this case, he would not choose what satisfies him; he
would rather choose what he takes to be in his best interest. He disregards
whether or not his conduct happens to please him. This second type of ac-
tions shall be designated as “actions aiming at a good for the agent.” Such
actions are performed because one thinks that they are in one’s best interest
or that they avoid or do away with something opposed to one’s best inter-
est; the question whether or not the conduct is satisfying is of no or only of
secondary concern.
As has been explained, actions through which one aims at one’s sub-
jective satisfaction are not limited to those having positive satisfaction as their
goal but include those aiming at the avoidance of dissatisfaction. Similarly,
the class of actions through which one aims at a good for oneself includes
those through which one aims at avoiding what is opposed to one’s true
interest, or at avoiding evils for oneself. Thus, protecting oneself against a
Fritz Wenisch 125
disease or going to the dentist belong to this class. Further, for an action to
belong to this class it is not required that the action will indeed have a true
benefit for the agent as its consequence; it is sufficient for the agent to be
convinced that the action will lead to such a benefit. If one mistakenly be-
lieves that a course of action will lead to the avoidance of a particular disease
when in fact it causes one to contract it, one nevertheless carries out an ac-
tion aiming at a good for oneself.
Relationship Between the Goals of the Two Types of Actions
In order to highlight the difference between actions through which one aims
at one’s subjective satisfaction and actions through which one aims at a good
for oneself, actions displeasing to the agent have been chosen as examples
for the latter type. It is, however, important to note: Asserting that one aims,
through an action, at a good for oneself is to indicate why the action is per-
formed; it is not meant to imply that the agent will not enjoy the end aimed
at, or that there is no anticipation of enjoyment: think of a man who visits a
friend in order to ask him for advice—suppose that the friend usually gives
excellent advice—and who is happy that he has an opportunity to meet his
friend.
Concerning the subjectively satisfying, there are many occasions at
which a subjectively satisfying end is aimed for at the expense of what is in
the agent’s true interest (sleeping late, thereby being late for class, drinking
too much, or taking drugs are examples) and/or at the expense of what is
the right thing to do. There are, however, also instances of subjective satis-
faction not in opposition to a person’s true interest or to what is right; an
example being drinking a glass of wine. Following von Hildebrand,5 I will use
the expression “legitimately pleasing” to denote these objects. As becomes
clear from what has been stated, these legitimately pleasing objects often are
simply viewed as subjectively satisfying and are aimed at as such. This is the
case if the only thought occupying a person while striving for a legitimately
pleasing object is the pleasure it is capable of providing. Think, however, of
those whose world view includes a belief in God, who take these legitimately
pleasing things as gifts from God and are grateful for them. They consider
legitimately pleasing objects as being in their true interest in the sense of
being an enrichment of their lives. Since, in their case, legitimately pleasing
objects are viewed as being in their true interest, they may perform actions
motivated by the good for the agent when aiming at such objects rather than
5
See von Hildebrand, “Legitimate Interest in the Subjectively Satisfying,”
chap. 33 in Ethics.
actions motivated by the subjectively satisfying. If an object is called “legiti-
mately pleasing,” it is said about it that, given human nature, the nature of the
object, and to some extent the particular circumstances of an individual, one
experiences the object in question as pleasing without this enjoyment being
opposed to one’s true interest, and/or without causing the neglect of a duty.
Things which are legitimately pleasing in the sense explained can now be pur-
sued with two different “ends of the agent”: they can either be pursued such
that one aims at one’s subjective satisfaction only, or they can be pursued
such that one aims at one’s best interest, or one’s own good.6
Summary and Important Common Feature

of the Two Types of Actions
To summarize, actions aiming at one’s subjective satisfaction must be distin-

guished from actions through which one aims at one’s own good.
Next, an important feature is to be pointed out which both types
of actions share. In both cases, one is, in performing the action, thinking of
oneself; one aims at some kind of benefit for oneself. For this reason, both
types of actions shall be called “self-regarding.” Self-regarding actions shall
be defined as those which an agent performs mainly or exclusively in behalf
of him- or herself.
It is important to note that being self-regarding as defined above,
and as used in the following context, is not necessarily morally negative. It
must be distinguished from selfishness, which is morally negative. All selfish
actions are also self-regarding (to take a large piece of cake knowing that as a
consequence some will have to do without is both selfish and self-regarding),
but there are many self-regarding actions which are not selfish. Suppose that
I notice a truck moving toward me at high speed, and that I jump out of its
path. I perform this action in order to save my life; thus, the action is self-
regarding as defined above. It would, however, obviously be absurd to call me
selfish because of it.
6
According to von Hildebrand, legitimately pleasing objects—because of the
defects of human nature in our present state usually, although not necessarily, viewed
from the perspective of the subjectively satisfying—are only one type of goods for
the agent (“objective goods for the person” in von Hildebrand’s terminology), and
the lowest type at that. Others are “for the person…to be endowed with values,” the
“possession of goods which are able to bestow true happiness on us because of their
value,” and “things indispensable for our life: food, a roof to shelter us, etc.” See von
Hildebrand, Ethics, 393–94.
Fritz Wenisch 127
Three Types of Non-Self-Regarding Actions
We turn next to three types of actions belonging to the group of non-self-

regarding ones.
Actions Aiming at a Good for Someone other than the Agent
The following example illustrates a first type of non-self-regarding actions:

Suppose that you are driving in the pouring rain; you are almost late for an
appointment. You notice an elderly gentleman standing helplessly next to
his car which has a flat tire. Your first thought is, “I am glad that this did not
happen to me. A flat tire is all I need at this time.” You drive on. But then,
you begin to feel sorry for him, thinking, “Maybe I should help him.” The
thoughts of how uncomfortable it is to change a tire in a driving rainstorm,
however, and of arriving late for your appointment cause you at first to dis-
miss that idea. In the end, though, you decide to drive back and to offer your
assistance. If the example would take place as described, you would neither
have had your own subjective satisfaction as your end (on the contrary, help-
ing the person may be very displeasing), nor would you aim at your own good
(on the contrary, there may be certain disadvantages for yourself which you
anticipate as a result of being late for your appointment); rather, this is an
example of an action through which the agent aims at a good for someone
other than him- or herself.
There are two requirements for such an action to take place. First,
the agent must intend a benefit for the other. This is, however, only a neces-
sary but not a sufficient condition for an action with the final end of provid-
ing a good to someone else. A second requirement comes into view if the
original example is changed as follows: Suppose that, while you are driving
on after having noticed the elderly gentleman, you remember him to be the
wealthy man who has moved into town recently. It occurs to you that he
might reward you handsomely for your help, and this motivates you to drive
back and to offer your assistance. In this situation, you would obviously in-
tend to benefit him. Benefiting him would, however, only be a relative end
rather than an end in itself. Your final end would be to receive a reward, that
is, a good for yourself (or, depending on what you want to use the money
for, maybe only something subjectively satisfying); consequently, your action
would be self-regarding.7 Thus, the second requirement for the existence of
7
The action would also be self-regarding if a religious person would perform
it exclusively for the sake of improving his or her chance to be placed among the
sheep rather than the goats on judgment day. If this is the person’s only motive,
an action aiming at a good for someone else is that the agent must act out of
genuine concern for the other’s well-being.
Actions Aiming at Conforming One’s Conduct

to What One Considers to be Right
A second type of non-self-regarding actions comprises those which are car-

ried out simply to conform one’s conduct to what one considers to be right.
In those cases in which there is a duty to perform the action, it is, in Kant’s
terminology, done from duty rather than being merely in accord with duty.
For an example, picture the following situation: Your friend is study-
ing for a final examination in a course required for graduation. While working
through the material it becomes clear to him that he has underestimated its
complexity and that it will be impossible for him to know it sufficiently by the
time of the exam. Failing the course would have devastating consequences
for him, so he visits you and asks you to help him cheat, explaining to you a
foolproof cheating method and promising a generous financial reward. You
are reluctant to go along with him, but finally, you give in and agree to comply
with his request. After he has left, however, you think about the whole mat-
ter some more and you decide that you simply ought not to participate in a
scheme you clearly know to be wrong. You call him on the phone and tell him
that you are willing to help him study all night, but that you cannot help him
cheat. As you have feared, he is angry and disappointed, and you are sure that
you have lost his friendship for good.
Informing your friend that you will not help him cheat illustrates
the second type of non-self-regarding actions. The action described in the
situation given above does not fit into any of the three groups of actions
distinguished so far. That the person performing it does not aim at his own
subjective satisfaction is obvious. That he does not aim at a good for himself
also is clear; rather, he forgoes certain quite tangible goods (connected with
financial advantages), and he risks losing a friend. Since the method of cheat-
ing is foolproof, he is not aiming at avoiding an evil for himself either. Also,
it is clear that, given the situation as described, he is not aiming at provid-
ing a good to someone else; he may even feel bad about having to leave his
friend in a terrible predicament. (I assume that, unlike the typical student at
Franciscan University of Steubenville, the person in question is not religious;
consequently, avoiding an evil for himself or for the other in the afterlife is
not part of his concern.) In the example, the action is performed for the end
though (as opposed to being a secondary reason for acting), it would not work: There
does not seem to be any merit in helping others exclusively for one’s own sake.
Fritz Wenisch 129
of conforming one’s conduct to what one perceives to be the right thing to
do.
Actions Aiming at the Realization of Something

Considered as Important in Itself
A third type of non-self-regarding actions is represented, for example, by

an artist who creates a magnificent work of art not mainly for the sake of
earning money or for being admired but simply because of considering the
existence of this work of art as significant, or, for example, by a scientist who
works on a project for a similar reason. Their actions shall be called “actions
through which one aims at the realization of something one considers as im-
portant in itself,” or through which one aims at the realization of something
which is the bearer of a value, according to the sense assigned to that term
by von Hildebrand.
Coexistence of Several Types of Ends

in the Case of a Single Action;
Non-Self-Regarding is not the Same as Other-Regarding
Next, it is important to note that in the case of one individual action, sev-
eral types of ends may coexist. It is especially important to understand that
self-regarding and non-self-regarding elements may coexist among the ends
at which an agent aims through an action. Suppose a man saves the life of
his employer. While he is genuinely concerned for her and her family’s well-
being, a hoped-for pay raise is a strong additional incentive for him to act. His
action is obviously partly self-regarding, partly non-self-regarding.
It is even possible for all five types of ends distinguished so far to
coexist in the case of a single action. Suppose that a woman saves another
from drowning in a stormy sea. She has various incentives to perform this ac-
tion. First, she is a good swimmer who likes to show off and she anticipates
being admired for what she is doing. To the extent to which this is an incen-
tive for her to act, she aims at her subjective satisfaction. Second, the man
whom she is saving is her employer and, since she is in a desperate financial
condition, she hopes that out of gratitude he will give her a pay raise. To the
extent to which this thought is an incentive for her action, she aims at her
own good. Third, she feels genuinely sorry for him and his family and wishes
to benefit them. To the extent to which this is an incentive for her action,
she has someone else’s good as her end. Fourth, she is aware of being duty-
bound to save the drowning man and she wishes to conform her conduct to
what her duty prescribes. To the extent to which this is an incentive for her
action, she aims at conforming her conduct to what is right. Fifth, she knows
the man to be an eminent scientist on the verge of making an interesting
discovery of little apparent practical value and she wishes to keep alive the
possibility of this discovery. To the extent to which this is an incentive for her
action, her goal is the realization of something which is important in itself.
To avoid misunderstandings, let me emphasize that non-self-regard-
ingness is not coextensive with what is often called other-regardingness. An
action through which one tries to conform one’s conduct to what one un-
derstands to be right (e.g., wishing to do one’s duty) is non-self-regarding,
but not other-regarding. Other-regarding actions seem to be chiefly those
through which one aims at a good for someone other than oneself. All other-
regarding actions are non-self-regarding; the converse is not true, however.
The Significance of the Self-Regarding—

Non-Self-Regarding Distinction;
a Further Problem (= Material for Two Additional Papers)
What is the significance which the self-regarding/non-self-regarding distinc-

tion has for ethics? A few brief remarks on its significance must suffice; a
more detailed treatment would require me to write an additional paper.8
It seems that an action can be morally good only if it is non-self-
regarding. In other words, being non-self-regarding seems to be a necessary
condition for the moral goodness of an action.9 This does not mean that an
action must be purely non-self-regarding to be morally good. In the case of
most non-self-regarding actions, self-regarding elements are mixed into their
motives. While often such elements detract from the degree of the moral
goodness of an action, they do not eliminate all merit. Thus, non-self-regard-
ingness is a necessary condition for the moral goodness of an action in the
sense that actions can be morally good only if at least some non-self-regard-
ing elements are a part of the action’s motive. It is not required, however, for
an action to be purely non-self-regarding to be morally good.10
8
For a detailed discussion, see Fritz Wenisch, “To do or not to do…Basic
elements of an ethics of actions,” Aletheia 7 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2002): 31–218, esp.
96–103.
9
Many purely self-regarding actions are, of course, morally neutral, that is,
neither morally good nor morally evil.
10
Since being non-self-regarding is necessary, but not sufficient, for an action
to be morally good, there are non-self-regarding actions lacking moral goodness.
An example of a morally evil non-self-regarding action might be helping someone
Fritz Wenisch 131
Further, there are instances of actions which should ideally aim si-
multaneously at more than one of the non-self-regarding ends. Take, for
example, the case of protecting a person from contracting a disease if one
easily can do so. In this situation, there is a duty to act. Ideally, the action
should aim at providing a good for someone other than the agent out of a
sincere concern in the other’s well-being, at conforming one’s conduct to
what one’s duty prescribes, and at preserving something which is important
in itself (that is, what von Hildebrand would call the morally relevant value
of the other person’s health). If all of these three motivating factors are pres-
ent and if performing the action does not cause the agent to neglect a more
important duty, then the action is morally good. Does it, however, remain
morally good if the agent aims at only one of these non-self-regarding goals?
To me, it seems so—unless, perhaps, one of these motives is consciously
rejected instead of simply not being “thematic.” Once again, details would
require an additional paper.
Does one Necessarily Love the Person in Whose

Well-Being one is Genuinely Interested?
Return now to the example of the elderly gentleman with the flat tire. You
helped him out of a sincere concern for his well-being. Suppose someone
asks you later, “Do you love him?” You might respond, “I do not hate him—
but I do not even know him; I met him only this one time. How can I love
him?” Suppose you add, “Maybe I would begin loving him if I’d get to know
him—although I would not bet on it. The way he reacted to me rubbed me
the wrong way; so I am not sure what would happen, were I to get to know
him better.” Assume that the event took place before your conversion; so
Christian love of neighbor did not enter the picture.
To me, the example seems entirely realistic. You probably agree and
might even wonder why I am emphasizing that I can have a sincere interest in
the well-being of people of whom I would not be prepared to say that I love
them—it seems like an obvious plausibility. Does such an assertion seem not
to belong in the group of assertions to which my students at the University
of Rhode Island would react to with the proverbial “duh!”?
Well, that’s the end of the “sneaky” part. Now, for another von Hil-
debrand connection:
out of genuine concern in the other’s well-being, but in doing so, knowingly causing
serious harm to a third person. There is no room to discuss here what the additional
condition for the moral goodness of an action is. (See Wenisch, “To do or not to
do,” 103–4.)
Supplement of von Hildebrand’s Views or Disagreement?
The Open Question
As mentioned in my “Introduction for Thomists” above, von Hildebrand

distinguishes in his Ethics three different types of actions:11 those motivated
by the subjectively satisfying, those motivated by the objective good for the
person,12 and those motivated by the important in itself; that is, regarding the
latter, those which aim at bringing about a bearer of a value (= something
characterized by intrinsic preciousness) for its own sake. Providing a good to
someone else is subsumed in this third category insofar as the other’s enjoy-
ment in a true good is always a bearer of a value in von Hildebrand’s sense.
This division of actions includes three of the five types of actions I distin-
guished earlier; namely, those motivated by the subjectively satisfying, those
motivated by the good for the agent, and those aiming at the realization of
something considered as important in itself. Omitted from consideration are
actions aiming at conforming one’s conduct to what one considers to be right
and actions aiming at providing a good for someone other than the agent out
of genuine interest in the other’s well-being.
In the German version of Ethics, published as Volume II of his col-
lected works,13 von Hildebrand included a lengthy footnote in which he ad-
dresses the shortcoming involved in omitting a discussion of these two latter
types of actions.14 Concerning actions I designate as aiming at conforming
one’s conduct to what one understands to be the right thing to do (he men-
tions conforming to an obligation coming from a promise as an example),
he refers to a planned work The Sources of Moral Obligations and Prohibitions
[Die Quellen sittlicher Verpflichtungen und Verbote], which was never published,
although many of the themes one would expect him to address in it are dealt
11
He draws a corresponding difference between affective responses. How-
ever, I am limiting the discussion here to actions.
12
Strictly speaking, this expression is ambiguous. It does not specify whether
the agent’s own good or another person’s good is what motivates the action. Von Hil-
debrand’s explanation makes clear, however, that he is referring to actions through
which the agent aims at his or her own good.
13
This is the second German edition (see next footnote for biographic de-
tails). The first German edition was published under the title Christliche Ethik [Chris-
tian Ethics] (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1959). The first English edition appeared as
Christian Ethics (New York: McKay Company, 1952); the work was reprinted under
the title Ethics (see footnote 1 above for bibliographic details on that edition).
14
See Dietrich von Hildebrand, Ethik, vol. 2 of Gesammelte Werke (Stuttgart:
Kohlhammer, 1973), 290–92.
Fritz Wenisch 133
with in his posthumously published Moralia.15
Concerning actions aiming at a good for someone other than the
agent, he refers, in the footnote mentioned, to his book The Nature of Love,16
in which he discusses in great detail the idea that one necessarily is interested
in the goods for the beloved out of a genuine interest in the beloved’s well-
being. Moreover, his work Moralia contains an entire chapter on responses
to the “objective good” of another person as a source of morality different
from other sources.17 He states that, “The interest in the objective goods for
the other is…a central source of moral values [= moral goodness of which
the person taking this interest becomes the bearer because of this interest].”18
In both works, however, only one possibility is considered under which such
an interest occurs: that the person whose good is a motivating force for the
agent is being loved. In this sense, von Hildebrand says, “It belongs to love
that it considers everything also from the perspective of the objective good
of the other.”19 “This ‘for the other’ is a basic element of all love for a cre-
ated being.”20 “The interest in objective goods for others—an interest from
love—is something totally new in comparison to the value response[21] and
its own great source of goodness.”22 Again, this interest “is a basic element
of love for humans.”23
These words sound very much as if he would want to consider love
as a precondition for being interested in another’s good for the other person’s
sake, which would remove my earlier example of helping the elderly gentle-
man with the flat tire from that type of action, and countless other examples
in which one’s aim of helping another whom one does not love includes a
genuine interest in the other’s well-being but not the perhaps the more lofty
goal of bringing about the intrinsically precious fact of another person’s en-
15
Dietrich von Hildebrand, Moralia, vol. 9 of Gesammelte Werke (Stuttgart:
Kohlhammer, 1980), esp. chap. 9–13.
16
Dietrich von Hildebrand, Das Wesen der Liebe, vol. 3 of Gesammelte Werke
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971); an English translation by John F. Crosby with John
Henry Crosby was published under the title The Nature of Love (South Bend: St. Au-
gustine’s Press, 2009).
17
Von Hildebrand, Moralia, chap. 4, 99–103.
18
Ibid., 100 (all translations from Moralia are by Fritz Wenisch).
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., 101.
21
As far as actions are concerned, the “value response” corresponds to what
I have called “actions aiming at the realization of something that is important in
itself.”
22
Von Hildebrand, Moralia, 101.
23
Ibid., 103.
joying a good.24 If the passages I quoted are meant to limit explicitly the
possibility of being motivated by another’s good for his or her sake to cases
in which love is present, then this paper would involve a disagreement with
von Hildebrand. When I began my work on this presentation (even still at
the time I submitted the abstract), I thought that that is what it was going to
amount to.
There is, though, another possibility, based on the following state-
ment von Hildebrand also makes about another’s good as a source of moral-
ity: “We mention it [the interest in another person’s good for his or her sake]
in this chapter only as an outgrowth of love and the intentio benevolentiae25
[which is an essential ingredient of love].”26 This sentence can be read as im-
plying that the interest in another person’s good might also have another role
not discussed in the chapter in question. Perhaps he means something like,
“We mentioned it only as an outgrowth of love, but there is another possibil-
ity for it to be present.” Thus, I turned with great interest to the appropriate
section of a different chapter of Moralia (viz., 42), also concerning objective
goods for others. It contains an explanation of von Hildebrand’s thesis that
a value is carried by the fact of a person’s experiencing a true good. As I was
reading the segment, though, I thought, “Maybe he will also address once
again the interest in another’s good for the other person’s sake”; but then, I
arrived at the editor’s note: “The manuscript of this chapter breaks off at this
point.”27
Rats!
It appears, therefore, that on this side of eternity, it cannot be de-
termined whether my paper constitutes a supplement to von Hildebrand’s
thinking or whether there is a disagreement.
—University of Rhode Island
24
That this fact is necessarily brought about by such actions does not mean
that it must be a component of what motivates the agent.
25
This includes the intention to provide goods to the one loved.
26
Von Hildebrand, Moralia, 102.
27
Ibid., 467n20.
Stephen D. Schwarz 135
Dietrich von Hildebrand on

the Role of the Heart
and the Will in Love
Stephen D. Schwarz
Abstract
Is love from the heart or from the will? Many writers claim that
love is an act of the will. Von Hildebrand is emphatic in his claim
that love is the voice of the heart, that to really love a person is
to feel love for that person, and not merely to will for him what is
good, and surely not merely to “will to love” him. In this, I think
von Hildebrand is absolutely correct. But I also think that those
who stress the role of the will are basically correct. And so my
project in this paper is to show that these two seemingly opposed
claims are not really contradictory but actually two sides of the
same coin. Indeed, a careful reading of von Hildebrand himself
shows that he too provides an important and even essential role
for the will in his theory of the nature of love. I discuss six major
ways in which the will plays a crucial role in love. The most im-
portant of these is the will as the center of cooperative freedom.
The experience of love is in its very nature a gift, something I
cannot produce for myself by an act of will. But once it is there
in my heart I can freely say an inner yes to it. I can identify myself
with it and make it explicitly my own. It is now my love in a new
way since it is not merely the voice of my heart but of my whole
being. Another major way in which the will plays a crucial role in
love is faithfulness and perseverance. Briefly, we can say that love
is the voice of the heart and the role of the will is to serve love.
I. The Role of the Heart in Love
Let us think of friendship love, the love of a mother for her child, the love
of a child for his mother who loves him deeply, and the kind of love between
a man and a women that we designate by the expression “being in love” or
“falling in love.” In all of these cases it is the beauty and lovableness of the
© Stephen D. Schwarz, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)
136 The Role of the Heart and the Will in Love
other that touches us and that engenders a response from us. And of course,
it is our hearts that are touched, and the ensuing response is from our hearts.
If our hearts are not touched, and if we do not respond from our hearts, we
may perhaps like the other person in some way, and we may want to do good
things for him, but we do not love him. Von Hildebrand often speaks of
this, stressing that “love is essentially a voice of the heart.”1 In a similar vein,
he says, “Whether we think of the love for one’s parents, the love for one’s
children, or the love for one’s friend, we always find this element of giving
one’s heart.”2
The key role of the heart in love can also be “seen in the fact that
with love the value, the overall beauty of the individual, affects us more deep-
ly than does value in the case of any other value-response.”3 It affects us of
course in our hearts.
Love in its very nature desires a return of love, a requital of love. If
I truly love a person, I long for that love to be returned. If a boy deeply loves
a girl but she does not love him, he will be grief-stricken. The desire to be
loved back, the intense spiritual pain if my love is not returned, and the deep
happiness if it is; all these are experienced in my heart, they are the voices of
the heart.
Love is perhaps the deepest source of happiness for us. But hap-
piness in its very nature must be felt; it must be experienced in the heart. A
happiness which is not felt is no happiness at all. To have real love is to have
the happiness of love, and so we can see again that love is an experience of
the heart. This applies both to my own experience of having the happiness
of love and also to what my love for the other wants to give him, namely the
happiness of love.
For von Hildebrand’s view of love the role of the union that love
desires and affects is particularly important. He calls this intentio unionis, and
says of it “that this union is a specific source of happiness.”4 But this union
of love “can only come into being through a requital of love; indeed, mutual
love is the only possible way for achieving the full union of two persons. As
long as the beloved person does not return our love, we do not reach the
desired union.”5 As we saw, this is a matter of the heart.
1
Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine Affec-
tivity, ed. John Henry Crosby (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007), 67.
See also The Nature of Love, trans. John F. Crosby with John Henry Crosby (South
Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009), esp. chap. 2; the original appears in German as,
Das Wesen der Liebe (Regensburg: Verlag Josef Habbel, 1971).
2
3
Ibid., 76.
4
Ibid., 124.
5
Ibid., 126.
Let us compare love with contrition, gratitude, and compassion.
Consider the case of someone who has committed a serious sin, a horrible
evil. But then he realizes what he has done; he is overcome with a deep sor-
row and remorse. He repents and begs God for His mercy and forgiveness.
A true repentance—a full repentance—is something that the sinner feels
intensely in his heart. If he does not have this feeling he will experience this
absence as a terrible shortcoming, for it alone is the adequate response to
his evil, and he will long to have it. A “will to repentance” may be all he can
muster, and God will surely accept this, but it nonetheless falls short of what
repentance really is in its nature. The same is true of gratitude. A friend saves
my life at great risk to his own life. If all I can muster is a will to be grateful
without any feelings, I will surely experience this as a very inadequate re-
sponse. A real gratitude is a felt gratitude. To say that I am grateful, especially
that I am extremely grateful as in our example, means that I feel grateful, that
gratitude is the voice of my heart. Finally, a compassion for people who are
undergoing horrific sufferings which is only intellectually realized and then
posited as an act of will is a mere shadow of real compassion which is of
course a felt compassion, the voice of the heart. Compassion is so much a
matter of felt compassion that we can say that the greater the compassion,
the more intense the feeling.
Like contrition, gratitude, and compassion, love is essentially the
voice of the heart, something that is felt. To truly love a person means to feel
love for that person. And to long for that person’s love in return is to feel a
longing, a longing that the person will turn to me in love, a love that is the
voice of his heart.
Yet it is often claimed that love is not a feeling or not an emotion.
Thus John Powell says of love that “it is not a feeling. If it were a feeling, love
would be a very fickle reality….”6
This calls for a key distinction. The term feeling can indeed refer to
something that is not proper to love, as when it is used to designate moods
and other emotional states that are below the personal level; that often de-
pend on the state of the body and its many fluctuations. Powell is absolutely
correct when he says that love is not a feeling in that sense. But the feeling
proper to love is something quite different. It is completely on the personal
level, as much as an act of will or of knowledge. It is a meaningful response
of the person to a reality, as given to him in his experience, what is often
called an “intentional” response. Think again of the example of a full contri-
tion. The recognition of the evil and the awareness of one’s guilt are acts of
6
John Powell, Unconditional Love (Allen, Texas: Argus Communications, 1978),
63. See also his book The Secret of Staying in Love: Loving Relationships through Communica-
tion (Allen, Texas: Resources for Christian Living, 1974), “Thesis One: Love is Not a
Feeling,” 36–37.
knowledge. The resolve to repent and to ask for forgiveness are acts of will.
And the intense experience of horror at one’s evil which is at the very core of
contrition is essentially a feeling, the voice of the heart. All three are on the
same spiritual and personal level, and all three belong equally to contrition. It
is the same with love: love involves intellect, will, and heart, and each plays an
essential role.
We can go even further. We can speak of two levels of affectivity.
Von Hildebrand’s main point is that in its essence, at its core, love is an expe-
rience of the heart. It is the heart that gives love; and it is the heart where love
is received. This is level one, the basic level. But at certain times I may feel my
love more intensely than at other times. Sometimes I may even experience a
“dry spell.” In this way we can say that love “goes up and down,” that it is not
always stable; and it is in this sense that love cannot be identified with feelings
of love. This is the second level, and Powell’s main point. Thus Powell and
von Hildebrand are both correct; their points are not contradictory but refer
to two different levels of affectivity. Powell is also correct that love cannot be
seen as only a matter of feelings. It is indeed more since it essentially involves
the will. This brings us to the second major point.
II. The Role of the Will in Love
Many writers stress the role of the will in love. In some cases they say or im-
ply that it is only a matter of the will, or at least primarily a matter of the will.
Powell says that “love is a decision and commitment.”7 This clearly refers to the
will. John Paul II, in his important book, Love and Responsibility, also lays great
stress on the will. “Love between persons is essentially a creation of human
free will.”8 Again, “The most profound, by far the most important element
[in love] is the will, in which the power to create love in a human being and
between people is vested.”9 Erich Fromm is equally emphatic. “Love should
be essentially an act of will, of decision to commit my life completely to that
of one other person…. To love somebody is not just a strong feeling—it is a
decision, it is a judgment, and it is a promise.”10
The view that I would like to propose and defend here is that love
is both a matter of feelings and of the will. It is not a question of which of
the two it is but rather of the ways in which both play a role. Insofar as the
7
John Powell, Unconditional Love, 63.
8
Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), Love and Responsibility, trans. H. T. Willetts
(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1981), 51.
9
Ibid., 90.
10
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York: Harper and Row, Bantam
Books, 1956), 47.
“will position” stresses the will it is correct, though some versions may be
incomplete. Insofar as this position denies the role and importance of feel-
ings it is mistaken. The “feelings position” that I consider here, that of von
Hildebrand, does not play one against the other but includes both, though
one can easily get the impression that feelings are stressed more than the will.
This is because von Hildebrand, realizing that the role of the will was already
emphasized, saw the need to restore the balance by stressing the other aspect:
feelings as the voice of the heart.
Starting with the basic Hildebrandian thesis that love is the voice of
the heart—that to love someone means to feel love for that person, and that
to long for love is to long for the experience of feeling love, and is itself a
feeling—I want to suggest that there are at least six major ways in which the
will plays a crucial role in love.
(1) The Will as the Center of Cooperative Freedom. Love is a gift. To receive the
love of another person is in its very nature a gift, something I cannot pro-
duce for myself by an act of will. But my response of love, my being able
to love the other person, is also a gift. I may see a person and have a very
strong desire to love him; I may even believe that I should love him, and yet
find that I do not in fact love him. Von Hildebrand is clearly correct when he
says that merely to will to love a person is not really to love him and will be
experienced by that person as falling short of real love. But is the gift of love
that I receive when I love another person, when my heart goes out to him in
love, when I really feel the love for him; is this the whole picture?
No, there is a crucial role to be played by the will. An affective
response such as joy or sorrow, compassion, gratitude, contrition, and of
course love, cannot be willed into existence. It is not in our direct power. But
once it is there we can freely take a position with respect to it with our will.
Von Hildebrand calls this “cooperative freedom,” and it is one of his truly
great contributions to philosophy. Let us focus on its role in love. Coopera-
tive freedom means that I say an inner yes or no to the love that is in my
heart. By saying my inner yes to the love I feel I identify myself with that love
and make it explicitly my own response. My love achieves through this a new
character. It is my love in a new way, since it is now not merely the voice of
my heart but of my whole being. What is originally given to me in my heart
as gift now becomes fully my own through the explicit inner yes of my will.
The response of my will joins the response of my heart to form a new reality.
Von Hildebrand calls this inner yes “sanctioning.”
It should be noted that this role of the will is possible only on a view
which holds that love is originally a feeling. It cannot be included in a view
which claims that “love is not a feeling.” Such a view, though it tries to give a
prominent role to the will, actually ends up by denying to the will the signifi-
cant role that cooperative freedom provides.
On the other hand, those who say that love is not merely a feeling,
that feelings are not always reliable, have a valid point. It can be expressed by
saying that the basic feeling of love must be sealed by the will through the
exercise of cooperative freedom.
One way in which the will plays a role in love is the power to refuse
love. This is sometimes necessary. A person already married finds himself
loving another in this way. To remain faithful to his spouse he must say an
inner no to the new love; he must disavow it, distance himself from it. We
see here clearly both the role of the heart and the role of the will. The new
love arises spontaneously in the heart; it is not in the range of the power of
the will to control. But the will does have the power to say either an inner yes
or no to it; or to do nothing and in effect remain neutral, in which case the
person fails to exercise his freedom in the way that is called for in such a case.
Clearly, the refusal to love is an exercise of cooperative freedom, an inner no
which is the opposite of the inner yes that makes the response of love fully
my own, the response of my whole person.
(2) Love Means a Commitment of the Will. If I truly love a person I commit
myself to that person. This is most clearly seen in the commitment of a man
and a woman to each other in spousal love which is sealed in the marriage
vow. But it is true also of other forms of love. If I love you as my friend I
commit myself to you in a bond of friendship. I will be there for you when
you need me. “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” Such a commitment, a
promise of faithfulness of love, can only be made by the will.
(3) True Love Means Faithfulness and Perseverance; it is Unconditional. Faithfulness
and perseverance are clearly from the will. They are in my power to give or
to refuse. Only if they are present is a love really love. This shows again that
love, which is initially and somehow in its substance a feeling, must be sealed
by the will in order to be truly a love.
We can also say that love has a moral dimension, that in loving a per-
son I also assume a certain responsibility for him. This, of course, varies sig-
nificantly, depending on the kind of love in question. It is especially present
in a parent’s love for his or her child; less so in a friendship love between two
adults. To love a person means to carry out what this responsibility involves;
and this is clearly in our power, a matter of the will.
The second and third of these ways in which the will plays a crucial
role in love are closely related. The second refers to the initial commitment at
the beginning; the third to carrying it out afterwards.
(4) Cases Where Love is Primarily from the Will. Consider these cases: A teen-age
child is in total rebellion against his parents and everything that they hold
dear. His behavior is obnoxious. The parents are deeply saddened. They no
longer have the positive feelings of love which were so strong before. But
they continue to love him, they persevere in their love; their love is truly
unconditional. In a way, they love him even more because they see that he
needs their love, their loving support and affirmation, even more. Here love
is carried primarily by the will, not by feelings. Again, a deeply religious per-
son undergoes a dark night of the soul, where all feelings of love of God are
withdrawn. But the person holds fast and continues his love through an act
of the will. Finally, a person who is committed to a Christian love of neigh-
bor for all persons may find a particular person repulsive. But by God’s grace
he loves him by an act of will.
It might seem that what I have said here contradicts what I said
above; namely, that to really love a person is to feel love for that person and
not merely to “will to love” him; that love is the voice of the heart rather
than of the will. In reply, I am claiming only that in such latter cases of love
the role of the will is primary, not that love comes only from the will. Love
is still ultimately and at its core the voice of the heart. One way to see this
is to realize that the motive for persevering in love is the original love felt in
the heart, a love that is still there, though the heart that feels it is wounded
by sorrow, darkness, or negative reactions. This is essentially the point made
above in the last paragraph of part I: that in its essence love is an experience
of the heart; that it is the heart that gives love, what I called there the “basic
level” or “level one.”
Let me suggest a three-fold distinction regarding the phrase “the will
to love”:
1. What von Hildebrand rejects as a poor substitute for love,
where the voice of the will replaces the voice of the heart;
where to “will to love” really means trying to love or wishing
one could love and sadly failing in this effort.
2. The general strength dimension of love, which applies to all
love, our theme here in discussing six major ways in which
the will plays a crucial role in love.
3. The more specific case where loving or continuing to love is
hard because of the absence of present feelings of love and
sometimes because of contrary feelings, our present theme
[item (4) of the six major ways the will plays a role in love].
Here, the more specific case where loving is hard, “the will
to love” does not designate the failure of love as in distinc-
tion ‘1.’ regarding the phrase “will to love” given immediately
above, but means that the will has a heavier burden to carry
than in normal cases. Love is still basically the voice of the
heart and an affective response, but one where the will must
provide added strength to sustain the love.
The proper role of “the will to love” (distinctions ‘2.’ and ‘3.’ above) varies
according to the type of love, whether it is friendship love, love of one’s own
children, love of one’s parents, spousal love, or love of neighbor. But that is
a topic beyond the scope of this paper.
(5) Carrying out the Commandment to Love. At its core the Christian message in-
cludes the commandment to love: “A new commandment I give you, that you
love one another.” This, of course, can be carried out only if the will plays a
crucial role in love.
(6) Love Includes the Readiness to Make Sacrifices for the Other. If I truly love you
I will be willing to do what is good for you even if “it costs me something.”
This refers both to the general willingness to sacrifice and also to the strength
to carry this out on a specific occasion. This is primarily a matter of the will
and shows the importance of the will, for I should make the sacrifices that
love calls for whether my feelings support me or not.
III. Loves Involves Both the Heart and the Will
The term will is not always used in the same sense. Let me explain how I am
using this term. Basically, the will is what is free in a human person. “The will
alone is free in the strict sense of being in our immediate power, whereas af-
fective responses are not free in this sense.”11 This means that what von Hil-
debrand calls “the free spiritual center,” the center for cooperative freedom,
is really the will, even though he rarely if ever calls it that. This is probably
because, at other times, he identifies the will with the basis of all actions.
“In speaking of the will in the strict sense, we mean the response which is
directed toward something not yet real, but endowed with the possibility of
being realized. In willing we turn to this not-yet-real fact with the specific
interest of bringing it into existence.”12 To clarify matters let me suggest the
following.
The will is one of the three spiritual centers in the human person,
along with the intellect and the heart. Its essential mark is freedom, while the
other two are not free. It has, I think, four principal functions or roles:
11
Von Hildebrand, Ethics (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1972), 203.
12
Ibid., 200. See also The Nature of Love, 41–42.
1. The master of actions. In this role, the will is directed towards
the realization of a not-yet-real but possible future state of
affairs, as von Hildebrand notes.
2. The center for responses to real objects, including other per-
sons, outside me. If I say a free inner yes to something I am
exercising my will in this sense; for example, adoring God,
and turning inwardly to my neighbor in love. I may also say
an inner no as when I freely reject something already existing
as morally evil. [This refers to items (4) and (5) in the list in
part II above.]
3. The center for cooperative freedom. This refers to “the free
attitude toward experiences already existing in our soul….
The way in which we endure bodily pains which are imposed
on us is an example of cooperative freedom.”13 [Item (1) in
part II.]
4. The power of commitment, remaining faithful, perseverance,
resolving to do something and carrying it through. This is
what provides the strength of love. [Items (2), (3) and (6) in
part II.]
Despite a certain lack of precision in his use of the term will, and
perhaps even through such imprecision, von Hildebrand has, I think, seen
something of immense importance. The idea of will is usually associated in
our minds with the idea of power and control, of bringing something new
into existence; and this is indeed one of its key features, manifested in the will
being the master of actions. But there is also another deeper level in which it
turns to something already existing in a cooperative way. If a person listens
from his depth to the words of a wise and holy religious counselor, humbly
tries to understand them, and to apply them to his soul even where they are
contrary to his prideful self-assurance, he manifests this deeper cooperative
level. At this level it is not my power and control that are thematic but rather
a “going along” with something good and noble and valid that is offered to
me. A person who cooperates with God’s grace in his soul manifests this
level.
It is one of von Hildebrand’s most profound insights that the great-
est and deepest things in our life are not those that we accomplish ourselves
by our own power of free will; rather, the greatest and deepest things are
gifts:
13
Von Hildebrand, Ethics, 316.
This of course applies to the supernatural sphere in which grace
is an absolute unmerited gift utterly inaccessible to our freedom.
But not only here…. Happiness is a gift, a pure gift. Much as we
may prepare the ground for it, genuine happiness remains a gift,
dropping like dew upon our heart, shining gratuitously like a sun-
ray into our soul.
The same applies to many affective experiences: deep contrition,
the gift of tears, a deep and ardent love, “being moved” on hear-
ing sublime music or when witnessing an act of superabundant
charity. These experiences exist in the higher, spiritual part of the
affective realm and have the character of gifts from above, just as
a deep insight of our intellect is a gift.14
The dual notions of gift and freedom of will in its cooperative role
are central to von Hildebrand’s view of love as involving both the heart and
the will. The cooperative role refers to “the ‘yes’ spoken by the free personal
center in the sanctioning of the love.”15 Von Hildebrand adds:
And so we see that there are these two dimensions of self-dona-
tion. The first is purely affective in nature, having the character
of a gift that we can never give ourselves; it is a pure voice of the
heart. The second is the voice of our free personal center; it is
the sanctioning of the gift of an affective response of love. Only
when both are present does the self-donation of love take on its
full character….16

In summary we might say this: The will serves love. Pope John Paul II,
Erich Fromm, John Powell, and others, stress this serving role, that the will
must guide love and give it strength and that without the will love withers
and dies. They do not make explicit that what the will serves is in itself, in
its nature, an affective response, a spiritual feeling, the voice of the heart.
This is the great contribution of von Hildebrand. Occasionally writers whose
focus is on the will do make explicit the reference to the heart and feelings.
Thus Fromm says: “Unconditional love corresponds to one of the deepest
longings, not only of the child, but of every human being.”17 Clearly a deep
longing is a deeply felt longing, a voice of the heart.
We can also say that love is guided and strengthened by the will.
However, Love is from the heart; it is the voice of the heart. It is not from the will.
—University of Rhode Island
14
15
16
Ibid., 56.
17
Fromm, The Art of Loving, 35.
Paola Premoli De Marchi 145
Dietrich von Hildebrand and

the Birth of Love as an I-Thou Relation
Paola Premoli De Marchi
Abstract
The Nature of Love has rightly been defined as a Summa of von
Hildebrand’s thought, but Hildebrandian philosophy is an organic
whole, and many insights contained in that treatise are rooted
in works written many years before. Understanding his other in-
quiries into the essence of the spiritual relations which can be
performed only by persons is a necessary prerequisite for un-
derstanding the significance of von Hildebrand’s masterpiece on
love. This paper focuses on von Hildebrand’s phenomenological
investigations into the “birth” of human relationships and their
effects on the self-realization of the person as they are described
mainly in Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, in some other works, and in
a few unpublished pages. This paper, then, is divided into three
parts: (1) The first part is dedicated to summarizing von Hilde-
brand’s analysis of the essence of personal relationships as spiri-
tual acts, as social acts, and as acts which involve value responses.
Von Hildebrand’s anthropology is essentially a metaphysical and
relational philosophy of the person: the person is a spiritual sub-
stance—an individual subject—and at the same time a subject
who is called to realize himself through his relationships to the
world, to other human subjects, and to God. (2) On the basis of
this framework, the second part of the paper develops a phe-
nomenological description of the path that begins from the initial
spiritual contact between persons and leads to the I-Thou rela-
tion. This analysis, according to von Hildebrand, must consider
above all the communication between persons and the conditions
for interpersonal reciprocity, union, and communion. On the
basis of these investigations, we can understand why love is the
most perfect kind of relationship. This is true from the point of
view of the relation in itself, since love is the relationship which
can produce the deepest link between persons; but it is also true
from the point of view of the relata (the terms of the relation),
© Paola Premoli De Marchi, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)

146 The Birth of Love as an I-Thou Relation
since love fosters the highest realization of the persons as indi-
viduals. This inquiry also reveals the deep connection between
von Hildebrand’s works Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft and The Nature
of Love. (3) The third and final part of the paper aims to further
deepen our understanding of von Hildebrand’s insights into the
effects of love on the human person by drawing on some of his
minor works and unpublished writings. Von Hildebrand’s crucial
argument in this regard is that love is the most perfect act, since
it affects the perfection of the persons involved, that is, both the
lover and the beloved. Only in loving and in being loved is the
human being re-affirmed in his being and awakened to his full
personal existence and essence.
* * *
Dietrich von Hildebrand’s philosophy of love is contained both in its most

comprehensive and systematic form in his work, The Nature of Love, which
for many reasons can justifiably be considered as a Summa of his thought.1
His philosophy of love, however, forms a unified and organic whole which
he developed over the course of more than sixty years of philosophical activ-
ity. The volume on the nature of love therefore has roots in von Hildebrand’s
earlier philosophy. These roots are worth investigating in order to attain a
precise understanding of the thought of this phenomenologist and his place
in the history of philosophy. In what follows, I would like to bring to light
von Hildebrand’s inquiry on the essence of interpersonal relationships. This
has been expounded upon mainly in his book, Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, in
some minor writings, and in a few unpublished pages, and is an important
basis for von Hildebrand’s philosophy of love. I would like to focus, above
all, on his description of the beginning of interpersonal relations and on the
effects of human contact on the actualization of the person.2
First, let me begin by drawing your attention to the metaphysical
foundations of von Hildebrand’s anthropology of relationship, which is in-
timately connected with his personalism. Second, I will review von Hilde-
brand’s phenomenological description of the process by which interpersonal
relationships are shaped. Finally, I will outline some of the effects that hu-
1
See Paola Premoli De Marchi, introduzione alla Dietrich von Hildebrand,
Essenza dell’amore (Milano: Bompiani Il Pensiero Occidentale, 2003), 5.
2
Dietrich von Hildebrand, Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, vol. 4 of Gesammelte
Werke (Regensburg: Habbel, 1975), 20. All English translations are my own.
man relations, most especially love, have on the actualization of the human
person.
The Metaphysical Foundations of

von Hildebrand’s Anthropology of Relationship
Von Hildebrand is one of many thinkers in the twentieth century who tried
to find an alternative to the opposition between individualism and collectiv-
ism. Martin Buber expressed a dissatisfaction with the opposition when he
noted that this opposition is completely misleading because, “if you consider
the individual by himself, then you see of man just as much as you see of
the moon…if you consider the aggregate by itself, then you see of man just
as much as we see of the Milky Way.” 3 Only man with man, Buber adds, is
a completely outlined form; that is to say, only men in their interpersonal re-
lationships, as giving and receiving, as asking and answering, as “completing
one another in mutual contribution”4 is a completely outlined form.
Several philosophers belonging to the phenomenological circles of
Munich and Göttingen shared an interest in the social nature of man. Max
Scheler, for instance, offered thoughtful arguments for the centrality of rela-
tionships for the person. In his book, On the Eternal in Man, we read:
It is inherent in the eternal, ideal nature of an intelligent person that
all…[his] existence and activity as a spirit is ab origine just as much
an outward-conscious, co-responsible, communal reality as a self-
conscious, self-responsible, individual reality. The being of a man
is just as originally a matter of being, living, and acting “together”
as a matter of existing for himself.5
In the Politics, Aristotle said that man is by nature a zöon politikon, a “political”
or “social” animal.6 In a similar vein, the proponents of realist phenomenol-
ogy maintain that the common membership of mankind is deeply rooted in the
essence of man. However, they are even more daring than Aristotle in con-
sidering such belonging as essential, objective, and metaphysically grounded,
because of their clearer insight into what it means to be a person. Consistent
3
Martin Buber, Between Man and Man (London: Routledge Classics, 2002),
243.
4
Ibid., 243.
5
Max Scheler, Vom Ewigen im Menschen (Bern: Francke, 1968), 371; translated
by Bernard Nobel as On the Eternal in Man (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction
Publishers, 2010), 373.
6
Aristotle, Politics I.2.1253a2.
with this claim, we see this in von Hildebrand’s philosophy as well. In 1933,
amidst his struggle against National Socialism, he wrote:
The spiritual person, as a conscious and meaningful being, is so
deeply different from any other being that the distinction be-
tween personal and impersonal being is maybe the deepest which
is given in the realm of being—apart from that between finite
and infinite being—even deeper than that between substance and
accident, or between life and pure inanimate matter. 7
According to von Hildebrand, the person’s metaphysical dignity makes her
incommensurable to any impersonal being. The person has both a substantial
and relational character; and, as a spiritual subject, the person is the most per-
fect substance and also the most perfect relational being.
On the one hand, the person is the only kind of substance which,
by being conscious of the world, possesses the rest of being, and, by being
self-conscious, possesses herself. Furthermore, the transcendence over natural
laws which is a feature of any spiritual subject makes the person capable of
taking a free position toward what occurs to her and to intervene in the world
actively by initiating new causal chains. On the other hand, her same essence
as a spiritual subject also makes her, a person, capable of establishing rela-
tionships which are totally deeper and more unifying than those which any
non-personal being can attain.8 We can contrast, for instance, the fusion of
two metals, which produce an alloy, with a great loving relationship in which
two persons reach an intimate and deep unity. In the first case, a material and
substantial bond is created, whereas in the second case we find a spiritual but
non-substantial link. Even so, the latter is much more perfect, intimate, and
deeper than the former. The fact that the person is a spiritual substance, von
Hildebrand writes in Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, precludes the possibility of
one person forming a single substance with another; at the same time, her
capacity for transcendence makes the person able to establish with other
persons a link incomparably deeper and more radical than any relation that is
possible among the parts of a material whole.9
Von Hildebrand’s understanding of the essence of personal relation-
ships lies at the basis of community structures to which man by his nature is
ordered. According to von Hildebrand, “man as spiritual person will never be
understood if we do not recognize his ordination to community, his capac-
ity to form a new totality, his being ordered to and called to community.”10
7
Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Die korporative Idee und die natürlichen Gemeinschaf-
ten,” in Der Katholische Gedanke, Augsburg, Jg. 6 (1933): 49 (translation mine).
8
Ibid., 50.
9
Von Hildebrand, Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, 20.
10
Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Die korporative Idee,” 50.
Von Hildebrand’s philosophy of community is an essential element of his
philosophy of relationship and requires further research.11
The recognition of the person’s spiritual essence is, for von Hilde-
brand, directly related to the essential relationship given in the encounter of
the person with the world of values. This relation is described as follows in
Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft:
The created spiritual person of man is by his essence ordered
in a purely objective way to the world of values and above all to
the quintessence of all values, God. The essence of man can be
understood only on the basis of this ordination and orientation.12
Von Hildebrand characterizes this orientation to values as one of “incorpo-
ration” (Inkorporation): the person is anchored, or rooted, in values, but also
called to embody in her life the values which fall within the sphere of her
freedom and can therefore be realized by her. The ordination to values, then,
assumes different features depending on the kinds of values at stake. From
the text just quoted, we already see that priority is reserved for the ordination
to God, to whom man is destined to give glory and with whom he is destined
to be eternally united. Even when man does not subjectively acknowledge his
being as a creature, this does not change his metaphysical situation, which de-
termines the way in which he is related to moral and morally relevant values.
While the link to any other kind of value depends upon the natural talents
and capacities of each subject, all men are “at home” (von Hildebrand uses
the term beheimatet) in the values that determine their eternal destiny. In other
words, the highest personal values, and above all moral values, determine the
essence of the person, even when the person who has these values is not
aware of having them.
The incorporation of values in a person in fact occurs in two ways.
First, a deep and continuous relation to a category of values—either posi-
tive or negative—causes an objective incorporation of these values in the per-
son. When the person becomes aware of values, a subjective incorporation (the
second way in which values are incorporated in a person) is added to the
objective one. Both forms of incorporation are important in interpersonal
relationships.
The idea that man is essentially related to other men and to God, on
the one hand, and to values (the “good”) on the other, corresponds to the
classical view of man’s social nature as described, for instance, by Plato in the
Republic and Aristotle in the Politics. But for von Hildebrand, this dual rela-
tion reveals the authentic vocation of man: he is called to realize interpersonal
11
See Gian Paolo Terravecchia, Fenomenologia sociale: Il contributo di Dietrich von
Hildebrand (Padova: Diade, 2004).
12
relationships and to take part in forms of community life, since those values
(e.g., artistic or intellectual) which involve cooperation with other men can
be realized only in I-Thou and I-we relationships and through participation
in communities. Furthermore, man needs others to improve his relationship
with God (for instance, in liturgy) and to attain the specific self-realization
that flows from self-donation.
In concluding this first section, we can note that at least from the
early 1930s onward, von Hildebrand’s anthropology of relationship, which
is also presupposed in The Nature of Love, had already been outlined in its
essential elements: namely, that (a) man is a person, that is, a spiritual subject
capable of transcendence and called to answer to the sphere of values; and
that (b) he is ordered to relationship with God and with other human beings,
that is, to realize unifying relationships and communities.
The Origin of Interpersonal Relationships
We turn now to von Hildebrand’s phenomenological analysis of the origin

of human relationships, which is very relevant for his understanding of love.
Von Hildebrand has affirmed that he met many good professors
but had only one true teacher; this was Adolf Reinach, a promising assistant
of Husserl, who died prematurely during the First World War.13 In his best
known work, The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law,14 Reinach defined a par-
ticular category of human acts, namely, social acts. By this expression he meant
those acts of the person which involve another person as conscious recipient
and have a specific content as their object that is shared by the two partners.
Social acts can be expressed by propositions built from expressions like: “I
promise/communicate/ask someone something.”15
In Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, von Hildebrand refers to Reinach’s in-
vestigations of social acts and builds on them by describing the steps which
lead from the most basic and accidental contact between two persons to true
interpersonal relationship.
13
See Dietrich von Hildebrand’s contribution in “Reinach as a Philosophical
Personality,” Aletheia 3 (1983): xv–xxvi.
14
Adolf Reinach, The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law, trans. John F. Crosby
(Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2013); originally published in German as Die apriorischen
Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechts in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung
1 (1913): 685–847.
15
On Reinach’s philosophy of relationship, see Daniela Falcioni, Le regole della
relazionalità. Un’interpretazione della fenomenologia di Adolf Reinach (Milan: Giuffré, 1991).
Intentional but Not Yet Real Contact
Contact between a person and a thing can be either only physical or spiritual.
When I trample a flower, I have a purely physical contact with it; whereas
when I recognize to which species the flower belongs, or contemplate its
beauty, the contact is spiritual, since it is intentional, making the flower present
in my mind in an immaterial way. The distinction between material and spiri-
tual is given also in contact between persons. If during dinner I accidentally
hurt a friend’s foot, we have a merely physical contact. If I kick my friend
to warn him when he is about to say something embarrassing, my contact is
spiritual; that is, intentional, meaningful, and voluntary. I perceived the risk
and decided to do something about it.
The first level of spiritual contact between persons occurs when
we inwardly address an intentional act—for instance, an attitude of love or
anger—to another person without revealing it to the addressee. This, von
Hildebrand says, is a form of contact with the other person that is intentional
but not real. Let us think of the case in which we want to get acquainted
with someone but do not have the courage to take the first step; we have in
mind the other person and are interested in her. Nevertheless, there is no
real contact with her, since the relationship remains only in our desires, in
our intentions.16 We could say that this kind of contact is only “potentially
interpersonal” because it involves an intention which is not fulfilled.17
From Communication to Social Act
Contact with another person becomes real when communication (Mitteilung) is

initiated. Only then does the contact assume the features which, according to
Reinach’s definition, are proper to social acts. In order to have genuine com-
munication, the intentional content of the contact, for instance a favor which
is asked, must not only be expressed by the person who needs the favor, but
also understood by the subject of whom the favor is asked. When the other
person registers the act I direct to her, the contact assumes a qualitatively dif-
ferent character. It ceases to be a monologue and is open to the possibility of
becoming a dialogue: a personal act can become an interpersonal act.
Von Hildebrand adds that this step brings about an interpersonal
space, a “properly spiritual means (medium), which is realized among spiritual
16
The specific form of intentionality which is as yet not a real relationship be-
tween two persons is referred to by von Hildebrand with a special word (intentionär),
which is difficult to translate.
17
persons and bears a certain analogy to the space of the external world.”18 By
way of analogy, imagine an empty swimming pool with several persons in
it. If one communicates something to the others, such as inviting them to a
party, and assuming these others hear her invitation, then the interpersonal
space created is not unlike what occurs when the pool is filled with water:
something connects the persons in the pool.
If communication is a necessary condition for interpersonal con-
tact, we can understand why language—both verbal and non-verbal—is an
essential element for initiating a relationship. It is well-known that Aristotle
affirmed the essential connection between social life and language when, in
the Politics, he introduced the study of human communities by distinguishing
between animals, which have voice to express pleasure and pain, and man,
who has speech to communicate that which is useful or harmful, good or
evil, and who, therefore, is the only political animal in the strict sense of the
term.19
Throughout the last century many philosophers turned to language
as their main field of inquiry. Von Hildebrand himself, in manuscripts which
remain unpublished, dedicated much attention to the philosophy of lan-
guage. He emphasized the fact that language and communication are human
achievements which transcend the mere exchange of information which oc-
curs, for example, between two computers. Language has a very profound
personal significance, as we can see from the many functions it can per-
form. Von Hildebrand introduces four functions of language: (a) that of
objectifying knowledge; namely, by translating thought into words; (b) the
expressive-communicative function, which is essential to any transmission of
knowledge, testimony, etc.; (c) that of the social act, which occurs when one
acts by means of words (i.e., in making a promise or in giving one’s consent
in marriage); finally, (d) that of intimate communication between persons,
which lies at the heart of the deepest interpersonal relationships.
Conditions for “I-Thou” Relationships:

Self-Communication, Reciprocity, and Stability
According to von Hildebrand, not all instances of interpersonal contact are

relationships in the strict sense. In the fourth function of language we can
see a higher level of spiritual contact: here, not only is the object communi-
cated, but also is the “ray of our taking position” to it. That is to say, we do
not communicate mere information but also our inner relation to something
18
Ibid.
19
Aristotle, Politics I.2.1253a5–18.
(verlautbarte Stellungnahme). This communication, von Hildebrand says, is very
different from spontaneous expressions—for instance, on the face—which
automatically follow many of our affective experiences, since it has an inten-
tional character. The recipient is called not only to become aware of another’s
intention but also to genuinely encounter the “specific matter” of the speak-
er’s deep intention and experience.20 The best example of this is the declara-
tion of love. When a young man communicates his love to the beloved, he
does not simply say that he loves her; rather, he wishes to “reach” the beloved
with his love. Obviously not all communication requires this element. It usu-
ally suffices to convey pure information when communicating in professional
matters. In the case of events endowed with real value or when it is a matter
of the most personal human affairs, on the contrary, the disclosure of one’s
own stance is an integral part of providing “complete information.” To com-
municate joy or suffering in a purely neutral way, or the details of an event
endowed with great value—above all, a moral value—is inadequate. The kind
of communication that lies at the basis of interpersonal relationships, then,
has a very strong relation both to the values involved and to the interiority of
the person communicating.
When the recipient takes cognizance of the communicant’s inten-
tion, the possibility of an I-Thou contact is given (Ich-Du-Berührung). Von Hil-
debrand identifies four degrees of contact based on the reaction of the recip-
ient and in this way describes the path towards reciprocity in the relationship.
Let us imagine Romeo declaring his love to Juliet: The lowest de-
gree of contact is given when Juliet does not grasp the communication in all
its implications but only in its subject-matter: even though she understands
Romeo’s message, she is not affected by its content and receives it as mere
information, perhaps even responding with indifference: “Really?”
A further step is taken when Juliet understands both the content of
the communication and Romeo’s stance toward her, but responds with an act
that is antithetical to Romeo’s communication; for instance, with refusal or
hate.
A third degree of contact is identifiable when Juliet fully registers
Romeo’s intention and responds to it with an act which is “of the same sign”
but not identical: for example, she receives Romeo’s declaration as it is, a
demonstration of love, and rejoices in it.
The spiritual contact is fully realized only when the recipient—and
here we have the highest degree—answers with an act that corresponds to what
is addressed to her; in our example, when Juliet returns Romeo’s love. Like-
wise, a man responds to a proposal of friendship with friendship; the child
who receives paternal love responds with filial love; the believer responds
20
Von Hildebrand, Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, 24ff.
to God’s love with love for God. Only in reciprocity do we find the fullness
of the I-Thou relationship. In Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, von Hildebrand de-
scribes this last degree with the incisive expression of Ineinanderblick: by this
term, he means the mutual look given between two persons which is primar-
ily a spiritual way of looking, but is analogous to physical sight. He writes:
I look at someone, and he does not notice it. Here we have the
lower step—like the only potential but not real contact; when he
notices my look, without looking at me, the second step; if he
looks at my face when I am looking at his face, the third one. If
our looks meet and each of them reaches the other person—as
they were pushed one into the other—then we reach a completely
new spiritual contact, a formal climax given by the explicit mutual
referring of one to the other.21
Besides communication and reciprocity, relationships involve a third ele-
ment, namely a certain stability, which is based on two factors. First, a rela-
tionship has stability to the degree that both persons are involved. The more
the relationship affects the persons involved, the deeper their mutual under-
standing, their free engagement, and their affective life, the more stable their
relationship will be. This is the case both in positive and negative relations.
Relationships always imply an involvement of the heart.22
In the second place, stability is linked to, and given, with a unique
form of duration, which is reflected in the special way that relationships are
present in consciousness. When a man asks me for information at the cross-
roads, our contact is over as soon as he goes on his way, and I will probably
forget about it immediately. That is an actual contact. But when I fall in love,
or when I am in conflict with someone, the awareness of my relationship
with the other person endures in me and influences my conscious life, even
if I am busy with other things. In this case, the relationship has what von Hil-
debrand terms a “superactual presence” in my conscience.23 There are rela-
tionships, like love and friendship, which always endure in me in a superactual
21
22
The term ‘heart’ for Hildebrand refers to that part of the affective sphere
which cannot be reduced to impulses but instead embraces those experiences and
responses of the person that are spiritual and motivated by consciously perceived
relevant objects. This affective dimension can fall under the sphere of influence of
the will even though not in the form of a command but as an act either of sanction,
by which the person so to speak endorses his affective experiences, or of disavowal,
by which the person distances himself from them. See Dietrich von Hildebrand, The
Heart, ed. John Henry Crosby (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007), Part I.
23
See Dietrich von Hildebrand, Christian Ethics (New York: David McKay,
1953), 224ff; and Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, trans. John F. Crosby
with John Henry Crosby (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009), 44ff, 77ff.
way. Yet weaker kinds of relations, for instance those among acquaintances
or colleagues, can also have a superactual existence.
What we mentioned above is valid both for relationships marked by
love and for those affected by hate. However, according to von Hildebrand,
hate never causes an authentic relationship in the strict sense (Beziehung), al-
though it is an interpersonal mutual contact (Verhältnis). The reason for this
is that hate implies by its nature separation and alienation, which in turn hin-
ders the constitution of a true interpersonal bond.24 Only the “mutual look”
proper to love, and to those positive acts which contain at least a core of love
such as veneration, esteem, and joy, can bring about a real union (Vereinigung)
among persons. Their content implies a movement toward the other person,
a form of transcendence in which one enters her sphere, and this produces
not only a contact, but also an “I-Thou” bond (Ich-Du Verbindung).
The union that results from just any benevolent kind of relation-
ship, however, does not yet produce the highest kind of bond between two
persons: only in one kind of relationship, namely that of love, do we find in
an incomparably higher form of union, a true “becoming one” (Einswerdung).
Only in a relationship of love can there be that supreme kind of interper-
sonal union which is called personal communion.
Value response is crucial in the process of becoming united with
another person. In any relationship many values are present: those of the
persons involved (e.g., their moral, intellectual, and ontological values) and
those involved in the relationship itself (e.g., in friendship, the values shared
by the friends and those which motivated their relationship). In chapter eight
of Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, von Hildebrand calls attention to the fact that
values in themselves possess a virtus unitiva—a unifying power—and negative
values, on the contrary, a dividing power. This force is a phenomenon of
experience with an objective metaphysical foundation. Experience shows us,
indeed, that every contact with the world of beauty and goodness produces
in the person, besides a spiritual “awaking,” also an opening to others, or a
feeling of connection with them.
Despite possessing both an outward and an inward dimension, man
has an almost innate tendency to relate to others only at the level of the for-
mer. Thanks to his relation to values, however, which engage his capacity for
transcendence, man is prompted to step outside of himself, to cast open, so
to speak, the doors of his interiority, and to overcome the “crust of indiffer-
ence, selfishness, and pride.”25 And, as a result of connecting with the world
of values, man can also achieve union with other persons. The actualization
of the “I” as a free spiritual center, which is made possible by adhering to
24
Von Hildebrand, Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, chap. 9.
25
Ibid., 99.
the world of values, also makes the person capable of a deeper and more
substantial link with others. The unifying power of values permeates mean-
ingfully all the degrees of unity which can derive from the mutual look which
is proper to love, both in regard to the other person’s value and also in the
incorporation of one or more spheres of shared values. Negatives values, on
the contrary, can neither inspire true love nor bring about an objective incor-
poration in them of the persons involved.
Love and the Actualization of the Person
Love is given in a multiplicity of kinds. According to von Hildebrand, we can

classify love according to (a) category (we have, for instance, maternal, pater-
nal, or filial love; then, spousal love, friendship, love for God, charity, etc.);
(b) intensity, (e.g., we can compare two degrees of friendship); and (c) quality,
which depends upon the kinds of values which motivate it. For instance, a
spousal love motivated by spiritual values (e.g., the moral virtues and intelli-
gence of the beloved) has a higher quality than a love motivated by mere vital
values (i.e., the physical beauty and strength of the beloved).26
Nevertheless, love is in itself the most important relationship for
man. We can see this by considering its essential traits, which are listed at
the end of chapter two of The Nature of Love: love is (1) the most affective value
response; (2) essentially superactual in the proper sense; (3) love involves a being
delighted by the values of the beloved; (4) it is an intentio unionis—namely, the
lover desires a spiritual union with the beloved and to take part in his essence
and existence27; (5) love involves a real interest in the happiness, well-being,
and good of the beloved person, namely, an intentio benevolentiae28; (6) love is
related to a gesture of self-donation, which in spousal love and the love for
God assumes the character of a giving of one’s self; (7) love implies an ex-
traordinary commitment of our freedom and heart to the beloved person; (8) love is
the value response which confers the greatest happiness; and (9) love involves
an essential desire for reciprocity. If we recall the beautiful image used by von
Hildebrand, that “in love I open the arms of my soul as to surround the soul
of the beloved person,”29 we can add that the embrace is reciprocal: in loving
we wish both to embrace and to be embraced.

Most of these characteristics of love were already developed in von
Hildebrand’s early works. For instance, the distinction between intentio benevo-
26
Ibid., 42.
27
See von Hildebrand The Nature of Love, and also von Hildebrand, Metaphysik
der Gemeinschaft, 38.
28
See von Hildebrand, Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, 38.
29
lentiae and intentio unitiva is described in Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft, which, as
noted above, was published in 1930. In addition, the role of happiness in love
is strictly related to von Hildebrand’s insight into the superabundant charac-
ter of authentic happiness: happiness cannot be pursued directly as an end of
our actions but is a gift, an indirect consequence of our value responses. This
is true also of love. In The Role of Human Love, for example, von Hildebrand
writes:
Affirmation of the other person as such is what takes place in
love. My own desire for happiness can never give rise to love for
him. But happiness does come from union with another—be-
cause of the love I bear him. Happiness is love’s outcome, never
its motive.30
The fact that love is the human experience that can bring the person greatest
happiness is a proof of the fact that this relationship is objectively, and not only
subjectively or psychologically, the most important path to the realization of
the person. But it must be a true and genuine love.
Already in his early works von Hildebrand’s philosophy of love was
based on the idea that a fine balance is required between receiving from the be-
loved (e.g., the attraction the beloved exercises on the lover; the desire to be
united with the beloved and to take part in his life; the desire for a return of
love), on the one hand, and giving to the beloved (which above all emerges in the
desire for the other’s good and happiness and in self-donation to him) on
the other. Love as a value response of one whole person to another whole
person combines these two directions. Only when the two directions are inte-
grated can there be authentic love. And it is clear that von Hildebrand thinks
that this fine balance is possible but only under certain conditions: namely,
when (1) the individuality of the persons concerned is both conserved and
affected by the love31; (2) when the intentio benevolentiae has priority over the
intentio unionis32; and (3) when the self-donation of both persons is the basis
of reciprocity and mutual respect so that each person does not aim to pos-
sess the other but rather gives to the other through intimacy, time, help, and
understanding.33
30
Dietrich von Hildebrand, “The Role of Human Love,” chap. 2 in Man
and Woman (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1966), 39. See also von Hildebrand,
“Value and Happiness,” chap. 5 in The Nature of Love, 101–22.
31
See von Hildebrand, “Eigenleben and Transcendence,” chap. 9 in The Na-
ture of Love, 200–220.
32
See von Hildebrand, “Intentio unionis,” chap. 6 in The Nature of Love, 123–46.
33
See von Hildebrand, “The ‘Gift’ of Love,” chap. 3 in The Nature of Love,
58–82; see also, von Hildebrand, “Conclusion,” in The Nature of Love.
When these conditions are met, love becomes the greatest source of
the realization of persons. We can only fully understand what man is and is
called to be, according to von Hildebrand, by understanding what love is. In
The Role of Human Love, we read:
To the extent that we fail to grasp what love really is, it is impos-
sible for us to give adequate philosophical consideration to what
man is. Love alone brings a human being to full awareness of
personal existence. For it is in love alone that man finds room
enough to be what he is.34
To explain what he means, von Hildebrand considers the case of the person
who for the first time experiences true love. We might think of the young
man who really falls in love for the first time, or of the foundling who is ad-
opted by a loving family:
As soon as a man experiences true, real love, [that] blissful adven-
ture that every love is, we find that he breaks through the network
of self-centeredness, that he is widened, that he pierces through
his own pettiness. Indeed, it is in loving alone that one can truly
live; suddenly, the lover ceases to be dominated by conventions
and conventional values; he is freed from the fetters of what “one
does”; he no longer lives as a “one,” but as a real person. He
awakens to the true hierarchy of goods and values; and above all
in loving, every man becomes more humble. Even the most me-
diocre person ceases to be mediocre as soon as he really loves.35
Among the many effects which love produces in the person, inner freedom
is of crucial importance. Far from being a mere instinct, love—both as a
response of the heart to another person and as self-donation—implies a
supreme kind of freedom. With self-donation to another person the most
perfect actualization of freedom is attained, since only this kind of donation
is adequate to the person: the recipient is an equal, a human person—or even
a person who transcends the human person, in the case of self-donation to
God. Self-donation, therefore, requires above all that one frees oneself from
the chains of egocentrism.
Von Hildebrand also points out the anthropological relevance of
love as a reaffirmation of the being of the beloved. Each one, by exercising his
personal capacities, in some way affirms himself and at the same time affirms
others in their dignity as persons. The lover cooperates with the act with which the be-
loved affirms himself, both in what he is and is called to be: by affirming the beloved
34
35
Von Hildebrand, “The True Meaning of Sex,” chap. 1 in Man and Woman,
17.
in his being, the lover calls the other person to his self-realization. We read in
an undated manuscript from a conference:
Our affirmation of the beloved person is a reaffirmation—a co-
acting with the deep immanent rhythm of self-affirmation, which
is essentially involved in the existence of a person.... In loving
the extraordinary and marvelous fact happens that we reaffirm
and participate in this ontological self-affirmation of another per-
son.... Love is also an affirmation of the immanent tendency of
the other person to attain the plenitude of his own being—to
actualize all possible values, to become perfect.36
Here we find the zenith both of von Hildebrand’s anthropology and philoso-
phy of relationship:
Through a real love, man is drawn to his depth. His relation to
the entire world becomes different, more authentic, and deeper.37
We are not simply speaking of the need to be recognized, which every human
being has and which can affect his whole development as a person, as we find
it in the relationship between a mother and her newborn.38 Here von Hilde-
brand seems to be saying that man requires not only to be recognized as a human
being and an individual person but also to be loved in a total and radical way.
Any deep and authentic human love, like that between two loving parents and
their children or two married people who are aware of the uniqueness and
exclusivity of their relationship, can lead the beloved persons to unforeseen
heights in their actualization. But if we are to maintain strict consistency with
what we have said, we have to admit that only in God’s perfect love for man
can the human person truly “find himself ” and therefore realize his deepest
potential.
There is a meaningful relation of this to the Gospel of St. John,
where Jesus says:
As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If
you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as
I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I
have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may
be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I
love you. (Jn 15:9–12)
We notice that Jesus here does not say to his disciples “try to love me,” and
36
English unpublished manuscript preserved in the von Hildebrand Archives,
International Academy of Philosophy, Folders 51, 60.
37
Von Hildebrand, “The True Meaning of Sex,” 18.
38
See, for example, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theodramatik II: Die Personen des
Spiels, 2: Die Personen in Christus (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1978), 186ff.
then “I will love you,” or something similar. Rather, he says “remain in my
love,” or put otherwise, “you are already beloved by me” and “you just need
to welcome this love and respond with love.” And this is the way to happi-
ness. Christian theology, therefore, gives us the best metaphysical explana-
tion for the role of love in man’s self-realization: since man is created and
redeemed by God, and God is love, his essence, existence, and vocation can
be understood only in the light of love.
From this theological viewpoint we can understand better why von
Hildebrand says that love is both a gift and a task. In his unpublished writings
we read the following:
Being able to love, both in general and in the specific love for
a human being, is a gift of God. But it also contains a task, an
appeal to our free will. And not only faithfulness, not only the
preserving and protecting [of] one’s love, but also the fact that we
have to learn how to love truthfully.39
An Italian reader cannot but think of that well-known verse from Dante’s Di-
vine Comedy: “amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona”; that is, “love, that exempts no
one beloved from loving.”40 But von Hildebrand is saying something more:
love is a gift from God, but also a task. We are called to learn to love. And
this requires an education. This path begins with gratitude for the gift of the
loving relationships we have, continues with our free engagement to tran-
scend our egocentrism in order to pursue the good of the beloved and union
with him, and is fulfilled by self-donation. At a conference at Notre Dame
University, von Hildebrand said:
Yes, indeed, we must learn to really love, and this requires living
in the depth, giving contemplation its true place in our lives, re-
turning always again to a real confrontation with God. We must
always again renew our gratitude for the gift of our union with
the beloved person, go back to the valid moment in which the
true beauty of this individual person was revealed to me. For in-
deed, only out of reverence and gratitude can true love blossom.41
—University of Padua
39
“Der Mensch und seine Liebe,” unpublished manuscript preserved in the von
Hildebrand Archives, International Academy of Philosophy, Folder 61.
40
Dante Alighieri, Inferno, trans. Henry W. Longfellow, Routledge’s Pocket
Library (London; New York: G. Routledge and Sons, 1890), 103.
41
English unpublished manuscript preserved in the von Hildebrand Archives,
International Academy of Philosophy, Folder 74.
Stephen Phelan 161
Love and the Will in

Dietrich von Hildebrand’s
The Nature of Love
Stephen Phelan
Abstract
Dietrich von Hildebrand’s The Nature of Love is a deep and pene-
trating analysis of love as a value-response, in which he elucidates
many facets of, and distinctions within, this greatest gift to the
human person. Building upon his work, The Heart, von Hildbrand
follows the implications of the affective character of love as a
response to the value of other persons, and indicates numerous
ways in which love goes beyond other affective responses. What
I shall argue in this paper, however, is that his thesis, if consid-
ered as fully capturing the essence of love, is inadequate to fully
describe our lived experience of often having to love in the ab-
sence of a full and sufficiently heartfelt response to the beloved.
In truth we are called to love whether or not our heart responds
adequately in a given situation, and this aspect, the verb-character
of love, or where love and the will intersect, is what I believe is
not completely ignored but is under-examined by von Hildebrand
in this work. As such, I hope that the reader will see that I am
not attempting to refute his thesis but rather to elucidate what I
believe is a boundary which I do not see adequately addressed in
his work.
Introduction
In The Nature of Love, Dietrich von Hildebrand offers an analysis of love as

a value-response.1 Building upon his work, The Heart,2 in The Nature of Love,
1
2
Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Heart, ed. John Henry Crosby (South Bend:
St. Augustine’s Press, 2007).
© Stephen Phelan, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)
162 The Nature of Love
von Hildebrand follows the implications of the affective character of love
as a response to the value of other persons, and indicates numerous ways in
which love goes beyond other affective responses. What I shall argue in this
paper, however, is that his thesis, if considered as fully capturing the essence
of love, is inadequate to fully describe our lived experience of often having to
love in the absence of a full and sufficiently heartfelt response to the beloved.
In truth, we are called to love whether or not our heart responds adequately
in a given situation, and this aspect—namely, the verb-character of love, or
where love and the will intersect—is what I believe is not completely ignored,
but rather is under-examined by von Hildebrand in this work. As such, I hope
that my paper makes it clear that this is not an attempt at refutation of his
thesis but rather an elucidation of what I believe is a boundary that I believe
is not adequately dealt with in his work.
Parental Love in the Ordo Amoris
For a jumping-off point let us look at a problematic passage from the book’s
conclusion, entitled the Ordo Amoris. In this chapter von Hildebrand sets out
to delineate, as the title suggests, the order of love, or how much one should
love others based on such considerations as the category in which a loving
relationship exists, such as spouse, friend, child, etc., as well as the values evi-
denced in the beloved. It is in this chapter that von Hildebrand asserts that
the child who is gracious and noble deserves to be loved more than the one
who is a scoundrel. As von Hildebrand puts it:
Yet love in the true sense, the joy over the beloved person, the
delight in his or her being, the desire to be in his or her presence,
the specific value-response of love, all of this is deserved more by
the good child. More love is due to this child in the sense of love
as such and of the specifically parental love.3
Also, a parent may have compassion for the child who is failing morally, and
may expend more effort in reaching out to him and praying for him, but to
love that child as much as the one who is morally superior is evidence of a
moral failing in the parent:
When parents do not [have more love for the superior child], we
suspect that they do not appreciate the moral and human supe-
riority of their child, that they have not grasped the difference
between one child and another, that they live in illusions, that

3
Stephen Phelan 163
their love is not a pure love but that various illegitimate elements
are affecting it.4

Perhaps sensing that this requirement may seem uncharitable to a
Christian, von Hildebrand inserts a footnote here. Considering the parable of
the prodigal son and what appears to be a greater love for the prodigal son,
rather than the faithful son, he asserts that the joy and greater love expressed
over the prodigal’s metanoia is a legitimate response, especially given the other
son’s resentment. He also considers here the parable of the good shepherd,
finding in it a validation of his thesis:
One could object: even if this is true, in the other parable of the
lost sheep Christ does say that one must above all else go after
the lost sheep. Yet even this is not incompatible with our thesis,
for here it is not a matter of more love but of the greater effort
called for by the greater danger, and of being challenged to act
out of the concern for saving what was lost and bringing it back.5
So even in biblical passages that do not immediately seem to confirm his
sense of what is required in the love of a parent for a child, his interpretation
of them in light of his thesis ends with confirmation.
Before responding to these assertions directly, perhaps it is worth-
while to define more clearly what von Hildebrand means by both love and
value-response. First, we have seen what he means by love “in the true sense”
in the passage from chapter fourteen quoted earlier: namely, “the joy over the
beloved person, the delight in his or her being, the desire to be in his or her
presence, the specific value-response of love….” While this is true of the
ordo amoris in general, it does not require that we ignore the categories of love
and their objective ranking. We are not required, for example, to love a great-
souled stranger more than we love a sibling, a spouse, or a great friend. Other
value responses such as admiration, veneration, respect, and the like are at
play and may indeed be deserved to a greater degree by the greater person,
but love has priorities other than these, including those required by, and ap-
propriate to, the category of love in question. And within specific categories
there is indeed a hierarchy of values which requires our response to a greater
or lesser degree depending on the corresponding degree of the possessed
value in the beloved.
Here I think it might be helpful to draw out some parts of the text
which strengthen what is meant by love as a value-response as it pertains to
the will, especially since I am going to argue that it is this aspect of love which
is not adequately dealt with by von Hildebrand.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid., 353.
First, in another passage from chapter fourteen, he ties the idea of
value response to the ranking of values in the ordo amoris:
In the ordo amoris in the general sense, the first and decisive factor
is the rank of the value with which a given good is endowed. For
it is a very general and fundamental law that a response is due
to every good having value, a response that in fact corresponds
to the rank of the value. And this means that a response to a
higher good contains a certain “more” in comparison to a lesser
good. Other things being equal, it is clear that I should admire
the greater artist more than the lesser one, that I should revere
a saint more than a Socrates. This fundamental law of the due
response extends to all value-responses and hence also to love.6
While this seems to put the responsibility for the rank of response com-
pletely on the object, and not on the one who responds, this would be a mis-
taken impression, as anyone who has read von Hildebrand’s Ethics knows.7 To
deny any role of the will in love, von Hildebrand says, is to relegate love to
something equivalent to the love potion in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s
Dream: “This view not only denies love its character as value-response, but
even its character as an intentional act.”8
Second, an adequate value-response assumes a certain formation of
character which enables one to recognize the value to which one responds.
There is here an obvious analogy, one which von Hildebrand draws repeat-
edly, to Aristotle’s examination of virtue in Nicomachean Ethics: the virtuous
man is virtuous not because he does what is right, but because he does what
is right wholeheartedly and finds pleasure in doing so, in full knowledge that,
and why, it is good. In Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues
that continence is not a virtue despite the fact that the continent man acts
rightly: he recognizes what is good and does it but with an accompanying
pain rather than the pleasure that rightly accompanies right action when one
possesses virtue. One freely develops his character through his actions and
decisions; therefore, the will is, to return to the Hildebrandian thesis, prior
to the value-response, even if it is not reflected in the spontaneity of the
response.
Third, again developing ideas from his earlier works Ethics and The
Heart, the one who responds freely sanctions or disavows the response; it is
not a foregone conclusion.9 One can, for example, choose between possible
6
Ibid., 351–52.
7
Cf. von Hildebrand, “Value Response” and “Due Relation,” chaps. 17 and
18 in Ethics (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1972).
8
9
Cf. von Hildebrand, The Heart, 68–70.
Stephen Phelan 165
spouses, although in doing so and once married, this particular freedom dis-
appears. One must sanction all affective value-responses toward persons for
them to be free. Regarding the love for God, for example, von Hildebrand
puts it succinctly:
For in these affective moral responses, which in the actions are
united with the will, the element of obedience is in no way ab-
sent; the spontaneity involves no shaking off of the “yoke” of
the moral ought. The love for God does not eliminate the obe-
dience to God but rather perfects it in a quite particular way. It
goes beyond obedience but does not extinguish it; it contains it
per eminentiam.10
We can extend this reasoning to God’s command to love one’s neighbor (and
surely the other categories of love, including the love for children); the value-
response is a perfection of, not a denial of, the freedom of the response.
Further, in chapter three von Hildebrand develops an idea of what
is translated as the “gift” of love, or those aspects of love that go beyond any
former description of value-response. Regarding the person-directedness of
love as opposed to its value-directedness he says,
On the other hand, love refers to the individual person; this is the
theme of love, and though I love the other for his beauty and lov-
ableness, I do not just love him insofar as he realizes these values.
And in addition, love goes beyond a pure value-response in that
it involves a highly personal commitment that is not obligatory
and that gives “something” that transcends all value-responses.11
But his subsequent investigation of this “apparent antimony” of love re-
solves not with an enlightenment of this commitment, but with how love
somehow puts us in touch with the wider realm of values. The reader will not
find here an investigation of the nature of this non-obligatory commitment.
Also in chapter three, we see a further possible reply to the notion
that a parent may be required to love one child more than another. Here he
discusses a way in which love as a value-response goes beyond other value-
responses in its independence of the hierarchy of values in that it is directed
at the person directly:
Indeed, if in love I were strictly required to give value its adequate
response, then it would be wrong for me to love a person spous-
ally when there is someone else whom I revere even more, or to
love someone as a friend when I revere this other more. This “in-
dependence” of love from the rank of the value is related to the
10
11
Ibid., 76.
fact that a particular affinity must be given; that God must have
spoken, as it were, a particular word between the two. In all these
natural categories of love there is an element of a “vocation” to
love.12
In this we see an example of what von Hildebrand calls the “gift” of love:
it is this word of love, that which is spoken by God between lover and be-
loved within a particular relationship, which requires that one look beyond
the beloved’s moral character and love intentionally the one who seems un-
interested in our love and does little or nothing to earn it. Von Hildebrand
acknowledges this, however, just before the problematic passage in chapter
fourteen and feels that this issue is addressed by limiting the value-response
to, for example, the morally superior child over the lesser; to that love par-
ticular to love of parent for child. In other words, if we only consider love
within the category of parental love for child and not between categories,
then it is permitted, even required, that we then rank the degree of love on
the basis of the beloved’s moral status.
The Reply
Having examined in some detail what von Hildebrand means by both love
and the value-response elaborated upon in The Nature of Love, we return to
the particular passage from chapter fourteen which gave rise to this inquiry.
My reply will have three parts: First, I shall reply directly to what von Hilde-
brand seems to think are confirmations of his thesis from Scripture. Second,
I shall employ a personalist argument which I believe effectively counters
von Hildebrand’s thesis as argued. Finally, I shall offer what I think is the key
distinction that elucidates more completely the dialogue between heart and
will which love requires.
To put it plainly, I find no Scriptural defense for von Hildebrand’s
position here whatsoever. In the case of the prodigal son, I find no evidence
that the father loved the returned prodigal more than the faithful but resent-
ful son, nor would such a preference be justified. The father’s joy over the
prodigal’s return is a perfectly suitable response given his son’s metanoia, but
is it a suddenly greater love for one son over the other that is shown here?
Did he love his other son more due to his faithfulness and industriousness up
until the moment when he learned of his formerly dissolute son’s metanoia?
No; before he even knew of his son’s change of heart he was ecstatic at his
return and ran out to meet him. Further, when the father learned of his other
son’s resentment, he pleaded with him to share his joy. If one were to assert
12
Ibid., 78–79.
Stephen Phelan 167
that love within a particular category of love did admit to being based on
moral status, then the response of the father to the moral value of the once
prodigal son would reveal a fickleness on his part, for such a sudden reversal
of affection is hardly considerate of the faithful son’s moral status. I do not
see this in Christ’s parable: the father rather shows great love and proper
responses toward both sons, not a sudden reversal of the ranking of his love
for each.
Further, von Hildebrand’s citation of the shepherd who leaves the
ninety-nine to find the one who went astray in no way validates his thesis. He
says that the extra effort required to bring back the lost sheep is not evidence
of greater love, with which one may agree, but he does not consider the other
side of the coin; that it is evidence of at least an equal love as he has for the
other ninety-nine, in addition to the “gift”—the extra effort which is moti-
vated by this love. Does von Hildebrand think that the shepherd really loved
the ninety-nine more than the one who went astray?
Or consider Saints Monica and Augustine. Did Monica love her way-
ward son Augustine less when he was steeped in sinful living, or did she com-
bine her ardent love for her son and desire for his well-being with a deep faith
in God’s providence, partially facilitating, in the only way a mother in her
position could, one of the most dramatic conversions in history? Certainly
she was not overjoyed at his moral character, yet she loved him immensely.
Her love took the form of prayer, motivated by her motherly love for her
son. Her love, honored by God, became the vehicle for the sanctification not
only of her son, but of herself.
We see in these examples a reply that might come from within the
tradition of Christian personalism represented by von Hildebrand, and in-
deed a reply is implied in The Nature of Love. Von Hildebrand is right to say
that we love persons and will states of affairs—we do not love (in the proper
sense) states of affairs and will persons—but in loving a person we do will
what is best for him, and, as von Hildebrand acknowledges, the form this takes
differs between the categories of love. In my opinion, however, he goes too
far when he draws a distinction between love of parents for children, wherein
his idea of a ranking of love based on moral value status is meant to obtain,
and love of neighbor, where it is not. This is a false distinction that has no
Scriptural or philosophical basis. I have given what I think the Scriptural
reply might be based on numerous examples, but from within the Christian
personalist tradition one could also reply that we are not called to love a
person based on his qualities, even within a particular category of love, but
based on the fact that he is created in the image and likeness of God. Even
the morally failing child, friend, or spouse, by virtue of their personhood,
possesses an incommunicable core which, as the locus of the person’s value
as a person, is the proper object of our love for him. While a person’s moral
character may evidence this core more completely than other values he pos-
sesses (or lacks),13 it is not the basis for our love of him. We have seen where,
within von Hildebrand’s work, he acknowledges this (as in the “gift” of love
of chapter three), but when the implications of such an idea challenge the
affective quality of the value-response character of love, von Hildebrand
discounts the importance of this surplus to salvage affectivity.
We see in all these examples how moral value as a basis for ranking
love within a particular category is inadequate to describe the word spoken
by God between lover and beloved, or the requirement of love in each case.
This is where I believe the limits of von Hildebrand’s thesis are most clear: if
we limit the nature of love to an affective value-response, then we are indeed
obliged to rank our love based on, for example (and among other consider-
ations), the joy which we feel in the presence of the beloved. If, however,
we are to love the person regardless of his moral, or other, failings, then we
cannot equate our love with our affective response.
As von Hildebrand acknowledges, there is more in the notion of
love than this affective response, but I would argue that he does not develop
this idea nearly enough. In fact, a second volume could be dedicated to love
as a verb, love as act; indeed love as willed within each of the different cat-
egories of love. Von Hildebrand is correct when he points out that love as
such cannot merely be willed, as this would be evidence of a poverty of love.
But he does not deal adequately with how we are to love when response fails:
when the beloved does nothing to “deserve” our love.
Here lies the key distinction that I would like to make: the beloved
may or may not act in a way so as to “deserve” our love, but that has nothing
to do with our obligation to love him and does not provide justification for
loving, in any true sense, one person more than another within a particular
category of love. His deserving of our love and our loving response to him
are two different things; in fact, they are at times independent of each other.
The object of our intentionality, of our value-response of love, is the person
himself; deservedness and love only appear to have mutual obligation if love
is considered as an affective value-response. The lovableness of the beloved
does indeed determine the affective character and quality of my response—I
am obliged to respond with great joy to the moral success of the beloved and
to be saddened by his failure. But on my view, this only highlights why love
cannot be considered merely an affective value-response: God does not say
that we are to love only, or even to a greater degree, the more lovable per-
son; but rather that we are to love him. It does no good to draw boundaries
around particular categories and within them to rank love based on the moral
13
Cf. von Hildebrand, “The Heart as the Real Self,” chap. 8 in The Heart,
67–74.
Stephen Phelan 169
qualities evidenced by the beloved. Love as an act of the will sanctions or dis-
avows the response to the value of the other, but it also perseveres in a way
appropriate to the category when one’s response fails due to a flaw in either
the lover or beloved. How this love is manifested toward the other is indeed a
function of, among other things, his and our moral status and the category in
which the love occurs. We see this consideration in many places in The Nature
of Love, for example, when von Hildebrand speaks of compassion, greater
effort required in caring for or praying for a failing child, or what the surplus
of love calls for; but for the most part, he does not pursue the implications
of these, choosing instead to repeatedly affirm the affective value-response
character of love.
Conclusion
God’s commands, especially the command to love, are meant to be freely and
fully assented to, not merely obeyed. The affectivity of the value-response of
love is its primary character, particularly in the case of the love of spouse and
of friends, as these are the types of love which most obviously demonstrate
our freedom in their onset. But to limit the role of the will to an assent or dis-
avowal of a value-response is to leave unexamined the nature of obligation
within particular categories, and how we are to freely will, to persevere, to
expend the greater effort in love in the absence of any perceived moral value
in the beloved, as our lived experience as lovers and sinners tells us is part of
everyday life. A love that is merely willed is indeed inadequate, as is love only
considered as an affective response to another. This dialogue between heart
and will is where I would argue that the nature of love is to be found, and von
Hildebrand’s work in The Nature of Love is an enormous contribution to the
study of the latter, while elucidating many meeting places between these two
aspects of love. In fact, the work’s importance itself invites complementary
examination of the intersection of love and the will.
—Independent Scholar
Humility in Dietrich von Hildebrand’s
The Nature of Love
Mary M. Keys
Abstract
In this paper I examine the role that humility plays in Dietrich
von Hildebrand’s The Nature of Love, giving special attention to
the interrelation between humility and love as von Hildebrand
expresses and explores it throughout this book. Consideration is
also given to an apparent foil of humility, the virtue of magna-
nimity or greatness of soul; to an authentic foil of both humility
and love, the vice of pride; and to the way von Hildebrand under-
stands the relationship between natural and supernatural virtue
as it pertains to humility. To grasp von Hildebrand’s theory of
humility more fully, both in itself and as it applies to his theory
of love, I turn to another of his works: Humility, Wellspring of
Virtue. The paper’s conclusion reflects briefly on the relationship
between Dietrich von Hildebrand’s appreciation for humility as a
preeminent virtue and his own great-souled struggle against Na-
tional Socialism.
* * *
Humility enters von Hildebrand’s analysis of The Nature of Love1 explicitly in

at least ten passages, from the author’s Introduction through the book’s pen-
ultimate chapter. The content of these passages can be resolved into seven
significant claims concerning humility as it relates to love and other impor-
tant aspects of our personhood and humanity:
1. Humility is held to be an “incomparable virtue,” a “great part

of morality.”2
1

2
Ibid., 236n1.
© Mary M. Keys, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)
Mary M. Keys 171
2. Humility is given to us as a gift, and it is given [datum] to us
only in others. As such, humility is among—and perhaps the
first among—the virtues that are meant to be experienced
and delighted in by a person only as they are found and re-
ceived in others, and never in oneself.3
3. “A certain humility before the other” is an “essential” char-
acteristic of every true love.4
4. The possession of a deep and beautiful humility tends to en-
hance the moral value of a person’s loves, enabling him or
her to “invest” these loves with greater personal and moral
depth, beauty, fidelity, and sensitivity.5
5. Conversely, by loving truly, greatly, and rightly, a person re-
ceives “as a gift [his or her] better…self ” and “grow[s] in
humility.”6
6. Through faithfulness in love a person is enabled to see an-
other whom he or she loves “from within,” and thus to rec-
ognize in him or her elusive and easily misunderstood virtues
and values, one of which is humility.7
7. Any “great love” causes personal growth in both humility and
magnanimity, virtues that are in a certain sense “polar oppo-
sites” of one another; and yet the perfect integration and full
actualization of these two virtues depend upon the supernatu-
ral love of caritas or charity.8
The following sections of this paper will consider in greater detail several of
these claims von Hildebrand makes concerning humility.
Lowly Humility as a Great and Glorious Virtue
In The Nature of Love, Dietrich von Hildebrand is lavish in his praise for the
virtue of humility. While influential modern philosophers such as Spinoza
and Hume devalued humility to the status of a self-deprecating passion and
even a vice, von Hildebrand considers it “an incomparable virtue,” a “glori-
3
Ibid., 11, 153.
4
Ibid., 281.
5
See ibid., 311.
6
Ibid., 312–13.
7
Ibid., 334.
8
Cf. ibid., 70, 243, 270, and 313.
172 Humility in The Nature of Love
ous virtue.”9 Since the book is chiefly about love rather than humility, it is
not surprising that there is no definition of humility given in it, nor any
proper argument in support of its status as a great and glorious virtue. Von
Hildebrand seems to write The Nature of Love most specifically for an audi-
ence that believes in, or is at least conversant with, and somewhat open to,
Christian faith and the Catholic intellectual tradition. In such readers one
can suppose that the humility of Christ and of the saints has already been
glimpsed and admired, perhaps even received as good and beautiful, and, to
use terms from von Hildebrand’s phenomenological lexicon, ‘value-radiating’
and ‘value-bearing.’
For a more developed argument than The Nature of Love offers con-
cerning the nature and excellence of humility, we can turn to von Hilde-
brand’s libretto: Humility, Wellspring of Virtue.10 I will not summarize the book’s
full argument here, but will highlight three of the most salient features of
humility are expounded in this book—features von Hildebrand considers to-
gether—which make this virtue incomparable, great, and glorious in human
personality, action, and life.
Near the opening of Humility, Wellspring of Virtue, the reader is led
to consider the twofold mortal enemy of goodness and holiness: “pride and
concupiscence.”11 It is striking that this foil remains identically phrased and
at least as strongly stressed in The Nature of Love, written more than three de-
cades later. Indeed, the phrase “pride and concupiscence” is a trope through-
out The Nature of Love, which must be overcome for our loves to be fully true
and truly themselves. While von Hildebrand maintains that all true virtue is
founded in, and sustained by, humility, and so sets itself against pride and
concupiscence, only humility itself can eradicate pride, the oldest and most
powerful enemy of humanity. As von Hildebrand writes:
Pride and concupiscence are mostly intertwined in some definite
manner. Persons tainted by pride alone are seldom to be met with.
It is these two enemies that render us blind to value. But they are
not of equal importance: it is not concupiscence but pride that
constitutes the primal evil in our souls. Satan’s original gesture is
the act of absolute pride that rebels against God, the embodi-
ment of all values, in an attempt to appropriate His power and
dominion…. The fact alone that pride is the primal source of all
moral evil clearly demonstrates the paramount importance of hu-
9
Ibid., 236n1, 270.
10
Dietrich von Hildebrand, Humility, Wellspring of Virtue (Manchester: Sophia
Institute Press, 1997); originally published as “Humility,” chap. 7 in Transformation in
Christ (New York‑Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1948), 149–88.
11
Ibid., 6.
Mary M. Keys 173
mility. What is most essential in the process of dying to ourselves
is the conquest of pride and that liberation from one’s self whose
name is humility.”12
This is one reason for humility’s “incomparable” value.
Closely related to this is another aspect of humility’s greatness: its
intrinsic openness to value in all its forms and readiness to respond to value
with a pure heart and clear mind. One grievous form of pride as von Hil-
debrand understands it is the full or partial subordination of value to one’s
own ego, grandeur, and glory, and the related refusal to submit oneself to and
serve true value outside of oneself and one’s agenda for advancement; one’s
own “counting for much.”13 Against this stands humility:
Humility is, first, an antithesis to all metaphysical pride of the
kind just described. In the humble man, the basic attitude of re-
sponsiveness to value has the whole field; he is not dominated at
all by the desire of absolute power or of counting for much. He
grasps the objective meaning of values in its independence from
the pursuits of the subject, and honors them with an unhampered
and adequate response.14 The readiness to posit that submission
and surrender which belongs to every response to value is pres-
ent in him. He is concerned with the glory not of his own ego,
but of the objectively important, of that which pleases God. The
inward nobility of good, its intrinsic beauty, touches the heart and
delights him. In his devotion to the good, he participates in the
harmony of values; his soul is bright and serene, free from the
corrosive poison that eats the heart of the proud.15
This is a second and even more foundational grounding for the excellence
of humility.
A third and closely related account of the grandeur of humility in
von Hildebrand’s analysis is its instantiation of, and openness to, the deepest
metaphysical truths concerning our existence as human persons. More spe-
cifically, humility allows us to recognize our being as creaturely being, utterly
dependent upon and sheltered by God our Creator and Father. Thus, humil-
ity allows us to see and to live willingly in the truth of who we are and who
we are called to be:
12
Ibid., 6–7.
13
Ibid., 11–12, 15–17.
14
On this point see also Aurel Kolnai, “The Sovereignty of the Object: Notes
on Truth and Intellectual Humility,” in The Human Person and the World of Values: A
Tribute to Dietrich von Hildebrand by his Friends in Philosophy, ed. Balduin V. Schwarz (New
York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1960), 57–81.
15
Von Hildebrand, Humility, 17–18.
It is in humility that we attain to an exact consideration of the metaphysical
situation of man. Humility presents in specifically sharp relief that
general aspect of all Christian morality—the unreserved recogni-
tion of the metaphysical situation of man, the attitude of throw-
ing all illusions overboard and granting to the whole of reality the
response that is due to it. Thus it has been said justly: “Humility is
truth.” Correspondingly, the soul of pride is falsehood, for pride
means a refusal to realize our metaphysical situation.16
Only truthful humility opens the path to true joy: joy in being crea-
tures dependent on and beloved by God, and joy above all in God’s existence
and glory.17 “Humility, then, contains not merely the knowledge of our de-
pendence on God but the active conformity of our will to it; our blissful
surrender to God. The humble one feels sheltered in God.”18 Together with
this metaphysical realization comes a fuller grasp of the truth of our moral
situation, our great dignity as human beings and also our failures so often to
correspond to this dignity in our attitudes and actions—our grandeur et misere,
to borrow from Pascal. “Although we are nothing by ourselves, although ev-
erything we have is received, still, we have received a great deal from God,”19
and true humility cannot fail to recognize and revere these gifts in ourselves
and especially in others. “The humble Christian will be the last to emulate the
pantheist in minimizing human personality or in regarding man as a quantité
negligeablé.”20 Thus “[h]umility allows us to see our true moral and metaphysi-
cal condition” and opens the way to embracing the full freedom and personal
responsibility inherent in our existence as human persons.21 These attributes
and effects of humility are also of great social and civic importance.
Persons, Love, and Humility
In The Nature of Love, von Hildebrand locates the essence of love most prop-
erly speaking, as it is given to us, as an interpersonal phenomenon. He writes:
Love in the most proper and most immediate sense is love for
another person, whether it be the love of a mother for her child,
16
Ibid., 25–26 (emphasis added). For a recent study of humility as truth in the
thought of Dietrich von Hildebrand, see Michael Wenisch, “The Convergence of
Truthfulness and Gratitude in Scheler’s and von Hildebrand’s Accounts of Humil-
ity,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84, no. 1 (2010): 85–98.
17
18
Ibid., 37.
19
Ibid., 41.
20
Ibid., 43.
21
Ibid., 48–55.
Mary M. Keys 175
the love of a child for its parents, the love between friends, the
love between man and woman, the love for God, or the love of
neighbor. Love for non-personal things, such as the love for a na-
tion or a homeland or a country or a work of art or a house, bears
only a certain analogy to love. But it is much closer to love in the
proper sense than is self-love.22
In a true value-response of love, it is not the virtues or values pos-
sessed by the other person properly speaking that awaken love and constitute
the object or “theme” of one’s love for him or her; rather, it is the beloved
person as such, “in his beauty and his preciousness, which he embodies in
his own unique way.”23 Von Hildebrand highlights the dimension of mystery
and inexpressibility in personal love responding to “the overall beauty and
preciousness of this individuality, which is the fundamental value datum; and
while this value is nourished by many vital, spiritual, and moral values, it can
never be completely analyzed into these nor can it be directly formulated as
these can be.”24
So virtues such as humility never can be fully thematic to real love;
they cannot immediately ground or awaken love. Yet von Hildebrand’s ac-
count of love’s grounding in the overall beauty and unique preciousness of
another person suggests that the humility of another person may “nourish”
the beauty that is responded to in love. When humility is present in another,
it forms an integral characteristic or aspect of the whole persona that may be
responded to in wonder; wonder that as von Hildebrand notes several times in
The Nature of Love is a fountain overflowing in love and in philosophy.
While a person’s humility per se is not the cause of love, not a rightful
cause of love at least, it is both a true value in itself that deserves a rightful
response, such as affirmation and reverence, and an objective good of persons.
Humility is objectively good for the person who possesses it, but von Hil-
debrand also considers that it cannot be recognized by him or her as such.
Humility cannot be experienced and delighted in oneself. Rather, it is only pos-
sible for us to receive, contemplate, and delight in humility when we are given
it in another, in other persons. This is true to a great extent of love as a virtue, but
it is especially and perhaps uniquely true of humility. Thus, von Hildebrand
writes in his first chapter: “Virtues are in fact primarily given to us in other
persons. What humility is can only be grasped in another person; kindness is
primarily given to us in others.”25 He elaborates on this important distinction
later in the course of The Nature of Love, in a passage worth quoting at length:
22
Von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 15 (italics in original).
23
Ibid., 19.
24
Ibid., 23.
25
Ibid., 11 (emphasis added).
There are two formally distinct kinds of objective good for the
person; the purely objective good and the good that exists only as
experienced. One and the same good can be for one person ob-
jective in the sense of not being meant to be experienced and can
for another person be meant to be experienced. The virtues of a
person are just such a good. His virtues can obviously never be a
good for me in the same sense in which they are a good for him,
for he alone possesses them. But they can be for me what they
can never be for their possessor, namely a good meant to be expe-
rienced, or an experiential good, as we well could call it. Here we
have a typical case in which our stance towards one and the same
thing varies accordingly as it is our own or someone else’s. The
thing requires an entirely different response in each case, to the
point that a response that is noble and appropriate when directed
to the other, becomes morally quite negative and incompatible
with humility when directed to oneself. The beneficial goods that
are not meant to be experienced in oneself, such as all the values
possessed by persons and especially moral values, can only take
on the character of something to be experienced and enjoyed
when they are seen in another person.26
Humility’s elusive nature, the perils of trying to identify it directly
without losing or mistaking it, has often been noted, especially in modern
times when philosophers and literary persons alike have even expressed skep-
ticism as to whether there is such a thing as true and valuable humility. Von
Hildebrand’s account of love suggests that it may hold part of the solution
to the search for humility and the validation of its existence and value. True
humility, as von Hildebrand understands it, has nothing to do with inappro-
priate, excessive dependency on others, or with “servility” flowing from an
insufficiently real sense of oneself as a unique person,27 or of one’s Eigenleben
or subjectivity.28 Yet it is often equated with both, or at least is mistaken for
one or the other of these moral weaknesses; or else what appears as humil-
ity is simply a mask for egoism and pride.29 Part of the problem here is that
when we merely look at others from the outside we cannot infallibly tell
reality from semblance. Only in genuine love, as von Hildebrand beautifully
expresses it, can we come to know another not merely “from without,” but
26
Ibid., 153; cf. von Hildebrand, Humility, 71–75.
27
See von Hildebrand, Humility, 85–87.
28
See von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 200–220; see also, John F. Crosby,
introduction to The Nature of Love, xxvii–xxx.
29
One thinks, for instance, of Charles Dickens’s character Uriah Heep in
David Copperfield.
Mary M. Keys 177
through love’s characteristic faithfulness in a certain way also “from within.”
Love of this sort can recognize the presence of a true virtue of humility in
another’s character and actions, whereas an unloving person might perceive
instead apparent weakness of character or “servility.”30 One recalls here the
old Latin adage ubi amor ibi oculus: von Hildebrand’s theory of love captures
the possibility of sight capable of perceiving—and a person capable of de-
lighting in—the reticent virtue of humility.
It remains for us in this section to contemplate the reciprocal awak-
ening and strengthening of humility and love as Dietrich von Hildebrand
illustrates them. Every true love entails an overcoming of isolating sensual-
ity and allows one to encounter, appreciate, and rejoice in another in him or
herself, for his or her own sake, as we have seen. Every true “being in love”
possesses among its essential characteristics the “reverently looking up to
the other, a value responding enchantment with the other, a certain humil-
ity before the other, and a greater spiritual alertness and gentleness.”31 How
this virtuous humility grows and intensifies in love is illustrated beautifully in
another passage from The Nature of Love:
By loving I become more beautiful, and this precisely through the
special commitment and self-gift which is proper to love, and also
through a certain humility. In loving, I grow in humility because
love is a gift and because I experience myself being “seized” by
something that is greater than myself. Before I had relied on my
own strength and my ideal had been to live life out of my own
power without any dependence on anyone else, but now all of
this collapses when I love. I experience my creaturehood, and in a
blissful way, for I experience that the incomparably precious thing
which I have received is a pure gift. Above all, I approach the per-
son whom I love with a humility that I have not known before.
In the presence of the beloved person I am prepared to take off
the armor with which I approach all other people, the armor of
self-assertion and latent rivalry.32
None of us can know for sure that he or she brings the virtue of
humility to his or her acts of loving others; that he or she possesses humility
to “invest” in his or her loves and with which to ennoble and enrich them.
Nevertheless, von Hildebrand presents a powerful case that the character of
the one who loves, his or her virtues and moral values, will bring beauty and
power to adorn love, and that, correspondingly, love will grow and become
30
31
Ibid., 281.
32
Ibid., 313.
more beautiful because of the presence of humility. Von Hildebrand writes
that the self-gift of love:
expresses itself especially in how much a person invests into his
or her love. In certain people all that is best and most beautiful
in them emerges and stands out in their love in a particular way.
They invest all of their spiritual élan, their plenitude and, above
all, their moral stature in their love…. If we think of Leonore
in Beethoven’s Fidelio or of Imogene in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline,
then we have typical examples of all the great moral characteris-
tics which are actualized and invested in their love. The heroism,
the ultimate commitment that is not deterred by any danger, the
unconditional devotion combined with humility—all of this radi-
ates from their love and makes it a thing of great value.33
Love and the Great Harmony of Humility and Magnanimity
As may always be the case in serious studies of humility, a certain paradoxical

sense pervades Dietrich von Hildebrand’s writings on the subject. Two ap-
parent paradoxes concerning humility stand out in his work. First, humility
is called, in the opening line of Humility, Wellspring of Virtue, and quoting St.
Francis de Sales, “the highest of all human virtues”; and yet in key passages
of both Humility, Wellspring of Virtue and The Nature of Love von Hildebrand
seems clearly to say that “true humility” is always in some deep sense a super-
natural virtue, one requiring an acknowledgment of, and an encounter with,
the personal God of Judeo-Christian Revelation; hearing God’s personal call
addressed to oneself as to each human being. Humility as a virtue thus seems
always to be linked to faith and charity: it thus differs fundamentally from
the fully human virtue of modesty. Consider these two passages from, first,
Humility Wellspring of Virtue, and second, The Nature of Love:
Humility, which springs from our confrontation with God, neces-
sarily bursts the bonds of all mundane immanence, of the periph-
eral, terrestrial, everyday aspect of things, based on a vision of
the world which would forever bar our access to God. Whereas
the virtue of modesty, operating on the level of earthly relation-
ships is linked to an attitude of quiet reserve or even resignation
in which there is no place of boldness, humility implies a heaven-
ward aspiration that carries with it a breath of greatness and holy
audacity.34
33
Ibid., 310–11.
34
Mary M. Keys 179
Caritas…is separated by an abyss from the quasi-love of neighbor,
which is something merely natural…. An analogous difference is
the one between the agreeable modesty of someone who stays in
the background because he realizes the superiority of others, and
the glorious virtue of humility.35
While one can appreciate perhaps the metaphysical-theological
grounding of von Hildebrand’s theory of an “abyss” between natural love
and caritas, and between natural modesty and supernatural humility, it still
seems to be an overstatement. Is there no virtue of humility that a noble pa-
gan could cultivate? Is there no natural human virtue closer or more similar
to supernatural humility than mere modesty?
Here, the account of humility in The Nature of Love’s seems to mark
a leap forward in von Hildebrand’s phenomenology of humility, as com-
pared with his treatment of this issue in Humility, Wellspring of Virtue. Von
Hildebrand, in describing the effect of (natural) true love on morality and
vice-versa, writes in The Nature of Love of what seems a universal human or
natural form of humility, “a certain humility” that bears traces of and yearns
for the full beauty and freedom of the supernatural virtue of the same name.
We have considered this key passage already, but it bears repeating in part
here:
By loving I become more beautiful…through a certain humility. In
loving, I grow in humility because love is a gift and because I ex-
perience being “seized” by something that is greater than myself.
Before I had relied on my own strength and my ideal had been to
live life out of my own power without any dependence on anyone
else, but now all this collapses when I love. I experience my crea-
turehood, and in a blissful way…. Above all, I approach the person
whom I love with a humility that I had not known before. In the
presence of the beloved person I am prepared to take off…the
armor of self-assertion and latent rivalry…. Every great love makes
a person both more magnanimous and more humble, and these values are all
moral values.36
This final sentence leads directly into the second paradox of humil-
ity as a virtue, and one von Hildebrand’s thought shares with that of Augus-
tine and Aquinas: the problem of the compatibility and harmony between
humility and magnanimity, or greatness of soul. Here it is noteworthy that
von Hildebrand finds that only in Christ, through grace and caritas, can these
virtues develop together and reach their highest values in perfect harmony
35
Von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love, 270 (emphasis added).
36
Ibid., 313 (emphasis added).
with one another. While early passages in The Nature of Love suggested that
no real integration of harmony was possible to nature between such—in a
certain sense—“polar-opposite” moral values, the passage just quoted, to-
gether with others (in the key chapter “Love and Morality”), indicates that it
is precisely love—“any great love”—that awakens such polar-opposites and
impels their loving growth together, in search of (perhaps unknowingly) that
full freedom and redemption in and through Christ’s love.
Conclusion
My scholarly interest in von Hildebrand’s philosophy was awakened by the

recognition that he, together with others including Max Scheler and Gabriel
Marcel, and even Václav Havel, had reminded the twentieth century and be-
yond of the excellence of humility, that much maligned virtue in modernity.
My interest was intensified as I learned more about his life and his clear criti-
cal appraisal of, and heroic opposition to, National Socialism and totalitarian-
ism in all its forms.
This heroism and readiness for self-sacrifice for a just and great
cause bespeak magnanimity. A reader of The Nature of Love is indeed struck
by its author’s sensitivity to highness, greatness in all forms, in all “values”:
great music, great painting, great philosophy, great love, and great statesman-
ship, among others. That one so open to height and breadth and depth—one
as he himself said possessing the “soul of a lion,”—should love humility so
much and write of its excellence suggests both an intellectual and a moral
integration through love, of the sort of which von Hildebrand writes so
eloquently. Given his theory of nationalism in general, including Nazism,
as resting on the pridefulness of an “extended ego,” one could surmise that
both his virtue of humility, which he could not contemplate, and this virtue
in others and in itself, which he did indeed contemplate, must have aided
him in his heroic struggle for justice and the dignity of every human person.
For these among many other reasons, von Hildebrand’s life and philosophy
deserve to be known more widely and studied more deeply in the field of
political philosophy. I hope in this paper to have provided a modest contribu-
tion to this cause.
—University of Notre Dame

Mathew Lu 181
Universalism, Particularism, and

Subjectivity—Dietrich von Hildebrand’s
Concept of Eigenleben and
Modern Moral Philosophy
Mathew Lu
Abstract
Modern philosophers tend to regard morality as intrinsically uni-
versalist, embracing universal norms that apply formally to each
moral agent qua moral agent, independent of particularities such
as familial relationships or membership in a specific community.
At the same time, however, most of us think (and certainly act
as if) those particularist properties play a significant and legiti-
mate role in our moral lives. Accordingly, determining the proper
relationship of these two spheres of the moral life is of great
importance, but a fully successful resolution of this tension re-
mains lacking. I believe Dietrich von Hildebrand’s work on love,
and specifically his development of the idea of Eigenleben (Sub-
jectivity) in The Nature of Love, offers a fruitful way forward. In
this paper I begin by laying out some of the chief features of
the universalist character of modern moral theory in both Kan-
tianism and consequentialism. I then articulate some of the ways
in which von Hildebrand’s understanding of Eigenleben offers us
genuine insights towards articulating a substantive account of the
proper relationship of the universal demands of morality and
the particularist demands of my own life. Specifically, von Hilde-
brand’s critique of extreme altruism shows that moral agents can-
not be properly understood according to merely formal proper-
ties like rationality, because each person’s particular Eigenleben is
the only real grounds for moral agency. Von Hildebrand develops
a critique of depersonalized universalism similar to Bernard Wil-
liams’s later criticisms of Kantian moral thought, while offering a
positive account that is in many ways more compelling. Ultimate-
ly, von Hildebrand allows us to see that a genuine Subjectivity is
the necessary ground for the possibility of love, including and
© Mathew Lu, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)

182 Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Concept of Eigenleben
especially the love of God, which serves as the basis for a genuine
morality based on objective values. Building on this insight we
can begin to articulate an account of the moral life grounded in
answering the call of God that can do justice to both our univer-
salist and particularist intuitions.
* * *
Moral philosophers in the modern period have tended to divide themselves

into two camps. On the one hand, the modern deontologists emphasize the
demands of duty upon the agent conceived as a person. These overwhelm-
ingly take their point of departure from Kant’s ethical thought, wherein the
agent is understood most essentially as an instantiation of reason bound by
laws which are binding on all other rational agents in the same way. On the
other hand, the consequentialists emphasize the overall outcomes. These
moral philosophers argue that our moral obligations are best understood as
requiring the promotion of the best possible (or optimific) states of affairs,
which is itself understood according to some maximizing principle. These
overwhelmingly follow a utilitarian conception of the optimific state of af-
fairs, defining it as the maximization of pleasure or preference satisfaction.
In what follows I shall consider briefly the structure of each of these
two modern approaches to ethics and their difficulty in according a legitimate
normative role for love in general and special obligations arising out of love
in particular. Although each system differs radically from the other in its con-
ception of both the right (what principles ought to guide action) and the good
(what constitutes moral worth) they nonetheless share striking similarities in
their overall conception of morality as a system of universal laws or rules.
As such, they both seek to eliminate or downplay particular attachments as
constituting a threat to impartiality, which itself becomes a, if not the, defin-
ing feature of morality.
After briefly laying out these structures of modern moral philos-
ophy I shall discuss Dietrich von Hildebrand’s interesting and suggestive
analysis of altruism in which he develops his concept of Eigenleben. I shall
argue that his analysis invites us towards a powerful critique of these modern
moral philosophies that allows us to recognize some of the ways in which a
proper conception of the moral life is not only compatible with special obli-
gations but actually demands them. It almost goes without saying that given
the scope of this paper the following will be schematic at best, though I do
hope it captures the essence of the position under discussion.
Mathew Lu 183
Kantianism
Deontological Kantian ethics begins with the principle that the only thing
good in itself is a good will. A will is good insofar as it is determined by
universal and necessary laws that it gives to itself. For Kant what is morally
significant about us is not our humanity; indeed, it is precisely these “anthro-
pological” aspects that must be thrown off in order for us to manifest our
true moral nature. Instead, what is morally significant is simply that we are
rational agents, and thus possess wills that can be freely determined accord-
ing to practical reason.
For Kant we live up to our true moral nature only insofar as our wills
are pure—that is, freely determined according to rational laws that bind all
moral agents in the same way. This can only occur insofar as the will itself
is truly free or autonomous. Kant, of course, realizes that there is more to
a human being than a rational will. We are embodied creatures with particu-
lar dispositions, desires, and inclinations that result from that embodiment.
However, he holds that it is precisely these empirical, anthropological inclina-
tions that pose the most serious threat to our moral freedom.
Kant observes that many (indeed the vast majority) of us are de-
termined in our actions not by rational reflection but by our various desires
and inclinations. Naturally, we tend to act to gratify these inclinations. For
Kant, however, this determination of my will according to my inclinations is
actually a species of unfreedom (that he calls “heteronomy”); for, when I act
to gratify an inclination my will is not determined by reason alone. Instead,
the goal of my action has been determined by a passion that I receive from
experience.
Obviously, I can, and do, use reason to determine the best or most
efficient way to gratify my desires. Kant calls this use of reason “hypotheti-
cal.” But when I reason out the best means to satisfy my desires my reason is
thus made the slave of my passions. No matter how clever I am in develop-
ing ingenious ways to satisfy my desires, insofar as I am driven to act by my
desires, he thinks that I remain importantly unfree because to act on the basis
of my passions is to be in some fundamental sense passive.
Conversely, I am only truly free when not only my means but also
my ends are determined by reason. In the hypothetical use of reason my ends
are determined by my passions. When reason itself determines its own end,
it does so, as Kant puts it, “categorically.” Thus, the free use of reason is the
categorical use of reason to determine its own proper ends.
What is it, though, to use reason categorically? What ends can rea-
son, and reason alone, have? First we must observe that its ends cannot be
given to reason by inclination or desire. But if we are not driven by our de-
sires, what ends could we have? Kant’s answer to this is that I am free only
when my actions are determined according to universal laws. This means that
any good end that I can have will not be my end alone. Rather, any legitimate
end that I have must, in principle, also be available to any other rational agent
in similar circumstances.
This, in turn, points to an essential feature of Kant’s ethical thought.
In some very important way a Kantian moral agent is “anonymous.” By this
I mean that the sort of categorical reasons that can inform the ends of a free
Kantian agent are reasons that are in no way particular to that agent. These
particularities must be filtered out precisely because they are the result an
agent’s empirical psychology. They arise from personal affections and inclina-
tions that are largely given to us by circumstance.
These particularities include my loves. It is commonplace that we do
not choose our families; they are one of the most important givens of our
moral lives. Yet, as a given, my particular family is in some important sense
arbitrary. That I am this woman’s son or that child’s father is, for all I know, an
accident. As such, why should these particular people have an overweening
moral claim on me? Why am I morally bound to care for them over others?
The most natural explanation would have to do with my affection
and love for these particular people. But affections of this sort are inclina-
tions, and as should be clear from the foregoing discussion, a will determined
by inclination is unfree and so impure. Indeed, Kant is clear that all my in-
terpersonal relationships should be regulated not by love or affection but in-
stead by impersonal respect. The contemporary Kantian David Velleman puts
it this way: “when the object of our love is a person and when we love him
as a person—rather than a work of nature, say, or an aesthetic object—then
indeed, I want to say, we are responding to the value he possesses by virtue
of being a person, or as Kant would say, an instance of rational nature.”1
As he goes on to explain, what I owe all other rational agents is
respect, a recognition of them as instantiations of rational nature. Indeed, I
cannot properly understand my own freedom as an instantiation of rational
nature if I deny a like freedom to all other such instantiations. Thus my rec-
ognition of my own rationality entails that I must respect the autonomy of
all my fellow persons.
This demand for respect is essentially formal and anonymous. I must
respect all other rational agents qua rational agent. And since it is only their
rational nature that makes them worthy of respect, the empirical particulari-
ties that makes this woman my mother or that boy my son have no direct mor-
al value. Accordingly, I possess no moral duty to treat my family members
with any particular moral concern simply because they are my own family.
1
David J. Velleman, “Love as Moral Emotion” in Ethics 109, no. 2 (January
1999): 365.
Mathew Lu 185
Consequentialism
Let us turn now to consequentialism. Formally, consequentialism can be de-

scribed in terms of two principles. The principle of the right dictates that
I must do all in my power to promote the good. The principle of the good
explains what the good is in terms of a best (or optimific) state of affairs.
While in principle a number of different consequentialisms are possible, in
practice one consequentialist theory is dominant: utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism defines the good in terms of the best possible state
of affairs; that is, one in which pleasure or preference satisfaction is maxi-
mized. This is calculated by adding up the total pleasures of all utilitarian
patients and subtracting their total pains. There is debate amongst the utili-
tarians themselves about both what constitutes pleasure and about whom
the relevant utilitarian patients are. For our purposes here, though, what is
significant is that it reveals that experienced outcomes are the only things that
count in the utilitarian view.
In making moral choices, utilitarianism requires the agent to act al-
ways in whatever way will most promote the optimific state of affairs. More
sophisticated forms of utilitarianism mediate this by allowing the good agent
to act according to rules which he believes will achieve the desired end, so
relieving the agent of a duty to evaluate the consequences of each and every
act. Nonetheless, even rule-utilitarianism, and yet more sophisticated vari-
ants, such as those promoted by Peter Railton or Sam Scheffler,2 still make
the same basic claims about the nature of the good as an optimific state of
affairs.
What do we discover when we consider our particular loves in light
of utilitarian principles? One important feature of utilitarianism is that it
makes no distinction between different agents’ and patients’ pleasures and
pains. That is to say, my pleasures count for no more (or less) than anyone
else’s. Pleasure intensity or quantity, however, does enter into the calculation.
Considering this, if we ask what kind of obligations we have with respect to
our individual families, the answer will be determined by an impartial analysis
of the possible pains and pleasures we can produce with respect to them.
Now this may, in fact, generate certain obligations to our families
simply because family members tend to be closer at hand, and therefore we
have more capacity to affect their experiences than others. It may turn out,
for example, that rules requiring parents to care for their children are justified
according to a utilitarian scheme simply because parents tend to be better
positioned to do this. However, this is a contingent circumstance. In differing
2
Cf. Peter Railton, “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Mo-
rality,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs 13, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 134–71; cf. also, Samuel
Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism, revised edition (Oxford: OUP, 1982).
social circumstances it might turn out that others would be better positioned
to care for the children, and if this is so (and in accord with the maximization
of overall utility) then these other agents should have charge of them.
What this means is that familial relationships qua familial relation-
ships are not morally significant in themselves. Like everything else in conse-
quentialism they are morally significant only insofar as they affect outcomes.
Of course, it is also the case that I am more likely to care about the members
of my family than strangers, and therefore my own pleasures at seeing them
prosper (or pain at seeing them suffer) are likely to be more intense. This
differential affect on me must be taken into account. But again, we should
see that the moral significance of these relationships lies only in their impact
on the utility calculus. That this person is my wife or that person is my child
makes no difference in itself to their weight in the moral calculus. As one
early utilitarian pithily remarked: “What magic then [is there] in the pronoun
‘my’, that should justify us in overturning the decision of impartial truth?”3
In the end, all that really matters for the utilitarian is the promotion
of the good understood as the optimific state of affairs. Different utilitarians
may disagree amongst themselves about what means are most effective in
achieving this end, but there is no real disagreement about the overall end.
As such, strictly speaking, no object can have true intrinsic moral worth apart
from its contribution to the calculus of outcomes. Thus our loves per se have
only contingent moral significance, as I have described above, and possess
no intrinsic moral worth that could give rise to independent moral obliga-
tions. Any moral obligations I have with respect to members of my family
exist only insofar as they affect the pleasure outcome. Thus, I can reasonably
be expected to favor non-family members over family members in all cases
where doing so conduces to a superior outcome.
Eigenleben
In the Nature of Love,4 we find a new development in von Hildebrand’s

thought that offers some intriguing possibilities for thinking about the prop-
er relationship of the universality of moral obligation and the particularity
of our special concern for family, friends, etc. He introduces a new term of
art—Eigenleben—that refers “to those things which concern [one] as an indi-
vidual person in a special way.”5 After a long career emphasizing the impor-
3
William Godwin, cited by Alasdair MacIntyre in “The Magic in the Pronoun
‘My’” in Ethics 94, no. 1 (October 1983): 122.
4
5
Ibid., 201.
Mathew Lu 187
tance of transcendence through value-response, von Hildebrand had come
to realize that an over-emphasis on transcendence alone can lead to a certain
kind of error and that transcendence must be balanced by the immanence
of Eigenleben.
Von Hildebrand develops his conception of Eigenleben out of his
critique of “extreme altruism.” He notes that reflecting on the nature of
love might initially lead one to think that the most perfect kind of love is
the most selfless. Accordingly, we might think that we should pursue such
a complete self-abnegation that we “become indifferent to [our own] hap-
piness and unhappiness to the point of living only by pure value-response.”
Indeed, according to this line of thought, to “take an interest in something
beneficial for myself ” is “to be selfish and to live at odds with every kind of
transcendence.”6
Initially we might expect von Hildebrand to be sympathetic with
such altruism. His emphasis on transcendence as part of the value-response
of love superficially seems to be in the same spirit. However, in the Nature
of Love he is clear that this extreme emphasis on selflessness is a “disastrous
error.” This striving for complete self-abnegation is in fact a kind of deper-
sonalization that undercuts the very ground of personhood. The advocate of
this error “fails to see the mysterious center to which everything in the life of
a person is referred…and that is inseparably bound up with his dignity as a
person.”7
As in so many other things, what we seek is an intermediate between
two extremes. A well-ordered Eigenleben is opposed to a false transcendence
of self-abnegation as well as the selfishness of egocentrism or hedonism. The
mistake arises when we take the plausible claim that love is fundamentally op-
posed to self-gratification to such an extreme that we begin to think that love
requires a complete selflessness leading to self-abnegation. Von Hildebrand
identifies a deep irony here—to abnegate the self in this extreme way actually
undercuts the very possibility of genuine value-response. In other words, a
healthy Eigenleben is itself a necessary condition for the possibility of genuine
transcendence in the value-response of love. Without the “substance” of
personality that constitutes a healthy Eigenleben, there would be no subject to
make the value-response.
Eigenleben thus refers to that which makes us the persons that we
most fundamentally are; it is the ground of our authentic relationship to God
and His creation. To deny or repress my legitimate Eigenleben is to undermine
the possibility of the relationship because it damages one of the relata. Ac-
cordingly, my Eigenleben is not a burden to be overcome, but the ground of
6
Ibid., 206.
7
Ibid., 206.
the possibility of my life as a person.
At the center of all of this is von Hildebrand’s Personalism and his
recognition that love is at the heart of the person. This conception of the
person is opposed both to the Kantian self as an instantiation of a rational
nature as well as to the rational utility maximizing self of consequentialism.
As different as they are in their conception of the good and the proper scope
of practical reason, both branches of modern moral thought nonetheless
both regard the moral agent according to merely formal properties and thus
as essentially anonymous and interchangeable. For the modern moral phi-
losopher what I ought to do in these circumstances is what anybody ought to
in these same circumstances, and that is true whether I seek to act according
to the Categorical Imperative or to maximize utility.
Von Hildebrand’s key insight lies in his recognition that morality has
purchase on me as a moral agent, not simply because I am a practical rea-
soner, but because as a person I stand in an irrevocable relationship to God
and His creation. Von Hildebrand writes, “When the moral call is addressed
to me and appeals to my conscience, then at the same time the question of
my own salvation comes up. It is not just the objective issue which is at stake;
I and my salvation are just as much at stake.”8
Genuine morality must make essential reference to me as a person
who stands in certain relationships; both to other human persons, and most
importantly to God. Indeed, the demands of morality are themselves “ulti-
mately the call of God” and I am authentically called to obey them precisely
because God through those demands calls to me as the unique person that
will ultimately be judged by Him. Heidegger famously claims that my death is
what is most truly and authentically mine, and thus in facing up to my death
my being is most authentically revealed to me. Von Hildebrand seems to me
to be making an analogous claim. My authentic self is grounded in my own
unique Eigenleben, for which nobody else can substitute. In the end, it is I who
shall stand before the Seat of Judgment, and so it is I who ultimately bears
true responsibility for my actions. At the same time, there is real universality
here as well because God’s specific call on me to the demands of morality are
very similar, if not identical, to his call to all others.9
This becomes the grounds for a radical critique of modern moral
theory. We are invited to recognize that the good moral agent is one who
takes a proper interest in his own happiness and indeed the final disposition
of his soul. Moral agents are not fungible, nor are they anonymous. Each is
8
Ibid., 207.
9
Thinking about this interplay between God’s universal moral law (e.g., the
Decalogue) and his unique personal call to each of us opens up a very intriguing line
of thought about how to understand the specific lives of the Saints, including very
difficult cases like the command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.
Mathew Lu 189
called to be in personal relationships in which his own happiness and ultimate
salvation are always present concerns. As such, the attempt to articulate mor-
al obligation just on the basis of abstract and impersonal duties is doomed
to fail. Moral agency is rooted in the unique Eigenleben of each person, not in
the mere fact of his possessing some more formal property such as being an
instantiation of rational nature or a utility maximizer. Accordingly, there is no
such thing as an abstract moral agent; there is this moral agent or that moral
agent, each individuated by their respective Eigenleben. Different moral agents
certainly share certain common features, centrally including a rational nature,
but their agency is not simply reducible to that rational nature.
In some interesting ways this parallels a critique of Kantian ethics
developed by Bernard Williams, who argued in Ethics and the Limits of Phi-
losophy10 that a Kantian moral agent is in some sense fundamentally anony-
mous. What a Kantian moral theory (including contemporary varieties of
neo-Kantian and constructivist theories) cannot fully account for is why I—
this unique person—am truly called to pursue a pure will. Von Hildebrand’s
analysis of Eigenleben offers the beginnings of a compelling account of the
person that reveals the hollowness of the Kantian emphasis on autonomy.
In addition, his development of Eigenleben also offers a rebuke to
the consequentialist tradition that can find no intrinsic worth in persons at
all. For the utilitarian there is no “magic” in the particular commitments that
place special demands on me in virtue of my loves. All that ultimately matters
is the promotion of a maximized utility, which my particular concerns impact
only insofar as they contribute to, or diminish from, the putatively optimal
state of affairs. Accordingly my own happiness is of no more importance
than anyone else’s, even to me. While more sophisticated utilitarians might
be willing to grant a certain allowance for the empirical psychological weak-
nesses of human beings which lead them to care more for particular people
like family and friends, these relationships have no value per se. They are valu-
able only insofar as they contribute to the optimal state of affairs. Thus, at
best, the utilitarian can recognize the importance of my Eigenleben only as an
unfortunate empirical fact about my psychology, not as an intrinsically im-
portant feature of the moral life.
Of course, none of this should be taken to deny that there are im-
partial and objective moral demands that demand my obedience. However,
what we have to recognize is that these demands have purchase on me pre-
cisely owing to my uniqueness as a person possessing an individual and ir-
reducible Eigenleben. As I suggested above, what we seek is an intermediate
position that allows us to recognize both that morality implicates particular
10
Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1985).
persons even as it makes objective demands. Needless to say, we have only
just begun; so much more remains to be done. Nonetheless, this new devel-
opment in von Hildebrand’s thought is a key insight and an important clue
towards the development of a way of thinking about morality that allows us
to recognize the legitimate demands of both universal moral norms as well
as particularist goods grounded in our multifarious loves.
—University of St.Thomas

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Quaestiones

John Henry Crosby, Special Guest Editor

Selected Proceedings from two International Conferences:

The Philosophical Legacy of Dietrich von Hildebrand

Presented by the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project

Vol 3, No. 2 Spring 2013

Introduction to The Philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand

Biography of Dietrich von Hildebrand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Dietrich von Hildebrand in Dialogue

An Ontology of Love: A Patristic Reading of Dietrich

The Phenomenology of Body and Self*

The Non-Violence of Love: A Hildebrand-Girard Encounter†

Dietrich von Hildebrand and Paul Ricoeur:

Principium Versus Principiatum: The Transcendence of Love

What Makes Experience “Moral”?

Dietrich von Hildebrand on Benevolence in Love and Friendship:

Dietrich von Hildebrand on the Heart‡

Self-Regarding and Non-Self-Regarding Actions, and

Dietrich von Hildebrand and the Birth of Love as an I-Thou Relation†

Dietrich von Hildebrand on Particular Questions

Humility in Dietrich von Hildebrand’s The Nature of Love †

Universalism, Particularism, and Subjectivity—Dietrich von Hildebrand’s

Introduction to The Philosophy of

I am grateful to Dr. Paul Symington, Editor of Quaestiones Disputatae, for the

—John Henry Crosby

Dietrich von Hildebrand

About the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project

Philip Blosser, PhD, is Professor of Philosophy at Sacred Heart Major Sem-

Ann-Therese Gardner, PhL, is a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow

Francis Feingold is a graduate student in philosophy at the Catholic Univer-

Mary M. Keys, PhD, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Uni-

Paola Premoli De Marchi, PhD, Dr. habil., is Lecturer in Ethics at the

Stephen Phelan is the Director of Communications for Human Life Inter-

Stephen D. Schwarz is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University

David Utsler is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy and Re-

Fritz Wenisch, PhD, is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rhode

Robert E. Wood, PhD, is professor of philosophy in the Institute of Philo-

His Eminence John Zizioulas is the Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan of

His Eminence John Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon

I regard it as a great privilege to be invited to offer some reflections on the

© John Zizioulas, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2013)

Person as an Ontological Category

One of the fundamental contributions of the Greek Fathers to personalist

Henry Crosby (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009).

Person as a Relational Category

The Person as an Ethical Category

John F. Crosby, introduction to The Nature of Love, xxxvi.

Michelangelo Merisi da Carravagio, “The Calling of St. Matthew,” oil on

canvas, 1600 (San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome).

Edmund Husserl, the director of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s doctoral disser-

—Catholic University of America

The Non-Violence of Love:

If the notion of love is central to communal living, whether in its differing

Henry Crosby (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009).

Desire and Love: von Hildebrand’s

Girard’s initial achievement in the realm of cultural studies was to develop a

René Girard, Mensonge romantique et vérité Romanesque (Paris: Grasset, 1961),

Why Avoid Violence? Girard’s Need for Ontology

—University of North Texas

Hildebrand, “The Modes of Participation in Value,” International Philosophical Quarterly

—The Catholic University of America

What Makes Experience “Moral”?