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Document Details :

Title: The Perception and Practice of Love in the Love that is Godself
Subtitle: A Response to Jan-Olav Henriksen
Author(s): MÜHLING, Markus
Journal: Louvain Studies
Volume: 41    Issue: 3   Date: 2018   
Pages: 286-297
DOI: 10.2143/LS.41.3.3285318

Abstract :
In his response to Jan-Olav Henriksen’s contribution, Markus Mühling develops four theses to challenge the background theories which Henriksen used to develop his theological anthropology. Firstly, in Henriksen’s use of Kohutian psychology and reference to Theories of Mind, there is a remainder of the individualism and cognitivism that prevents a full acknowledgment of perichoretic relationality in our lives. Secondly, it seems that there is also a remainder of representationalism which could actually be avoided if one sees what seem to be relations of representations as relations of resonance, and if one understands experience not primarily as predication but as perception. Thirdly, the use of Peircean semiotics seems to be too restricted to humans and used in a manner that separates humans from other kinds of animals; Mühling, however, suggests an alternative approach in terms of resonances. Fourthly, if we were to hike up this alternative path, we would have to stress further features that are decisive for a realistic understanding of the experiences of unconditional love and of God. These conditions of the possibility of love consist of: the primacy of becoming over abstract being; contingency and narrativity; attentionality; and the asymmetry of unconditional love.

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