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published on October 13, 2015
John F. Crosby
Is Love a Value-Response? Dietrich von Hildebrand in Dialogue with John Zizioulas
Metropolitan John Zizioulas has recently written a probing assessment of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s The Nature of Love. Zizioulas has thereby opened a dialogue between his own theological personalism and von Hildebrand’s phenomenological personalism. In this paper, I am at continuing this dialogue. I formulate three objections that I see Zizioulas raising to von Hildebrand’s claim that love exists as a value-response. In considering them, I try to eliminate misunderstandings, to identify areas of agreement and disagreement, and to show where each of these thinkers has something to gain from the encounter with the other. Most of all, I aim at working towards an understanding of love that incorporates the insights of both von Hildebrand and Zizioulas.