Love and the Ethical
This chapter aims to put some flesh on the bones of the biblical commandment Love thy neighbor as thyself. Goodman situates the Mosaic ethics of love and its commands in behalf of existential desert and the dignity of personhood. Biblical and rabbinic thinking here and in particular in the work of the philosopher Bahya ibn Paquda stands out vividly alongside the ideas of Hobbes, Hume, Adam Smith, and John Rawls. It is not utility or the sheer positivity of the Law that motivates love of one's neighbor, or anything so abstract as Kantian duty, but the very claim the neighbor makes on us. In this light, the commandment becomes more robust and concrete, its expectations clarified and enlarged.
Keywords: Love thy neighbor, rabbinic ethics, David Hume, Adam Smith, Bahya ibn Paquda, Immanuel Kant, Legal positivism (biblical), Dignity, Desert, John Rawls
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