HomePhilosophia: International Journal of Philosophyvol. 21 no. Special Edition (2020)

TRUE LOVE SHINING THROUGH THE ECLIPSE OF CONFLATION: WOJTYLA’S NOTION OF LOVE AND THE MACHINATIONS OF TOLERANCE AND INCLUSION

Ferdinand D. Delos Reyes

 

Abstract:

Tolerance and inclusion—the adamant mark of political correctness are among the notions that best characterize contemporary time. These ideas generally express themselves as attitudes that pave the way for processes to afford accommodation into discourses of what may even be evidently false so as not to offend those holding the opposite and minority views. Such an attitude of misplaced intellectual benevolence has tarnished many aspects of daily life: academic, corporate, social, political, and even theological. Whereas the idea of love is involved, it can be lucidly observed how true love is going through tough times given the present state of affairs. There are good reasons to believe that Love is being defined anew in the name of tolerance and inclusion to include instances devoid of the ground upon which true love grows—the common good. Love, the most basic emotion, the attitude proper and perfective of the human person and best manifested in the pouring out of oneself for the authentic good of the other must not be allowed to be eclipsed through oversimplification and be conflated with notions actually diametrically opposed to it, effecting depersonalization and human devolution. In light of the intensity of how political correctness asserts itself, allowing the ugly to be raised and seen as something beautiful, and that which has no sense to be understood as profound, Karol Wojtyla’s (Pope John Paul II) compendium of ideas and timeless articulation on the notion of love is definitively potent to the cause of authentic human flourishing.