Work
Spaemann's two most important works are Glück und Wohlwollen (Happiness and Benevolence, 1989) and Personen (Persons, 1996). In Happiness and Benevolence, Spaemann sets forth a thesis that happiness is derived from benevolent acting: that we are created by God as social beings to help one another find truth and meaning in an often confused and disordered world.
| “ | The paradigm of acting from benevolence is any action by which we come to the help of human life which requires this help...only when we are helped do we learn to help ourselves, that is, to enter into that indirect relationship with ourselves which is constitutive of for all rationality which is not strictly instrumental, constitutive for all ethical practice." | ” |
He participated in Pope Benedict's Schülerkreis, a private conference with Benedict convened since the late 1970s.
Read more about this topic: Robert Spaemann
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“Even if matter could do every outward thing that God does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the chief call for a God on modern men’s part is for a being who will inwardly recognize them and judge them sympathetically. Matter disappoints this craving of our ego, so God remains for most men the truer hypothesis, and indeed remains so for definite pragmatic reasons.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The work of the miner has its unavoidable incidents of discomfort and danger, and these should not be increased by the neglect of the owners to provide every practicable safety appliance. Economies which involve a sacrifice of human life are intolerable.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“There is no mystery in a looking glass until someone looks into it. Then, though it remains the same glass, it presents a different face to each man who holds it in front of him. The same is true of a work of art. It has no proper existence as art until someone is reflected in it—and no two will ever be reflected in the same way. However much we all see in common in such a work, at the center we behold a fragment of our own soul, and the greater the art the greater the fragment.”
—Harold C. Goddard (1878–1950)