The Virtue of the Negative: The Gospel Narrative of the Rich Young Person and the Paradoxical Relationship between Prohibitions and Love

Roger Burggraeve

The Virtue of the Negative

The Gospel Narrative of the Rich Young Person and the Paradoxical Relationship between Prohibitions and Love

Authors

Roger Burggraeve Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Keywords:

The Rich Young Man, Prohibitions, Ten Commandments, Moral Community, Virtue, Desire, Love

Abstract

This essay offers a ‘reflective meditation’ on the gospel narrative of the rich young person (Mt 19:16-19; Mk 10:17-19; Lk 18:18-20). In his quest for the fullness of life the rich young person turns to Jesus as if to some kind of ‘guru’ to show him the way. Refusing to act the role of absolute master, Jesus points his attention to the prohibitions of the second tablet of the Ten Commandments. This implies an ethical paradox, namely that of how the negative opens the door to the positive. As boundary rules, the formulated prohibitions create the conditions for love without defining that love as behavior prescriptively. This, in turn, opens up the perspective of the ‘aesthetics of ethics’ or the ‘beauty of the good’ and the ‘community of participation’, insofar as it gives shape to the attitudes and virtuesthat form the soul of the ethical prohibitions. From this it becomes clear how the prohibitions are merely the embedment and not the source or goal of ethical passion, nor that of qualitative human existence.

Author Biography

Roger Burggraeve, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Roger Burggraeve, SDB, is professor emeritus of theological ethics at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium). He is co-founder and honorary chair of the KU Leuven’s Center for Peace Ethics. As an internationally renowned Levinas scholar, who knew him well personally for many years, he has published in Dutch, English, French, German and Italian numerous books, articles, and contributions on Levinas’ anthropological, ethical and metaphysical thinking. Among others: “Invincible goodness. Levinas on socio-political responsibility, its hither side and beyond, in dialogue with Vasily Grossman,” Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture 24, no. 3 (Dec. 2020): 1-96. Inspired by Levinas’ Talmudic thinking, he developed a philosophical reading of the Bible: To Love Otherwise: Essays in Bible Philosophy and Ethics.Leuven/Paris/Bristol, CT: Peeters, 2020.

The Virtue of the Negative: The Gospel Narrative of the Rich Young Person and the Paradoxical Relationship between Prohibitions and Love