Agapism is belief in selfless, charitable, non-erotic (brotherly) love, spiritual love, love of the soul. It can mean belief that such love (or "

agape In Christianity, agape (; ) is "the highest form of love, charity" and "the love of God for man and of man for God". This is in contrast to philia, brotherly love, or philautia, self-love, as it embraces a deep and profound sacrificial love ...

") should be the sole ultimate value and that all other values are derived from it, or that the sole

moral imperative A moral imperative is a strongly-felt principle that compels that person to act. It is a kind of categorical imperative, as defined by Immanuel Kant. Kant took the imperative to be a dictate of pure reason, in its practical aspect. Not following ...

is to love. Theological agapism holds that our love of

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

is expressed by loving each other. As the

ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...

of love, agapism indicates that we should do the most loving thing in each situation, letting love determine our obligation rather than rules. Alternatively, given a set of rules, agapism indicates to follow those rules which produce the most love. In 1851, the English journalist and social researcher

Henry Mayhew Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 – 25 July 1887) was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine ''Punch'' in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in ...

, discussing means to "a more general and equal division of the wealth of the country", characterized agapism as "the voluntary sharing of individual possessions with the less fortunate or successful members of the community" and as the alternative to communism ("the abolition of all rights to individual property"). In 1893, the American philosopher

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...

used the word "agapism" for the view that creative love is operative in the cosmos.Peirce, C. S. (1893), "Evolutionary Love", ''The Monist'', v. III, n. 1,
p. 176
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''Arisbe'

{{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070520131053/http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/evolove/evolove.htm , date=May 20, 2007 . Reprinted in '' Collected Papers'' v. 6, paragraphs 287–317, for the word "agapism" see 302. Reprinted also in '' Chance, Love, and Logic'' pp. 267–300, '' Philosophical Writings of Peirce'' pp. 361–74, and '' The Essential Peirce'' v.1, pp. 352–72. Drawing from the Swedenborgian ideas of Henry James, Sr. which he had absorbed long before,Peirce, C. S. (1870), Review of Henry James, Sr.'s ''The Secret of Swedenborg'', in ''North American Review'' 110, April, pp. 463–8, ''Google Books'
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Reprinted in '' Writings of Charles S. Peirce'' v. 2, pp. 433–8, Peirce Edition Projec
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Peirce held that it involves a love which expresses itself in a devotion to cherishing and tending to people or things other than oneself, as parent may do for offspring, and as God, as Love, does even and especially for the unloving, whereby the loved ones may learn. Peirce regarded this process as a mode of evolution of the cosmos and its parts, and he called the process "agapasm", such that: "The good result is here brought to pass, first, by the bestowal of spontaneous energy by the parent upon the offspring, and, second, by the disposition of the latter to catch the general idea of those about it and thus to subserve the general purpose." Peirce held that there are three such principles and three associated modes of evolution:

"Three modes of evolution have thus been brought before us: evolution by fortuitous variation, evolution by mechanical necessity, and evolution by creative love. We may term them ''tychastic'' evolution, or ''tychasm'', '' anancastic'' evolution, or ''anancasm'', and ''agapastic'' evolution, or ''agapasm''. The doctrines which represent these as severally of principal importance we may term ''tychasticism'', ''anancasticism'', and ''agapasticism''. On the other hand the mere propositions that absolute chance, mechanical necessity, and the law of love are severally operative in the cosmos may receive the names of '' tychism'', ''anancism'', and ''agapism''." — C. S. Peirce, 1893

Notes

External links

https://web.archive.org/web/20111024011940/http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html Philosophy of love Charles Sanders Peirce