1 Eros and Agape Revisited: Reconciling Classical Eudaemonism with Christian Love? Robert C. Koons University of Texas at Austin 1. Introduction Anders Nygren (1890‐1978), the professor of theology and bishop of Lund, Sweden, was the author of one of the most influential books in 20 th century theology: Agape and Eros, published in 1930‐38 in Swedish and eventually in English and seven other languages. Nygren’s work contains a trenchant statement of the fundamental incompatibility of the classical eudaemonism of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (the object of Eros) with the new Christian ethic of selfless and ‘unmotivated’ Agape. According to Nygren, the Eros of the Greek philosophers is primarily selfish (the pursuit of some good for oneself) and dependent on the prior value of its object (one loves the good because it is good). In contrast, Christian Agape is selfless (one loves another for the sake of the good of the other) and utterly unmotivated by any worthiness of its object (God loves the sinner despite the sinner’s absolute unworthiness). (Nygren 1953, 75‐99) For the Christian, the unconditional love of God and the neighbor is fundamental and independent of any love of self, while for the erotic philosophical tradition, any love for one’s friend is grounded in one’s love for oneself. Unsuprisingly, Nygren sees these stark contrasts as absolute barriers to any harmonization of the two traditions. In particular, Nygren asserts emphatically that Thomas Aquinas’s synthesis of the two was “doomed to failure.” (Nygren 1953, 645) These questions have grave political implications. If Nygren’s absolute dualism were correct, it would, by separating Christian political theology from political philosophy, undermine any possibility of a rationally graspable natural law as the foundation for civic life. Nygrenian theology would entail the non‐existence of any rational common ground or via media between believers (motivated by God’s Agape) and non‐believers (still in the grip of Eros). Nygren’s challenge can also be approached from a second angle: interpreting it as a challenge to the coherency and adequacy of the eudaemonistic theory of friendship and politics in the works of Plato and Aristotle on its own terms. The eudaemonists insist both (1) that it is possible to love one’s friend for his own sake and not merely as a means to one’s own fulfillment (Books 8 and 9 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 1155b32), and (2) that it is rational to sacrifice oneself for the good of one’s community (through courageous action in war, for example – see book 1 of the Ethics, 1094b8‐10, and especially book 9, 1169a20). However, these actions seem possible only on the alternative theory of selfless, Agape love. How can an egoist, however rational and high‐minded, avoid treating the good of his friends as merely instrumental to his own happiness? And how can such an egoist justify the sacrifice