At least some people want to be loved simply for being the particular individuals they are, as distinct from any properties they might possess. However, the most prominent theories in contemporary philosophical work on love are framed so as to exclude that possibility. In this article, I argue that Christians have the resources to say that one can be loved for oneself if they appeal to the love God has for his creatures in making them from nothing. This article comprises four sections. In the first two sections, I introduce and characterize the desire to be loved for oneself, distinguishing the relevant desideratum from other, similar phenomena. In the third section, I note that the appraisal and bestowal views exclude the possibility that one could be loved for oneself in the relevant sense and note some other possible, initial objections. Finally, in the fourth section, I attempt to show one way in which God can be said to love his creatures in creating them – despite the fact that they do not exist before their own creation. I do so by attempting to show that, plausibly, there is a sense in which, if God engages in the creative act for its own sake and the creature itself is that act seen under a certain aspect, God can plausibly be said to create the creature for its own sake – and so, plausibly, to create it in love.

The recognition of the particular in law is crucial, and any good lawyer or judge should be able to correctly establish the potential instantiation of the abstract into the particular. This is the arduous task of the so-called ‘determination’. In his influential new book, Reciprocal Freedom, Ernest Weinrib elucidates the dynamic relationship of transforming the abstract into a determination. As is usual in his writings, Weinrib shows a perceptive, nuanced, and insightful position on the nature of private law. Nevertheless, I maintain that determination can only occur through the application of practical reason—a deliberative process that aligns with the valuable and the good, rather than solely focussing on the right and the dutiful. In grappling with Weinrib’s masterful work, I thus argue that the fundamental premise of his view is ‘the separation of rights and values’, and I aim to debunk this presupposition.

In this paper, we offer an outline of a feminist approach to considering the issue of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). Dominant ways of discussing ETI, particularly first-contact scenarios and protocols, are characterized by what feminism terms male bias. As with other cultural texts and disciplines, ETI studies can also be enriched by a feminist perspective. In this paper, we propose two possible applications of a feminist approach to considering ETI, such as using feminist categories to analyse our discourse about ETI, as well as understanding ETI in terms of sex and gender. We also propose a vision of ETI as genderless.

It is widely agreed that the focus of love is ‘the beloved herself’—but what does this actually mean? Implicit in J. David Velleman’s view of love is the intriguing suggestion that to have ‘the beloved herself’ as the focus of love is to respond to her essence. However, Velleman understands the beloved’s essence to amount to the universal quality of personhood, with the result that the beloved’s particularity becomes marginalized in his account. I therefore suggest an alternative. Based on Søren Kierkegaard’s analysis of the self, I demonstrate that the beloved being ‘herself’ is determined by a quality—selfhood—that is both essential and particular to her. To have as the focus of love ‘the beloved herself,’ I claim, is to respond to this quality, which is to respond to her individual essence.

Although many Barth scholars have begun to argue for the necessity of evaluating Barth's theology as an interpretation of scripture, so far these efforts have focused more on hermeneutical questions and less on the specifics of Barth's exegesis, the specific ways his conclusions derive from that exegesis, and the interplay between his exegetical work and his theology. Accordingly, this article seeks to contribute to Barth studies by tracing the development of Barth's christology through his exegesis of Romans 5:12–21 in the first edition of the Romans commentary and Barth's later essay Christ and Adam – specifically how he understands the function of Christ's particularity in relation to his universal soteriological significance. These works have been selected not only because they give extended treatments of the text but also because there is a wide timespan between them. Furthermore, in contrast to the second edition of Romans and the Church Dogmatics, these texts remain relatively untapped, and will consequently provide a unique entry-point into Barth's exegetical work. By looking at Barth's theological development through his exegesis of Paul's text, we have a benchmark by which both to trace Barth's development and to critique it: does Barth do justice to both the particular and universal aspects of the christology of Romans 5:12–21? In this way, I intend to take seriously Barth's recurring assertion that his project succeeded or failed by how well it functioned as biblical interpretation. It will be demonstrated that the early Barth was unable to allow Christ's particularity to have much of a soteriological function in his interpretation of Romans 5:12–21, and was thus compelled to downplay the particularity of Christ which is emphasised in the text and instead emphasise his universality as the only aspect of soteriological value. By contrast, the later Barth grounded Christ's universality precisely in his particularity; that is, the Christ-event only had universal soteriological consequence because it was the action of a particular, historical Jesus. Yet, despite any problems we might find with Barth's interpretations, both works display Barth as an interpreter seeking to grapple with the nuances of scripture and with one of the central issues of the biblical text, and of soteriology in general: the relation of the one to the many.