“On Pure Love”[Pl. 1:656–671]
Keyword(s):
“On Pure Love” is one of many essays gathered by Fénelon’s editors under the heading Lettres et opuscules spirituels. This particular essay likely dates to the quietism controversy that reached its peak with the publication of Fenelon’s Maxims of the Saints in 1697. “On Pure Love” is properly a work of spirituality rather than political philosophy. Yet its theme—the concept of pure love untainted by self-love—represents Fénelon’s most extensive treatment of a core concept in his political and moral thought, and also presents an important source of reflection on self-love that synthesizes several seventeenth-century views and anticipates key eighteenth-century theories of self-love from Rousseau to Adam Smith.