Amor, ergo sum

.... there is certainly one underlying element that is fundamental to any understanding of human personhood, and that is the quality of love. Without love we are not human. It is love that lies at the heart of the human mystery, love that expresses the Christological and Trinitarian image within us, love that enables us to act as priests of the creation and mediators. During the early part of the seventeenth century, inaugurating a fresh era in philosophy, Rene Descartes chose as his point of departure the principle Cogito, ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am." He might have done better - since the human animal is far more than simply an animal that thinks - to have taken as his starting-point the affirmation Amo, ergo sum, "I love, therefore I am"; or better still, Amor, ergo sum, "I am loved, therefore I am." In the words of Fr Dimitru Staniloae, "If I am not loved, I am unintelligible to myself." As Paul Evdokimov sates, the greatest event between God and the human person - and we may add, between one human person and another - is to love and be loved. If we can make love the starting-point and end-point in our doctrine of personhood, our Christian witness in the twenty-first century will prove altogether creative and life-giving.

- Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Orthodox Theology in the Twenty-first Century (2012)