Agape and the Four Loves with Nietzsche, Father, and Q

A Physiology of Reconciliation from the Greeks to Today

Goicoechea

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781621897415
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Goicoechea explains Nietzsche's thesis that the agapeic love of Jesus is humankind's highest affirmation, even for sinners like the author's father, Joe Goicoechea, who lived it out existentially. Already before the Q scholars, Nietzsche saw this love as the essence of the Sermon on the Mount and based his philosophy upon it. Throughout the Catholic tradition agape fulfilled the affection of Empedocles, the eros of Plato, the friendship of Aristotle, and the agape of Plotinus. While, as Anders Nygren shows, modernists protested such syntheses, now postmodernists once again let agape and the four loves contribute to one another.

Part One

Joyful Beginnings

I. Father

I.1 Of affectionate beginnings with his Basque family

I,1.1 Identification in mother-son bonding

Daddy was born on February 4, 1910 in Boise, Idaho which was

one of the largest Basque settlements outside of Spain and France.

Though the last half of January and the first half of February

are the times of bitterest cold in that mountain desert valley,

baby Jose Manuel was peaceful warm in his mother’s serenity.

Daddy was born into the quest of his mother, Eulalia Sabala,

and into the dreams of his father, Eleuterio Goicoechea.

Gramma Goicoechea, who grew up in that tiny seaport cove

of Elanchove, Spain, lost her first husband in a fishing accident

out on the North Sea when her two daughters were but babies.

As a young woman in her mid-twenties, Gramma was sponsored

by her brother, working in Boise to come join him in America.

So with her four-year-old daughter, Claudia, and her two-year-

old daughter, Mary, she took the boat to New York City and then

traveled across the United States on the train out to Idaho.

Without knowing any English she met Eleuterio and in 1907,

a few months after she reached Boise, she and he were married.

A year later their baby girl, Angelus, came to bless them and

a year after that their first baby boy, little Jose, was born.

During the nine months within his mother’s womb baby Jose

identified in the spirit of his physiology with his mother’s

great faith and strength and courage in anxiety before adversity.

The Basques were hunter-gatherers from cave-painting antiquity

and their shamanic culture became one with their Catholic faith.

Gramma Goicoechea prayed through the day and God’s presence

let her be a fearless fighter as she adventured together with

her new husband and received help from her first two daughters

in caring for her two still nursing newest little babies.

Already in her womb and through the first year of his life

Daddy bonded with his mother and thereby was already

becoming the fighter whose faith could meet any challenge.

I,1.2 Daddy’s daddy and their Tuttle ranch

Daddy’s daddy, Eleuterio Goicoechea, was born on a farm near Lekeitio,

that town where a young Basque dances on the casket as they carry it

from their beautiful church to the graveyard of their blessed dead.

He came to Boise all alone in his mid-twenties and like all Basques

was loyal and hardworking and thus experienced quick upward mobility.

Eleuterio was as proud as he could be of his little daughter and

of his new baby boy who basked in the constant affection, not only

of his mother, father and two older sisters, but of the whole

Basque community who lived in their part of town in boarding houses.

Many Basko men became sheepherders, but Eleuterio who was

nicknamed “legs” because of his long athletic legs was chosen

and chose to run a ranch in a tiny desert oasis called Tuttle.

Gramma Goicoechea’s brother, who sponsored her to come from Spain,

was a cook for the big new construction company of Morisen-Knudson.

And just as he helped Gramma to come to Boise from Spain so

he helped her to find her husband and to get their Tuttle Ranch.

So out there in the desert just East of Gooding Gramma, Grampa,

Aunts Claudia, Mary and Angelus and Daddy as a two-year-old,

began to live their dream of running a farm in the new country.

They had a few milk cows, a few sheep, some chickens and

a team of horses that pulled them to town and helped with the crops.

The desert was un...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Detailed Line of the Argument
• Introduction
• Part One: Joyful Beginnings
• Part Two: Sorrowful Proceedings
• Part Three: Glorious Finishings
• Bibliography