The liberationist caritas. Pascalian heritage in the philosophical argumentation of Gustavo Gutierrez in his Theology of Liberation

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to review the theological approaches of Gustavo Gutierrez (1928) expressed in his Teología de la Liberación [TL] and to shed light on the liberationist constitution of the Pascalian caritas adopted by said author in this book. Our work proceeds in three parts, namely, firstly (I) we will verify the concept of charity in the Teología de la Liberación of G. Gutierrez—after  contextualizing his life and work and summarizing the main argumentative nuclei on which the latter is built—to corroborate the attention given to such teological virtue as a vehicle for his liberationist reaffirmation; Then (II) we approach Pascal’s caritas from the (anti) Cartesian metaphysics and anti-probabilism of Port Royale, providing attention to the critical editions of Pascal’s work - proposed for the recent forty-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Frenchman and in the last decade in different languages — and assuming the notion of caritas subtilior as our own categorical invention; and, finally, (III) we will argue the liberationist background of Pascalian caritas [subtilior] resignified by G. Gutierrez in his theological work.