Ordo amoris as the Philosophical Horizon of Fertility

Abstract

The study examines the philosophical intelligibility of love through the concept of ordo amoris, in its anthropological and ethical dimensions. It proceeds from the insight that love is not merely an affective phenomenon, but an original order that structures human cognition, action, and responsibility. Drawing on Max Scheler’s value ethics and Renzo Gerardi’s relational ethics, the paper argues that ethical comportment is grounded in the experience of responsibility toward the other. Through an analysis of Blaise Pascal’s theory of the “three orders,” the study shows that love possesses a distinctive rationality irreducible to instinctual drives or instrumental reason. From the hermeneutical horizon of the “order of the heart,” fertility emerges as a limit-situation of the order of love, in which human freedom and openness to ultimate meaning are simultaneously disclosed.