[532] 1) The first and highest level: agapē --- in English, love^a, but love in the sense of the New Testament concept of love. 2) The second level: mediating principles, or the middle principles, as they are often called---"middle axioms," as John Bennett^b in Union Seminary calls them---which are results of wisdom^c and in which both natural law and pragmatism are united, come to their right. 3) And then the third level: the level of the kairos, of the concrete, unique situation^d into which one acts. Kairos is the Greek word for "the right time," the qualitative time, the right moment in which something can be done which cannot be done in any other moment. So we have these three levels: love^e; wisdom^f (including the principles which wisdom

has tentatively formulated, or preliminarily formulated); and the realm of the unique moment^g. Let's discuss first the principle of love^h. The principle of love means that here is something IMMOVABLE, unchangeable, which, however, in its application, is dynamically changing in every moment. What is love? Love is the reunion of the separated, or, better, the urge towards the reunion toward the separated. This separation can be a separation from oneself, and then the true self-love---which should be called differently---is the reunion with oneself, ultimately in terms of self-acceptance. Or it is the reunion with the others, and with the ground of oneself AND the world. Now if this is love, this principle of reunion, then it is obvious that here the formal and

the material principle coincide. The formal principle, as we have seen, was the self-affirmation of the person as person. This is possible only because of his complete centeredness and because of his encounter with OTHER persons. The principle of love expresses the union with the others, in the fundamental ethical principle. You cannot be really a person without self-acceptance; otherwise you are continuously disrupted into pieces, some of which you accept (wrongly), others which you reject (wrongly), because you are a unity. And only if you are able to accept yourself fully---and that meeas [sic.] means what is wrongly called the right self-love, the NECESSARY and GOOD self-love---only then