Stanford Online : Love as a Force of Social Justice

I was on the way to find an online course to benefit from; then when I was searching for an interesting issue, then I came across to the course named as "Love as a Force of Social Justice" given by Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences with the instructor Anne Firth Murray. I began to look at to the course description immediately. Then I just read the instructor description on course: "I was particularly enmeshed in thinking about violence against women at the time, and writing a textbook about it as well. And I was worried that I might get dragged down by the sad topic of violence against women and I thought, 'I should begin thinking about the opposites of violence.' So, I began reading about nonviolence, which led me to Gandhi who equated nonviolence with love. Then I decided to teach on love, so that I could learn more about it and more about nonviolence."

This online course covers the concept of agape love (compassion/kindness) in many different and comprehensive layers as a force for social justice and action. The subtitles of this course are target to handle biological, psychological, religious, and social perspectives of love by benefitting from this variety of disciplines.

I think the understanding of love in every relations separately by considering the main context of it will change something in a sociological ground for micro and macro level of relations among individuals.

For this shared platform, I chose 3rd week of the course which is named as 'Introduction to Love in Monotheistic Religions'. In this special class professor tried to give emphasize to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam's definition of love by focusing the place of love in those religions. The most effectual part of this lesson for me is "the similarity among these three when we see love as treating one's neighbor as oneself."

While I was taking this course, I was very appreciated to gain new perspectives on the very basic issue of love by comparing with other religions and taking the issue of love in other areas. I strongly suggest you to watch the whole course asap.

Here is the link of the course as well; https://online.stanford.edu/courses/sohs-y0004-love-force-social-justice