The Quiet Lake and the Hidden Spring: Locating the Ground in Kierkegaard's Works of Love

At the end of the prayer with which he begins Works of Love (1847), Søren Kierkegaard notes that while ‘works of love’ might normally be viewed as a subset of worthwhile human endeavours or ‘works’, from heaven's perspective no work can be pleasing unless it is a work of love. From this arises the question—which Kierkegaard himself moves swiftly to address—of what distinguishes a work of ‘love’ from other, non-loving works? In this article, and with particular reference to Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), I highlight how Kierkegaard's answer to this question draws upon the theological tradition that Bernard McGinn has called ‘the mysticism of the ground’.

“Your Existence is a Delight to Us.” An Investigation into the Identity of the Neighbour in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love

In this paper, I look into the identity of the neighbour in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, whom I argue has not been identified adequately by previous interpreters. I propose to clarify the identity of the neighbour by contrasting her with the ethical other as presented in four alternative ethical theories. I then set out to reconstruct ethical otherhood in a comparative analysis of Aristotelian virtue ethics, Kantian deontology, Hegelian theory of recognition, and Millian utilitarianism. Ultimately, through a both close and—admittedly—productive reading of Works of Love, I interpret and discuss the fundamental features of Kierkegaard’s neighbour over against these four positions.

In the Middle of Love: At the Fringes of Personhood. An Explorative Essay on the Dialogue of I and Thou and the Poetics of the Impersonal

In Works of Love, Søren Kierkegaard introduces the idea that God’s love is “the middle term.” It is a love that manages to be in the middle of all created being. To that extent, love is not just one relation among others, but the “being-in-relation” as such. It is, in Heideggerian terms, “the with” of being-with. This implies, further, that the middle is as inconspicuous as it is ubiquitous. According to Martin Buber, however, there is a privileged relation to the middle in the I–Thou relation. It is here that it reveals itself. For Buber, this is so on the strength of two important traits of this dyadic relation: that it is dialogical and personal. It is in dialogue that I and You are responsive to the word of God; and it is in personal co-presence that the theophany of “the absolute person” may occur. This paper explores these tenets of “philosophy of dialogue” at their fringes. Accordingly, it explores the impersonal in the person and the monologue in dialogue. More specifically, it aims to show how: (a) the impersonal in the person is disclosed in love and angst and how (b) the monologue in dialogue is expressed in a poetics of the impersonal.

Kierkegaard and forgiveness

This chapter introduces Kierkegaard’s contribution to the debate about forgiveness. The first part gives an overview of his explicit accounts of forgiveness, focusing upon the divine forgiveness of sins and its implications for interpersonal (human) forgiveness and self-forgiveness. This incorporates discussion of some key New Testament passages on forgiveness. The second part explores what difference is made by understanding interpersonal forgiveness as a ‘work of love’. Against the objection that ‘love’s vision’ involves wilful blindness, it is argued (drawing on both Kierkegaard and Troy Jollimore) that love has its own epistemic standards and that Jollimore’s claims about romantic love and friendship can in the relevant respects be extended to the case of agapic neighbour-love. In developing this view—which is seen as echoing important themes in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love—the importance of understanding ‘love’s forgiveness’ in the light of other virtues, especially hope and humility, begins to be shown.

Kierkegaard and Beauvoir: Existential Ethics as a Humanism

Simone de Beauvoir’s moral philosophy has received relatively little attention in the scholarly world. This article seeks to bring her Ethics of Ambiguity into dialogue with Søren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, two works written a century apart, but which both strive to offer a response to challenges concerning the dangers of existential philosophy’s focus on subjectivity. Despite some fundamental differences in orientation, especially with regard to questions of action and social change, Beauvoir and Kierkegaard’s works offer complementary models for understanding how existential ethics can move beyond subjectivist stances and allow for attentiveness to the plurality of concrete, singular others.

Does Kierkegaard’s Rewritten Parable of the Good Samaritan Leave the World to the Devil? Kierkegaard and Adorno on What it Means to Love one’s Neighbor in the Modern World

This article critically examines and discusses the charge, raised by Adorno in his essay on Works of Love, that Kierkegaard’s rewriting of the Gospel story of the good Samaritan reduces neighbor love to abstract inwardness. It has been somewhat ignored in the reception of Adorno’s text that he also praises Kierkegaard as a critic of his time. I explore Adorno’s appreciation of this dimension in Works of Love and seek to develop it further by examining Kierkegaard’s sharp eye for discovering how the inhumanity of the slavery in the past persists in more hidden and subtle ways in the modern world dominated by the instrumental rationality of economics.

Disability, Anthropology, and Flourishing with God: A Kierkegaardian Account

How can the writings of Søren Kierkegaard address contemporary issues in the theology of disability? For while it is surely true that Kierkegaard had ‘no concept of “disability” in the contemporary sense’ of the term, I will argue that there is much in Kierkegaard’s writings that addresses issues related to disability. I begin by exploring Kierkegaard’s discussion of suffering and its application to disability theology. I argue that while this has some application, it doesn’t get to the heart of the issue, since a theology of disability must address more than the issue of suffering. Instead, I argue, we should look to Kierkegaard’s anthropology because it is here that we find a vision of what it is to be truly human, and, therefore, how we might understand what it means for those with disabilities to be truly human. To do this, I outline the account of the human being as spirit in The Sickness Unto Death, noting its inability to include certain individuals with severe cognitive disabilities. A straightforward reading of Sickness suggests that Kierkegaard would think of those with cognitive disabilities as similar to non-human animals in various respects. Noting the shortcomings of such an approach, I then offer a constructive amendment to Kierkegaard’s anthropology that can retain Kierkegaard’s concern that true human flourishing is found only in relationship with God. While Kierkegaard’s emphasis on teleology can be both affirming and inclusive for those with disability, I argue that we need to look to Kierkegaard’s account of ‘neighbor’ in Works of Love to overcome the difficulties with his seemingly exclusive anthropology.