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Love's Grateful Striving: A Commentary on Kierkegaard's Works of Love
Soren Kierkegaard's Works of Love (1847), a series of deliberations on the commandment to love one's neighbor, has often been condemned by critics. Here, Ferreira seeks to rehabilitate Works of Love as one of Kierkegaard's most important works. He shows that Kierkegaard's deliberations on love are highly relevant to some important themes in contemporary ethics, including impartiality, duty, equality, mutuality, reciprocity, self-love, sympathy, and sacrifice. Ferreira also argues that Works of Love bears on issues peculiar to a religious ethic, such as the role of God as "middle term," and the possibility of preserving the aesthetic dimensions of love in a religious ethic of relation.
- GenresPhilosophy
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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February 28, 2022
In this volume, M. Jamie Ferreira presents a near-comprehensive commentary on Søren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love that also puts Kierkegaard into conversation with Emmanuel Levinas, Paul Ricoeur, Martin Buber, Jacques Derrida, Martin Luther, Immanuel Kant, and others in an effort to contextualize the Danish thinker’s ethic and defend it from specious criticisms. Ferreira’s aim is to demonstrate that Works of Love, one of Kierkegaard’s most misunderstood and understudied texts, contains resources to articulate an ethic that stresses impartiality coupled with moral attention to concrete difference and the distinctive needs of individuals (9). She persuasively shows how Kierkegaard’s ostensibly opposed emphases on abstraction and concreteness, essence and difference, when read in conjunction with one another, correct for errors and lacunae in moral theories that overstate the importance of impartiality or, conversely, amplify particularized care at the expense of universality. When read in its totality and with charity, she insists, Works of Love puts forth a strict, yet nevertheless contextual love ethic that can account for different types of relationships and even different kinds of love—like, for example, interested care for a spouse or child, or less intimate benevolence that addresses the concrete needs of someone less familiar (259). Ferreira’s interpretation hopefully puts to rest the clearly one-sided view that Works of Love recommends an otherworldly, individualistic, and abstract divine command ethic that forbids preferential love and reciprocal relations. Such a crude interpretation of the text, she successfully demonstrates, unduly focuses on specific deliberations and spurious proof-texts taken out of context, whereas her commentary strives to situate the deliberations in relation to each other and to the dominant mores of nineteenth-century European Christendom of which Kierkegaard was so critical.
Works of Love can be divided into two sections, one of which examines the form of the love commandment—i.e. what it requires of us, to whom it applies, how and whether it can be fulfilled, its metaethical basis—while the other examines its matter—i.e. what is its object, what are the actual works of love. Importantly, Ferreira insists that this division does not map onto the division between first and second series, since she locates a shift within the first series’ fourth deliberation toward how the love commandment can be fulfilled in relation to concrete particularity. In relation to the first part of Works of Love, Ferreira identifies several problematic ideas to which commentators have frequently objected over the years. For example, there is the familiar Kantian concern that love, insofar as it is an inclination, cannot be commanded, to which Ferreira responds that, for Kierkegaard, while preferential love cannot be commanded, impartial, non-preferential love can be. The key idea here, Ferreira explains, is that no one can be excluded from the scope of our love, not that the commandment requires that we perform works of love toward all of humanity. Kierkegaard would answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” with, the “equal before God.” As Ferreira writes, “anyone who confronts you in need has a claim on your love and is your neighbor” (47).
Another standard concern derives from Kierkegaard’s assertion that “to help another person to love God is to love another person; to be helped by another person to love God is to be loved” (WL, 107). The worry here is that Kierkegaard recommends a spiritualized love that fails to attend to the particular, physical, and temporal needs of the other. Yet what does it really mean that to love the neighbor entails that one helps them love God? If, as Kierkegaard insists, to love God means to love like God, which simply means to love the neighbor (which makes love of God and neighbor equivalent), to help the neighbor love God, by the simple law of transitivity, is to help them love their neighbor better. Therefore, that love of neighbor necessitates that one help the neighbor love God does not mean that love of neighbor entails an otherworldliness that overlooks the material needs of others, nor does it subsume love of neighbor into a love of God that is entirely spiritualized. For Kierkegaard, “the world is love’s task,” Ferreira explains. “The world is not left behind in such an ethic” (81). And if this defense fails to exonerate Kierkegaard of otherworldly abstraction, consider how he also states that “to love God is to love oneself truly” (WL, 107). Well, once more by the law of transitivity, “if to love God is to love oneself truly, then to help another love God is to help another to love himself or herself truly” (81). In this sense, too, what it means to love the neighbor does not undercut the possibility of love that addresses the temporal needs of the neighbor. For Kierkegaard, there is no stark dichotomy between material assistance toward the neighbor and spiritual assistance to help the neighbor love God; they are simply not mutually exclusive.
Ferreira summarizes her discussion on the form of the love commandment with four basic observations on how Kierkegaard understands neighbor-love. First, love of self is permissible and, properly conceived, the criterion for what it means to love the neighbor—evident from the “as yourself” part of the love commandment. Similarly, erotic love and friendship, both forms of preferential love, are real (and uniquely sublime) goods, yet distinct from neighbor-love in that the latter is non-preferential. Second, that neighbor-love erases distinctions between individuals and is radically impartial does not entail the rejection of preferential relations; in fact, Kierkegaard claims, one must preserve neighbor-love within relations of erotic love and friendships. Third, the commandment to love the neighbor is unconditional in that no one can be excluded from it, and in two ways: first, in that no one can be excluded even when the other is not the natural object of one’s inclinations or preference, and second, in that no one can be excluded even when the other is the object of one’s inclination or preference. Finally, Ferreira observes how Kierkegaard interprets the commandment to love the neighbor in terms of contrasts between internal and external, inner and outer: while hidden love that never manifests in action is useless, action in and of itself is not sufficient to fulfill the command, since one must perform the action with love. Here, we see a familiar anti-consequentialism that stresses interior disposition as the appropriate basis for moral action.
Kierkegaard is not uncontroversial in his discussion of the matter of the love commandment, either. For example, in the fourth deliberation of the second series, Kierkegaard claims that, most basically, love is “a sacrificial giving of oneself” (WL, 265, 268), a proposition that echoes standard Protestant interpretations of the love commandment and raises consternation about the limits of self-sacrifice. If, as Kierkegaard maintains, the duty to love is absolute, unconditional, and inexhaustible—consider his emphasis on love’s “infinite debt”—are there any limits on what it demands from us? In other words, does the love commandment amount to a blank-check, i.e. that there is no limit to the self-sacrifice that attention to the other’s needs could in many situations entail? Ferreira offers several reasons to believe that this is not the case and that such limits do exist for Kierkegaard. First, Kierkegaard insists that we are not permitted to love the other more than ourselves, since the only person whom we can love more than ourselves is God. To love another in the obedience and adoration owed to God alone is to make an idol of that person; consequently, love of the other cannot entail subservience to their every whim and wish. Second, insofar as love of self is the criterion for love of the other, love for another person cannot be harmful to the other person, and this too imposes a limit on what love requires. That is, if love for ourselves forbids that we harm ourselves, then love for another person cannot necessitate actions that will ultimately harm them, and hence, once more, we are not subject to the beloved’s every whim and wish.
Third, the fact that all humans are equals before God puts a limit on what love demands: while the unconditional nature of the love command means no one is excluded from the scope of love, it also means that I too am not excluded, and hence my love for others cannot be so asymmetrical that it precludes or inhibits proper love of self. Fourth, insofar as I have a duty to love the other, I must maintain myself so as to fulfill this responsibility; the love commandment cannot then demand that in each and every instance I sacrifice my welfare for the sake of the other. Finally, Kierkegaard (like Emmanuel Levinas) sharply differentiates love and justice: whereas justice ensures that each receives their due, love makes no distinction between mine and yours. While Ferreira severely truncates this discussion of justice, her point is that, for Kierkegaard, justice limits the self-sacrificial demands of an infinite duty to love. Yet she leaves open the question as to when we should act with justice versus when to respond in love: she draws on Levinas to answer this question (there will never not be “the third,” and hence most (perhaps even all) situations require justice—but then where is love?), but leaves out how Kierkegaard would address this question.
Also of note is that Ferreira appropriately calls readers’ attention to how Kierkegaard understands the telos or purpose of love. On this, he writes: “To become one’s own master is the highest—and in love to help someone toward that, to become himself free, independent, his own master, to help him stand alone—that is the greatest beneficence” (WL, 274). In essence, to love someone means to help them become more free, to help them become their own master. Kierkegaard’s love ethic is then eminently concerned with freedom and autonomy, not entirely unlike Kant, albeit on very different terms. Importantly, for Kierkegaard, to love in such a way that promotes the freedom of the beloved necessitates that one “hides” one’s help or assistance: “[The beloved] is standing by himself—that is the highest; he is standing by himself—more you do not see. You see no help or support. . . . No, he is standing by himself—through another’s help. But this other person’s help is hidden from him—the one who has helped? No, from the eyes of the independent one” (WL, 275).
Why must love that promotes the freedom and independence of the other be hidden from the beloved? Ferreira offers two reasons, one of which concerns the other’s self-respect: Kierkegaard insists that we must not love the other in such a way that humiliates them or becomes a burden to them. The second reason implicates the idea of love as gift, a central theme in Works of Love that Ferreira repeatedly addresses. For Kierkegaard, God is love and the source of all love, and the ability to love in us is a gift of God offered in grace. Consequently, our supposed gift of love to the other is not technically a gift at all because our love is a gift from God that imposes on us the duty to love the other. The love we show to the other should not then appear to be a gift because, in truth, it is not one, but rather reflects our infinite debt to the other. Ferreira writes: “Unless I give to another in such a way that the other sees that what I have given has been a gift from God to me, a gift enabling me to give to another, and that it is ultimately to God that the recipient should feel indebted, then I have misled the recipient—and that is a form of harm” (160). In other words, the beloved should not feel that they owe me on account of the love I show them, hence the imperative to hide one’s help to the other.
In sum, Love’s Grateful Striving clarifies several complex and often misunderstood ideas in Works of Love and corrects several strands of misinterpretation offered by Theodor Adorno, Alasdair MacIntyre, and E.J. Løgstrup. Thanks to her hermeneutical charity, nuanced interpretation of difficult concepts and tricky metaphors, and fruitful comparative analysis, Ferreira helps readers identify the viability and persuasiveness of Kierkegaard’s love ethic. Love’s Grateful Striving is therefore an essential supplement to Works of Love for both students and scholars alike, a work of love in itself.
Works of Love can be divided into two sections, one of which examines the form of the love commandment—i.e. what it requires of us, to whom it applies, how and whether it can be fulfilled, its metaethical basis—while the other examines its matter—i.e. what is its object, what are the actual works of love. Importantly, Ferreira insists that this division does not map onto the division between first and second series, since she locates a shift within the first series’ fourth deliberation toward how the love commandment can be fulfilled in relation to concrete particularity. In relation to the first part of Works of Love, Ferreira identifies several problematic ideas to which commentators have frequently objected over the years. For example, there is the familiar Kantian concern that love, insofar as it is an inclination, cannot be commanded, to which Ferreira responds that, for Kierkegaard, while preferential love cannot be commanded, impartial, non-preferential love can be. The key idea here, Ferreira explains, is that no one can be excluded from the scope of our love, not that the commandment requires that we perform works of love toward all of humanity. Kierkegaard would answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” with, the “equal before God.” As Ferreira writes, “anyone who confronts you in need has a claim on your love and is your neighbor” (47).
Another standard concern derives from Kierkegaard’s assertion that “to help another person to love God is to love another person; to be helped by another person to love God is to be loved” (WL, 107). The worry here is that Kierkegaard recommends a spiritualized love that fails to attend to the particular, physical, and temporal needs of the other. Yet what does it really mean that to love the neighbor entails that one helps them love God? If, as Kierkegaard insists, to love God means to love like God, which simply means to love the neighbor (which makes love of God and neighbor equivalent), to help the neighbor love God, by the simple law of transitivity, is to help them love their neighbor better. Therefore, that love of neighbor necessitates that one help the neighbor love God does not mean that love of neighbor entails an otherworldliness that overlooks the material needs of others, nor does it subsume love of neighbor into a love of God that is entirely spiritualized. For Kierkegaard, “the world is love’s task,” Ferreira explains. “The world is not left behind in such an ethic” (81). And if this defense fails to exonerate Kierkegaard of otherworldly abstraction, consider how he also states that “to love God is to love oneself truly” (WL, 107). Well, once more by the law of transitivity, “if to love God is to love oneself truly, then to help another love God is to help another to love himself or herself truly” (81). In this sense, too, what it means to love the neighbor does not undercut the possibility of love that addresses the temporal needs of the neighbor. For Kierkegaard, there is no stark dichotomy between material assistance toward the neighbor and spiritual assistance to help the neighbor love God; they are simply not mutually exclusive.
Ferreira summarizes her discussion on the form of the love commandment with four basic observations on how Kierkegaard understands neighbor-love. First, love of self is permissible and, properly conceived, the criterion for what it means to love the neighbor—evident from the “as yourself” part of the love commandment. Similarly, erotic love and friendship, both forms of preferential love, are real (and uniquely sublime) goods, yet distinct from neighbor-love in that the latter is non-preferential. Second, that neighbor-love erases distinctions between individuals and is radically impartial does not entail the rejection of preferential relations; in fact, Kierkegaard claims, one must preserve neighbor-love within relations of erotic love and friendships. Third, the commandment to love the neighbor is unconditional in that no one can be excluded from it, and in two ways: first, in that no one can be excluded even when the other is not the natural object of one’s inclinations or preference, and second, in that no one can be excluded even when the other is the object of one’s inclination or preference. Finally, Ferreira observes how Kierkegaard interprets the commandment to love the neighbor in terms of contrasts between internal and external, inner and outer: while hidden love that never manifests in action is useless, action in and of itself is not sufficient to fulfill the command, since one must perform the action with love. Here, we see a familiar anti-consequentialism that stresses interior disposition as the appropriate basis for moral action.
Kierkegaard is not uncontroversial in his discussion of the matter of the love commandment, either. For example, in the fourth deliberation of the second series, Kierkegaard claims that, most basically, love is “a sacrificial giving of oneself” (WL, 265, 268), a proposition that echoes standard Protestant interpretations of the love commandment and raises consternation about the limits of self-sacrifice. If, as Kierkegaard maintains, the duty to love is absolute, unconditional, and inexhaustible—consider his emphasis on love’s “infinite debt”—are there any limits on what it demands from us? In other words, does the love commandment amount to a blank-check, i.e. that there is no limit to the self-sacrifice that attention to the other’s needs could in many situations entail? Ferreira offers several reasons to believe that this is not the case and that such limits do exist for Kierkegaard. First, Kierkegaard insists that we are not permitted to love the other more than ourselves, since the only person whom we can love more than ourselves is God. To love another in the obedience and adoration owed to God alone is to make an idol of that person; consequently, love of the other cannot entail subservience to their every whim and wish. Second, insofar as love of self is the criterion for love of the other, love for another person cannot be harmful to the other person, and this too imposes a limit on what love requires. That is, if love for ourselves forbids that we harm ourselves, then love for another person cannot necessitate actions that will ultimately harm them, and hence, once more, we are not subject to the beloved’s every whim and wish.
Third, the fact that all humans are equals before God puts a limit on what love demands: while the unconditional nature of the love command means no one is excluded from the scope of love, it also means that I too am not excluded, and hence my love for others cannot be so asymmetrical that it precludes or inhibits proper love of self. Fourth, insofar as I have a duty to love the other, I must maintain myself so as to fulfill this responsibility; the love commandment cannot then demand that in each and every instance I sacrifice my welfare for the sake of the other. Finally, Kierkegaard (like Emmanuel Levinas) sharply differentiates love and justice: whereas justice ensures that each receives their due, love makes no distinction between mine and yours. While Ferreira severely truncates this discussion of justice, her point is that, for Kierkegaard, justice limits the self-sacrificial demands of an infinite duty to love. Yet she leaves open the question as to when we should act with justice versus when to respond in love: she draws on Levinas to answer this question (there will never not be “the third,” and hence most (perhaps even all) situations require justice—but then where is love?), but leaves out how Kierkegaard would address this question.
Also of note is that Ferreira appropriately calls readers’ attention to how Kierkegaard understands the telos or purpose of love. On this, he writes: “To become one’s own master is the highest—and in love to help someone toward that, to become himself free, independent, his own master, to help him stand alone—that is the greatest beneficence” (WL, 274). In essence, to love someone means to help them become more free, to help them become their own master. Kierkegaard’s love ethic is then eminently concerned with freedom and autonomy, not entirely unlike Kant, albeit on very different terms. Importantly, for Kierkegaard, to love in such a way that promotes the freedom of the beloved necessitates that one “hides” one’s help or assistance: “[The beloved] is standing by himself—that is the highest; he is standing by himself—more you do not see. You see no help or support. . . . No, he is standing by himself—through another’s help. But this other person’s help is hidden from him—the one who has helped? No, from the eyes of the independent one” (WL, 275).
Why must love that promotes the freedom and independence of the other be hidden from the beloved? Ferreira offers two reasons, one of which concerns the other’s self-respect: Kierkegaard insists that we must not love the other in such a way that humiliates them or becomes a burden to them. The second reason implicates the idea of love as gift, a central theme in Works of Love that Ferreira repeatedly addresses. For Kierkegaard, God is love and the source of all love, and the ability to love in us is a gift of God offered in grace. Consequently, our supposed gift of love to the other is not technically a gift at all because our love is a gift from God that imposes on us the duty to love the other. The love we show to the other should not then appear to be a gift because, in truth, it is not one, but rather reflects our infinite debt to the other. Ferreira writes: “Unless I give to another in such a way that the other sees that what I have given has been a gift from God to me, a gift enabling me to give to another, and that it is ultimately to God that the recipient should feel indebted, then I have misled the recipient—and that is a form of harm” (160). In other words, the beloved should not feel that they owe me on account of the love I show them, hence the imperative to hide one’s help to the other.
In sum, Love’s Grateful Striving clarifies several complex and often misunderstood ideas in Works of Love and corrects several strands of misinterpretation offered by Theodor Adorno, Alasdair MacIntyre, and E.J. Løgstrup. Thanks to her hermeneutical charity, nuanced interpretation of difficult concepts and tricky metaphors, and fruitful comparative analysis, Ferreira helps readers identify the viability and persuasiveness of Kierkegaard’s love ethic. Love’s Grateful Striving is therefore an essential supplement to Works of Love for both students and scholars alike, a work of love in itself.
January 6, 2019
Helpful, thorough commentary.
partially-read
December 26, 2024Read chapters here and there for Kierkegaard’s Works of Love and Contemporary Issues.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews