Kierkegaard on indiscriminate love

Abstract

The axle around which Kierkegaard's thought revolves is the difference between the infinite and the finite, and the commandment to love all humans indiscriminately is the manifestation of the infinite within the area of the finite. The realization of this commandment will not let inequality disappear; finitude can never be conceived as the realization of the infinite and undifferentiated. The goal of absolute human equality will therefore never be realized within the realm of the finite and political. However, one must keep an open space for it as the area from which the values of the political are calibrated and evaluated. If the goal is considered realizable, politics will be reduced to secularized versions of theocracy; if lost, politics will be reduced to entertainment. The task of the church in relation to the political is to maintain the significance of this principle.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The standard work on Kierkegaard’s relation to social and political issues in his later works is still Kirmmse, Golden Age Denmark.

2 Ryan, Kierkegaard's Indirect Politics emphasizes Kierkegaard’s significance for 20th century political thought.

3 Kierkegaard, Skrifter, hereafter referred to as SKS with volume and page number, vol. 8, 7–106. The work is sometimes also referred to as Two Ages; for an English translation, see Kierkegaard, Writings, vol. 14. That this book signifies a shift in Kierkegaard’s work is emphasized by Plekon, “Kierkegaard's Two Ages,” 20–1.

4 SKS 9,7–378.

5 ‘The Individual One’: Two ‘Notes’ Concerning My Work As an Author (‘Den Enkelte’: Tvende ‘Noter’ betræffende min Forfatter-Virksomhed), SKS 16,77–106. This was intended as an appendix to The Point of View of My Work As an Author.

6 Gyllembourg, To Tidsaldre. Amazon has published an e-book edition of the original version.

7 According to Battersby, “The Phantom,” 32, Kierkegaard “provides a counter-example to a dominant trend, insofar as he is taking the writings of a woman seriously, and is privileging a female perspective”.

8 Numbers in parentheses refer to the page numbers in SKS 8.

9 “Befordrings-Væsenets Hurtighed og Communicationens Hastværk staaer i omvendt Forhold til Raadvildhedens Seendrægtighed” (61). One can only speculate on what Kierkegaard would have said to the age of internet and space-rockets.

10 This is intended as an indirect critique of Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Thomasine Gyllembourg’s son and the leading Hegelian in Denmark; so Battersby, “The Phantom,” 34.

11 “Og hvoraf kan dette [Reflexions Trældom] komme, uden deraf, at den religieuse Individualitets Udsondring for Gud i Evighedens Ansvar forbigaaes” (82). For Kierkegaard, this is a consequence of “the ingrained sinfulness of the human condition;” so Stan, “A Reconsideration,” 359.

12 According to Westphal, “Kierkegaard's Sociology,” 146, this implies a collective self-deification that Kierkegaard views as idolatrous, and ultimately as diabolical.

13 This respect for the seriousness of decision sets Kierkegaard apart from postmodern thinkers like Derrida and Caputo, who are fascinated by his unrelenting critique of tradition and establishment. On this difference, see Walsh, “Kierkegaard and Postmodernism”.

14 So Westphal, “Kierkegaard's Sociology,” 152.

15 Kirmmse, Golden Age Denmark, 268. According to Rocca, Kierkegaard, 225–6, Kierkegaard reserves the sublation of the principle of contradiction for the relation between the eternal and the temporal. Sublating it within the temporal, as Hegel does, secularizes the paradox.

16 By means of envy, what appears as respect for equality is nothing but the insistence that “each be just like the others”; so Westphal, “Kierkegaard's Sociology,” 150.

17 Mass society leaves the distinction between good and evil outside its worldview, preferring instead to speak of the boring and the interesting; so Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Sociology,” 144.

18 “Kierkegaard describes modernity with uncanny brilliance—and with prophetic accuracy insofar as a ‘media age,’ the ‘internet age’ and the age of ‘tweeting’ is concerned;” so Battersby, “The Phantom,” 27. As an interesting attempt at reading A Literary Review as a critique even of our time, see Tyson, Kierkegaard's Theological Sociology.

19 In my view, this is overlooked when one considers A Literary Review as remaining within the conservative mainstream of the Golden Age; so, e. g., Plekon, “Kierkegaard's Two Ages,” 45. Even Plekon, however, is aware of the anti-elitism of Kierkegaard’s social thought; see 49.

20 On Kierkegaard’s social and political conservatism, see Nordentoft, Hvad siger Brand-majoren?, 70–93.

21 As emphasized by Nordentoft, Kierkegaard, 106, Kierkegaard’s analysis explodes his conservatism from within. Nordentoft dates the shift to the last years of Kierkegaard’s life; in my view, however, it is clearly anticipated already in A Literary Review. One may also doubt whether Nordentoft pays sufficient attention to the explicitly theological foundation of the shift.

22 Liberalism thus falls victim to the irony of culminating “in the disappearance of the very individual who is exalted in its theory and practice;” so Elrod, Kierkegaard and Christendom, 68.

23 On the relation between A Literary Review and what was to follow, see Plekon, “Kierkegaard's Two Ages,” 51–2.

24 There is thus a certain parallel between Kierkegaard’s critique of established religion and that found in another of Hegel’s students, Karl Marx. On this parallel, see Forrester, “Attack on Christendom” and Marsh, “Marx and Kierkegaard”.

25 Numbers in parenthesis in this part refer to the page numbers in SKS 9. For an English translation, see Kierkegaard, Writings, vol. 16.

26 For Kierkegaard, the ethical obligation is grounded in divine presence, not, as for Kant, in reason. On this difference, see further Martens, “You Shall Love,” 72.

27 On the ontological implications of Kierkegaard’s understanding of love, see Come, “Kierkegaard's Ontology of Love”.

28 On the biblical foundation of Kierkegaard’s understanding of love, see Evans, Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love, 125.

29 The love of God, neighbour and oneself are the three mysteries that constitute “the ultimate dynamic that permeates and qualifies everything that ‘is’”; so Come, “Kierkegaard's Ontology of Love,” 91. This “love is unconditional, even when reduplicated within the finitude and fallibility of the human being” (108).

30 According to Elrod, Kierkegaard and Christendom, 123, Kierkegaard’s “writings in this second period [after 1846] are devoted to a rediscovery of the other as neighbour in and through the discovery of one’s own self.”

31 On the significance of the idea of reduplication in Works of Love, see Burgess, “Kierkegaard's Concept of Redoubling”.

32 According to Quinn, “Kierkegaard's Christian Ethics”, “Christian love of neighbour is invulnerable to alterations in its object” (355). On this topic, see also Evans, Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love, 147–51.

33 “Christendommen har stødt Elskov og Venskab fra Thronen, Driftens og Tilbøielighedens Kjerlighed, Forkjerligheden, for da at sætte Aandens Kjerlighed isteden, den til ‘Næsten’” (51). Kierkegaard is, however, not alone in his critique of preferential relationships; see Ferreira, “Love,” 336.

34 “Den christelige Kjerlighed lærer at elske alle Mennesker, ubetinget alle. Ligesaa ubetinget og stærk som Elskov strammer i Retning af, at der kun er een eneste Elsket, lige saa ubetinget og stærk strammer den christelige Kjerlighed i modsat Retning” (56).

35 “Det er Gud, der skal lære hver Enkelt, hvorledes han skal elske” (“God will teach each one how to love,” 116). For this reason, “Christian equality does not look at all like earthly likeness”; so Martens, “You Shall Love,” 65.

36 “‘Næsten’ er Evighedens Mærke – paa ethvert Menneske” (‘Neighbour’ is the sign of eternity on every single human; 94).

37 As emphasized by Rocca, Kierkegaard, 235, eros and philia are not replaced, but transformed by agape.

38 “Kjerlighed til Næsten er derfor den evige Ligelighed i at elske” (64).

39 On the offending character of Works of Love, see Hall, The Treachery of Love, 12–16.

40 Kirmmse, Golden Age Denmark, 324, and Rocca, Kierkegaard, 235, comments on the play on words between “Ligelighed” (equality) and “Lighed” (sameness).

41 This is also emphasized in Rocca, Kierkegaard, 232–3.

42 “Saasnart Kjerligheden dvæler ved sig selv, er den ude af sit Element” (182). According to Barrett, “The Neighbour's Well-Being,” 144, this refutes the critique by Martin Buber, Theodor Adorno and others that Kierkegaard is only interested in love as a cosmic interiority. For an updated overview of this debate with what seems to me as a consistent conclusion, see Millay, “Concrete and Otherworldly”.

43 On Kierkegaard’s rejection of comparison, see further Stan, “A Reconsideration,” 353.

44 So also Martens, “You Shall Love,” 76. For a discussion of how love remains in eternity without ever being able to forcefully remove the possibility of offence, see Come, “Kierkegaard's Ontology of Love,” 112–19. According to Come, Kierkegaard succeeds in maintaining the unchangeability of eternal hope without letting it deteriorate into the flatness of a doctrine of apokatastasis.

45 Mistrust is an existential conclusion that does not follow from the fact that the person does not appear to be trustworthy; so Rudd, “Believing All Things,” 122. This implies a subversion of the hermeneutics of suspicion as taught by Marx, Freud and Nietzsche (125). The practical application is that one should be strict with oneself and generous with others (135).

46 Karl Barth therefore errs when criticizing Works of Love for being weak in its understanding of God’s own love. For a rejection of Barth’s critique, see Martens, “You Shall Love,” 77.

47 “Din Tilgivelse til en Anden er Din egen Tilgivelse” (373). The opposite is equally true: To accuse another before God, is to accuse oneself. Rocca, Kierkegaard, 243–6, discusses this as something strange and peculiar in Kierkegaard’s thought, but it is lifted straight from the Lord’s Prayer: Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors (Matt 6:12 ESV). The significance of forgiveness, and thus of soteriology, for Kierkegaard’s understanding of love, is emphasized by Stan, “A Reconsideration,” 363.

48 This is the true realization of the relationship between self-love and love of the other.

49 “Thi Gud er egentligen selv dette rene Lige for Lige, den rene Gjengivelse av hvorledes Du selv er  …  han gjentager det med Uendelighedens Forøgelse” (377). On this aspect of Works of Love, see further Andic, “Love's Redoubling”.

50 So, e.g., in Rocca, Kierkegaard, 236.

51 On Kierkegaard’s struggle with the problem of how to criticize one’s readers without considering oneself superior to them see Hall, The Treachery of Love, 46–7.

52 In Kierkegaard’s view, this is what happened when professor Martensen included the late bishop Mynster among the true witnesses (see, e.g., Garff, SAK, 629); hence Kierkegaard’ struggle against the State Church in the last year of his life.

53 Kirmmse, Golden Age Denmark, 64–8.

54 Nordentoft, Hvad siger Brand-majoren?, 99–112.

55 Page numbers here refer to SK 16. The English translation is found in Kierkegaard, Writings, vol. 22.

56 For a succinct summary of Kierkegaard’s perceptive exploration of the dangers of the crowd, see Stan, “A Reconsideration,” 360–1.

57 “I Forhold til alle timelige, jordiske, verdslige Formaal kan Mængde have sin Gyldighed, endog sin Gyldighed som det Afgjørende, det er som Instantsen. Men om Sligt taler jeg jo ikke, saa lidet som jeg befatter mig dermed. Jeg taler om det Ethiske, det Ethisk-Religieuse, om ‘Sandheden’, og om at ethisk-religieust betragtet er Mængden Usandheden, naar den skal gjælde som Instantsen for hvad ‘Sandhed’ er” (86). Kierkegaard is here moving within the context of an Augustinian-Lutheran doctrine of the two regiments.

58 “Det Religieuse er den forklarede Gjengivelse af, hvad en Politiker, forsaavidt han virkelig elsker det at være Menneske og elsker Menneskene, i sit lykkeligste Øieblik har tænkt  …  det religiøse [er] Evighedens forklarede Gjengivelse af Politikens skjønneste Drøm” (83).

59 Here is another play on words: “Menneske” (human) + “Lighed” (equality) = “Menneskelighed”, which is the Danish word for “humanity”.

60 According to Barrett, “The Neighbour's Well-Being,” 153, this debunking of “the pretensions of political ideologies” is an important aspect even of the deliberations in Works of Love.

61 According to Nicoletti, “Politics and Religion,” 186, the relation between religion and politics parallels that between faith and reason. There is nothing inherently wrong with either reason or politics as long as their ambitions for finding ultimate solutions are kept at bay. The attempt at realizing equality within the realm of the political thus represents “the sacralization of politics” (187).

62 By overlooking this reticence, one makes Kierkegaard into an early representative of liberation theology. In spite of its many interesting observations, Pérez-Álvarez, A Vexing Gadfly, in my view goes too far in this direction.

63 As emphasized by Millay, “Concrete and Otherworldly,” 37–8, in this insistence on the love of one’s neighbour as the point of orientation even for social ethics, Kierkegaard maintains a position that is close to that of Augustine. A similar point of view is defended in Barrett, Eros and Self-emptying.

64 See Bellinger, “Toward a Kierkegaardian Understanding”.

65 In Kierkegaard’s time, politics was a male responsibility. Universal suffrage for women was introduced in Denmark in 1915.

66 Kierkegaard thus “emphasizes the importance of the single individual for the world, not just for religious life;” so Nicoletti, “Politics and Religion,” 190.

67 “Kierkegaard himself is supposedly a conservative, bourgeois, isolated egotist supporting the monarchy and bemoaning the rise of democracy, and yet his writings offer a radical reappraisal of the individual that emerges as subversive, critical and dangerous;” so Ryan, Kierkegaard's Indirect Politics, 27.

68 Come, “Kierkegaard's Ontology of Love,” 93.

69 This is the essence of Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel; see Hühn and Schwab, “Kierkegaard and German Idealism,” 85. Hence the parallels between Kierkegaard’s and Marx’s critique of bourgeois Christendom; see note 22.

70 Cf. Gal 3:28, the point of which is not that differences disappear, but that they appear in a new light.

71 “Redoubling God’s love is both that which makes a person truly human and the highest human task; it is both an ontological and an ethical matter;” so Burgess, “Kierkegaard's Concept of Redoubling,” 43.

72 On the significance of Christ for Kierkegaard’s understanding of love, see Martens, “You Shall Love,” 72–3, and Stan, “A Reconsideration,” 363–5. When being reduced to the arbitrary instantiation of an unspecified “Messianism”, the radicality of the commandment disappears; see Alfsvåg, “The Commandment of Love”.

73 This is emphasized in Martens, “You Shall Love,” 75.

74 “When the criterion of success–of quantitative results, of power–is applied to religion, its essence becomes empty and worldly;” so Nicoletti, “Politics and Religion,” 185. On this aspect of Kierkegaard’s thought, see further Stan, “A Reconsideration,” 354–5.

75 According to Tyson, Kierkegaard's Theological Sociology, 5–6, works like Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been, John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory and Peter Berger’s Desecularization of the World can be seen as signs that we are on our way to reintegrating a Kierkegaardian understanding of society.