Works of Love : Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol 16

479 Pages·1995·3.33 MB·English

by  Kierkegaard

WORKS OF LOVE
KIERKEGAARD’S WRITINGS, XVI
WORKS OF LOVE
by Søren Kierkegaard
Edited and Translated
with Introduction and Notes by
Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong
Copyright ©1995 by Postscript, Inc.
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
Chichester, West Sussex
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855
[Kjerlighedens Gjerninger. English]
Works of Love / by Søren Kierkegaard;
edited and translated with introduction and notes by Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong
p. cm. — (Kierkegaard’s writings; 16)
Translation of: Kjerlighedens Gjerninger.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-691-03792-2 (cloth) ISBN 0-691-05916-0 (paperback)
1. Love—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Spiritual life—Christianity.
I. Hong, Howard Vincent, 1912-. II. Hong, Edna Hatlestad, 1913-.
III. Title. IV. Series: Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855. Works. English. 1978;
16.
BV4505.K4213 1995 241’.4—dc20 94-23103
Production of this volume has been made possible in part by a grant from
the Division of Research Programs of the National Endowment
for the Humanities, an independent federal agency
Princeton University Press books are printed
on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council on Library Resources
Designed by Frank Mahood
Second printing, and first paperback printing, 1998
Printed in the United States of America
http// pup.princeton.edu
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-05916-7
ISBN-10: 0-691-05916-0
CONTENTS
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
Works of Love
First Series
PREFACE
I. Love’s Hidden Life and Its Recognizability by Its Fruits
II. A. You Shall Love
B. You Shall Love the Neighbor
C. You Shall Love the Neighbor
III. A. Romans 13:10. Love Is the Fulfilling of the Law
B. Love Is a Matter of Conscience
IV. Our Duty to Love the People We See
V. Our Duty to Remain in Love’s Debt to One Another
Second Series
PREFACE
I. Love Builds Up
II. Love Believes All Things—and Yet Is Never Deceived
III. Love Hopes All Things—and Yet Is Never Put to Shame
IV. Love Does Not Seek Its Own
V. Love Hides a Multitude of Sins
VI. Love Abides
VII. Mercifulness, a Work of Love Even If It Can Give Nothing and Is Able to
Do Nothing
VIII. The Victory of the Conciliatory Spirit in Love, Which Wins the One
Overcome
IX. The Work of Love in Recollecting One Who Is Dead
X. The Work of Love in Praising Love
CONCLUSION
SUPPLEMENT
Key to References
Original Title Pages of Works of Love, First and Second Series
Selected Entries from Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers Pertaining to
Works of Love
EDITORIAL APPENDIX
Acknowledgments
Collation of Works of Love in the Danish Editions of Kierkegaard’s
Collected Works
Notes
Bibliographical Note
Index
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
Works of Love was published (September 29, 1847) about six months after the
publication of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (March 13, 1847), a
volume Kierkegaard dedicated to “that single individual,”1 “whom I with joy and
gratitude call my reader.”2 Reflecting in his usual dialectical way upon the
emphasis on individuality, the individual, and the single individual, Kierkegaard
wrote a journal entry in which he anticipated the response to the discourses and
formulated the title for his next book: Despite everything people ought to have
learned about my maieutic carefulness, by proceeding slowly and continually
letting it seem as if I knew nothing more, not the next thing—now on the
occasion of my new upbuilding discourses they will probably bawl out that I do
not know what comes next, that I know nothing about sociality….
Now I have my theme of the next book. It will be called:
Works of Love3
The writing of the First Series of Works of Love was finished in April 1847,4 the
Second Series on August 2,5 and the manuscript was delivered to the printer on
August 17.6 In addition to writing a large, finely crafted, sharply deliberated
book, Kierkegaard devoted considerable time to other reflection and writing. “I
now would like to give a series of twelve lectures on the dialectic of
communication. After that, twelve lectures on erotic love [Elskov], friendship,
and love [Kjerlighed].”7 “So I once again have put the lectures away and have
taken up my interrupted work (the first part of which I have finished): Works of
Love”8 Obviously the substance of the contemplated lectures on love and
friendship found a place throughout Works of Love; traces of reflections on
communication and knowledge are also present there.9
Preparation, however, for writing Works of Love preceded the actual writing
by many years. Kierkegaard’s appraisal of Socrates in his dissertation (1841)10
included the significance of his ugly appearance, a theme that reappears in
Works of Love.11 Either/Or (1843) as a complex whole covers the spectrum of
arbitrary self-love, erotic love, and marital love,12 and Judge William ends with a
borrowed sermon on the love of God13. Two of Three Upbuilding Discourses
(1843) are titled “Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins.”14 The third discourse in
Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1845) is “On the Occasion of a
Wedding.”15 Stages on Life’s Way, like Either/Or, presents various conceptions
of love, from the various views of love in the speeches in “ ‘In Vino Veritas’” to
marital love in Judge William’s “Some Reflections on Marriage in Answer to
Objections,” and ends with an account of an unhappy love, “‘Guilty?’/’Not
Guilty?’”16
Works of Love, then, is Kierkegaard’s climactic consideration of erotic love
and Christian love against the background of the multifarious characterizations
of love in the earlier pseudonymous and signed works. The two Danish words
for two kinds of love, Elskov and Kjerlighed,17 lend themselves to the clarifying
of contrast and definition in a way not available with the single ambiguous
omnibus word in English.
Kierkegaard was of the opinion, however, that the availability of the two
words in Danish did not guarantee an understanding of distinctions. Therefore
Works of Love is called “deliberations” and not “discourses,” because a
deliberation “does not presuppose the definitions as given and understood.“
Therefore a deliberation must first fetch people “up out of the cellar, call to
them, turn their comfortable way of thinking topsy-turvy with the dialectic of
truth.”18
Works of Love, then, aims to find a reader where he is, in the ambiguities of
his understanding of the nature of love. The substance within which the reader
comes to see himself is a positive love ethics, in complementary contrast to the
ethical discourse on purity of heart,19 which maintains a substantial openness in
delineating the ethical integrity of the person, the ethical consciousness as
qualitatively distinguished from the episodic immediacy of the esthetic life. In
Works of Love, love in its works20 (because it is a deed, not a volatile, lovely
feeling) is the highest good of ethical vision. But we do not clearly know or we
have forgotten what love is.21 Christian love is not simply the same as erotic love
and friendship or the heightening of the immediacy of these interests. Rather it is
ethical-religious love, which dethrones and catches up immediacy’s love, since
one’s beloved and friend are also neighbors.
The fundamental character of the love in Christian love ethics separates it
from any sentimental ethics; furthermore, the implicit difference between
imperative ethics (as in the discourse on purity of heart, Either/Or, II, and parts
of Fear and Trembling) and indicative ethics distinguishes Christian love ethics
from immanental philosophical ethics and exclusively imperative religious ethics
and also from unprincipled “Christian pragmatism” (opportunism with furrowed
brow). Christian ethics is characterized not only by the distinctions between love
[Elskov] and love [Kjerlighed], inclination and “you shall love,” ethical ideals
and “the prototype,” but also by its indicative responsiveness, rooted in and
motivated by the redemptive love of God for the individual and all human
beings, toward the neighbor.
Christianly the emphasis does not fall so much upon to what extent or how
far a person succeeds in meeting or fulfilling the requirement, if he actually
is striving, as upon his getting an impression of the requirement in all its
infinitude so that he rightly learns to be humbled and to rely upon grace.
To scale down the requirement in order to be able to fulfill it better (as if
this were earnestness, that now it can all the more easily appear that one is
earnest about wanting to fulfill the requirement)—to this Christianity in its
deepest essence is opposed.
No, infinite humiliation and grace, and then a striving born of gratitude
—this is Christianity.22
Since perhaps most individuals live in a diluted social morality and need the
rigorous ethical imperative of vision and requirement, this aspect of Works of
Love may appear dominant. Fundamental, however, is the primacy of God, in
whose love and forgiveness the person humbled under the requirement is
restored by grace and renewed and turned to the indicative expressive ethics of
gratitude in life. “It is indeed God in heaven who through the apostle says, ‘Be
reconciled’; it is not human beings who say to God: ‘Forgive us.’ No, God loved
us first; and again the second time, when it was a matter of Atonement, God was
the one who came first—although in the sense of justice he was the one who had
the furthest to come.”23 This is the mature, indicative, expressive Christian ethics
of grace in the opening prayer and in the conclusion.24
While writing Works of Love, Kierkegaard was diverted not only by the
lectures on communication but also by an urge to travel again to Berlin, but he
resisted it and “instead … visited the king [Christian VIII]…. Now the point is to
reduce productivity and to loaf a little here at home rather than to have these
intense distractions that promptly make me productive again.”25 He remained in
Copenhagen but became more productive than ever.26 The varied writings in
1847–1848 included projected discourses on the Atonement under the title
“Work of Love,”27 a title that was eventually changed to The Sickness unto
Death.
In one of the few journal entries about Works of Love, Kierkegaard states that
the section “The Work of Love in Praising Love,” which obviously pertains to
what he was doing in the whole book, “contains nothing direct” about him.28
Perhaps the statement has particular reference to the excluded section titled “A
Self-Defense.”29 Works of Love does, however, illustrate his view of the entire
authorship as his own education, his own upbringing.30 With the stress on works
of love and the critique of the poet, Works of Love is a decisive point in the
entire authorship and indicates Kierkegaard’s qualifying of inwardness with an
emphasis also on action.
This movement from “the poet” to religious existing is basically the
movement in the entire work as an author regarded in its totality. See
Works of Love (II A, B31) concerning the use again made there of “the poet”