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Kierkegaard’s Deontology of Love

  • Milan Petkanič EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: July 14, 2022
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Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook
From the journal Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Volume 27 Issue 1

Abstract

Deontology is mostly reflected and discussed in connection with Kantian ethics, but in the history of thought there is found another outstanding concept of deontological ethics: Kierkegaard’s ethics of love. This paper clarifies the deontological nature of Kierkegaard’s ethics as it is formulated in his key ethical treatise Works of Love (1847). According to Kierkegaard, whose ethics of love was basically his own original interpretation of the Christian concept of neighbor-love, duty is the distinctive feature of love—since Christian love is defined as a command to ‘love thy neighbor.’ For Kierkegaard it is precisely this duty that creates a dividing line between authentic love and non-authentic love: the first one stands for the Christian love for the neighbor, while the latter refers to the natural concept of love as an emotion or inclination exemplified mainly by éros and friendship. The deontological concept of love is challenged later in the article by other aspects of love, such as a need, feeling, and virtue, which at first sight seem to be in a contrast with the concept of love as a duty.

The present text was written at the Department of Philosophy/ Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, Trnava University, Trnava, as part of the solution of the VEGA grant project no. 1/0174/21.

Online erschienen: 2022-07-14

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Title pages
  3. Preface
  4. Contents
  5. Section 1: Interpreting Kierkegaard’s Works
  6. Section 1:   Interpreting Kierkegaard’s Works
  7. Either/Or Read as Bildungsroman
  8. Wielding Fear and Trembling Against Religious Violence and Bigotry
  9. Repetition and the Art of Writing Novels
  10. Voice and Fertility, (Self‐)Impregnation and (Inter‐)Dependence: The Pseudonyms and their (Narratives about) Wives
  11. The Logic of Contemporaneity: On Anti-Climacus’s Philosophy of History
  12. “A Place of Rest at the Foot of the Altar”: Topological Categories and Correlations in Kierkegaard’s last Discourse at the Communion on Fridays
  13. Section 2: Concepts, Problems and Theories in Kierkegaard
  14. Section 2:   Concepts, Problems and Theories in Kierkegaard
  15. Kierkegaard’s View on Theater “with Continual References” to Contemporary Theater Theories
  16. Kierkegaard’s Hermeneutics of Anxiety and Agonistic Hermeneutics
  17. Kierkegaard’s Strong Anti-Rationalism: Offense as a Propaedeutic to Faith
  18. Kierkegaard’s Deontology of Love
  19. What Thinkers Call “the Other”
  20. Colossal Vacuums: Kierkegaard and the Rise of the Public in the Anthropocene
  21. Revolutionizing the Right to Revolt: Søren Kierkegaard and the Responsibility to Revolt
  22. ‚Für das Bestehende spendiert‘: Die Kategorie des Korrektivs als Instrument der schriftstellerischen und existentiellen Selbstpositionierung Kierkegaards
  23. Section 3: Kierkegaard’s Sources and Reception
  24. Section 3:   Kierkegaard’s Sources and Reception
  25. Time or Eternity? An Approach to the Kierkegaardian Notion of Spirit through the Movement of Finitude in Dialogue with Levinas
  26. Toward an Upbuilding Metapsychology: Kierkegaard, Lacan, and the Infinite Movement
  27. Who Permits Evil? Plantinga’s Free Will Defense and Kierkegaard’s Free Spirit Offense: In Search of a Coherent Theistic Solution to the Problem of Evil
  28. Law and Gospel, Distinction and Dialectic: C.F.W. Walther, Søren Kierkegaard, and the Rich Young Ruler
  29. Revisiting the Czech Reception of Kierkegaard in Early 20th Century
  30. Kierkegaard and Religionswissenschaft: A Source- and Reception-Historical Survey (Part 1)
  31. Section 4: Kierkegaard’s Contemporaries – Sources in Translation and Commentary
  32. Section 4:   Kierkegaard’s Contemporaries – Sources in Translation and Commentary
  33. Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s “On the Principle of the Beginning of History”
  34. Heiberg’s Article on History and Kierkegaard’s Critique
  35. Backmatter
  36. Abbreviations
https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2022-0011

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Title pages
  3. Preface
  4. Contents
  5. Section 1: Interpreting Kierkegaard’s Works
  6. Section 1:   Interpreting Kierkegaard’s Works
  7. Either/Or Read as Bildungsroman
  8. Wielding Fear and Trembling Against Religious Violence and Bigotry
  9. Repetition and the Art of Writing Novels
  10. Voice and Fertility, (Self‐)Impregnation and (Inter‐)Dependence: The Pseudonyms and their (Narratives about) Wives
  11. The Logic of Contemporaneity: On Anti-Climacus’s Philosophy of History
  12. “A Place of Rest at the Foot of the Altar”: Topological Categories and Correlations in Kierkegaard’s last Discourse at the Communion on Fridays
  13. Section 2: Concepts, Problems and Theories in Kierkegaard
  14. Section 2:   Concepts, Problems and Theories in Kierkegaard
  15. Kierkegaard’s View on Theater “with Continual References” to Contemporary Theater Theories
  16. Kierkegaard’s Hermeneutics of Anxiety and Agonistic Hermeneutics
  17. Kierkegaard’s Strong Anti-Rationalism: Offense as a Propaedeutic to Faith
  18. Kierkegaard’s Deontology of Love
  19. What Thinkers Call “the Other”
  20. Colossal Vacuums: Kierkegaard and the Rise of the Public in the Anthropocene
  21. Revolutionizing the Right to Revolt: Søren Kierkegaard and the Responsibility to Revolt
  22. ‚Für das Bestehende spendiert‘: Die Kategorie des Korrektivs als Instrument der schriftstellerischen und existentiellen Selbstpositionierung Kierkegaards
  23. Section 3: Kierkegaard’s Sources and Reception
  24. Section 3:   Kierkegaard’s Sources and Reception
  25. Time or Eternity? An Approach to the Kierkegaardian Notion of Spirit through the Movement of Finitude in Dialogue with Levinas
  26. Toward an Upbuilding Metapsychology: Kierkegaard, Lacan, and the Infinite Movement
  27. Who Permits Evil? Plantinga’s Free Will Defense and Kierkegaard’s Free Spirit Offense: In Search of a Coherent Theistic Solution to the Problem of Evil
  28. Law and Gospel, Distinction and Dialectic: C.F.W. Walther, Søren Kierkegaard, and the Rich Young Ruler
  29. Revisiting the Czech Reception of Kierkegaard in Early 20th Century
  30. Kierkegaard and Religionswissenschaft: A Source- and Reception-Historical Survey (Part 1)
  31. Section 4: Kierkegaard’s Contemporaries – Sources in Translation and Commentary
  32. Section 4:   Kierkegaard’s Contemporaries – Sources in Translation and Commentary
  33. Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s “On the Principle of the Beginning of History”
  34. Heiberg’s Article on History and Kierkegaard’s Critique
  35. Backmatter
  36. Abbreviations
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