Works of Love

Works of Love
Name	Works of Love
Author	Søren Kierkegaard
Original title	Kjerlighedens Gjerninger
Country	Denmark
Language	Danish
Subject	Christianity, Ethics, Philosophy
Published	1847
Media type	Print

Works of Love

Works of Love is a 1847 essay collection by the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard. It presents an extended meditation on Christianity's commandment to love one's neighbor, written amid mid‑19th century debates in Copenhagen involving figures such as Hans Christian Andersen, Bishop Hans Lassen Martensen, and contemporaries in the Danish Hegelian movement. The book engages biblical themes from sources including the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount, and Pauline epistles while addressing readers conversant with figures like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Background and Publication

Kierkegaard wrote Works of Love shortly after publishing Philosophical Fragments and Either/Or, during a prolific period that produced The Concept of Anxiety, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, and Christian Discourses. The 1840s Copenhagen intellectual scene featured public debates involving Hegelian interpreters such as P. F. Rist and ecclesiastical authorities like Bishop Jacob Peter Mynster, influencing Kierkegaard's corrective stance toward speculative systems and institutional Church practice. First issued in Danish under the title Kjerlighedens Gjerninger, the work circulated among readers of The Corsair and other periodicals, prompting commentary from literary figures including Henrik Ibsen and critics aligned with National Liberalism.

Themes and Structure

The book is structured as a series of discourses and reflections that explicate the Christian command to "love thy neighbor," drawing on narratives and law from the Old Testament and exemplars in the New Testament such as Jesus and Paul the Apostle. Kierkegaard contrasts various forms of love: erotic love exemplified in classical sources like Plato, aesthetic love treated in Aristotle, social love associated with figures like Georg Brandes, and the Christian neighbor‑love rooted in Augustine of Hippo's theology. He frames love as duty under Mosaic Law and grace mediated through faith informed by readings of John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Thomas Aquinas. The prose alternates between polemic, exegesis, and personal address, invoking authors such as William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Gustave Flaubert to illustrate human relational dynamics and ethical failure.

Kierkegaard develops motifs of inwardness and subjectivity, building on prior treatments in Either/Or and Either/Or II, and mobilizes rhetorical devices found in sermons by Jonathan Edwards and essays by Michel de Montaigne. He treats works of love as both concrete deeds and spiritual dispositions, engaging legal‑ethical categories familiar to readers of Roman law commentaries and residents of metropolitan centers like Aarhus and Odense.

Philosophical and Theological Context

Works of Love situates itself against prevailing currents: the speculative metaphysics of Hegel, the empirical moral psychology of David Hume, and the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant. Kierkegaard insists on the primacy of Christian responsibility over systematic reason, dialoguing with theological reformers and pastors such as Friedrich Schleiermacher and Nikolai Grundtvig. He addresses doctrines of sin and redemption debated by scholars influenced by Peter Lombard and engages pastoral concerns prominent in the Lutheranism of the Church of Denmark. The work also resonates with existential themes later taken up by thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, while maintaining a distinctively theocentric orientation aligned with Pauline theology.

Kierkegaard’s method blends philosophical critique with biblical hermeneutics; he reads scriptural imperatives through a lens informed by scholastic sources including Anselm of Canterbury and modern exegetes such as David Friedrich Strauss. The result is a sustained inquiry into how the Christian ethical demand for neighborly love resists reduction to aesthetic preference, social convention, or rational maxims attributed to figures like Jeremy Bentham.

Reception and Influence

Contemporary reception was mixed: some critics in Copenhagen’s literary salons, including adherents of Hegelianism and proponents of National Romanticism, found Kierkegaard’s anti‑systematic stance provocative, while pastors and lay readers engaged his pastoral exhortations. Later 19th‑century figures such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer acknowledged affinities with Kierkegaardian themes, and 20th‑century existentialists and theologians, including Jean Wahl, Gabriel Marcel, and Paul Tillich, cited the work in debates over faith, ethics, and subjectivity. Literary modernists like T. S. Eliot and philosophers such as Simone Weil and Emmanuel Levinas drew on Kierkegaard’s notions of love and neighborliness. The book influenced discussions in Christian ethics seminars at institutions like Harvard Divinity School, University of Oxford, and University of Copenhagen and continues to appear in curricula alongside works by Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther.

Major Translations and Editions

Key English translations include those by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, which incorporate critical apparatus alongside translations of Kierkegaard’s other discourses, and earlier renderings by translators such as Walter Lowrie. Major scholarly editions are published by presses associated with university series at Princeton University Press, University of Toronto Press, and Danish critical editions preserved by institutions like the Royal Danish Library. Notable annotated editions pair the text with commentaries from scholars including Alasdair MacIntyre, Merold Westphal, and George Pattison, and modern paperback releases by Penguin Books and Cambridge University Press have broadened accessibility for readers and students internationally.

Category:1847 books Category:Søren Kierkegaard