Love's Grateful Striving

Søren Kierkegaard's Works of Love (1847), a series of deliberations on the commandment to love one's neighbour, has often been condemned by critics. This book seeks to rehabilitate Works of Love as one of Kierkegaard's most important works. Jamie Ferreira shows that Kierkegaard's deliberations on love are highly relevant to some important themes in contemporary ethics including: impartiality, duty, partiality, equality, mutuality, reciprocity, self-love, sympathy, and sacrifice. Works of Love also has implications for postmodern concerns about the normative relation between Self and Other - questions of "gift" and responsiveness, "infinite demand" and responsibility. In addition, Ferreira argues, Works of Love also bears on such issues as the role of God as "middle term," and the possibility of preserving the aesthetic dimensions of love in a religious ethic of relation.