Online research in philosophy

This article explains and assesses a particular method of loving others that is espoused by Søren Kierkegaard. In his later works, Kierkegaard advocates a kind of deceptive love whereby one mystifies or deceives another person for that other person's own good. The theological underpinning of this mode of love is found in the imitation of Christ. In other words, just as Jesus adopted an incognito, so also Christians should, at times, appear different or lowlier in order to help others by meeting them where they are. After explaining this form of love, I argue that there are considerable reasons not to follow Kierkegaard in his support of outright deception within personal relationships. I conclude with some brief reflections on whether the deceptive structure of Kierkegaard's own authorship is thereby condemned or whether it can be exonerated.

Preface to the Irving Singer library edition -- Preface -- Introduction: Love and meaning -- Two myths about love -- Persons, things, ideals -- Sexual love -- Love in society -- Religious love -- Civilization and autonomy -- Love, and do as you will.

Love plays God -- The foundation of Western love : Hebrew scripture -- From physical desire to paradise : Plato -- Love as perfect friendship : Aristotle -- Love as sexual desire : Lucretius and Ovid -- Love as the supreme virtue : Christianity -- Why Christian love isn't unconditional -- Women on top : love and the troubadours -- How human nature became loveable : from the high Middle Ages to the Renaissance -- Love as joyful understanding of the whole : Spinoza -- Love as enlightened romanticism : Rousseau -- Love as religion : Schlegel and Novalis -- Love as the urge to procreate : Schopenhauer -- Love as affirmation of life : Nietzsche -- Love as a history of loss : Freud -- Love as terror and tedium : Proust -- Love reconsidered.

Love plays God -- The foundation of Western love : Hebrew scripture -- From physical desire to paradise : Plato -- Love as perfect friendship : Aristotle -- Love as sexual desire : Lucretius and Ovid -- Love as the supreme virtue : Christianity -- Why Christian love isn't unconditional -- Women on top : love and the troubadours -- How human nature became loveable : from the high Middle Ages to the Renaissance -- Love as joyful understanding of the whole : Spinoza -- Love as enlightened romanticism : Rousseau -- Love as religion : Schlegel and Novalis -- Love as the urge to procreate : Schopenhauer -- Love as affirmation of life : Nietzsche -- Love as a history of loss : Freud -- Love as terror and tedium : Proust -- Love reconsidered.

"Something in between : on the nature of love" -- Love's blindness (1) : love's closed heart -- Love's blindness (2) : love's friendly eye -- Beyond comparison -- Commitments, values, and frameworks -- Valuing persons -- Love and morality -- Afterword. Between the universal and the particular.

Introduction: Women in love -- Cupid doffs his blindfold : love as wisdom -- The power of power differentials : love as inequality -- The blade between us : love as transgression -- We must be two before we can be one : love as absence -- On my blood I'll carry you away : love as heroism -- Anonymous except for injury : love as failure -- Carving in the flesh : love as art -- Epilogue: Waging love : toward a new definition of eros.

If there is an inherent connection between love and generosity, between love and creativeness, as this book argues there is, then how can love itself be selfish, destructive and tyrannical? Concerned with questions about love in its different forms, this book seeks and discusses the views of writers--Plato, Proust, Sartre, Freud, D. H. Lawrence, Erich Fromm, C. S. Lewis, Kierkegaard, Simone Weil and Kahlil Gibran--who have suggested distinctive solutions to the problems which love poses in the face of its obstacles. The enquiry which the book undertakes emcompasses both the conceptual and existential experience of love.

This article presents a close reading of Kierkegaard’s Works of Love in light of the question whether neighborly aspirations are sensitive to the worth of close personal relationships and to the importance of the material well-being of fellow citizens. The interpretive analysis is set within the larger debate overKierkegaard’s critique of preferential love and his apparently apolitical focus on inward authenticity, and it concludes that neighborly love is far more emotionally vulnerable and sensitive to the particulars of individuals and their social and material standing than isolated passages suggest. Kierkegaard’s work thus contributes to the current preoccupation with the moral relevance of emotions and their place within public life.

This article presents a close reading of Kierkegaard’s Works of Love in light of the question whether neighborly aspirations are sensitive to the worth of close personal relationships and to the importance of the material well-being of fellow citizens. The interpretive analysis is set within the larger debate overKierkegaard’s critique of preferential love and his apparently apolitical focus on inward authenticity, and it concludes that neighborly love is far more emotionally vulnerable and sensitive to the particulars of individuals and their social and material standing than isolated passages suggest. Kierkegaard’s work thus contributes to the current preoccupation with the moral relevance of emotions and their place within public life.

The aim of this paper is to throw light on Kierkegaard’s neglected distinction between love and its works, and by doing so to resolve the ambivalence in his position with regard to preferential love in Works of Love. In this text Kierkegaard seems to fail to reconcile his insistence on neighbourly love’s demand for equality and self-denial, with his wish to affirm the centrality of preferential love to human existence. My claim is that neighbourly love and preferential love are two distinct works of love that share the double structure of faith. This paradoxical structure, presented and discussed by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling, allows the two loves to be realized together, without requiring any compromise regarding their respective demands.