Kierkegaard on Faith and Love

Explores Kierkegaard's belief that earthly love and religious life do not conflict but rather enhance and perfect one another.

Sharon Krishek (Author)

9780521519410, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 July 2009

216 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1.7 cm, 0.48 kg

'Sharon Krishek's Kierkegaard on Faith and Love argues that romantic love is a central and abiding theme in Kierkegaard's writings and of philosophical importance.' George Pattison, Journal of European Philosophy

Kierkegaard's writings are interspersed with remarkable stories of love, commonly understood as a literary device that illustrates the problematic nature of aesthetic and ethical forms of life, and the contrasting desirability of the life of faith. Sharon Krishek argues that for Kierkegaard the connection between love and faith is far from being merely illustrative. Rather, love and faith have a common structure, and are involved with one another in a way that makes it impossible to love well without faith. Remarkably, this applies to romantic love no less than to neighbourly love. Krishek's original and compelling interpretation of the Works of Love in the light of Kierkegaard's famous analysis of the paradoxicality of faith in Fear and Trembling shows that preferential love, and in particular romantic love, plays a much more important and positive role in his thinking than has usually been assumed.

Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations
Introduction. Stages on love's way
1. Lost loves
2. The sorrowful lover
3. The knight of love
4. Neighbourly love versus romantic love
5. The double movement of love
6. Faith-full romantic love
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of religion [HRAB], Religion & beliefs [HR], History of Western philosophy [HPC]