Art and Praise in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love (New Kierkegaard Research) 1666936057, 9781666936056

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Art and Praise in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love

NEW KIERKEGAARD RESEARCH Antony Aumann, Northern Michigan University, and Adam Buben, Leiden University Advisory Board: John J. Davenport, Fordham University; Rick Anthony Furtak, Colorado College; Sheridan Hough, College of Charleston; Noreen Khawaja, Yale University; Sharon Krishek, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; John Lippitt, University of Notre Dame Australia; Anna L Söderquist, St. Olaf College; Jon Stewart, Slovak Academy of Sciences; Patrick Stokes, Deakin University. New Kierkegaard Research promotes scholarship on all aspects of Kierkegaard’s thought and its legacy. The series includes volumes dedicated to the careful exegesis of Kierkegaard’s writings, as well as ones that bring his ideas into dialogue with other thinkers. It also serves as an outlet for books drawing inspiration from Kierkegaard to address current questions in philosophy, religion, and other disciplines. New Kierkegaard Research is pluralistic in nature. It welcomes proposals from scholars approaching Kierkegaard from either analytic or continental philosophical backgrounds, as well as from those adopting historical, contemporary, or comparative frameworks. Emphasis is placed on philosophical engagement with Kierkegaard’s ideas, but the series publishes books by authors working in a variety of academic fields. Titles in the Series Art and Praise in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, by Richard McCombs Kierkegaard and the New Nationalism: A Contemporary Reinterpretation of the Attack upon Christendom, by Thomas J. Millay Ethical Silence: Kierkegaard on Communication, Education, and Humility, by Sergia Hay

Art and Praise in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love Richard McCombs

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: McCombs, Richard A., II, 1967—author.  Title: Art and praise in Kierkegaard’s Works of love / Richard McCombs.  Description: Lanham: Lexington Books, [2024] | Series: New Kierkegaard research | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “With a focus on Works of Love, this book argues that for Kierkegaard the living of the life of faith and love is a kind of art, involving skillful attention to the specificity of the episodes in an individual’s life, and the creative imagining of new ways of enacting these virtues.” —Provided by publisher.  Identifiers: LCCN 2023041992 (print) | LCCN 2023041993 (ebook) | ISBN 9781666936056 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666936063 (ebook)  Subjects: LCSH: Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855. | Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855. Kærlighedens gerninger. Classification: LCC B4377.M398 2024 (print) | LCC B4377 (ebook) | DDC 198/.9— dc23/eng/20231017 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023041992LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023041993 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To my wife Acacia McCombs

Contents

Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations Introduction

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1

Chapter 1: The Poetry of Faith in Fear and Trembling Chapter 2: Love’s Art of Upbuilding





23 51

Chapter 3: The Arts of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Peace-Making 79 Chapter 4: The Art of Praising Love



Chapter 5: Two Examples of Praising Love Chapter 6: Love’s Equality Conclusion





119 131

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Appendix: The Wisdom of Love Bibliography Index

101



167

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177

About the Author



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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to several people for their help with this book. My friend Anthony Eagan generously read many drafts and gave much helpful advice. My son John McCombs, and my colleague, Llyd Wells, also read portions of the manuscript and made useful suggestions. Finally, my wife, Acacia, to whom this book is dedicated, raised insightful questions about my ideas, and provided much moral support over the years that it took me to complete this project.

ix

List of Abbreviations

References to Kierkegaard’s writings in English will use the following standard sigla adapted from Mercer University Press’s International Kierkegaard Commentary series: C CA CD CI CUP EO 1 EO 2 EUD FSE FT

The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress. See Christian ­Discourses. The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reider Thmpte in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). Christian Discourses and The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). The Concept of Irony and “Notes on Schelling’s Berlin Lectures,” trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments,” trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). Either/Or: Part I, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). Either/Or: Part II, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). Fear and Trembling and Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983).

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List of Abbreviations

JP

Soren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 7 vols., ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, vol. I: 1967; vol. 2: 1970; vols. 3 and 4: 1975; vols. 5–7: 1978). L The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Godly Discourses, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). P Prefaces and Writing Sampler, trans. Todd W. Nichol (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). PC Practice in Christianity, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). PF Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). PV “The Point of View for my Work as an Author,” “The Single Individual,” On My Work as an Author, and “Armed Neutrality,” trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). R Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). SLW Stages on Life’s Way, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). SUD The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). TA Two Ages: The Present Age and the Age of Revolution. A Literary Review, trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978). TM The “Moment” and Late Writings, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). UDVS Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. WA Without Authority, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). WL Works of Love, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). The corresponding volume and page number in Soren Kierkegaards Skrifter (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag) has been provided for Fear and Trembling and Works of Love: SKS 4 Gjentagelsen: Frygt og Baeven. Niels Jorgen Cappelorn, Joakim Garff, Johnny Kondrup and Finn Hauberg Mortensen (Copenhagen: Gads, 1997). SKS Kjerlighedens Gjerninger, ed. Niels Jorgen Cappelorn, Joakim Garff, Johnny Kondrup (Copenhagen: Gads, 2004).

Introduction

Praise is ubiquitous in Kierkegaard’s authorship; and his mastery of the art of praise goes a long way towards explaining why he is a deeply moving writer. The very first sentence of his dissertation, The Concept of Irony, speaks of what “must be praised” (CI 9/SKS 1:71). Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms praise Socrates, Lessing, Shakespeare, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, various actors and actresses, farce, woman, romantic love, marriage, knights of infinite resignation, the biblical figure of Job, patience, the gloriousness of being a human being, free will, silence, obeying God, joy in God, hope, faith, and even hardship, guilt, and suffering. One of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, Judge William, emphasizes the importance of praise by praising the praise of marriage, and in general Kierkegaard often praises artful encomiasts and discerning admirers. He also imagines a eulogy bestowed on him by his future “poet, who, when he comes, will usher me to the place among those who have suffered for an idea” (PV 95/SKS 16:74). Most importantly of all, he writes that “all our discourses . . . praise Christianity” (WL 197/SKS 9:196). An example of this is Works of Love, in which Kierkegaard says he “endeavored ‘many times and in many ways’ to praise love,” namely Christian love, or love of one’s neighbor as oneself, which is traditionally called charity (WL 375/SKS 9:368). The ubiquity of praise in Kierkegaard’s authorship suggests that a major task for him as an author is to praise things. Kierkegaard corroborates this suggestion by calling himself “a singular kind of poet and thinker” (WA 165); for the main thing that he means by calling himself a poet is that he praises things.1 In Works of Love he writes that pagan poets praise romantic love and friendship (WL 44/SKS 9:50–51). He also mentions the “special case” of “religious poets,” whose “songs are to the glory of God,” and are about “faith, hope, and love” (WL 46/SKS 9:53). In other books too Kierkegaard describes poets as praising or celebrating things (SLW 126, 413/SKS 6:119, 383; SUD 78/SKS 11:192). But more often than not he merely implies the poet’s doxological vocation. For example, in Fear and Trembling the pseudonymous author writes that the task of the poet is to use his “song and speech” to bring

1

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Introduction

it about “that all may admire the hero as he does, may be proud of the hero as he is” (FT 15/SKS 4:112). POETRY AS PRAISE OF IDEALS Kierkegaard’s mandate as a panegyrical poet is specifically to praise ideals.2 In a draft of The Sickness Unto Death, the pseudonymous author indicates that his mission is to “praise the ideal” (SUD 158/SKS SD ms. 3.4). As for Kierkegaard, he says that his task is “poetically presenting the ideals” (JP 1:708/SKS 23:15); and he calls himself a “poet who influences by means of the ideals,” which he loves, portrays, and advances (FSE 21/SKS 13:50; COA 251; PC 311/SKS IC ms. 8.19; JP 6:6749; TM 129/SKS 13:174). Obviously, if he loves ideals and presents them in order to advance them, then he praises them. In addition to “faith, hope, and love,” Kierkegaard’s ideals include “the good, the beautiful, the noble, the true, the exalted, the unselfish, the magnanimous, etc.” (TM 225/SKS 13:281). In praising ideals Kierkegaard seeks to make people passionately aware of their worth. That is, he aims to make readers admire ideals, wonder at them, and feel grateful for them. Admiration, wonder, and gratitude, however, are not enough. Kierkegaard thinks that if we admire an ideal, then in most or many cases we should apply it to our lives, by imitating or serving it. He also thinks that we should admire and praise with discernment. That is, praise for Kierkegaard is not mere rhetoric. He does not want to trick his readers into admiring ideals. Instead he seeks to make readers know or understand the worth of what he praises. An indication of his concern for discerning admiration is that he calls himself a “poet and thinker.” Qua thinker he desires to promote thoughtful admiration of ideals. Another indication of his concern for intelligent praise and admiration is that he frequently finds fault with conventional poets because they stupidly praise unworthy things, or because they praise worthy things ineptly and without understanding. Too often, Kierkegaard complains, excellence is praised in “stock phrases,” or by means of cheap, shoddy, and “shabby banalities” (C 303/SKS 14:93). In Stages on Life’s Way the pseudonymous author seems to speak for Kierkegaard when he claims to be a discriminating distributor of honors: “the gods . . . have given me an uncommon ingenuity in paying attention to people, so that I neither take off my hat before I see the man nor take it off to the wrong one” (SLW 470/SKS 6:433). Thus Kierkegaard’s task as a poet is to discover supremely worthy things, or ideals, and to praise them in a way that adequately reveals their worth, so that his readers admiringly and gratefully discern their excellence, and feel summoned to serve or imitate them.

Introduction

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Before proceeding further, it will be useful to define admiration and praise. Admiration at its best consists in correctly understanding or perceiving the worth of something, and rightly delighting in, rejoicing over, wondering at, or being thankful for, that worthiness. Praise at its best is speech or writing that maximally helps people admire worthy things. Although the most important thing for Kierkegaard about poetry is that it praises ideals, he uses poetry for more than praise. Most generally, he employs it to present possibilities of human existence, and to this end he uses language with verve, invents representative persons, tells moving and instructive stories, and constructs apt metaphors and striking images. When the possibilities that he presents are worthy ideals, he praises them, and invites people to imitate them. When they are mediocre, foolish, or evil, he mocks, satirizes, or denounces them. Thus as poet he is always influencing by means of the ideals. Kierkegaard calls himself not just a poet, but “a singular kind of poet and thinker” (WA 165/SKS 12:281). He is singular or distinctive in several ways: 1. The typical poet has the serious defect of not striving to put the ideals that he praises into practice, and even uses his admiration and praise of things as a substitute for striving. Kierkegaard differs from the typical poet in that he defines himself “as one who is striving” to existentially approximate the ideals that he celebrates (JP 6:6528). 2. He writes that he is a poet who “is fighting for a confession of our weakness” (JFY 133/SKS 16:187; cf. JP 1:708/SKS NB 23:15). This is to say that he aims to induce people to confess that they fall short of the ideal, so that they may take refuge in divine forgiveness and grace, and then gratefully strive to imitate the ideal with the help of grace (JP 1:993/SKS NB22:112).3 In order to induce confession, Kierkegaard often devastatingly criticizes people in the light of the ideals. Since he regards the ideals as absolutes, he is bound not only to praise them, but to blame people for being indifferent to them, or betraying them. 3. He often says that he is a poet who is “without authority” (WA 165/SKS 12:281). This means that he takes it upon himself, without a special, divine command, to remind people about their duty to imitate the ideals. 4. Some poets are not thinkers, but muddled enthusiasts. As I said earlier, because Kierkegaard is a “poet and thinker,” he seeks to make his readers understand the nature and the worth of what he praises. That is, he develops an account of what he celebrates, defines it, compares it to other things, distinguishes it from other things with which it may be confused, and in general shows its relations to other pertinent things. One of the ways that Kierkegaard praises something is to compare it to some already admired thing, and then to argue that what he is celebrating is superior to that thing. Kierkegaard frequently insists that he is “only a poet” (TM 226/SKS 13:283; COA 250). What he means by this is that he falls short of the ideal

4

Introduction

which he praises, or that he does not claim to be a heroic representative of the ideal (JP 6:6511). In the next chapter we will examine why Kierkegaard thinks he can praise ideals most effectively by modestly claiming to be only a poet.4 The Need for Poetry Kierkegaard thinks that the poet’s celebration of ideals is one of life’s greatest blessings, because ideals, when justly appreciated, make people “indescribably happy,” and give them something to live for (JP 6:6749). That is, poetry seeks to discover and reveal what is most valuable and consequently gives life the most profound meaning. Therefore poetry is more important than every human activity except actually living for the ideals that poetry itself discovers and praises. Without competent praise of models of perfection, Kierkegaard thinks, life presents a frightful prospect: If a human being did not have an eternal consciousness, if underlying everything there were only a wild, fermenting power that writhing in dark passions produced everything, be it significant or insignificant, if a vast, never appeased emptiness hid beneath everything, what would life be then but despair. . . . If an eternal oblivion, perpetually hungry, lurked for its prey and there were no power strong enough to wrench that away from it—how empty and devoid of consolation life would be! (FT 15/SKS 4:112)

Human life without idealism is not merely boring and directionless. It is catastrophically empty, depressingly meaningless, and a cause for despair. But “precisely for that reason it is not so, and just as God created man and woman, so he created the hero and the poet” (FT 15/SKS 4:112). The hero, who represents the ideal, and the poet, who admiringly describes the beauty and profound significance of a heroic ideal, together rescue human beings from the threat of nihilism. Although people tend not to perceive or acknowledge their need for ideals, Kierkegaard thinks this need is widely felt. He writes that “the complaint is frequently made that life is so insignificant, so meaningless . . . so empty, so monotonous” (CD 106/SKS 10:117). In order to help cure this spiritual malaise, Kierkegaard seeks to make people wonder gratefully at ideals that give life purpose, depth, and meaning. The acme of wonder and admiration according to Kierkegaard is adoration, or worship. Strikingly, Kierkegaard suggests that faith consists in adoration, because he labels both faith and adoration as the alternative to being offended by Christianity (SUD 86/SKS 11:199).

Introduction

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Poetry’s Complements: Irony, Satire, and Polemics Praise is a positive mode of writing that complements the many negative literary modes in Kierkegaard’s authorship, such as irony, satire, and polemics. Kierkegaard is probably more well known for his negativity than for his praise. One of his teachers reproached him for being excessively polemical, and he himself admits that he has a polemical nature. But he is also aware of the danger of extreme negativity, which he condemns as early as his dissertation, in which he writes that irony is “a healthiness insofar as it rescues the soul from the snares of relativity; it is a sickness insofar as it cannot bear the absolute except in the form of nothing” (CI 77/SKS 1:136). Thus Kierkegaard’s negativity is not an end in itself, but serves the positive. Although it is not always apparent, Kierkegaard subordinates irony and polemics to panegyrics: as an ironist and polemicist he tears down idols so that as a poet he may build up awareness of genuine ideals. Kierkegaard often presents a very negative appearance in order to praise things effectively. Since “many an enthusiast, if he does nothing else, makes a person nauseated” by professions of intense admiration, Kierkegaard often adopts a negative appearance so as to conceal his enthusiasm and thus avoid nauseating his readers (SLW 259/SKS 6:242). He also claims that the modern age is pathologically negative and ironic, so that it is particularly prone to be disgusted by enthusiastic praise of ideals. What is to be done about this praise-resistant nihilistic disease? Kierkegaard remarks that “in the era of negativity the authentic ironist is the hidden enthusiast” (TA 81/8:78). In other words, in the present, negative age a wise and artful enthusiast like Kierkegaard partly conceals his zeal in order to seduce people to admire worthy things. A description of an imaginary man in Stages on Life’s Way applies aptly to Kierkegaard himself: “Arrayed in mockery, and thereby deceptive, at heart he is an enthusiast” (SLW 492/SKS 6:453). Thus Kierkegaard’s irony, mockery, and polemics are often a disguise that he puts on in order to be able to praise ideals without disgusting people. This disguise seems to be quite successful, in that Kierkegaard’s irony, satire, and polemics are remarked on far more often than his praise of ideals. Praise: A Substitute for Apologetics? One prominent negative aspect of Kierkegaard’s writings is his repeated attack on apologetics, which may be defined as the attempt to defend, or to support, Christian faith with rational arguments. Kierkegaard’s vehement rejection of apologetics often gives the false impression that he rejects ethical and religious knowledge, or relegates such knowledge to a minor role in Christian life. What Kierkegaard rejects in the guise of apologetics, however,

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Introduction

he affirms in the guise of praise. For his praise—say, his praise of love of one’s neighbor as oneself—does not aim at mere persuasion. In Works of Love he writes that the purpose of praising love is to make people “properly aware” that love is the highest, and that making people aware of important things like this is immensely beneficial for them (WL 365/SKS 9:359; WL 85/SKS 9:91; WL 375/SKS 368). Therefore, Kierkegaard’s praise of neighbor-love is intended to make people properly aware that loving and being loved are the “highest good” and the “only thing worth living for” (WL 239/SKS 9:240). This doxological intention is remarkably similar to the goal of apologetics. Like apologetics, praise of Christian love is meant to make people properly aware of important things about Christianity that could attract them to it and invite them to embrace it. As we shall see, under the rubric of praise, Kierkegaard even sets forth rational arguments for the excellence of Christian charity. It is as though Kierkegaard said: “These arguments are not apologetical, but doxological, and therefore permissible.” Thus for Kierkegaard praise is analogous to apologetics, or a substitute for it, or perhaps even an unacknowledged version of it. In sum, Kierkegaard anathematizes apologetics with great fanfare on the front page, but he canonizes an analogue to it in the small print on the back page. It should be stressed that Kierkegaard’s Christian panegyric differs crucially from conventional apologetics. An apologist typically argues that Christianity is true or credible, and ought therefore to be embraced. Kierkegaard, however, praises Christianity not by arguing that it is true, credible, or probable, but by seeking to make people aware that Christian ideals are possibilities of the highest worth. Once people have been made aware of the value of Christian ideals through Kierkegaard’s expert praise, then it is up to them whether they will venture everything by living heroically for these ideal possibilities that could turn out to be mere dreams. Summary Kierkegaard repeatedly calls himself a poet, and clearly indicates that the task of a poet is to praise heroes and ideals; his writings abound in praise; he says in Works of Love that he praises love, and that all his discourses praise Christianity; he is a master of the art of praise, so much so that his virtuosity in praising heroes and ideals goes a long way towards explaining why his writings are exciting, interesting, and deeply moving; he often criticizes praise of unworthy things, and inept praise of worthy things; and, finally, he gives advice on how to praise things competently, so that one could develop from his writings a panegyricon, or a eulogistic science. Surprisingly, despite the importance and ubiquity of praise in Kierkegaard’s authorship, the secondary literature on his writings has taken little notice of his praise of

Introduction

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ideals in general, and of his praise of love in particular.5 Accordingly, one of the two main purposes of this present book is to give serious attention to Kierkegaard’s theory and practice of praise, especially his praise of charity, that is, love of one’s neighbor as oneself. LOVE’S ART There is something quite strange about Kierkegaard’s praise of love. Given his conviction that love is the greatest good, it is striking that he praises it more for its art than for its goodness or holiness. More generally, although Kierkegaard often sharply contrasts the esthetic sphere of human existence, on the one hand, with the ethical and religious spheres, on the other, and frequently berates writers who confuse the spheres, he also surprisingly tends to praise ethical and religious things for their art. Among these things are faith, repetition, subjectivity, obeying God, silence before God, reliance on God, preaching, and catechizing. Even more generally, he tends to use the word art to approvingly describe competence in many important things: communicating, conversing, questioning, reading, and observing people. Indeed, virtually everything that Kierkegaard praises he describes either as artful or heroic, or both—for example, he praises subjectivity, faith, hope, and charity for both their art and their heroism. We are not yet ready to investigate why Kierkegaard praises love primarily for its art. That will be a topic for the conclusion of this book. But for now we can begin to see why he stresses love’s art, and why he thinks this art is worthy of at least some praise. Since love wants to do the greatest good it can for people, it also wants to acquire the means of doing good, namely art and wisdom. Good intentions are not enough for charity. We would think that someone who called himself a physician, but who had not acquired the knowledge and skill needed to attend expertly to the health of human bodies, was ridiculous. Similarly, putatively loving intentions that never progress towards the acquisition of the wisdom and skill needed for spiritually benefiting others are comical. Therefore we might hypothesize that wisdom and art, or at least a wholehearted effort to acquire know-how and finesse, are essential to love. Kierkegaard insists that how love speaks and acts often matters much more than what it says and does (WL 13-14/SKS 9:21). By stressing love’s way, he stresses its art, since he deeply connects art with the way one speaks and acts (CUP 78/SKS 79; CUP 86/SKS 86). How we speak and act reveals most deeply who we are, and determines most decisively whether we artfully achieve our spiritual purposes, or clumsily fail to accomplish them. More specifically, the way we say and do even little things often determines whether

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Introduction

we succeed at communicating our love for the neighbor, or at helping him to grow spiritually. In short, expressing love and accomplishing its purposes are delicate tasks calling for finesse. Kierkegaard decisively corroborates our hypothesis when he writes that “love practices” an “art of upbuilding,” and that “building up is love’s most characteristic specification” (WL 219/SKS 9:222; WL 216/SKS 9:218). Together these two quotations imply that what is most characteristic, or most essential, about love is an art. But if art is essential to love, this means that in order to understand, not only Kierkegaard’s praise of love, but also what he means by love, it is necessary to understand the art that he thinks is essential to it. Objections to the Study of Love’s Art, and Replies to These Objections What if love’s art is capable of little? If so, we might justly conclude that little is to be gained by examining it. But in fact Kierkegaard attributes great power to love’s art. Describing the labors of a lover to effect a reconciliation with someone who has wronged her, Kierkegaard says that “everything disturbing, every conceivable hindrance is removed as if by magic” (WL 343/ SKS 9:338); and, “no one can hold out against one who loves” (WL 344/SKS 9:338). If love’s art is magically and irresistibly potent, not just in exceptional cases, but in the generic case of the “one who loves,” then it becomes very important to develop an account of this art.6 People often talk as though the more artful something is, the less there is that can be said about it. What if love is essentially artful, and its art is potent, but almost nothing illuminating can be said about it? If so, then it might be futile to investigate this mysterious art. But there are plenty of reasons to reject this pessimistic and demoralized fretting. If love can do the greatest good for the neighbor by means of art, and if the one who loves is, as Kierkegaard might say, “infinitely concerned” to do good to the neighbor, then, even if little can be said about love’s art, this little will be precious to the one who loves. But perhaps much can be said about it. Kierkegaard himself describes and explains a great deal about the art of love, as we shall see, and he says even more about the art of indirect communication, which love uses to communicate itself to the neighbor. He also writes that “it is unconditionally the most upbuilding if someone succeeds in speaking properly about how love builds up” (WL 222/SKS 9:224). Since love builds up by art, this quotation implies the extreme importance of speaking properly about love’s art. The quotation also implies that it is possible to speak properly about love’s art—otherwise why say that it is most upbuilding to speak properly about it.

Introduction

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In summary, according to Kierkegaard, art is essential to love, so that one cannot understand love without also understanding its art. He thinks that this art is potent in helping the neighbor achieve the greatest good. He also thinks that it is possible, and of the utmost importance, to talk about this art. But, despite the extreme importance of love’s art, and of talking about it, both for Kierkegaard, and for anyone who wishes to love people beneficially, Kierkegaard’s account of the art of love has been almost entirely neglected in the secondary literature.7 There are excellent reasons, therefore, to examine love’s art, and the primary purpose of this present book is to undertake this examination. An Account of Skill Kierkegaard describes love as dexterous, or skillful (WL 340/SKS 9:335). Skill is essential to art, and perhaps the most basic component of it. But, though Kierkegaard says much about art, he says little about skill. Accordingly, the following account of skill is not derived mainly from Kierkegaard’s writings, but I believe that it will nevertheless help us to understand what he says about love’s art. Skill is an ability to do, say, make, or perceive something well. A skill has a goal and consists in competence or excellence in the means to its goal. Speaking broadly, one might say that skill has two aspects: reliably knowing what needs to be known in order to achieve a given purpose in the relevant circumstances, and the ability to effectively put that knowledge into practice. Speaking in more detail, skill has six aspects: something to work with or on (call it the material); a goal that requires working with the material; knowledge of, or sensitivity to, the material; control of, or adequate influence on, the material; control of oneself in order to control the material; and consistency in control by means of habits or techniques. We will consider each of these in turn. The goal is something to be done, made, said, communicated, performed, or perceived. A skill is used to bring about desired changes or effects in something: an object, a person, or a complex situation involving many objects or persons. For the sake of convenience, we will refer indiscriminately to these things as the material of an art. The material has a nature, with limits and necessities, on the one hand, and possibilities and opportunities, on the other. Skillful work or action must take into account, or take advantage of, the nature of its material. A skilled person needs to know or understand the nature of the material of his art, to perceive the specific condition of that material here and now, and to know how to influence or control it. By knowing these things, one can avoid struggling vainly against the necessities of the material, and can take

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advantage of or nurture its possibilities, in order to gain leverage, multiply one’s force, or otherwise do much with little. Just how much knowledge, and what sort, skill requires, are controversial questions. Some thinkers prefer to say that skill needs, not knowledge, but sensitivity to its material.8 Here is a very incomplete list of questions to which a skilled person may need to know the answers. What are the qualities and quantities of the material that am I working with? Where are it and its parts now, or in what condition are they? Where will they be, or where can they be, at a certain later time, or in what condition? How can I put them where I want them to be, or in the right condition, at the right times? What exactly is the condition that I am seeking? How can I coordinate many movements in the material, some of which I control, some of which I can only predict or anticipate? What difficulties stand in my way? How may I overcome them? What aids do I have, what can they do, and how may I best use them? What rights, desires, and abilities does the material have? How can I respect and cooperate with them? And so on. Skill involves being able to control or influence a material competently, so as to bring about a desired condition in it. But not all kinds of control are based on skill. For example, control can be founded mainly on brute strength, or on the unskilled use of tools. Skill then is control, despite limits of strength, gratuitous information, speed, endurance, tools, and advantage, either material or psychological. By gratuitous information I mean, say, being told the combination of a safe, when the task is to pick its lock. Obviously an important part of a skill can be timely acquisition of information that is difficult to acquire, through perception or thinking. For example, in hitting a pitched baseball a batter needs to recognize quickly what kind of pitch he is working with: a fastball, a curve, etc. Material advantage consists in things like the size, shape, weight, length, or position of something. A boxer might win a match, not because of superior skill, but because his reach is much greater than his opponent’s. An example of psychological advantage is being vested with effective authority, or being trusted, feared, or loved, when the task is to get people to do something. Without psychological advantage, there may be need of skillful exhortation or clever manipulation in order to encourage or induce the desired behavior. Of course skill means making effective use of some or all of the advantages, information, speed, tools, etc., that one has. But if success is achieved mainly because of speed, strength, etc., then it is not achieved mainly through skill. Thus, in short, skill involves doing much with little, whether that be through finesse, expert timing and positioning, clever exploitation of one’s resources, cunning manipulation of a psyche, patient nurturing, sympathetic cajoling, or well-expressed encouragement. It is difficult to give a complete list of all the resources that must be limited in order for skill to come into play and show itself. Therefore one cannot perfectly define skill as control despite poverty of resources. Kierkegaard avoids

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dealing with this problem by stressing that when skill is at issue it is crucial how something is said or done. That is, skill might be described as the ability to accomplish something by how one uses all of one’s available resources. If two people have the same resources, and both try their hardest, then the reason that one succeeds while the other fails at exactly the same task will often be that one of them is more skilled than the other. Given that skill can accomplish much with little, it follows that skill can be shown by thrift. Skilled action does not use superfluous or unnecessary actions or resources. If I drench my body in order to wash my hands, then I do not have the skill of hand-washing. There is a saying that necessity is the mother of invention. We might also say, conversely, that control despite poverty of resources is the child of skill. In order to control things external to oneself, it is necessary to control oneself too. In order to use tools, I need to use my hands, or some other part of my body. Therefore in working skillfully on a material other than oneself, there is the task of controlling oneself, and of coordinating one’s own actions with movements of the material. And in order to control oneself, there is need for knowledge of oneself. In order to catch a ball that is thrown to me, I need to be proprioceptively aware of where my hands are. We can apply the principle of minimum waste to the self-control required by skill by observing that in skillful action one does not make superfluous bodily movements or waste one’s own energy. Skill’s thrift has noteworthy consequences. Since skilled action does not waste opportunities or time, it tends to be relatively fast. Because skilled acting, making, or speaking is economical or efficient, a performance of skill tends to be smooth, pleasing to watch, or beautiful. An appropriate amount of precision is an essential element of skilled control. In order to accomplish much with little, it is necessary to apply one’s resources at the right points, or to the right areas, and at the correct moments, or in the correct time-windows. Skilled precision is a mean. It avoids the extremes of sloppiness and of unreasonable meticulousness. On the one hand, if an action is sloppy, then it wastes resources and has unintended and often undesirable effects. A spade is not an appropriate tool for removing a splinter from your finger. On the other hand, if an action is more meticulous than its purpose requires, or than one’s overall plan permits, then it wastes time and effort. A needle is not a suitable device for digging a deep well. Precise control is not enough. A truly skilled person is consistently precise in controlling a material by means of a stable ability. Obviously, the normal way to achieve consistency is practice. Through practice one acquires habits that are essential to a skill. Often we call a group of related habits that are essential to a skill a technique.

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A skill that works with a complex and varied material requires a repertoire of techniques that have appropriate levels of generality or specificity. The problem with a very general technique is that it applies to a great many cases at the cost of applying crudely to almost all of them. When one size fits all, it fits most rather poorly—it is asked to do too much with too little. The problem with highly specific techniques is that an adequate repertoire of them would require so many different techniques that it would be impractical to master all of them; and even if one could master them all, it would be quite difficult to make timely decisions about which of them to use for any given case. A travelling salesman with a different hat for literally every head has too much merchandise to carry around and would waste much time finding the right hat for any given head. He lacks door-to-door-skill because he wastes his resources. There is a revealing resemblance between techniques and tools. If one has many very different sorts of tasks that call for a hammer, it is often better to possess many hammers of varying sizes and shapes. That is, one hammer is too general for optimal success at all hammering jobs. Similarly, in order to succeed at several similar but sufficiently different tasks calling for skill, one may need many similar, but sufficiently different, techniques. An advantage of habit and technique is that they enable us to do something with little effort and attention, that is, (relatively) automatically. Once you have put in the work to learn a technique, then you may often be sparing of effort in applying it. This automatic quality in technique frees much of our attention from some things so that we may attend to other things, or it may help us to do a task we can do automatically even better if we attend exclusively to it. In order to be creative in skillful action it helps immensely to be able to do much of one’s task automatically so as to free up resources for invention. Skills have limits. Even in routine applications of technique, there can be a need for minor adjustments, owing to a slight novelty in the situation. But mere skill can stretch only so far, and if the novelty in a situation is great, then mere mastery of techniques, and minor adjustments, are not enough, because the skilled person’s repertoire of techniques does not apply sufficiently well to the novel situation. Moreover, one cannot amass an infinite number of techniques, even though some kinds of tasks pose an almost infinite variety of situations or problems. That is, some kinds of tasks are too big for even a supremely skilled person’s bag of tricks. What then is to be done when mere technique is insufficient, but success is desirable and possible? A skilled person who is also an artist makes up for the poverty in his treasury of techniques with creativity. When even the most extensive toolkit is inadequate, there is need of creativity in order to do much with little. One obvious kind of situation in which there is need of creativity is one of great complexity. Some

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cases are so complicated, and call for the coordination of so many techniques, that mere mastery of the relevant techniques falls far short of what is needed for consistent success. A qualification is in order. Creativity grounded in skill is not enough for devising an artful solution to a novel problem. An attempted solution might be skilled and creative but fail miserably. What is needed is a creative and skillful response that is well-adapted to one’s task; and, if possible, the artful person should be resourceful in discovering creative and effective solutions to problems in saying, doing, or making something. Obviously, effective creativity is quite mysterious, and would require much labor to explore. I will not attempt this here. A Preliminary Account of Love’s Art Kierkegaard thinks that love is artful in many ways or senses. In all of these senses, art includes skill, but also transcends it. As I noted earlier, Kierkegaard describes love as dexterous, or skillful, in its work (WL 340/SKS 9:335). But mere skill is not enough for the great variety of situations in which love is possible and desirable. Therefore love requires creative art as well as skill. Or, as Kierkegaard puts it, love needs to be and is inexhaustible in inventing means both of doing good and of expressing itself (WL 181/SKS 9:181). Inexhaustibility in invention is required for two reasons. First, owing to the immense variety of human situations in which a lover wants to help the neighbor, mere skill cannot competently cope with all of them, so that an efficacious lover must creatively adapt her skills to new situations. Second, since love does not want to repeat the same rote expressions of itself over and over, but desires to communicate itself freshly and aptly on every occasion, so that it may be credible and salutary, it needs an art of inventing new expressions of itself. Love according to Kierkegaard is shown in how a person speaks or acts, that is, by his or her style. Kierkegaard stresses that love is expressed not by what one says or does, but by how one speaks and acts (WL 13–14/SKS 9:21). He ascribes great power to love’s style or way, asserting that an apparently hateful deed might actually be loving if done in the right way, and that an apparently loving action might be actually unloving if it is done in the wrong way. One might even say that love can do so much with so little that it can achieve its purposes with less than nothing, that is, with apparently hateful deeds. Imagine a lover who is cursed by an evil spirit, so that he can say only words generally regarded as hateful to his beloved, but who nevertheless effectively expresses love in all that he says to her. Such virtuosity is too great for mere skill, and requires art.

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One of the main ways that something can be artful is that all of its parts aptly serve its main idea or purpose, and thus give it unity (EPW 76–84/SKS 1:32–39). Coordinating many skillful acts or effects harmoniously, and making something new and unified out of them, demands an art that transcends mere skill; for skill wears blinders in order to focus on and see some limited thing, or a few limited things, while art has a more comprehensive vision. In other words, unity in a work of art is skill’s principle of parsimony perfected and writ large: nothing in a whole created by art is wasted, because everything in it sparingly but effectively serves its main idea. Kierkegaard describes subjectivity, that is, living ethically or religiously by imitating an ideal, as artful unity.9 Subjectivity is artful because (nearly) everything in the life of the subjective individual expresses service to an ideal, or the application of an ideal to her life, or faithful imitation of an ideal. Subjectivity seems to have a claim to being the greatest art because its scope is a whole life, so that there are myriads of elements to be coordinated. Although subjectivity has skillful thrift in that it does not waste its words and deeds, but coordinates and unifies its efforts in the service of its idea, it nevertheless uses everything at its disposal to live for that idea, as happens, say, in a maximum but skillful effort in the clean and jerk, or in a marathon. Love of one’s neighbor as oneself is a species of subjective art because it is imitation or reduplication of the ideal of divine love. Since love is subjective art, but also seeks difficult-to-achieve effects on or in other people, it has an even greater claim to art than merely solitary subjectivity, in that its scope includes, not just a whole individual life, but a whole life in concerned relation to many other people, who are to be treated, not as inanimate material, but as free human beings. Ideals are infinite, but each situation to which they may be applied is marked by specificity, limitation, or finitude. Therefore the art of imitating ideals involves unifying the infinite and the finite. Johannes de silentio hits the mark when he says that faith “absolutely . . . express[es] the sublime in the pedestrian” (FT 41/SKS 4:136). Faith is transcendently skillful, that is, artful, because it does the most with the least, when it uses the pedestrian to absolutely express the sublime. Johannes Climacus indicates that an artful communicator of ethical and religious truths combines another pair opposites besides the finite and the infinite, namely, earnestness and jest (CUP 87–88/SKS 7:87). The communicator is earnest because of the infinite importance of the ideal to be communicated. He jests partly because finite expressions of the ideal inevitably fall short of it, and should not be idolized, and because God, not he, is the true helper. Thus another general meaning of art for Kierkegaard is synthesizing opposites while preserving the tension between them as one imitates an ideal. A lover is artful in this sense when she is very serious in wanting to help the neighbor, but assists with a light

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touch so as not to call undue attention to herself, and so as not to put too much external pressure on the person to be helped (WL 277/SKS 9:275). Ordinarily when opposites come together they clash, and there is noise, waste, interference, or destruction, so that we might conceive of harmonizing opposites as an especially impressive instance of art’s economizing. Kierkegaard describes love in the terms of fine art, or as something that even surpasses fine art at its own game. For example, he compares works of love to works of fine art, and says that the former are “the most beautiful of all” (WL 314/SKS 9:311; WL 325/SKS 9:322). Deeds of love are most beautiful because they skillfully instantiate the most sublime ideal within the limits of finitude. Kierkegaard also celebrates love as interesting, because it partly reveals and partly conceals its divine source, and because it accomplishes much with little. He even ascribes good taste to love (WL 325/SKS 9:321–322). Therefore an important part of the reason that love “makes life worth living” is that it is joyously beautiful, and intriguingly interesting, and not just prudent to find, and skillful to apply, suitable means to its benevolent ends. As Kierkegaard says, there are tasks of love that “will be able to engage you as works of art” (WL 340/SKS 9:335). A qualification or clarification is in order. The artful person does not always use the capacity to do much with little in a Spartan manner. Art may require expansiveness, proliferation, and baroqueness. But it is baroque in the right way, and it is not senselessly wasteful, even if it might appear to be. When the task is to live artfully, there is need for novelty and variation, in order to avoid boredom, lifeless routine, and unimaginative repetition. The existential artist imitates an ideal that is rich and can therefore inspire and support variation. What is more, in order to be faithful to the bounty of the ideal it is necessary to express it with inexhaustible variety. If the existential artist is not fertile in variation, then he wastes the opportunities afforded both by the ideal and by new situations that allow for fresh expressions and new applications of the ideal. Therefore repetition, efficiency, and minimalism may be wasteful. In the case of imitating an ideal, they do little with much, while variation and reinvention may do much with much. For example, in order to express the richness of one’s love for life or for another person it may be fitting to express it with luxurious variety or ornate elaboration. PROSPECTUS Chapter one illustrates the importance of praise for Kierkegaard by examining his most controversial book, namely, Fear and Trembling, which has been interpreted “in a bewildering variety of ways.” I argue that the main purpose of Fear and Trembling is to praise faith, and that interpreting it as praise is

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the key to unraveling many of its difficulties, and to explaining many of its key features. Chapter two examines how love builds up two of the greatest goods in the neighbor, namely, selfhood and love. It explains the formidable difficulties of this task, and describes how love overcomes these difficulties through Socratic pedagogy and charitable trust. Love helps the neighbor to stand alone as a self by Socratically concealing its assistance, so as not to promote habits of dependence. Love encourages the neighbor to love by convincingly expressing its heartfelt belief in the actuality or possibility of love in her. This chapter makes extensive use of examples of love’s art of upbuilding from Middlemarch and from The Brothers Karamazov. Life often goes wrong, as do human beings. It is not unusual for a person to sin against others, thereby harming them, herself, and her relationship with them. Chapter three is about love’s skilled repair-work: forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace-making. Forgiveness helps to heal sinners, while reconciliation and peace-making help repair human relations. In this chapter I make use of examples of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace-making from Middlemarch and The Brothers Karamazov. I also use some fruitful ideas of Charles Griswold as inspiration for supplementing Kierkegaard’s account of forgiveness and reconciliation. Chapter four shows how Kierkegaard praises love with poetry and dialectic. It shows that Kierkegaard’s praise of love is perhaps more dialectical, or argumentative, than poetic. Kierkegaard’s arguments in praise of love have an a fortiori structure. He lets “the poet” praise erotic love and friendship, and then argues that Christian love matches and exceeds the ideals which the poet praises. This chapter considers the difficulty of praising a love which the encomiast must stress is offensive to merely human standards. It examines what it means to praise love while also demanding that a decision be made about it. And it investigates the role of self-denial in love’s praise. Chapter five explicates two exemplary encomia of love. The first is Kierkegaard’s panegyric of a simple three word exhortation to “love one another” written by St. John. Kierkegaard’s praise of John’s words is a powerful and beautiful example of a charitable interpretation that discovers great but hidden riches in the words of another person. The second example comes from one of the most moving scenes in The Brothers Karamazov, namely, Alyosha’s speech at the stone at the end of the novel. This speech illustrates many aspects of Kierkegaard’s panegyricon, but also complements it, and perhaps even corrects it. Kierkegaard thinks inequality among human beings on essential things is or would be cruelly inhuman, and that love works to express or establish human equality in all things that really matter. One might suspect that Kierkegaard’s strategy for establishing equality requires lowering the standards of human

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achievement. And yet Kierkegaard boldly claims that love unites and equalizes people, not in a “common poverty” or in a “common mediocrity,” but in “a community of the highest.” All people, he claims, can be virtuosos of the art of love. This is an exciting claim, if only we can be convinced that it is not a mere dream. Chapter six considers several arguments that Kierkegaard presents, or implies, for the possibility of human equality in love’s art and knowledge. This chapter also examines what Kierkegaard says about how to artfully express essential human equality in the midst of inessential inequalities of wealth, social status, political power, and talent for worldly endeavors. Finally, this chapter concludes by examining Iris Murdoch’s novel, A Fairly Honourable Defeat, for its moving depiction of an art of love that is possible for ordinary people. The Conclusion shows Kierkegaard praising both an ideal actress and the essential art critic (in The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress) more for their heroism and spiritual excellence than for their art and discrimination, and praising silence before God, obeying God, and joyful trust in God (in The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air) almost more for their art than for their virtue or holiness. I argue that the meaning of Kierkegaard’s practice of praising higher things for lower qualities and lower things for higher qualities is that he thinks art and esthetics contain within them a dynamism that can and should lead a person to ethics and religion, and that ethics and religion are not complete unless they include art and esthetics as essential, albeit subordinate, elements.10 In the Appendix I argue that love’s art requires wisdom, or knowledge, and a lot of it. This should not be surprising, since art is sometimes described as know-how. Kierkegaard makes grand claims about love’s capacity for knowledge, asserting that “everyone can come to know everything about love.” The Appendix briefly describes what love needs to know, and how according to Kierkegaard it comes to know these things. NOTES 1. For another scholar who thinks that something like praise is ubiquitous in Kierkegaard’s authorship, see Christopher A. P. Nelson, “The Joy of It,” in Christian Discourses and The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 17 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2007), 119–41. Nelson says that “[f]rom beginning to end, Kierkegaard’s is a philosophy of joy,” and that “Kierkegaard’s entire authorship may be conceived as a communication of joy” (119, 137). Since admiration is delight or joy in excellence, and praise seeks to communicate joy in excellence, Nelson implies that praise is central to Kierkegaard’s

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writings. Nelson does not, however, stress that Kierkegaard praises things, or connect the communication of joy with poetry. 2. Several great thinkers agree with Kierkegaard about the function of poetry. For example, see Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). Tocqueville writes that poetry is “the search for and the depiction of the ideal” (458). Plato also agrees with Kierkegaard about poetry, as is shown by his attacking the poets for praising the wrong heroes, and thus the wrong ideals. See also Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1990). Nietzsche writes the following: “A psychologist asks . . . what does all art do? does it not praise? does it not glorify?” (100). But, one might object, if all art praises, where is the praise in a novel whose protagonist is an antihero? For a reply to this objection, see Victor Brombert, In Praise of Antiheroes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Brombert argues that, even though the creators of antiheroes typically intend to subvert the prestige of heroism, nevertheless their antiheroes are often courageous and honest paradigms of subversion, and therefore admirable, so that antiheroic novels are at least implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, “praise of antiheroes” (2, 5). If the intention to praise survives even in the cynical and subversive milieu of the antiheroic novel, the need to praise must run very deep in human nature indeed. 3. For an interpretation of Kierkegaard’s use of ideals in Works of Love, see Amy Laura Hall, Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Hall interprets Works of Love as presenting the ideal of love in order to humble its readers and induce them to acknowledge their sins (11–16). In other words, Hall reads Works of Love not mainly as praise of the ideal of love, but as blame of those who fall short of it. 4. There are few investigations into the meaning of Kierkegaard’s description of himself as a “singular kind of poet.” For a noteworthy inquiry into this see Sylvia Walsh, “Kierkegaard: Poet of the Religious,” in Kierkegaard on Art and Communication, ed. George Pattison (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 1–22. Walsh gives a good account of what it means that Kierkegaard is a poet. “A poet, above all, must have intense pathos or intense passion. As one of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms succinctly puts it: ‘Without pathos, no poet’ (SLW 405/SKS 6:376)” (1). Walsh does not mention that among the passions of the poet are admiration or adoration, which would make a poet want to praise what she admires. Kierkegaard “sees his poetic task as one of merely describing rather than imaginatively constructing the religious ideals” (19). I agree. Kierkegaard does not think that he is inventing Christianity, but that he is working to restore it in the present age. Moreover, admiration and praise are more meaningful for the praiser if she does not think that she is inventing what she admires. “Unlike the usual poet, he is able to bring to bear a dialectical understanding of the ideal” (19). Yes. Kierkegaard thinks that adequate admiration of something requires that it be “understood in its greatness (FT 31/SKS 4:127). “He sees his task as being to provide an existential rather than a purely poetic expression of the ideal” (19). I agree: Kierkegaard praises in order to invite or challenge people to express in their lives the ideals that he praises. “He is ethically aware that the task is not to poeticize the ideal but to be like it (JP 6:6632/SKS NB 18:100)” (19). Definitely. “Finally, he

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does not merely present the ideal, like the ordinary poet, but is personally engaged in striving toward it (JP 1:817/SKS NB11:196; JP 6:6528/SKS NB 14:19)” (20). Yes. Curiously, although Walsh connects the poet and the ideals in many ways, she does not explicitly say that poets praise ideals, nor even that poets admire ideals. 5. Two other scholars discuss Kierkegaard’s praise of love. See Lee C. Barrett, in Eros and Self-Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 2013), 94, 197; and “Authorial Voices and the Limits of Communication in Kierkegaard’s ‘Signed’ Literature: A Comparison of Works of Love to For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 21 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1999), 13–37. In the latter of these Barrett says that the purpose of Works of Love is to praise love, explains aspects of Kierkegaard’s strategy of praise, and gives an account of why praise of love is important (22–25). Barrett’s admirable book and essay, however, are not primarily about praise of love. See also Begonya Saez Tajafuerce, “Rhetoric in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, or ‘No sooner Said than Done,’” in Works of Love, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 16 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1999), 305–37. 6. Kierkegaard almost always downplays the results of human action, and stresses the hidden inwardness of the ethically or religiously striving individual. He does this partly because the individual cannot be held strictly responsible for the effects of her actions—these being ultimately beyond her control. But a person can be held responsible for her intentions, her effort, her hidden inwardness, and her relation to God. Therefore Kierkegaard often stresses these internal things and deemphasizes external results. He does this too in Works of Love (WL 84–85/SKS 9:89–90). But in that same book, by stressing the art of love, and its immense power, Kierkegaard thereby stresses the results of love’s work. Thus love’s need for effectual art suggests a substantial revision of Kierkegaard’s oft-repeated thesis about the unimportance of results. For a consideration of Kierkegaard’s concern with results in Works of Love, see M. Jamie Ferreira, Love’s Grateful Striving: A Commentary on Kierkegaard’s Works of Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). One of Ferreira’s main concerns is to correct misinterpretations of Works of Love according to which love as described by Kierkegaard is “asocial, otherworldly, nonmutual,” acosmic, and lacking “ethical human relationship” (5, 6). Some readers of Works of Love claim that for Kierkegaard love puts the lover in a relationship with God, but not with other human beings. Ferreira’s book argues convincingly against this misreading. But I think it could succeed even better if it attended to what Works of Love says about the art of love. For Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the art with which love builds up the neighbor clearly shows that the lover cares about actually helping other existing human beings; and his emphasis on the power of love’s art indicates that love should and may hope to help the neighbor immensely. 7. Ferreira’s Love’s Grateful Striving is the most thorough in intention and in fact of the interpretations of Works of Love, and an excellent book. Despite its thoroughness, it does not explore the important theme of love’s art. The first words of the book

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are: “What does the love commandment—‘love your neighbor as yourself’—ask us to do?” (3). This guiding question about what love does indicates the emphasis of Ferreira’s book. But there is another important question, which Works of Love stresses, of how love does what it does, which is partly or largely a question about love’s art. Ferreira sometimes describes how love does what it does, especially how it gives; and this discussion could lead to an investigation of the art of love (156–57, 166). Ferreira also quotes Kierkegaard as saying that love is dexterous, but does not examine this dexterity in much detail (159). Curiously, Ferreira includes only a brief discussion of the purpose of love that makes love desire to be artful, namely, its intention to “build up” the neighbor (137–38). Sylvia Walsh, in Living Poetically: Kierkegaard’s Existential Aesthetics (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), gives an excellent account of Kierkegaard’s ideas about the poetry of ethical and religious life. But she claims that Works of Love does not unite the poetic and the religious, and instead drives a wedge between them. She writes that Works of Love is among books by Kierkegaard that “declare . . . that a union between the aesthetic and the ethical is a ‘misalliance’”; and that “a poetic relation to actuality is a ‘misunderstanding’” (167). She also writes the following: “Perhaps the most devastating criticism of the poet and poetry in the writings of the middle period” is in Works of Love (179). There can be no doubt that there is much criticism of the poet in Works of Love. But I disagree with Walsh about the status of the poetic, the aesthetic, and art in that book. It criticizes the mere poet, or the pagan poet, partly in order to usher in a religious poetry of love. Moreover, Walsh exaggerates the extent to which Works of Love criticizes the poet. It also praises the poet, as we shall see. And this praise is part of the basis for the introduction of a poetry of Christian love. See also Carl. S. Hughes, in Kierkegaard and the Staging of Desire (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014). Hughes argues that Kierkegaard often employs a theatrical rhetoric, not just in his pseudonymous authorship, but even in a book like Works of Love (6). More importantly for my purposes, he argues that, according to Kierkegaard, the ordinary lover of the neighbor can be theatrical in lovingly expressing human equality (191). Hughes is quite rare in deliberately and explicitly describing even a little of what love does as art. What he says is illuminating and helpful. But he does not discuss love’s art in general, or at length, since his concern is with the centrality of theatricality in Kierkegaard’s writings, and with Kierkegaard’s own art of staging as an author. Louis Mackey’s Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971), has a promising title for my purposes, and it is beautiful, insightful, and interesting in what it says about Kierkegaard’s poetry. But it does not discuss the poetry or the art of neighbor-love. There are two rich and interesting books by Sharon Krishek on Kierkegaard and love: Kierkegaard on Faith and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), and Lovers in Essence: A Kierkegaardian Defense of Romantic Love (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022). These books create opportunities for talking about the art of love. Both books give excellent accounts of the double movement of faith as described in Fear and Trembling, and creatively apply their interpretation

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of that movement to love, especially romantic love, in a way that Kierkegaard does not explicitly do. But, even though Kierkegaard indicates that the double movement is great art, Krishek does not explicitly interpret it as art. In Lovers and Essence, Krishek interprets romantic love as a “correspondence of essences” that helps people fulfill their potential to become the “best version” of themselves, or the selves they are “intended to be” (59, 223). Thus arises the question: can anything take the place of correspondence of essences when there is no romantic love? It seems to me that romantic love’s correspondence of essences does some work that otherwise would require art and wisdom. And even in the case of romantic love, the lovers should not merely rely on the correspondence of their essences, but should use the art and wisdom that they have to assist the “work” that their essential correspondence is naturally doing. 8. There is a debate in philosophy about whether skill, or expertise in a field— where expertise is more than one skill, and is something like virtuosity—involves knowledge or thinking, and in what ways it does. This question can be put in many ways. We can ask whether expertise involves thinking. Does it involve reasoning, concepts, deliberation, reflection, calculation, or other things? Herbert Dreyfus, in Skillful Coping, ed. M.A. Wrathall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), argues that expertise at its best is highly non-cognitive. B.G. Montero, in Thought in Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), argues that even at its best, expertise involves thinking, analysis, and self-awareness, or at least that it can involve these things without being diminished. It is important that Dreyfus and Montero have common ground. They agree that much thinking is often or typically required in order to become an expert. Practice usually involves thinking, and becoming an expert often requires reflecting on one’s mistakes or weakness, and what to do about them. They also agree that experts encounter situations that are so novel that the expert must think about how to respond to them. What Dreyfus and Montero disagree about is what happens with experts at their best. Do they think or not? Dreyfus says no, Montero, yes. Kierkegaard seems to me to side mostly with Montero. In Works of Love he speaks much about love’s knowledge, and often says that a skilled lover knows how to do this or that. For example, he speaks of a general “understanding of what it is to help another human being” (WL 276/SKS 9:274). He says that in order to “get to know best what resides in this person,” you must “understand the art of making yourself no one” (WL 347/SKS 9:341). To add just one more example, he says that love “knows how to confer a blessing” (WL 213/SKS 9:216). 9. In the Postscript Johannes Climacus claims that “to exist is an art” (CUP 351/SKS 7:321). In this quotation Climacus is using the word “exist” in a special sense. He means that it is an art to put one’s convictions about how to live into practice, so that everything one does, thinks, says, and feels indirectly expresses one’s convictions. For a good account of this type of art, which Kierkegaard often calls subjectivity, see Sylvia Walsh, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard’s Existential Aesthetics. Walsh sometimes speaks of art, but more often of the poetic and the aesthetic. Moreover, she deems art to be “closely related to the other two” terms (19). According to Walsh, Kierkegaard thinks that the poetic is essential to and “in certain [texts of Kierkegaard] even identical to, ethical and religious forms of life”; and that

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a “Christian mode of ‘living poetically’ . . . is a possibility and a requirement for everyone” (2). To live poetically is partly to “include poetic and aesthetic factors in” life, and, more importantly, to reduplicate the ideal “in human life” (3, 5). In other words, imitating the ideal in one’s action, creatively and resourcefully adapting it to one’s circumstances, or representing it in one’s life, is an art. Although Walsh does not herself apply her account of living poetically to love of neighbor as described in Works of Love, this account fits love of neighbor: for, since love is one of the ideals, loving is an artful reduplication of an ideal. 10. Since praise is ubiquitous in Kierkegaard’s authorship, it would have been possible to write about praise in many texts of Kierkegaard other than Works of Love, Fear and Trembling, The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air. Either/Or volume one has much praise of art and artists. Either/Or volume two, and parts of Stages on Life’s Way, praise marriage as the most beautiful of all. Stages even praises the praise of marriage. Philosophical Fragments praises Socrates and the incarnation. Repetition praises farce, some actors, Job, and repetition, which is something like faith. Two Ages praises the age of revolution, and a novel by Thomasine Christine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvard. The Postscript praises subjectivity, and Lessing. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits praises Christian suffering, hardship, being guilty before God, and other things. For Self-Examination praises Luther and other “glorious ones” of Christianity. And all Kierkegaard’s discourses praise Christianity. But my present book is not an attempt to give a complete account of praise in Kierkegaard’s authorship. Its focus is on praise in Works of Love. It interprets Fear and Trembling in order to show the extreme importance of praise for Kierkegaard, that the importance of praise for him has not been noticed much in the secondary literature, and that paying attention to praise can be a crucial heuristic device for interpreting Kierkegaard. I also interpret The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air, because the praise in them helps us to understand why Kierkegaard praises love primarily for its art, and not for its goodness.

Chapter 1

The Poetry of Faith in Fear and Trembling

Fear and Trembling is perhaps Kierkegaard’s most controversial book.1 In this chapter I argue that the key—or at least a key—to Fear and Trembling is its doxological intent. The strong version of my thesis is that the book’s primary purpose is to praise faith. The modest version is that a major purpose of the book is to praise faith. I believe that this thesis is interesting in its own right. But I also claim that my argument for it helps us to see many crucial things about Kierkegaard: that praise is immensely important for him; that he goes to extreme lengths, and employs devious art, in order to praise a Christian ideal; that interpreting Kierkegaard in the light of his intention to praise an ideal can be very fruitful for explaining many features of his texts, and for clearing up numerous problems and difficulties in them; and that, given the extensive evidence of the intention to praise faith in Fear and Trembling, there is either a striking blindness to praise, or else a remarkable indifference to it—as though it were unimportant—in the secondary literature.2 DIRECT EVIDENCE OF FEAR AND TREMBLING’S PANEGYRICAL PURPOSE We will consider several kinds of direct evidence for the telos of Fear and Trembling: the book’s relatively explicit indications of its purpose, the poetic and panegyrical nature of its pseudonymous author, Johannes de silentio, and Silentio’s suggestions that “the present generation” needs to hear the praise of faith.

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Silentio’s More or Less Direct Statements about His Eulogistic Intention Johannes de silentio expresses a deep concern about intelligent admiration and competent praise. He says he does “not wish to participate in . . . empty praise,” or to “waste time on unmerited eulogies” (FT 30/SKS 4:125–26). He complains that people do not admire things properly, but instead fall into a “brutish stupor that gawks at life and thinks it has seen something” (FT 38/SKS 4:133). He blames and mocks people for admiring or praising unworthy people instead of “authentic heroes” (FT 85/SKS 4:175). For example, he quotes the witty quip: “One fool always finds a bigger fool, who admires him”; and he finds fault with praise of “misplaced magnanimity” (FT 55/SKS 4:149; FT 86/SKS 4:176). He criticizes the error of praising worthy things unworthily, an error which “turns wine into water” (FT 37/SKS 4:132). The esthetic mentality does this when it “thoughtlessly supposes that it is praising love” for doing something that is in fact unworthy of that passion (FT 99/SKS 4:189). Silentio blames typical poets for not even knowing who the most admirable character in their own story is. For example, he wagers that a poet in telling the story of Sarah and Tobias would focus on Tobias, who is indeed brave and noble, when in fact “Sarah is the heroic character” (FT 103– 4/SKS 4:192–93). Silentio explains aspects of correct praise of greatness. For example, he says that it is necessary to “speak humanly about it” (FT 34/SKS 4:130). He is especially concerned that Christianity is not praised, or else is praised unworthily. For example, he laments that people thoughtlessly praise the “Christian world in cliches” by saying that “a light shines over” it, when in fact light shines on the ancient Greek world, and there is much darkness, along with fear and trembling, in the Christian world (FT 55/SKS 4:149). We might sum up our current line of argument by saying that Silentio presents himself as a concerned expert on what does and does not deserve admiration and praise, how to admire discerningly, and how to praise competently. It is because he is such an expert that he says the following: “I could be tempted to call myself tortor heroum [tormentor of heroes], for I am very inventive when it comes to tormenting heroes” (FT 109/SKS 4:198). This is to say that in telling stories of heroes—and he tells many—he invents torments for them, so that they may reveal their worth by how they endure, persevere, and triumph in their torments, and so that he may rank various kinds of heroes— something he often does. Silentio clearly and frequently indicates his concern about admiration and praise of faith in particular; and he unambiguously expresses his intention to praise faith. He asks wistfully: “Who speaks to the honor of faith?” Thus indicating that it should be honored (FT 32/SKS 4:128). He complains that many people “glorify Abraham,” his main representative of faith, “in cliches” (FT



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28/SKS 4:124). He makes it clear that he himself strives to honor faith, identifying himself as “the one who aspired to speak” in praise of Abraham (FT 23/SKS 4:119). He indicates that he must speak “out of respect for [faith’s] greatness” (FT 75/SKS 4:166–67). He writes that the “last thing” he “will do is to scale [Abraham] down” (FT 31/SKS 4:126). This is to say that the first thing he will do is adequately express the greatness of Abraham and his faith, or that nothing is more important to him than praising faith. He writes that it is “against my very being to speak inhumanly about greatness” (FT 64/SKS 4:156). Thus, his very being is to speak humanly about greatness, especially the greatness of faith. In other words, Kierkegaard created Silentio as a poet whose reason for being is to celebrate faith. Silentio jests that if everyone in his age has performed the marvel of faith, “then what I am writing is the loftiest eulogy upon [my] generation by its most inferior member” (FT 51/SKS 4:145). Thus, Silentio claims that “what he is writing,” namely, Fear and Trembling, is meant to be “the loftiest eulogy” of the marvel of faith. He is so bent on praising Abraham, that, even if he had “acknowledged as true the judgment that Abraham was a murderer,” he doubts that he “would have been able to silence [his] reverence for him” (FT 30/SKS 4:126). The source of this determination to praise Abraham is Silentio’s inexhaustible admiration, which inspires him to say that he “will never weary of admiring” his hero (FT 38/SKS 4:133). Most tellingly, near the center of Fear and Trembling, and at its main pivotal point, which is to say, in a position of maximum emphasis, Silentio writes that “the point is to perceive the greatness of what Abraham did” in his deeds of faith (FT 53/SKS 4:146). Thus, Silentio’s task is to help readers to perceive the greatness of faith by praising it. Silentio does not just talk about praising Abraham and faith. He praises them—a lot. One of his chapters is explicitly a “Eulogy on Abraham,” that is, a speech in praise of Abraham (FT 15–23/SKS 4:112–20). However, it is not just in one, special chapter that Silentio praises Abraham, but in the whole book. He calls faith great, a wonder, or a marvel on almost every page, and several times he calls it “the greatest . . . of all” (FT 52/SKS 4:145). He also explains at length what is great about it, namely, its heroism and its art. Silentio indicates that faith is heroic by representing it with the figure of “the knight of faith,” who courageously endures and prevails in dreadful trials. He explains that faith is a “work of art” because its “dialectic . . . is the finest and the most extraordinary of all” (FT 36/SKS 4:131). The art of faith consists in simultaneously performing and beautifully balancing two opposing movements: the movement of infinite resignation, by which the knight of faith renounces the good things of the world, because he acknowledges that God has the right and the power to deprive him of them, and the movement of gratefully getting the world back as a gift from God.3

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A major way that Silentio praises faith is by describing, explaining, and emphasizing the difficulty and horror of its tasks. Since “in our age everyone is unwilling to stop with faith, but goes further,” and because people think faith is trivial and easy, Silentio argues that, and explains why, faith is the “most difficult of all” (FT 7/SKS 4:102; FT 52/SKS 4:145). Obviously, faith’s extreme difficulty is a strong indication of its superlative greatness. Silentio stresses the horror of faith as much as its difficulty, and in order to reveal the difficulty. He bids us to “learn to be horrified by the prodigious paradox that is the meaning of [Abraham’s] life” (FT 52–53/SKS 4:146). He says that “one approaches” Abraham “with a horror religiosus” (FT 61/SKS 4:154). He describes and stresses the horror of faith so much that we might even say that an important purpose of Fear and Trembling is to evoke horror at the dreadful deeds of faith. This purpose, however, is subordinate to the goal of praising faith. For Silentio says that “if one does not know the terrors of” faith, “one does not know the greatness, either” (FT 75/SKS 4:167). One must know the terrors and horrors that the hero of faith voluntarily and courageously endures in order to know his or her courageous and heroic greatness. Thus, Silentio stresses the horror of faith in order to praise its courage and heroism. Silentio Is a Poet Whose Task Is to Praise Faith Silentio writes that the task of the poet is to use his “song and speech” to bring it about “that all may admire the hero as he does, may be proud of the hero as he is.” (FT 15/SKS 4:112). Therefore, if Silentio is a poet, his task is obvious: to praise his hero Abraham, and the faith that Abraham represents. But Silentio denies being a poet, saying, “I am not a poet, and I go at things only dialectically.” (FT 90/SKS 4:180). There is so much evidence against Silentio’s assertion that he is not a poet that it hardly seems worth refuting it. But thoroughness seems to be required, when there is so much controversy over what Fear and Trembling is really about. To begin with, Silentio’s reason for asserting that he is not a poet, namely, that he goes at things “only dialectically,” is ridiculous. Therefore, we should suspect that the conclusion he builds on this premise—namely, that he is not a poet—is likewise ridiculous. We don’t have to look further than Fear and Trembling’s subtitle—Dialectical Lyric—to see that the book labels itself as lyric or poetry. What is more, the subtitle indicates that the book is lyric modified by dialectic, which is to say that it is more poetry than dialectic, so that the author, Silentio, is more poet than dialectician. It is also revealing that, on the title page of a draft of Fear and Trembling, Silentio is described as “a poetic person who exists among poets.” (JP 5:5660/SKS EE1 ms. 5). Silentio, therefore, is a poet whose task is to praise his hero, namely, Abraham, the father and representative of faith.



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The Need of the Age for Praise of Ideals Silentio talks much about the needs of his age, and nearly all of them call for a poet. In his Epilogue he explains that what “the present generation needs” is an “honest earnestness that fearlessly and incorruptibly points to the tasks, an honest earnestness that lovingly maintains the tasks” and that “keeps the tasks young and beautiful and lovely to look at” (FT 121/SKS 4:180). If that is what the present generation needs, it is reasonable to infer that Fear and Trembling answers this need, and that Silentio aims to keep the tasks of infinite resignation and of faith young and beautiful and lovely to look at. But to show the beauty and loveliness of ideal tasks is the work of poetry. Therefore, Silentio is a poet whose task is to praise faith by keeping its “tasks young and beautiful and lovely to look at.” Kierkegaard writes that “the portrayal of the existential”—and faith is something existential—“is chiefly either realization in life or poetic presentation, loquere ut videam [speak so that I may see]” (JP 1:1058/SKS NB 15:81). This is to say that portraying the existential requires either living it, or poetically describing it, so that it may be seen. Therefore, poetry, as understood by Kierkegaard, is eminently suited to fulfilling the need of keeping the tasks young and beautiful and lovely to look at. Earlier I noted that Silentio says that “the point is to perceive [or see] the greatness of what Abraham did” (FT 53/SKS 4:146). By saying this he indicates that the point of his book requires a poet to speak so that readers may see the greatness of faith. Yet another indication of the importance of poetic vision is that in the Exordium Silentio describes a person who models a (partly) correct relation to Abraham, and whose “one wish” is “to see Abraham,” or “to have witnessed that event” in which God tested the faith of Abraham (FT 9/SKS 4:105). What this exemplar wishes for himself, Silentio wishes for his readers, namely that they see the events that reveal the greatness of faith; and he uses poetry to attempt to accomplish his wish. More generally, Kierkegaard himself thinks that poetic imagination is needed in order to become contemporary with heroes, with ideals, and even with Christ. His pseudonym Johannes Climacus writes that “poetic imagination” is the way “to become contemporary” with Christ (CUP 65/SKS 7:67). In Fear and Trembling one of the main things that Silentio does is to use poetic imagination to help his readers to become contemporary with Abraham so that they can learn to be horrified by him and to admire him. Silentio describes the modern world as demoralized and in need of encouragement. For example, he begins his book by remarking that “our age stages a real sale” at which spiritual things can be had at a “bargain price” (FT 5/SKS 4:101). Bargain prices notwithstanding, spiritual things seem to have lost their salability, so that there is a doubt whether anyone will make a bid for them (FT 5/SKS 4:101). Silentio also suggests that many modern people feel

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that human existence is empty of meaning and “devoid of consolation.” They sense that an inescapable and “eternal oblivion, perpetually hungry, lurk[ing] for its prey,” awaits us at death. Still worse, people fear that life is ultimately nothing but a cause for despair. As a remedy to despair and nihilism, Silentio says, “God created the hero and the poet” (FT 15/SKS 4:112). The hero symbolizes profoundly meaningful ideals which console, which are memorable, and which give hope to despairing humanity. The poet reveals the ideal meaning and essence of the hero and strives to make him remembered. This is exactly what Silentio tries to do by praising Abraham. Silentio laments that his age has “crossed out passion in order to serve science” (FT 7/SKS 4:103). That is, it tries to achieve knowledge by being dispassionate, impersonal, and objective. But Silentio claims, “the essentially human is passion” (FT 121/SKS 4:208). Therefore, by crossing out passion the present age crosses out its own humanity. Losing one’s humanity is so disastrous that we should expect Silentio to make it a high priority to remedy this loss. Remedying it requires poetry, according to Stages on Life’s Way, which says that “without passion, no poet” (SLW 405/SKS 6:376). It would be unpardonable for Silentio to stress that his age profoundly needs a poet, and then to refuse to be one for his age. Moreover, he fits the description of a poet. Therefore, he is one, specifically one whose main task is to praise faith. INDIRECT EVIDENCE OF FEAR AND TREMBLING’S PANEGYRICAL PURPOSE Probably the best way of arguing that the primary purpose of Fear and Trembling is eulogistic is to show the fruit of reading the text as praise of faith. If such a reading clears up difficulties, reveals the meaning and importance of salient features of the text, and generally helps us to understand the book, this would confirm the centrality of praise in Fear and Trembling. We will examine many features of Fear and Trembling in the light of the hypothesis of its encomiastic intention: namely, its structure, its poetry, its scare-tactics, the four failed Abraham’s in the Exordium, the book’s difficulty and its claims about the silence and unintelligibility of faith, Silentio’s suggestion that his book is a deception, the character of this same Johannes de silentio, who is the pseudonymous author of the book, the mysterious epigraph of the book, and the careful dialectical work in the Problemata to distinguish faith from ethical life. The fact that my hypothesis that Fear and Trembling is a laudatory text helps us to make excellent sense of so many difficulties and pervasive features of the text is compelling evidence for this hypothesis.



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The Structure of Fear and Trembling C. Stephen Evans claims that Kierkegaard uses the frame of his books, or how they “begin and end,” in order artfully to stress his main intentions or main points; and Evans thinks this interpretive insight applies especially well to Fear and Trembling. I agree, and add that Kierkegaard also uses major turning points in his books in the same way that he uses their beginnings and endings. As we have seen, Silentio begins Fear and Trembling by lamenting that “our age stages a real sale” (FT 5/SKS 4:101). The result is that it becomes doubtful “whether there is finally anyone who will make a bid” (FT 5/SKS 4:101). Thus, Silentio shows his concern that everything “in the world of ideas” and ideals has become so devalued that there is a danger that no one will be willing to pay for them, that is, struggle and sacrifice for them. He goes on to ridicule people who think they have gone further than faith and suggests that faith is a task “for a whole lifetime” (FT 7/SKS 4:102). By beginning his book in this way Silentio suggests that his purpose is to show the worth or value of faith, or to show that it is worth making a bid—the highest bid—for faith. In the Epilogue Silentio again mocks the urge to go further than faith, talks about what is valuable, and asserts that faith is “the highest” (FT 122/SKS 4:209). Near the middle of the book, just before turning to the Problemata, Silentio says that “the point”—presumably the main point for him and his readers in his book about faith—“is to perceive the greatness of what Abraham did” (FT 53/SKS 4:146). Thus, the structure of Fear and Trembling stresses the value or greatness of faith, the need to perceive this greatness, and, in short, the importance of admiring and praising faith.4 The Poetry of Fear and Trembling Silentio does not merely suggest that he is a poet whose task is to praise faith. He actually creates sublime poetry in order to fulfill his task. He does not write in verse, but he employs poetic diction, an elevated style, striking images, poetic characters, and stories that are moving and interesting. All these poetic elements work together to make us perceive and admire the greatness of knights of faith. In other words, a major reason that Fear and Trembling is perhaps Kierkegaard’s most poetic book is that he needs it to be such in order to accomplish the poetic task of praising faith. Silentio does not merely tell us that “one approaches” Abraham “with a horror religiosus” (FT 61/SKS 4:154). He artfully uses poetry to fill us with religious horror—or at least horror about a religious figure—not just once or twice, but repeatedly throughout his book. He creates a horrific atmosphere so that we can sense the courage required for enduring the dreadful and terrible tasks of faith.

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In the Exordium Silentio invents a person who is in love with and obsessed with Abraham, a person who attempts to imagine from different points of view the trial of Abraham when he was commanded by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac. The result is four moving versions, both of the trial, and of Abraham, all of whom are notably inferior to Abraham as he is described in the rest of the book. It can be hard to know what to do with these four little stories. But at the least, I think, we can say that they have the following two purposes. First, as the title of the section containing the four stories suggests, they attune readers to the task of imagining Abraham.5 That is, they exercise the imagination and the passions of readers, and help them to get a passionate appreciation of the father of faith. Second, through the failures of the inferior Abrahams that they describe, these four mini-stories show the difficulty of the trial of Abraham, and thereby the greatness of triumphing in them, as Abraham did. The Character of Johannes de silentio No feature of Fear and Trembling does more to help it praise faith than the character of its pseudonymous author, Johannes de silentio, whose “very being” is to praise faith. Kierkegaard creates Silentio as a poet of faith, and the latter is so well-designed that not only his virtues, but even his defects, are perfectly adapted to his poetic task. Therefore, in order to understand how Kierkegaard uses Silentio to praise faith, it will be useful to investigate the character of this fictional author. Silentio’s main qualification for praising faith is that he makes the first movement of faith, the movement of “infinite resignation,” by which he acknowledges that he has neither the right to the goods of this world, nor the power to acquire and securely hold on to them without divine assistance. Silentio does not, however, make the second and decisive movement of faith, by which he would be fully engaged with the world on the basis of a trust that God wishes him to do this and supports this engagement with miraculous assistance. By creating Silentio as a believable “knight of infinite resignation,” Kierkegaard gives his pseudonym the competence and authority to praise faith. Since Silentio makes the first movement of faith, but not the second, he is the “middle instance” between the excellence of faith, on the one hand, and mediocrity, on the other. He has “comparatively greater insight” into faith “based on his competence,” and uses this hard-won insight “to make others aware of the virtuoso and of his virtuosity” (JP 2:1812). In other words, since Silentio believably makes the first movement of faith, namely, infinite resignation, he has credibility as a properly informed eulogist of faith. In Works of Love Kierkegaard explains how possessing the very excellence that one praises can get in the way of praising it. He says that “the speaker,



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if everything is to be as it should be and poetically perfect, must” lack or be deficient in the quality that he praises. “If the speaker” has this quality, then “he easily becomes unsure or untruthful; either he will be tempted to gain advantage for himself from the praising, which is to defraud the object, or he will fall into a kind of embarrassment so that he does not dare to say everything about how glorious [the object] is, out of fear that someone would think that he is speaking of himself. But if the speaker [is not praising himself] then he can freely speak” (WL 372–73/SKS 9:365–66). If we apply the reasoning of this quotation to our present investigation, we see that in order to praise faith optimally, Fear and Trembling needs a pseudonymous author who confesses that he falls short of faith and its greatness. Since Silentio denies that he has faith, he is not hampered by modesty when he praises it, and readers do not dismiss his enthusiastic praise of it as biased boasting about himself. A word of warning. I am now going to criticize the character of Silentio at some length. I am not going to do this for the pleasure of it, or to feel superior to him, or even for the sake of ethical instruction. Instead, I want to show that Silentio’s vices of character are his virtues as a poet. In other words, Silentio’s virtuosity as a poet of faith depends essentially on his ethical defects. Kierkegaard’s art is revealed by the use to which he puts Silentio’s flaws, as God’s wisdom, omnipotence, and providence in Paradise Lost are revealed by his turning the evil that Satan intends or does into good. Silentio does not say merely that he lacks faith, but also that he is incapable of it. He gives just one reason—and a very unconvincing one at that—to explain his incapacity. He cannot make faith’s movement, he claims, because he “continually use[s] all [his] strength in resigning everything”—that is, he uses all his strength on the first movement of faith, so that he has none left for faith’s second and decisive movement (FT 49/SKS 4:143). In short, faith is “just too hard” for him. Kierkegaard himself does not tolerate such an excuse. In his Journals he explains that “if the learner says: I can’t, then the teacher answers: Nonsense, do it as well as you can, in order to get to know the task better and better” (JP 1:653, 4). Thus, Kierkegaard would repudiate Silentio’s excuse for his lack of faith. Silentio writes that “[e]very time I want to make this movement [of faith], I almost faint” (FT 48/SKS 4:14). Silentio speaks here of wanting to make the movement of faith, not of trying to make it. Tellingly, he never claims that he has tried to make this movement. But if he has not even attempted it, it is highly doubtful that he could know he is incapable of it. Silentio tells us that if only he could find a “knight of faith,” “I would watch him every minute to see how he made the movements; I . . . would divide my time between watching him and practicing myself, and thus spend all my time in admiring him” (FT 38/SKS 4:133). This claim that he “would practice” the movements of faith if, is highly suspicious. Since, by his own

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admission, he already “can describe the movements of faith,” surely he does not need a knight of faith to show him these movements (FT 37/SKS 4:132). Moreover, he claims that going by externals it is “impossible to distinguish” the knight of faith “from the rest of the crowd,” or, as Johannes Climacus would put it, that faith is an “essential secret” (FT 39/SKS 4:134). Therefore, Silentio could never know that he had found a genuine knight of faith. But, even if an obliging angel were to point out such a knight to him, Silentio would not be able to observe the hidden, inner movements of that knight’s faith. Furthermore, according to Johannes Climacus, no one is ever “assisted in doing the good by someone else’s actually having done it,” so that even miraculously seeing an example of the inner workings of faith would not help Silentio to acquire faith himself (CUP 359/SKS 7:328). Finally, since the “knight of faith is a witness, never the teacher,” and refuses to sell “what he has obtained at a bargain price,” there is good reason to doubt that the knight of faith would deign to inform Silentio of anything that Silentio does not already know (FT 80/SKS 4:171). Consequently, since Silentio can already describe faith’s movements without having found a knight of faith, and since in any case he could not verify that he had found such a knight, nor, if he could verify this, could he either observe that knight’s hidden, inner movements, or be taught the movements by that knight, nor, if he could observe or be taught these hidden movements, could he be inspired or helped to faith by this observation or instruction, his claim that he would practice faith if only he could find a knight of faith is basically an oblique confession that he has no intention to attempt the movements of faith, thank you very much. Silentio’s insistence that he cannot make the movement of faith loses all credibility when we reflect on his claim that “no human being is excluded from” faith, and his claim that “true greatness,” which he identifies with faith, “is equally accessible to all” people (FT 67/SKS 4:159; FT 81/SKS 4:171). If all people can make the movement of faith, then surely Silentio can make it too, unless he were to beg off with the ingenious technicality that he is not a real person, but merely a fictitious pseudonymous persona. Therefore, to be blunt, Silentio’s claim that he cannot make the movement of faith is a lie that he knows or ought to know for a lie; and he deceives himself about his incapacity for faith in order to evade faith, or as Kierkegaard might put it, because he “want[s] to make excuses and look for excuses” (JP 1:649; 10/SKS Papir 365:2–24). The main way that Silentio evades the task of faith is by poeticizing it (SUD 77/SKS 4:128). He substitutes poetically celebrating faith, or admiration, for “existentially striving” to be faithful, or imitation. There are several passages in Fear and Trembling in which Silentio virtually confesses that he desires, not to imitate Abraham and his faith, but only to praise him. For example, he describes a man, suspiciously like himself, whose “one wish,”



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or “one longing,” is, not to imitate Abraham, but “to see” him, and “to have witnessed that event” in which God tried Abraham (FT 9/SKS 4:105). This passage suggests that Silentio’s one wish is to see and to contemplate the greatness of Abraham, and not to imitate that greatness. Similarly, Silentio claims that the poet—and he himself is a poet—is happy that the hero whom he admires is “not himself, that his love can be admiration” (FT 15/SKS 4:112). In other words, it makes Silentio happy to admire his hero without imitating him. Given that Silentio is content to praise the hero of faith without imitating him, it is not surprising that he tries to justify or excuse his praise sans imitation. He claims that “God created” the “poet or orator,” who “can do nothing the hero does; he can only admire, love, and delight in him”—a claim suspiciously at odds with his own assertion that “no human being is excluded from” the heroism of faith (FT 15/SKS 4:112). Furthermore, he says, admiration is the poet’s “humble task” and “his faithful service in the house of the hero” (FT 15/SKS 4:112–13). With these words Silentio indirectly asserts that God created him as a poet commissioned to praise the faith of Abraham, but incapable of imitating it—a dubious assertion, as we have seen, but also an ironically apt assertion, since Kierkegaard creates Silentio as such a poet. Silentio completes his brazen and blustering substitution of poeticizing faith for striving to be faithful when he writes that if the poet “remains true to his love” for the hero, “then he has fulfilled his task, then he is gathered together with the hero” (FT 15–16/SKS 4:113). Thus, Silentio asserts that he as a poet shares in his hero’s heavenly reward, even though he has not dared what the hero dares, or endured what the hero endures, or struggled and suffered in trials like those of the hero. Kierkegaard strongly denounces Silentio’s estimation of the fitting reward for poeticizing faith, writing that “it seems a flagrant wrong” for the suffering imitator of Christ and any non-imitator to “be equally blessed” (FSE 23/SKS 13:52). Besides poeticizing his own relation to faith, Silentio poeticizes faith itself. As we have seen, Silentio thinks that his task is to celebrate faith. Another Kierkegaardian pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, claims that to “celebrate a hero of faith is just as fully an esthetic task as to celebrate a war hero.” He claims further that a “religious poet . . . is in an awkward position” because he “wants to relate himself to the religious by way of imagination, but just by doing that ends up relating himself esthetically to something esthetic” (CUP 388/SKS 7:353). Therefore, according to Climacus, by celebrating faith poetically and esthetically, Silentio ends up poeticizing and estheticizing faith itself, and thus distorts it. Johannes Climacus explains the poetic distortion of faith that occurs in Fear and Trembling when he says that the “portrayal” of “the knight of faith” in that book “was only a rash anticipation, and the illusion was

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gained by portraying him in a state of completeness, and hence in a false medium, instead of in the existence-medium,” since the task of faith is never finished in this life, and the real knight of faith is always in a state of striving, struggling, and becoming (CUP 500/SKS 7:454). In other words, Silentio distorts things by presenting Abraham as perfect in his faith. In the Eulogy on Abraham, Silentio repeatedly says that “Abraham had faith.” But Silentio never describes Abraham’s struggle to acquire faith. Instead, he presents Abraham’s faith esthetically, that is, as a finished accomplishment. Admittedly, Silentio does sometimes refer to the “struggles of faith,” and speaks a little about striving, contending, and working, and about disciplining oneself to make the movement of infinite resignation, but he does not actually describe the struggle to acquire faith. Incidentally, it seems likely that Silentio’s depiction of faith as non-struggling and finished is motivated by his own reluctance to struggle for faith. By representing faith as something finished, and not as continually struggling, he makes it easier for himself to avoid the struggle of faith. In The Sickness Unto Death and in Practice in Christianity, Anti-Climacus incisively exposes “the sin of poetizing instead of being” in a way that frequently calls Silentio to mind (SUD 77–78/SKS 4:191–92; PC 233–57/SKS 12:227–49). The crucial distinction in Anti-Climacus’s exposé is between a mere admirer, who does not imitate what he admires, and an imitator (or, more literally, a follower) who struggles to become similar to what he admires. Anti-Climacus writes that “in every individual . . . there resides . . . a profound cunning . . . that is of evil,” and that wants to “sneak away from the requirement.” A common strategy for sneaking away from the requirement inherent in the ideal is poetic admiration, which is essentially “excuse and evasion,” (PC 239–40/SKS 12:233). When imitation is not added to admiration, the latter is a “deceit, a cunning that seeks evasion and excuse” (PC 242/SKS 12:235). The admirer “is only spinelessly or selfishly infatuated with greatness” (PC 246/SKS 12:239). Anti-Climacus explains that whereas an “imitator is or strives to be what he admires . . . an admirer keeps himself personally detached” (PC 241/SKS 12:234). The admirer “forgets himself” (PC 242/SKS 12:234). This detached, evasive self-forgetfulness is the crucial defect of mere admiration. Kierkegaard’s Use of Silentio According to Kierkegaard, faith is an “absolute requirement” for all human beings. But, he thinks, it would be an inept strategy for him as a writer to inform his readers too quickly of this strenuous and painful duty. That is because human beings will go to great lengths to evade immense labor and intense pain. If Kierkegaard were to begin his praise of faith by announcing



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that the thing he praises is a duty or requirement, it is very likely that his readers would try to evade consciousness of this duty by not listening receptively to what he has to say about it. Therefore, in order to win a hearing for faith, Kierkegaard describes the greatness of faith while not mentioning the duty to be faithful. Just as a skilled salesperson attempts to make you admit that you appreciate his wares before allowing the question of their cost to arise, so Kierkegaard attempts to make us admire faith before he troubles us with a demand that we strive for it. We have seen two reasons that Kierkegaard is wise to use Silentio, who does not have faith, as his eulogist of faith in Fear and Trembling. The first is that, because he lacks faith, Silentio’s praise of faith does not seem to be off-putting self-praise. The second reason is that, because Silentio does not trouble readers with a demand to strive for faith, he makes them receptive to his praise of faith. A third reason that Silentio is a well-designed eulogist is that his lack of faith makes him very non-threatening. If Silentio had faith, readers might feel judged and silently challenged by him to imitate his example. In relation to his readers Silentio is what Constantin Constantius calls an observer: “An observer knows how to appear easygoing; otherwise, no one opens up. Above all, he guards against being ethically rigorous or portraying himself as the morally upright man” (R 183/SKS 4:53–54). Because Silentio does not portray himself as upright in the faith, people feel that they may “confide in him,” or trust him; they “open up” to him and become receptive to his praise of faith. Kierkegaard goes one step further than creating Silentio as a character who neither has faith nor requires faith of his readers. He also presents Silentio as someone who evades the task of faith with the excuse that it is too hard for him. By being an example of evasion, Silentio excuses evasion in his readers. Because he excuses himself from imitating faith, his praise of faith is as far as possible from posing a threat to readers, and is even a sort of comfort to them. They are soothed by the fact that the example of Silentio furnishes them with a pretext not to strive for faith. Shielded by Silentio from the burden of striving for faith, readers are freed up to acknowledge and admire faith’s greatness. As long as there is no mention, no little hint, of a duty or requirement, they may very well have the magnanimity to admit that faith is a supreme greatness achieved by a few exceptional individuals like Abraham. Thus, Silentio’s self-excusing, self-deceiving, task-evading admiration of faith is Kierkegaard’s way of getting his readers to be as receptive as possible to acknowledging and admiring the greatness of faith. As Anti-Climacus puts it, “the misunderstanding that goes under the name of admiration . . . is even necessary in order to attract people” (PC 245/SKS 12:238). Silentio is the personification of this attractive misunderstanding. After Kierkegaard has attracted people to faith through the pseudonymous persona of Silentio, his

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propagandist, he can break the distressing news to them in later books that the faith they admire is required. Yet another way that Silentio helps readers excuse themselves from the task of faith is by repeatedly claiming that faith cannot be understood. If I cannot understand faith, then I may beg off trying to perform its movements until they make more sense to me. Kierkegaard addresses this evasion in the following quotation: “Ah, this matter of the essentially Christian is so strange; in a certain sense it is so indescribably easy to understand, and on the other hand it actually becomes difficult only when it is that which must be believed” (CD 146/SKS 10:155). Thus, one can make faith hard to understand in order to evade the task of having faith, and this is what Silentio does. The Dialectical Distinction between Ethical Life and Faith Merold Westphal claims the following about the purpose of Fear and Trembling: “In Fear and Trembling, Johannes de silentio seeks to show the difference between the ethical and the religious, [. . .] simply for the sake of showing that the two are different.” By this claim Westphal seems mainly to mean that Silentio draws the distinction “without personally identifying with either position.” That is: Silentio “takes no position.”6 I think that Westphal is correct that Silentio intends to do something like this. Silentio does indeed work hard to distinguish the ethical and the religious, and stresses this distinction. He introduces each of the three Problemata by indicating an intention to distinguish Hegelian ethics from faith. Finally, it is true that Silentio does not say he thinks the beliefs of the knight of faith are true, and he does not urge his readers to embrace faith. Nevertheless, Silentio is clearly not neutral about faith. He constantly expresses his admiration for Abraham and for the greatness of faith. He asserts and sometimes argues that heroes of faith are greater than ethical heroes. In the eyes of Silentio it simply is not up for grabs whether faith is greater than ethical life: his admiration of knights of faith far exceeds his admiration of ethical heroes. Most importantly of all, Silentio continues to call Abraham greater than ethical heroes, even in the Problemata, where it is doubtful whether ethical life or faith has truth on its side. Therefore, Silentio makes the distinction between ethics and faith, not “simply for the sake of showing that the two are different,” but also for the sake of revealing that faith is greater than ethics. In other words, Silentio distinguishes between ethics and faith not for its own sake, but in order to help people perceive that the knight of faith is greater than ethical heroes, and to help people admire the greatness of faith.



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Consider Silentio’s last words before the Problemata: “In order to perceive the prodigious paradox of faith . . . It is now my intention to draw out in the form of Problemata the dialectical aspects implicit in the story of Abraham” (FT 53/SKS 4:147). To be sure, one reason that Silentio describes the prodigious paradox of faith is to show that it is different from the rationality of ethical life. But another reason is that the prodigious paradox of faith makes faith great, as we shall see (FT 65/SKS 4:158). Silentio’s efforts in the Problemata to help his readers perceive the prodigious paradox of faith constitute a crucial moment in his praise of faith. In sum, Westphal is correct that Silentio does not argue that faith has more truth on its side than ethics. But he is not right that Silentio is neutral about faith, for Silentio praises faith as something much greater than ethical life. The Silence and Mystery of Faith One of the most prominent features of Fear and Trembling is that Silentio repeatedly makes four related claims about faith: that faith cannot speak, that it cannot be understood, that it occurs by virtue of the absurd, and that it is a paradox. Silentio’s emphasis on these four claims does much to help him praise faith, as I will argue. Silentio uses silence to praise faith both argumentatively and rhetorically. We will begin with an implicit argument about silence. Let us recall that the purpose of the Problemata is to help readers “perceive the prodigious paradox of faith.” According to Silentio, there is “distress and anxiety in the paradox,” and the distress and agony are “due in particular to the silence” of faith, or to the fact that the knight of faith is “thoroughly incapable of making himself understandable” (FT 118/SKS 4:205; FT 74/SKS 4:165). Silentio also claims that knights of faith become “greater by means of [. . .] the distress and the agony and the paradox” (FT 65/SKS 4:158). That is, the silence of faith is agonizing, so that by voluntarily incurring and enduring this agony, and by acting despite it, knights of faith become greater than all other heroes. Therefore by stressing the silence of faith and helping readers in the Problemata to perceive the prodigious paradox of faith, Silentio in effect praises faith for the strength and courage by which it endures the agony of its own silence. Let us consider the silence of faith a little more thoroughly. Silentio stresses that humans are social beings, and he conceives of speaking as a social act. By speaking to other people about why we live as we do, we express our willingness to appeal to universal norms to justify our choices in life, and to be advised and judged by other people in the light of these norms. The knight of faith, however, relativizes human norms by relating absolutely to God, and by being willing to obey divine commands even when they are contrary to

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universal norms. More generally, even when she is not actually violating ethical laws, the knight of faith lives constantly before God and in total readiness to disobey human laws if God commands it. Since she is “God’s confidante, the Lord’s friend,” any attempt to justify her way of life in dialogue with other people would be a betrayal of her private relation to the divine (FT 77/SKS 4:168). Therefore, she must be silent about her relation to God. And, even if she were to try to speak about it, she would not be able to convincingly explain her purely private relation to God to other people. Living silently as a knight of faith is difficult. The knight of faith must endure many painful things: loneliness; not being understood by others, or, worse, being misunderstood; being thought dishonest, or even insane; not sharing responsibility with others for one’s actions and way of life; and doing without advice or encouragement on one’s choice of life. What is more, the knight of faith must endure not only tension with other people, but also a tension within himself. As a social being the knight of faith would find it a relief to live in dialogue and mutual support with other people about the most important things, so that resisting this desire is a great burden. As a social being the knight naturally shares moral feelings with other people, so that in acting contrary to the moral feelings of others, he also acts contrary to his own. Given the loneliness and suffering of silence that knights of faith must endure, and the magnitude of the difficulties that they encounter, I think we can see that they have need of great strength, courage, and nobility. Let us consider the rhetoric of silence. Silentio’s basic rhetorical move is to say something like this: “faith is so great that words cannot express its greatness.” Of course, this is a cliché. But Silentio employs this cliché so artfully that we tend not to notice what he is up to. Typically, the use of the clause, words cannot express, is a cop out. The inept eulogist resorts to it because he has nothing better to say. But Silentio shows that he is not copping out by the fact that he praises many things very artfully. In particular, he praises infinite resignation, which he does not find at all ineffable, very movingly and effectively. This expert praise gives him authority as an encomiast and makes us trust him when he says that words cannot express the greatness of faith. Silentio in effect uses a double a fortiori rhetorical strategy. He competently shows the greatness of infinite resignation. Then he argues that, since faith includes infinite resignation, and even greater things, which he describes well, faith is even greater than resignation. Then he says that, since faith as far as we understand it is very great, but faith also includes even greater things that cannot be said, but can only be intimated, faith is “the greatest of all.” Silentio does all this so well that we tend to believe him and to admire the greatness of faith.



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The Epigraph Another advantage of the thesis that the primary purpose of Fear and Trembling is to praise faith is that it helps us to understand the enigmatic epigraph of the book, which says the following: “What Tarquinius Superbus said in the garden by means of the poppies, the son understood but the messenger did not.” The epigraph alludes to a famous story of Roman history involving a secret message. In that story Tarquin’s son sends a messenger to his father, who rules in Rome, to ask what he should do now that he has attained a position of power in Gabii, a city that is an enemy of Rome. Instead of answering in words, Tarquin strolls in his garden, lopping off the tops of the tallest poppies with his staff. The messenger does not understand what Tarquin is getting at, but when he reports to the son what Tarquin did in the garden, the son understood the secret message that he was to go about killing off the leading men of Gabii, thus leveling the populace. How then to apply the epigraph to the task of interpreting Fear and Trembling? Silentio is obviously the messenger who does not understand his own message. His message concerns faith, and he himself often claims that he does not understand faith. But his lack of understanding runs much deeper than this. As we have seen, Silentio distorts faith by shrouding it in mystery, or by making it hard to understand, when according to Kierkegaard it is not difficult to understand faith if one is a willing learner. But Silentio does not understand that he has made faith hard to understand, or why he has done this. An important effect of his making faith hard to understand for himself is that he makes it somewhat difficult for his readers to understand it too. Moreover, his mystification of faith gives the impression that understanding faith is an abstruse theoretical task suitable for exceptionally clever people. But in fact, according to Kierkegaard, understanding faith well enough to have faith is a task that can and should be accomplished by everyone. Silentio has turned a task for everyone into an elitist task. With all this in mind, I suggest that lopping off the heads of the poppies signifies a command to readers to kill off mystifying, sophisticated accounts of faith which divide people into the talented, who understand, and the giftless, who do not. By commanding that sophisticated, intellectual interpretations of faith be killed off, and that the field be leveled, the epigraph points to the need for a simple understanding of faith that is equally available to all people. As in the Roman story, so also in the application of that story in the epigraph, the secret message is not a theory, but a command to do something: to become simple in relation to faith—something that Kierkegaard often urges. In summary, the epigraph suggests two things: first, in order to praise faith, Silentio, or Kierkegaard, distorts it by making it somewhat hard to understand; and, second, the epigraph hints at

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this distortion and at the need to correct it in order to make faith simple and easy to understand. MAIN CONCLUSION The direct evidence that the primary purpose of Fear and Trembling is to praise faith is so extensive that by itself it might be deemed conclusive. Silentio says that he is the one who aspired to speak Abraham’s praise, that what he is writing is the loftiest eulogy of faith, that the point is to perceive the greatness of what Abraham did, that his very being is to speak humanly about greatness, and much more. The indirect evidence is even more compelling. All or virtually all of the salient or enigmatic features of the book make very good sense on the hypothesis that its purpose is to praise faith: namely, the book’s structure, its emphasis on silence, absurdity, and paradox, its poetry, its four short stories about the defective Abrahams, its at times horrific atmosphere, the character of Silentio, the dialectical distinction between faith and ethical life in the Problemata, and the epigraph. I will add yet one more piece of indirect evidence for my thesis. Silentio praises faith so beautifully, so artfully, so successfully, and, in short, so well, that it is reasonable to suppose that praising faith is what he is designed to do. If the book is most successful at praising faith, then we might infer that its main purpose is to do precisely this thing that it does best. I therefore conclude that the primary purpose of Fear and Trembling is to praise faith, and that Kierkegaard masterfully succeeds at this task. FEAR AND TREMBLING’S ENORMOUS CONTRADICTION On the one hand, Silentio forcefully asserts that faith cannot speak, cannot be understood, is absurd, and is a paradox. Much of what he says in this regard is extreme. On the other hand, he implies in many ways, and even sometimes directly asserts, that faith can speak, must speak, and can be understood.7 I am going to argue for the claim that this blatant contradiction exists for the purpose of praising faith. My claim is likely to be controversial. I wish to stress that I do not want my case that the primary purpose of Fear and Trembling is the praise of faith to depend upon this controversial claim. As I said in the main conclusion, I think the case I have made for my thesis is already convincing. Nevertheless, I am fully convinced that, if we are open-mindedly willing to challenge conventional interpretations of



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Kierkegaard, we will be convinced that he thinks faith can be talked about and understood rather well. There is a great deal of evidence that Silentio thinks faith is mostly unintelligible, and mostly incapable of speaking. This evidence is conspicuous, and readers scarcely ever fail to notice it. Therefore, I will pass over it and move on to the task of showing the evidence that Silentio thinks faith can speak and can be understood. The Contradiction about Silence The dubiousness of faith’s inability to speak emerges aptly in the following quotation: “Abraham cannot speak, because he cannot say that which would explain everything (that is, so it is understandable)” (FT 115/SKS 4:202). Explaining everything is a very high standard for speaking and being understandable. If the problem with Abraham’s speech is that he cannot explain everything, then it seems he can explain and say some things. By offering such a strangely weak account of why Abraham can neither speak nor be understood, Silentio implies that Abraham can speak in part, explain in part, and be understood in part. Silentio describes a youth who is informed, by means of a “purely private relation [. . .] to the divine,” of the “will of heaven” concerning his impending marriage (FT 93/SKS 4:183). Silentio says that in this case the youth cannot speak, and the reason for this is that “however willing he might be to do so,” he can offer no proof or publicly acceptable evidence of heaven’s will for him. If he were to speak, people would have a decent idea of what he was claiming. But they would be unlikely to believe him. He has no acceptable evidence to offer them, and they might well regard him as dishonest or insane if he were to claim that he has a purely private relation to the divine. Sometimes Silentio suggests that faith ought not to speak, or that speaking would be a betrayal of the faithful person’s relation to God. He says or suggests that the knight of faith is “God’s confidant,” that Abraham’s life of faith “is like a book under divine confiscation and never becomes publice juris [public property],” and that Abraham’s trial “extract[s] from him the pledge of silence” (FT 77/SKS 4:168; FT 21/SKS 4:117). The idea here seems to be that Abraham could speak, but that by speaking he would betray his relation to God, so that he ought not to speak. Therefore, in summary, when Silentio says that faith cannot speak, he means that it cannot explain everything, or that it cannot offer adequate public evidence for what it says, or that it ought not to speak. By giving these reasons that faith cannot speak, Silentio implies that there are ways in which it can and may speak. Silentio goes rather far in allowing or even requiring faith to speak. He claims that when the angel revealed God’s will to Mary concerning her divine

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son-to-be, and she replied, “Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord—then she is great, and I believe it should not be difficult to explain why she became the mother of God” (FT 65/SKS 4:158). How strange that Mary’s words of faith can be so well understood that “it should not be difficult to explain why she became the mother of God”! Silentio says similarly surprising things about Abraham’s consummate words of faith. As he comments on these words, Silentio says that faith not only can speak, but must speak. The final words of Socrates help one to “perceive [. . .] the necessity for Abraham to consummate himself in the final moment” of his trial, and to “have a word to say, since as the father of faith he has absolute significance oriented to spirit” (FT 117/SKS 4:205). Silentio says of Abraham’s necessary speech that “a final word by Abraham has been preserved, and insofar as I can understand the paradox, I can understand Abraham’s total presence in that word. First and foremost, he does not say anything, and in that form, he says what he has to say.” Abraham’s response to Isaac’s question—“Who will provide the lamb to be sacrificed?”—“is in the form of irony, for it is always irony when I say something and still do not say anything” (FT 118/SKS 4:206). Even as he denies that Abraham says anything, Silentio categorizes what Abraham says as irony, and claims that Abraham’s ironic utterance is so pregnant with meaning that the father of faith is totally present in it. To top it all off, Silentio “can understand Abraham’s total presence in that word,” and can understand further that it is an “appropriate final word,” as if he is qualified to sit in judgment on faith’s consummate words, in which it is totally present (FT 117/SKS 4:205). Thus, according to Silentio: faith can speak, and sometimes must speak; we can understand the appropriateness of what faith says; and we can even understand Abraham’s total presence in his consummate words of faith. To say the least, that is a lot for faith to say, and a lot for us to understand. If you think that Silentio seriously claims faith is virtually mute and unintelligible, it will be very hard for you to make sense of his glosses on Abraham’s words of faith. The Contradiction about Knowledge or Understanding Silentio implies that his project of praising faith communicates knowledge of the greatness of faith. He suggests that he “speaks out of a knowledge of greatness,” and says this: “I certainly can understand ‘the greatness of’ faith; and I can understand ‘the terribleness of it’ even better” (FT 75/SKS 4:167; FT 72/SKS 4:163). When he says that it is “permissible . . . to speak about Abraham, for whatever is great can never do damage when it is understood in its greatness,” he implies that he expects to make his readers understand the greatness of faith, so that he will not become guilty of doing harm to



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them (FT 31/SKS 4:127). Thus praise for Silentio is not mere rhetoric, but entails making his readers understand the greatness of faith. As he says, “the point is to perceive the greatness of what Abraham did.” If that is the point, we can understand why Silentio often criticizes unintelligent praise, and why he mocks undiscerning admiration that “gawks at life and thinks it has seen something” (WL 38/SKS 9:133). Since Silentio says that he “can describe the movements of faith,” and describes them in a way that many people think they understand, it seems that much about faith can be understood (FT 38/SKS 4:132).8 Indeed, Silentio writes as if he understands faith from the inside. He describes not only the external, empirically observable aspects of faith, but also its inner, spiritual movements. The Biblical story of Abraham does not tell us that Abraham practiced the inner “movement” of “infinite resignation,” nor that he “need[ed] no preparation and no time to rally to finitude and its joy” when Isaac’s sacrifice was reprieved—nor many other such things (FT 37/SKS 4:132). Since Silentio discovers and describes the hidden, interior movements of faith, it is rather dubious for him to say that he does not understand those very movements that he himself has discovered and described by reflecting on the story of Abraham. Silentio implies in several ways that he knows things about the essence of faith. He states “characteristics” or “criteria” “whereby the paradox [of faith] can be distinguished from a spiritual trial”; and he claims that “from the paradox itself several characteristic signs may be inferred that are understandable also to someone not in it” (FT 56/SKS 4:150, 79). These signs must be things that are necessary to faith, and therefore essential to it, even if they do not dwell in the profound heart of faith. Silentio again implies he has an understanding of faith’s essence, when he says that it is “precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal” (FT 55/SKS 4:149). If this is precisely the paradox of faith, then it must be part of the essence of faith. Finally, Silentio says that “partnership in” faith “is utterly unthinkable” (FT 71/SKS 4:163). But if partnership in faith is utterly unthinkable, then single individuality, about which Silentio and Kierkegaard say a lot, is essential to faith. Even when Silentio stresses the absurdity and paradox of faith, he nonetheless often claims that something about faith can be understood. For example, he blames his age because it does not “understand what the absurd is,” thereby implying that people should be able to understand what the absurdity of faith consists in (FT 101/SKS 4:190). Near the end of his book, Silentio writes the following: “Here again it is apparent that one can perhaps understand Abraham, but only in the way one understands the paradox. I, for my part, can perhaps understand Abraham” (FT 119/SKS 4:207). Silentio understands faith, even if he understands it only in the way that one understands a

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paradox.9 Silentio also speaks of what goes on in Abraham’s mind while he is in the paradox, when God has commanded him to sacrifice his son. He says Abraham “knew it was God . . . who was testing him,” and knew that “no sacrifice is too severe when God demands it” (FT 22/SKS 4:118). Therefore, even when Abraham is in the paradox, he has knowledge of God, and perhaps even needs to have it in order to be in the paradox. It is not just Abraham who can have knowledge or understanding of faith. Silentio implies that everyone can understand faith as well as they need to, when he claims that “no human being is excluded from” the marvel of faith (FT 67/SKS 4:169). If everyone can have faith, and since the task of faith is to have it—not to theoretically contemplate it—then everyone can understand faith as well as they need to understand it, and Silentio’s claim that it cannot be understood is either false or irrelevant to people focused on the task of having faith.10 Thus the claim that Kierkegaard thinks faith cannot be understood seems to involve falsely attributing a theoretical attitude to him, and adopting that attitude oneself. In a passage that we have already considered, Kierkegaard agrees with Silentio that everyone can adequately understand faith: “Ah, this matter of the essentially Christian is so strange; in a certain sense it is so indescribably easy to understand, and on the other hand it actually becomes difficult only when it is that which must be believed” (CD 146/SKS 10:155). I think it is safe to infer that Kierkegaard would include faith in the category of the “essentially Christian.” Therefore, Kierkegaard claims that faith is “indescribably easy to understand,” but that we make it difficult for ourselves. A NECESSARY DECEPTION Silentio says that faith is distressingly silent and unintelligible, and he says that faith can speak and be understood. What are we to do with this contradiction? We could try to work out a silentian theory of silence, absurdity, meaning, and understanding that rescues him from the charge of inconsistency. That seems difficult, maybe impossible. We could conjecture that his real position is that faith is mostly silent and absurd, and try to explain away the counterevidence. But if we attempt this, there is the problem that if Silentio wanted to convince us that faith is silent and absurd, it would have been counterproductive and even senseless for him to say or imply, as he does, that faith can speak and be understood.11 If, however, we say that Silentio thinks faith is a mystery about which many important things nevertheless can be said, understood, or known, then we can understand why Silentio might lie about or exaggerate the silence and absurdity of faith: namely, this exaggeration



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helps him to praise faith, because, as we have seen, stressing faith’s silence and absurdity helps him to praise it. Tellingly, in the Epilogue Silentio suggests that he practices an “excusable, perhaps even necessary, deception [. . .] in order to jack up the price” of faith (FT 121/SKS 4:208). Since lying about or exaggerating the silence and absurdity of faith would help him to praise faith, and since there is much evidence that he thinks faith can speak and be understood, it is reasonable to suppose that the “necessary deception” that Silentio practices is precisely lying about or overstating the silence and absurdity of faith. Silentio attributes traits to some of his contemporary readers, namely, those influenced by Hegelian philosophy, which render it strategically prudent for him to be hyperbolic about faith’s unintelligibility. He says that these readers think faith is trivial and easy both to acquire and to understand. Owing to this opinion, they seek to “go further” than faith. Their manner of going further is to try to transpose faith’s “whole content . . . into conceptual form” (FT 7/SKS 4:103). That is, they seek to transmogrify faith into Hegelian philosophy, and do not attempt to struggle heroically to put it into practice. They think that “it is enough to know what is great—no other work is needed” (FT 27/SKS 4:123–24). That is, they idolize thinking, and use thinking to avoid faith’s existential work. Finally, “they cross out passion in order to serve science” (FT 7/SKS 4:103). Therefore, they are almost incapable of admiring faith or of feeling horrified by it, unless something drastic is done to help them. Obviously it is difficult to praise faith to people with these traits. If Silentio were to explain clearly and cogently that the Hegelians are wrong about faith, they would turn what he said into philosophy, and not attempt to live it. Since they think that “it is enough to know what is great—no other work is needed,” Silentio must convince them that they do not know what faith is. In order to thwart their idolization of knowledge, Silentio stresses the mystery of faith, and makes faith hard to understand. As long as the cogito-idolaters are confused by what he says, it will be hard for them to turn it into theoretical philosophy. Moreover, by confusing them, and making them uncomfortable, he might thereby arouse passion in them. Faith seems more horrible when one does not comfortably understand it, and it seems more admirable when it seems to transcend understanding. Thus, we should interpret Silentio’s exaggeration of the mystery and silence of faith as an artful way of praising faith to his Hegelian readers.12 It seems reasonable for someone to object at this point that, if Silentio’s account of faith is obscure, deceptive, and misleading, does he not risk harming readers on an important matter? How might he or Kierkegaard respond to this objection? Perhaps they would say that faith is easy to understand if one wants to understand it. Perhaps Kierkegaard would say that he wrote other books that explain faith clearly. Or perhaps the majority view of Fear

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and Trembling is wrong, and there is a relatively clear account of faith in that book for those who are open to it.13 Or, finally, perhaps it is so important to get readers to admire faith, that some compromises must be made, and some risks be taken, in order to accomplish this goal. SECONDARY CONCLUSION Given that the primary purpose of Fear and Trembling is to praise faith, and that in pursuing this goal Kierkegaard uses masterful strategy, devious art, and beautiful poetry, it follows that praise has great importance for him. He assigns high priority to it because praise of ideals shows readers what most deserves admiration and imitation, and thus makes life worth living. Despite the extensive evidence which can be mustered both that Fear and Trembling is a book of praise, and that Kierkegaard’s task as a poet is to praise ideals, scholars have given scant attention to Kierkegaard’s poetry of praise in general, or to Fear and Trembling’s praise of faith in particular. Thus, there is a strange blindness about praise in the secondary literature—Kierkegaard has hidden his enthusiasm quite well.14 In the remainder of this book we will investigate Kierkegaard’s praise of Christian love, and the art for which and with which he praises it. NOTES 1. The scholarly interpretations of Fear and Trembling agree about almost nothing except that the book is difficult, controversial, and egregiously misunderstood. Robert L. Perkins, Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals (Eugene: WIPF & Stock, 1981), says that Fear and Trembling is “very deceptive,” ix. Clare Carlisle, in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: A Reader’s Guide (London: Continuum, 2010), writes that the book is “challenging and enigmatic,” “essentially open-ended and inconclusive,” “especially difficult,” and “rather elusive,” so that it seems “difficult to find firm footing . . . from which to develop . . . an interpretation of” it, viii, 175–76. C. Stephen Evans, in his introduction to Fear and Trembling (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), says that Fear and Trembling is “baffling” and “profoundly difficult,” vi; and says in “Faith as the Telos of Morality: A Reading of Fear and Trembling,” in Fear and Trembling and Repetition, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 6 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1993), 9–27, that Fear and Trembling is Kierkegaard’s “most mystifying and misunderstood book,” 9. Louis Mackey, in Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, says that Fear and Trembling “is as deeply misunderstood as it is widely read,” 206. Ronald M. Green, “Enough Is enough!: “Fear and Trembling is Not about Ethics,” Journal of Religious



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Ethics (1993): 191–209, claims that “few books have been as badly misunderstood as this one,” 191. In his introduction to Fear and Trembling, Evans notes that the profound difficulty of Fear and Trembling gives rise to a “bewildering variety of conflicting interpretations” (vi). Interpreters rarely agree on what the book is “really about.” In his chapter “What is Fear and Trembling really about?,” John Lippitt, in Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling (New York: Routledge, 2003), gives a thorough account of the extensive scholarly disagreement over what Fear and Trembling is really about. C. Stephen Evans, in Kierkegaard’s Ethics of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), asks the same question “What Is Fear and Trembling Really About?” 74. Some interpreters claim that Fear and Trembling is about faith, others that it’s about “what faith is not.” For example, Evans, in his introduction to Fear and Trembling, says that “Johannes does not really tell us what faith is but what it is not, even though he says a lot about faith” (xi). He also writes, in “Faith as the Telos of Morality,” that “it is a mistake to take Fear and Trembling as giving us a positive account of faith,” (22; cf. 14). Some scholars say that Fear and Trembling is about ethics, others that it’s most certainly “not about ethics.” For example, Ronald Green, entitles an essay about Fear and Trembling “Enough Is Enough!: Fear and Trembling is Not About Ethics.” Evans, in “Faith as the Telos of Morality,” writes that “the true theme of Fear and Trembling” is “how an individual becomes a self in the truest and deepest sense of the word, how a person achieves ‘salvation,’’’ (19). He also writes, in his introduction to Fear and Trembling, that the “main point of Fear and Trembling . . . is not that faith is opposed to morality, but that genuine religious faith cannot be reduced to a life of moral striving, or completely understood using only the categories of a rationalistic morality” (10). Merold Westphal, in “Johannes and Johannes: Kierkegaard and Difference,” in Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 7 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1994), 13–32, makes a similar argument to that of Evans: “In Fear and Trembling, Johannes de silentio seeks to show the difference between the ethical and the religious,” “simply for the sake of showing that the two are different,” 13. John Lippitt, in Routledge Philosophy Guide, identifies three interpreters for whom the book is really about sin, grace, and forgiveness: namely, Louis Mackey, Ronald Green, and Stephen Mulhall (161–62). Ronald M. Green, in “Enough Is Enough!” argues that Fear and Trembling is about “soteriology” (192). John Davenport, in “Faith as Eschatological Trust in Fear and Trembling,” in Ethics, Love and Faith in Kierkegaard, ed. Edward F. Mooney (Blomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), claims that “the main point of Fear and Trembling . . . is to present the essence of ‘faith’ as eschatological trust,” 198. Merold Westphal, in “Johannes and Johannes,” argues that, read correctly, “Fear and Trembling is critical social theory,” like that of Marx and the Frankfurt School (20). And there are still other interpretations, like those which posit that the interesting thing about Fear and Trembling is a secret message to Regine Olson, or Kierkegaard’s grappling with the grief and trauma of his failed engagement with her. 2. Many scholars mention in one way or another that Fear and Trembling has to do with the greatness and heroism of faith. But no scholar, so far as my research

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indicates, has argued that the main purpose of Fear and Trembling is to provoke perception of faith’s heroic greatness. Ronald M. Green, in “‘Developing’ Fear and Trembling,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 257–81, claims that on the first and most obvious level of meaning of Fear and Trembling, Silentio “employs the dramatic story of Abraham’s sacrifice to raise the price—and cost—of faith,” 260. But Green does not give much attention to Silentio’s efforts at jacking up the price of faith. Alastair Hannay, in his introduction to Fear and Trembling (London: Penguin Books, 2003), writes that the “most embracing general message of Fear and Trembling seems to be, then, that the notion of faith is in current discussion of it so far cheapened that what is talked about is not properly called faith at all. . . . If Abraham is to be said to be great, then we should be given a clear picture of what it was that he achieved,” 13. But Hannay does not interpret Fear and Trembling primarily as an effort to reverse the cheapening of the value of faith. Instead he thinks that in “impressing us with Abraham’s greatness Kierkegaard has a very special purpose,” namely, “to draw the reader’s attention to certain very fundamental questions” (7–8). Thus my interpretation is the converse of Hannay’s. Hannay argues that that Fear and Trembling tries to impress us with Abraham’s greatness in order to pose certain philosophical/theological questions, whereas I argue that that all the philosophical and theological questions and answers in Fear and Trembling are mainly intended to help impress us with Abraham’s greatness. Clare Carlisle, in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, explains that a major motivation for her “writing a guide to Fear and Trembling” was “to think about courage” (viii); and she ends her guide with an excellent account of the meaning of “humble courage” in Fear and Trembling (193–99). Obviously, courage is an important part of heroic greatness. But the concept of heroism is broader than the concept of courage. Heroism involves a story of not just of courage but of triumphant struggle. Although Carlisle stresses courage, she does not go so far as to say that Fear and Trembling is mainly about courage, but instead she says that that book is “‘about’ many different things at once” 1. C. Stephen Evans, in Kierkegaard’s Ethics of Love, writes that “in many ways de silentio appears to be the poet whose task is to eulogize Abraham as a hero of faith” (65). Evans’s claim here is almost a statement of my thesis, but he qualifies his claim with the phrase, “in many ways.” Curiously, Evans does not explain or describe in detail Silentio’s eulogizing of faith; nor does he offer an interpretation of Fear and Trembling that focuses on that eulogizing. Evans, in “Faith as the Telos of Morality,” is also sensitive to the fact that Fear and Trembling is poetry, not dialectic, claiming that “Silentio’s account of faith is a poetic anticipation of the situation of the Christian believer. Since it is poetry, one should not look to the story for detailed information about the character of Christian existence” (23). Thus Evans thinks that the account of faith in Fear and Trembling is poetry, and should therefore be held to standards different from philosophy with its attempt to conceive and define. But Evans does not suggest that the function of the poetry is to help us to perceive something, or that the main purpose of Fear and Trembling is poetically to provoke perception of faith’s greatness.



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3. For a good account of the double movement of faith see Sharon Krishek, Kierkegaard on Faith and Love (46–56, 75–106); cf. Lovers in Essence (104–11, 118–23). 4. Evans, in Kierkegaard’s Ethics of Love, claims that “the main point of” Fear and Trembling is to distinguish “faith” from “ethical life” as the latter is understood by Hegel; and he argues that the truth of his claim “can be seen if we look at the ‘frame’ of the book. Kierkegaard pays close attention to the ways his books begin and end, and Fear and Trembling is no exception. The main targets of both the Preface and the Epilogue are those who think faith is something easy and natural, those who think that if one wants to be special one must ‘go further’” than faith (75). It seems to me that the evidence adduced by Evans points to a conclusion different from the one he draws. If the Preface and Epilogue urge that faith is not easy, and that in order to be special one should not attempt to go further than faith, then they urge not just that faith is different from Hegelian ethical life, but that faith is special, difficult, and greater than ethical life. Furthermore, and more importantly, the framing elements of the book stress the worth of faith. The Preface suggests that faith has enough value for a whole lifetime. The turn to the Problemata says that the point is to perceive the greatness of faith. And the Epilogue stresses that faith has the highest worth. Therefore, if we attend to the frame of Fear and Trembling to find its purpose, what we find is that the book is working to impress us with the worth and greatness of faith. 5. The title of the section, Stemning, means “mood,” “atmosphere,” or “attunement.” An important part of the purpose of this section is to attune readers to the correct moods for encountering Abraham: namely, admiration and horror. 6. Westphal, “Johannes and Johannes,” 13–14. 7. Some years ago, Louis Mackey, in Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, marveled that “the apparent contradiction between Kierkegaard’s negative theology and his habit of thinking in images, similes, and analogies has never been officially noticed” (258). I do not think things have changed much since then. 8. Sharon Krishek, in Kierkegaard on Faith and Love, suggests that Silentio understands more about faith “than he wishes to admit” (47; cf.51). She also provides evidence that he understands faith (47), gives a reason why he might claim not to understand it when he actually does (51), and supports her claim by giving a compelling account of the double movement of faith (46–56, 75–106); cf. Lovers in Essence (104–11, 118–23). 9. It is an important and controversial question, which I cannot go into profitably here, how one understands the paradox. But we should note that there is a sense in which one understands the paradox. For a recent account of the paradox, very different from mine, which interprets the Paradox as highly irrational and unintelligible, see Mark A. Wrathall, “Coming to an understanding with the paradox,” in The Kierkegaardian Mind, ed. Adam Buben, Eleanor Helms, and Patrick Stokes (New York: Routledge, 2019), 239–53. 10. Obviously, I have not said what this minimal understanding of faith is. If I attempted to state it, my hypothesis might be highly controversial. 11. For a scholar who argues that Kierkegaard has a “polemic against the attempt to understand faith,” and who attempts to provide an alternative to understanding faith,

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see page 229 of K. Brian Soderquist’s “On Faith and Reason(s): Kierkegaard’s Logic of Conviction,” in The Kierkegaardian Mind, 227–38. 12. Sharon Krishek, in Kierkegaard on Faith and Love, asks: “So why does Johannes [de silentio] present himself as someone who does not understand” faith, “when his book provides written evidence against this claim?” (47). Krishek provides two answers. One is that the “failure that Johannes is preoccupied with is not one of understanding faith, or of giving an accurate account of it. It is rather one of performing it” (47). I agree that this is one reason Silentio does this, and I think that there is a lot of evidence for this in Fear and Trembling. Krishek also suggests that because Silentio’s readers: “took themselves to understand what faith involves and to have progressed far beyond it . . . we can see the point of narrating the account of faith in the voice of someone who insists on faith’s unintelligibility. Kierkegaard wanted his contemporaries to understand, to take a minute to think, and to realize, how profoundly difficult it is to have faith. Kierkegaard wanted his contemporaries to face and acknowledge the fact that faith is not the triviality that they believed they acquired simply by virtue of being born Christians” (51–52). 13. Sharon Krishek, in Kierkegaard on Faith and Love, gives a compelling account of the double movement of faith in Fear and Trembling (46–56, 75–106). Cf. Lovers in Essence (104–11, 118–23). She also says insightful things about faith’s double movement when she applies it to her account of romantic love in Kierkegaard on Faith and Love (138–65). 14. It will be useful to remember here some passages quoted in the introduction to this book. First, Kierkegaard remarks that “in the era of negativity the authentic ironist is the hidden enthusiast” (TA 81/SKS 8:78). Second, in Stages on Life’s Way, the pseudonymous author offers the following description of an imaginary person: “Arrayed in mockery, and thereby deceptive, at heart he is an enthusiast” (SLW 492/SKS 6:453). Silentio, who mocks his age a great deal, seems to be a “hidden enthusiast.”

Chapter 2

Love’s Art of Upbuilding

I Corinthians 13, which Kierkegaard calls a “renowned passage,” is undoubtedly the most famous encomium of Christian love (WL 219/SKS 9:222): 1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. 4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. 11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Kierkegaard’s endeavor in Works of Love to praise love seems to be inspired by, and an interpretation of, St. Paul’s immortal panegyric of charity (WL 375/SKS 9:368). Kierkegaard announces the theme for the second part of Works of Love with a quotation from I Corinthians: “love builds up” (WL 209/SKS 9:212).1 By comparing himself to a “skilled master builder,”2 Paul seems to suggest that love builds up through skill, or art. Kierkegaard picks up on this suggestion, claiming that Paul describes in I Corinthians 13 “an art of upbuilding 51

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that love practices” (WL 219/SKS 9:222). Since Paul does not say that love builds up specifically through art, and Kierkegaard does not spell out how he discovers the idea of art in Paul’s renowned panegyric of love, I will make an educated guess at how Kierkegaard discovers this. Just before the celebrated chapter 13, Paul writes that he “will show you a still more excellent way,” thus implying that the subject of chapter 13, namely love, is a way, and that love’s excellence is its way.3 Since Kierkegaard frequently stresses that art consists in the way that an artful person speaks or acts, we may conjecture that his interpretation of Paul’s idea that love is an excellent way is that love is excellently artful, that love is a skilled master-builder, or that love has an excellently artful way of building up. In Christian Discourses, Kierkegaard glosses “the tongues of angels” as “the art of all poets,” or “the eloquence of all orators” (CD 177/SKS 10:188). Using this gloss as a clue, I suggest that Kierkegaard would paraphrase verse one of chapter 13 roughly as follows: If I speak with eloquent, angelic art, but do not have love, then my speech is, Christianly understood, “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal”—that is, bad music, or bad art; but, if I speak with love, then I create excellent music. In other words, Kierkegaard seems to read verse one as saying that there is a Christian art of love that far surpasses all other arts. As we read verse three of I Corinthians 13, we should bear in mind that it would be natural to think a person is loving if he bestows all his goods to feed the poor. But, Paul counters, without love, this seemingly loving deed is worth virtually nothing. I submit that Kierkegaard glosses verses one and three when he says there “is no word in [the] human language,” and there is “no work,” that “unconditionally demonstrates love.” Instead, showing love “depends on how the work is done,” or on “[h]ow . . . the word is said (WL 13/SKS 9:21). No word—not even a word spoken with the tongues of angels—reliably reveals the presence of love. No deed—not even giving away all one’s possessions to benefit the poor and needy—dependably indicates a loving motive. Love is instead made manifest by the excellently loving way a word is said or a deed is done. Love has a characteristic manner, or style. What a person does in love is, metaphorically, the letter of love, but the way a loving person acts shows the spirit of love. To be sure, what a loving person does is important, but it is the spirit of love that gives life and efficacy. In verses four through seven Paul describes essential deeds and qualities of love. Kierkegaard comments that “what is said . . . about love” in these verses “is simply more precise specifications of how love acts in building up” (WL 219/SKS 9:222). Much of the second part of Works of Love consists in showing how love builds up by means of the deeds and qualities for which Paul praises it in verses four through seven; and several chapters in part two

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derive their titles from these verses: “love believes all things,” “love hopes all things,” “love does not seek its own,” and “love abides.” Kierkegaard boldly and strikingly generalizes his claim that the important thing about a lover is how he or she speaks or acts: “There is nothing, nothing at all, that cannot be done or said in such a way that it becomes upbuilding” (WL 212/SKS 9:215). Perhaps Kierkegaard literally means what he says, but I suspect that he exaggerates for effect. Certainly we can all imagine horrific deeds that would be hard to perform with perfect love. In any case, Kierkegaard’s extreme and perhaps deliberately hyperbolic assertion downplays as much as possible what love says or does, and maximally stresses how love speaks and acts—and this is to say that the above quotation maximally emphasizes love’s art, since the art of words or deeds consists, according to Kierkegaard, in how they are said or done. Kierkegaard’s shocking claim that any word or deed can be loving stresses the possible virtuosity of love’s art. The greater someone’s wisdom and skill are, the more freedom we allow her to improvise outside whatever rules or laws apply to her task. When Kierkegaard says that any word or deed may be loving, he implies that as long as love artfully builds up, it has total freedom from rules or laws. But only perfection in goodwill, art, and wisdom could justify complete freedom. Thus, the assertion that any word or deed can be upbuilding is a declaration of the possible perfection of love’s art. We might reasonably conjecture that, at least most of the time, loving actions must be constrained or guided by ethical laws or rules. Kierkegaard agrees. But he also emphatically stresses that law is an essentially incomplete guide, not just for virtuosos, but for everyone, when he compares it to an artist’s sketch, and says that “love is the fulfilling of the law” (WL 91/SKS 9:96). According to this image, law guides love, but does not and cannot tell it exactly what to do. Instead, it provides a sketch that the artist of love must creatively adapt to the particulars of each situation. Love is always artfully beyond the law: in extraordinary and sublime cases it artfully and helpfully does what the law forbids, and in ordinary cases it artfully improvises on details that are not included in the law’s sketch, in order to complete the picture, and fulfill the intention of the law. There is a strong indication in I Corinthians that Paul agrees with Kierkegaard about love’s freedom from law in its mission to build up the neighbor, and that Kierkegaard derives his idea of love’s license from Paul. The latter writes the following: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.”4 This verse indicates that what matters most about an action is not whether it is required or permitted by the law, but whether it is helpful. Love’s criterion is helpfulness, not lawfulness. When a lover like Paul is sure of himself, he may break any law that stands in the way of artfully helping the neighbor. Furthermore, since art and wisdom are needed if a person is

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going to help reliably when he or she improvises illegally or extra-legally, Paul’s claim that all things are lawful for him points to the great importance of love’s art and wisdom. It is therefore fitting that Paul stresses wisdom in I Corinthians, saying that Christians are the “stewards of the mysteries of God,” and that “we have the mind of Christ.”5 Presumably a lover needs the mind of Christ in order to achieve the perfection of love’s art that grants her license for the perfect freedom in which all things are lawful for her. LOVE’S MATERIAL GIFTS AND MERCIFULNESS Our focus in this chapter will be almost entirely on love’s spiritual help of the neighbor. It should be noted, however, that love does not neglect the neighbor’s material condition, and often provides her food, shelter, medicine, and alms, and is merciful to her when she is suffering. M. Jamie Ferreira instructively describes love’s material gift-giving, stressing the “‘How’ of Love’s Giving.”6 Love, she explains, should “give a good thing in a way that focuses on the other and takes [the lover] as much as possible out of the center of attention.”7 Because all gifts are ultimately from God, what one person gives another is not the deepest sense his own property, so that the gift “should not look like one.”8 I would add to this important insight that in order to prevent the gift from looking like one, there is need of art—for it is difficult to give without seeming to.9 Kierkegaard devotes a chapter of Works of Love to mercifulness, which has “sympathy for the misery of others, gives comfort, and alleviates suffering,” both physical and mental (WL 322/SKS 9:319; WL 324/SKS 9:320; WL 325/SKS 9:322). The key to the art of mercifulness is its art: “Mercifulness is how” one does what one does to alleviate suffering (WL327/SKS 9:323). If you can do something merciful, the most important thing is the way you do it; and if you can do nothing observable for your suffering neighbors, the crucial question is how you think, feel, or pray for them. Kierkegaard writes about a daughter whom “nature has stepmotherly denied . . . almost every gift for being able to alleviate her mother’s condition”: “Imagine this unfortunate girl, who sighs under the heavy burden, that she still, according to the slight capacity granted her, is inexhaustibly inventive in order to do the little bit, the nothing she is able to do, to alleviate her mother’s life. See, this is mercifulness! No rich man will waste thousands of dollars to have an artist paint this, because it cannot be painted” (WL 325/SKS 9:322). The daughter’s achievement of mercifulness is superlatively skillful. She does very much with very little. Although she is virtually giftless, she is nonetheless “inexhaustibly inventive,” or wondrously creative, in her efforts to alleviate her mother’s suffering. And even when an unloving third party

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might judge that she accomplishes nothing, she expresses loving concern in the way she acts, so that her mother with eyes of love may find comfort and alleviation of suffering in the beautifully solicitous manner of her daughter. Kierkegaard claims that the daughter’s mercifulness “cannot be painted,” and that “perhaps . . . even an artist and . . . an art connoisseur” could not see the beauty of her mercifulness; and yet her mercifulness is the “most beautiful and the truest” (WL 325/SKS 9:321–22). This is to say that charitable mercifulness transcends any fine art that can be hung on the wall of a museum, and that its beauty is hard for unloving critics or ungenerous connoisseurs of art to appreciate. Kierkegaard protests against those who “act mercilessly toward the poor and miserable person” when they say or imply that his giftless state prevents his practicing mercifulness (WL 316/SKS 9:313). Kierkegaard also implies that he “knows how to encourage and inspire the poor,” and that he mercifully uses this knowledge: “We shall endeavor . . . to make as clear as possible, as inviting as possible . . . to the poor person what comfort he has in being able to be merciful” (WL 316/SKS 9:313). He comforts the poor person with the thought that his poverty does not hinder mercifulness, but even facilitates it, because it removes every externality and every resource that could obscure essential mercifulness with its superficial glitz. A further aspect of Kierkegaard’s message of comfort is that the rich are often in need of mercifulness from the poor, so that the poor can do good to the rich. Since Christianity regards wealth, not as a merit, but almost as a reproach, it also regards the wealthy as needing spiritual mercy owing to their riches. Thus, Kierkegaard mercifully and artfully brings comfort to the poor, the weak, and the giftless with his praise of the mercifulness that they can practice perhaps better than all other people. The Gospel of Matthew gives a striking example of mercifulness. When a leper comes to him for healing, Christ not only heals him, but, we are told, he “reached out his hand and touched him.”10 George MacDonald comments on this story thus: “The poor man was terribly cut off from his people, looked upon as defiled . . . and so horrid that nobody would touch him. It is a terrible thing to show disgust at any human being.”11 MacDonald says that by touching the leper, Christ showed graciousness, which presumably means something like beautiful love that mercifully alleviates the suffering of loneliness. Touching the leper is a gracious giving of meaning to the mending of a body, an artfully merciful way of alleviating the suffering of a man “terribly cut off from his people.”

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HELPING THE NEIGHBOR TO STAND ALONE Love builds up the two greatest goods in the neighbor: independent selfhood and love. By a Socratic art of pedagogy, or by what Kierkegaard calls the maieutic art and the art of “indirect communication,” love builds up the neighbor so that he or she “stands alone” as an independent self (WL 217/ SKS 9:220).12 Love “love’s forth love” in the neighbor by “presupposing love” in her. For the remainder of this chapter we will examine, first, how love artfully helps the neighbor to stand alone, and then how love helps the neighbor to love.13 Helping someone to stand alone means assisting him to be “free, independent, his own master,” and a “distinctive individuality” (WL 274/SKS 9:272; WL 272/SKS 9:270). Standing alone is not just a virtue, or even the greatest virtue, but is essential to being a human being in the full sense. Kierkegaard describes what it means to become fully human in a variety of ways. He says that it is to become subjective, or a self, or capable, or a single individual. Kierkegaard’s conceptions of these things are rich and nuanced, and we cannot elaborately investigate them here. Subjectivity might be described as infinitely striving to imitate and live for an ideal, and conscientiously examining oneself in the light of that ideal. A self in the highest sense is a person who strives to exist self-consciously before God, and who takes responsibility for herself alone before God. Capability means the power, through strenuous practice, to exist ethically or religiously. A single individual strives to take sole responsibility for herself, for her thoughts, feelings, words, deeds, and spiritual condition. From these brief descriptions we can see that these four concepts are at least remarkably similar to one another, and are perhaps even different aspects of the same thing. We might glimpse their fundamental unity by saying that all of them have to do with unifying oneself as a human person by strenuously living for an ideal, and by examining oneself with the ideal as the criterion. In this chapter I will not worry about the differences among these four concepts. For our purposes, when Kierkegaard says that love helps another person to stand alone, he means that it helps him to become subjective, a self, ethically or religiously capable, and a single individual alone before God. In order to help someone to become a self, there is need of a form of communication that promotes wholeness, activity, and self-knowledge. As is well known, Kierkegaard claims that direct communication is usually inadequate for these goals, and he often makes use of indirect communication in his efforts to achieve them. Let us consider some limitations of direct communication. Suppose that a person directly says what a self is, and why one ought to be a self. One

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problem with this message is that it is abstract, and therefore addresses a person only as a thinking being, and not as a passionate, volitional, and active being. Another problem with it is that it is utterly ineffective if its recipient is unreceptive or resistant to it, and thus rejects it without really considering it. Perhaps the resistant recipient will turn a teaching intended to be lived into a mere theory to be contemplated and debated. Or the recipient may be so resistant to the message that he deceives himself and confuses things in order to avoid the task of putting it into practice. Or the recipient may be so demoralized, fearful, or diffident, that he will not dare to apply the message to his life. Another problem with direct communication of something ethical or religious is that, even before hearing the message, the recipient may be familiar with it, and weary of it, so that he does not listen to it with any interest or concern. But it can also happen that a direct message can seem so earnest that it is unendurable. Finally, if the direct communication seems to go well, and is gratefully received by the recipient, he may become dependent on the communicator, when the goal was for him to stand alone. These are formidable difficulties, and direct communication is too clumsy and naïve to deal with them. Despite the defects of direct communication, Kierkegaard is not wholly opposed to it. If the learner is receptive to the message, direct communication may work better than indirect communication, because the learner does need to waste time deciphering the difficulties posed by indirect communication, but may immediately get down to the work of applying the message to his life (PV 8/SKS 13:15). Kierkegaard also explains that, since Christianity cannot be discovered by any human being, but must be revealed, learning what it is initially requires direct communication (JP 1:651/SKS Papir 367). Since he believes that neighbor-love is revealed in the New Testament, Kierkegaard thinks that teaching about this love requires some initial direct communication. According to Kierkegaard, indirect communication is well adapted to overcoming the difficulties that often cause direct communication to fail, and to helping people become harmoniously whole, strenuously active, and conscientiously honest about themselves. Our present task is to examine how this works. One simple way for a communicator to make the learner active, so that he will develop capability, is to pose questions to him. Most people are familiar with this aspect of Socratic pedagogy. The better, the more apt, and the more artful the questions, the more helpful they are likely to be. The Socratic pedagogue also encourages the learner to ask her own questions. More generally, an indirect educator seeks to make learners active by bringing about conditions that invite and encourage fruitful activity. This seems to be John Dewey’s basic idea of education.

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Suggestions are also useful for inspiring the learner to go to work on his own behalf. A suggestion is a mixture of direct and indirect communication. The suggester says something more or less directly, but leaves important things unsaid, which she hopes the learner will discover and put into practice. Mere mixture of directness and indirectness, however, is not enough. Skillful suggestion says the right things at the right time so as to make helpful hints about vital things. The most important aspect of indirect communication may also be understood broadly in terms of suggestion. To communicate subjectivity is to suggest one’s own subjectivity, or one’s own relation to the ideal, by the way one speaks and acts (JP 1:649/SKS Papir 365; JP 1:653/SKS Papir 368). This expression of one’s own subjectivity is necessarily incomplete, since subjectivity essentially involves hidden inwardness. But subjectivity can be partly and indirectly revealed by how the indirect communicator speaks and acts, and this indirect communication is the best revelation of subjectivity, because it communicates the essential how more than the secondary what. Kierkegaard describes subjectivity as art, and says that it is communicated by art (CUP 351, 79/SKS 7:321, 79). Moreover, since the art of subjectivity consists in how a person’s relation to the ideal organizes everything about her into a beautiful harmony, and since a person communicates her subjectivity by showing her relation to the ideal in how she speaks, acts, and comports herself, the thing to be communicated and the method of communication are virtually the same. Therefore, we might say that subjectivity is communicated by an art which is natural to it. This makes sense. We naturally reveal things that thoroughly permeate our being, or that run very deep in us. If we love or dislike someone, we inevitably reveal this by how we speak and act, by our tones of voice, and by our facial expressions, unless we are very good at deliberate concealment. Therefore, if subjectivity permeates our whole being, we naturally express, suggest, or indirectly communicate it in a thousand ways. Indirect communication aims to induce not just activity, but the activity of the whole person. In The Sickness Unto Death Kierkegaard identifies the important aspects of the whole person as feeling, knowing, and willing, and says that “whatever of feeling, knowing, and willing a person has depends upon what imagination he has” (SUD 31/SKS 11:147). Roughly speaking, imagination is a capacity for becoming aware of possibilities, especially ideal possibilities which are a joy or a dread to think about, which arouse intense passion, and which call for us to make a decision about our lives (SUD 31, 41/SKS 11:147, 156). Given imagination’s influence over the whole person, it is fitting for indirect communication to make use of its power; and it is easy to see that Kierkegaard often uses it to create many stories, images, pseudonymous personae, and analogies for his pedagogical project.

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Kierkegaard uses stories as lenses through which to look at possibilities for one’s own life, and as mirrors in which a person may examine both her actual self and her potential selves.14 He encourages readers, sometimes directly, usually indirectly, to examine themselves in the light of the stories he tells or summarizes. What do I think and feel about the characters in a story and their actions? What do I admire, or have contempt for? What do I feel called to imitate, or to avoid? Who in the story do I resemble? Do I perhaps resemble the villain? And so on. By encouraging readers to ask such questions as these Kierkegaard provides stories as tools of self-examination.15 Indirect communication deals with the problem that an ethical or religious message can seem old and trite by imaginatively making its message new. The communicator must hide or disguise familiar aspects of what she communicates, by imaginatively inventing a new shape or version of it, or analogies to it. Kierkegaard says that the subjective communicator has the “art to vary [her message] inexhaustibly” (CUP 77/SKS 7:78). Because the ideal is infinitely rich, it can be varied inexhaustibly. Because it is infinitely meaningful, it inspires the subjective individual to use her imagination to find countless versions of it. And because the subjective individual lives for the ideal, and applies it to every situation, her whole life consists in practicing the art of producing a variety of expressions of it. Kierkegaard himself is a master of inexhaustible variation; and a major feature of his authorship is that he invents and presents new expressions of Christianity, a notable example of this being Philosophical Fragments. In communicating a message of infinite importance, a person can be so earnest that she overwhelms and repels the learner. The indirect communicator hides her earnestness with jest and irony. The content of the message is earnest, and so is the communicator, but she presents the message jestingly or playfully. This is one form of irony. Another form is to pretend to share the learner’s seriousness about something trivial or secondary in order to redirect his attention to something of greater worth. Socratic ignorance seems, at least sometimes, to be an ironic pretense. The question-asking Socratic pedagogue may pretend not to know the answer to his questions, when in fact he does know, in order to attain solidarity with learners, and provoke their efforts. Similarly, a teacher may ironically feign inability to do something that needs doing in order to inspire learners to do it. Perhaps the most interesting and controversial aspect of indirect communication is deception. Kierkegaard says that indirect communication deceives a person “into the truth” (WL 277/SKS 9:274). Sometimes this deception means deliberately pretending one’s purpose is other than it really is. Sometimes it involves merely hiding one’s intentions. As we have seen,

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subjectivity is essentially hidden. Therefore, some of the deception in indirect communication is unavoidable. Kierkegaard thinks that deception is especially useful against illusion, and claims that an “illusion can . . . be removed . . . only indirectly” (PV 43). If I am self-deceived, and you attack my illusion or delusion, I may feel defensive and stubbornly double down on it. You have to trick me into seeing the truth about myself. You must pretend that what you are doing does not pose a threat to my delusion, in order to set up the conditions for exposing it for what it is, or, even better, the conditions in which I myself will discover it. A wellknown way of doing this is to tell me a story about someone who initially seems rather different from me, but then suddenly you show me, or I myself realize, that the story is about me.16 We will now turn to what Kierkegaard says about helping another person to stand alone in Works of Love. Kierkegaard thinks that independently standing alone entails terrible responsibility, dreadful loneliness, and Herculean labor. Therefore, we have a strong natural aversion to genuine independence. Given this aversion, it is difficult to persuade or induce people to stand alone. Obviously we enjoy the honor of being thought to be independent people. But often what we really want is a modest and conforming independence that— comically—wins us praise or approval. Genuine independence is so much harder and more painful than its counterfeit, that helping people to embrace the task of independent selfhood is extremely difficult. Another difficulty is that the work you do to help another person to stand alone tends to make him dependent on you. Yet another possible difficulty is that, even though people are not eager for authentic independence, they nevertheless sometimes resent help, so that, if they suspect someone is attempting to help them, they become hostile. Sometimes, in order not to make the helped person dependent on her, the loving helper must hide her assistance. Kierkegaard writes that the loving helper must “give in such a way that the gift looks as if it were the recipient’s property” (WL 274/SKS 9:272).17 A delicate and difficult maneuver. How much greater the difficulty, if much help is needed. Kierkegaard says that “just this is the art, to have been able to do everything for the other person and pretend as if one had done nothing at all” (WL 277/SKS 9:275). The chasm between doing everything and appearing to do nothing is a measure of the difficulty of love’s task and the deceptive art that is needed to succeed in it. Besides stressing human independence, Kierkegaard also stresses that “to need God is a human being’s highest perfection,” and that a human being should rely on God for everything (EUD 297/SKS 5:291). Standing alone is itself an artful synthesis of independence of other people, which is a kind of pride and aloofness, and utter self-abasement before God, which is supreme humility. Thus standing alone requires an art that balances rare pride and rare

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humility. I think this combination is what Johannes de silentio calls “paradoxical and humble courage” (FT 49/SKS 4:143). If standing alone requires great art, then the loving educator who calls forth this art in another person will need even more finesse than the person whom he helps. Kierkegaard waxes eloquent when he talks about the art with which love builds up selfhood: “to stand by oneself—through another’s help . . . Many authors use the dash . . . with insight and taste; but a dash has never been used more significantly . . . than in this little sentence . . . because in this little sentence infinity’s thought is contained in a most ingenious way, and the greatest contradiction is surmounted” (WL 275/SKS 9:273). Notice that Kierkegaard thinks that good taste is required to enjoy the artistic aspects of the task of helping another person to stand alone. More importantly, since art according to Kierkegaard overcomes contradictions, and love overcomes the greatest contradiction, we can all see what this implies. I want to stress, as Kierkegaard does, that the most impressive of love’s syntheses of opposites is to do everything for another person to help him to need nothing from you. Kierkegaard maximally compresses the idea of this synthesis into the words, “to stand by oneself—through another’s help,” and comments that “in this little sentence infinity’s thought is contained in a most ingenious way.” Another artful synthesis described in the above passage is that the lover “makes himself infinitely light precisely in the cunning of the dash,” but also breathes a “heavy breath, almost like a deep sigh.” The loving person suffers “the sleeplessness of anxiety” because of weighty concern for the neighbor, but must conceal this deep concern, so as not to oppress the neighbor with it (WL 277/SKS 9:275). Love is serious, grave, and heavy in its intention to help; but in order to achieve its goal it appears almost infinitely light and graceful. In helping the neighbor to stand alone, love must not only hide much of the help it gives, it must also restrain itself from giving many sorts of help that one might wish to give. In this restraint, a human being imitates divine love. Prima facie, one might believe, or at least imagine, that divine love should achieve its loving purposes through power. But if Omnipotence wishes to invite human beings freely to love both It and one another, It must use only a small measure of its might, so as not to overwhelm human initiative. Demonstrations of power must therefore defer to the thrift of divine art, which does much with self-imposed weakness. One might perhaps interpret the incarnation as an expression of divine love’s determination to do much with little. As with the divine art of love, so with the human: in order to maximize the neighbor’s freedom and love, it is necessary for the lover to restrain many of her own powers, thereby making room for the neighbor to exercise hers as she stands alone.

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Is Love an Odious Manipulator? Perhaps the most delicate task of the lover who deceitfully assists the neighbor to stand alone is deeply to influence the neighbor while nevertheless preserving his freedom, so that the neighbor really does freely choose selfhood, even as he is thoroughly influenced, deceived, and maybe even manipulated. The self-contradiction in the task of manipulating another person’s free decision seems to pose a problem too great for human art to solve. What is perhaps even more troubling is that to manipulate another person’s free choice poses not merely a technical or artistic problem, but also an ethical one. There is the danger that manipulation entails an unpardonable violation of the neighbor’s freedom and dignity as a human being.18 Socrates says that justice may demand lying to someone who is insane. Is refusing to be a self a kind of insanity that justifies the use of deceptive manipulation by love’s physician? Is selfhood such a great good, and non-selfhood so great an evil, that one may cut ethical corners in order to help another person to become a self? That is, are “all things permitted” to skilled master-builder of selfhood? Does a human being who is not yet a self actually have any dignity to respect?19 That is, is paternalism sometimes called for, when the one to be helped is something like a child? How much risk is involved in pushing people hard to become selves? Might people thus pushed become demonic in the Kierkegaardian sense? If the answer is “yes,” is the risk of creating a demoniac worth it? I propose that in order to be justified in the use of manipulation and deceit in his efforts to help another person stand alone, a lover needs to know the answers to the above questions, and the answers must support his project of manipulation. Thus arise three more questions. Does Kierkegaard himself think that the lover can know the answers to these questions. Is he right that the lover can know them? And do the answers support the project of “deceiving into the truth”? Kierkegaard often seems to reject knowledge, or to assert that we can know very little about ethical and religious things. If the truth about Kierkegaard is that he is mostly skeptical or epistemically modest, then it is likely that this modesty should forbid attempting to deceive and manipulate another person into the truth.20 But if he thinks profound ethical or religious knowledge is possible, and he is right about this, then deceptive manipulation may even be commendable. In Works of Love Kierkegaard makes astounding claims about what love knows. He says that through love a person can come to know “that God is,” and that one “is loved by God” (WL 361/SKS 9:355; WL 364/SKS 9:358). More relevantly, he says that a lover can sometimes know what is good for the neighbor “better than [the neighbor] can” (WL 20/SKS 9:28). Most relevantly, he claims that “every human being can come to know

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everything about love” (WL 364/SKS 9:358). If these grand claims—which Kierkegaard explicitly makes—are true, then it seems a lover can be justified in deceptive manipulation of the neighbor for his own good. One on One as Single Individuals Skill needs accurate information about its material. Since a human being has both a universal nature, and peculiarities, and maybe even an individual nature,21 the artful indirect communicator needs to be aware of the individuality of the person to be helped, so as to tailor her assistance to that very individual. If I am blind, then the person who seeks to help me must not point with her finger at something and expect me to see it. If the communicator is aware of the individual to be helped, with all his peculiarities, then she can “find him where he is” in order to lead him to where she wants him to go (PV 45). That is why a lover needs the art by which one “gets to know what resides in this person” (WL 347/SKS 9:341). LOVING FORTH LOVE Kierkegaard claims that one “loves forth love” by doing “nothing but presuppose that love was present in the ground” of the neighbor (WL 217–18/SKS 9:220). More fully, the presupposition is that love is part of the neighbor’s essence, that love is already present or perhaps latent in the neighbor and is waiting for an opportunity to show itself or to grow. Love’s Expressiveness Kierkegaard obviously exaggerates when he says that the lover does nothing but presuppose love in the neighbor. If that were all the lover did, then the presupposition would not be communicated to the neighbor, either directly or indirectly, and would therefore remain wholly without effect. What Kierkegaard seems to mean is that the presupposition of love is the basis of building up love. If you profoundly presuppose love, and do not waver from this presupposition, then your words, tones of voice, deeds, manner, and countenance will naturally and indirectly communicate your presupposition. Kierkegaard indicates the importance of communicating love’s presupposition in the following: “If anyone has ever spoken to you in such a way or treated you in such a way that you really felt built up, this was because you very vividly perceived how he presupposed love to be in you” (WL 222/SKS 9:225). Notice that the communication of love’s presupposition is indirect. Kierkegaard does not say that it is upbuilding to hear someone say explicitly

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that he or she presupposes love in you. Such words can be insincere, perfunctory, and hard to credit. Instead, he says that the loving person speaks to you, or treats you, in such a way that you “vividly perceive how he presupposes love to be in you.” How the upbuilder speaks and acts is crucial. His manner of speaking and acting is so expressive that you vividly perceive his presupposition of your love. Kierkegaard stresses love’s expressiveness in many ways. For example, he says that we owe an expression of our feelings of love to our neighbor (WL 12/SKS 9:20). He also tells a moving story of love’s expressiveness from Luke 22, saying that, after Peter’s denial of him, Christ “looked at” Peter. Kierkegaard claims that when Jesus looked at this disciple, he was wholly bent on trying to help him. Peter was in the spiritual danger of succumbing to despair because he had betrayed Christ, whom he loved most of all. Kierkegaard goes on to claim that in this situation Jesus saved Peter “with a look” (WL 170/SKS 9:170). The look saved Peter because it artfully expressed compassion, forgiveness, encouragement, or in short, love. Two books that we shall have much to do with, The Brothers Karamazov and Middlemarch, stress the importance of love’s expressiveness. In The Brothers Karamazov, Father Zosima, who teaches a doctrine of “active love,” says: “Keep company with yourself and look to yourself every day and hour, every minute, that your image be ever gracious” in order that you express your active love and do good to others.22 It is striking that Father Zosima does not focus merely on actively loving others, but stresses the need to constantly cultivate a gracious and loving appearance. Active love needs to learn to express itself convincingly and therefore artfully. Zosima suggests that love’s cultivation of its appearance is a matter of art when he opposes the actions of “humble love” with mere force.23 Perhaps cultivating the appearance of love even helps one to grow in love, since our posture, comportment and facial expressions influence our inner thoughts and passions. The main character of the novel, Alyosha, is often described as having a lovingly salutary appearance that makes people feel unjudged, loved, and at ease. George Eliot claims that owing to her difficult lot in the world, woman devised “an art which does mend nature” in order to lessen the sufferings of human beings.24 The character in Middlemarch named Dorothea exemplifies this art in many ways, especially in her facial expressions and tones of voice. It is striking how often Eliot describes Dorothea’s appearance. For example, there is a scene in which Dorothea is talking to Charles Lydgate, who is suffering owing to slanders against him, and Dorothea helps him by expressing her belief that he is a noble person harassed by malicious and calumnious gossip. Eliot writes that Lydgate “saw Dorothea’s face looking up at him with a sweet trustful gravity. The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us.”25 This passage is

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remarkably similar to the one from Works of Love in which Kierkegaard says that if you have been built up by another person’s words or deeds, this “was because you very vividly perceived how he presupposed love to be in you” (WL 222/SKS 9:225). Lydgate is built up, the lights are changed for him, because Dorothea’s face and voice express generous wishes, ardent charity, and grave trust in his goodness and nobility, and he vividly perceives her generous and charitable presupposition about him. To sum up, loving forth love requires artful communication. Because the lover artfully expresses, and the beloved perceives, the presupposition of love, the latter is encouraged and challenged to act in a loving manner. But here a problem arises. What if I am a beginner in love’s work, and my presupposition of love is not yet my second nature for me? If so, my habits work against me. I will constantly imply that I do not presuppose love by my words and deeds. What then is to be done? By thinking about and imagining how I would act if I fully presupposed love in my neighbor, I will discover that I must be patient, because love will eventually show itself, and that I must not be domineering and interfering, because my neighbor’s love is to originate from my neighbor, not from me, and so on. Then, having done this, I must pay careful attention to myself as I strive to help, and afterwards in reflection, so as to detect and correct my mistakes. By doing this, I will form habits and dispositions that will help me to express my presupposition of love more gracefully, naturally, and effectively. Love’s Expressive Prompter Kierkegaard believes that in building up love in the neighbor the lover must take into account that love is commanded by God. The obvious way to do this is to report the commandment to the neighbor. But difficulties arise here. It is hard to report a divine command in the right way. By passing it on you might give the false impression that you are an authority, or that the command should be obeyed because you want it to be, and this is to confuse oneself with God. But neither may you pretend that it is matter of indifference to you whether the command is obeyed, because such indifference is unloving. M. Jamie Ferreira points out that in Purity of Heart Kierkegaard says the way to convey a divine command is like assuming the role of a prompter at a theater performance of a play.26 This image is apt because a prompter lacks authority and has a minor role. But a prompter is also obviously concerned that the lines be said correctly. In short, a lover should artfully imply that she is merely a concerned, but lowly subordinate—an interesting case in which a prompter may be a greater artist than the actor.

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Love Believes All Things Kierkegaard investigates four species of love’s presupposition of love in the neighbor: belief, hope, vision, and interpretation. Kierkegaard interprets I Corinthians 13:7, “love . . . believes all things,” as meaning that love builds up by believing that the neighbor is actually loving, even when he does not appear to be. It is always possible, Kierkegaard argues, to choose to believe in the neighbor’s love, because one does not strictly know that he is not loving. Whatever the appearances may suggest, it is possible that a given person is loving and good, or unloving and malicious, because there is no certain knowledge of other people. One must, like Socrates, distinguish what one knows from what one does not, and acknowledge that one does not strictly know whether another person is loving or not (WL 231–33/SKS 9:232–34) Thus adequate knowledge of other people is “the infinite art of equivocation” that holds opposite possibilities—that the neighbor is loving, and that the neighbor is unloving—in equilibrium (WL 231/SKS 9:232). By not artlessly assuming an unjustified knowledge claim about the neighbor, the lover finds it possible to believe that the neighbor is loving. The Brothers Karamazov contains a splendid example of love’s believing in the goodness of another person. Alyosha is visiting his brother Dimitri, who is also called Mitya, on the eve of the latter’s’ trial for the murder of their father. Although Mitya is innocent, the evidence against him seems damning. He asks Alyosha whether he thinks he is guilty or innocent: “Alyosha, tell me the complete truth, as before the Lord God: do you believe that I killed father or not? You, you yourself, do you believe it or not? The complete truth, don’t lie!” he cried to him frenziedly. Alyosha reeled, as it were, and his heart—he could feel it—seemed pierced by some sharp thing. “No, don’t, what are you . . . ,” he murmured, as if at a loss. “The whole truth, the whole, don’t lie!” Mitya repeated. “Never for a single moment have I believed that you are the murderer,” the trembling voice suddenly burst from Alyosha’s breast, and he raised his right hand as if calling on God to witness his words. Mitya’s whole face instantly lit up with bliss. “Thank you!” he uttered slowly, as if sighing after a swoon. “Now you’ve revived me . . . ”27

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Notice that Alyosha does not say that he knows his brother is innocent, but that he has never believed that his brother was guilty. What strikes me as most important and most moving about this passage is how Alyosha communicates his belief to Mitya. If the greatest actor in the world had tried to represent belief in Dimitri, he could not have done it more effectively than Alyosha does. When asked the momentous question whether he believes his brother to be innocent, Alyosha does not immediately answer. Instead, he reels, stutters, and mutters in confusion. He communicates that he is stunned by the fact that Mitya has been suffering from the thought that Alyosha may not believe in him. Perhaps Alyosha feels guilty that he has not already communicated his trust in his brother. Then, when Alyosha does finally give voice to his charitable belief, he states his trust in the strongest possible way: saying, never has he for a moment believed that his brother is the murderer and raises his hand as if calling on God as witness. Alyosha’s unconsciously artful demonstration that he lovingly believes in his brother’s innocence is of the highest importance to Mitya, and would be to almost anyone in a similar situation. Mitya is revived or resurrected by his brother’s artful expression of loving belief. Dostoevsky thought deeply about what it means to believe the best of others, and shows in The Brothers Karamazov a way of believing all things that is not explicitly mentioned by Kierkegaard. Once again we will consider Alyosha, who, Dostoevsky says, “was sure that no one in the whole world would ever want to offend him, and not only would not want to but even would not be able to. For him this was an axiom.”28 Alyosha’s conviction seems clearly false, but it is usefully false. His conviction makes him slow to take offense from many people who treat him rudely and whom he wants to help. If he rose to the bait and took offense at insults, then he would probably lose his will and capacity to help people who wished to offend him. But since he refuses to take offense, he remains patient with people who speak insultingly, and persists in striving to help them, when another would-be-helper might angrily abandon the attempt at beneficence. In short, Alyosha’s conviction that no one would ever want to offend him is very similar to presupposing love in other people, and gives him much power to love others when they are rude or worse. Kierkegaard examines a range of alternatives to believing that the neighbor is good and loving, all of which he finds to be vicious and foolish. The least vicious is doubt, or a suspension of belief, or “believing nothing at all” of the neighbor. Then comes mistrust, which sometimes seems to mean suspecting others of evil, and sometimes seems to mean believing evil of them. And then there is “envy, malice, and corruption, which believe all evil” about the neighbor (WL 234/SKS 9:235). At first sight, doubt seems more artful,

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more knowledgeable, and more truth-loving than love. For suspension of belief perfectly holds “the opposites in equilibrium,” and does not risk error, but belief seems to disturb the equilibrium by choosing to give more weight to the charitable interpretation of the neighbor than to the uncharitable one. We should recall, however, that Kierkegaard claims that love maintains the opposites in equilibrium because it keeps in mind that it does not know whether the neighbor is loving or unloving. When love chooses to believe that the neighbor is loving and good, it does not confuse this willed belief with knowledge; and only by not confusing choice with knowledge is it able really to make a choice. Furthermore, Kierkegaard argues that to “believe nothing at all is the very border where believing evil begins” (WL 234/SKS 9:235). In other words, if we do not actively choose to think well of others, we will tend to slip into thinking ill of them, perhaps because it can be maliciously pleasant to do so. Moreover, when we are called upon to act, typically we cannot suspend judgment, but must express by our words and deeds either that we do or do not trust someone. Kierkegaard sees mistrust as much worse than doubt. Mistrust, he says, has a “preference for evil,” so that it “cannot maintain knowledge in equilibrium; it defiles its knowledge and therefore verges on envy, malice, and corruption, which believe all evil” (WL 234/SKS 9:235). Out of envy or malice, mistrustful people want to think ill of others. Or perhaps they wish to think ill of them in order to feel superior to them, or because they do not want others to set a high standard of behavior to which they might be obliged to conform. Or maybe they lack the courage to trust other people and excuse their cowardice with the lie that they already know that other people are untrustworthy. Let us consider an important objection to belief in love. One might complain that it is naïve and often harmful to believe that the neighbor is loving when he is not. If I believe someone is better or more loving than he actually is, I might put him in a position of trust where the temptation to do wrong is too strong for him to resist, and thus harm both him and the people whom he wrongs. Kierkegaard is not naïve, and knows all this, as is made clear by the many penetrating and profound descriptions of vice and evil in his writings. When he urges us to believe all things because of love, he pays us the complement of trusting us to figure out that by believing in love we must be not only as innocent as doves, but also as wise as serpents. Essentially the task is to believe in love and express this belief when it is upbuilding or beneficial to do so, and to detect and correct a lack of love, or protect other people from malice, when this is upbuilding or helpful. Obviously, it requires wisdom to believe or not believe in the right thing, in the right way, and at the right time, and it requires art to express belief and unbelief as the situation requires. Even when a lover is factually wrong in her belief in love, according to Kierkegaard she is not foolishly deceived, for two reasons. First, the lover

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knows that love may be present or absent, and knowingly chooses the noble risk of believing in its presence. When the lover is clearly conscious of the risk in believing, if the belief turns out to be false, there is no question of her being deceived. Second, the goal of the lover in believing all things is not to predict the future, but to express love and to encourage the neighbor to grow in love. By expressing belief artfully, the lover achieves her goal of offering encouragement, and is therefore not deceived, even if the neighbor does not take advantage of the encouragement. Trustful Love Is George Eliot’s Middlemarch George Eliot’s Middlemarch deeply explores and aptly illustrates three ways of thinking about other people that we have been considering: suspicion, suspension of belief, and trust. We will consider suspicion first. When the physician Lydgate arrives in the province of Middlemarch, he is the object of much gossip and unsympathetic speculation. Eliot writes that he is “virtually unknown,” and that insofar as he is known it is “merely as a cluster of signs for his neighbors’ false suppositions.”29 Thus Lydgate is an occasion for people to speculate in an ungenerous and undiscerning manner. More importantly, the fact that he is regarded merely as a “cluster of signs” means that he is not respected as a person. Presumably the Middlemarchian speculators think of themselves as persons; by respecting their own personhood and not Lydgate’s, they do him an injustice, and they take an approach to interpreting him that has little chance of producing a fair judgment. Many, perhaps most, instances of suspicion in Middlemarch are either false or ignoble. Eliot gives many examples of suspicious people, like a horse trader, whose business probably requires a wary distrust of other practitioners of his profession. Eliot says of a cynical and base man named Featherstone that he “enjoy[ed] his consciousness of wisdom in distrusting . . . mankind.”30 That is, it flatters his pride to think that no one is better than he is, and to think that no one can take him in by a false pretense of goodwill or honesty. Bulstrode, who is correctly suspected of murder, says of many people who are hostile to him, that they “are glad to believe any libel uttered by a loose tongue against” him, and that “their consciences become strict against” him.31 That is, they enjoy thinking evil of him, perhaps because he has offended them by his smug self-righteousness, or perhaps because it is enjoyable to contemplate someone worse than oneself. In saying that their consciences become strict against him, Bulstrode seems to mean that people are apt to hold him to a higher standard than that to which they hold themselves. They neither love him as themselves, nor use the same standards of judgment for him and for themselves.

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On the basis of mere conjecture, nearly everyone in Middlemarch believes (falsely) that Lydgate is Bulstrode’s accomplice in murder, and people encourage one another in speculating irrationally and unjustly about him. Eliot shows us, in some detail, many low characters gossiping with gusto about him and recklessly slandering him. Lydgate, who is an intelligent man, senses that there is no way to dispel the clouds of suspicion that surround him. Given the human propensity to believe evil of others, and given the exacerbation of this propensity by the delight of telling and hearing malicious gossip, there seems to be no way for him to recover his good name in Middlemarch. Let us now consider neutrality. There is not much neutrality in Middlemarch. The character who best exemplifies it is a priest named Farebrother. True to his name, Farebrother is fair towards his fellow human beings, and a brother to them. As a result, he understands them pretty well; but his neutrality proves to be a defect when Lydgate is wrongly suspected of complicity in murder. In this situation Farebrother believes neither that Lydgate is innocent, nor that he is guilty, but scientifically suspends judgment on the question. Because he does not believe in the innocence of Lydgate, he shies away from him, and thus loses the opportunity to help him in his distressing situation. Since Farebrother is both the friend of Lydgate and a priest, it is arguable that he has a double duty to help Lydgate, and to believe that Lydgate is not the sort of man to conspire to murder someone. But Farebrother fails to do both of these things. It seems that being fair and a brother are not enough. Why then does Farebrother fail both to help Lydgate and to believe in his innocence? Eliot tells us that the priest “had not escaped that low estimate of possibilities which we rather hastily arrive at as an inference from our own failure.”32 Like many people, Fairbrother makes the hasty generalization, based on his own failings, that other people are similarly weak. In other words, he tends to assume that other people cannot be better than he is himself, and he is sometimes wrong in this assumption. Given that he is a good and intelligent man, his error is quite telling. Eliot seems to be implying that even decent and reasonable people are prone to think less well of worthy people than they should. In another novel of hers, the title character, named Daniel Deronda, is in “terror lest he should . . . fall into the . . . philosophy which explains the world into containing nothing better than one’s own conduct.”33 That is, Daniel is very afraid of a philosophy that reduces the world and the people in it to his own measure, and this terror helps him to be an inspiringly loving person. Let us now consider belief or trust. A minor character in Middlemarch, Mr. Vincy, makes the case for belief as follows: “I should have thought . . . that there was no religion to hinder a man from believing the best of a young fellow, when you don’t know worse.”34 Note that he doesn’t say you should believe the best of a young man no matter what, but that you should believe the best of him when you don’t know worse. I think Kierkegaard would have

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appreciated Eliot’s light touch in having a minor character, with merely middling morals, state the noble principle that we should try to believe the best of people. The character named Dorothea Casaubon is an exemplary representative of belief in Middlemarch. She says that she “believe[s] that people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.”35 Her creed is extreme, but might have much truth in it. For, if we are in fact generally more suspicious than we should be, then suspected persons will often be better than we think they are. Even if Dorothea’s creed is wrong factually, she may be correct that the right way both to know people and to help them is to believe that they are better than we are initially inclined to think them. By believing this, we may encourage them to become better, and we will be open to discovering hidden virtues in them. In her novel Daniel Deronda Eliot writes that in “many of our neighbours’ lives, there is . . . a certain exquisite goodness which can . . . only [be] divined” by an “inward instruction of our own privacy.”36 To become such a diviner one must begin by being a believer. Speaking to Farebrother on the question of Lydgate’s guilt or innocence, Dorothea says: “You don’t believe that Lydgate is guilty of anything base? I will not believe it. Let us find out the truth and clear him!”37 There is obviously a tension in her attitude when she says she will not believe he is guilty of anything base, but also says, let us find out the truth. For the truth could turn out to be that he is guilty of something base.38 Dorothea’s position would be defective if we could disinterestedly seek the truth about Lydgate. But given that we human beings are prone to enjoy evil reports of others, it is helpful and perhaps necessary to investigate gossip with a methodical resistance to thinking ill of someone. Whereas Descartes recommends methodical doubt, Eliot recommends methodical belief. Her methodical believer in the goodness of others, Dorothea, is far from neutral when it comes to judging other people. It gives her pain to think ill of them, not because she is foolishly sentimental or weak-minded, but because of her ardent charity, which desires good things for other people, and is willing to work to reveal, or to bring about, these good things. Caleb Garth is similar to Dorothea in his practice of believing in people. Eliot writes the following of him: “Especially if there was anything discreditable to be found out concerning another man, Caleb preferred not to know it.”39 This may seem very unreasonable of Caleb. But consider the fact that much knowledge of blameworthiness is gratuitous. Perhaps there is a praiseworthy ideal of knowledge that is open to discovering both admirable and discreditable facts about human beings. And it is undeniably true that in order to protect oneself, it is often necessary to be able to discern the discreditable qualities of other people. But, after we concede all this, it seems likely that many of the blameworthy things we think we learn about others are not

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true, or not the whole truth, or involve mitigating circumstances, or are not useful to us. That is, much of the information that we glean by the method of suspicion is either false, partly false, or gratuitous. When Farebrother explains why he thinks there is a good chance that Lydgate may be guilty as suspected, Dorothea replies: “Oh, how cruel . . . And would you not like to be the one person who believed in that man’s innocence, if the rest of the world belied him? Besides, there is the man’s character beforehand to speak for him.”40 Why might one want to be the one person to believe in the innocence of a falsely suspected man? Dorothea seems to see belief in goodness as a kind of heroism. At any rate, she says “People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.”41 One kind of bravery she thinks should be glorified is the bravery to believe in innocence when public opinion assigns guilt. Another kind is to help the guilty person to amend his character, while others are complacently enjoying the contemplation of his vices or crimes. Dorothea helps Will Ladislaw by believing in him. Eliot writes that “one of the great powers of [Dorothea’s] womanhood” was “holding up an ideal for others in her believing conception of them.”42 Her great power is to see the possible perfection which another human being resembles, and which he can imitate, to express belief in the other person’s capacity for approximating this ideal, and thus to encourage the other person. Eliot comments that when Dorothea expresses her belief in Ladislaw, “he felt that in her mind he had found his highest estimate.”43 By showing Will a goal to which he might aspire by expressing her believing conception of him, Dorothea shows him his own possible growth and grandeur, and encourages him to strive to grow. Love Hopes All Things Besides believing all things, love also “hopes all things.” Love hopes for the good of the neighbor, or, as Kierkegaard puts it, love hopes in “the possibility of the good.” Hope enables a person to persist in working for the good of the neighbor, and the expression of hope encourages the neighbor, builds him up, and helps him to become aware of his capacity to achieve good things. Kierkegaard calls hope “the best gift” (WL 259/SKS 9:258). Kierkegaard writes that despair—which is the opposite of hope—involves a “wanton misuse of the powers of imagination” (WL 254/SKS 9:254). Given that despair imagines an evil possibility, it seems that hope imagines a good possibility. Since it can be hard to see why there is hope for some people, hard not to focus on their seemingly unloving and unpromising appearance, and difficult either to imagine some people as reformed characters or to invent a story for them in which they achieve the good, love requires the art to imagine the possibility of the good.

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Love’s Vision Love also sees or perceives the neighbor as lovable. Inasmuch as seeing is immediate and mostly involuntary, love must run deep if it is to change the way we see people. No half-hearted effort or partial reformation could bring about a transformation in vision. In a section on love’s seeing and perceiving, Kierkegaard compares love to eating: “the task” in eating, he says, “is not to develop one’s fastidiousness but to transform oneself and one’s taste” so that one can enjoy a variety of foods (WL 158/SKS 9:158–59). Similarly, the task in loving is not fastidiously to dwell on peoples’ imperfections, but to develop one’s taste in order to be able to perceive the good in them. After comparing love to eating, Kierkegaard likens it to the art of portrait painting. He contrasts two artists who observe people differently from one another. One turns “what is intended to beautify life,” namely, art, into something “like a curse” that “only fastidiously discovered that none of us is beautiful.” Kierkegaard suggests that this fastidiousness is a sign of the imperfection of this artist. The other artist is willing and able to “discern a more beautiful side and discover something transfigured” in every face. It is important that this second artist discerns beauty in every face. He does not feign an opinion about beauty, or project an imaginary beauty, but discovers it. Kierkegaard compares the second artist to someone who is “loving enough to be able to find something lovable in all of us” (WL 158/SKS 9:159). The obvious suggestion here is that in seeing something lovable in people, the loving person is an ethical artist of everyday life. The genius of this artist is so great that even when she does not create art, in the light of her charity ordinary people are revealed as works of art. Midas’s greedy touch killed his loved ones, but the generous vision of love gives life and interest to human beings whom an unloving person might regard as the offscourings of the world, and the scum of the earth until now. To see people as lovable requires a double restraint. First, it demands turning a blind eye to defects. Thus, love is “the closed eye of forbearance and leniency that does not see defects and imperfections” (WL 162/SKS 9:162). Second, it requires renouncing a kind of artistic perfectionism. “When it is a duty to love the people we see, one must . . . give up all imaginary and exaggerated ideas about a dreamworld where the object of love should be sought and found—that is, one must become sober, gain actuality and truth by finding and remaining in the world of actuality as the task assigned to one” (WL 161/SKS 9:162). Love can see the neighbor as lovable because it does not fastidiously insist on perfection. Since it is not wrong-headedly infatuated with the ideal, it has a capacity soberly to see and love actual people. Kierkegaard is famous for his insistence on ideal standards, and on the duty to strive to imitate ideals. Often people who stress the ideal are abstractly

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disconnected from reality, or harshly judgmental about failures to achieve the ideal. It is therefore important for us to note that Kierkegaard warns us against judging other people in an idealistic manner. The lover should help the neighbor to strive for the ideal, but should also be quick to see and encourage the good in the neighbor, no matter how meager that good may be. Love’s Art of Interpretation Kierkegaard writes that “the art of interpretation . . . with the help of the mitigating explanation hides the multitude of sins” (WL 293/SKS 9:290– 91).44 This art of interpretation explains apparent crimes or sins in the most lenient way possible. It is the synthesis of believing in, hoping for, and perhaps seeing love in the neighbor: “believing all things . . . and hoping all things . . . are the two chief means that love . . . uses for the mitigating explanation that hides a multitude of sins” (WL 294/SKS 9:291). Love’s interpretation combines several of its arts, as musical theater combines drama, poetry, song, and dance. Kierkegaard waxes lyrical about love’s lenient interpretation: “Ah, if people would rightly understand what beautiful use they could make of their imagination, their acumen, their inventiveness, their power to put things together, by using it to find, if possible, a mitigating explanation [of apparent sin or evil]—then they would gain more and more of a taste for one of the most beautiful joys in life” (WL 292/SKS 9:289). As you can develop a taste for Greek lyric poetry, so can you acquire a taste for mitigating explanations. Ingeniously creating and sympathetically listening to guilt-clearing or guilt-lessening accounts of apparent vice and crime can become for us not only a duty grudgingly adhered to, but an artistically or esthetically fulfilling pastime, or even a vocation. People do not, however, often make this beautiful use of their imagination. Kierkegaard writes that “if someone has discovered how fundamentally good-natured almost every human being is, he would hardly dare to acknowledge his discovery, and he would fear becoming ludicrous, perhaps even fear that humanity would feel insulted by it” (WL 284/SKS 9:282). One sign that Kierkegaard may be right is that many current readers and watchers of television have a marked taste for crime fiction in which the culprit is found out and proven guilty; but there seems to be little taste for mystery novels in which the detective proves at the end that no one is guilty, there was no murder, it was all a misunderstanding, the parties involved were actually trying to be loving and good, but a fatal chance intervened. If as much art and ingenuity were expended in searching for and promoting fundamentally good human nature as is expended in detecting murderers, villains, and violent-offenders, real and imaginary, would we acquire an exquisite taste for the good, or

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would we hanker after intriguing evils, interesting deceptions, and artful dodgers of justice? Growing and Nurturing Love To suggest how one person artfully helps another to love, Kierkegaard usually employs the metaphor of the art of building, that is, a metaphor from the realm of human activity and industry. But he also uses a metaphor based on nature. Having said that when the lover is building up she is “concealed and as nothing,” he adds the following: Therefore, we can compare this upbuilding of love only with the secret working of nature. While people sleep, the forces of nature sleep neither at night nor by day; no one gives a thought to how they continue—while everyone delights in the beauty of the meadow and the fruitfulness of the field. Love acts in the same way; it presupposes that love is present, like the germ in the grain of wheat, and if it succeeds in bringing it to fruition, love conceals itself just as it was concealed while it worked early and late. (WL 218/SKS 9:221)

Nature is a greater artist than any mortal person has ever been, in that it accomplishes its ends more beautifully, more effortlessly, and more secretly than any human being can. Thus, this metaphor pays love a grand compliment by comparing its achievements to nature’s sublime and superhuman artistry. PROSPECTUS A human person is both an individual and a social being. In this chapter we have focused on the way love builds up the neighbor insofar as he or she is an individual. In the next chapter we will examine the way love helps the neighbor as someone who is or could be a member of a community of love. NOTES 1. I Cor. 8:1. 2. I Cor. 3:10. 3. I Cor. 12:31. 4. I Cor. 6:12. 5. I Cor. 4:1; 2:16. 6. Ferreira, Love’s Grateful Striving, 156. 7. Ibid., 161. 8. Ibid., 159.

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9. Ferreira in Love’s Grateful Striving does not explicitly speak about love’s art, but stresses things about love that call art to mind. For example, she says that love must hide that it is giving (156), and that in order to hide, the giver must be ingenious (159). She also notes that in general Kierkegaard “urges us to be ‘dexterous’ in the ways in which we give to another” person (159). According to Ferreira, the main purpose of dexterously hiding one’s help, or of taking oneself as giver out of the center of attention, and making the gift seem not to be a gift, is a compassionate concern for the feelings of the recipient of the gift (157, 163). The recipient should not feel humiliated, and should not be “made to feel the gift as a burden,” but should retain his or her “self-respect” (158, 161). 10. Matt. 8:3. 11. George MacDonald, Proving the Unseen (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989), 94. 12. In the Republic, when Polemarchus defines justice as helping friends and harming enemies, Socrates asks what benefit justice confers on friends, and claims that doing good requires art and wisdom, as in the cases of a physician or ship’s captain (332a-33e). Works of Love denies that specialized skills like medicine and sailing are needed to do good to the neighbor, since one can do the highest good to neighbors merely by building up love in them. Thus one might respond to Socrates by saying that justice itself is a great good, and that a just person can do great good to people by building up justice in them. 13. Krishek, in Lovers in Essence, sees selfhood and love as deeply connected, in that love, especially romantic love, helps both the lover and the beloved to become themselves (5). 14. See Antony Aumann, Art and Selfhood: A Kierkegaardian Account (London: Lexington Books, 2019). Aumann gives an account of the relation of stories and becoming a self (40, 62, 198–99). See pages (109–13) for an account of Kierkegaard’s idea of stories as lenses and mirrors. See also Anna Strelis Soderquist, Kierkegaard on Dialogical Education: Vulnerable Freedom (London: Lexington Books, 2016), for an account of the relation of becoming a self and stories, 1–30. 15. Aumann, Art and Selfhood, says that if we teach indirectly, “we should provide our audience with the background resources, training and tools they need to discover the lesson on their own” (164). 16. Antony Aumann, Art and Selfhood, 109–13. 17. Ferreira, in Love’s Grateful Striving, analyzes Kierkegaard’s teaching about how love gives material gifts while preserving the independence of the recipient (151–68). This analysis interprets love’s concern for the independence of the recipient of a gift mostly as a concern for their feelings, a concern that the recipient not feel humiliated, or a concern that the recipient preserve their self-respect (158, 161, 163). I agree Kierkegaard thinks love has these concerns for the feelings of the neighbor. But when Kierkegaard says that in order to build up the neighbor, one must avoid making the neighbor dependent, he is not talking primarily about feelings or material goods. Instead, he is talking about helping the neighbor to stand alone, to be a self or a single individual who accepts freedom and responsibility, and chooses to love on their own responsibility. Building up love and selfhood in the neighbor is a more subtle

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and difficult task than graciously giving material gifts, and therefore requires more art. Ferreira describes aspects of this greater art in the following words: “We must encourage others, affirm others, and support others, without controlling them” (141). 18. Aumann, Art and Selfhood. Aumann argues that Kierkegaard’s manipulation is paternalistic, and ethically wrong (167, 173, 176). 19. Ibid., 173 20. Ibid., 179. 21. Krishek, in Lovers in Essence, argues that Kierkegaard thinks a human being has both an individual essence and a universal nature. The “particular qualities” do or should “express in the best way, relative to her, those universal qualities such as rationality, creativity, freedom of will, and caring, that constitute the image of God in personhood” (51). But, Krishek claims, in Works of Love Kierkegaard does not posit an individual essence. 22. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 319. 23. Ibid. 24. Quoted by Bernard J. Paris, in “George Eliot’s Religion of Humanity.” In George Eliot: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. George R. Creeger (11–36) (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1970), 15. 25. George Eliot, Middlemarch (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 762. 26. Ibid., 58. 27. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 597. 28. Ibid., 101. 29. Eliot, Middlemarch, 142. 30. Ibid., 132. 31. Ibid., 727. 32. Ibid.,187. 33. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (London: Oxford University Press, 2009), 177. 34. Eliot, Middlemarch, 129. 35. Ibid., 733. 36. Eliot, Daniel Deronda, 152. 37. Eliot, Middlemarch, 730. 38. Of course, Dorothea, or Eliot, could mean that Dorothea will not believe anything base of Lydgate, unless she knows he has behaved basely. 39. Ibid., 523. 40. Ibid., 734. 41. Ibid., 735. 42. Ibid., 772. 43. Ibid. 44. Ferreira, in Love’s Grateful Striving, says that mitigating explanations require us to be “creative, ingenious in looking for the good” (174).

Chapter 3

The Arts of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Peace-Making

Love helps the neighbor to stand alone, but it also builds a community of shared endeavor and mutual support, and makes peace among quarreling neighbors. A lover believes the neighbor is loving, but also discerns the neighbor’s failures to love, calls the neighbor’s attention to them, helps the neighbor to repent of them, forgives his sins, and achieves reconciliation with him. Love sometimes hides itself and deceives the neighbor in order to help her, but it also wants to express itself honestly so that the neighbor may enjoy the great good of knowing she is loved. Our task in this chapter is to examine the art required by these communal and community-building deeds of love. FORGIVENESS The ultimate end of forgiveness is new life in reconciliation with a wrong-doer, but forgiveness does not always get as far as that. Therefore we will begin by considering forgiveness in abstraction from its final goal. To forgive in this incomplete sense is to release a neighbor who has sinned against you, and to correct your own, perhaps sinful, response to the sin. You relieve the neighbor of the burden of having wronged you, by blotting out the sin, or by making it of no effect, or by neutralizing as many of its harmful effects as you can, and, of course, by communicating to the sinner that he is forgiven. By forgiving you also work on yourself, so that you do not resent the sin, or hold any trace of a grudge because of it, but love the sinner as yourself. In forgiving a neighbor you affirm his essential humanity, and the possibility of his repentance and reform. Kierkegaard regards forgiving the neighbor as something that calls not just for goodwill and effort, but also for dexterity (WL 295/SKS 9:293). In order to appreciate the art of forgiveness we need to understand its difficulties, and 79

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what it takes to overcome them. Perhaps a sinner does not believe that he can be forgiven, or that the one he sinned against really forgives him. Perhaps a sinner regards being forgiven as a humiliation, and thwarts any attempt to put him in the inferior position of being one forgiven. There is also the opposing danger that a forgiven sinner may abjectly idolize the loving forgiver, or become gratefully dependent on her in a way that hinders him from standing alone. Therefore love needs rhetoric to persuade the sinner that he can and should be forgiven; and it needs steady-handed finesse to sail the narrow passage between the Scylla of causing offense and the Charybdis of inspiring excessive gratitude. In forgiving one must artfully combine rigor and gentleness (WL 339/SKS 9:334). Rigor is needed because wrongdoing is a serious matter that should not be excused or encouraged. Gentleness is needed because the forgiver does not have the right to judge, condemn, or crush the sinner, and is himself a sinner, not a being of a different kind looking down on the one forgiven from a sublime height. Needless to say, there is no formula or algorithm that enables a person to be rigorous and gentle in the right way. Only benevolent intentions aided by art can do it.1 John Lippitt points to another aspect of forgiveness that calls for art: namely, that the forgiver must not reduce the one forgiven to being simply and mainly a wrongdoer.2 The one forgiven must not be defined as wrongdoer, but as a human being, who has dignity, or who is made in the image of God. It is not enough, however, to see or to define the one forgiven correctly. The forgiver must express, preferably in indirect fashion—because indirect expression is so much more convincing and moving than direct speech—that the one forgiven is a human being, first, and one who did some wrong, second. RECONCILIATION Love’s repair-work is not complete after forgiving a sinner. Love does not just erase or bury the sin; it also makes things new. In particular, it seeks to create a new union between the sinner and the forgiver. Only when the sinner and the forgiver are united in love does forgiveness attain its perfection.3 Kierkegaard calls this new unity reconciliation, which he describes as “the most beautiful and the most difficult victory” (WL 343/SKS 9:337). Nowhere does Kierkegaard attribute more art to love than in the case of reconciliation. He writes that, when sin has ruptured relations between two people, and the one wronged is a loving forgiver, “[e]verything disturbing, every conceivable hindrance” to reconciliation “is removed as if by magic” (WL 343/SKS 9:338). He writes also that “no one can hold out against one who loves” when she seeks to create unity with the one forgiven (WL

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344/SKS 9:338). Great indeed must be love’s dexterity and art if it is irresistible, and if the hindrances to its purposes are removed as if by magic! In order to appreciate the beauty and art of love’s reconciliation, we need to understand what is difficult about it. We have already considered forgiveness’s need for rigor and gentleness, but in abstraction from the goal of reconciliation. We will now consider this need in its proper context. Kierkegaard says that the lover must sometimes “lovingly deal [the wrong-doer a] merciful blow.” He adds: “What a difficult task: at one and the same time to thrust away from oneself and to win for oneself, at one and the same time to be as rigorous as truth requires and yet as gentle as love desires in order to win the one against whom the severity is employed!” (WL 339/SKS 9:334). The lover must not pretend there was no wrong-doing, lest she soothe a conscience that needs pricking. Instead she may need to deal a merciful blow which makes the crime clear. Obviously, this blow could offend or humiliate the wrong-doer, and thereby thrust him away, when what love wants is to unite with him in fellowship. Then, at the same time that she is stern and rigorous, or shortly thereafter, the lover must gently and encouragingly woo the wrong-doer to participate in love’s unity. But how to be sternly honest and at the same time gently inviting? Kierkegaard says that to be forgiven is in a way to be overcome by the loving goodness of the forgiver. But to “be the one who has been overcome is a humiliating feeling. Therefore one who has been overcome prefers to avoid the one who overcame him” (WL 338/SKS 9:333). Obviously there can be no reconciliation or union in love if the one forgiven avoids the one forgiving him. Love’s rhetoric must therefore find a way to avoid or heal humiliation. Kierkegaard explains that the lover prevents the forgiven person from feeling humiliated by minimizing his own achievement: “The one who loves does not give the impression at all, nor does it occur to him, that it is he who has conquered, that he is the victor—no, it is the good that has conquered” (WL 339/SKS 9:334). The lover does not say, however, that the good is the true conqueror. He “gives the impression” that the good is the conqueror, not by what he says, but by how he looks, speaks, and acts. Kierkegaard lyrically describes the way love wins the one overcome by its expressiveness: “Would that I could describe how the one who loves looks at the one overcome, how joy beams from his eyes, how this loving look rests so gently on him, how it seeks, alluring and inviting, to win him! . . . This is the way the loving one looks at him and besides is a calm as only the eternal can make a person” (WL 342/SKS 9:337). Love’s art is eminently expressive. Its look is indescribably joyful, gentle, inviting, and alluring, and expresses more than can be said explicitly. Kierkegaard praises the art of winning a sinner to reconciliation in an especially rich passage:

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How dexterous love can be, what a jack-of-all-trades! . . . Alas, perhaps an agreement in love often miscarries because it is done too earnestly; this happens because one had not oneself learned from God the art of being sufficiently earnest (and one learns this from God) to be able to do it as lightly as the truth can still allow. Never believe that earnestness is moroseness; never believe that the contorted countenance it pains one to look at is earnestness—no one has ever been earnest who has not learned from earnestness that one can appear too earnest. When it really has become second nature for you to want to win your enemy, you will also have become so familiar with these kinds of tasks that they will be able to engage you as works of art. When there is continually a fresh influx of love within you . . . as it should be, then there is also time to be dexterous. But when there is resistance within a person, when in consideration of the Law’s rigorous commandment he must force himself to go ahead in order to come to an agreement with his enemy, then the matter easily becomes too earnest and fails just because of—much earnestness. But however worthy it may be, especially in contrast with irreconcilability, this “much earnestness” is not something we should strive for. No, the one who truly loves is indeed dexterous (WL 340/SKS 9:335).

Love’s dexterity is to be supremely earnest, but with a light air, like a debonair courtier who suavely and jestingly challenges a rival to a duel to the death (to pick a singularly unloving analogue to love). When the goal is to be reconciled, appearing too earnest about another person’s sin is heavy, clumsy, and in poor taste. It lacks courtesy. The appearance of intense earnestness inconsiderately puts too much pressure on the person who is to be won. What is to be avoided here is not intense earnestness itself, but the appearance of it. Thus winning a sinner to reconciliation requires a sort of theatrical performance, a holy deception that conceals profound concern behind a gentle and gracious manner. Strikingly, Kierkegaard says that when “it really has become second nature for you to want to win your enemy, you will also have become so familiar with” the tasks of forgiveness and reconciliation “that they will be able to engage you as works of art.” The artist of love takes a deep interest not only in the goals of love, but also in the artful means to her goals, as though the means were almost as important as the ends, or subsumed by the ends. Tolstoy seems to agree in his novel, Resurrection, where he beautifully describes a character who sincerely wants to help another person, but who is also “attracted by the sheer difficulty of” the task of benefiting her.4 Tolstoy seems to imply that there is nothing wrong with love’s being attracted by the sheer difficulty of its tasks. In order to win your enemy to reconciliation it must have “become second nature for you to want to win” him. Once you have no lingering resentment or reluctance to being reconciled, then you are freed up to attend fully to

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the task of winning the sinner to reconciliation. Often we fail to do something extremely difficult, not because we lack ability, but because we do not whole-heartedly employ our ability. The key then is unity and sincerity of purpose. If it has become second nature for you to achieve reconciliation with a repentant sinner, you will not act at cross purposes with yourself, but can direct all your powers to that one end, without any ungracious appearance of strain or reluctance, and thus succeed.5 Kierkegaard thinks that the lover may go very far in taking the emphasis off forgiveness and putting it on reconciliation: When the one overcome asks, “Have you really forgiven me now?” the one who loves answers, “Do you truly love me now?” But then he certainly is not replying to what is asked. No, that he does not do; he is too loving for that. He does not even want to answer the question about forgiveness, because this word, especially if emphasis is laid on it, could easily make the matter too earnest in a damaging sense. What a wonderful conversation! There seems to be no sense to it; they seem to be speaking at cross-purposes, and yet they are speaking about the same thing, as love indeed understands (WL 343/SKS 9:338).

So often art is a matter of emphasizing the right thing in the right way so as to create the appropriate mood. The one who overcomes a sinner through love puts emphasis, not on the sin and the forgiveness of it, which would make for a somber mood, but on the new beginning in love made by the repentant sinner, which creates a joyous and hopeful mood. Moreover, since direct expression of forgiveness is often not fully convincing, the one who overcomes in love expresses forgiveness indirectly (and perhaps directly too), and therefore convincingly. The question, “Do you really love me now?” seems to be a reference to words said by Christ to Peter at the end of The Gospel of John. Peter, as predicted, denied Christ three times. After his resurrection, Christ asks Peter three times “Do you love me?” Kierkegaard interprets Christ’s thrice repeated question, not as a punishment of Peter for his betrayal, but as a loving and artful offer of reconciliation with a man who must have felt terribly guilty about denying Christ. The triple utterance of Christ’s question and of Peter’s answer to it magically undo the spell or curse cast by Peter’s thrice uttered denial of Christ. The Brothers Karamazov beautifully illustrates artful emphasis on a repentant sinner. Allow me to set the scene. Alyosha’s beloved spiritual advisor, the elder Zosima, has just died. After his death, his corpse begins to exude an “odor of corruption.” Since the corpses of many saints are said to remain incorrupt for a long time, this stench of rotting flesh could be taken as a sign that Zosima was not a holy man, but a fraud. Many people in the monastery

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where Zosima had lived resent the elder, and use his corpse’s stench as an occasion to slander him. When Alyosha becomes aware of the envious gossip about Zosima, he is devastated, and seeks out his acquaintance Ratikin. The latter, a wicked man, senses the vulnerability of Alyosha, and takes him to visit a woman named Grushenka, who wishes to corrupt Alyosha by seducing him. After Alyosha arrives she flirts with him and sits on his lap. Then Ratikin tells Grushenka that the elder Zosima has just died. Gurshenka replies: “The elder Zosima died!” Grushenka exclaimed. “Oh, Lord, I didn’t know!” She crossed herself piously. “Lord, but what am I doing now, sitting on his lap!” She suddenly gave a start as if in fright, jumped off his knees at once, and sat down on the sofa. Alyosha gave her a long surprised look, and something seemed to light up in his face. “Ratikin,” he suddenly said loudly and firmly . . . “did you see how she spared me? I came here looking for a wicked soul . . . but I found a true sister, I found a treasure—a loving soul . . . She spared me just now . . . I’m speaking of you, Agrafena Alexandrovna. You restored my soul just now.”6

After a little more conversation, “Grushenaka kept repeating ‘He called me his sister, I’ll never forget it! . . . I may be wicked, but I gave an onion,’” (giving an onion is a reference to a story of a soul in hell which has a chance to be redeemed because of its one and only good deed in its former life, namely, giving an onion to a person in need). Consider Alyosha’s great deed of love. Instead of scolding Grushenka for trying to ruin him, or wasting time by saying that he forgives her, he instantly praises her, and calls her his sister. Although he is burdened by his own immense grief, he instantly seizes the moment to build up Grushenka. He attributes a work of love to her, saying that she restored his soul. Grushenka is deeply moved, so much so that she says she will never forget that he called her his sister. This memory could become for her a ready and stable source of goodness for the rest of her life. In other words, Alyosha gives her a sacred memory. When she says that she gave an onion, it is evident that Alyosha has helped her see that though she is a sinner, she “really loves him now.” Sometimes the one who loves must wait for the right moment to express forgiveness of a sinner and achieve reconciliation with him. Kierkegaard describes love’s patient waiting in the chapter that interprets the following words from I Corinthians 13:13: “love abides.” Suppose that a sinner resists all artful attempts to win him to repentance and reconciliation. In such a case “the one who loves . . . continually emancipates himself from his knowledge of the past. He knows no past; he is only waiting for the future” (WL 307/SKS 9:304). While waiting, the one who loves does not dwell on the evil condition

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of the sinner, but on the possibility of his future repentance and growth in love. Because the one who loves waits in the right way, that is, patiently, in hope, and in readiness to unite in love when the opportunity arises, he achieves a great feat when the sinner begins to repent: that the transition of forgiveness may be as easy as meeting a person one saw a while ago, that the conversation of love might flow as naturally as with someone with whom one is in conversation, that the pace of the common journey might be in rhythm as quickly as it is between two people beginning a new life for the first time—in short, that there might be no stopping at all that could jolt, not for a second and not for a split second—the one who loves accomplishes this, because he abides and never wastes away. (WL 314/SKS 9:311)

After waiting patiently, the lover transforms a potentially awkward moment into a beautiful one. Because he has been waiting expectantly for his cue, and is always ready to act on it without delay, he is able instantly to establish rapport with the finally repentant wrong-doer. He runs out on the road to meet him, like the loving father of the prodigal son in the Gospel of Luke, and immediately they are in rhythm with one another. All proceeds smoothly, beautifully, artfully.7 To repeat, love accomplishes this feat because it abides until the critical moment when everything becomes possible. SOME LIMITATIONS OF KIERKEGAARD’S ACCOUNT OF LOVE’S ART In the remainder of this chapter I will extend Kierkegaard’s rich and deep account of love’s art to possibilities and opportunities that he neglects. Perhaps he is aware of some or all of these possibilities. In any case, he does not discuss them, and they are worth considering. When Kierkegaard talks about a work of love, he tends to mention only one worker, and only one neighbor; and if he does speak of more than one worker, then he attributes art to only one of them. This is to say that he generally describes a work of love as something involving unequals. The superior person artfully teaches, builds up, deceives the inferior person for his own good, etc., and the other is acted upon and helped. There is something wrong with the above picture. Both Kierkegaard and love seek to promote equality for human beings. When a lover helps someone to stand alone, this standing alone requires the one who stands to be artful. Therefore love could, probably should, and perhaps must call for a collaboration in art between the one helping and the one helped. Moreover, the lover who builds up another person is himself built up by helping, and the one who

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is helped might artfully assist in the building up of the lover. Thus we see that there is opportunity for collaboration in love’s art. Kierkegaard considers at least two examples of loving collaboration. But he does not describe them as collaborations in art. In one example, he imagines a pair of people, a lover and a person with an imperfection or defect. Kierkegaard says that the one who loves will not regard the neighbor’s defect as a reason for severing ties with him. Instead “the two are to hold together all the more firmly . . . in order to remove the weakness” (WL 167/SKS 9:167). The removal of the defect becomes “equally important to both” people, and “the relationship will with integrated power fight against the imperfection, overcome the defect, and remove the heterogeneity,” thus establishing equality (WL 166–67/SKS 9:167). Integrating one’s power with the neighbor’s in order to remove his defect, while still respecting his dignity, and oneself remaining a single individual, requires much delicacy and finesse, perhaps from both parties in the collaboration. But, although Kierkegaard says that the defective person collaborates, he does not say that the defective person uses art to do this. But surely this is possible. A person may have many virtues, and may be a skillful artist of love, despite needing help, and despite being weak when it comes to correcting some particular defect. Moreover, if the goal of working together is equality, then equality should begin to show itself in the very work performed in order to establish it. The second example has to do with reconciliation, when Kierkegaard allows the one forgiven to say: “Have you really forgiven me now?” Although Kierkegaard permits the one forgiven to be (minimally) involved in reconciliation, he does not suggest that this person’s involvement can be artful. And yet surely it can be. Everyone is a sinner, even those who love greatly and artfully. Therefore, at least sometimes the one forgiven can play her role artfully. Once we begin considering collaboration in the art of love, a new world opens up for us. There are many opportunities for profoundly meaningful collaboration in art-works of love. It is possible to cooperate artfully in all or many works of love that we have already discussed. People can labor together in helping another person to stand alone, in showing mercy, in teaching, in loving forth love, and so on. Parents are often called to work artfully together for the good of their children. Moreover, whenever people collaborate on some permissible endeavor, they may transform their collaboration into a loving one. Kierkegaard begins the second part of Works of Love by explaining that spiritual speech is metaphorical. As speech can be metaphorical, so can loving action. Love can use an ordinary collaboration as the basis for, and expression of, a loving and artful cooperation in which love is more important than the occasion for love.

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In artful and loving cooperation, there may be more than two artists. The case of a loving family is a good example of an opportunity for artful love involving numerous people. In cooperating, each artist of love sometimes takes the initiative, and sometimes responds. Each plays off and builds on what the other says and does. When the collaborators are at their best, there will be a synergy, in which they elevate one another and achieve a result that it is greater than the sum of its parts. In collaborative art-works of love, as I have suggested, all may be built up. Nevertheless, typically the work officially focuses on a main goal. This may be the benefit of one or more people. The beneficiaries may be one, some, or all of the collaborators, or they be non-workers. If the people to be helped are sufficiently numerous, and other conditions hold, then the work may be social or political. Kierkegaard regards social and political works of love as possible, but problematic, and he does not focus on them in Works of Love.8 SOME SUPPLEMENTS TO KIERKEGAARD’S ACCOUNT OF LOVE’S ART In his book, Forgiveness, Charles Griswold describes forgiveness and reconciliation as things accomplished by the wrong-doer and the forgiver working together. Griswold uses the artistically suggestive idea of a narrative, or the telling of a story, to describe effective forgiveness and reconciliation.9 The narrative may be authored by the forgiver, or coauthored by the forgiver and the one forgiven.10 In order for one or both of them to build a narrative that has a meaning that they can share, the two people must sympathetically imagine one another.11 They also must seek to give their narrative a unity, or a unified meaning—and this is a goal that requires art.12 Griswold says that the two people should use ideals to create the narrative’s unity, especially an ideal of growth.13 Griswold even makes use of the notion of a reversal, from Aristotle’s Poetics, in his development of his idea of the narrative of forgiveness. The reversal that he has in mind is “a new perspective on the injury” that supports forgiveness and reconciliation.14 But repentance and the decision to forgive might also be thought of fruitfully as reversals from an unloving to loving attitude. By the way, another concept from the Poetics can be used fruitfully to think about repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation, namely, recognition. There is or may be need for a recognition of guilt, by the repentant wrong-doer, a recognition of the goodness of forgiving, by the forgiver, and a recognition of the goodness of reconciliation, by both people. Griswold usefully stresses the role and importance of apology in forgiveness and reconciliation.15 Kierkegaard does not so much as mention the word,

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and this omission is a defect in his account of reconciliation. For forgiveness and reconciliation require in the best case a cooperation of apology and forgiveness. Moreover, there is, or should be, art in apology. Kierkegaard often idealizes the one who loves. But a loving person is a sinner like other people. That is, a lover will often need to apologize for wrongs he has done the neighbor. And he will want to do this artfully. He will use art to help the one whom he wronged to forgive him and to reconcile with him. It would be harmful for the one he injured not to forgive and reconcile with him, and good for him to do this. By graciously apologizing, the loving sinner helps the one he sinned against to forgive him and to unite with him in love. Therefore, just as there is an art of forgiving, so there is also an art of being forgiven. A further refinement of the present line of thought is that a lover may subtly help someone who has wronged him to apologize artfully for the sin. The lover may even manage to give the upbuilding impression that the apology was initiated by the wrong-doer. Curiously, Griswold does not explicitly say that forgiveness and reconciliation are arts, or need art. When he lists what he considers to be the thirteen most important questions about forgiveness, not one of them has to do with how to forgive.16 We can see here what we might call a philosopher’s prejudice that is interested in the concepts connected with something, but not in how these concepts are to be applied in life. Nevertheless, much of what Griswold says about forgiveness has to do with art. We have just considered his use of a theory of narrative, which is a theory of art, even though he does not say so. As we saw, he makes use of ideas about art from Aristotle’s Poetics—the idea of a reversal, for example. He also talks about rituals of forgiveness and reconciliation—and ritual involves artfulness.17 Finally, he considers the role of a work of art, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in reconciliation.18 An obvious place to consider collaboration in love’s art is romantic love and friendship. Kierkegaard tends to be suspicious of both of these, and is more concerned about their dangers than he is excited by their virtues. But he also praises them, and thinks that they can be combined with neighbor love, and thus redeemed.19 His suspicion of them seems to result from his ideal of the single individual alone before God. This ideal is threatened by various sinful forms of unity between friends, or between romantic lovers. But it might just as fairly be said that Kierkegaard’s ideal of love’s unity is threatened by sinful individuality. Thus there is a tension between the ideal of unity and the ideal of single individuality, at least when they are practiced by sinful humanity. But Kierkegaard often sees tension between ideals as opportunities for art. Therefore he should see the tension between the ideal of single individuality and the ideal of love’s unity as a rich opportunity for artful synthesis.

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Romantic love and friendship have several advantages as relations in which to practice charity. They are meant to last a long time, often a life-time, and they include a great variety of interactions. Therefore they provide fertile conditions in which to “vary [expressions of charity] inexhaustibly.” They also afford the opportunity, metaphorically speaking, not just for vignettes, but for novels, or even for a series of novels. That is, the lovers or friends may create a grand narrative of their attempts to love one another as themselves. Finally, lovers and friends get to know one another well, and can use their deep and nuanced understanding of one another as a basis for loving one another more skillfully and artfully than strangers typically can. Peace-Making in George Eliot’s Middlemarch As we have seen, Kierkegaard writes beautifully about how a lover achieves reconciliation with a sinner. But he does not describe how a lover acts as a peace-maker between two other estranged people. But since the peace-makers are blessed, and peace-making seems to be a work of love, let us consider an example of artful peace-making from Middlemarch. Again, some stagesetting is required. Tertius Lydgate has a troubled marriage, and asks Dorothea to speak to his wife, Rosamond, in order to try to improve things. When Dorothea first visits Rosamond, she finds the person with whom she herself is in love, namely, Will Ladislaw, seemingly flirting with Rosamond. Dorothea is devastated. But, despite a night of intense agony, she returns the next day to try again to talk to Rosamond about her marriage to Tertius. In order to appreciate this conversation, we need to know something of Rosamond’s character, and the difficulty of working with her. Rosamond is a spoiled and indulged egoist. Eliot tells us that Rosamond regards herself as the only blameless person in her world.20 Given that in fact she has many moral faults, her belief that she is blameless shows that she is egregiously unreasonable and unreceptive to any hint of criticism. It will be very difficult for Dorothea to penetrate this armor of egoism in which Rosamond has encased herself. Furthermore, when Rosamond becomes aware that Dorothea has arrived for a second visit, she takes special measures to protect herself against Dorothea’s influence. Because she expects to be criticized by Dorothea, Rosamond “inwardly wrap[s] her soul in cold reserve.”21 Yet another serious difficulty for Dorothea is that she herself is suffering greatly. Her belief that Ladislaw was good and noble was precious to her. When appearances deprive her of this belief, she is described as being in agony and despair. And since she has deep feelings for Ladislaw, her belief that she has lost him causes her intense pain. Thus she has her own acute grief to deal with, and this grief makes it more difficult for her to focus on

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what another person needs, especially a person who is partly responsible for that grief. One last difficulty is that Dorothea regards the mental separation between Tertius and Rosamond as “a trouble which no third person must directly touch.”22 The idea here is that there is a sort of sacred I-Thou relation between married persons, and that a third person violates this relation if she intervenes indelicately in it. But in cases where no direct contact is allowed, there is need for art, indirection, and finesse. Tertius confirms the need for artfulness by using the word “blundering” to describe his own unsuccessful efforts to effect a reconciliation between himself and his wife. Before her second visit with Rosamond, Dorothea asks herself: “What should I do—how should I act now, this very day if I could clutch my own pain, and compel it to silence, and think of those three!”23 It is noteworthy that Dorothea asks not only what she should do, but how she should do it. Kierkegaard would approve. That she asks how she should act indicates her awareness of the need for art, her awareness of the need for an indefinably helpful manner of speaking and acting. Eliot describes in great detail how Dorothea appears when she visits Rosamond, and this description greatly contributes to the power of the scene. Rosamond herself is quite sensitive to appearances, being, as she is, a pretty young woman obsessed with finery. Therefore, Dorothea’s facial expressions, her tones of voice, and even her new bonnet, are crucial to Dorothea’s ability to do good to Rosamond. After Dorothea speaks her first words to Rosamond, Eliot comments on them thus: The cordial, pleading tones which seemed to flow with generous heedlessness above all the facts which had filled Rosamond’s mind as grounds of obstruction and hatred between her and this woman, came as soothingly as a warm stream over her shrinking fears. Of course Mrs. Casaubon had the facts in her mind, but she was not going to speak of anything connected with them. The relief was too great for Rosamond to feel much else at the moment. She answered prettily, in the new ease of her soul.24

And here is Rosamond’s answer: “I know that you have been very good. I shall like to hear anything you will say to me about Tertius.”25 Rosamond begins determined not to listen to Dorothea, and is preoccupied with her reasons for objecting to anything Dorothea might say to her; but, Eliot tells us, Dorothea’s cordial and pleading tones, not her words, but her tones, win Rosamond over. These cordial tones circumvent all of Rosamond’s prepared objections in order to find a way into her heart. In parts of the novel preceding the above quoted passage, Eliot anticipates this description of Dorothea’s cordial, pleading tones. For example,

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Will Ladislaw calls Dorothea a poem, that is, something in which thinking and feeling are perfectly united.26 She thinks what she feels, and she feels what she thinks. Will also compares her twice to an Aeolian harp,27 which is a musical instrument played by the wind. She makes a sort of music in everyday life by beautifully responding with feeling to the world around her. She is an improvisational artist of everyday life. Being a human poem, or a human harp, is very useful if you want to help people, especially by means of pleading tones. Dorothea is so bent on helping others, so sincere in her desire to do good, that her face and tones naturally express her purpose. She feels so strongly that she must help Rosamond that her love is effortlessly made manifest in the lines of her face, and in the modulations of her voice, as she speaks to Rosamond. Such natural revelation of love is hard to resist, so that even Rosamond, a determined resistor, yields to Dorothea’s manifest love. Dorothea wisely takes advantage of Rosamond’s lowered defenses by expressing her belief in the innocence of Tertius, and by reporting that other reputable people share her belief. As she speaks, her “self-forgetful ardour”28 is apparent to Rosamond, so that the latter feels bashful timidity before a superior, and thanks Dorothea for her kindness. It is great progress for Rosamond to feel that someone is her moral superior, and for her to feel gratitude. As the two women continue speaking, Dorothea struggles to endure her own sorrow, but somehow transmutes her self-concern into sympathy through an effort at self-mastery. This transmutation is characteristic of art. For much art is the result of strong personal feeling translated into something no longer private, but intelligibly accessible to and shareable with other people. Dorothea senses that her sympathy has had a salutary effect on Rosamond, so that the latter has grown even more receptive to advice. Therefore when Rosamond criticizes Tertius, Dorothea counters by teaching her that her marital troubles are not due to Tertius’s defects, but to the nature of marriage itself, which requires compromise, forbearance, and sacrifice. Dorothea even goes so far as to give a little speech encouraging Rosamond to struggle against her egoism, though without using that word, which would probably offend Rosamond. Thus in a short time Dorothea has brought Rosy a long way. Before this conversation between the two women, Rosamond would have been utterly unreceptive to a message about the need to work, sacrifice, and suffer in service of her marriage. But perhaps now the message partly gets through to her. Both women have their own grief, and when their individual sorrows have reached a high pitch, Eliot writes the following: “Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own—hurried along in a new movement which gave all things some new, awful, undefined aspect—could find no words, but

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involuntarily put her lips to Dorothea’s forehead which was very near her, and then for a minute the two women clasped each other as if they had been in a shipwreck.”29 When Rosamond is seized by emotion stronger than her own, and given a new vision of things, it is as if she is in the grip of a great work of art, in this case a living art-work of love. She expresses affection for Dorothea by kissing her, without thinking what she is doing. And when they clasp one another as if they had been in a shipwreck, Rosamond experiences loving fellowship for perhaps the first time in her hitherto self-centered existence. No doubt this is the finest moment of her life up to this point. Moved by loving fellowship with Dorothea, Rosamond volunteers the important information that Ladislaw never loved her (Rosamond), but had always loved Dorothea, and she confesses that the misleading appearance of an affair between her and Ladislaw was her fault. It is a momentous change in Rosamond for her to take the blame for something so weighty, because for her whole life she has always thought that she is the only blameless person in her world. Dorothea then tries to win some sign that Rosamond’s affection was “yearning back towards her husband.”30 Not for a second does Dorothea indulge in the pleasure of her fellowship with Rosamond, but instead she tries to channel Rosamond’s new love back toward Tertius. The results are modest. Rosamond replies by asking: “Tertius did not find fault with me then?”31 This does not seem very loving. But Rosamond’s words show at least that she is thinking with concern about her husband, and that she cares that he might be finding fault with her. After Dorothea has left, and Tertius is talking with Rosamond, he asks her what she thinks of Dorothea. She replies as follows: “I think she must be better than anyone . . . and she is very beautiful. If you go to talk to her so often, you will be more discontented with me than ever!” Once again it is a great step forward for Rosamond to recognize the goodness of Dorothea when she says Dorothea must be better than anyone. The conversation between the Lydgates continues thus: Tertius “laughed at Rosy’s words, ‘so often,’” and asked, “But has she made you any less discontented with me?” Rosamond replied, “I think she has.”32 Although this scene is immensely moving, one might judge that Rosamond’s improvement is in fact quite small. And yet Eliot makes the encounter between the two women that we have just examined the climax of Middlemarch. Imagine being given the task of writing a great book whose climactic scene describes a heroine making a wife less discontented with her husband. If you are like me, you would reject this task as ludicrous. What daring for Eliot to write such a book! Her success in writing it is testimony to her genius. But let us examine in a little more detail what Dorothea does for Rosy. Perhaps she accomplished more than we think. We saw that Dorothea helped

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the egoist Rosamond to acquire some humility. Rosamond admitted to herself that Dorothea is superior to her. She voluntarily accepted blame for her flirtation with Ladislaw. She experienced and participated in a moment of loving fellowship with Dorothea. She may have learned from Dorothea that marriage is necessarily difficult, and that in order to improve her marriage she must struggle against selfishness and unrealistic expectations. As a result of what she learned from Dorothea, Eliot tells us, Rosamond “never committed a second compromising indiscretion.”33 And, in the epilogue of the book, we learn that Rosamond preserved a “religious remembrance” of Dorothea and of the aid which Dorothea gave her in the “sharpest crisis of her life.”34 But, Eliot tells us, the reformation of Rosamond’s character does not go very far. She does not become virtuous or reasonable. And yet it seems to me that the help that Dorothea gives to Rosamond is not a small accomplishment, even if it is not a spectacular world-historical triumph. If we hanker for more than this, then perhaps we are irrationally and immaturely idealistic. Perhaps we should think that making the world a little better by artfully loving others is a worthy goal that makes life worth living. In any case, we must admit that Dorothea gave Rosamond the opportunity to be saved, to be fundamentally changed, and to become a good and loving person. And maybe that is as much as one adult can do for another adult who is spoiled and unreasonable. If Eliot had told us that Rosamond deeply amended her life and became a saint after her conversation with Dorothea, that unrealistic ending would probably have offended our sense of what is fitting, and would not have fortified us for the difficulties of real life. Eliot begins Middlemarch by suggesting that Dorothea is a sort of frustrated modern St. Theresa. Eliot enacts, or pretends to undergo, a change of heart about the need for spectacular greatness in the life of a modern St. Theresa. In the Prelude she laments that her modern St. Theresa is a “foundress of nothing,” and that the saint’s “loving heart-beats . . . are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognizable deed.”35 In general the Prelude gives the sense of a wasted life. The Finale of the novel, or the epilogue, repeats some of the things said in the Prelude, but with an important difference. It says of the modern St. Theresa, Dorothea, that her “full nature . . . spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth.” Once again we might suspect the author is talking about a wasted life. But it is not so. For instead of saying that Dorothea’s efforts are dispersed among hindrances, Eliot says that the “effect of [Dorothea’s] being on those around her was incalculably diffusive.”36 The words dispersed and diffusive have almost the same meaning, except that the word, “dispersed,” implies a squandering of potential, and the phrase, “incalculably diffusive,” implies a beneficial effect that extends so far that it is hard to determine its limits. It is as if Dorothea is being likened to the God of Plotinus, the One, which by

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diffusion or emanation brings about the cosmos. For the narrator does not say that Dorothea’s actions have an incalculable effect, but that her very being is incalculably diffusive. It is though Dorothea does not even need to act in order to do good in the world. Perhaps what Eliot means is that Dorothea’s actions are a perfect expression of her being. And if her actions perfectly express her being, then we might say that they are consummately artful, that no limitations of technical skill impede the expression of her being and its loving purpose. Eliot then goes on to write the last words of the novel, which are a beautiful proof that epigrammatic telling can be just as artful as any showing can be: “for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”37 Thus the growing good of the world is dependent on anonymous artists of love. Love for Eliot, as for Kierkegaard, is often hidden, but revealed to discerning eyes through its fruit. Alyosha’s Founding of a Loving Community of Boys in The Brothers Karamazov We will now turn to the Brothers Karamazov for an example of another kind of reconciliation. Alyosha believes that Zosima sends him out from the monastery into the world to “reconcile and unite” people,38 and perhaps his greatest deed in the novel is to reconcile one sick and dying boy, Ilyusha, with a group of boys who previously tormented him—one of whom he stabbed with a pen—and to build up a community around Ilyusha. In the novel there is a clever and proud boy named Kolya who reads about the founding of Troy, and uses this putative information to embarrass his teachers, and to cut a grand figure before his classmates. Another boy, younger than Kolya and somewhat timid, named Kartashov, manages to snatch Kolya’s book unobserved for a minute, and to read about the founding of Troy. When Kartashov publicly proves that he knows who founded Troy, Kolya cleverly poses a different question. In what sense did the founder found Troy?39 Did he lay the first brick on the ground? This episode is not just a humorous display of the cleverness and pride of Kolya, but is meant to make readers think about the meaning of the founding of a community. Alyosha is the chief founder in the book. He artfully establishes the brotherhood of boys by his loving acts, and the thing that he builds is not a city with walls, but a spiritual community whose bonds are love and friendship. How then does he do it? As Kolya might say, in what sense is he a founder? Given the difference in age between the adult Alyosha and the boys, it is unlikely that they would adopt him as their leader. Therefore he needs art

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to erase the difference between himself and them. When he first meets the boys, he begins his acquaintance with them by giving practical advice, not in a domineering way, but in a friendly fashion that shows he shares their interests. The narrator comments that “Alyosha instinctively understood [that] one must begin with boys precisely in a serious and practical way so as to be altogether on an equal footing.”40 Notice that Dostoevsky, like Kierkegaard, sees the importance of equality for love. Dostoevsky further describes the art with which Alyosha builds a society of love. Less than a page after speaking of the “need for art in a young soul,” the narrator comments on Alyosha’s “whole art,” which, the narrator tells us, “lay in getting [the boys] together one by one . . . as if quite unintentionally and inadvertently. And this brought enormous relief to Ilyusha in his suffering.”41 The proximity of the passage about the need for art and the description of Alyosha’s whole art in building a society of love suggests that the human soul needs to love with art. We should also note that Alyosha’s art is deceptive. He pretends that planned events are inadvertent. Thus both Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard agree that love requires an art of deception. Alyosha does much more than we can here explore to build a loving community of boys: he is patient and gracious with them; he gives them sound advice; he does not judge them in an offensive manner, but is able gently to point out faults, etc. Sacred Memory in The Brothers Karamazov I will end this chapter by considering the gift of a “sacred memory,” which is perhaps the most important way that love builds up in The Brothers Karamazov. We have already looked at three examples of it. One is from Middlemarch, namely, Rosamond’s religious remembrance of the aid given to her by Dorothea in the greatest crisis of her life. A second, in The Brothers Karamazov, occurred when Grushenka says that she would “never forget” that Alyosha thanked her for giving him a metaphorical onion. A third occurred in the scene in which Alyosha expressed his belief in the innocence of Dimitri. It is easy to imagine that their sacred memories will be a sources of strength and inspiration for Rosamond, Grushenka, and Dimitri in their struggles in life. These examples of sacred memory share the common feature that in each case what is remembered is a beautiful moment of unity in love. Thus sacred memory is not a private treasure, but has to do with human fellowship, or with brotherhood, as the title of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece suggests. Let us consider another example of sacred memory. At the trial of Dimitri an immigrant German physician is called to witness. He is a good man but also somewhat comical in his poor command of the Russian language. He says that he remembers Dimitri “as such a tiny boy, left alone in his father’s

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backyard, where he was running in the dirt without any shoes and just one button on his little britches.” The author comments that a “certain note of sensitivity and emotion was suddenly heard in the honest old man’s voice.” Then we learn that out of love and pity the physician gave the little boy “a pound of nuts.” The physician explains: “because no one had ever yet given the boy a pound of nuts, and I held up my finger and said to him: ‘Boy! Gott der Vater,’ and he laughed and said ‘Gott der Vater’” and so on, the physician teaching the young Dimtri a prayer in German. The German continues his story and describes how recently, after 23 years, Dimitri came into his study and held up his finger and said, laughing: “Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn, und Gott der heilige Geist! I’ve just arrived, and have come to thank you for that pound of nuts; for no one bought me a pound of nuts before; you are the only one who ever bought me a pound of nuts.” And then I remembered my happy youth, and a poor boy in the yard without any shoes, and my heart turned over, and I said: “You are grateful young man, for all your life you have remembered that pound of nuts. . . . And I embraced him and blessed him. And I wept. He was laughing, but he also wept . . . for a Russian quite often laughs when he ought to weep. But he wept, too, I saw it. And now, alas . . . !” “And I’m, weeping now, too, German, I’m weeping now, too, you man of God!” Mitya suddenly cried from his place.42

This is a profoundly moving passage. Perhaps it borders on the sentimental, but in context, I think, it does not seem so. In it we see gratitude for a sacred memory. This sacred memory obviously means a great deal to Dimitri, who can so far forget himself at his trial that he thanks the old doctor for his past act of love. The way that he expresses his gratitude is especially moving. He weeps, and though he calls the physician, German, and before that, leach, he afterwards thinks better of how to address the giver of the pound of nuts, and calls him a “man of God.” The correction adds force and pathos to Dimitri’s expression of gratitude. If that man of God had not given the young Dimitri a pound of nuts, if Dimitri had not experienced that loving act, and preserved a sacred memory of it, perhaps he would not have been able to resist the temptation to murder his father when he had the opportunity to do so. Let us consider one last instance of sacred memory in The Brothers Karamazov. This one seems to be largely responsible for making Alyosha the loving and saintly person that he is. The narrator tells us that Alyosha’s mother died “in his fourth year, and though it is strange, I know that he remembered his mother all his life.”43 This memory is something like a supernatural power that pervades Alyosha’s existence. The narrator speaks of special and early childhood memories emerging “throughout one’s life as specks of light, as it were, against the darkness . . . ” and continues:

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he remembered a quiet summer evening, an open window, the slanting rays of the setting sun (these slanting rays he remembered most of all, an icon in the corner of the room, a lighted-oil lamp in front of it, and before the icon, on her knees, his mother, sobbing as if in hysterics, with shrieks and cries, seizing him in her arms, hugging him so tightly that it hurt, and pleading for him to the Mother of God, holding him out from her embrace with both arms towards the icon, as is under the protection of the Mother of God . . . and suddenly a nurse runs in and snatches him from her. What a picture!44

In The Brothers Karamazov it seems that the prayers of Alysoha’s mother were answered. Alyosha’s decision to enter the monastery and live under the authority of Zosima was precipitated by a memory of his mother. This memory seems to have communicated to Alyosha a sense of being intensely loved, a sense that he has a calling to serve the Mother of God, a sense that he is safe and protected, so that he may take the risk of loving people in ways that other people would consider imprudent or dangerous—a sense, in short, that intense love is the meaning of life and divinely supported. This feeling of being loved no matter what is doubtless the source of his conviction that no one could offend him, or even want to offend him, a conviction that enables him to love various people who do their best to insult him. Sacred memory is the opposite of offense as the latter is understood by Dostoevsky. Offense, or feeling painfully insulted, is a source of much evil and harm in The Brothers Karamazov. When people are offended they may become embittered, and they often harm themselves in order perversely to get revenge on the people who they think wronged them. The offended person is harmed by the offense because he remembers it, dwells on it, perhaps nurses it, and may even deliberately do harm to himself, or refuse to allow himself to be healed, in order to put his offender even more in the wrong. Offense is a bitter and painful memory that tears down, whereas sacred memory is a joy that builds up, repairs, and renews. Just as one can deliberately recall offense, so one can store up and deliberately recall a sacred memory. Thus love according to Dostoevsky means not only taking care to avoid giving offense to people, especially to children, but also working to give them a sacred memory. To love people, especially the young, means arming them with a memory of a holy time and place that they may recall later in order to be built up. Kierkegaard does not thematize sacred memory, or treat gratitude to another human being as an important way of being built up. If one person “gives” another a sacred memory, admittedly there is the danger that the recipient will become unhealthily grateful to and dependent on the giver of the sacred memory. Kierkegaard worries greatly about this danger, and therefore often stresses the need to hide gifts. No doubt this concern makes a certain sense.

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But is it really impossible to be grateful to a fellow human being, while preserving one’s dignity and freedom, and while bearing in mind that all people are in need of God? Is gratitude never a step on the path by which a person becomes a loving self? Does not the tension between gratitude and independence afford human beings another opportunity for artful synthesis of good things? If not, then we would have to say that God has deprived people of the joy of being grateful to one another. By stressing individuality and standing alone, Kierkegaard may help some people achieve a noble independence, but he also risks thwarting or hindering charitable human communion. NOTES 1. See John Lippitt, Love’s Forgiveness: Kierkegaard, Resentment, Humility, and Hope (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). Lippitt says that “[l]ove’s forgiveness must be practiced artfully” if it is going to be both rigorous and gentle (103). Ferreira, in Love’s Grateful Striving, also notes this same need for art (208). Ferreira also says that the forgiveness requires that the forgiver be “creative and gentle in the expression of ‘solicitude’ for the person who is in the wrong” (206). But neither Lippitt nor Ferreira thematizes, loves art, or talks much about it. 2. Lippitt, Love’s Forgiveness, 96–97. 3. In Love’s Grateful Striving, Ferreira writes that the “end of forgiveness is reconciliation” (176; cf. 208). 4. Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection, trans. Anthony Briggs (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 173. 5. In Love’s Grateful Striving Ferreira stresses that when love’s tasks become natural, it performs them with art (208). 6. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 351. 7. The smooth transition of the lover from patient waiting to reconciliation calls to mind the art of knights of faith in Fear and Trembling. These knights, who have renounced everything for the sake of God, are able to receive anything instantly and gracefully, like ballet dancers who leap high, and then, in landing, instantly and gracefully assume an earthbound posture, with perfect balance and control (FT 41). 8. We will consider this more in the conclusion of this book. 9. Charles L. Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 79, 98–99. 10. Ibid., 109. 11. Ibid., 99. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 104, 109. 14. Ibid., 109. 15. Ibid., iv. 16. Ibid., xx–xxi. 17. Ibid., 167–71.

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18. Ibid., 201–6. 19. See both books by Krishek on love. 20. Eliot, Middlemarch, 665. 21. Ibid., 792. 22. Ibid., 773. 23. Ibid., 788. 24. Ibid., 794. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 223. 27. Ibid., 80, 209. 28. Ibid., 795. 29. Ibid., 797. 30. Ibid., 799. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 800. 33. Ibid., 835. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 4. 36. Ibid., 838. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., 196. See also pages 526 and 536 for Alyosha’s work of peace-making. 39. Ibid., 550–51. 40. Ibid., 177. 41. Ibid., 538–39. 42. Ibid., 674–75. 43. Ibid., 14. 44. Ibid., 18–19.

Chapter 4

The Art of Praising Love

In Works of Love Kierkegaard “endeavored ‘many times and in many ways’ to praise love” (WL 375/SKS 9:368).1 Praising love is a work of love, and, like other such works, requires art.2 This is not surprising. Praise is often recognized as something that requires art. In the classical world, for example, the rhetoric of praise, which was called epideictic rhetoric, was one of the three main branches of the oratorical art. This chapter is about Kierkegaard’s theory and practice of the art of praising love. Kierkegaard assigns great importance to the praise of love. Since he says that the purpose of praising love is to make people “properly aware” that love is the highest, and that the main condition for benefitting people is to make them aware, it is arguable that he deems the praise of love to be love’s most beneficial work (WL 365/SKS 9:359; WL 85/SKS 9:91). Therefore it is fitting to praise the praise of love, in order to inspire people to learn to eulogize charity. Kierkegaard says that it is “unconditionally the most upbuilding if someone succeeds in speaking properly about how love builds up” (WL 222/SKS 9:224). Praise of love, like other works of love, seeks to build up the neighbor. Praise of love should therefore aim to speak properly about how love builds up. And since love builds up by art, the encomiast of love seeks above all to speak properly about the unbuilding art of love. Thus, we have arrived at a partial answer to the question, posed in the introduction to this book, why Kierkegaard praises love more for its art than for anything else: namely, he thinks that the most beneficial way for him to praise love is to praise it for the art that it uses to build up. This answer is only partial because the following crucial question still remain to be answered: Why is it more upbuilding to speak properly about how love builds up, than it is to speak about the generous and sacrificial goodwill that makes love willing to work to build up the neighbor? We will return to this question in the conclusion of this book. We have already examined, in chapters two and three, Kierkegaard’s descriptions and explanations of the art with which love builds up.3 Therefore, 101

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we have already begun to examine Kierkegaard’s praise of love. This is not surprising. For I suppose that Kierkegaard evoked in you, as he did in me, admiration for the skill and beauty of love’s upbuilding art. THE RHAPSODY OF LOVE Lee Barrett says that “Works of Love frequently waxes rhapsodic about the blessedness of a life of love.”4 The most rhapsodic or poetic part of Works of Love is chapter one, in which there is a predominance of natural images of love. That chapter says love grows and bears beautiful fruit; but it does not say that love labors in the fields and harvests fruit. It appealingly likens God as the source of love to an eternally fresh spring. In order to love, it seems, human beings do not need to toil and sweat, but only to permit the divine waters of love to flow gently through them. These natural images downplay the difficulties and labors of love in order to show love’s attractions to readers at the beginning of their journey through the book. Works of Love usually presents love as a duty that is largely or partly contrary to the natural and spontaneous inclinations of human beings. But chapter one speaks of a “need in love” to be “known by its fruits,” a need which is like that of the poet to make poetry (WL 10/SKS 9:18). As the poet is inspired by the muse to make beautiful verse, so a person may be inspired by love to make beautiful fruit. It would be difficult to present love in a way that is more attractive than this. Chapter one speaks of the “hidden life” of love and its “revealing fruits” (WL 8/SKS 9:16). This talk of tension between concealment and disclosure reveals love as something interesting; it alluringly invites us to look for signs of hidden love in our neighbor, and appeals to the artist in us that might wish to become interesting by revealing with visible fruits the hidden life of our own love. If you were to regard the first chapter of Works of Love as a prospectus or sample of the rest of the book, you would be disappointed. Chapter one presents love leniently and appealingly. But the rest of the book presents love as an imperious command that is difficult and sometimes painful to obey. Thus Kierkegaard begins Works of Love with what ancient rhetoricians called a captatio benevolentiae [winning of goodwill], which is a device for securing the attention and receptiveness of one’s audience at the beginning of an oration. Kierkegaard himself suggests his strategy of praising love in a quite provocative way, when he says that in many cases an “introduction must be a kind of striptease.”5 By the way, chapter one is not just panegyric. It is also polemic, or philippic. In it Kierkegaard criticizes a “conceited sagacity,” which does not believe

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in high things, and which is “proud of not being deceived.” He admits that we “can be deceived by believing what is untrue.” But, he rejoins, we can also be “deceived by not believing what is true” (WL 5/SKS 9:13). This second deception can be terrible. By it one can “defraud oneself” out of the highest (WL 5/SKS 9:14). If there is risk on the side of belief, there is also risk in unbelief. Thus Kierkegaard argues against the “poisonous spirit of distrust” in order to persuade people to believe in love, or at least to listen to its praise in a generous and receptive spirit (WL 7/SKS 9:15). THE POET AND OTHER RIVALS OF LOVE In order to praise love, Kierkegaard sets himself in opposition to the figure of the poet, who appears frequently in Works of Love. The poet is the priest and eulogist both of erotic love and of friendship. Although Kierkegaard is at times harsh with the poet, he also vigorously affirms him. For example, he speaks of a person who wins the “greatest human honor: that a poet has celebrated her” for her devotion to her lover (WL 310/SKS 9:308). Like Kierkegaard, the poet perceives sublime ideals that soar above the paltriness of bourgeois life. That is why Kierkegaard blames a person who “has neither the spirit of a poet nor the spirit of Christianity” (WL 45/SKS 9:52); and why he criticizes other people for “giving up the poet without grasping the essentially Christian” (WL 62/SKS 9:70). It is as if Kierkegaard were saying: would that you were either a poet or a Christian, but if you are neither, your bourgeois-philistinism makes you insipid and hard to help. The poet brings along with him two more rivals, namely, romantic love and friendship. Although Kierkegaard often criticizes romantic love and friendship, he also praises them as beautiful and noble, and therefore as sources of deep meaning in human life.6 If they were not so, then love’s superiority over them would be nothing to boast about. But since Kierkegaard has a high regard for eros and philia, his praise of caritas often proceeds by showing that it is superior to romantic love, friendship, and other more or less worthy rivals. Kierkegaard writes that “no poet, if he understands himself, would think of singing” the praises of “Christian love,” and that “love for neighbor has certainly not been celebrated by any poet” (WL 8/SKS 9:16; WL19/SKS 9:27). Kierkegaard concedes that the poet seems to have a good reason for praising romantic love and friendship, and for not praising neighbor-love: “Be honest, admit that with most people, when they read the poets’ glowing description of erotic love or friendship . . . perhaps . . . this seems to be something far higher than this poor: ‘You shall love,’” a commandment that belongs to Christianity (WL 29/SKS 9:36). Similarly, he admits that the neighbor is “apparently

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very unpoetic” (WL 18–19/SKS 9:26). For, he explains, the “beautiful is the immediate and direct object of immediate love, the choice of inclination and of passion” (WL 373/SKS 9:366–67). The ugly, by contrast, is rejected by inclination, and the neighbor is the ugly when one is commanded to love him contrary to one’s inclination. We naturally find the poet’s praise of the beauties of erotic love and friendship much more appealing than praise of dutiful love of one’s neighbor, who may be a quite disagreeable fellow. Kierkegaard points out a more general difficulty than that of praising love when he writes that it is the fate of the good that it “happens very often” to “make a very poor showing” in the world (WL 226/SKS 9:228). Since the good is difficult and costly, and therefore often contrary to inclination, it can be quite unappealing, and people frequently do not want either to celebrate it or to hear it celebrated. It is not quite true, however, that no poet who understands himself would think of singing the praises of Christian love. For Kierkegaard strives to understand himself, calls himself a poet, and praises love of neighbor. He also speaks of the songs of “religious poets,” which are “to the glory of God,” and are “about faith, hope, and love” (WL 46/SKS 9:53). Thus, some poets knowingly dare to praise neighbor-love, despite the difficulty and unprofitableness of the enterprise. When Kierkegaard denies that the poet would praise love, he is speaking of the poet qua poet, or the poet who is not also a Christian. We see, then, that poetry has an ambiguous status in Works of Love.7 In taking on the poet as his rival, Kierkegaard admits that the deck seems to be stacked against him, when he utters the following lament: “alas, the Christian proclamation at times is scarcely heard,” but “all listen to the poet, admire him, learn from him, are enchanted by him” (WL 46–47/SKS 9:54). How then does Kierkegaard go about winning the daunting contest of praise with the enchanting secular poet? PRAISE AS DELIBERATION AND AS DIALECTIC Given that Kierkegaard is a poet, and this his rival in Works of Love is the poet, we might expect a great deal of poetry in that book, and there is a fair amount of a kind of poetry in it, especially in chapter one. But, if we compare Kierkegaard’s book about love to Fear and Trembling, whose subtitle is “Dialectic Lyric,” we find that the former book is only moderately poetic. Its measure of poetry is diminished partly because it has much deliberative and dialectical work to do. Kierkegaard in fact identifies Works of Love as deliberations, which do not “presuppose the definition” of love and of various aspects of love “as given and understood,” but which present and explain the

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definition (JP 1:641/SKS NB 2:176). This identification seems to be correct, in that much of the book consists of dialectical expositions of love. But one does not think of deliberations as praise. How then can Works of Love be praise of love if it consists of deliberations, which are presumably dryly dialectical? Lee Barrett gives an excellent answer to this question. He notes that in the Concept of Anxiety, the pseudonymous author explains that for a correct concept there is a “true mood” that “properly corresponds” to it (CA 14/SKS 4:322). If the mood of the explanation belies the concept, then the concept is not adequately explained. Barrett argues that the “appropriate mood” for a deliberation about the concept of love is praise.8 In order properly to understand love, one needs to perceive its great worth and attractiveness, and praise helps one to perceive this. Kierkegaard cannot competently define love without also praising it. One of the main ways that Kierkegaard praises love is to argue dialectically and Socratically for its superiority to its rivals.9 In other words, Kierkegaard makes use of his rivals’ own premises to argue Christian love is the highest good, because it remedies its rivals’ weaknesses, and fulfills their aspirations. We might further describe his arguments by noting that they make use of a fortiori reasoning: if you admire erotic love and friendship, then, by the criteria that induce you to admire them, you should admire Christian love even more.10 Thus the writer who is famous for condemning apologetics, and who seems to many readers to reject reason, praises Christian love by arguing rationally for its superiority over its best rivals. Kierkegaard says that paganism, and therefore also the poet, paganism’s designated eulogist of the ideals of erotic love and friendship (WL 44/SKS 9:51), “made erotic love and friendship into love, and abhorred self-love” (WL 57/SKS 9:64). With the poet’s own condemnation of selfishness in mind, Kierkegaard writes that it “will now be shown that” the love which the poet praises, namely erotic love (and friendship), is itself “another form of self-love” (WL53/SKS 9:60). Kierkegaard offers numerous arguments for his assertion about the selfishness of erotic love (when it is not combined with and corrected by Christian love).11 The poet believes “the lover must admire the beloved.” It seems that “to admire another person is certainly not self-love.” But if the person I admire prefers me, or favors me, then my admiration is indirectly self-love: “to be loved by the one and only admired one, would not this relation turn back in a selfish way into the I who loves—his other I? And so it is also with friendship” (WL 54/SKS 9:61). If the person I love most and admire most loves or admires me more than she loves anyone else, then my love goes out to her and returns to me in a delightfully flattering way. The lover and the friend want to be preferred by the one whom they prefer, and this desire to be preferred by the preferred one is to prefer oneself. By the way, even though erotic

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love and friendship typically involve self-love, Kierkegaard does not simply condemn them. For he thinks it is much better to admire people than to be a self-enclosed self-lover. But the virtue of being a romantic admirer is only a partial one, or a sort of “glittering vice,” since it has a taint of selfishness. Kierkegaard uses a famous saying of pagan antiquity, namely, that “friends are one soul,” as the basis of a criticism of erotic love and friendship: “The more securely one I and another I join to become one I, the more this united I selfishly cuts itself off from everyone else. At the peak of erotic love and friendship, the two actually do become one self, one I” (WL 56/SKS 9:62– 63). We are all familiar with the kind of phenomenon to which Kierkegaard is referring. Lovers and friends privilege their relationship to one another over their relations to other people. Their concern for their romance or friendship tends to lead them selfishly to neglect others. To be sure, it is commendable when two egos become one. Many selfish people do not transcend their egoism in this way. And Kierkegaard does in fact commend this union of two egos without criticizing it much in Philosophical Fragments (PF 48/SKS 4:252). But this erotic self-transcendence has its limits, and therefore comes in for criticism in Works of Love. In summary, a friend or a lover overcomes selfishness to the extent that she enlarges herself so as to merge with her lover or friend, but this new self draws a tight circle about its compound ego, and selfishly privileges itself over other people. Although romantic lovers are justly praised for nobly and beautifully making sacrifices for the beloved, given the selfishness of romantic love, it is also possible, or even likely, that this selfishness will show itself in many ways even within the romantic relationship. One of the main aims of Amy Laura Hall in Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love is to show that Kierkegaard exposes many ways in which romantic love can be selfish, treacherous, harmful, and self-deceived. For example, she argues that often the “beloved becomes a projection of the lover’s ‘passionate preference,’” or of the lover’s “self-centered hopes and dreams.”12 When the beloved fails to conform to the lover’s projection, then the lover may become angry or resentful, or attempt to force the beloved to conform to his wishes. But love of neighbor does not project its private fantasies onto the neighbor, or become angry and resentful when the neighbor falls short of its expectations—for charity is patient and kind. Erotic love feels a need for permanence: “However joyous . . . spontaneous love . . . can be . . . precisely in its most beautiful moment it still feels a need to bind itself, if possible, even more securely. Therefore, the two swear an oath, swear fidelity” (WL 29/SKS 9:37). By nature, erotic love wants to endure, but it is insecure. Sensing the insecurity and transience of their love, lovers seek to bind themselves to their love with an oath, and they seek this precisely in the “most beautiful moment” of their love. Like the lovers whom

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he praises, the poet also senses the need for an oath, and insists that the lovers promise to love one another forever (WL 29–30/SKS 9:37). Kierkegaard remarks that “the poet is right in this, that if two people will not love each other eternally, then their love is not worth talking about, even less worth singing praises about” (WL 31/SKS 9:38). The person who most admires and appreciates erotic love, the poet, thinks this love is most beautiful and most praiseworthy when it promises unceasing fidelity. Kierkegaard argues that despite its desire and its oath to be faithful forever, erotic love left to itself does not usually last, but is frequently defeated by various obstacles. Natural romantic love “can be changed into . . . hate” (WL 34/SKS 9:41). One possible reason for this transformation is that a jilted lover is tempted to hate a beloved who jilts him. Erotic love “can become the sickness of jealousy” (WL 35/SKS 9:42). Jealousy is a failure and diminishment of love, partly because a jealous lover seeks to obstruct the beloved’s relations with people who might benefit her. Reasons could be multiplied here, so let’s conclude with what is perhaps the most formidable obstacle to erotic love’s “bearing it out, even to the edge of doom,” namely, that this kind of love can lose “its ardor, its joy, its desire, its originality, its freshness” through time and through “the indifference of habit” (WL 36/SKS 9:43). We are all familiar with the fact that time and habit can undermine the ardor and enthusiasm of romantic love. Kierkegaard claims that although the poet and the lovers themselves want their love to endure, they do not know how to accomplish their goal. Kierkegaard criticizes them for swearing to be faithful by their own love for one another—the very thing that they fear will prove unfaithful. Bootstrapping is not a sound strategy, both in general and in erotics. Kierkegaard says that instead of swearing by their love, the lovers must swear by eternity, for “one must swear by the higher; but if one is to swear by eternity, then one swears by the duty that one ‘shall love’” (WL 31/SKS 9:38). He adds that “only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally secured” (WL 32/SKS 9:40). Kierkegaard’s basic idea here is that in order to make erotic love last, it is necessary to subordinate it to something higher than it, to God, say, or to the divine command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. If two lovers believe in an eternal God who demands dutiful fidelity to oaths of love, then they can be helped to faithfully keep their oaths to one another by the thought of God, and perhaps by miraculous divine assistance. Kierkegaard points out that even when romantic love faithfully endures, all might not be well with it. He imagines a woman who is separated from her beloved, and who waits for his return with great faithfulness. He says that it is “indeed very beautiful and praiseworthy to wait . . . for another” to return (WL 302/SKS 9:300). Because of her exemplary fidelity, she “does indeed have . . . the greatest human honor: that a poet has celebrated her” (WL

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310/SKS 9:308). By waiting for her beloved, she sacrifices the life that she could have lived if she had moved on. Kierkegaard praises her sacrifice: “the highest thing that can be said of any human being: one is sacrificed.” But he also questions whether her sacrifice is fitting: the “only question is whether it is the highest for which one is sacrificed” (WL 310–11/SKS 9:308). Kierkegaard judges that her sacrifice is not appropriate because “in the highest sense erotic love is not love and not the highest.” It seems that there is something misguided in her extreme loyalty to her absent lover. Furthermore, despite her best efforts, this woman cannot fully maintain her love in all its original beauty. Kierkegaard explains the inevitable weakness of her erotic love thus: “There was no fault in the girl; she was and remained faithful to her erotic love. Yet her love changed somewhat over the years. That is the nature of erotic love” (WL 311/SKS 9:309). Even though the woman is not to blame, “time had weakened in her the desire by which she lived.” No one can “be unconditionally faithful . . . in what does not eternally abide—and erotic love does not do that” (WL 312/SKS 9:309). The woman aspired to be eternally faithful, but her beloved was not eternal, and one cannot be eternally faithful to what is not eternal. Kierkegaard continues this line of investigation by exploring the tragic nature of the woman’s erotic love. He claims that the fact “[t]hat she is sacrificed does not have the solemnity of the eternal . . . but . . . the sadness of temporality and thus the inspiration for the poet” (WL 312/SKS 9:309). Though the poet agrees with the maiden’s aspiration to eternal love, he also knows that if her beloved does not return in timely fashion, she is doomed to sorrow. But the poet finds in this sorrow a source of beautiful poetry—at her expense. That is, the poet exploits her sorrow. Having ruined her by persuading her to accept a mistaken view of love and of the meaning of life, he then makes poetry out of her ruinous sadness. Kierkegaard sometimes praises love by arguing that it fulfills ideals of the world, and not just those of poets. For example, he writes that “[e]ven the one who ordinarily is not inclined to praise God and Christianity does so” when he considers that Christianity “has saved human beings from . . . [the] evil” of various gross inequalities like slavery, “by deeply and forever memorably imprinting the kinship of all human beings” in our minds (WL 69/SKS 9:75–76). Although the world honors the Christian idea of equality, when it attempts to create equality on earth, by its own admission it can only go so far: “Well-intentioned worldliness . . . admits” that perfect equality “is an impossibility” (WL 72/SKS 9:78). Christianity, however, proposes a way to succeed where the world fails. Christianity can achieve perfect equality between or among people, not indeed by political means, but by neighbor-love. For the neighbor is one’s equal (WL 60/SKS 9:66). Everyone

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can and should love the neighbor as oneself, and everyone can and should be loved as the equal of the one loving. Kierkegaard notes that the “purely human view of love . . . teaches that love requires no reward,” and that love makes sacrifices (WL 130/SKS 9:133). But the purely human conception inconsistently makes an exception. That is, purely human love wants to be rewarded for its sacrifice by being loved and admired. What is more, to the noble-minded, the greatest rewards and compensations are to be admired and celebrated by a poet. Thus, sacrifice of money, time, or health for the reward of admiration and fame is, to the noble person, a good bargain. Christian love, however, is truly unselfish because it is willing to make genuine sacrifices—that is, to love without reward—even when the result is that it will be “accused, scorned, hated, mocked” for being good (WL 131/SKS 9:134). Kierkegaard argues that Christian love fulfills purely human standards better than purely human love does—in this case because it is willing to be more truly without reward than purely human love. As the result of his dialectical arguments, Kierkegaard posits an order of rank in conceptions of love. This hierarchy aptly suggests how the Christian conception of love is the refinement or perfection of various human conceptions, namely, those of common sense, the poet, and Socrates: “the highest degree of self-love the world also calls self-love; the self-love of the alliance the world calls love; a noble, self-sacrificing, magnanimous, human love that still is not Christian love is ridiculed by the world as foolishness; but Christian love is hated, detested, and persecuted by the world” (WL 120/SKS 9:123). After chapter one of Works of Love, which waxes quite rhapsodic about love, the book’s praise of love is often more deliberative, dialectical, and sober than it is poetic. Kierkegaard allows the poet, however, enthusiastically to praise erotic love and friendship; and then he artfully exploits the poet’s praise. He uses dialectic to expose the defects of erotic love and friendship, and to suggest that Christian love can succeed where its rivals fail. In this strategy Kierkegaard is like Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, who steals the glory of his rival, Hotspur, and erases the infamy of his own profligate youth, by slaying Hotspur in battle. That is, Kierkegaard uses dialectic to steal the poetic glory of erotic love and friendship, and to establish the superiority of Christian love, as a possibility, to its rivals. It is worth stressing that by using arguments to praise love, Kierkegaard does not attempt to prove that Christian love is actual or even possible. Instead, he posits neighbor-love as a possibility, and argues that this possibility is superior to the poet’s darlings. What I am tempted to call Kierkegaard’s apologetics (or crypto-apologetics) does not seek to establish the truth, rationality, credibility, probability, or unallowed appeal of Christian doctrine, but

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the unmatched greatness of Christian ideals as possibilities that demand a decision. In order to do this it uses both reason and imagination, or poetry. CAN CHRISTIAN LOVE SUCCEED WHERE ITS RIVALS FAIL? Kierkegaard’s Socratic criticism of the poet, romantic love, and friendship shows serious defects in them, and reveals that they do not live up to their own ideals. But is there good reason to believe that Christian love can do any better? Certainly, Christian love cannot be proven to perform better than they do by arguments based on commonly accepted premises. The best way to know about Christian love, according to Kierkegaard, is not through arguments, or through observation of other people, but by striving to love. However, perhaps we may legitimately make some hypothetical arguments such as the following. If the Christian teaching about God is true, then the one who sincerely strives to love will receive divine aid that helps him or her to love more faithfully and selflessly than friends and romantic lovers who do not make use of divine assistance. Or, if that teaching is partly true, then some divine or even cosmic support may be available. Or, even if the Christian teaching is false, but a person sincerely believes it, that person will be likely to love less imperfectly than non-believers. For sincere belief in a God of love is a powerful source of motivation. Or, taking away even more, if a person without belief in the Christian God nonetheless accepts (a secular version of) the Christian teaching about love, strives to apply this ideal of love to her life, and conscientiously examines herself in the light of this ideal, it seems likely that her love will better approximate her ideal than the love of typical friends and romantic lovers does. But, (it must be conceded) if human nature is ingloriously weak, or inveterately selfish, or stubbornly in need of compensation for its efforts, or incurably fickle and therefore inevitably bored or wearied by a dutiful life of neighbor-love, then the one who strives to love may not only fail to fare better at love than others, but may even fare worse, owing to the strain she puts on herself with her excessive and unrealistic expectations. She may even lash out against the one to be loved because she is frustrated and resentful about the deprivations caused by her striving after a chimera.

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KIERKEGAARD’S DILEMMA: TO PRAISE LOVE OR TO WARN PEOPLE ABOUT IT? Eulogists and apologists have been known to stretch the truth in their efforts to make something seem more attractive than it actually is. But Kierkegaard is dedicated to uttering honest praise of love, and this means stressing that love is costly and difficult. Kierkegaard thinks that the cost is so high that “we almost prefer to warn” people about love rather than to recommend it (WL 197/SKS 9:217). Furthermore, he writes that “Christianity can be praised only when at every point the danger is incessantly made evident—how to the merely human conception the essentially Christian is foolishness and offense” (WL 199/SKS 9:198). Christianity in general, and Christian love in particular, are offensive, or potentially so, because they are uncompromisingly perfectionistic and idealistic. Christian love, as we have seen, has much in common with merely human love; but it applies the standards of merely human love with uncompromising rigor and consistency, and this severity is not easy for flesh and blood to endure. If Christianity were content to improve merely human love a little—pruning it here, adding something comforting there—then it might be widely praised. But since it is perfectionist, idealistic, and uncompromising, its extremism is repellent to the merely human point of view. All of this is offensive enough, but the most offensive thing is yet to come. Christianity compounds the offense by teaching that if you strive to love unselfishly, with the greatest effort and sacrifice, the world will protect itself from the rigorous duty to love by calling your love selfishness, and will reward your efforts at charity with hate and contempt, and perhaps with persecution. Therefore, if you strive to love “you will fare badly in the world” (WL 191/SKS 9:91). It is hard enough to strive to love, but then to be derided, or even persecuted, instead of rewarded, for this heroic striving, is too much—offensively too much. Kierkegaard offers a deeper and stranger account of the origin of offense than the one which we just explored. The Christian teaching of love makes human beings great, proclaiming that they are capable of extraordinarily heroic benevolence. Kierkegaard says that the “uncharitableness of the natural man cannot allow him the extraordinary that Christianity has intended for him; and so he is offended” (SUD 86). The natural man does not love himself enough to consent to be as great as Christianity intends him to be. He wants a modest amount of excellence for himself, but not too much. This self-envy is quite strange and calls for an explanation. Kierkegaard complies by explaining that the natural man feels as though he is being mocked when Christianity teaches him that he can be great and extraordinary (SUD 85–86/SKS 11:199).

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This doctrine seems to want to lure him into foolish and dangerous endeavors. He sees that he will look like a madman in the eyes of the world for believing and practicing an ideal that offends it; and this is a repelling prospect. We might say that when a person is offended at the offer of too much good, he hears in himself the voice of the world which will mock him for his seemingly childish idealism. We can now see better why Kierkegaard says that no poet would think of singing the praises of Christian love. To praise Christian love is to risk offending people. But the poet wants to be admired for his praise, not to anger people and be derided by them. Since the poet wants to ingratiate himself with his audience, not to annoy them, he must either scale down the difficulty of charity, or praise something else entirely. How then is love to be praised if it is (potentially) offensive, and its offensiveness cannot be hidden, but must be stressed? An obvious answer is to separate what is offensive about love from what is admirable about it, and to warn people about the one, and to praise the other. Kierkegaard sometimes employs this strategy. For example, although he calls love good, he scarcely ever praises its goodness, but instead praises its art, because its goodness is costly and difficult, but its art is beautiful and admirable. Another possible strategy of praising love is to alternate between praising it and warning people about it. Kierkegaard employs this strategy on a large scale in Works of Love. He begins its first chapter with an inoffensive and even lovely description of love. Then he goes on to discuss the offensive demands of love: that love is a duty, that it is self-denying, that it is hated, etc. Towards the end of the first half of Works of Love, he veers away from the offensiveness of love to describe the beautiful art of loving the people we see. And then he ends the first half of the book by explicitly stressing the offensiveness of love. The second half of Works of Love is in general less offensive than the first. If the reader has endured the first series, she is rewarded with the second series, which begins with a declaration of love’s upbuilding art, and includes many moving descriptions of this art in action. But then, in the last chapter, Kierkegaard stresses that the praise of love requires self-denial, and in the Conclusion, he sets forth a hard to endure explication of Christianity’s teaching of “like for like,” which menacingly forbids judging other people at all, and threateningly demands forgiveness of all the wrongs done to you by your neighbor. Ultimately, however, praising love and warning people about it cannot be neatly separated from one another. Kierkegaard often writes that when Christianity is presented correctly, it becomes clear that the only possible responses are admiration, adoration, or faith, on the one hand, and offense, on the other. What is more, he claims that admiration and offense are almost the same thing. He writes that “admiration is a happy relation to superiority, and

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therefore it is a blessed feeling; in true unanimity with oneself, it is perhaps more blessed to admire than to be the one admired” (CD 131/SKS 10:141). He also defines offense as admiration, namely, “unhappy admiration” (SUD 86/SKS 11:199). He says that the most intense form of offense, which he calls defiance, “is weakness and feebleness, which makes itself unhappy by not willing to be weakness and feebleness, is the unhappy relation of weakness and feebleness to superiority, just as envy tortures itself because it does not will to be what it basically is, admiration” (CD 131/SKS 10:141). In short, faith is happy admiration of and surrender to (the Christian teaching about) Christ, while offense is unhappy admiration and defiance of exactly the same thing. And since both faith and offense are admiration of Christ, or of love, or of Christianity, adequate praise of Christian love, which aims to produce admiration, necessarily presents people with a choice to admire either happily or unhappily; and that is why praising love and warning people about it cannot be neatly separated from one another. PRAISING LOVE WHILE DEMANDING A DECISION ABOUT IT We have arrived at another description of what it means to praise Christianity or Christian love: to present people with a choice, and to help them appreciate their options. Kierkegaard writes that Christianity “terrifyingly compels” people “to choose: either to be offended or to accept Christianity” (WL 200/SKS 9:199). To compel people to choose is not merely to make them adequately aware of their options, but also to make them aware of their freedom and responsibility to choose among or between the options. In other words, compelling a choice requires making people free. In Works of Love Kierkegaard writes that “the highest one human being can do for another is to make him free, help him to stand by himself” (WL 276/SKS 9:274). Love would like to persuade people to admire love and not to be offended at it. But it must respect human freedom, and present people with a choice. This necessity of respecting freedom and risking offense is a source of great sadness for Kierkegaard. In Practice in Christianity the pseudonym Anti-Climacus writes the following: “Ah, if only you could have an intimation of what happens within [Christ] every time he sadly must repeat these words of concern: ‘Blessed is he who is not offended at me . . . to me it seems that you could not possibly be offended at him’” (PC 77/SKS 12:89). He also writes: “Oh, if you could form a conception of his joy over every believer, then, saved, you would bypass the offense” (PC 78/SKS 12:90). If a person could be aware of how much Christ loves her, and how sad she makes him by taking offense at his love, then she would not be offended at him.

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Kierkegaard is so sorrowful over the fact that it must always be possible for people to be offended by divine gifts that he sometimes almost disregards this sad necessity. In “The Expectancy of Faith,” where he praises faith as the “most glorious,” “most beautiful,” and “highest good,” he describes how the encomiast of faith might help people who resist being helped: “I will accompany his thought and constrain him to see that it is the highest good. I will present it from slipping into any hiding place . . . I will praise the gloriousness of faith to him, and in presupposing that he possesses it, I will bring him to will to have it as his own” (EUD 9, 10, 15–16/SKS 5:20, 25). The person who lovingly desires to help, also aims to constrain the neighbor to see that faith is the highest good. Further, although Kierkegaard does not say that he can constrain a person to have faith as his own, he nevertheless says that he will “bring him to will have it as his own.” Is there an important distinction between saying that you will constrain a person to do something and saying confidently that you “will bring a person to do” it? Can you really respect freedom while bringing a person to embrace faith as his own? In Works of Love Kierkegaard is just as ambivalent about freedom as he is in “The Expectancy of Faith.” Sometimes he speaks as though all love can do is make the neighbor aware of love in order to demand a decision about it, and sometimes he speaks of love as magically irresistible. THE SELF-DENIAL REQUIRED FOR PRAISING LOVE The last chapter of Works of Love, other than the Conclusion, is “The Work of Love in Praising Love.” This chapter is fairly limited in scope and does not address many aspects of love’s praise. What it focuses on is the moral condition of the praiser, and the praiser’s personal relation to his task. Specifically, it shows the role of self-denial in praise: “the work of praising love must be done inwardly in self-denial” and “outwardly in self-sacrificing unselfishness” (WL 360/SKS 9:354; WL 365/SKS 9:359). A crucial result of inward self-denial is humbly to learn one’s need for God, and then to become an instrument of God in praising love, or God’s co-worker in love’s praise (WL 362/SKS 9:356). We will examine inward self-denial again in chapter seven, which is about equality, because Kierkegaard thinks that inward self-denial makes it possible for all people to praise love with art and virtuosity. Kierkegaard consults poetry to consider how to praise love with what he calls “outward self-sacrifice”: even if we wanted to forget actuality, forget how the world is, and poetically transfer the whole relation into the realm of the imagination, it lies in the very nature of the matter that in the relation between human beings unselfishness is

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required for truthfully praising love. Let us risk a poetical venture of the kind in which we have nothing at all to do with the actual world but only at the theoretical distance of thought go through the thought of praising love. If in the poetical sense a person is to speak altogether truthfully about the true love, there is a double requirement: The speaker must make himself into the self-lover, and the content of the discourse must be about loving the unlovable object. But in that case it is impossible to have any advantage from praising love, because one can have advantage from this only if the speaker is regarded as the person who loves or the content of the discourse is the ingratiating theme of loving the lovable object. And if it is impossible to have any advantage in praising love, then it is indeed unselfish to do it (WL 371/SKS 9:364–65).

Kierkegaard does not explain how the eulogist of love is to make himself seem to be a self-lover. Nor does he appear to do this himself, so that there is reason to be suspicious of his claim that the encomiast of love must pretend to be a self-lover. This suspicion is confirmed when we consider the last words of Kierkegaard’s chapter on praise: “If, then, someone . . . is asked whether it is actually out of love that he [praises love], the answer must be: ‘No one else can decide this for certain; it is possible that it is vanity, pride—in short, something bad, but it is also possible that it is love’” (WL 374/SKS 9:367). This passage certainly does not say that the lauder of love puts on an appearance of being a self-lover. But it also indicates that love’s eulogist does not directly claim to be motivated by love, so that other people might suspect him of self-love. There are many reasons that Kierkegaard himself should think that the actual, flesh and blood encomiast of love should not put on a self-loving appearance. The advice to feign self-love is the result of Kierkegaard’s consultation with the poet. But the poet as such is not a Christian, so that his advice on how to praise Christian love is questionable. The maxim to praise love by pretending to be a self-lover is the result of “forgetting actuality” and having “nothing at all to do with the actual world.” But the encomiast of love wants to praise love in the actual world and to help actual people, not to praise love to imaginary people in a dream world of a poet. Most tellingly, in order to praise love correctly Kierkegaard himself thinks that he needs to consult Christianity, not the poet. If he merely attended to his own description of Christian love, he would see that love wants to be recognizable in its fruits; and since praise of love is a work of love, the eulogist of love will want his or her love to be recognizable in its fruits, so that it is doubtful that he or she would want to feign selfishness. It could even be harmful for the eulogist of love to put on a false appearance of selfishness, because that would make him seem to be a hypocrite, thereby perhaps undermining his praise of love.

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I propose that the “poetical venture” does not give us Kierkegaard’s unadulterated advice, but merely an image of it. What Kierkegaard really counsels is that one should try not to attract undue attention to oneself by praising love, or to win undue admiration. Instead, one should deny oneself by striving to direct other people’s attention and admiration to love itself. Lee Barrett helpfully describes the authorial voice in Works of Love. Often, notes Barrett, the voice in Kierkegaard’s signed works is confessional, in that the author confesses his own failings, and is severe on the failings of his readers. But in the signed Works of Love Kierkegaard almost never speaks of himself and speaks only once of his failure to love perfectly. That is why the voice in Works of Love is not confessional. Instead, it is doxological; and in order to praise love as well as possible the author seeks not be a distraction by drawing attention to himself. To this end, says Barrett, Kierkegaard makes the “implied author” “relatively unspecified” and “relatively indistinct.”13 Barrett is certainly correct that the authorial voice of Works of Love is relatively unobtrusive, and that the reason for this is that Kierkegaard denies himself in order not to distract people from their vision of the beauty and greatness of love. NOTES 1. For insightful comments about Kierkegaard’s praise of love see Lee C. Barrett, in two texts, Eros and Self-Emptying (94, 197); and “Authorial Voices” (22–25). Sharon Krishek, in Kierkegaard on Faith and Love, claims that Works of Love “praises love in all its possible forms” (4). Tajafuerce, in “Rhetoric in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love,” thinks that praise of love is central to Works of Love (312). 2. Kierkegaard says that the praise of love “is an art and yet no art but a work” (WL 359/SKS 9:354). In chapter seven we will examine in what senses praising love is and is not an art. 3. Tajafuerce gives the impression in “Rhetoric in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love” that the only moving examples of love in Works of Love are the book’s use of phrases spoken by Christ, and “parables . . . narrated by Christ” (336). But in chapters two and three we considered many beautiful and moving examples of love that Kierkegaard provides and that do not refer to words or deeds of Christ. Certainly, Kierkegaard thinks that Christ’s love is the best love, but not that it is the only beautiful and imitable love. 4. Lee Barrett, “Authorial Voices,” 18. 5. Curiously, Tajafuerce claims in “Rhetoric in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love” that the striptease of Works of Love is its prayer (337). The prayer is admittedly beautiful, but it is unlikely to seduce readers who are not already sympathetic to Christianity with its strict love-commandment. A much better candidate for Works of Love’s striptease is chapter one, which is interesting and appealing to all sorts of people, Christian and non-Christian alike. Chapter one is so much more poetically appealing than the

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prayer, that, if the prayer may be likened to a striptease, I blush to say what chapter one may be likened to. Tajafuerce lists the Journal entry in question as JP 1:639, but I have not been able to track down the reference. 6. Sharon Krishek, in Kierkegaard on Faith and Love, claims that Works of Love “praises love in all its possible forms, including the romantic” (4). 7. In “Rhetoric in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love,” Tajafuerce does not acknowledge Kierkegaard’s ambivalence in Works of Love about poetic praise of Christian love. That is, she takes seriously the passages that criticize the poet, and disregards those that praise him, and those that use poetry to praise Christian love (329, 330). 8. Lee Barrett, “Authorial Voices,” 24. 9. Tajafuerce claims in “Rhetoric in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love” that Works of Love “does not and must not provide any proofs” that attempt to “epistemologically secure” its “message” about love, “where ‘proof’ includes not only logical but also rhetorical syllogisms” (328). But, as we shall see, Kierkegaard provides many arguments for the value of Christian love in Works of Love, though of course he would not call these arguments proofs that “epistemologically secure” his message about love. 10. Tajafuerce argues in “Rhetoric in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love” partly on the basis of Practice in Christianity that admiration of love must be” rejected as constituting a primary obstacle to . . . love” (330). Admittedly, Practice in Christianity has many negative things to say about mere admiration, but it also claims that “the misunderstanding that goes under the name of admiration” of, say, love, “is even necessary in order to attract people” (PC 245). Moreover, it is not admiration as such that Anti-Climacus criticizes, but admiration without imitation. Indeed prior admiration is even necessary for strenuous imitation. Thus Kierkegaard is ambivalent about both the poet and about admiration, but Tajafuerce ignores the ambivalence. By the way, I have presented many objections to Tajafuerce’s essay about Works of Love, because that article seems to me emblematic of a common way of interpreting Kierkegaard that tends to obscure his partly poetic task of praising Christianity. 11. Krishek’s two books on Kierkegaard and love show well that erotic love and friendship are not as such contrary to charity, and can be combined with it. 12. Hall, Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love, 87, 44. 13. Lee Barrett, “Authorial Voices,” 19, 27.

Chapter 5

Two Examples of Praising Love

In this chapter I will compare and interpret two pieces of exemplary praise of love, each of which occurs in a concluding and climactic moment, one from the Conclusion of Works of Love, and the other from the final scene of The Brothers Karamazov. KIERKEGAARD’S PRAISE OF JOHN’S EXHORTATION TO LOVE In the Conclusion of Works of Love, Kierkegaard eulogistically interprets an exhortation to love from The First Epistle of John, chapter four, verse seven: In this book we have endeavored “many times and in many ways” to praise love. As we thank God that we have succeeded in completing the book in the way we wished, we shall now conclude by introducing the Apostle John, who says, “Beloved, let us love one another.” These words, which have apostolic authority, also have, if you consider them, an intermediate tone or an intermediate mood in connection with the contrasts in love itself. The basis is that they are by one who was perfected in love. You do not hear the rigorousness of duty in these words; the apostle does not say, “You shall love one another”; but neither do you hear the vehemence of poet-passion and of inclination. There is something transfigured and beatific in these words, but there is also a sadness that is agitated over life and mitigated by the eternal. It is as if the apostle said, “Dear me, what is all this that would hinder you in loving, what is all this that you can win by self-love! The commandment is that you shall love, but ah, if you will understand yourself and life, then it seems that it should not need to be commanded, because to love people is the only thing worth living for, and without this love you are not really living. Moreover, to love people is the only blessed comfort both here and in the next world; and to love people is the only true sign that you are a Christian”—truly, a profession of faith is not enough either (WL 375/SKS 9:368). 119

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Let us consider this passage part by part.1 “In this book we have endeavored ‘many times and in many ways’ to praise love.” This sentence states the purpose of Works of Love. Kierkegaard typically says that something is artful because of the way it is said or done. Therefore, the phrase “many ways” suggests artful variation and flexibility in adapting to different contexts. “As we thank God that we have succeeded in completing the book in the way we wished, we shall now conclude by introducing the Apostle John, who says, ‘Beloved, let us love one another.’” Kierkegaard humbly thanks God for his success in praising love, but also expresses proud confidence that he has succeeded in his doxological endeavor. Uniting opposites like humble gratitude and proud confidence is a major task of art according to Kierkegaard’s conception of it. Kierkegaard concludes his book by introducing three words of the apostle John. At the risk of exaggeration, we might posit that the whole purpose of Works of Love was to lead up to these three words of the apostle (and to Kierkegaard’s laudatory interpretation of them). The apostle’s three words, which Kierkegaard interprets partly as praise of love, are quite simple and unimpressive on the surface. But Kierkegaard makes much of them, as we shall see, and seems to delight in showing the hidden art and wisdom of what is perhaps the shortest panegyric on record. “These words, which have apostolic authority, also have, if you consider them, an intermediate tone or an intermediate mood in connection with the contrasts in love itself.” As will become clear later, the apostolic authority that Kierkegaard speaks of here points to one of the contrasting elements in love. We will encounter the second contrasting element soon. By saying that John’s words have “an intermediate tone or . . . mood in connection with the contrasts in love itself,” Kierkegaard is pointing to the art of the words of the apostle, which consists partly in unifying the contrasting elements in love through an intermediate tone or mood. In the Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard’s pseudonym explains that in correct communication the “mood . . . properly corresponds to the correct concept” (CA 14/SKS 4:322). By speaking about the intermediate mood of the apostle’s words, Kierkegaard points to the art that matches mood to meaning.2 “The basis is that they are by one who was perfected in love.” The basis of what? Kierkegaard does not explicitly say. Probably he means the basis of the artfully intermediate tone or mood. The art of love, he implies, is accessible to anyone who is perfected in love through trials and strivings. “You do not hear the rigorousness of duty in these words; the apostle does not say, ‘You shall love one another’; but neither do you hear the vehemence of poet-passion and of inclination.” Kierkegaard now names the two contrasting elements that John artfully unites in his exhortation to

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love: “the rigorousness of [the] duty” to love and the “vehemence of poetpassion.” According to Kierkegaard, John’s words suggest these two elements, but soften the rigorousness, and make the poet-passion more tranquil. Throughout Works of Love Kierkegaard consistently stresses the duty to love. But in the Conclusion, we learn that it is possible to speak properly about love without emphasizing duty, and the basis of being able to speak in this way is that one is perfected in love. “There is something transfigured and beatific in these words, but there is also a sadness that is agitated over life and mitigated by the eternal.” Is Kierkegaard hearing voices? At any rate he begins to hear quite a lot in John’s three words. Now he hears another synthesis of contrasting elements. “Transfigured and beatific” words express an elevated happiness. A “sadness that is agitated over life and mitigated by the eternal” contrasts with this happiness. This sadness itself contains a third set of contrasting components, namely, an agitation over life, and a mitigation of this agitation caused by the thought of the eternal. Kierkegaard refers to a synthesis of agitation and mitigation, and the whole of this synthesis is itself synthesized with an elevated happiness. Presumably the source both of the happiness and of the mitigation is the eternal worth of love, and the source of the sadness is that so much of the world does not yet share the beatific joy of love.3 “It is as if the apostle said, ‘Dear me, what is all this that you can win by self-love!’” How did we get to “self-love”? Kierkegaard develops his idea or insight that John is sad because some people do not embrace love and its joy. The reason that they do not embrace these is their self-love, which makes them want to privilege themselves, and therefore prevents them from loving their neighbor as themselves. But such self-love does not really win much for a person, since it makes a person lonely, and makes life a sordid affair. “The commandment is that you shall love.” Kierkegaard detects a reference to the commandment to love. What John writes, “Beloved, let us love one another,” is, grammatically speaking, an exhortation, not a command. It resembles a command, but is also something like a wish. Since what John says is a first-person plural exhortation, he includes himself in the fellowship of those who are to love one another, and by doing so he avoids being imperious. “The commandment is that you shall love, but ah, if you will understand yourself and life, then it seems as if it should not need to be commanded, because to love people is the only thing worth living for, and without this love you are not really living. Moreover, to love people is the only blessed comfort both here and in the next world.” Kierkegaard here describes John as praising love4: love is the only thing worth living for, and the only comfort both here and in the next world. We are naturally inclined to desire meaning and comfort, and part of the reason that the apostle can exhort people to love,

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and not just command them, is that love is not merely an onerous duty, but something meaningful and comforting. “‘ . . . and to love people is the only true sign that you are a Christian’— truly, a profession of ‘faith is not enough either.’” Kierkegaard interprets the apostle’s exhortation not as just one important piece of advice, but as a summation of the whole of Christianity. One shows that he is a Christian, not by a profession of what he believes, but by his artful way of loving the neighbor. Kierkegaard takes a simple exhortation of St. John, interprets it, and sees in it far more than almost anyone would or could. We should recall that Kierkegaard claims that love has an art of interpreting, and that this art can detect what is not visible on the surface (WL 293/SKS 9:290). Kierkegaard exemplifies this art of charitable interpretation when he restates the words of the apostle. As he paraphrases them, he makes them his own. That is, he speaks in the first person, as if he himself were the apostle. So great is love’s art of imaginative and sympathetic identification with the neighbor! Although Kierkegaard attributes sublime art to John, he does not attribute eloquence to him. The art of praising love does not require Shakespearean poetry. In his interpretation of John, Kierkegaard reveals an art which is accessible to all people and which can accomplish great things with only three words. In Works of Love Kierkegaard stresses many disagreeable things about love: that it is a divinely commanded duty, that it risks being hated for being good, that it requires self-denial with its resulting pains, and that it is potentially offensive. It is refreshing that the passage Kierkegaard chooses to climactically epitomize Christian love does not include these repelling elements. But, after discussing the words of John, in the remainder of the Conclusion, Kierkegaard sets forth something stern and potentially offensive, namely, a discussion of “the Christian like for like,” or the teaching that God will judge a person as he or she has judged others (WL 376–86/SKS 9:369–78). Kierkegaard’s beautiful praise of John’s words is therefore a sort of oasis, or a temporary reprieve from rigor. Kierkegaard in general is wary of friendship, on the grounds that friends tend to warn one another against the imprudent deeds required by absolute commitment to eternal ideals. He also does not often stress the importance of Christian community, even in Works of Love. The words that he quotes from John, however, hint at a Christian community of love. That is, John’s exhortation to love one another seems to be an invitation to the building of loving community. Throughout Works of Love, there is not a single exhortation to love, until we reach the words of John in the Conclusion.5 Moreover, Kierkegaard exhorts his readers to love, not on his own authority, but by quoting John. It seems that Kierkegaard wishes to explain thoroughly the nature, worth, and

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cost of love before he exhorts anyone to embrace a life of love. This is the patience of the praise of love. ALYOSHA’S SPEECH AT THE STONE We will now consider Alyosha’s speech in praise of love, which is arguably the acme of The Brothers Karamazov. This speech beautifully exemplifies many aspects of Kierkegaard’s theory of the praise of love, but also complements it, challenges it, and perhaps corrects it. It complements or even corrects Kierkegaard’s doxological theory because it praises ordinary individuals, feelings of love, and sacred memory, and because it attempts to build up a sacred memory in the boys who hear it. We have already met the three boys who figure most prominently in this speech: Ilyusha, the sick boy, now deceased, around whom Alyosha builds a loving community; Kolya, the precocious boy to whom Alyosha gives much advice, and who caused Ilyusha intense moral suffering; and Kartashov, who stole some of Kolya’s thunder by learning who founded Troy. The speech occurs just after the funeral of Ilyusha, who has died of consumption. Alyosha and the boys are walking around outdoors, waiting to go inside and eat a meal in memory of Ilyusha. Shortly before Alyosha’s eulogy of Ilyusha and of love, the boy Kolya expresses the love growing in him by saying that he would like “some day” to “offer [himself] ‘as a sacrifice for truth!’”6 He adds that he “would like to die for all mankind,” and is seconded by another boy.7 He later says that he would “give everything in the world” “to resurrect” Ilyusha.8 Thus Alyosha has inspired in Kolya an intense desire to love. But Kolya is about to show that his love is imperfect. Imperfection is shown also in that another boy throws a brick at a flock of sparrows. Just before the extended passage that we will consider together, Kartashov interrupts Kolya, and the latter responds angrily, “I ask you seriously, Kartashov, not to interrupt anymore with your foolishness, especially when no one is talking to you or even cares to know of your existence,” Kolya snapped irritably in his direction. The boy flushed deeply, but did not dare to make any reply.9

This passage shows that Alyosha still has work to do in building a community of love, since Kolya expresses malice when he says to Kartashov that “no one . . . cares to know of your existence.” Although he “would like to die for all mankind,” he makes an exception of Kartashov, whose existence he flagrantly cares not to know about. The prologue to Alyosha’s speech continues thus:

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Meanwhile they were all walking slowly along the path, and Smurov [another of the boys] suddenly exclaimed: “Here’s Ilyusha’s stone, the one they wanted to bury him under!”10

Ilyusha and his father used to talk to one another in the vicinity of this stone. The stone has become for the boys a symbol of the dead boy, and a way of remembering him. Alyosha stages his speech in a place most pregnant with memory of the dead boy, and thus in a place that might aptly assist him to create a sacred memory centered on Ilyusha.11 They all silently stopped at the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole picture of what Snegiryov had once told him about Ilyushechka, crying and embracing his father, exclaiming: “Papa, papa, how he humiliated you!” rose at once in his memory. Something shook, as it were, in his soul. With a serious and important look he gazed at all those dear, bright faces of the schoolboys, Ilyusha’s comrades, and suddenly said to them: “Gentlemen, I should like to have a word with you, here, on this very spot.” The boys gathered around him and turned to him at once with attentive, expectant eyes. Snegiryov is Ilyusha’s father. The person who humiliated him is Alyosha’s brother, Dimitri.

By mentioning Ilyusha’s concern for his father’s humiliation, Alyosha remembers that Ilyusha was also humiliated and offended by Dimitri. Much of the book is a meditation of Christ’s command not to offend children,12 a command which Father Zosima comments on,13 and which is often violated in the novel, with lasting harmful consequences. Perhaps Alyosha wishes somehow to take responsibility for his brother’s treatment of Snegiryov, in keeping with Father Zosima’s teaching that we should realize our guilt and responsibility before all people. Notice that the narrator stresses Alyosha’s loving appearance. Similarly, we are invited to see the “dear, bright faces of the schoolboys” as Alyosha looks at them with the eyes of love. Notice also that Alyosha calls the boys gentlemen, as a sign of respect, or as a way of suggesting that he is addressing equals, and as a means of winning their receptivity to what he wants to tell them. Gentlemen, we shall be parting soon . . . perhaps for a very long time . . . Let us agree here, by Ilyusha’s stone, that we will never forget—first, Ilyushechka, and second, one another. And whatever may happen to us later in life, even if we do not meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we

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buried the dear boy, whom we once threw stones at—remember, there by the little bridge?—and whom afterwards we all came to love so much . . .

Alyosha begins to build a sacred memory for the boys. They are first to remember the wrong they did Ilyusha. Alyosha charitably includes himself among those who threw rocks at Ilyusha, though in fact he did no such thing. Perhaps this inclusion is another instance of being guilty for all and before all. It is certainly an expression of unity and brotherhood, and is a way of softening his indirect criticism of the boys whom he wishes to build up. Alyosha does not dwell on their guilt, but moves on quickly to saying that they came to love Ilyusha so much. Perhaps his claim that the boys loved Ilyusha greatly is an exaggeration, but it is a beneficial one, and expresses belief in love. . . . He was a nice boy, a kind and brave boy, he felt honor and his father’s bitter offense made him rise up. And so first of all, let us remember him, gentlemen, all our lives. And even though we may be involved with the most important affairs, achieve distinction or fall into some great misfortune—all the same, let us never forget how good we once felt here, all together, united by such good and kind feelings as made us, too, for the time that we loved the poor boy, perhaps better than we actually are . . .

Alyosha praises Ilyusha, the boys, and their loving feelings. He does not try to teach them clearly what love is, but talks mostly about how they feel. He is adapting what he says to their youthful capacities. But he does help them to see that love is a matter of unity. And though he praises them, this praise is not mere flattery, since he tells them that in their love for Ilyusha they may have been, for a time, better than they actually are. . . . My little doves—let me call you that—little doves, because you are very much like those pretty gray, blue birds . . . as I look at your dear kind faces—my dear children, perhaps you will not understand what I am going to say to you, because I often speak very incomprehensibly, but still you will remember and some day agree with my words. You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from childhood, from the parental home. You hear a lot said about your education, yet some such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man stores up many such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation . . .

Alyosha begins to call his audience doves and boys, not gentlemen, because he wants to let them know that they should not feel distressed if they cannot perfectly understand what he is going to say to them, and because he wants to

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emphasize that they have the chance, as children, to store up a sacred memory. Using love’s rhetoric, he addresses them as gentleman for some purposes, and as doves and boys for others. He does not attempt merely to fix something sacred in their memory, but also to teach them about the importance of sacred memory, when he praises it as the highest, strongest, and soundest thing for a human being, and the “best education.” As Kierkegaard would say, Alyosha praises sacred memory for its great upbuilding power. Perhaps we will even become wicked later on, will even be unable to resist a bad action, will laugh at people’s tears, and at those who say, as Kolya exclaimed today: “I want to suffer for all people”—perhaps we will scoff wickedly at such people. And yet, no matter how wicked we may be—and God preserve us from it—as soon as we remember how we buried Ilyusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we’ve been talking just now, so much as friends, so together, by this stone, the most cruel and jeering man among us, if we should become so, will still not dare laugh within himself at how kind and good he was at this present moment! Moreover, perhaps just this memory alone will keep him from great evil, and he will think better of it and say: “Yes, I was kind, brave and honest then.” Let him laugh to himself, it [does] not matter, a man often laughs at what is kind and good; it just comes from thoughtlessness; but I assure you, gentlemen, as soon as he laughs, he will say at once in his heart: “No, it’s a bad thing for me to laugh, because one should not laugh at that!” 

Alyosha says some home-truths. He does not merely praise the boys, but warns them of upcoming difficulties. We might even say that he risks offending the boys by telling them they might become wicked, by suggesting that being good and loving is not merely a matter of feelings, but takes hard work, and cannot be accomplished once and for all in a moment. Here we can see an indirect reference to the freedom and responsibility that are central pieces of the theory and practice of active love. Alyosha and a sacred memory cannot make the boys permanently good, no matter how good they may feel now, because they are free and responsible for themselves. A large part of the sacred memory Alyosha seeks to implant in the boys is that they are to remember how kind and good they were in relation to Ilyusha. “It will certainly be so, Karamazov, I understand you, Karamazov!” Kolya exclaimed, his eyes flashing. The boys were stirred and also wanted to exclaim something, but restrained themselves, looking tenderly and attentively at the orator. “I am speaking about the worst case, if we become bad,” Alyosha went on, “but why should we become bad, gentlemen, isn’t that true? Let us first of all and before all be kind, then honest, and then—let us never forget one another. I say it again. I give you my word, gentlemen, that for my part I will never forget any

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one of you; each face that is looking at me now, at this moment, I will remember, be it even after thirty years . . .”

Alyosha tries to persuade the boys to be loving persons, but indirectly, in that he does not use the crucial word “love.” Instead, he speaks of love’s qualities and actions: being nice and kind, remembering people, and being the occasion of a sacred memory. Perhaps he thinks that the word love will sound like what Kolya would call “sentimental slop.” He does not hesitate to use words to describe love that a pedant about ethical or religious terminology would cringe over, such as nice. Kolya said to Kartashov just now that we supposedly “do not care to know of his existence.” But how can I forget that Kartashov exists and that he is no longer blushing now, as when he discovered Troy, but is looking at me with his nice, kind, happy eyes . . .

Alyosha gently corrects Kolya, who spoke hatefully to Kartashov, and indirectly expresses that he loves Kartashov by asking how he could ever forget him with his “nice, kind happy eyes.” Gentlemen, my dear gentlemen, let us all be as generous and brave as Ilyushecka, as intelligent, brave, and generous as Kolya . . . and let us be as bashful, but smart and nice, as Kartashov. But why am I talking about these two? You are all dear to me, gentlemen . . . Well, and who has united us in this good, kind feeling, which we will remember and intend to remember always, all our lives, who, if not Ilyushecka, that good boy, that kind boy, that boy dear to us unto ages and ages! Let us never forget him, and may his memory be eternal and good in our hearts now and unto ages and ages!

Alyosha continues praising not just love, God, and virtues, but particular boys in his audience. Again, Alyosha does not mention love, but other qualities. He also focuses on feeling. He does so in order to encourage the boys to remember their sacred feelings, because remembering a feeling one had at a sacred moment can be a means of reviving it. Like the Apostle John, Alyosha uses the exhortation, “Let us . . . ” He does this at least in part in order to express his equality and solidarity with his audience. “Yes, yes, eternal, eternal,” all the boys cried in their ringing voices, with deep feeling in their faces. “Let us remember his face, and his clothes, and his poor boots, and his little coffin, and his unfortunate, sinful father, and how he bravely rose up against the whole class for him!”

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Alyosha mentions many seemingly trivial details. But perhaps there is art in this, and the minutiae help to fix his speech in the boys’ memories. At any rate he ends with something non-trivial, that is, bravery. “We will, we will remember!” the boys cried again, “he was brave, he was kind!” “Ah, how I loved him!” exclaimed Kolya.

The boys participate in the praise. In speeches about love, loving interruptions that echo the praise are welcome. “Ah, children, ah, dear friends, do not be afraid of life! How good life is when you do something good and rightful!” Kolya, who was a bit of a bully towards Ilyusha, has learned to love a little, taught by Alyosha. Moreover, he is willing to express that love publicly and directly, when before he had been embarrassed to speak lovingly. Earlier in the book he feared to express love for fear of seeming ridiculous, and Alyosha said that even if it was ridiculous, that did not matter, “because it’s good.”14 The art of love is not always debonair and swashbuckling, but risks seeming comical. As Kierkegaard writes: “whoever is the object of your love has a claim upon an expression of it also in words if it actually moves you inwardly,” even if the expression may seem to some people to be sloppy sentimentality (WL 12/SKS 9:20). When Alyosha tells the children not to be afraid of life, he applies the teaching of Father Zosima, namely, showing the boys how to “bless life,”15 “Yes, yes,” the boys repeated ecstatically. “Karamazov, we love you!” a voice, which seemed to be Kartashov’s, exclaimed irrepressibly. “We love you, we love you,” everyone joined in. Many had tears shining in their eyes . . . “Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya proclaimed ecstatically. “And memory eternal for the dead boy!” Alyosha added again, with feeling. “Memory eternal!” the boys again joined in.

Alyosha’s beautiful praise of love ends fittingly, with the boys expressing their love for him and for Ilyusha. It is striking that Alyosha never directly tells the boys that he loves them. He is as indirect on this matter as Kierkegaard himself could wish. He shows his love to them and does not tell them about it. And yet the boys surely feel that he loves them, and perhaps would even

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swear under oath that he has directly told them that he loves them. Alyosha also speaks very little about himself in his speech, keeping his focus lovingly on the boys. His love dictates that he must decrease, and they must increase. CONCLUSION We have examined three exemplary encomia of love: John’s (as interpreted by Kierkegaard), Kierkegaard’s praise of John’s praise, and Alyosha’s. These exemplary encomia illustrate much of Kierkegaard’s teaching about the art of praising love. John’s praise of love, and Alyosha’s praise of it, are artful in how they say what they say, and in their combining of opposites. Kierkegaard explicitly stresses the intermediate mood of John’s words. Alyosha establishes a joyous mood of praise that is tinged with sorrow over the death of Ilyusha, so that he too creates an intermediate mood. Both Kierkegaard and Alyosha give charitable interpretations of something, Kierkegaard of John’s words, to which he attributes much meaning and art that are not evident on the surface, and Alyosha gives a charitable interpretation of the boys, to whom he attributes more love than they have stably achieved. Both John and Alyosha are indirect. The former implies much without saying everything explicitly, as Kierkegaard’s interpretation of John suggests. The latter effectively implies his love for the boys without declaring it outright. Alyosha’s speech complements Kierkegaard’s theory of love’s praise, by praising feelings of love, by trying to create or reinforce loving feelings in his audience, by praising ordinary individuals for their love, and by attempting to give a sacred memory of love to the boys in order to fortify them for life. It is important that Alyosha also explains the edifying power of sacred memory to the boys—this is similar to explaining how sacred memory builds up. We should recall that Kierkegaard says “it is unconditionally the most upbuilding if someone succeeds in speaking properly about how love builds up” (WL 222/SKS 9:224). Speaking properly about how love builds up is one of the “many ways” of praising love, and we see that Kierkegaard and Alyosha practice different versions of this loving way. NOTES 1. A sign of the neglect of the praise of love among scholars is that in the volume of the International Kierkegaard Commentary on Works of Love, this passage is never referred to. And yet this passage is arguably the best praise of love in the book, and occurs in a position of great emphasis, that is, at the beginning of the Conclusion.

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2. Ferreira has many helpful things to say in Love’s Grateful Striving about the intermediate tone of the passage we are now considering (241ff). 3. In Love’s Grateful Striving, Ferreira says the sad thing is “that we need to be commanded to do what we need desperately to do” (241). 4. Ibid., 242. Ferreira notes that Kierkegaard reads John’s words as a kind of invitation to love. The idea of an invitation implies that the thing to which one is invited is appealing and valuable. Ferreira does not, however, mention praise when she talks about John’s words, or Kierkegaard’s interpretation of those words as praise. 5. In “Authorial Voices,” Lee Barrett writes this: “Only in the book’s conclusion, after the exposition has ended, does Kierkegaard directly urge the reader to adopt a life of love, and this he does not in his own voice, but by quoting the apostle John’s words” (20). I would add that when Kierkegaard quotes the words of the apostle, he speaks those words, and elaborates on them, in the first person, as if he were himself the Apostle John. He even daringly puts words into the mouth of John. Again, there is an artful synthesis of humility and boldness. 6. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 768. 7. Ibid., 769. 8. Ibid., 773. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., 773–74. 11. In the remainder of this chapter I will gloss pages 774–76 of The Brothers Karamazov, most of which consists of Alyosha’s speech. 12. Matthew 18:6. 13. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 319. 14. Ibid., 558. 15. Ibid., 285.

Chapter 6

Love’s Equality

In I Corinthians Paul suggests that love both elevates people and equalizes them. In chapter 12 he discusses “spiritual gifts,” which distinguish and perhaps even divide people from one another, some having greater gifts, others having lesser ones. As Paul transitions from the topic of spiritual gifts to his panegyric of love in chapter 13, he says that he will now “show you a more excellent way,” namely, love. One might think that this more excellent way is possible only for a spiritual elite. But the qualities that Paul ascribes to love in chapter 13—patience, kindness, not being puffed up, not behaving oneself in an unseemly manner—are within the reach of all people. Thus, Paul suggests that love equalizes people in its more excellent way. Equality is of the highest importance to Kierkegaard, and he deplores the inequalities that inhumanly separate one human being from another: “Allow me . . . to express . . . this, which in a way is my life, the content of my life, its fullness, its bliss, its peace and satisfaction—this, or this view of life, which is the thought of humanity and of human equality . . . unconditionally every human being, is equally close to God . . . is loved by him” (WA 165/SKS 12:281). Love is the means to humanity and equality. Being loved equally by God, human beings ought also to love one another equally. Kierkegaard says that the “neighbor is one who is equal” (WL 60/SKS 9:66); and that to “love the neighbor is . . . essentially to will to exist equally for unconditionally every human being” (WL 83–84/SKS 9:89). Love’s equality runs so deep that the lover does not just treat everyone equally, but “wills to exist” equally for everyone. LOVE’S COMMUNITY OF THE HIGHEST A standard criticism of egalitarianism is that it achieves equality by hindering or preventing excellence. It is natural therefore to suspect that by stressing equality Kierkegaard promotes mediocrity. But, according to Kierkegaard, 131

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love “reconciles all, not in a common poverty nor in a common mediocrity, but in the community of the highest” (WL 365/SKS 9:359). Thus Kierkegaard, like Paul, claims that Christian equality does not drag down what is high, but lifts all people up to the highest. The foundation of equality is that every human being has “equal kinship with and relationship to God” (WL 69/SKS 76). Equal kinship is given and does not have to be worked for. The scoundrel and the saint have equal kinship with God. This unearned equality is something like a possibility that must be actualized. It is actualized by loving like God, or by imitating God. Kierkegaard calls (partially) actualized kinship likeness. Love’s purpose may be described as helping the neighbor to achieve “that blessed likeness before God,” which is the highest (WL 126/SKS 9:129). By helping the neighbor to achieve this blessed likeness, the lover achieves it too, and thereby the “community of the highest” is established. But in what respects can people be equally like God? They can be equal in their goodwill towards the neighbor. They can be equal in unselfishly working for the good of the neighbor, and in making sacrifices for the neighbor.1 And yet, as I have been arguing throughout this book, love is not just a matter of good intentions and hard work, but of actually helping the neighbor; and this requires skill and wisdom. Is equality in love’s art and wisdom possible? Kierkegaard seems to say that not everyone can be equally artful and knowledgable in their love, when he writes that the “one who praises art and science . . . sows dissension between the gifted and the ungifted” (WL 365/SKS 9:359). Presumably dissension arises because art and science require rare talent and special opportunities for training or study. Thus, it seems that Kierkegaard thinks the art and science of love are beyond the reach of some or many people. In another passage Kierkegaard seems ambivalent about the art of praising love, writing that praise of love is “an art and yet no art but a work” (WL 359/SKS 9:354). Praise of love is an art in one way, but not in another. I propose that this passage means that praise of love is an art in that it skillfully and beautifully achieves its purpose, but not an art in that it does not require talent or exclusive training. Let us recall that Kierkegaard praises as great art the following words of John: “Beloved, let us love one another.” These words certainly do not seem to the casual reader to be artful. But Kierkegaard plausibly reveals art in them. Therefore, according to him, there is an art even in seemingly simple praise of love, which perhaps can be discerned only by the eyes of love, or under the guidance of love. On the one hand, not everyone can write world famous poetry. That takes talent, even genius. On the other hand, everyone can learn to praise love as John does. And, here is a crucial point, John’s words are, at least in the eyes of love, greater art than

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world famous poetry, even though anyone who loved sincerely could invent words as artful as John’s. Someone might here propose the following objection. It is well and good that a loving interpreter sees great art in a simple sentence. But a lover aims, not to be seen as helping her neighbor, but actually to help her neighbor, no matter how much art it requires. The lover, in other words, wants results, not a charitable interpretation of its bungling attempts to do good. And in order to get results, love needs the means, namely, art and wisdom. But how is this possible for the giftless and untalented? EQUALITY IN WISDOM We will consider wisdom, or knowledge, first. In Christian Discourses Kierkegaard stresses that every human being can know what a human being needs to know: It is heard again and again; it is regarded in the world as definitely settled that people would like to know the truth if only they had the capacity and the time for it and if it could be made clear to them. What a superfluous concern, what an ingeniously fabricated evasion! Every human being truly has capacity enough to know the truth—would God in heaven be so inhuman as to have treated someone unfairly! And every human being, even the busiest, truly has time enough also to come to know the truth . . . It is so easy to shove the blame onto the lack of capacity, onto the lack of time, and onto the obscurity of the truth, and then on the other hand it looks so fine and is so easy to say that one would very much like to know the truth (CD 170/SKS 10:181–82).

We see in this passage that Kierkegaard thinks all people can know the truth that they need to know, and that this is a matter of divine justice. God makes all people capable of knowing the needful things, because it is just for him to do so. Since God makes all people responsible for living ethically and religiously, and responsibility requires knowing or understanding what one ought to do, God makes all people able to know or understand their ethical and religious duty. According to Kierkegaard, everyone “can come to know everything about love,” because love’s knowledge comes from conscience, which is co-knowledge (with God) (WL 364/SKS 9:358; WL 143/SKS 9:145). If love’s knowledge were a science, or required rational argumentation in the form of a complicated system of deductions, then obviously not everyone could acquire it. If, however, this knowledge does not require inferences,

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but careful and dutiful attention to conscience, then differences in cleverness vanish into irrelevance. Kierkegaard often stresses the importance of striving. In Works of Love he says that coming to know everything about love requires that a “person strain his spiritual powers” to love God and neighbor (WL 362/SKS 9:356). By straining his powers to the utmost, a person learns his limits, and it turns out that they are very narrow. Indeed, the striver comes to understand that “I am able to do nothing at all” without the help of God (WL 363/SKS 9:357). If a person humbly accepts the offensive idea that he is capable of nothing at all without divine assistance, then for him God becomes the educator: “What a human being knows by himself about love is very superficial; he must come to know the deeper love from God” through “self-denial,” or by admitting his limits and accepting divine assistance (WL 364/SKS 9:358). Since the crucial thing in coming to know everything about love is humble acceptance of divine aid, then everyone is equal in the capacity for this knowledge. Being capable of nothing at all without God, and accepting divine assistance, equalize all people. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment contains a beautiful illustration of a person of limited intelligence, named Sonya, understanding what she needs to understand in order to love and help the murderer Raskolnikov. In the scene in which Raskolnikov begins to reveal his crime to her and the ideas that led to it, the narrator tells us that Sonya was “not understanding a thing. She understood only that he was terribly, infinitely unhappy.”2 Although she understands nothing, with one exception, what she does understand is an important thing for a loving person to understand. In a later scene Raskolnikov confesses to Sonya in anguish that he committed a murder, and what effects this crime has had on him. Dostoevsky tells us that “Sonya listened to him attentively,” and that as she listened she “tried with all her might to understand something.”3 She exclaims that “I’ll understand everything in my own way,” which she does indeed eventually do.4 Dostoevsky tells us explicitly that she “understood that” Raskolnikov “was tormented,”5 and, when Raskolnikov tells her some of the ideas that lead him to commit murder, she “understood that this gloomy catechism had become his faith and his law.”6 Though virtually giftless, she uses all her ability to understand Raskolnikov’s anguish, and she does understand it in a way that makes her able to help him. When Raskolnikov confesses his crime to the authorities, but without repenting of it, and goes to Siberian prison, she goes with him to do what she can to give him comfort. When he finally repents, in the last pages of the novel, Sonya “immediately . . . understood everything,”7 as she had lovingly predicted.8

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EQUALITY IN ART Kierkegaard writes that “every human being by his life . . . by his behavior in everyday affairs . . . by his words . . . should and could build up and would do so if love were really present in him” (WL 213/SKS 9:216). This passage does not strictly imply universal equality in art. It does, however, say everyone can succeed in building up; and, as we have seen, building up is an art. Therefore, it implies that all can build up with art. When Kierkegaard speaks about the art of love, he speaks about human beings in general, not special people with talent. He says, for example, that when a generic person who loves is attempting to perform a certain good to the neighbor, “no one can hold out against one who loves” (WL 344/SKS 9:338). This is to say that anyone can love with irresistible art. But if everyone’s love can be irresistibly artful, then there is equality in aptitude for love’s art, or near enough. Even though the “art of upbuilding that love practices” is quite difficult, all people can become virtuosos of it (WL 219/SKS 9:222). One of Kierkegaard’s explanations of equality in love’s art is the same as his explanation of equality in love’s knowledge. He says that if you humbly acknowledge that without God “you are able to do nothing at all,” then God will help you, or act through you. If the “omnipotent one” is “your co-worker, you are able to do everything.” When a person accepts his need for God, he “becomes an instrument” in the hands of God. “From that moment on, if he honestly and faithfully perseveres, he will gain the best powers, but they are not his own; he has them in self-denial” (WL 362/SKS 9:356). Since everyone can become God’s co-worker, or an instrument in the hands of God, then everyone can love like God, and with divine efficacy. Notice the difference between the above metaphors. Being an instrument of God seems to take away virtually all agency from a human being—though in order to become such an instrument much agency is required, namely, the most difficult self-denial and the most sensitive receptiveness. Being a co-worker implies full agency—though obviously God’s co-worker is going to do infinitely less than God. Kierkegaard’s claim that through self-denial a person “will gain the best powers, but they are not his own,” nicely mediates between these two interpretations. Through self-denial the one who loves has stewardship of the best powers, or has the best powers on loan. Surprisingly, Kierkegaard also stresses the great power of human beings without mentioning divine assistance. Consider the following: “Use one-tenth of the power that is granted to you; when you use it to the utmost, then turn your back upon God and compare yourself with other human beings—in a very short time you will be advanced among the people” (WL 102/SKS 9:106–7). Kierkegaard is suggesting here that because we are lazy, or divide

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our allegiance between many incompatible goals, we rarely use even onetenth of our power on one thing. And because we rarely see what a human being can do who concentrates even a little on one thing, we vastly underestimate what even a minimally dedicated person can achieve. How much more then could a wholly dedicated person accomplish. According to Kierkegaard, such a person, even if he or she seems to be quite without talent, can do great things with sublime art. She can love artfully, know everything about love, and skillfully praise love in speech. EXAMPLES OF EQUALITY In Fear and Trembling Silentio writes that passion “unites all human life,” and adds the following: “Lessing has somewhere said something similar from a purely esthetic point of view. He actually wants to show . . . that grief, too, can yield a witty remark . . . he quotes from Diderot a story about a peasant woman and a remark she made.” Silentio does not quote the remark of the peasant woman, but he goes on to quote Lessing’s comment on her remark: “That also was wit, and the wit of a peasant woman, besides; but the situation made it inevitable. And consequently, one must not seek the excuse for the witty expressions of pain and sorrow in the fact that the person who said them was a distinguished, well-educated, intelligent, and also witty person; for the passions make all men equal again: but in this, that in the same situation probably every person, without exception, would have said the same thing” (FT 67/SKS 4:159). Lessing says that a certain situation could evoke a witty remark from any human being. Kierkegaard might say similar things about the situation of love, which is this: right now it is of the utmost importance that this particular human being, here before me, be helped, since as far as I know, this could be the critical time in the neighbor’s life, such that, if he is helped to love, he will love, but if not, perhaps not. If a person is open to this situation, and submits fully to its demands, then he or she will make love’s equivalent of the peasant woman’s witty remark. The situation of love itself will reveal what to do and how to do it. Often people who have performed a heroic deed say modestly that anyone would have done what they did in the same situation. Even if what they say is false, it is revealing. They feel that the situation itself called forth their heroic deed. Similarly, if I could be sensitive to the situation of love, with its need and its danger, I might also find that it brings forth loving art. In Twelfth Night, Malvolio says: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Similarly, charity, or if you will, Bonvolio, might say that the situation of charity thrusts greatness in art upon it.

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In the Gospel of Matthew a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus pleading for help because her daughter is “severely possessed by a demon.”9 At first Jesus does not respond to her, but when she persists in her pleading, he says that he “was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” thereby implying he was not sent to help her. When the Canaanite woman still persists in begging for help, he replies that it is “not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Thus insulted, many people would give up, or take offense and depart, or return an insult for an insult, or lose their wits because they were overcome by anger. The Canaanite woman, however, does none of these things, but instead replies: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Jesus’ response is surprising: “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” The author then informs us that the woman’s daughter was healed instantly. Obviously, at least part of the point of this story is that the woman shows great faith, love, and humility by persisting in pleading for help, despite first receiving no reply, then a discouraging one, and finally an insulting one. But there is more to the story than that. The Canaanite woman also wittily plays on Christ’s implication that she is a dog, and in her witty reply both acknowledges him as her master, and suggests that as her master he has benefits to bestow on her. Her wit is perhaps part of her greatness, and she is all the greater because she manages to be witty when Christ’s discouraging and disrespectful treatment of her could easily have deranged her wit. She is able to be artful in her reply because of her great love for her daughter, and because of her assiduous attention to the needs of the situation of love. Interpreting Luke 22, Kierkegaard says that after Peter denied Christ three times, and Christ was in custody of the authorities, Christ saved Peter “with a look” (WL 170/SKS 9:170). Kierkegaard suggests that Christ was able to save with a look, not because of a divine art inaccessible to mere mortals, but because he willed to do it. Almost anyone who had been betrayed would be feeling sad or angry or resentful, and this dejection or anger would prevent almost anyone from focusing on Peter to see what Peter needed. But Christ saw that Peter was in danger of sinking into despair because he had betrayed the person whom he loved most, and who he also believed was the Messiah. And because Christ perceived that he was in the situation of love, he was able to save Peter with a loving, encouraging, and hopeful look. Kierkegaard suggests that if an ordinary person who had been betrayed by Peter could be wholly unselfish in attending enthusiastically to the spiritual need of Peter, that person would also be able to save (or perhaps to help) Peter with a look. Indeed in one sense helping Peter would be quite easy. Since Peter loves Christ, but betrayed him, obviously he is in danger of despairing. How then to help him when one is in shackles? Look at him encouragingly and lovingly. All of this is easy and obvious—if, that is, a person wholeheartedly wants to

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see and do what is helpful. But almost no betrayed person ranks helping his betrayer as his first priority. Let us consider another example of artful help that depends on a wronged person attending lovingly to the need of the wrongdoer. The example is from The Brothers Karamazov, and the context is that, unbeknownst to Alyosha, his brother Dimitri has publicly humiliated the father of a boy named Ilyusha. When Alyosha first encounters Ilyusha, the boy throws a rock at him, and bites him on the finger. The narrator tells us that after bandaging his wound, “[a]t last Alyosha raised his quiet eyes to him. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you see how badly you’ve bitten me. That’s enough, isn’t it. Now tell me what I’ve done to you.’ . . . ‘Though I don’t know you at all, and it’s the first time I’ve seen you,’ Alyosha went on in the same gentle way, ‘it must be that I did something to you—you wouldn’t have hurt me like this for nothing. What is it that I did, and how have I wronged you, tell me?’”10 One of the keys to this passage is the phrase, “At last,” which implies that Alyosha restrained himself in order to attend to the needs of Ilyusha. Alyosha did not react immediately, but paused to consider what he should do. He did not even look at Ilyusha until he thought he was ready to do so lovingly. When “at last he raised his eyes,” he was prepared to help the boy. He then asks Ilyusha what wrong he had done to him, not as a rhetorical question, but seriously. He open-mindedly assumes that there may be some way that he has been involved in wronging the boy. Alyosha thus applies Father Zosima’s teaching about love that each of us is guilty before everyone, and responsible for everyone, and should go about loving people with this guilt and responsibility in mind. This teaching about guilt and responsibility helps one to become aware that he or she is in the situation of love. Because Alyosha admits that he might have wronged Ilyusha, and approaches the boy in an open-minded way, looking for his own guilt and what he must do to help, he is eventually able to do considerable good to Ilyusha, to the boy’s father, and to their whole family. An analogy might be helpful here. Human beings by nature walk artfully. If you compare even a somewhat clumsy human being to a dog walking on its hind legs, or to a gorilla imitating the human gait, the natural art of human walking is evident. But, if a person is injured, weak from illness, or drunk, then his natural art of walking cannot show itself. Let him recover his health, strength, or a sober condition, and he will walk again with grace. So might it be with love. Human beings are perhaps made to love artfully, and if a person removes all impediments to fulfilling her loving nature, then she will love naturally, and therefore artfully.

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THE ROLE OF VIRTUE IN ARTFUL UPBUILDING One of the most important goals of love is to help another person to stand alone as a distinct individual. There are many possible obstacles to accomplishing this goal. When we help, we often want to assert ourselves a little, and not just to affirm the other person. Maybe we want to make a display of our help, when what is needed is to hide our assistance so as not to make the other person unhealthily dependent on us. Or perhaps we may want to mold the other person at least partly in our image, instead of helping him to become a distinct individual. Or maybe our conception of human nature is too narrow, because it is based on our peculiar interests and preferences. Kierkegaard sums up many of these obstacles when he writes that the “rigid, the domineering person lacks flexibility, lacks the pliability to comprehend others; he demands his own from everyone, wants everyone to be transformed in his image” (WL 270/SKS 9:269). Therefore, the truly loving person needs to practice humble self-denial in order to pay attention to the neighbor, adapt to the neighbor’s needs, and move his or her own spirit flexibly like an ideal dancing partner in response to the promptings of the other person. In other words, “love does not seek its own,” but what is good for the neighbor. Humility and self-denial are keys to building up the neighbor as a distinct individual. A large part of the art of building up other people is to presuppose love in them, to believe in their love, to hope for their growth in love, to see their love, to interpret their deeds as leniently and charitably as possible, and to express all of this effectively. Let us examine each of these ways of presupposing love in turn. It is easy to see that believing in love depends on moral virtue and goodwill. Envy makes a person wish to see evil in others, and to resent good in them. Pride makes a person fear to look like a fool by trusting someone who ends up taking advantage of him. Cowardice wants to avoid the risk of trusting someone who may betray that trust and injure the truster. Laziness makes us want to see the faults of others, so that we can use these faults to establish a low standard of human behavior that is easy to comply with. But, if a person is happy at the thought that others are good and loving, if a person is willing courageously and humbly to run the risk of being harmed or made a fool of by trusting someone who may betray that trust, if a person is willing to accept that the standards for good behavior are set by the ideals, and not by average human conduct, then such a person can believe that the neighbor is loving; and, more importantly, such a person will be able both to act whole-heartedly on this belief, and to express it naturally and convincingly, thereby building up love in the neighbor.

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But perhaps I have overstated things. One the one hand, it seems that Kierkegaard thinks it is mostly true that sincere love naturally communicates itself. But, on the other hand, there are no doubt limits or impediments to this natural communication. Probably many lovers need to think about how to communicate love, and practice communicating it, especially since most lovers do not love perfectly. Perhaps one who has perfect intentions would naturally express them. But if you are striving to love, and your intentions are mixed, then some attention to your appearance, as Zosima recommends, will be prudent. Moreover, we have all been habituated by society to act in certain ways, which of course are not designed to express charity. Therefore, some thought and work may be needed to break bad habits and form salutary ones. Hoping for the possibility of the neighbor’s good is a matter of virtuous goodwill. Kierkegaard calls the opposite of hoping for the neighbor’s good, namely, despair, a “wanton misuse of the powers of imagination” (WL 254/SKS 9:254). Therefore, hope is a proper use of the imagination. If one has the goodwill to hope for good things for the neighbor, then one is well-placed to artfully imagine these good things. Everyone who dreams in a self-flattering way uses some art and ingenuity. If we were to employ that imaginative power for inventing good possibilities for the neighbor, and hoping for them, with the earnestness of an egoistic dreamer, we would have the art to imagine hopeful possibilities, to express our hope, and to act accordingly. Kierkegaard discovers in a common vice a universal capacity for artfully perceiving what is lovable in the neighbor. He notes that the capacity to see is strongly affected by desires and passions. Passion “swiftly equips even the perhaps otherwise limited person” who “is an injured party . . . with an amazing acuteness” to discern faults in the wrongdoer. Similarly, passion “makes obtuse even the perhaps otherwise insightful person” when he has been wronged, so that he cannot see “any mitigating, exonerating, justifying view of the wrong, because the injured passion is pleased to be blindly acute” (WL 168/SKS 9:168). If vicious passion can make an obtuse person amazingly acute to see evil, and make an otherwise insightful person obtuse and blind to a “justifying view of the wrong” done to him, then virtuous passion, or love, can make even an obtuse person amazing acute to see love and the good in others. I think that this is an especially good indication that anyone who loves their neighbor intensely and passionately can acutely see the good in them. Let us consider love’s lenient interpretation of the neighbor. Kierkegaard writes that “knowledge of evil” usually has an “understanding with evil,” or a sort of affinity with it. “If this understanding does not mean anything else, it still is a malignant curiosity about evil, or it is cunning’s reconnoitering for an excuse for one’s own faults by means of an intimate acquaintance with the extent of evil, or falsity’s scheme to jack up its own worth

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by means of acquaintance with the depravity of others” (WL 286/SKS 9:284). Kierkegaard goes on to anatomize the understanding with evil by showing how various vices make us eager to interpret other’s deeds uncharitably: namely, anger, bitterness, envy, malice, cunning, pride, “a worldly, conceited mentality,” sagacity, and a “cowardly, timorous small-mindedness” (WL 257/SKS 9:256–57). These vices give us an understanding with evil that looks for evil. But if we choose instead to have an understanding with good, and practice using it, then we may acquire love’s art of lenient interpretation of the neighbor. Forgiveness and Reconciliation The art of forgiveness depends largely on goodwill, effort, and virtue. Kierkegaard writes the following: “If . . . I am reluctant to forgive or make myself important by being able to forgive . . . no miracle happens” (WL 295/SKS 9:293). If the would-be-forgiver makes himself self-important in forgiving—if, that is, he shows off, seems proud of his forgiveness, evinces a demand for praise, admiration, and gratitude—then he makes forgiveness a story about himself, and not about the other person. But forgiveness needs to be a celebration of the one forgiven, a story about her repentance, or her new beginning, or her power and intention to love, or her ability to stand alone as a self before God. Moreover, if the forgiver makes a display of forgiving, he or she is also likely to offend the one forgiven, and thus to tempt him to commit new sin. Kierkegaard waxes eloquent about the achievement of forgiving without offending: “Woe to the person by whom offense comes; blessed be the loving one who by withholding the occasion hides a multitude of sins!” (WL 299/SKS 9:297). Love has the dexterity, or skill, or art, not to offend when forgiving, and thus to diminish sin by means of forgiveness; and much of the reason it has this dexterity is that it is eager to forgive, and avoids making itself self-important. If you are eager to forgive, and to put the focus not on yourself, but on something good about the one forgiven, this will give your words, deeds, and expressions of forgiveness a grace and credibility that are essential to helping the neighbor. After forgiveness should come reconciliation. In order to win your enemy to reconciliation, it must have “become second nature for you to want to win” him (WL 340/SKS 9:335). If this has become your second nature, so that you have no lingering resentment or reluctance to be reconciled, but are ardently eager for it, then you may attend wholeheartedly to the task of winning the neighbor to reconciliation. Your efforts will not appear strained, or stilted, or insincere, but natural, spontaneous, heart-felt, and therefore persuasive. Since what we do naturally is usually graceful and effective, then everyone

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can artfully win a sinner to reconciliation, if it has become second nature to want to do this. Mercifulness Perhaps the main point of the chapter in Works of Love on mercifulness is that everyone can practice this art of love. That chapter argues that mercifulness does not require worldly resources, so that anyone can practice it. Perhaps the poor, needy, and disenfranchised can practice it even better than the rich and powerful, because in their case many external resources have been removed, so that what remains is essential mercifulness, which consists in a will to alleviate suffering and give comfort, and in how one acts, speaks, or even thinks and feels. Anyone can have the sincere intention to be merciful, and show this to their fellow human beings by their words, deeds, comportment, or countenance, or at least to God by their thoughts, feelings, or prayers. Three Spiritual Machines for Multiplying Beneficent Force: Duty, Conscience, and Infinite Debt The art of love depends on things that seem antithetical to art, like duty, conscience, and a feeling of infinite debt toward the neighbor; but in fact this triumvirate gives love resources for art that are unavailable to mere esthetes. Admittedly, duty and debt seem very unesthetic. The idea of duty calls to mind onerous and unwelcome tasks, a steady drain on the forces of life, weariness, reluctance, repression, regret, or a dreary round of perfunctory tasks. Duty seems like a vampire sucking the life out of love. But in the unesthetic soil of duty grow the most beautiful flowers and fruit. In order to see why duty can produce beautiful and joyful love, it is helpful to realize that, according to Kierkegaard, neighbor-love is not the result of a divine command, but is natural to human beings. The divine command does not bring neighbor love into existence,11 but takes something that already exists naturally, and corrects it, refines it, stabilizes it, and directs it to all neighbors. In other words, the divine command supplies a powerful motivation to stay true to one’s natural love of neighbor and to perfect it. And since neighbor love is in part natural, the duty to love the neighbor is not simply an alien imposition on nature, and is even something like a perfection of nature. Kierkegaard writes the following about conscience, which he judges to be closely connected to duty: “make Christianity your own, and it will show you a point outside the world, and by means of this you will move heaven and earth . . . so quietly, so lightly, that no one notices it” (WL 136/SKS 9:138). To move heaven and earth without a show of effort, and without being noticed, would be the acme of art or skill: the greatest effect with the least

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(apparent) effort. The point outside of the world is to make love a “matter of conscience,” to make it an absolute duty, to understand that God commands love. With the thought that the voice in oneself that urges one to love the neighbor is the voice of God, one gains a fulcrum to move heaven and earth with one’s small allotment of strength. Another way of generating leverage for love is the thought that one has an “infinite debt” to the neighbor: “here is the philosopher’s stone: the least little expression of love is infinitely greater than all sacrifices” (WL 182/SKS 9:181–82). The philosopher’s stone is an image of an art so great that it seems like magic, an art so potent that it can change lead into gold, can change any mundane leaden action into a goldenly loving action. In order to illustrate the artful power of infinite debt, Kierkegaard imagines a person who wants to conduct a “test” or “experiment” to see. whether he . . . could be . . . just as inexhaustible in his sacrifices, services, and expressions of devotion as the one who loved this person—you easily see that he will not be able to accomplish it . . . between the two [lovers, the genuine lover and the experimental one] there will a difference of immeasurability. The one who actually loves continually has . . . an infinite head start, because every time the other has come up with, figured out, invented a new expression of devotion, the one who loves has already carried it out, because the one who loves needs no calculation and therefore does not waste a moment in calculating (WL 181/SKS 9:181).

Sincere love will always be victorious over experimental love, even when real love has the least talent, and experimental love has the greatest genius, because real love is utterly devoted to doing good to the neighbor, and therefore to the art of doing good. The whole-hearted lover uses ten-tenths of her powers, while the experimenter can muster only a minute fraction of his powers for his frivolous experiment. The experimental lover has to calculate and deliberate what to do, while the genuine lover has made love her second nature, so that in many situations she intuits the loving thing to do with no effort of thought. It seems obvious that the genuine lover will be more spontaneous and natural in her loving acts than the pretender, and that this natural spontaneity will show in a kind of grace. Thus, genuine love communicates or expresses love more successfully than any experimental love can. The person who is loved by an infinite debtor “in every manifestation of the lover’s love lovingly apprehends the immeasurability” of this love, and “confesses . . . that with the least little thing the lover does infinitely more than all the others do with the greatest sacrifices.” When the one loved sees the infinitude of love in the lover, by the way the lover speaks and acts, this gives immeasurable worth to the deeds of debt-paying love. Therefore, to “remain in debt is

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infinitely cunning,” even if the loving infinite debtor is generally thought to be dull-witted (WL 187/SKS 9:186). Let us consider an analogue to infinite debt in The Brothers Karamazov. Father Zosima teaches that out of love one should regard oneself as “guilty before all people, on behalf of all and for all, for all human sins, the world’s and each persons.” Only when people are convinced of this teaching will “the goal of our unity be achieved.” “Only then will our hearts be moved to a love that is infinite, universal, and that knows no satiety.”12 Zosima plausibly explains how one might be guilty of the sins of others: “if I myself were righteous, perhaps there would be no criminal before me now,” because my righteousness might have shone luminously for him.13 He also says you should think that “the guilt is yours” that your neighbor does “not want to listen to you” when you wish to help him.14 This is to say the lover has the duty to acquire the art needed to be listened to when there is something helpful to be said. Zosima adds that awareness of one’s guilt before all is a source of “gladness” or joy.15 This teaching of guilt before all is remarkably similar to Kierkegaard’s claim that the one who loves joyfully feels himself to be in infinite debt to the beloved. Both teachings take away the individual’s proud sense of entitlement. If a person regards herself as being in in infinite debt, or as guilty before all, she does not calculate how much she should give, does not resent the wrongs done to her by the beloved, is not half-hearted in the good that she does, does not waste time comparing herself to other people, but is totally focused on the task of doing good to the beloved. We might also add that both teachings have the aroma of pious exaggerations, which may not be literally true, but which prove very beneficial in practice. But thinking like that is almost certainly antithetical to love. By the way, The Brothers Karamazov illustrates the power of guilt before all on many occasions. We often see Zosima or Alyosha treated disrespectfully, unfairly, or with a lack of just appreciation, but continuing to love and to work wholeheartedly for the good of other people. A VEXED QUESTION: IS ART NEEDED TO PRAISE LOVE? We will now turn to the consideration of equality in the praise of love. Given the importance of the issues involved, I will review some points, and argue at length that Kierkegaard thinks all human beings can praise love artfully in speech. It seems that speaking artfully in praise of love is beyond the capacity of many human beings. It is attractive to hypothesize that Kierkegaard thinks equality in artful praise of love is achieved, not through speech, but through

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deeds of love.16 For deeds of love can perform the function of praise. That is, they can show the goodness, greatness, and beauty of love, so that they often evoke admiration, and inspire admirers to become imitators. What is more, in Christian Discourses Kierkegaard writes that the “Christian’s life is like a hymn of praise to the master’s honor” (CD 85/SKS 10:93); and that “to the same degree that your life shows how much you have given for its sake, to the same degree you praise Christianity” (CD 177/SKS 10:188). We see that Kierkegaard has the idea of action as praise; and since there seems to be need of this idea in order to explain how all people can praise love effectively, one might think it reasonable to conclude that the praise of love which all people can artfully perform consists in deeds of love. But in fact, as I shall argue, Kierkegaard clearly implies that all people can artfully praise love in speech. 1.  There seems to be no reason for Kierkegaard not to say that everyone can praise love by loving actions, if that is what he means. But he does not say this, nor strongly imply it. Therefore it seems that for him praise of love makes use of speech. 2.  Just after the chapter on the praise of love, Kierkegaard interprets John’s simple, three word sentence as praise of love (Beloved let us love one another.), and praises it. Kierkegaard seems to quote and praise that simple sentence in order to illustrate the claim that anyone can wonderfully praise love in speech. 3.  Kierkegaard’s claim that all human beings can love their neighbor with irresistible art is just as hard to credit as the claim that all people can praise love artfully in speech. But Kierkegaard clearly makes the former claim, so that there is little reason to doubt that he also makes the latter claim. 4.  In the chapter on the praise of love, Kierkegaard stresses speech, saying that “if a human being . . . could rightly understand that he himself is capable of nothing . . . how wonderfully such a person would be able to speak about love” (WL 365/SKS 9:358–59). If a generic human being can speak wonderfully about love, then a generic human being should also be able to praise love wonderfully and artfully in speech. 5.  According to Kierkegaard, if a person discovers that he can do nothing at all without God, then he becomes an “instrument for God” (WL 364/ SKS 9:357), and God’s co-worker. And if God is “your co-worker, you are able to do everything” (WL 362/SKS 9:356). Would it not be strange if you could do everything, but not praise love artfully in speech?17 6.  At the beginning of the chapter on the praise of love, Kierkegaard writes that to praise is “is an art, and yet no art, but a work” (WL 359/SKS 9:354).18 To say that love’s praise is an art and not an art seems to mean that this praise is an art, but not a kind of art that most people think of

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when they hear the word art: namely, a kind that requires talent and leisure. Praising love is an art that does not require either special talent, or the leisure that is available only to the privileged. 7.  Consider Kierkegaard’s first words in the Conclusion to Works of Love: “In this book we have endeavored ‘many times and in many ways’ to praise love” (WL 375/SKS 9:368). Howard and Edna Hong attach to their translation of this passage an endnote that refers the reader to the Epistle to Hebrews 1:1. The relevant portion of that bible-verse, however, is almost certainly translated more accurately as “gradually and in many ways,” so that there is reason to doubt that Kierkegaard is alluding to the Epistle to Hebrews. I suggest that Kierkegaard is instead referring to Plato’s Meno. After teaching Meno’s slave-boy a theorem of geometry in order to illustrate the idea of recollection, Socrates comments on the illustration thus: “And if someone will ask him these same things many times and in many ways, you know that he will end up having knowledge about them no less precisely than anyone.”19 The reference to the Meno is quite apt. The doctrine of recollection teaches that important knowledge is innate in all human beings, and Socrates claims that the slave-boy upon correct questioning will be the equal of anyone in geometrical knowledge. Therefore, I suggest, the reference to the Meno means that if a person endeavors many times and in many ways to praise love, she will be the equal of anyone in the capacity to do this. It may be helpful to point out that in the Meno Socrates repeatedly bids Meno to try, or to make an attempt, to define or explain various things, so that one of the themes of that dialogue is that in order to do what any human can do, a person must try, strive, make an attempt, or endeavor. Let us consider the following passage about how a person might be helped by God to know love, love artfully, and praise love artfully, to think one thought directed inwardly away from all distraction, step by step, from month to month, to make stronger and stronger that hand that tightens the string of thought, and then from the other side step by step, continually to learn ever more obediently, ever more humbly, to make the hand lighter and more supple in the joints, the hand with which at every instant, if necessary, the tension for a moment can be relaxed and eased, then with increasing passion to grasp ever more firmly, ever more securely, and with growing humility to be able, if for a moment it is made necessary, to let go ever more readily—this is very strenuous. (WL 360/SKS 9:354–55)

Clearly the main meaning of this image is that a person needs to strain her powers to the utmost, but also be utterly receptive to allowing God to work through her. This synthesis of strenuous striving and humble receptivity

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to divine aid is an essential part of the art of love. But there is more to the image than this. It appears that Kierkegaard is comparing the human lover to a stringed musical instrument, which both plays itself, and allows itself to be played by God. In other words, the human lover plays a duet with God, with herself as the instrument. She plays with all her heart and strength, but is also always ready to defer to, or follow the lead of, the master-musician of divine love. ARTFULLY EXPRESSING EQUALITY Another aspect of the equality of love is that it needs to be expressed, artfully, in life, even though, or especially because, we see about us many inequalities of talent, accomplishment, wealth, political power, and social status. External inequality tends to dazzle people and blind them to essential human equality. There is need, therefore, for people artfully to express their essential equality. Kierkegaard describes love’s expression of equality by comparing earthly life to the “theater of art.” In this theater human beings are actors who wear clothing or costumes by which they represent some accidental role in worldly, human affairs. The art of the actors is to hint that their role or station is a disguise, and then to let the “inner glory of equality . . . shine through as it continually should” (WL 87/SKS 9:92).20 In order to express essential equality, it is necessary to downplay one’s talents and station in life, by which one differs from other human beings. A person whose station is high or privileged expresses equality through humility, or by not preening. A person of low station expresses equality with a subtle assertion of dignity, or by walking as it were with head held high, even as she also shows proper respect for others—for asserting one’s equality with dignity is not brazen self-assertion, but lovingly respectful fellowship. In each case the art is to make light of the differences that the world regards as all important, and to express and stress the equality that the world disregards. The thought of God makes it possible and perhaps easy to practice the art of equality. If one regards one’s life as a drama played out before God, and thinks that God loves one equally with all the other actors, this gives the right emphasis to equality, and puts accidental inequalities in the correct light. Obviously there is the important question of what Kierkegaard thinks should be done about many kinds of social, political, and economic inequality. This question is too difficult for brief treatment here and is not something that Kierkegaard connects to the issue of the art of love.21

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IRIS MURDOCH ON EQUALITY IN THE ART OF LOVE Iris Murdoch strikingly resembles, and helpfully complements, Kierkegaard with her thought about the relation of art and love. Murdoch posits that fine art and moral art are both based upon “love of the individual,” and she suggests that loving artfully is not mainly a matter of talent, but of self-denying attention to other people. Murdoch goes so far as to claim that the “essence of both art and morals is love.”22 Love, she says, “is the imaginative recognition of, that is, respect for, [the] otherness” of other individual people.23 Imagining other people, often as if from the inside, is a basis for knowing them, and for presenting them or inventing them in literature. Hence Murdoch says that love is “knowledge of the individual.”24 It is difficult to acknowledge and respect other people in their otherness owing to various endemic human flaws. The “fat relentless ego” wants to reduce other people to things that serve it.25 Murdoch writes that the “chief enemy of excellence in morality (and also in art) is personal fantasy; the tissue of self-aggrandizing and consoling wishes and dreams which prevents one from seeing what is there outside one.”26 She argues that if we can really see other individuals, the force of their otherness will tend to propel us towards treating them with love and respect. The problem is that we so often do not really see others, but instead incorporate them into our self-aggrandizing fantasies. Given that Murdoch links love and art so closely, it would not be surprising if she described artful deeds of love in her novels. The theme of one of her best novels, A Fairly Honourable Defeat, is love. Virtually all of the characters in it talk about love, aspire to it, and praise it; and more than one of them thinks of it as the meaning of life. They also are aware that love means helping, which they prate about a lot. But all of them are seriously flawed in the practice of love, except for the character named Tallis. The villain of the tale, who is named Julius, shows contempt for all this idealism about love, asserting that “[g]ood is dull,” and asking, “What novelist ever succeeded in making a good man interesting?”27 Murdoch rises to the challenge of her character. The good and loving man of her novel, Tallis, is admittedly quite unprepossessing. Other characters say of him that he is “hopelessly incompetent,” feeble, spiritless, a muddler, a “weak and unsuccessful man.”28 Despite this general disrespect, one person says: “I think Tallis is one of the sanest men I know.”29 Presumably this character glimpses Tallis’s loving connection to reality which renders him sane. At the end of Part 1 of the novel, there is a climatic episode which reveals Tallis as interesting, artful, and effective. The scene is a restaurant, where five “burly youths” are violently harassing a Jamaican man. Without friends in the

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restaurant, Simon speaks out against the harassment, only to become a victim of it himself, at which point Axel, Tallis, and Julius arrive on the scene. Axel then berates the youths, so that one of them advances towards him with malicious intent. Murdoch writes: “The next moment something happened very quickly. Tallis moved in from behind Julius and before anyone could shift or cry out, he had struck the youth very hard across the side of the face . . . with the flat of the hand, but with such violence that the boy staggered back against his companions and almost fell to the floor.”30 The result is that the boys are cowed and leave the restaurant. Despite seeming incompetent and weak to his intelligent friends, and despite not being physically formidable, Tallis proves to be the most effective of them in an emergency, or in the situation of love. But to be effective without strength against force is the very essence of skill or art. Moreover, Tallis is not violent, but loving. When the situation calls for it, however, he is able to step outside of moral convention, or the letter of the law, in order to do what is needed. One theorist of love in the novel, Rupert, is fond of the aphorism: “Love and do as you please.” But when Rupert attempts to do this in the novel, it leads to disaster. Tallis, however, artfully illustrates this maxim of love. Julius, who (as I said before) is the villain of the novel, watches the fight scene in the restaurant with “fascinated interest,” and with “irrepressible delight,” remarking, “That blow was terrific.” Here is a delicious irony. Despite his bleak assessment of the good man in novels, Julius finds the good man in his own novel interesting. Axel, who is perhaps the most honest of the characters in the book, says of the episode of the Jamaican and the five burly youths: “‘My God, it was impressive!’ . . . ‘Do you know, we all acted characteristically, Simon intervened incompetently, I talked, [Julius] watched, and Tallis acted.’ ‘It was perfect,’ Julius replied.”31 Tallis impresses again at the end of the novel. The situation is that Julius, Iago-like, has through deception and clever manipulation, separated a loving married couple, and nearly separated a second couple. He goes to the house of Tallis to describe or boast about his exploits, perhaps because he wishes to shock the good man, or perhaps because, owing to Tallis’s heroism in the restaurant, Julius respects him and wishes to impress him. As soon as Tallis hears Julius’s story, he wisely discerns that the people whom Julius has deceived and manipulated may be in danger. He then tells Julius that Julius himself is going to telephone one of the concerned people, and explain what he has done. Surprisingly, Julius obeys, despite being an egoist who does not take orders from others.32 We are not told why he obeys. But it is striking that once again Tallis sees what needs to be done in a crisis, and does it effectively. As it turns out, the telephone call is too late to prevent a disaster that resulted from Julius’s mischief. But Tallis is not to be blamed for that. He acted as promptly

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and effectively as he could have, and had he known sooner about the danger, he might have prevented disaster. In both cases of Tallis’s lovingly effective action, other, more intelligent, and seemingly more capable people had the opportunity to save the day. In one case, no one else tried. In the other case, two people did attempt to help, but ineffectively. Tallis not only has more will to do good than others, he also has more art and wisdom to do it, even though he seems weaker and less intelligent than his friends. Tallis is not artfully effective just because of a lucky inspiration of the moment. He himself remarks that “human ills need thought and work which are disciplines of the imagination.”33 Tallis has put in this work, and through discipline has developed his moral imagination to the point that he is an artist of love who in important matters and at important times sees what needs to be done and does it skillfully. There are indications that Murdoch thinks, like Kierkegaard, that there is an art of love available to all people. She describes a quarrel between Rupert and his son Peter. After the quarrel, Murdoch describes Rupert and his reflections about his disturbed relation to his son. If only he could be wise. He had been far too stiff with Peter all along . . . He should have embraced his son, nothing else really mattered except that indubitable show of love. But a show of love was something for which Rupert was entirely untrained. He did not even know how to lay his hand on Peter’s arm without the gesture seeming artificial. How could he possibly convey to his son the tenderness with which his heart was now so over-brimming that it stretched his bosom with a physical pain? . . . Rupert knew too that his whole training, the whole of the society which kept him so stiffly upright and so patently and pre-eminently successful, had deprived him gradually of the direct language of love. When he needed gestures, strong impetuous movements to overturn barriers, he found himself paralyzed and cold.34

According to this passage, there is a direct language of love, a naturally effective and therefore artful way of expressing love, which society and training tend to impair. A tender heart can become frozen and cold because it lacks this natural art and therefore the means and the confidence to express itself. This is to say that there is an art available to everyone that can sustain or support feelings of love. We might even say that there is an art of expressing love which is accessible to all people, and which is essential to love, and that love cannot thrive if this art is lost. Murdoch’s theory of love and art nicely complements Kierkegaard’s, in that she argues for a substantial unity between fine art and the practical art of love. Kierkegaard might object that to love a person as an independent esthetic object does not guarantee that the lover will act lovingly toward that

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person, while Murdoch could reply that though there is no guarantee, a loving apprehension of the other as other is already a selfless and generous act, and therefore can help one to be loving also in action. She might also urge that without imaginatively artful vision of the other, a person lacks sufficient motive and understanding for loving effectively. CODA ON TOLSTOY Like Kierkegaard, Tolstoy teaches that there is an art of love that can be practiced in ordinary life by ordinary people, as he shows in his wonderful creation of an idealized peasant, Platon Karataev, in War and Peace. This man is as simple as possible, as he “never thought of what he . . . would say,” but was perfectly spontaneous.35 Tolstoy also writes that Platon “loved and lived lovingly with everything that life brought his way, especially other people.”36 As a result of his love and simple spontaneity, Platon is artful. He is a master of rhetoric, in that his words have an “irresistible persuasiveness.” His stories have charm, so that listening to them, Pierre finds that “the simplest events [. . .] acquired a character of solemn seemliness.”37 Thus Platon is a master of the communication of admirable and loving feelings, despite his lack of education, and even of logic. After a terrible ordeal, and after his admiring observation of the example of Platon, Pierre, who formerly was socially clumsy and somewhat oblivious of other people, is transformed into an artist of love, not because he is intelligent, but because of his goodwill. A certain princess notices his benevolent attention to her with gratitude, and as a result “reveal[s] to him the hidden good sides of her character.” Tolstoy comments: “The most cunning person could not have wormed himself into the princess’s confidence more skillfully” than Pierre does.38 NOTES 1. See Jorgen Bukdahl, Kierkegaard and the Common Man, trans. and revised by Bruce H. Kirmmse (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001). Bukdahl argues that according to Kierkegaard “all people are equal in their freedom to manage and develop their gifts” (4). 2. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment: A New Translation by Michael R. Katz (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018), 361. 3. Ibid., 455. 4. Ibid., 456. 5. Ibid., 458. 6. Ibid., 460.

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7. Ibid., 603. 8. See Krishnan Venkatesh, in Frodo’s Wound: Why The Lord of the Rings Is a Great Book (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2021). Venkatesh shows that the Lord of the Rings provides an example of a character who, because of his love for Frodo, understands important things about Frodo better than others do who are much wiser than he is. When the Company of eight misinterprets Frodo’s delay to declare his purpose, to go either to Minis Tirith or to Mordor, Sam says that they “don’t understand my master at all,” and proceeds to give the correct interpretation of Frodo’s procrastination. Aragorn responds: “I believe you speak more wisely than any of us, Sam” (II/10). Shortly after this, when the Company is searching for Frodo, who is missing, Sam “guessed his master’s mind,” namely, that Frodo was attempting to go to Mordor alone; and guessing this, he found Frodo when the others could not, and accompanied him on his journey (II/10). He also has a good understanding of his master’s suffering: “Sam guessed that among all their pains [Frodo] bore the worst, the growing weight of the Ring, a burden on the body and a torment to his mind” (VI/3). Accordingly he treats Frodo with great compassion and tenderness, giving him what comfort and encouragement he can. Venkatesh makes the excellent point that, in the chapter “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit” (652–53), the “narrator has stepped into Sam, recognizing that only through Sam can Frodo be seen” (120). Venkatesh explains that it because of Sam’s love for Frodo that the former can see the latter. 9. Matt. 15:21–28. 10. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 179–80. 11. See Ferreira, Love’s Grateful Striving. Ferreira says according to Kierkegaard the “command [to love] does not tell us to love; we don’t need a commandment for that. Rather, it guides ‘how’ we love” (41). 12. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 164. 13. Ibid., 321. 14. Ibid., 321. 15. Ibid., 289. 16. In Love’s Grateful Striving Ferreira argues that in Works of Love what is meant by praising love is a deed of love. Her main reason for thinking this has to do with equality. She notes that Kierkegaard claims that all people can praise love, and adds that “not all of us can . . . write eloquently” (228, 229). 17. In Love’s Grateful Striving Ferreira stresses Kierkegaard’s claim that “with God’s help I can do everything for the other” (234). If one is going to take the idea of divine assistance seriously, why not also say that with God’s help I can praise love artfully? 18. In Love’s Grateful Striving Ferreira says that according to Kierkegaard, “praising love is not an ‘art’ at all,” because art requires talent, (229). But it is abundantly clear that Kierkegaard claims that love has an art of upbuilding, and that he thinks all people can practice this art. 19. Plato, Meno, trans. Robert C. Bartlett (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 114 (85c–d).

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20. See Hughes, Kierkegaard and the Staging of Desire. Hughes analyzes Kierkegaard’s metaphor of a theatrical play, and stresses that the ordinary lover according to the metaphor can “manifest ‘glimmers’ of a truth” about human equality (191). 21. Kierkegaard’s attitude towards social and political equality and inequality is a difficult question. Many interpreters, like Adorno, think that Kierkegaard is indifferent to inequality in society and politics. Others see signs of concern. See Sylvia Walsh, “When ‘That Single Individual’ Is a Woman,” in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 5 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2003), 31–50. Walsh argues that “a feminist reader may . . . find . . . much” in Kierkegaard’s writings “that is upbuilding and supportive of her fight for true equality in the world,” even though Kierkegaard himself does not engage in this fight (49). See also Robert L. Perkins, “Upbuilding as a Propaedeutic for Justice,” in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 5 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2003), 325–56. Roberts argues that Kierkegaard sees some, but little, benefit, in love’s working for political and social equality (352). See also Lee Barrett, “The Neighbor’s Material and Social WellBeing in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love: Does It Matter?” in Works of Love, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 16 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1999), 391–410. Barrett argues that Kierkegaard suggests that “movements of social reform could have genuine . . . value in ‘building up’ the neighbor in love” (163). Barrett insightfully shows Kierkegaard’s ambivalence about material and social factors: “On the one hand [Kierkegaard] talks as if material and social factors are important for love, but on the other hand he asserts that they are not” (164). Barrett also insightfully says that the tension about this matter in Works of Love “is no accident.” “The tension must be in the text, because the tension exists in human love” (164). Thus love cares about social equality, but gives it only secondary importance. Perhaps Kierkegaard thinks that a too vehement striving for social equality tends to hinder the higher purposes of love. 22. Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 215. 23. Ibid., 216. 24. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Ark Paperbacks, 1970), 28. 25. Ibid., 52. 26. Ibid., 59. 27. Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat (New York: Penguin, 2001), 205. 28. Ibid., 12, 13, 203. 29. Ibid., 12. 30. Ibid., 220. 31. Ibid., 220–21. 32. Ibid. 367–77. 33. Ibid., 100. 34. Ibid., 125.

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35. Tolstoy, War and Peace, 972–73. 36. Ibid., 973. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., 1105.

Conclusion

It is time—perhaps past the time and high time—to confess that Kierkegaard is ambivalent about praising love. In this concluding chapter we will explore the reasons for, and the consequences of, this ambivalence. By doing so we will have the opportunity to deepen and refine our understanding of several important aspects of praise and art: 1. the differences between proper praise of ethical and religious things, on the one hand, and unfitting praise of them, and merely esthetic praise of esthetic things, on the other, 2. some aspects of the relations between esthetics on the one hand, and ethics and Christianity, on the other, 3. why Kierkegaard surprisingly praises love—the highest good—more for its art than for its goodness, and 4. the roles that Kierkegaard thinks art, praise, and admiration should play in life. KIERKEGAARD’S AMBIVALENCE ABOUT PRAISING LOVE Kierkegaard says that he is a poet, and that poets praise things; he writes that all his discourses praise Christianity; and praise is ubiquitous in his authorship. So of course he praises Christian love. But that is only part of the story. Kierkegaard says things that seem to prohibit his praising love. One of his pseudonyms, Johannes Climacus, claims that “a religious poet . . . is in an awkward position” because he “wants to relate himself to the religious by way of imagination, but just by doing that ends up relating himself esthetically to something esthetic. To celebrate a hero of faith is just as fully an esthetic task as to celebrate a war hero” (CUP 388/SKS 10:353). What Climacus criticizes seems to be what Kierkegaard does when he praises Christian love as beautiful, and when he says that the tasks of love may engage a person “as works of art” (WL 340/SKS 9:335). Furthermore, the pseudonym Anti-Climacus calls admiration of Christ a misunderstanding, and even goes so far as to suggest that admiration of Christ is evil (PC 245, 239/SKS 12:238, 232). But if it is an evil misunderstanding to admire Christ, presumably praise and admiration of the love that Christ taught and exemplified cannot be much better. 155

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It is especially strange that Kierkegaard praises love primarily for its art, and very little for its goodness. For he says that love is the greatest good, and that God is love. Therefore, we would expect him to praise love for its goodness and for its God-likeness. But he does this very little. Moreover, Kierkegaard is usually very strict in demanding that the spheres of existence be kept distinct, namely the esthetic sphere, the ethical sphere, and the religious sphere; and he harshly criticizes writers who irresponsibly mingle or confuse the spheres. But art seems to be something esthetic, and love is ethical and Christian, so that Kierkegaard should not praise religious love for its art, or at least not primarily for its art. Why then does Kierkegaard praise Christian love, why does he praise it primarily for its art, and what is the character of correct praise and admiration of love? IS KIERKEGAARD’S PRAISE OF LOVE A CONCESSION TO HUMAN WEAKNESS? Anti-Climacus writes that “the misunderstanding that goes under the name of admiration . . . is even necessary in order to attract people” (PC 245/SKS 12:238). On the basis of this quotation we might conjecture that Kierkegaard’s praise of love is a concession to human weakness. Perhaps Kierkegaard sees praise of love as more or less wrong. Maybe his praise of love distorts love in order to make it attractive. But, so the argument for concession might run, if this praise can seduce people to a life of love, the wrong and the distortion are worth it. But this conjecture about concession cannot be right. If a person is going to be adequately motivated to love his neighbor, by practicing self-denial and making sacrifices, he needs to passionately admire the ideal of love. And in order to get people to ardently admire love, praise of love is usually necessary. Therefore, praise of love is not a compromise, or a merely provisional device to attract people, but a permanent and necessary source of motivation for a life of love. Still, it must be admitted that praise of love is dangerous. Since love is a high and beautiful ideal, it is possible for a person who has no intention of performing works of love to enjoy admiring and contemplating the ideal of love. This is the unavoidable risk in praising love and other ideals. But the alternative is worse. Not to praise love and other ideals means allowing many people to languish in triviality, nihilism, or despair. Although Kierkegaard runs the risk of allowing his readers to perversely contemplate the ideals that he praises, he also does much to prevent this. He challenges and summons his readers to imitate and serve the ideals. He tries

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to help them become aware of their duty to live for the ideals. He stresses the difficulty of living thus, and that living thus has a high cost in suffering, in being mocked, or even in being persecuted. He berates people for their indifference to ideals. Finally, he offers advice, or “dietetic prescriptions,” about how to imitate ideals. All this is as much as to say that Kierkegaard attempts to artfully blend praise of ideals with corrections and complements to this praise. More generally, he artfully mixes, in ways that would require great art to describe, various complementary modes or moods: the doxological, the confessional, the satirical, the polemical, and the didactic. Just as there is correct praise of existential ideals, so there is correct admiration of them. The right-minded admirer is aware of the temptation to indulge in the fascinations of poetic imagination, and conscientiously attempts to use her admiration of ideals as motivation to strive at the task of imitating ideals. Most deeply, the conscientious admirer uses admiration to draw as close as possible to the ideals in his or her innermost being, so that he or she can do no other than serve them. Kierkegaard calls such an intimate relation to the ideals personal, concerned, conscientious, earnest, and subjective. Given that Kierkegaard is correct to praise love, and perhaps obliged to do this, it is nevertheless not at all obvious why he should praise it primarily for its art. In order to make progress on this crucial question, it will help us to consider two more panegyrical writings of Kierkegaard: The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air, and The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress. ESTHETIC PRAISE OF RELIGIOUS VIRTUES IN THE LILY OF THE FIELD AND THE BIRD OF THE AIR The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air consists of three discourses, which praise, respectively, silence, obedience, and joy. In the first discourse Kierkegaard begins by talking about the figure of “the poet,” who wishes he were free from care like a bird, and who “praises the happiness of the bird and the lily” (L 10–11/SKS 11:14). Kierkegaard criticizes this poet for being soft and weak, and for despairingly refusing to strive for what he wishes. Kierkegaard introduces the poet primarily in order to contrast the poet’s praise of the bird with correct Christian praise of it. He claims that Christianity uses the symbol of the bird to praise silence.1 Admittedly, it seems that “there is no art in the ability to keep silent, or that it would be an inferior art.” But in fact, “the ability to keep silent is a great art” (L 16/SKS 11:16). Kierkegaard explains that silence means waiting for and listening to God.2 But he does not clearly explain why silence is an art. The reason seems to be that silence entails the difficult task of balancing the opposites of great effort, on the one hand, with receptive submission, on the other. Silence is the

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most energetic activity that consists in nothing but emptiness, patient waiting, and receptiveness. Normally when we work as hard as possible, we want to accomplish or produce something of our own, so that the artist of silence must overcome this desire while working at the limit of human capacity. In the second discourse Kierkegaard does not call obedience an art, nor does he directly praise it; but he praises the lily as a symbol of it. Because the lily is “unconditionally obedient,” it is “unconditionally free of cares,” and therefore “wholly and fully itself” (L 53/SKS 11:32). Owing to this freedom from care, “it is lovely” and beautiful (L 53–54/SKS 11:32). Apparently obedience is so unesthetic that Kierkegaard cannot extol obedience itself, but only an image of it. In the third discourse Kierkegaard praises joy. Such praise might seem both too easy and unnecessary—for who is not inclined to desire joy and approve of it? But “it is not so easy always to be joyful” (L 72/SKS 11:40), because there is much in life to lament, and sometimes we are too resentful of our misfortunes to rejoice over our blessings. Therefore joy must be commanded: “You shall learn joy from the lily and the bird” (L 77–78/SKS 11:43). Before the last discourse Kierkegaard has already described some conditions of joy, namely, to be silent, so as to learn obedience, and through obedience to be free of care by trusting God who commands that trust. Then, in the third discourse, Kierkegaard explains how to be joyful: “Cast all your care or sorrow upon God.” To cast this sorrow well, to “hit the mark,” requires “[m]arvelous dexterity” (L 83/SKS 11:45). Those who miss the mark are guilty of clumsiness (L 86/SKS 11:46). Why does Kierkegaard take the metaphor of casting so seriously that he claims freedom from care is dexterous or artful casting of care on God? Because the “marvelous feat” of casting one’s cares upon God “resolves a contradiction”—in this case, the contradiction between force and rest (L 84/SKS 11:46). The caster of care does not use her own force, but instead uses all her strength to rely on and rest in the strength of God. Therefore, the art of “unconditional joy [. . .] over God” resembles the art of silence (L 86/SKS 11:46). Silent and joyful adoration of God requires both heroic striving and a humble acceptance of divine assistance. Thus, we see that Works of Love is not exceptional in its praise of ethical and religious love for its art. Kierkegaard praises religious silence, obedience, and joy for their art, too. ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS PRAISE OF THE IDEAL ACTRESS In The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, Kierkegaard does the converse of what he does in The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air. That is,

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he praises an artist for her ethical and religious virtues. The Crisis describes and praises, not a particular actress, or a specific dramatic performance, but the ideal actress at the crisis, or decisive point, of her career, when it has become possible for her to undergo a metamorphosis (C 307/SKS 14:96). Not many critics would think to praise a non-existent, ideal actress. But then there are not many essential critics. The reason for praising an ideal actress instead of an empirical one might be that one of the most important things about something is what it could be at its best. The perfection of the ideal actress lies in a unity of what nature gives her, and what she acquires through work, reflection, and practice. Kierkegaard proceeds on the assumption that the best way to reveal the perfect actress is to show her taking possession of her native charm and natural gifts and elevating them into something virtually supernatural. The actress does this in her metamorphosis, which Kierkegaard calls “the highest” (C 307/SKS 14:96). Already when she is young, this actress has the essential basis for art in how she speaks and moves: “she is as if possessed by good fortune—to such a degree that it accompanies her where she walks and stands, in everything she undertakes, in the slightest motion of her hand, in every intimation of her eyes, in every toss of her head, in every turn of her body, in her walk, in her voice, in her gestures” (C 308/SKS 14:96). She has an “indefinable possession” that might be described as “expressiveness of soul”; “in the mood of immediate passion she is attuned to idea and thought”; and “her as yet unreflective inwardness is essentially in harmony with ideality” (C 311/SKS 14:98). In short, she is naturally in tune with the idea of her role, and naturally expresses it by her manner. Even before her metamorphosis, the young actress accomplishes the artistic task of uniting opposites. She expresses both trustworthiness and roguishness: “One would think that trustworthiness on the one hand and on the other roguishness, animation, good fortune, and youthfulness are utterly heterogeneous qualifications that do not belong together at all. Yet this is by no means the case—they do absolutely belong together,” and come together in the ideal actress (C 310/SKS 14:97). Kierkegaard also describes these opposites as “exuberance and trustworthiness,” and says that they “seem to be a strange compound” (C 311/SKS 14:98). Imagining the actress at work before viewers, he writes that the “weight of all those eyes” is a kind of “burden,” but for her “the weight of the burden continually transforms itself into lightness” (C 312/SKS 14:99). Thus, the young actress is like the loving forgiver who is serious in intention, but light in her manner, because the forgiver wants to keep the focus on the repentance of the sinner, and not on her own act of forgiveness.

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Kierkegaard writes that the young actress “relates herself soulfully to the author’s words” (C 311/SKS 14:98). “She does not merely take the author’s words correctly from his mouth, but she gives them back to him” with “the co-sounding of roguishness,” and with “the co-knowledge of ingeniousness” (C 312/SKS 14:99). She is surprisingly similar to a worshiper of God, who has co-knowledge with God in her conscience, and who makes the law and the ideal her own by creatively adapting it to her circumstances. Now we finally come to the actress at the time when she no longer possesses “immediate youthfulness.” She has lost the charm and bloom of youth, so that theater-goers are no longer enchanted by nature’s gifts in her. She has reached the crisis, or the decisive point, at which a metamorphosis becomes possible. Since audiences are no longer dazzled by her youthful charm, she has the opportunity to express her role through spirit, which is higher than merely immediate youthfullness. Kierkegaard says that she must now spiritually express the quality that she has most noticeably lost, youthfulness. He imagines the metamorphosized actress playing Juliet with “an eminent performance,” in which she manifests youthfulness with a sort of art of the spirit (C 322/SKS 14:106). Whatever idea her role calls for, be it feminine youthfulness or “the idea of femininity sensu eminentissimo [in the most eminent sense],” “she is truly able to be a servant of her idea” (C 324/SKS 14:107; C 322/SKS 14:106). In this service she is quite similar to the ethical or religious hero’s service of an ideal. In order to express the idea of youthfulness, the no longer naturally youthful actress must “resist time” (C 322/SKS 14:106). Kierkegaard almost always understands resisting time as an ethical, religious, or heroic task. A person who loves his neighbor must resist time by not letting his love become a dull habit. He must keep his love fresh despite the passage of the years. Time is the great destroyer of all things natural, so that to resist it is to overcome nature and to become spirit. Almost everything that Kierkegaard says that the actress achieves in her metamorphosis seems to be more a spiritual achievement than an artistic one. The actress already had almost all the theatrical art that she needed when she was young, naturally, or with little effort, and what she acquires by her metamorphosis is something existential or spiritual. Kierkegaard shows great concern about the actress as a person. Although art aficionados may think that an artist’s celebrity is an unalloyed blessing, Kierkegaard insists that “being an actress” has thorns of which most people are oblivious (C 303/SKS 14:93). These thorns in the life of an actress correspond roughly to the trials and sufferings of becoming or being a Christian. As the Christian has to resist being offended at the fact that he is hated for trying to be good, so the actress must resist being demoralized by the fact that her art is not discerningly appreciated. She worked to perfect her art, only to

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discover that success in this was not enjoyable in the way that she expected, so that she “may . . . look around despondently for an expression of genuine appreciation” (C 304/SKS 14:93). Kierkegaard dwells on the sorrow that arises from not being intelligently appreciated. He imagines the actress being “praised and admired” in “stock phrases” and with a “meager sum of shabby banalities” (C 303/SKS 14:93). Alas, people tend to be “lethargic in their admiration,” and “lazy in the habit of admiration” (C 317–18/SKS 14:103). Kierkegaard laments that few people “know how to preserve the vigilance of fervency and appreciation so that in the fourteenth year of admiration they can see her with the same originality” that they had a decade earlier (C 318/SKS 14:103). But those who know how to admire have the gift of “human joy over the rarity” (C 314/SKS 14:100). Thus, even admirers of the actress must resist time. Despite our awareness that Kierkegaard highly esteems adequate admiration, we are surprised to find that he goes so far as to call admiration of worthy art an instance of “the most meaningful of pleasures” (C 305/SKS 14:94). Surely ethical and religious pleasures are so much more important than esthetic ones, that it would not be just to attribute so much significance to mere art. THE ESSENTIAL ESTHETICIAN Kierkegaard idealizes not just the actress, but the critic, or “essential esthetician,” who understands and praises her (C 314/SKS 14:100). This esthetician is one of those “unselfish servants of truth, whose life is sheer struggle with the sophisms of existence” (C 315/SKS 14:101). Struggle is characteristic of heroism, and the life of the ideal critic is sheer struggle. Like Socrates, he struggles against sophistry, in the service of the truth. He is also unselfish, in that he is concerned to make the truth about the actress known, not to win fame as a critic. He cares not just about beauty, but also about the truth about beauty. He unites the true and the beautiful, and perhaps the good as well. Rarely has an art critic been conceived as so heroic! Kierkegaard describes the essential esthetician as a kind of artist who unites opposite excellences in order to help others admire the actress as they should: “Intoxicated in admiration and yet sober in dialectical levelheadedness, he will . . . understand his call to create room so that this marvel can be seen and admired precisely as such” (C 324/SKS 14:107). Like the knight of faith, who unites dialectic and lyric, the essential esthetician unites dialectical levelheadedness with intoxicated admiration. You may remember from our examination of Fear and Trembling that Silentio asserts that the hero and the poet are an essential and complementary pair. The hero represents an ideal worth living for, and the poet reveals the

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excellence of the hero and the meaning in the ideal, so as to inspire people with admiration and emulation. The ideal actress and the essential esthetician closely resemble the hero and the poet, since the actress achieves excellence, and the essential esthetician helps people to enjoy one of life’s most meaningful pleasures, namely, admiration of the ideal actress. To sum up, when Kierkegaard praises the actress and her critic, he uses mostly ethical and religious categories. The actress’s metamorphosis is similar to rebirth, a religious category. Her resistance to time is an ethical and religious deed. She has a cross to bear, which is analogous to facing the possibility of offense, or suffering for the truth like a truth-witness. She is a servant of the idea, as a religious person is a servant of God, or a hero of an ideal. She co-sounds the words of the author as the believer echoes God’s commands in her conscience. We could also say similar things about the resemblance of Kierkegaard’s essential art critic to a spiritual hero. In an earlier chapter we noticed that praise of love is so important to Kierkegaard that he praises worthy praise of love. Similarly, artful praise of art is so important to him that he praises it for providing one of life’s most meaningful pleasures.3 WHY KIERKEGAARD PRAISES LOVE FOR ITS ART Like Works of Love, both The Crisis and the Lily surprisingly mingle art and esthetics, on the one hand, with the ethical and the religious, on the other. What are we to make of this apparent confusion of existential categories? To begin simply, esthetics is not the opposite or the inevitable enemy of ethics and religion. It can cooperate fruitfully with them. Further, esthetics may perhaps find its perfection or fruition in ethics or religion, as the ideal actress shows her perfection through ethical and religious virtues. It may be that esthetics even contains within itself a dynamism which can or should lead the esthete to higher ways of life. Conversely, ethics and religion include, and perhaps must include, esthetic elements. As heartfelt obedience makes a person beautiful, so heartfelt love makes a person artful. But, if art is properly and essentially part of love, then, it seems, it should be permissible, and is perhaps even obligatory, to praise love for its art. Nevertheless, even if we grant all this, we still do not yet see why it is permissible to praise love primarily, and almost exclusively—as Kierkegaard does—for its art. Let us then try to see why praising love for its art may be an eminently fitting thing to do.

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WHY KIERKEGAARD PRAISES LOVE PRIMARILY FOR ITS ART The art of love is the perfection of love. For the person who works and struggles to love, love becomes her second nature. Then, even if she is lacking in talent, her love naturally becomes artful, as we saw in the last chapter. It follows that praising someone for the art of her love in part means praising her because love has become her second nature. Furthermore, art is not just a useful tool of love, but is essential to it, and its fruition. Love would not be what it is without art. Without art “love” is at best only the possibility of love, or the intention to learn to love. The art of love actualizes this possibility and this intention. Love exists most fully when it is artfully at work and artfully expressing itself. Therefore, the wise encomiast chooses to praise love at its best, to praise the perfection and fullness of love, and this is precisely love artfully at work.4 In short, the art of love is not an external and optional tool that love may or may not use, but love’s very own power and activity. As Machievelli’s prince must have his own arms, so love essentially has its own art. Similarly, the beauty of love is not an alien charm artificially bestowed on it by a cunning and wheedling rhetoric, but its very own graciousness. In the introduction to Works of Love, Kierkegaard distinguishes between the hidden life of love and its fruit, which reveals the hidden life. I propose that artful deeds of love are its revealing fruit. The eulogist of love assists love’s artful deeds to reveal love’s hidden life and its secret source in God. Since it would be clumsy directly to praise the hidden life of love, the artful eulogist instead wisely praises the beautiful fruit of love—namely, artful deeds.5 A POETICAL VENTURE If someone were to object that I have exaggerated Kierkegaard’s estimation of the worth and status of art, I would reply that I probably have not gone far enough. Many of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, at any rate, express or imply the highest estimation of art. Anti-Climacus, for example, claims that “Christ’s life upon earth, every moment of this life, was truth” (PC 203/SKS 12:200). He also says that “truth is the way” (PC 207/SKS 12:203). But, as we have seen, expressing truth by the way one lives is also art. Thus Anti-Climacus suggests that Christ’s life upon earth was art—because his life was truth, truth is the way, and the way is art. Johannes Climacus for his part calls the incarnation a poem, and says that the idea of “the god” made man is “the most wondrously beautiful thought” (PF 36/SKS 4:242). He also attributes to the incarnation one of the most

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important of art’s qualities, namely, uniting opposites, when he says that the paradox of the incarnation “unites the contradictories” by “eternalizing . . . the historical and . . . historicizing . . . the eternal” (PF 61/SKS 4:263). Therefore, he agrees with Anti-Climacus that the incarnation is sublime and divine art. And since these two pseudonyms, like Kierkegaard, conceive of Christian life as the imitation of Christ, they imply that Christian life and Christian love consist in imitation of divine love and divine art. WHY IT IS MOST GLORIOUS TO PRAISE AND ADMIRE GOD I have explained and justified praise and admiration as means to, and part of, imitation of ideals. But, according to Kierkegaard, they are much more than this. He writes that it is “most glorious to be nothing by worshiping” God (UDVS 193/SKS 8:290). This quotation is revealing in several ways. To worship according to Kierkegaard includes both praise and adoration. Adoration is enthusiastic admiration of what is greatest, and therefore the most intense form of admiration. It also involves a complete surrender to its object, God. Let us recall that admiration is delight in excellence. Adoration, then, is the highest form of admiration: it is “unconditional joy . . . over God” (L 86/SKS 11:46). And since “joy is communicative,” joy over God naturally leads to praise of God (L 88, 71/SKS 11:47, 40). It is striking that when Kierkegaard talks about worship, praise, and adoration of God, he does not talk much about work and imitation. We saw that in Practice in Christianity Anti-Climacus criticizes admiration sans imitation. But Kierkegaard seems to valorize praise and adoration of God as ends in themselves. Of course, he thinks that the praiser and adorer of divine love should imitate it too. And no doubt he also conceives of praise and adoration as actions. He probably even thinks that they dispose a person to imitate God. But as actions they are ends in themselves. If it is “most glorious to be nothing by worshiping,” and a human being is made to “be joy” over God, then praising and admiring are the best things about a human being (L 71/SKS 11:40). Kierkegaard says that “worship is what makes the human being resemble God” (UDVS 193/SKS 8:290). In worship a person is “transformed in likeness to” God (PC 189/SKS 12:188). This transformation is so great that the worshipper “almost becom[es] superior to the superiority” (CD 131/SKS 10:141).6 If praise and admiration can transform and elevate a person so much, then they should not be regarded merely as means to imitation, but as essential to the highest end and vocation of a human being.

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WHY PRAISE IS UBIQUITOUS IN KIERKEGAARD’S AUTHORSHIP We can see then why praise is ubiquitous in Kierkegaard’s authorship. Humans are created as doxological beings. They are meant to praise and adore God. But even praising other things is a relative good. For to praise, say, Mozart, is to transcend mere selfishness in order to honor something other than oneself, and to want to share the gift of admiring that thing with other people. Therefore praising the composer of Don Giovanni can teach a person about the riches of admiration, and lead one to the greatest wealth of worshipping God. As there is a ladder of love in Plato’s Symposium, so there is a ladder of admiration in Kierkegaard’s authorship, a ladder that is contained in the theory of the spheres of existence. CONCLUDING QUESTIONS In this book I have not attempted to present a complete theory of praise in Kierkegaard’s authorship. There are many major instances of praise in it that I have not considered. Perhaps the hardest to understand kinds of praise in Kierkegaard’s writings are praise of God, Christ, and eternal happiness. He praises these things quite sparingly. Why is this? Does he think that such praise is bound to fail abysmally, or that it is irreverent? Does he think that each person should praise God for himself or herself? Does he believe that only very advanced readers can appreciate praise of God, so that many readers will be left unmoved by it, and perhaps mock it? Given that Kierkegaard does sometimes praise God, how does he go about it, and why? These are hard questions, and the subject for a long essay, or even another book. Kierkegaard’s theory and practice of praise is so artful and admirable that I have not been able to investigate the whole of it adequately, or to praise it as it deserves. NOTES 1. See Christopher A. P. Nelson, “Soundings of Silence: The Lily, the Bird, and the Dark Knight of the Soul in the Writings of Soren Kierkegaard,” in Without Authority, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 18 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2006), 44–83. Nelson remarks that Kierkegaard extolls silence in the first discourse (82).

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2. Echoing Ettore Rocca, Nelson in “Soundings of Silence” writes that silence in the deepest sense for Kierkegaard means a “radical ‘opening up’” to God (83). In this essay Nelson gives an account of silence in Kierkegaard’s wider authorship. 3. See Hugh S. Pyper, “The Stage and Stages in a Christian Authorship.” In Christian Discourses and The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress. ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 17 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2007), 299–320. See also Stephen Crites, Crisis in the Life of an Actress and other Essays on Drama (London: Collins, 1967). Pyper and Crites both remark on the surprising cooperation of the religious and the theater in Kierkegaard’s thought. Pyper sums up a line of interpretation of Kierkegaard thus: “in the divine theater we are called to act out our selves, in response to the divine performance of the incarnation” (319). And Crites claims that to a surprising extent “Kierkegaard’s religious motivations could express themselves in a fundamentally theatrical way” (49). 4. See Stephen N. Dunning.“Transformed by the Gospel: What We Learn about the Stages from the Lilies and the Birds,” in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 15 (Macon: Mercer University Press 2005), 111–28. Commenting on The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air, Dunning writes that “the primary task of the religious” is “paradoxically to unite the aesthetic and the ethical in a new way” (127). If this is the primary task of the religious, then to praise love for its art is to praise it for achieving its primary task. 5. Some readers may wonder how Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard’s most authoritative pseudonym, could have committed the error of suggesting that admiration of Christ is evil. Anti-Climacus says that an “imitator is or strives to be what he admires, and an admirer keeps himself personally detached” so as not to “discover that what is admired has a claim upon him” (PC 241/SKS 11:2). This quotation clearly indicates that the imitator of Christ admires Christ, so that according to Anti-Climacus admiration as such cannot be evil. What is evil, therefore, is being a mere admirer, that is, refusing to imitate Christ when one admires him. Presumably Anti-Climacus’s exaggerated polemical attack on admiration is for rhetorical effect, to shock people and wake them up to the dangers of mere admiration. 6. In I Corinthians 13:6 Paul writes that “charity rejoices in the truth.” Using this passage, one might regard adoration of God as the perfection of charity’s rejoicing in the truth. For a provocative interpretation of this verse, see Questions on Love and Charity: Summa Theologiae, Secunda Secundae, Questions 23–46, trans. Robert Miner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). In Question 28, Article 2, Sed Contra, Thomas Aquinas says that “the joy of charity is joy about divine wisdom” (131).

Appendix The Wisdom of Love

Sometimes Kierkegaard gives the impression that he is a fideist, or that he denies reason and knowledge in order to affirm faith. In Works of Love he stresses the possibility and importance of knowledge so much that he almost seems to be a gnostic. Kierkegaard’s inspiration for much of Works of Love, namely I Corinthians, is similarly ambiguous. When St. Paul says that “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” that “knowledge will pass away,” and that God has “made foolish the wisdom of this world,” one might surmise that Paul has little esteem for knowledge. But when he says that “we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God,” that the Corinthians through Christ have been “enriched in all knowledge,” and that “we have the mind of Christ,” he almost boasts about knowledge, and a high degree of knowledge at that. Thus arises the question, why does Kierkegaard say such contradictory things about knowledge. When he writes for intellectuals who place too high a value, or the wrong sort of value, on reason and knowledge, Kierkegaard sometimes says that faith is absurd. But when he writes in order to upbuild his readers, he emphasizes the necessity for knowledge and understanding.1 If knowledge puffs up conceited intellectuals, it is no less true that skepticism tears down innocent believers. One has to know how to esteem knowledge neither too much nor too little, and how to use it in the right way. In this chapter my aims are quite limited. I will briefly say why Kierkegaard thinks love needs knowledge or wisdom, and what knowledge he thinks love has; and I will hint at how he thinks this knowledge is to be acquired. LOVE’S NEED AND CAPACITY FOR KNOWLEDGE Love needs knowledge, understanding, or awareness in many ways. Since “the condition for having had benefit is always first and foremost to become aware,” and love wants to benefit the neighbor, it needs to make the 167

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neighbor aware, and to be aware in order to make the neighbor aware (WL 85/SKS 9:91). In order to become a loving person one must strive strenuously and sacrificially, and this striving can be discouraging. Therefore people need to be encouraged to love. An excellent form of this encouragement is to become aware of the worth of love. According to Kierkegaard, one can become aware that love is “the highest good and the greatest blessedness,” and “the only thing worth living for” (WL 239/SKS 9:240; WL 375/SKS 9:368). Such awareness is highly encouraging. We saw in the introduction to this book that skill or art needs knowledge of its material and its task, or at least sensitivity to them.2 Kierkegaard agrees. He says that love has a general “understanding of what it is to help another human being” (WL 276/SKS 9:274). In order to help, or do good, a lover needs to be aware of a good, preferably the best good. Kierkegaard says that a lover can be aware of the “precious nature” of love (WL 25/SKS 9:33). The loving helper also needs to understand not just the worth of love, but its nature. Kierkegaard says that love has “true conception of love” (WL 236/ SKS 9:238). Besides understanding the nature and value of love, the loving helper needs to understand the person to be helped. Kierkegaard says that love has an art by which one gets “to know best what resides in this person” (WL 347/SKS 9:341). In order to understand another person, the lover needs to “understand the art of making yourself no one” so as to set him at ease and make him open up to you, and also in order to pay close attention to him, and not to your own egoistic projections (WL 347/SKS 9:341). And, of course, the lover must know how to help. Kierkegaard says that love “knows how to confer a blessing” (WL 213/SKS 9:216). Similarly he writes that “the one who loves knows how to make himself unnoticed so that the person helped does not become dependent upon him—by owing him the greatest beneficence” (WL 274/SKS 9:272). In summary, love knows or understands what it needs to know in order to help the neighbor: namely, what helping is, the nature and worth of the good for human beings, the individual character of the person to be helped, the means of helping, and how in practice actually to help. When helping others, a lover might dare to do things that would be utterly irresponsible without knowledge. Kierkegaard indicates that it can happen in love that you “perceive what is best for” your neighbor “better than he can” (WL 20/SKS 9:28). And if you perceive this, you may act for his benefit in a way that he deems insulting and disrespectful. Similarly, we have seen that Kierkegaard thinks a lover may deceive another person for her own good. But if a person were to do this without knowing well what he was about, that would be presumptuous, reckless, and therefore unloving. Father Zosima, the teacher of active love in The Brothers Karamazov, agrees that love often

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needs to be benevolently condescending, when he says “that most people need to be looked after like children, and some like the sick in hospitals.”3 Kierkegaard thinks that love can know an astonishing amount. He says that, through love, you can “discover that God is” (WL 361/SKS 9:355). Through love you can “become aware,” it can “become really clear to you,” that God “created you,” and that you, “like every human being,” are “loved by God” (WL 102/SKS 9:107; WL 364/SKS 9:358). But why itemize love’s knowledge, when Kierkegaard explicitly asserts that “every human being can come to know everything about love” (WL 364/SKS 9:358)?4 Although love needs knowledge as much as it needs art, Kierkegaard praises love’s art, but not its knowledge. Love’s art is beautiful, and therefore attracts people. But praising love’s knowledge risks puffing people up, thereby making them unloving. Kierkegaard generally regards knowledge as a mere means: “the essentially Christian . . . is not related to knowing but to acting” (WL 96/SKS 101). Kierkegaard claims that the commandment, you shall love, “wants only to be understood in order to be practiced” (WL 25/SKS 9:32). There is, however, at least one instance of love’s knowledge that Kierkegaard regards as an end. The one who loves desires, as an end in itself, that he and the beloved know that they are loved. For knowing that one is loved is good in itself, even if it also is useful as a means. HOW TO ACQUIRE LOVE’S KNOWLEDGE To examine the means to love’s knowledge well would require a long treatment. In this section I will provide only a very brief summary. One way of knowing the worth of love, as we saw in chapter four, involves rational argumentation. The arguments have this form: if you poetically perceive the worth of erotic love and friendship, then you can also see that they have defects, and you can understand that Christian love may hope to remedy these defects. But you cannot know on the basis of arguments that Christian love actually remedies these defects. Another means of knowing love is to believe in it: “The first point developed in this discourse was that we must believe in love—otherwise we simply will not know that it exists; but now the discourse returns to the first point and says, repeating: Believe in love! If we are to know love, this is the first and the last thing to say about it” (WL 16/SKS 9:23). By believing in love one becomes open to discovering it, and can come to know it, according to the old formula: fides quaerens intellectum. If you believe in love, then of course you should strive to be loving. If you so strive, then perhaps you will come know about love experientially. Moreover, by striving to love you may come to resemble divine love.

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Kierkegaard explains that this resemblance is crucial for acquiring knowledge of love, because in spiritual matters “[l]ike is known only by like; only someone who abides in love can know love, and in the same way his love is to be known” (WL 16/SKS 9:24). Thus, if you imitate divine love, then you may build up in yourself a likeness to it that will enable you to know it. Kierkegaard claims that everyone, using conscience, can “understand . . . what every person should do” (WL 79/SKS 9:85); and that “every person understands what the highest is,” if he or she does not willfully darken the light of this understanding (WL 78/SKS 9:84). But, since loving one’s neighbor as oneself is hard work, we have a motive to avoid love, and to avoid understanding our duty to love. Kierkegaard writes that people “timorously and traitorously avoid understanding” the duty to love (WL 103/SKS 9:108); and that “they know nothing higher [than selfish prudence] because they refuse to know anything higher” (WL 125/SKS 9:128). If love means hard work, self-denial, and then, as Kierkegaard claims, being hated by the world because one loves, then it is temptingly convenient to deceive oneself about the duty to love the neighbor. Granting all this, we can see another means of knowing love, namely, self-examination aimed at uncovering one’s self-deceptions concerning love. Kierkegaard claims that if a person strives to love and to understand love with all her might, she will discover that she is “able to do nothing at all” without God (WL 362/SKS 9:356). Then, if she is willing to accept divine assistance, all that she needs to know about love can be revealed to her (WL 364/9:358). The discovery that one is capable of nothing shocks a person, can make her cease busily trying to do her own will, and may thus create inner silence and receptivity to hearing the instruction of divine love. It is worth stressing that according to Kierkegaard the chief means of knowing love are not argumentative, but conscience, experience through striving, self-examination, accepting divine help because one has deeply experienced one’s own impotence without God, and coming to resemble divine love. Obviously, if Kierkegaard claims that the means of knowing divine love are spiritual, then the best means of evaluating this claim must also be spiritual.5 NOTES 1. See Richard McCombs, The Paradoxical Rationality of Soren Kierkegaard (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). In that book I argue that, despite appearances, Kierkegaard affirms reason, and that the source of this irrational appearance is that in order to promote rationality Kierkegaard often pretends to reject reason. 2. See Robert L. Perkins, “Upbuilding as a Propaedeutic for Justice,” in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard

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Commentary 5 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2003), 325–56. Perkins argues that, as an art, “virtue requires knowledge” (342), and that helping someone requires that you understand him (343). 3. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 217. 4. Dostoevsky agrees with Kierkegaard that love needs knowledge. In The Brothers Karamazov he writes that active love wants to help, and that to do this one needs to “know firmly what was good and needful” for people (187). Father Zosima claims that this knowledge is possible when he says that active love is, “for some people, perhaps a whole science” (58). Dostoevsky describes Alyosha as making progress in this science when he has Kolya praise him because he “know[s] how to give comfort” (558). 5. For two scholars who regard Kierkegaard as having a low view the possibility of religious knowledge, see Mark A. Wrathall, “Coming to an Understanding with the Paradox,” and K. Brian Soderquist, “On Faith and Reason(s): Kierkegaard’s Logic of Conviction.”

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Index

admiration: and adoration, 4; definition of, 3; and praise, 3, 18n4; versus imitation, 34 apologetics, 5–6, 105, 109–10 Aquinas, Thomas, 166n6 Aristotle, 87–88 art: preliminary account of love’s, 13–15; importance of how, 7, 10–11, 13, 53, 54, 58, 64, 120; as interesting, 15, 102, 116n5, 149; love’s need for, 7; as combining opposites, 14–15, 61, 68, 120, 129, 157, 159, 164 Aumann, Antony, 76n14–15, 77n18 Barrett, Lee C., 19n5, 102, 105, 116, 130n5, 153n21 believing: as an art of love, 66–72, 139 Brombert, Victor, 18n2 Bukdahl, Jorgen, 152n1 Canaanite woman, the, 137 Carlisle, Clare, 46n1, 48n2 Christ, 55, 64, 83, 116n conscience, 133–34, 142–43, 162, 170 Crites, Stephen, 166n3 Davenport, John, 47n1 direct communication, 56–57

Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov, 64, 66–67, 83–85, 94–97, 123–29, 138, 171n4; Crime and Punishment, 137 doubt, 67–68 Dreyfus, Herbert, 21n8 Dunning, Stephen N., 166n4 duty, 142 equality, 108, 131–53: artfully expressing, 137–48; and egalitarian, 131–33; importance of for Kierkegaard, 131; in capacity for love’s art, 135–47, 148–51; social, 153n21; in capacity for love’s wisdom, 133–34 Eliot, George, 64: Daniel Deronda, 70, 71; Middlemarch, 64–65, 69–72, 89–94, 95 erotic love, 88–89: as rival of Christian love, 103–8 Evans, C. Stephen, 29, 46n1, 47n1, 48n2, 49n4 expressiveness: of love, 63–65 fastidiousness, 73–74 Ferreira, M. Jamie, 19n6, 19–20, 54, 65, 76n9, 76–77, 77n44, 98n1– 5, 130n2–4, 152n11–16, 153n17–18 177

178

Index

forgiveness, 16, 79–80, 87–88, 141 friendship, 88–89; as rival of Christian love, 103–6, 109 Green, Ronald M., 46–47n1, 48n2 Griswold, Charles, 87–88 Hall, Amy Laura, 18n3, 106 Hanney, Alastair, 48n2 hope: as an art of love, 72, 140 Hughes, Carl C., 20n7, 153n20 ideals, 2–6, 14, 15, 18nn2,4, 73–74, 87–88, 156, 157–58, 161: need for, 27–29 imagination, 58–59, 72, 140 indirect communication: as an art of love, 56–63 infinite debt, 143–44 infinite resignation, 25, 30, 38 interpretation: as an art of love, 73–74 irony, 5, 42, 59 John, The First Epistle of, 119–23, 129 Kierkegaard, Soren: as poet, 1–4; The Concept of Anxiety, 105, 120; The Concept of Irony, 1, 5; Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 14, 21n9, 27, 32, 33, 34, 58, 59, 155; The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, 2, 158–62; Christian Discourses, 14, 36, 44, 52, 113, 133, 145, 164; Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, 60, 114; For Self-Examination, 2, 33; Fear and Trembling, 2, 4, 14, 18, 23–50, 61, 98n7, 136; The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air, 157–58; Practice in Christianity, 34, 35, 113, 117n10, 155, 156, 163, 164, 166n5; The Point of View for my Work as an Author, 1, 57, 60, 63; Repetition, 35; Stages on Life’s Way, 1, 2, 5, 18n4, 28, 50n14; The Sickness Unto Death, 2, 4, 32, 34,

58, 111, 113; The Moment, 2, 3; Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, 1, 64; Without Authority, 1, 3, 131 knowledge, 66, 68: love’s need and capacity for, 167–69; how to acquire love’s, 169–70 Krishek, Sharon, 20–21, 49n8, 50n12– 13, 76n18, 77n21, 116n1, 117n6 Lessing, 136 Lippitt, John, 47n1, 80, 98n1 love: art of, 13–15; purpose of, 7 MacDonald, George, 55 Mackey, Louis, 20n7, 46n1, 49n7 Manipulation, 62–63, 77 McCombs, Richard, 170n1 mercifulness, 54–55, 142 Montero, B.G., 21n8 mood, 120, 129 Murdoch, Iris, 148–51 Nelson, Christopher A.P., 17n,1 165n1, 166n2 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 18n2 offense, 67, 80, 97, 111–13, 125, 137, 141, 162; relation to admiration, 112–13; relation to praise, 111–13 peace-making, 89–95 Peter, St., 83, 137 Paul, St., 51–54, 131, 166n6, 167 Perkins, Robert L., 46n1, 153n21, 170–71 Pyper, Hugh S., 166n3 Plato, 18n2, 76n12, 146, 165 poet, the: Kierkegaard as, 3–4; as rival of Christian love, 103–4; the task of, 1–3, 26; weakness of, 157 praise: as apologetics-substitute, 5–6; artfulness of love’s, 144–47; as communicating understanding or knowledge, 3, 18n, 42–43;

Index

competence in, 30; definition of, 3; as demanding a decision, 113–14; dialectical character of, 104–10; of faith, 23–50; and ideals, 2–4; of love for its art, 155–64; and offense, 111–13; purpose of, 101; and selfdenial, 114–16; as ubiquitous in Kierkegaard’s authorship, 1, 17n, 22n, 165 prodigal son, the, 85 reconciliation, 80–88, romantic love. See erotic love sacred memory, 84, 95–98, 123, 125– 26, 129 seeing: as an art of love, 73–74 selfhood: building up of, 56 self-examination, 170 skill: as element of art, 9–13; definition of, 9

179

Soderquist, Anna Strelis, 76n14 Soderquist, K. Brian, 49–50n11, 171n5 subjectivity, 56; as artful, 14, 21n, 58; and indirect communication, 58–70 suspicion, 69–70 Tajafuerce, Begonya Saez, 19n5, 116–117 taste, 15, 61, 73, 74 Tolstoy, 82, 151 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 18n2 upbuilding art, 8, 16, 19, 51–77, 84–87, 95–98, 101–2, 123–26, 129, 125, 139 Venkatesh, Krishnan, 152n8 Walsh, Sylvia, 18–19, 20n7, 21–22, 153n21 Westphal, Merold, 36–37, 47n1 Wrathall, Mark. A., 21n8, 49n9, 171n5

About the Author

Richard McCombs received his PhD in philosophy from Fordham University in 2000. Since 1999 he has taught at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives with his wife, Acacia. He is the author of The Paradoxical Rationality of Sören Kierkegaard.

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