Publication Details

Abstract

The counter-position of the preferential and non-preferential love was elaborated by Kierkegaard to separate Christian love to one’s neighbor from love to a beloved person, friend or another preferential object of love. Kierkegaard publicly declared himself a religious and Christian author. Therefore, it is the conception of Christian love, which is the crucial subject of his essay. The counter-position, which has been fundamentally presented in his most important work Works of Love, derives from his earlier writings focused on the critique of esthetical, ethical or ironic paradigms of love. Kierkeggard’s concept of love wants to show especially the perception of the Other by an individual. Thus his ethics of love can be characterized as an ethics of a disposition of the loving subject. The theory of Christian love in his work is closely related to the concept of religiously motivated negation, which in his view is conditio sine qua non of the perception of the Other as an ethically reflected object of love independent of the natural preferences of the loving person.