AbstractIn this article we will argue that Kierkegaard has a positive view of love as a sheer natural and universal phenomenon. This sheer phenomenon of love is rooted in God’s love and is implanted in human nature by its Creator. Therefore this natural urge to love, that manifests itself both as a lack and a surplus, should not be juxtaposed to Christian neighbor love. For Kierkegaard there is one love, but this one love, hidden in the ground in every person, puts on different shapes and lets itself be known through these different forms. In this article we are interested in the dreaming and searching desire as described in “The Immediate Erotic Stages or The Musical-Erotic” in the first part of Either/Or, as these first and unconscious forms of love are the presupposition for falling in love, another form of love that is investigated in the article. We will argue the original form of love is preferential love, but that neighbor love, as a non-preferential type of love, springs from the same love that is given by God and hidden in every person.

This paper was brought about by a question that has both irritated and interested me for some time now: Is a person’s love of God inversely proportional to the same person’s hatred of the world? Must the one necessarily result in the other? Reading Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits reveals that this topic is constantly recurring throughout most of the discourses, though not all of them have this as a direct theme. In what follows I put forth the thesis that, for Kierkegaard, love is always one. Different kinds of love do not exist; there are only different forms in which love manifests itself. But fundamentally, love is one, and it is precisely this lack of ambiguity that guarantees a connection between a love of God and a love of the world, rather than a contradictory relationship. I am probably not alone in taking offence at the assertion that one’s love of God should be inversely proportional to one’s hatred of the world. Most likely, it is not only my intelligence and ethical consciousness that are alarmed by the idea that the one must necessarily result in the other. It is an assertion that repeatedly emerges throughout the New Testament and is quite often expressed and developed in many of Kierkegaard’s texts. It is a striking assertion. An offensive assertion, indeed, as all the while most of us are quite comfortable in the world we now inhabit and in the relationships we have formed with others in this life – with father, mother, brothers, sisters and all the others whom Kierkegaard collectively refers to as ‘neighbor.’ Why should a love of God imply a hatred of all that is wonderful, full of life and that which is God’s very own creation? What does God get out of it? The neighbor certainly goes home empty-handed! So why this (unreasonable) demand? What does it mean, anyway? How are we to understand the idea that loving God is hatred of the world?

Article Recent Danish Literature on the Upbuilding Discourses 1843 and 1844 and Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions was published on December 31, 2000 in the journal Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook (volume 2000, issue 2000).

'The upbuilding', is not a concept but an action or a communication between two parties: the one who upbuilds and the one who lets himself be upbuilt. This strategy of communication is not similar to the 'dialectic of communication', as often stated, and contrary to such an interpretation it is demonstrated that 'the upbuilding' takes over the best from the indirect communication, but at the same time develops a new way of handling the relationship between the one upbuilt and the one who builds up. This is shown by a dwelling on the reflections on the one who builds up in the first discourse of the second sequence of Works of Love, "Love Builds Up" and the reflections on the one who lets himself be upbuilt in the first two pages of the discourse "The Joy of It: That One Suffers Only Once But Is Victorious Eternally" in Christian Discourses. A close reading of the six prefaces to the early six collections of upbuilding discourses from 1843-44 will substantiate that 'the upbuilding' is a strategy of communication that implies not only a dialogical relation between the one who builds up and the one who lets himself be upbuilt, but also that this dialogical relation becomes a double dialogical relationship, as the one letting himself be upbuilded is acting upbuildingly towards others.

This essay tries to show the nature of the difference between the ethical and the social along with the point of contact between, what are for Kierkegaard, these fundamentally different categories. This issue is approached via a thematic reading of A Literary Review, combined with a brief explication of the views of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas on the relation between the ethical and the social. The distinction Kierkegaard draws in his supplement to The Point of View for My Work as an Author between the religious and the political, is also drawn upon, since it throws light on the distinction Kierkegaard makes between the ethical and the social in A Literary Review. This distinction shows many similarities to the statements of both Buber and Levinas, but also important differences. For Kierkegaard the ethical and the social are, on the one hand, two fundamentally different categories that must not be confused but, on the other, two fundamentally related categories, in that both are necessary for protecting the humanity of man. I try, in the following to show the nature of the difference between the ethical and the social, along with the point of contact between what are, for Kierkegaard, these fundamentally different categories. I approach this issue via a thematic reading of A Literary Review. But first, in order to throw Kierkegaard's position into relief, I will present a brief account of the views of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas on the relation between the ethical and the social. As part of the context for understanding this relation in A Literary Review I will also make use of the distinction Kierkegaard draws in his supplement to The Point of View for My Work as an Author between the religious and the political. 1 Owing to the theme of this article it is unnecessary for me to consider either the criticism addressed by Buber to Kierkegaard in 'Die Frage an den Einzelnen' in Das dialogische Prinzip, 7th ed., Gerungen: Lambert Schneider 1994 [1962], pp. 197214, or Levinas' criticism especially in 'Existence et ßthique' Noms propres, Paris

It is often claimed that Kierkegaard looks upon the neighbor as an absent presence, whereby his conception of love in a sense is emptied of meaning. This critique has been made in Denmark by K.E. L0gstrup, but is was already present in T.W. Adorno's interpretation of Works of Love. The critique made by these two gentlemen forms the background of a close-reading of II. A and IX in Works of Love. From such a reading it becomes clear that the absent neighbor is present in every relation of neighbor love between concrete human beings. It is exactly his absence that gives the ethical demand an eternal and universal validity that is not bound to the actual presence of another individual, but which nevertheless has this presence as its specific object. I. The Absence of the Present Neighbor Kierkegaard's discussion of "the neighbor" in Works of Love has often been characterized as displaying a certain contempt for a conception of "the neighbor" as a concrete individual to whom one is related through an immediate presence. It is supposed that Kierkegaard's concept of the neighbor is completely abstract, an absent presence, so to speak, to which one is bound via a shared humanity but whose concretion is negated by, or subsumed under, the thought that everyone is equal in the eyes of God. This absence of the neighbor also has consequences, argue critics, for Kierkegaard's conception

Article Love and Continuity: The Significance of Intersubjectivity in the Second Part of Either/Or was published on December 31, 1997 in the journal Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook (volume 1997, issue 1997).

This essay is intended to be a reflection on, or more precisely, an experiment with, the title: »The Unhappy Lover of Subjectivity«. It will take the form of a thematic reading of the Philosophical Fragments and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. The experiment itself will consist, however, in the identification of the relation, which according to Kierkegaard constitutes the self, with the relation of the self to God and to other people. My thesis is that these latter relations must be successful if the lover of subjectivity is to become happy and the relation which constitutes the self of this individual is to be successful i.e., is to be positive. The article is constructed around the following three questions: 1. Who is the unhappy lover of subjectivity? 2. What is subjectivity? 3. Why is the lover of subjectivity unhappy?