Work · Phenomenology & Hermeneutics
A Reckoning with Kierkegaard
Critique of Kierkegaard’s religious individualism: by setting the individual alone before God, Kierkegaard devalued the spontaneous expressions of life such as trust and love, which already carry the ethical within them.
Introduction
Løgstrup published this book in 1968 as a summing-up of his long engagement with Kierkegaard. He argues that Kierkegaard, by placing the single individual alone before God and treating the immediate relations of life as a stage to be overcome, devalued the spontaneous expressions of life – trust, love, mercy – in which, for Løgstrup, the ethical is already present. The critique is directed especially at the “Concluding Unscientific Postscript” and at “Works of Love”. The book was much discussed in Denmark and helped to define Løgstrup’s own philosophy of the sovereign manifestations of life.
Connections
Builds on
- The Ethical Demand1956 · K. E. Løgstrup
Criticizes
- Concluding Unscientific Postscript1846 · Søren Kierkegaard
More works by K. E. Løgstrup
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