Abstract
The purpose of the paper is to explore the presumed link between love and self-sacrifice by exploring the presuppositions through which it is established in Kierkegaard’s thought, and to briefly present a different perspective on those presuppositions. The paper has three parts. I begin with an exploration of the roles of self-sacrifice and the double-danger in Kierkegaard’s thinking about Christian love. In the second part, I focus on the role of the “anxiety of instrumentality”, i.e., the (poor) lover’s anxiety that if s/he benefits from loving then his/her love is impure, in Kierkegaard’s thinking about love and about the paradigmatic role of the despised martyr within it. I end with the Maimonidean conception of love, which allows no space for the poor spouse predicament, presenting the detached prophet/sage as the perfect lover. Unlike the Kierkegaardian paradigm, which links love with giving-up, this paradigm links love with giving, and with pleasure, joy, and happiness, thereby rendering sacrifice and suffering impossible when truly loving. Bringing these paradigms to bear on one another, I conclude that if we wish to reject both the despised martyr and the detached prophet/sage as paradigms of perfect loving then we are to give up the ideal that underlies both paradigms, namely, that it is only in “willing love alone” that we love purely.
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Notes
For an enlightening commentary on Works of Love, see Ferreira (2001). For various discussions of the nature and role of love for Kierkegaard, see Perkins (1999). For a discussion of Kierkegaard’s ethics of love, see, e.g., Evans (2004); Minister, Simmons and Strawser (2017). For the relation between preferential and non-preferential loves and the possibility of living the former in its fullest, see particularly Krishek (2009); Krishek (2014: 155-166); Lippitt (2012: 177-197); Lippitt (2013).
The term is borrowed from Halbertal (2012). For more on this term, see the second part of this paper.
For a lucid discussion of the role of guilt and the consciousness of sin for Kierkegaard, see Walsh, 2005, Ch. 1.
“Making oneself into nothing” does not entail passivity. As Ferreira puts it: “in relation to others I am both able to do nothing and yet able to do everything, with God as my helper. That is, I am nothing, but with God’s help, I can do everything for the other. What I can and should do requires self-sacrificing unselfishness, which is the outward expression of inward self-denial.“ (Ferreira, 2001: 234). For a helpful discussion of the dialectics between activity and passivity, the role of volitionism, and the meanings of “freedom”, see also Ferreira (1998: 207-234).
Kierkegaard’s characterization of Christian love as self-denial’s love does not entail that the lover’s telos in acting is self-denial or self-sacrifice; rather, his/her telos is to love Christianly. Since it is, however, impossible to love Christianly without self-denial, Kierkegaard describes self-denial and self-sacrifice as the defining features of Christian love. For more on that distinction as well as on the difference between a third-person account of the Christian lover and a first person account of his/her commitments and goals, see section Ic.
In a later article, in which he criticizes Walsh’s focus on Kierkegaardian self-denial he phrases it similarly, with the words: “It is important therefore to ask what limits are placed on ‘self-denial’ by recognizing the importance of such self-respect as part of proper self-love.“ (Lippitt 2015: 139).
See, e.g., SKS 8, 251-307; UD, 155-212.
Lippitt maintains that Kierkegaard’s commitment to basic self-respect is implicit in his examples of improper self-love. See Lippitt (2013: 121); Lippitt, (2105: 139). Kierkegaard’s examples, however, e.g., the example of the bustler who wastes his time and powers in the service of futile pursuits, the light-minded person or the depressed person who “desires to be rid of life” (SKS 9, 30-31; WL 23) seem to be directed at the one who lacks “the spirit’s definition of a self (SUD, 46). Not only is “basic self-respect” as construed by Lipppitt not implicit in these examples but it can easily be argued that “basic self-respect” as used by Lippitt is incompatible with these examples. The example of the person who “self-tormentingly thinks to do God a service by torturing himself” (SKS 9, 31; WL 23) is a better candidate for Lippitt’s argument. See, e.g., his mention of this example in Lippitt (2015: 140). I take this example as directed at showing that self-torment, per se, is not the aim; the aim is love, which although involves torment, and contrary to Lippitt, even excessive torment, does not involve self-inflicted torment.
As an anonymous reviewer lucidly puts it, it does not follow that there are no limits to what we are permitted to do for others in hope of bringing them to God. Kierkegaard’s emphasis is on the costs of loving, insisting that they are to play no part in the lover’s determining his/her course of action, his/her works of love. In other words, the Christian lover would agree to endure any amount of ill for the benefit of the other. The willingness to endure any amount of ill from the world is not tantamount to encouraging ill will from the world.
Loving the neighbor, therefore, is defined solely by one criterion—God. Whatever restrictions are placed upon the Christian lover in regard to what s/he is required to do or to refrain from doing, these are imposed by the criterion – not by a presumed parity between the lover and his/her neighbor. It is, of course, unclear, what God as criterion implies in each case; being uncertain and possibly deceived about one’s genuine motives, being uncertain about the right course of action, and how it may affect the neighbor, is part-and-parcel of the difficulty inherent in being a Christian lover and living as such. Kierkegaard explicitly discusses the difficulty to discern how to love Christianly in “Does a human being have the right to let himself be put to death for the truth?“ (Without Authority, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, Jew Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997, 47-89). Despite the reservations that are voiced in this essay, and despite the distinction that is drawn between Christ and “the human being”, I do not believe that Kierkegaard’s purpose is to provide an answer to the essay’s question. The essay’s purpose, I believe, is to raise the question and explore its meaning and its importance. Be that as it may, the ultimate judge of whether one has loved Christianly is God. It is in that sense that God is the criterion. I view the entailed human humility as one of the strengths of this account.
I am here in disagreement with Ferreira’s understanding of the scope of the second danger, for Kierkegaard. Ferreira maintains that “when we try to follow Christ’s example we will in all likelihood suffer, either because of the sacrifice we make to help another or because others will probably be offended by what we do.“ (Ferreira 2001: 237; my emphases). Like Ferreira, however, I believe that suffering, self-denial and the world’s rejection are not the goal, for the Kierkegaardian lover; rather, love is the goal.
By “actual endurance” of rejection by the world, I refer to the world’s attitude toward the Christian lover—not to the Christian lover’s attitude toward the world.
We may use the principle of double effect to distinguish between the lover’s commitment to live and act as a Christian lover, having love as his/her telos, and the lover’s foreseeing that living such love would involve self-sacrifice and the second danger.
The epistemology of the Christian lover’s trust and hope, as it is explicated in Works of Love and its relation to the epistemology of the absurd in Fear and Trembling is a complicated question that requires careful discussion. Unfortunately, it goes beyond the scope of this paper. Since I believe that the status of Abraham’s faith in Fear and Trembling is unclear, I believe that this question is even more problematic than it appears and involves more than epistemological considerations.
As Ferreira puts it, “Self-denial is not what … [the Christian lover] aims for directly…” (Ferreira 2001: 237). Ferreira rightly emphasizes that, “when Kierkegaard warns that we shall ‘die to the world’ or that we must ‘forsake the world’ he is not recommending self-denial for its own sake.“ (Ferreira 2001: 237). See also Dalferth who lucidly distinguishes between self-giving in love, i.e., loving unconditionally and unrestrictedly and seeking self-sacrifice or martyrdom: “One does not give up on life but lives it in such a way that it exhausts itself in the love of others. One loves so unconditionally and so unrestrictedly that even one’s own self-preservation does not present itself as an obstacle or limit to this love. It is thus not self-sacrifice and as such sacrifice itself, but neighbor love and as such love itself, which constitutes the horizon in which the sense of one’s death is disclosed. Hence death as a result of neighbor love is distinct from altruistic self-sacrifice.“ Dalferth (2010: 83).
By “willingness to be hated” Kierkegaard means enduring the neighbor’s hatred. It goes without saying that being hated is not the lover’s telos.
Even if we concede to Ferreira the significance of Kierkegaard’s comments on learning proper self-love it remains true that the relation between love and self-sacrifice plays an important role for him.
Although the Kierkegaardian lover does not aim directly at suffering, Lippitt’s critique is a valid one for two reasons: (1) Kierkegaard emphasizes self-denial and self-sacrifice as defining features of Christian loving, and (2) Kierkegaard insists on the second danger, emphasizing, as I pointed out, that, “all self-denial that finds support in the world is not Christian self-denial.“ (SKS 9, 195 ; WL 196).
Another line of thinking involves “the crowd is untruth” whose logic and relation to the two lines of thinking discussed in this section deserves analysis.
Lippitt seems to share this supposition, stating: “the danger is self-deception, and there is at the very least an epistemological worry about how we could ever know that our motives were so ‘pure’ (Lippitt, 2015: 142).
As with suffering, losing the money, too, is not the lover’s telos. His telos is to love purely. Owing to his anxiety of instrumentality, he sees the money as an obstacle to his love and wishes it to be gone.
Loving the world is, of course, loving the reward. For a lucid account of what “love of God is hatred of the world” does and does not mean, see, e.g., Ferreira (2001: 65-83).
We, thus, see that the “anxiety of instrumentality” is not limited to asymmetrical relationships. Anyone may feel like the “poor spouse” who has nothing to give the beloved and everything to gain by his/her love for the beloved. Asymmetrical relationships may enhance the anxiety but they do not bring it about on their own.
In other parts of Works of Love, Kierkegaard himself seems to concede that hoping to be loved in return, or needing to be loved in return does not render love impure. He states: “the love that has undergone the change of eternity by becoming duty certainly feels a need to be loved…” (SKS 9, 44; WL 39). I am grateful to an anonymous referee for emphasizing that. See also Ferreira, who argues against the charge that the Kierkegaardian lover foregoes mutuality in love. (Ferreira, 2001: 224 )
Kierkegaard’s conception of the “reward” as a threat does not entail that the Christian lover must reject the love or good will of the beloved, nor does it entail that the lover’s love is always rejected by his/her neighbors. The “anxiety of instrumentality” shows itself most clearly, when Kierkegaard employs the third person observer perspective on the Christian lover. It shapes Kierkegaard’s account of how the world responds to the lover, placing the rejected martyr as the paradigm for the Christian lover’s reception by the world.
Maimonides’s remarks on the binding of Isaac reaffirm that. Stern persuasively argues that for Maimonides, the climax of the narrative lies in the divine prohibition voiced by the angel not to sacrifice Isaac. Stern emphasizes that according to Maimonides, the degree of the prophetic prohibition against sacrificing Isaac is higher than that of the divine call to sacrifice him. (See Stern 2012)
All references to Maimonides within the text are to Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963).
The main difference between Maimonides and Kierkegaard on this issue has to do with their differing manners of construing the relation between suffering and joy. For a consideration of “joy” in Kierkegaard, and its manner of relating to suffering and sorrow, as well as of the similarities and differences between Maimonides and Kierkegaard on suffering and joy, see my Verbin (2017: 382-395). I argued that the “joy” in Kierkegaard’s Discourses, particularly in his Gospel of Sufferings and in his Christian Discourses is incommensurate with both “suffering” and with “temporal happiness”. Thus, “joy” for Kierkegaard (similarly to Maimonides) is not an experience; it does not involve the dissolution of suffering into pain and loss, as it does for Maimonides, nor does it involve their diminishment or reduction. “Joy”, like “blessedness” is another aspect of suffering faithfully, together with the horror. A full account of the relation between love and self-sacrifice, which I cannot undertake in the present paper, would include a detailed account of the nature of both “suffering” and “joy” for Maimonides and Kierkegaard.
Although the Maimonidean prophet/sage may fall prey into the hands of the wicked, (endure the second danger) this is not the paradigm of loving God but the exception. Moreover, even when s/he endures the second danger, it does not cause him/her to suffer.
Maimonides goes very far in this passage, indeed too far, in trivializing our human life, as we ordinarily live it, our attachments to family and friends, and to the various things for which we care. For more on the downside of the Maimonidean dissolution of the anxiety of instrumentality, see later on, in this section.
Both paradigms play a role in our thinking about loving in general: The “sacrificial paradigm” plays a dominant role in poetry, literature, as well as in politics. The “surplus paradigm”, which construes love as characteristically involving abundance, surplus, and the mutual empowerment of both lover and beloved, plays a central role in contemporary culture, in so-called “power-couples”.
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Verbin, N. Love and Self-Sacrifice: Kierkegaard, Maimonides and the Poor Spouse Predicament. Int J Philos Relig 93, 121–145 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-022-09848-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-022-09848-9