Søren Kierkegaard's "Works of Love" challenges the prevailing notion of romantic love, advocating for a demanding, Christian-inspired love that extends compassion and forgiveness to all, especially those deemed unworthy.
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one of the most provocative analyzes of
Love ever produced is to be found in the
writings of the Danish existential
philosopher Soren Kierkegaard
in a book entitled works of Love
published in Copenhagen in 1847.
clickergard then 34 years old proposed a
theory which deliberately upset every
leading idea that his own age in this
respect very similar to our own liked to
entertain about the hallowed concept of love
love
first and most importantly Kiker guard
insisted that most of us have no idea
what love is even though we refer to the
term incessantly the first half of the
19th century in Europe saw the Triumph
of what we today call romantic love
involving a veneration and worship of
one very special person with whose soul
and body we hope to unite our own
kikagard insisted that through
concentrating on romantic love we
develop a narrow and impoverished sense
of what love should actually be love is
not he insisted the special excitement
we feel when in the presence of someone
unusually beautiful Pure or accomplished
he proposed that we return instead to an
exacting version of Christian love which
commands us to love everyone starting
most arduously with all those who we by
Instinct consider to be Unworthy of Love
kikeard made a vital distinction between
what in Danish is termed Calicut true
love the kind Christians are commanded
to give and elskov or erotic love for
cakey God we should learn to love all
the many people it would be so tempting
to curse and to hate those whom we
believe are mistake and ugly irritating
venal wrong-headed or ridiculous to
learn to love such people that is to
practice Calicut and that is the real
accomplishment and the summit of our
Humanity it is true love when we can
look at someone who appears misguided
lazy angry or proud and instead of
labeling them revolting can wander with
imagination and sympathy how they might
have come to be this way when we can
perceive the Lost vulnerable or hurt
child that must lie somewhere within the
perplexing or dispiriting adult
love means making the effort to extend
our compassion beyond the bounds of
Attraction so that we may look
generously on all those we might at
first glance have deemed Beyond The Pale
or undeserving kikagard tells us that if
we understood love properly when we said
we loved a person we wouldn't mean that
we admired them but that we had a handle
on all the many difficulties that
underpinned their troubling and
objectionable sides
was especially aggrieved by how his
contemporaries had replaced the
Christian emphasis on forgiveness with
the pursuit of something that feels a
great deal more objective hard-edged and
rational namely Justice the pursuers of
Justice want to give everyone what they
actually deserve this sounds extremely
reasonable until one comes face to face
with an uncomfortable fact that if we
all actually ended up with what we truly
deserved the world would at once be
rendered entirely unlivable the attempt
to pursue Justice at all costs and the
belief that doing so is theoretically
possible gives rise to appalling
intolerance for if one really believes
that one can be a Flawless instrument of
righteousness then there is logically no
limit to the degree of Rage or the
sternness of punishments that can be
brought to bear upon wrongdoers
but for Geek guard our goal should not
be to try to create a world in which
everyone gets exactly what they deserve
it is to try to ensure that as many of
us as possible get the kindness that we need
need
apply to Children concepts of Justice
quickly reveal their absurdities Kiger
guard could see that if parents were to
give their children exactly what they
deserved most small people would have a
stroke be put out on hillsides to Die
the pursuit of Justice May spring from
the noblest of motives but it is in fact
a quick route to an unloving hell
instead kikagard proposed that there is
a ladder of love from the most
undemanding to the true and that we must
learn to climb this ladder on the first
rung of the ladder we love those who
love us then we love those who do not
love us then we love those who persecute
us and finally and triumphantly we
should love everyone without exception
Kiki God mocks those who say they
believe in love but then add that they
haven't found someone that they can love
there are millions of people around
points out Kierkegaard if we say that
they are not worthy of love we haven't
understood love we need to love those we
can actually see not in kindergarten's
terms invisible beings a kicker Guardian
dating site would force us to love
utterly random candidates not based on
admiration or virtue but on the basis of
our shared Humanity kikagard bemoaned
the selfishness of preferential love
Christianity has never taught that one
must admire his neighbor he wrote one
shall simply love him
Kiki guard detects an appalling
snobbishness in romantic love people who
otherwise Pride themselves on their lack
of prejudice will apply terrifyingly
strict criteria to their choice of
partner they want someone with just a
certain sort of face or income or sense
of humor they think of themselves as
kind and tolerant but actually when it
comes to love they have all the
broad-mindedness of a believer in what
Kierkegaard called a caste system
whereby men are inhumanly separated
through the distinctions of Earthly life
kickergard adds Christians don't only
love the poor they love everyone the
rich the corrupt the powerful he who in
truth loves his neighbor loves also his
enemy love is the fulfilling of a law to love
love
Kiki God talks about Christ's love for
his disciple Peter who repeatedly lets
him down
Christ did not say Peter must change
first and become another man before I
can love him again no just the opposite
he said Peter is Peter and I love him
love if anything will help him to become
another man so in imitation of Christ we
should love people especially if they
are hateful doing something hateful does
not disqualify anyone from Love in fact
it makes them all the more deserving of
it we speak continuously about
perfection and the perfect person rights
kicker guard but Christianity speaks
about being the perfect person who
limitlessly loves the person he sees
with all his imperfections and all his
weaknesses ultimately kicker guard wants
us to do something that sounds both
utterly odd and yet entirely kind
to be a Christian means to be the
imitator of Christ he writes and to be
an imitator means that your life has to
have as much similarity to his as it is
possible for a human life to have
Danish readers of the 1840s who came
across cake God's writings on love must
have been as surprised as we are about
what this philosopher had to say on the
subject because his perspective is so
different from that we ordinarily
operate with but however arduous message
to us may be we can see how relevant it
remains we too so often get stuck on the
idea that we have not found the one and
on that basis refuse to love anyone we
too judge and moralize rather than
forgive and lend sympathy we may still
be at the dawn of understanding what
true love really offers and requires of us
us
to learn more about love try our book on
how to find love which explains why we
have the types we do and how our early
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