SKC Seminar Autumn 2025

Lukas Bacho

(Yale University, USA)

"Love's Hidden Life: The Enigma of Emotion in Kierkegaard's Works of Love"

Existing philosophical treatments of Kierkegaard’s Works of Love (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger, 1847) make many assumptions linked to the question of whether Kierkegaard conceives of Christian neighborly love (Kjerlighed) as essentially emotional. In fact, the book itself seems hazy or perhaps even self-contradictory on this question. But in this workshop, I’ll argue that, contrary to some of Kierkegaard’s own statements, Kjerlighed must be understood as essentially emotional. For this I’ll rely on analysis of the text and contemporary philosophy of emotion that Kierkegaard (in his own way) seems to anticipate. I’ll then show how my argument has significant implications not only for Kierkegaard’s ethics—and its relationship to others’ ethics, especially Kant’s—but also for the ethical viability of Christian love writ large. By considering some prominent critiques of Works of Love in light of my findings, I’ll suggest that Kierkegaard was basically right about what Christian love involves, with the important caveat that he was not attentive enough to Christianity’s concern for the temporal and social world—a concern represented and enacted by Christ himself