Love's Grateful Striving

Søren Kierkegaard''s Works of Love (1847) a series of deliberations on the commandment to love one''s neighbour has often been condemned by critics. This book seeks to rehabilitate Works of Love as one of Kierkegaard''s most important works. Jamie Ferreira shows that Kierkegaard''s deliberations on love are highly relevant to some important themes in contemporary ethics including: impartiality duty partiality equality mutuality reciprocity self-love sympathy and sacrifice. Works of Love also has implications for postmodern concerns about the normative relation between Self and Other - questions of gift and responsiveness infinite demand and responsibility. In addition Ferreira argues Works of Love also bears on such issues as the role of God as middle term and the possibility of preserving the aesthetic dimensions of love in a religious ethic of relation.