The Work
Works of Love (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger) was published in Copenhagen in September 1847 by C.A. Reitzel. It is one of Kierkegaard's few books published under his own name (rather than a pseudonym), marking it as a direct authorial communication rather than an indirect or ironic presentation. At approximately 400 pages, it consists of two series of 'deliberations' (Overveielser) on the New Testament's teaching about love, organized around individual texts from the Gospels, Paul's letters, James, and 1 John. The standard English translation is that of Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton University Press, 1995), part of the authoritative Princeton edition of Kierkegaard's collected works.
Kierkegaard described the book in his journals as 'the work which most thoroughly presents my whole deliberation about ethics and ethico-religiousness.' It represents the most sustained engagement with biblical ethics in his published works and the clearest statement of his distinctive understanding of Christian love (agape) in distinction from romantic love (eros) and friendship (philia).
Biblical Engagement
Matthew 22:37-39 - the double love commandment: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself' - is the governing text of the work's entire argument. Kierkegaard focuses particularly on the second commandment and on two dimensions: the word shall (love is a duty, not a feeling), and the phrase as thyself (the self provides the standard of love, but the self's love for itself must be rightly understood). His central argument is that genuine Christian love is not a feeling that one naturally experiences toward agreeable or attractive people but an act of will directed equally toward every human being regardless of their personal qualities.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 - 'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up... Charity beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things' - is treated at length in the second series of deliberations, particularly the phrases 'believeth all things' and 'hopeth all things.' Kierkegaard's treatment of these phrases is among the most searching in the book: to 'believe all things' is not gullibility but a disposition of radical interpretive charity that assumes the best possible explanation for another person's behavior. To 'hope all things' is to persist in expectation of the other's redemption even after every natural ground for hope has been exhausted. Both require the suspension of self-protective judgment.
Luke 10:29-37 - the Parable of the Good Samaritan, provoked by the lawyer's question 'And who is my neighbor?' - is central to Kierkegaard's argument about the universality of the love command. The traditional answer to 'Who is my neighbor?' was: those who are near, those who are like me, those who belong to my community. The Samaritan's action inverts this: the neighbor is defined not by proximity or similarity but by need. The neighbor is the one before me who needs my love, regardless of who they are or how different from me. Kierkegaard extends this: the love command defines the neighbor so broadly as to include everyone I encounter - enemy, stranger, person of another race or class - and simultaneously restricts the category so specifically that it means the actual person before me right now, not an abstract humanity.
James 2:14-17 - 'What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?' - provides the concrete, anti-abstraction principle that grounds Kierkegaard's ethics. Love is not a sentiment, a feeling, an idea, or a theological proposition: it is works. The title Works of Love is itself a polemical gesture against spiritualizing interpretations of agape that reduce love to an inner attitude while remaining indifferent to the concrete needs of actual people.
Author and Context
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was born in Copenhagen, the youngest of seven children of Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, a wealthy merchant of melancholy and intense religious sensibility. His father's conviction that God had cursed their family (on obscure grounds) cast a shadow of guilt and anxiety over Kierkegaard's childhood. He studied theology at the University of Copenhagen, completed a dissertation on the concept of irony in Socrates, became engaged to Regine Olsen (whom he loved deeply and broke the engagement with, apparently believing he was unsuited for marriage), and devoted the remaining decade and a half of his life to writing with extraordinary intensity.
The immediate context of Works of Love was Kierkegaard's growing concern with what he called 'Christendom' - the cultural Christianity of his contemporary Denmark, in which being Christian meant being a respectable Danish citizen, and in which the demanding requirements of New Testament love had been domesticated into social convention. Works of Love was a sustained attack on this domestication: it insisted that Christian love as described in the New Testament is not a warm feeling toward agreeable people but a strenuous act of will directed at all people equally, regardless of their agreeableness.
Key Arguments
Kierkegaard distinguishes sharply between 'preferential love' (romantic love, friendship) and 'neighbor love' (agape). Preferential love is based on the qualities of the beloved: it loves because the other is attractive, compatible, loveable. Neighbor love is based on the commandment of God: it loves regardless of the other's qualities. The distinction is absolute: preferential love, however beautiful, is essentially self-love - it loves what pleases the self; neighbor love loves in spite of what displeases the self.
The analysis of 'self' in 'love thy neighbor as thyself' is particularly sophisticated. Kierkegaard argues that the commandment assumes a proper self-love - a love of one's eternal self that consists in obedience to God and the formation of virtue. The command to love the neighbor 'as yourself' then means: desire for the neighbor the same eternal good that you rightly desire for yourself. This reframes neighbor love from sentimentality to a deep concern for the other's true and eternal welfare, which may sometimes conflict with their immediate preferences.
Reception and Influence
The book was not widely received in Kierkegaard's lifetime. Its influence developed slowly in the twentieth century as Kierkegaard's work was translated and studied. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics and The Cost of Discipleship both engage with the love command in ways that reflect Kierkegaard's influence. Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy of the Other - the radical ethical claim that every face-to-face encounter with another person is an encounter with infinite ethical demand - is a philosophical development of Kierkegaard's analysis of neighbor love. Martin Buber's I and Thou (1923) is in dialogue with the same tradition.
Legacy
Works of Love is now recognized as one of the foundational texts of Christian ethics in the modern period. Its influence extends from academic theology and philosophy to pastoral practice and social ethics. Its insistence that agape is obligatory rather than spontaneous, directed toward the unlovable as much as the lovable, and expressed in concrete works rather than abstract sentiment has permanently shaped the discourse of Christian love.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Matthew 5:43-48 (loving enemies), Luke 10:25-37 (the Good Samaritan), 1 Corinthians 13 (the nature of agape), 1 John 4:7-21 (God is love and the practice of love), James 2:14-26 (faith and works), and Romans 12:9-21 (genuine, active love in the community).
Further Reading
- C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction (2009) - the best brief scholarly overview, with a good chapter on Works of Love. - Gene Outka, Agape: An Ethical Analysis (1972) - the landmark twentieth-century study of agape ethics, in which Kierkegaard's analysis is central. - M. Jamie Ferreira, Love's Grateful Striving: A Commentary on Kierkegaard's Works of Love (2001) - the most comprehensive scholarly commentary on the work.