Kierkegaard and The Lover

1 . Climacus urges caution by reminding us that an analogy between earthly love and faith is «imperfect» (K W VII, 48), perhaps even a «deception» (K W XII.1, 598). Enrahonar 29, 1998 9 19 5 Kierkegaard and The Lover M. Jamie Ferreira University of Virginia «A believe r, after all, is a lover; as a matter of fact, when it comes to enthusiasm, the most rapturous lover of all lovers is but a stripling compared with a believe r.» (K W XIX, 103) In this judgment made by Anti-Climacus, K i e rk e g a a rd expresses a view found repeatedly in his writings —namely, that the lover is a particularly apt model for re vealing dimensions of religious faith. What then is it to be a «lover»? The figure of the lover winds its ways thro u g hout Kierk e g a a rd's writings, clothed in the concrete experience of aesthetic, ethical, and/or religious categories. As we would expect, «love» and «love r » a re not used univocally in the pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous work s . Nor are those terms used univocally even within the context of the pseudonyms themselves: the picture of the lover found there is sometimes the aesthetic vision of aesthetic love, sometimes the ethical vision of aesthetic love , sometimes the aesthetic perspective on ethical love, sometimes the ethical persp e c t i ve on ethical love, and sometimes the aesthetic or ethical perspective on religious love. What are we to learn, or better, how are we to be enabled, t h rough these varied portraits of the lover? Although I cannot do justice to that variety in these few pages, I want to indicate several of the ways in which an analysis of the «lover» who is most in love can illuminate religious faith1. I will begin with a look at how Kierk e g a a rd's late «deliberations» on «genuine» l ove, love of neighbor, expose a rich interplay between the passion and unconditionality which qualify love . Kierkegaard's most explicit and lengthy account of love, Works of Love (1847) initially sets up a stark contrast between pre f e rential love and non-pre ferential love. Preferential love [Forkjerlighed] is said to be the heart not only of erotic love [Elskov], but also of friendship. Both are consigned to the domain of expressions of self-love since both are ways of loving «another-me»: «erotic love and friendship are preferential love» and «passionate preference is actually another form of self-love.» (KW XVI, 52-53) Both friendship and love reduce to «the I intoxicated in the other I» —even «in love and friendship one's 9 2 Enrahonar 29, 1998 M. Jamie Ferreira 2 . God's incorporeality would imply an imperfection in the analogy, but our embodiedness is central. Although Kierk e g a a rd suggests that «passion» re q u i res that we exclude «the third » , the context makes clear that he is rejecting the «pre f e rence» rather than the «passion»; more ove r, he simply defines «sensuous, flesh» as «selfishness», so we cannot assume that he would see embodied concreteness as negative (K W XVI, 50, 52). neighbor is not loved but one's other self, or the first I once again, but more intensely.» (KW XVI, 56-57) Non-preferential love [Kjerlighed], love of neighbor, on the contrary, is the paradigm of genuine love of an other because it is the paradigm of love for a genuine other. Later in Works of Love, we will discover Kierkegaard's normative proposal that LOVE IS UNSELFISH, LOVE IS FREE, and LOVE IS FAITHFUL. But before considering what is at stake in the model of unselfish, free, and faithful lover (as well as how this illuminates faith), it is important to note that Kierk e g a a rd puts in question the starkness of his dichotomy between preferential and non-preferential love by his account of the relation between various expressions of love. K i e rk e g a a rd takes pains throughout Wo rks of Love to remedy a variety of «misunderstandings» of the status of genuine love by indicating that they are not mutually exc l u s i ve; there is no existential “e i t h e r / o r” here. It is a «misunderstanding» to think that «in Christianity the beloved and the friend are l oved faithfully and tenderly in quite a different way than in paganism.» (K W XVI, 53) The goal is to «pre s e r ve love for the neighbor» i n e rotic love and friendship (KW XVI, 62). K j e rl i g h e dis not a «higher love» in addition to ero tic love and friendship (KW XVI, 45, 58); it is not a «more explicit definition» of pagan love (KW XVI, 142); it is not a different «type» of love since t h e re is «only one kind of love, the spirit's love» (KW XVI, 66, 143). It should «permeate» eve ry expression of love (KW XVI, 112); it can and should «lie at the base of and be present in eve ry other expression of love» (KW X V I , 146). Genuine love allows «drives», «inclination», «feeling», «natural re l a t i o n s » and «pre s c r i p t i ve rights [...] to remain in force»; it is not indifferent to «family relations» or «friendship» or «fatherland». (KW XVI, 144). The sanctification it seeks is to «make eve rything new while eve rything is still old.» (K W XVI, 145) The result —Christianity «has not changed anything» («eve ry t h i n g is still old») in the content of love and friendship, while it «has changed eve rything, has changed love as a whole.» (KW XVI, 147) I take these affirmations of unchanged content to suggest that the genuinely loving response addre s s e s specific concrete human needs: the concreteness and distinctiveness of love do not necessarily compromise neighbor love, and, conve r s e l y, neighbor love does not necessarily jeopard i ze the concreteness and distinctiveness of love . What do we learn from this suggestion that one does not leave erotic love or friendship behind in order to love someone as a neighbor, that love can be p re s e rved and transfigured in a transforming experience? We learn —again— what we have already heard from Climacus—namely, that love is after all, w h a t e ver else it is, a p a s s i o n. That is, it is a response of embodied, concre t e persons to embodied, concrete persons2.If, then, faith can be fruitfully analo- Kierkegaard and The Lover Enrahonar 29, 1998 9 3 3 . This does not, of course, deny that faith is a continual struggle or striving. g i zed with the passion of love, as Anti-Climacus suggests, we are re m i n d e d that the «happy passion» which Climacus terms «faith» (K W VII, 54, 59) is c o n c retely embodied, as contrasted with the fantastic abstraction of an idea l i zed pure intellect. How else does the understanding of love as passion illuminate re l i g i o u s faith? First, Kierk e g a a rd's various authors express an Aristotelian perspective on passion —for Aristotle, passions like love and anger illustrate a category which transcends the distinction between passive and active— we are re sponsible for our passions, they are our acts, even though they may not be done deliberately or «on purpose». When Climacus suggests that existence is «a time of falling in love», a «time for being in love», he hints at the passivity of love — yet he also describes existence as a «task», the task of existing in contradiction, the task of subjectivity. (K WXII.1, 396-397; 167, 314, 349-350) Love is a falling and a task — it is neither simply passive nor simply active. Pa s s i o n is both passive and active, or better, it transcends the simplistic dichotomy b e t ween them. A second characteristic of passion is that it is not something one has «to a certain degree». Climacus insists: «Much that is strange has been said about enthusiasm, much that is deplorable, much that is outrageous, but the most obtuse thing said about it is that it is to a certain degree». Si m i l a r l y, with ero t i c l ove: «the most obtuse thing said about it is that it is to a certain degre e » . (K W XII.1, 229) Passions like enthusiasm and love exhibit a t h re s h o l d d imension: one is not somewhat in love or a little enthusiastic; rather, until a response has a particular quality, it is not yet love or enthusiasm at all. Fa i t h , as a «happy passion», is similarly an integral, all-or-nothing, experience3. What are the implications of passion's rejection of «a certain degree»? On e implication is suggested through the connection Anti-Climacus makes betwe e n a lover and a lack of reasons or defense. He writes: «the most rapturous love r of all lovers is but a stripling compared with a believe r. Imagine a love r. Is it not true that he would be capable of speaking about his beloved all day long and all night, too, day in and day out? But do you believe it could ever occur to him, do you believe, it would be possible for him, do you not think he would find it loathsome to speak in such a manner that he would try to demonstrate by means of three reasons that there is something to being in l ove [...] do you believe that a lover would ever think of conducting a defense of his being in love, that is admit that to him it was not the absolute, unconditionally the absolute, but that he thought of it as being in a class with arguments against it and on that basis developed a defense.» «Is it not obv ious that the person who is really in love would never dream of wanting to p rove it by three reasons or to defend it.» (KW XIX, 103, 104) In other word s , as the medieval mystics like Ec k h a rt, Silesius, and Marguerite Po rete, we re fond of saying, love is «without why. » 9 4 Enrahonar 29, 1998 M. Jamie Ferreira 4 . Un f o rtunately this is translated in the English version as «re c i p rocity», which can mislead as to what mutuality is allowe d . 5. The «criterion» as found in remembering the dead emphasizes asymmetry, but the asymm e t ry of the test case is not a model for love because, as he insists, «without a yo u and an I, there is no love (even though with m i n e and yo u r s, there is no love).» (K W XVI, 266) The themes of “without degre e s” and “without why” are converse sides of the idea of unconditionality, and Kierk e g a a rd's description in Wo rks of Love of genuine love as unselfish, free, and faithful illustrates this unconditionality. «Learn», he says, «to love the living unselfishly, fre e l y, faithfully.» (K W X V I , 358) That love is unselfish is one expression of how it is “without why”. Hi s account of love as unselfish is elaborated in terms of the rejection of «re p a yment love» (G j e n k j e rl i g h e d)4.That is, love is not conditional on anything give n to us by the other. Love is without the “w h y” of a motive of either rew a rd or a particular kind of response. The extreme of this—that love is not conditional on any response by the other—is found in the limit case of love of the dead. But this is a test case, for Kierk e g a a rd, a heuristic device meant to clarify the purity of our motive s5. The freedom of love is another aspect of its being “without why”. He re K i e rk e g a a rd's point is that love is not conditional on any coercion, howe ve r, subtle, by the other. What is «extorted» from us cannot be love. (K W X V I , 351) Love is without the “w h y” of manipulation or pre s s u re by the other. Fi n a l l y, the fidelity which characterizes love can be phrased in terms of being “without why”. What is at stake here is that love is not conditional on the other's faithfulness, support, or encouragement. One's love is not corre l a t e d on a one-to-one basis with the other's response; it does not va ry with va r i ations in the beloved. Love is without the “w h y” of being tied automatically to a change in the other. Again, the extreme case of irre l e vance of response is found only in the limit case, the heuristic test, provided by love of the dead. In sum, an analogy of faith with the passion of love suggests that faith is c o n c retely embodied (rather than mere intellectual assent), not susceptible of « d e g rees», and «without why (without justification)». Elaborating the analogy through the dimensions of `without why' in Wo rks of Love, we can see that faith as love of God (or the following of Christ) is absolutely unconditional. Indeed, one could argue that still another message is implicit in Kierk e g a a rd ' s discussion of the test case of love of the dead: the message is that the test case for earthly love (love of the dead) parallels or pre p a res the soul for the test case of faith —namely, for the asymmetry of a «dark night». Kierk e g a a rd ' s God is, after all, «a Hidden Go d » . Bi b l i o g r a p h y Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fra g m e n t s , Kierk e g a a rd's Wr i t i n g s XII.1 (1992). Trans. How a rd V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton Un i ve rsity Pre s s . Kierkegaard and The Lover Enrahonar 29, 1998 9 5 Philosophical Fra g m e n t s, Kierk e g a a rd's Writings, VII (1985). Trans. How a rd V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton Un i versity Pre s s . The Sickness Unto De a t h, Kierk e g a a rd's Writings, XIX (1980). Trans. How a rd V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton Un i versity Pre s s . Wo rks of Love, Kierk e g a a rd's Writings, XVI (1995). Trans. How a rd V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton Un i versity Pre s s .