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A place for God: deconstructing love with Kierkegaard

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The human being dwells, in so far as he is a human being, in the nearness of God

(Heidegger 1998, p. 269) (The quote is Heidegger’s translation of Heraclitus’ saying “ἧϑος ἀνϑρώπῳ δαιμον”)

Abstract

There has been a significant increase in studies devoted to Søren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love in contemporary Kierkegaard research. There are several good reasons why this is so. The single theme that dominates, though, is the relation between preferential love and neighborly love. Are they reconcilable or not? The present paper recasts this discussion by situating Works of Love in the trajectory of deconstructive readings of community from Jean-Luc Nancy and onwards. It is divided into three sections. It is first shown that a deconstructive take on preferential and neighborly love indicates how any community has a place for love as its condition of (im)possibility. The opening of this place is then located in the Christian love-commandment. Finally, the expanse of this place is found in the spreading-out of the promise of love. The paper is conceived as a step towards letting love find its place in the analytics of being-there—as the phenomenon which opens the “there” without losing its “with.” The paper concludes with a postscript that points towards this broader context.

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Notes

  1. Quote taken from the supplementary material to Kierkegaard (1995, p. 409 [SKS 20, 86, NB: 118]). To all quotes from Kierkegaard’s writings I add in square bracket the corresponding reference to Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (SKS).

  2. Some deconstructive studies with a particularly relevant emphasis on community with regard to the present paper are: Dooley (2001), Rumble (2004), Wirth (2004) Jegstrup (2006) and Kline (2017). Of interest is also the study of Berres (2008).

  3. This discussion was initiated by Ferreira’s Love’s Grateful Striving (2001) which challenges the traditional view associated with a number of prominent thinkers such as Adorno, Løgstrup and Levinas: that the love Kierkegaard presents is dangerously—perhaps even cynically—but in any case, unrealistically “abstract”. Neighbor love can be preserved in preferential loves, so Ferreira’s contention. This, in turn, has called forth a great number of studies by various authors. Notable contributions are Krishek (2009), which contests the attempt at reconciliation by Ferreira (on the grounds of inconsistency in Kierkegaard), and Lippitt (2013), which defends a new version of it (the idea that neighbor love functions as a kind of test, a “God filter”, for preferential loves).

  4. Similarly, the opening chapter in Esposito’s Communitas is called “Nothing in common” (Esposito 2010, p. 1) and—particularly indicative here—Kline is able to present Works of Love under the heading “Love: holding nothing in common” (Kline 2017, pp. 155–176).

  5. See the scene of Thrasymachus’ blushing in Plato (1953b, p. 192 [350d]).

  6. Please see note 22 for the equivalence of this implication in the discussion on preferential and neighborly love.

  7. See the related take on the relation of lovers and community in Nancy’s celebrated text on the inoperative community (Nancy 1991a, pp. 36–40).

  8. I have changed Hong’s translation of sammenhold from alliance to cohesion throughout. This is less idiomatic but preserves better certain semantics of the Danish word which will be important in the present context.

  9. This paradox of immunization is important to Esposito’s account: If it were possible to create an absolutely immune community, this very immunization would destroy the community it serves to protect. This, however, is in fact impossible. Immunization—if we consider the medical paradigm—consists precisely in the inoculation of a small dose of that which the body should immunize itself against. Complete immunization, therefore, is a contradictio in adjecto. In order to be immune, you must be a host. And this means that whatever “something” a community has in common, and however tight it sticks together for it, any community remains susceptible to the untying of its communal knot. Esposito here develops the idea that immunization as such must immunize itself against an excess of immunization and, for instance, develop thresholds of tolerance (see Esposito 2011, p. 17, 109, 166 and 170). Accordingly, immunization cannot just come down to rejection of that which is foreign. Esposito’s interesting paradigm case here is that of pregnancy (see Esposito 2011, pp. 169–171).

  10. Although it would certainly be relevant, I must omit an engagement with Nancy’s meditation on this theme (see Nancy 1991c).

  11. “Kierkegaard sets the Christian standard so high that no human work could attain it…”, as Vanessa Rumble expresses it (2004, p. 161). Let me try, however, to explain why—on my interpretation—an insufficient ability to fulfill the love commandment does not adequately express its impossibility. My contention is that the sovereignty of the command cannot be left to the mercy of a fulfillment postponed in a perennial “ought.” By the very fact of its being commanded this love is already at work un-working even the tightest community. Such is the “force of law” inherent in the commandment of love (to allude to Derrida). Of course, it is in fact impossible to fulfill this commandment—but by what fact? This impossibility derives not from the fact that we cannot fulfill it. It derives from the fact that we cannot not fulfill it. This, precisely, makes it impossible to do something to fulfill it. When we are ready to do something, we are already too late. We can compare the situation with that of the alarm clock. When you hear it, it is already too late to decide if you should wake up or not. Similarly, when the command says: Love they Neighbor! and you reply: Yes, yes, I will, tell me what I must do, I will do anything?—then the impossibility is not that you must now do something beyond your capability (even if this is also the case). The true impossibility is that before you do something, the law is already fulfilled in your capability of being responsive to it, i.e. of being broken into by the command itself. Our insufficiency—our “sin” to use the Christian vocabulary—does not consist in a lack of capability but in our being cut off from our own capability. This means that we cannot do what we have already done. We cannot render law and love—“ought” and “is”—indistinct, although they are indistinct in the love that is commanded. As Kierkegaard writes: “Only foolishness speaks of love this way—[…] as if there were an essential difference between the Law’s requirements [Fordring] and love, which there certainly is, but not in love, in which the fulfillment is altogether one and the same [aldeles Eet og det Samme] with the requirement.” (Kierkegaard 1995, p. 106 [SKS 9, 110]—Kierkegaard’s italics).

  12. Nancy outlines the deconstruction of Christianity in the following manner: “…it is a question […] of meeting squarely […] what comes towards us from the depths of our tradition as more archaic (in the sense of archē and not of historical beginning, of course) than Christianity. In other words, the question is to find out whether we can, by revisiting our Christian provenance, designate in the heart of Christianity a provenance deeper than Christianity itself…” (Nancy 2008, p. 143). I suspect that Nancy already knows that what he is looking for bears “love” as its name. This suspicion is animated by the appearance of the word “heart” which Nancy explicitly addresses as the figure of love elsewhere (see Nancy 1991b and, on this text with respect to Kierkegaard, Kline 2017, pp. 170–173). I shall return to the notion of archē below.

  13. As for the notion of ἀρχή, it is intriguing to observe what Kierkegaard has to say in his deliberation on “Love Builds Up” about love as ground and about a certain presupposition of love between neighbors. I shall only give a quote here: “To build up is to erect something from the ground up—but, spiritually, love is the ground of everything.” (Kierkegaard 1995, p. 224 [SKS 9, 226]).

  14. Another suggestion—and I am thankful to the anonymous reviewer who drew my attention to this—would be univocity. I have opted not to use this term since it has come to designate the idea of a reconciliation of neighborly love and preferential love both inside Kierkegaard scholarship (cf. e.g. Strawser 2015, pp. 116–120) and outside of it (cf. Marion 2007, pp. 4–5). However, there is in fact a tradition of univocity that may be akin to what I choose here to call in-difference. Again, what I aim to designate with this notion is love before it enters the dialectics of contradiction and reconciliation; and as soon as we enter dialectics there is indeed not the poverty of just two forms of love but rather a ceaseless differentiation. Within this manifold the question of contradiction and reconciliation is not only appropriate but also unavoidable. How should I balance the many loves in which I am involved? Before this dialectic, however, love is in-different—or indeed univocal, bearing in mind a trajectory encompassing Plotinus, Scotus, Spinoza and Deleuze. As Deleuze has shown “…univocity is the key stone of Spinoza’s entire philosophy” (Deleuze 1988, p. 63). This univocity unites being and modes but not as a genus unites its specifications, i.e. not as a “common notion”. Granted, the idea of God may, as Deleuze says, serve as a common notion, “…since it expresses what there is in common between all existing modes; namely, that they are in God…”. (Deleuze 1988, p. 57). However, “…the idea of God is not in itself a common notion…” (Deleuze 1988, p. 57). This shift in the idea of God corresponds to a shift in how the attributes are grasped when we pass from the second to the third kind of knowledge, i.e. to the amor intellectus Dei. Deleuze writes: “The attribute is then no longer grasped as a common (i.e. general) notion applicable to all the existing modes, but as (univocal) form common to the substance whose essence it constitutes and to the essences of mode that it contains as singular essences.” (Deleuze 1988, p. 82). It is imperative to appreciate here that the community of univocal form is not the same as the community of the common notion. “What has changed is…”, as Deleuze points out, precisely “…the word “common”.” (1992, p. 300). The idea of God in itself—i.e. according to its definition as in se—is not, as the common notions, an idea about something general that numerically distinct modes have in common. It is rather the case—as Deleuze imparts Plotin’s view—that “…the One has “nothing in common” with the things that come from it.” (1992, p. 172). It is precisely in this sense, that it could perhaps also be said that agapic love is univocal: it has nothing in common with the manifold of loves that come from it.

  15. Kierkegaard is quite explicit on this pointas for instance here: “No politics has been able, no politics is able, no worldlines has been able, no worldliness is able to think through or to actualize to the ultimate consequence this idea: human equality, human-likeness” (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 103 [SKS 16, 83–84]).

  16. This would be the place to unfold Kierkegaard’s radical notion of equality. As for now, I shall only draw attention to the fact that Kierkegaard was very explicit on the point that no transformation of what is mine and yours into something that is ours will amount to equality in the Christian sense (see Kierkegaard 1995, pp. 265–266 [SKS 9, 265–266]). There is no political project of solidarity in this equality. In order to not let this point elude his reader, Kierkegaard even makes a terminological distinction between lighed (of the world) and ligelighed (of eternity). Whereas lighed is the measurable equality of some quality (a difference), ligelighed is an immeasurable equality of no quality (of no difference) (see Kierkegaard 1995, p. 58 [SKS 9, 64] and pp. 71–72 [SKS 9, 78]). This, incidentally, is also the reason why the common mark [det fælles mærke] by which eternity marks each one as a neighbor does not amount to some quality that neighbors have in common. Rather, by this mark eternity is able to single out each one without considering any difference. “Dissimilarity is temporality's method of confusing what marks every human being differently, but the neighbor is eternity's mark—on every human being” (Kierkegaard 1995, p. 89 [SKS 9, 94]). When Kierkegaard specifies how eternity is able to make this “difference without difference”, he is careful to stress that such a peculiar difference—which Kierkegaard therefore calls “Eiendommelighed”—in no way compromises eternity’s indifference towards differences but rather redoubles it. As he writes: “What love! First it makes no distinction, none at all; next, which is just like the first, it infinitely distinguishes itself in loving the diverse.” (Kierkegaard 1995, p. 270 [SKS 9, 268]—my italics). It is important to emphasize the phrase “which is just like the first” here. Otherwise, the neighbor may be falsely saved from the obliteration of all differences with a remaining difference. The only difference that may be resurrected upon the first movement is a difference without difference, i.e. “Eiendomemlighed”.

  17. This idea of “doing nothing”—or of inoperativity—echoes, of course, the notions of klēsis and katargein as they appear in the letters of Saint Paul (this cannot be overlooked if bearing the study of Agamben in mind (see Agamben 2005)). One of the clearest expressions of this aspect of Paulinian theology in Kierkegaard is the following: “…the person who loves the neighbor is at peace. He is at peace by being content with the dissimilarity of earthly life allotted to him, […] he lets every dissimilarity stand…” (Kierkegaard 1995, 84 [SKS 9, 89]). To the question, whether this love makes a difference then, Kierkegaard answers by referring to the very same peace. He notes that on the strength of God’s love, “…there is equality, infinite equality, between human beings”, and then asks: “If there is a difference—ah, this difference, if it does exist, is like peaceableness [Fredsommeligheden] itself.” (Kierkegaard 1997, p. 165 [SKS 12, 281]).

  18. Accomplishing existence—being-there—on the hither side of these distinctions is as inconspicuous as it is astonishing. Doing nothing is difficult to do. Think for instance on the patient to whom the dentist says: Relax! whereupon the patient answers: I am trying all I can! Or think about the stoic at the banquet. He does not, according to Epictetus’ depiction, greedily throw himself at the bread; but nor does he ascetically abstain from it (see Epictetus 1891, p. 222). The stoic takes it as it comes. He reaches for whatever comes his way—if reaching is indeed the right word for this gesture. What is stoic calm? The gesture reveals nothing of its extreme tension. The stoic must throughout the motion maintain himself in the e-motion of neither striving for the bread nor restraining his desire for the bread. He does, at no point, enter this dialectic. If he did, he would no longer be calm. He could then fight for the bread; or he could fight against his desire for the bread. However, you cannot fight dialectics itself by fighting it. In order not to enter dialectics, you must keep calm.

  19. Heidegger, for his part, was well aware that the more carefully things are taken apart, the better you may catch a glimpse of how they are joined together (Fügung). This is why he demanded a slow seeing (langsames Sehen) (see Heidegger 1995, p. 61 and 103).

  20. In Heidegger’s scrutiny of the first three chapters of book Θ of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, he illustrates the point of in-distinction between δύναμις and ἐνέργεια with that of a runner in the starting blocks (see Heidegger 1995, p. 187–188). In this tension of being “ready to go”, there is no longer just the mere potentiality to run (which is also there when the runner is resting), but nor has this potentiality yet been put to work (the runner is not yet running). The runner is in this way a vivid depiction of “a beginning before the beginning”. For a further discussion on the kind of force involved at this point of in-distinction see Lysemose (2019)

  21. There is thus a highly important philosophical issue hidden in the translation of gjerning into works. From this point, it would perhaps be possible to characterize more precisely the initially announced “step back” from the advanced contemporary scholarly discussion on preferential and neighborly love. If this discussion is an attempt to assess whether these two kinds of love can be reconciled or not, it is implicitly understood that this is a question about enactment. The question is negotiated on the ontological level of actuality: is it possible—without self-contradiction—to “put to work” preferential and neighborly love simultaneously? The suggestion that emerges from the presentation at hand, however, is that neighborly love is not a love that can be made operative at all. As such, it is also not commanded in the sense that it should be made operative. The Christian commandment of love is not the commandment of something possible that should be actualized. Nor is it the commandment of something impossible, that should be—but regrettably cannot—be actualized. Indeed, there is no competition as to which love should be actualized—preferential or neighborly love. On the contrary, all actual love is preferential. Only preferential love, therefore, is real. This, however, does not relegate neighborly love to a mere, or even chimerical, possibility. Rather, neighborly love is, in a sense, hyperreal or—perhaps better—virtual. It is a disturbing and recurrent love that no real love, i.e. no preferential love, can immunize itself wholly against. In other words, it is a love that comes to pass and, when it does, renders all our various operative forms of love in-operative, i.e. suspends, interrupts, and loosens them. Here, incidentally, the difference between the univocity (or in-difference) of a deconstructive take on love—such as presented here—and the univocity of a reconciliation of preferential and neighborly love—such as presented in parts of the Kierkegaard scholarship— reveals itself. A case of the latter is Davenport’s argument that neighborly love is not merely compatible with but may infuse various forms of preferential loves as such. The language he employs to describe this is significantly different to the one suggested here: neighborly love e.g. “operates” within, “enhances”, and “contributes positively” to the preferential loves it infuses (see Davenport 2017, p. 58f).

  22. I wholly share Kline’s impression when he writes that “Nancy’s essay “Shattered Love” in so many ways beats with a Kierkegaardian heart…” (Kline 2017, p. 167).

  23. It should be noted that Kierkegaard decisively does not interpret Christian love as a promise. The reason for this is clear: to promise is to defer the work of love that should instead follow without hesitation upon the command. Ultimately it replaces the work of love, which is why Kierkegaard warns that: “A promise with regard to action is like a changeling—therefore take care!” (Kierkegaard 1995, p. 95 [SKS 9, 99]). Nevertheless, I will try here—with Nancy—to interpret the promise of love so that we may find in this promise itself a work of love in a strict Kierkegaardian sense. I leave it an open question if Kierkegaard would follow suit. For a scholarly treatment of the concept of promise in Kierkegaard, see Glöckner (2009).

  24. I prefer to stick with the Danish original here. Hong translates: “Therefore, when the eternal is in the temporal, it is in the future…” (Kierkegaard 1995, p. 249 [SKS 9, 249]). When Kierkegaard immediately before states that the eternal and the temporal do not meet in the present [det Nærværende], the reason he gives is that this would make of the eternal something present—and this, I reckon, holds just as much for something which is present somewhere else as for something that has been or will be present in time (in the past or in the future). What is decisive is that the eternal never is conceived as something presentable (and thus itself temporal) but remains the unending coming-to-presence of whatever “something” becomes present (i.e. its temporalization: rhythm, scansion, modulation, folding…). On the notion of “det tilkommende” as the icognito of the eternal in time, see also Kierkegaard (1980, p. 89 [SKS 4, 392]).

  25. However, see also note 6 on that page!

  26. On the relation between neighborly love and the dialectic of recognition, see Grøn (1991). Although Grøn develops the dialectic involved in love as a duty to love those we see—namely as a dialectics of seeing and not-seeing—he arrives at a point where love escapes this dialectical movement. This occurs when he describes as the pivotal point in Kierkegaard that “love is given” (“kærligheden er givet”, p. 269). This implies, as he quotes Kierkegaard, that “love is to presuppose love”, and Grøn goes on to state that love’s difference to the dialectical movement of mutual recognition is that this movement stops precisely here, i.e. at the presupposition where it must always begin (see p. 269 and also Kline 2017, p. 165 and pp. 170–172). Just as Kline, I find Nancy’s juxtaposition between dialectics and exposition in “Shattered love” to be very helpful when trying to think love beyond dialectics (see Nancy 1991b, pp. 251–255).

  27. It is clear that this will make of Kierkegaard an accomplice to the Heideggerian strain in Nancy’s thinking. To that extend, the interpretation of Kierkegaard offered here will also affirm a crucial difference with regard to Levinas—a difference which Nancy puts succinctly as “two different measures of the incommensurable”: “One is calibrated according to the Other; the other is calibrated according to the with.” (Nancy, 2000 p. 81). For an emphasis on a Levinasian strain in Kierkegaard, see Strawser (2015, pp. 127–130).

  28. Douzinas and Žižek (2010) gathers texts from a conference in London in 2009 where a number of leading political philosophers of “the left” convened to discuss communism. For the notion of “the new thinkers of the left”, see Blinkenberg (2011).

  29. Nancy’s contribution in Douzinas and Žižek (2010) has as its title: “Communism, the word”.

  30. La retrait du politique was the title of a number of texts co-authored by Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe during their time at the Centre de Recherches Philosophiques sur la Politique.

  31. This, at least, is how I read the ending of Nancy (2007).

  32. This nothing is not the opposite of something, and thus not nihilism, as Heidegger remarks. Rather, it is the loss of all significance that exposes being-there to being-in-the-world itself (see Heidegger 1996, p. 175).

  33. See Kierkegaard’s deliberation on “Mercifulness, a Work of Love Even If It Can Give Nothing and Is Able to Do Nothing” (Kierkegaard 1995, p. 315 [SKS 9, 312]).

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Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank The Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at The University of Copenhagen for its hospitality while working on this paper which has benefitted greatly from valuable comments from staff members Joakim Garff, Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Ettore Rocca, Iben Damgaard and René Rosfort.

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Correspondence to Kasper Lysemose.

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Lysemose, K. A place for God: deconstructing love with Kierkegaard. Int J Philos Relig 87, 5–26 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-019-09740-z

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