Macalester Bell urges the cultivation of apt contempt as the best response to what she calls “the vices of superiority”. In this essay, I sketch two character profiles. The first—the ideal contemnor—paradigmatically answers the vices of superiority with contempt. The second—the ideal Christian neighbor—is marked by humility and love, and answers the vices of superiority in non-contemptuous ways. I argue that the latter character rivals the former as a fitting moral response to the vices of superiority. Furthermore, I argue that (...) the two character profiles are incompatible, so one cannot jointly cultivate humble love and contempt. Given contempt's nastiness, and the alternative resources available for answering the vices of superiority, I suggest one should focus one's character-formation efforts on the cultivation of humility and love. (shrink)

Amongst the many aims of education, surely the pursuit of global peace must be one of the most significant. The mandate of UNESCO is to pursue world peace through education by primarily promoting collaboration. The sort of collaboration that UNESCO endorses involves democratic dialogue, where various persons from differing backgrounds can come together, listen, negotiate and discuss possible ways in which peace might be pursued. While this sort of democratic dialogue with its associated free intellectual inquiry is more readily acceptable (...) for issues dealing with problems in the realm of physical nature, it is not so easily tolerated in the realm of ethics and values. Indeed inquiry into the realm of ethics by Kierkegaard has been described by Levinas to be a form of violence. Similarly John Dewey's work has been included in a list of the ten most harmful books by some conservatives in the United States because he promoted inquiry into morals and religion. Dewey argued against the assumption that there are two-realms—one physical and one moral. He and Kierkegaard both encouraged democratic inquiry into ethics, which is the sort of collaboration recognised by UNESCO as being necessary if we are to pursue world peace. Yet such investigations can be considered by some to be violent and harmful. It is argued here that pursuing inquiries into ethics and aims of education, while appearing to challenge the status quo, should not be construed as being violent but rather should be understood as democratic and educative. (shrink)

In Practice in Christianity, Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonym, Anti-Climacus enters into an extended engagement with Matthew 11.6, ‘Blessed is he who takes no offense at me’. In so doing, he comes to an understanding that ‘the possibility of offense’ characterises the ‘crossroad’ at which one either comes to faith in Christ's revelation or rejects it. Such a choice, as he is well aware, cannot be made from a neutral standpoint, and so he is led to propose that it is ‘the thoughts (...) of the heart’ (i.e. a person's disposition) that constitute the pivotal factor in determining whether or not God will reconcile a person into the Christian faith. In this paper, I discuss Anti-Climacus' interpretation of Mt. 11.6 and consider his reasons for interpreting a person's predisposition as being so decisive for faith. (shrink)

In this article, I embark on an analysis of Søren Kierkegaard's view of human otherness in strict correlation to his Christian philosophy. More specifically, my aim is to show that Kierkegaard's thought is essentially informed by a decisive appropriation of the soteriological category of sin which has momentous implications for Kierkegaard's views of selfhood and intersubjectivity. The main argument is that both Kierkegaard's negative evaluation of human otherness and his acerbic indictments of any collectivist interference in salvific matters cohere with (...) his appropriation of the doctrine of the Fall. At the same time, I show in what sense Kierkegaard deems human alterity to be indispensable to one's spiritual self-becoming expressed through the Christian imperative of loving the other as neighbor. Seen thus, agape, while supplementing Kierkegaard's creationistic psychology, actually becomes the necessary restorative opposite of sinfulness in the self's encounters with the distinct uniqueness of the human other. (shrink)

This paper examines Kierkegaard 's discussion of patience in some of his Upbuilding Discourses, and its connection with his understanding of the nature of selfhood as it appears both in the Discourses and in The Sickness unto Death. That understanding stresses that selfhood is not simply given, but is a task to be achieved—although a task that can only be achieved by the self that is formed in the process of undertaking it. For Kierkegaard, an account of the self that (...) recognizes its essential temporality must give a crucial role to patience as a virtue necessary for the formation and maintenance of personal identity. However, although the self is essentially temporal for Kierkegaard, it is also essentially such as to participate in eternity, and this complexity and tension in his concept of the self gives his understanding of patience a particular character—one that presents an important challenge to some of the dominant assumptions of recent and contemporary philosophy in both the analytic and the continental traditions. (shrink)

Manifold expressions of a particular critique appear throughout Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous corpus: for Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms faith is categorically not a first immediacy, and it is certainly not the first immediate, the annulment of which concludes the first movement of Hegelian philosophy. Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms make it clear that he holds the Hegelian dogmaticians responsible for the promulgation of this misconception, but when Kierkegaard’s journals and papers are consulted another transgressor emerges: the renowned anti-idealist F.D.E. Schleiermacher. I address the extent (...) to which this particular indictment is justified; over-against Gerhard Schreiber, I argue that this characterization of Schleiermacher’s view of religion is indeed a de facto critique. I begin by presenting and demonstrating the ubiquity of the phenomenon at the heart of Schleiermacher’s conception of perfect God-consciousness, then proceed to apply criticisms raised by Kierkegaardian pseudonyms Judge William, Vigilius Haufniensis, Johannes Climacus, and Anti-Climacus, supplemented with concerns raised by Kierkegaard himself, in order to demonstrate that these criticisms do indeed apply to and problematize Schleiermacher’s view. (shrink)

Few people doubt that severe poverty is a pressing moral issue. But what sorts of obligations, if any, do affluent people have toward the severely poor? If one accepts the idea that one has some obligations to the severely poor there still remains disagreement about the magnitude of this obligation and when it obtains. I consider Peter Singer's influential "shallow pond" argument, which holds that affluent people have greater obligations toward the severely poor than ordinary moral judgments suggest. Critics hold (...) that Singer's view is excessively demanding and therefore untenable. I thus turn to the parable of the Good Samaritan and Christian accounts of neighbor-love to help attenuate this criticism. Drawing from Christian conversations on neighbor-love, I attempt to demonstrate that accepting an obligation to assist does not necessarily result in one abandoning one's special relations, abnegating self-regard, or no longer pursuing other non-moral strivings. (shrink)

Philosophers have often misunderstood Kierkegaard's views on the nature and purposes of God due to a fascination with his earlier, pseudonymous works. We examine many of Kierkegaard's later works with the aim of setting forth an accurate view on this matter. The portrait of God that emerges is a personal and fiercely loving God with whom humans can and should enter into relationship. Far from advocating a fideistic faith or a cognitively unrestrained leap in the dark, we argue that Kierkegaard (...) connects this God-relationship to (a particular kind of) evidence and even knowledge. However, such evidence and knowledge – and hence God himself – may remain hidden from many individuals due to misconceptions of God and misuses of the human will. (shrink)

This article explains and assesses a particular method of loving others that is espoused by Søren Kierkegaard. In his later works, Kierkegaard advocates a kind of deceptive love whereby one mystifies or deceives another person for that other person's own good. The theological underpinning of this mode of love is found in the imitation of Christ. In other words, just as Jesus adopted an incognito, so also Christians should, at times, appear different or lowlier in order to help others by (...) meeting them where they are. After explaining this form of love, I argue that there are considerable reasons not to follow Kierkegaard in his support of outright deception within personal relationships. I conclude with some brief reflections on whether the deceptive structure of Kierkegaard's own authorship is thereby condemned or whether it can be exonerated. (shrink)

A significant challenge faces any ethic that endorses the view that divine commands are sufficient to impose moral obligations; in this paper, I focus on Kierkegaard's ethic, in particular. The challenge to be addressed is the "modernized" problem of Abraham, popularized especially by Fear and Trembling: the dilemma that an agent faces when a being claiming to be God issues a command to the agent that, by the agent's own lights, seems not to be the kind of command that a (...) loving God would issue. Against a solution to this problem proposed by C. Stephen Evans in Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love, I argue that Kierkegaard regards this scenario as never actually resulting in a fully responsible agent's performance of some horrendous action on account of her non-culpable misinterpretation of God's will and/or failure to discern correctly whether a perceived moral imperative truly is divine in origin. (shrink)

Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling presents a reductio ad absurdum regarding the time-spans subject to moral evaluation. The text's classic dilemma depends on assuming that we only evaluate discrete, contextless instants. The pseudonymous author constantly seeks the single instant or moral “photograph” that indicates Abraham's status. Doing so, however, extracts scripture's moral legislation out from narrative, resulting in theological paralysis and thereby requiring an alternative temporal vocabulary for evaluating Abraham. Fear and Trembling contains an under-explored alternative that sets Abraham within (...) the covenantal narrative's temporality. The paper explores the consequences of shifting from evaluating instants to evaluating narrative durations, showing that while Genesis 22 remains a challenging episode, it also offers a model of imaginative faith, fidelity to promises, and hope in the face of trauma that focusing on moral instants overlooks. (shrink)

The duty to love one's neighbor as oneself is at the core of Kierkegaard's Works of Love . In this book, Kierkegaard unfolds the meaning of neighborly love and claims that it is the only valid form of true love. He contrasts between neighborly love and preferential love (which includes romantic love and friendship) and criticizes the latter for being nothing but a form of selfishness. However, in some contexts, Kierkegaard seems to acknowledge the significance of preferential love relationships, and (...) does not disallow them. Therefore, his understanding of preferential love appears to be confused and inconsistent. My essay discusses the tension in Kierkegaard's position regarding preferential love, and by presenting recent readings of Works of Love , it asks whether this tension is resolvable and offers a suggestion for a possible solution. (shrink)

There is an increasing awareness that we are living in a global village, which demands a global ethics. In this article, I shall explore what contributions Confucianism, particularly its conception of love, can make. It has often been claimed that Confucian love is love with distinction, as a natural feeling, and as merely human love and so it is inferior to the Christian love, which is universal, commanded, and based on divine love. Drawing on the resources of the Cheng brothers' (...) neo-Confucianism, I shall explore how Confucianism can make creative responses to such criticisms and thus make a unique Confucian contribution to the emerging global ethics. (shrink)

Feminist scholars adopt wide-ranging views of self-sacrifice: their critiques claim that women are inordinately affected by Christianity's valorization of self-sacrifice and that this traditional Christian value is inherently misogynistic and necrophilic. Although Søren Kierkegaard's Works of Love deems Christian love essentially sacrificial, love, in his view, sets significant limits on the role of self-sacrifice in human life. Through his proposed response to one who requests forgiveness, “Do you now truly love me?” Kierkegaard offers a model of forgiveness that subverts traditional (...) ideals of the self-sacrificing and submissive woman while keeping love central. The question asserts self-love, involves redoubling and double danger, and expresses a refusal to imitate Christ's suffering. I propose a reading in keeping with Grace Jantzen's vision for a feminist philosophy of religion, which reads against the grain and “seeks to break through to new ways of thinking that may open up divine horizons.” My reading is further supported by Kierkegaard's contention that everything essentially Christian bears a double meaning. In light of the subversive potential found in the discrepancy between apparent love and actual love, as well as the duty to name the sin of one who has behaved in an unloving manner, I argue that Kierkegaard's philosophy of love resists simplistic understandings of self-sacrificing love. (shrink)

This essay tries to show that there exist several passages where Kierkegaard (and his pseudonyms) sketches an argument for the existence of God and immortality that is remarkably similar to Kant's so-called moral argument for the existence of God and immortality. In particular, Kierkegaard appears to follow Kant's moral argument both when it comes to the form and content of the argument as well as some of its terminology. The essay concludes that several passages in Kierkegaard overlap significantly with Kant's (...) moral argument, although Kierkegaard ultimately favors revealed faith over natural theology in general and Kant's moral faith in particular. Whereas Kant uses the moral argument to postulate the existence of God and immortality, Kierkegaard mainly uses it as a reductio ad absurdum of non-religious thinking. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers often construe mercy as a supererogatory notion or a matter of punitive leniency. Yet it is false that no merciful actions are obligatory. Further, it is questionable whether mercy is really about punitive leniency, either exclusively or primarily. As an alternative to these accounts, I consider the view offered by St. Thomas Aquinas. He rejects the claim that we are never obligated to be merciful. Also, his view of mercy is not restricted to legal contexts. For him, mercy's (...) scope is considerably broader, as it concerns a wide range of needs and hardships to which human beings are vulnerable. Such a view, I submit, affords a kind of normative depth lacking in many contemporary accounts. Unlike those views that construe mercy as either a supererogatory or legal concept, Aquinas's account illuminates mercy's obligatory nature and encourages us to make mercy a more salient fixture of our moral lives. (shrink)

In this essay, I first show that, from the view that God is the ultimate cause of the human ability to perform ethically laudable acts, does not follow that no continuity between biological and intentional altruism is possible. In line with recent theological research concerning the non-human world, I argue that there is a partial continuity between these two forms of altruism. I also show that, from a naturalistic viewpoint, no continuity at all seems demonstrable between the two forms of (...) altruism at stake. I therefore contribute to strengthen a more general conviction, according to which evolution in itself is more persuasive than its combination with naturalism. (shrink)

In Justice in Love, Nicholas Wolterstorff argues for a unique ethical orientation called “care-agapism.” He offers it as an alternative to theories of benevolence-agapism found in Christian ethics on the one hand and to the philosophical orientations of egoism, utilitarianism, and eudaimonism on the other. The purported uniqueness and superiority of his theory lies in its ability to account for the conceptual compatibility of love and justice while also positively incorporating self-love. Yet in attempting to articulate a “bestowed worth” account (...) of human dignity—in which dignity is given by divine love and respected in acts of justice—Wolterstorff leans on an unstable characterization of how love and the good are conceptually interwoven. As a result, his reader cannot be sure about the theoretical superiority of care-agapism. Moreover, Wolterstorff's attempt to value self-love and at the same time reject eudaimonism depends on a dubious interpretation of Augustine carried over from Justice: Rights and Wrongs, which itself further depends on a mischaracterization of the possible varieties of eudaimonism. This mistake is unfortunate because, on a closer reading of Augustine, one finds an agapistic account of eudaimonism that could have significantly helped Wolterstorff's overall account of the complementary relation of love and justice. (shrink)

Many Guatemalan women suffered extreme sexual violence during the latter half of the twentieth century. Learning of this violence can evoke hatred in persons who love and respect women—hatred for the men who perpetrated the violence and also for other men around the world who victimize women in this way. Hatred is a common response to a perceived evil, and it might in some cases be a fitting response, but it is important to subject one's emotions to critical moral reflection. (...) A key task of ethics is to encourage persons to cultivate good habits of being moved. This essay analyzes the way in which two different texts manage, through the skillful presentation of experiential narratives, to help readers acknowledge the hatred they might feel, but also to think twice about the hatred to which they consent. (shrink)

As a ‘poet of the religious’, Søren Kierkegaard sets before his reader a constellation of spiritual ideals, exquisitely painted with words and images that evoke their luminous beauty. Among these poetic icons are ideals of purity of heart; love of the neighbour; radiant self-transparency; truthfulness to oneself, to another person, or to God. Such ideals are what the ‘restless heart’ desires, and in invoking them Kierkegaard refuses to compromise on their purity – while insisting also that they are impossible to (...) attain. It is the human condition which makes them impossible, and he is willing to describe this in dogmatic terms as original sin – sin being the refusal and loss of God, and thus also the loss of a self that has its ontological ground in its relationship to God – but he is more concerned to explore it in psychological terms. The human condition is for Kierkegaard characterised not merely by ignorance, but by wilful self-deception. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a new way of understanding Christian ethics by critically interconnecting the theological meanings of the Aqedah ("binding") narrative of Mt. Moriah and the Passion story of Mt. Golgotha. Through an in-depth critical-theological investigation of the relation between these two biblical events, I argue that Christian ethics is possible not so much as a moralization or as a literalistic divine command theory, but rather as a "covenantal-existential" response to God's will in the impossible love on Mt. (...) Moriah as well as in the Son's willing embrace of God's will on Mt. Golgotha. (shrink)