This commentary on Søren Kierkegaard's Works of Love (1847), a series of 15 deliberations on the love commandment (to love one's neighbor as oneself), argues that Works of Love provides resources for understanding our ethical responsibility for others in ways that respect concrete distinctiveness and equality, partiality and impartiality, as well as the relation between self‐esteem, human needs, and self‐denial. This reading of Kierkegaard's Christian love ethic – an ethic of agape – relates to contemporary discussions of love as infinite debt and radical gift; it presents the ethical relation ... More

This commentary on Søren Kierkegaard's Works of Love (1847), a series of 15 deliberations on the love commandment (to love one's neighbor as oneself), argues that Works of Love provides resources for understanding our ethical responsibility for others in ways that respect concrete distinctiveness and equality, partiality and impartiality, as well as the relation between self‐esteem, human needs, and self‐denial. This reading of Kierkegaard's Christian love ethic – an ethic of agape – relates to contemporary discussions of love as infinite debt and radical gift; it presents the ethical relation as one of moral vision and moral blindness, in order to respect alterity and kinship; it also clarifies Kierkegaard's relation to his Lutheran heritage, highlighting both love's hiddenness and its works (fruits). Moreover, the deliberations on building up others, on forgiveness, and on reconciliation, address dimensions of our responsibility for community.