ABSTRACT
In recent decades of Kierkegaard scholarship, it is difficult to think of a more needed, important, and justly influential book than Jamie Ferreira’s 2001 Love’s Grateful Striving. Ferreira brings Works of Love into dialogue with a wide range of contemporary ethical conversations. She signals the capaciousness of her analysis early on: “Analytic moral philosophy, existentialism, deconstruction, Marxism, feminism—all of these are seedbeds, which generate different kinds of discussions because of their different vantage points and their different tools and methods of inquiry.” The commonalities that Ferreira finds between Levinassian and Kierkegaard ethics are especially revealing. Many readers will find points in Ferreira’s exegesis with which to quibble; this is inevitable in a commentary that engages with the letter of Kierkegaard’s text so minutely. But without question this book has established itself as a necessary conversation partner and a valuable guide for interpreters of Works of Love.
