ABSTRACT
Kierkegaard classifies love into two types: (a) those forms determined sensually (sandseligt) and psychically (sjæleligt); and (b) those which are essentially determined by spirit (Aand). The sensual, psychical forms of love are grounded in passion (Lidenskab), inclination (Tilbøielighed), and drives (Drifter), while spiritual, Christian love is grounded ontologically in a self-denying self, and deontologically in duty, discerned through conscience.2 Whereas sensual, psychical love is an accidental feeling in the person, Christian love is an essential ontological structure of the ethical-religious self-which ultimately produces works of love.3 Because the latter has chosen itself absolutely as ethical-religious, it subordinates everything in its life to divine command. Hence Christian love is a duty out of obedience to the
to be “concentric” with sensual, psychical love, in such a way that the latter is preserved in the former in a “higher immediacy.”5 Much of Kierkegaard’s authorship is focused on the dialectic between these apparently opposed conceptions of love.
