Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T09:54:42.332Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Works of Love in a World of Violence: Kierkegaard, Feminism, and the Limits of Self‐Sacrifice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Deidre Nicole Green
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Type
Open Issue Content
Information
Hypatia , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , Summer 2013 , pp. 568 - 584
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andolsen, Barbara Hilkert. 1981. Agape in feminist ethics. Journal of Religious Ethics 9 (1): 69–83.Google Scholar
Barrett, Lee C. III. 1999. The neighbor's material and social well‐being in Kierkegaard's Works of Love: Does it matter? In International Kierkegaard commentary: Works of love, ed. Perkins, Robert L.Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press.Google Scholar
Bell, Linda A. 1993. Rethinking ethics in the midst of violence: A feminist approach to freedom. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Berry, Wanda Warren. 1992. Finally forgiveness: Kierkegaard as a “springboard” for a feminist theology of reform. In Foundations of Kierkegaard's vision of community: Religion, ethics, and politics in Kierkegaard, ed. Connell, George B. and Stephen Evans, C.London: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Brock, Rita Nakashima, and Ann Parker, Rebecca. 2001. Proverbs of ashes: Violence, redemptive suffering, and the search for what saves us. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Joanne Carlson, and Parker, Rebecca. 1989. For God so loved the world? In Christianity, patriarchy, and abuse: A feminist critique, ed. Carlson Brown, Joanne and Bohn, Carole R.New York: Pilgrim Press.Google Scholar
Coakley, Sarah. 2002. Powers and submissions: Spirituality, philosophy and gender. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dalferth, Ingolf U. 2010. Self‐sacrifice. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 68 (1): 77–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daly, Mary. 1973. Beyond God the father. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Evans, C. Stephen. 2004. Kierkegaard's ethic of love: Divine commands and moral obligations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferreira, M. Jamie. 2001. Love's grateful striving: A commentary on Kierkegaard's Works of Love. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gebara, Ivone. 2002. Out of the depths: Women's experience of evil and salvation. Trans. Patrick Ware, Ann. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press.Google Scholar
Groenhout, Ruth. 2006. Kenosis and feminist theory. In Exploring kenotic christology: The self‐emptying of God, ed. Stephen Evans, C.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Amy Laura. 2002. Kierkegaard and the treachery of love. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heyward, Carter. 1999. Saving Jesus from those who are right: Rethinking what it means to be Christian. Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress Press.Google Scholar
Jantzen, Grace M. 1999. Becoming divine: Towards a feminist philosophy of religion. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, Søren. 1967–78. Søren Kierkegaard's journals and papers, vols. 1–7, ed. and trans. Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, Søren. 1980a. Practice in Christianity, ed. and trans. Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H.Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, Søren. 1980b. The sickness unto death, ed. Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H.Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, Søren. 1985. Philosophical fragments, ed. and trans. Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H.Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, Søren. 1995. Works of love, ed. and trans. Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H.Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, Søren. 1997. Christian discourses, ed. and trans. Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H.Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, Søren. 1997‐present. Søren Kierkegaards skrifter, vols. 1‐28, ed. Jørgen Cappelørn, Niels et al. Copenhagen: Gads.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, Søren. 2006. Fear and trembling. Trans. Hannay, Alistair. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, Søren. 2008. Purity of heart is to will one thing. Radford, Va.: Wilder Publications.Google Scholar
Krishek, Sharon. 2009. Kierkegaard on faith and love. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lebacqz, Karen. 1994. Love your enemy: Sex, power, and Christian ethics. In Feminist theological ethics: A reader, ed. Daly, Lois K.Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press.Google Scholar
Léon, Céline. 2008. The neither/nor of the second sex: Kierkegaard on women, sexual difference, and sexual relations. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press.Google Scholar
Lippitt, John. 2009. True Self‐Love and True Self‐Sacrifice. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 66 (3): 125–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plaskow, Judith. 1991. Standing again at Sinai: Judaism from a feminist perspective. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. 1996. Ties that bind: Domestic violence against women. In Women resisting violence: Spirituality for life, ed. John Mananzan, Mary. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books.Google Scholar
Walsh, Sylvia I. 1988. Forming the heart: The role of love in Kierkegaard's thought. In The grammar of the heart: New essays in moral philosophy and theology, ed. Bell, Richard H.San Francisco: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Walsh, Sylvia I. 1998. Feminine devotion and self‐abandonment: Simone de Beauvoir and Soren Kierkegaard on the woman in love. Philosophy Today 42 (supplement): 35–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, Sylvia I. 2005. Living Christianly: Kierkegaard's dialectic of Christian existence. University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Walsh, Sylvia I. 2011. “Introduction” in Søren Kierkegaard, Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, trans. Walsh, Sylvia. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Welch, Sharon D. 2000. A feminist ethic of risk, rev. ed. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press.Google Scholar
Welz, Claudia. 2008. Love as gift and self‐sacrifice. Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 50 (3–4): 238–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Delores S. 1993. Sisters in the wilderness: The challenge of womanist God‐talk. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books.Google Scholar