Kierkegaard’s Theistic Conception of Love, Existentially Considered

Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher, is well known for his existential thought, but no less significantly he was a profound religious thinker. These two different philosophical tendencies are interestingly united in his understanding of love. Indeed, his influential Works of Love—the only essay he explicitly devoted to the exploration of the nature of love—is specifically religious. However, this chapter aims to show that it is rather the conflation of Kierkegaard’s religiosity and his existentialism that results in his unique thesis of love. This thesis not only reconciles between neighborly (religious) love and romantic love but allows for a reclaiming of the value of the latter.