Kierkegaard’s View of Neighbor Love

This chapter explains and defends Kierkegaard’s conception of neighbor love as a duty against Kant’s well-known claim that a duty to love is “absurd,” because we do not have volitional control of our emotions. For Kierkegaard, neighbor love is a “passion of the emotions” that requires humans to love all other humans. I distinguish short-term occurrent emotions from long-term, dispositional emotions, and neighbor love is the latter kind of emotion, which Kierkegaard calls a “higher immediacy” or “immediacy after reflection.” We do not have volitional control of the former, but the long-term dispositional character of the latter means that over time they can be fostered or inhibited. Emotions are understood using Robert Roberts’s view that emotions are “concern-based construals.” The ground of neighbor love is a recognition of the “inner glory” that all humans possess as creatures made in God’s image. Neighbor love is good because it recognizes the value that humans possess, but it is a duty because it is required by God, who has the standing to make such a demand on humans. God has this standing both because God has created humans from nothing but also because God is love and destines humans for a loving relation with him that “does not end at a grave.” God requires humans to love their neighbors both because it is good, and because God knows that human sinfulness requires that love be a duty. Although neighbor love is a duty, it is also a virtue, though one that requires divine assistance to acquire. It is a virtue not only because of its goodness, but because it contributes to human flourishing by securing three goods humans naturally desire: perseverance of our loves, autonomy, and meaning or significance. To the degree that neighbor love is actualized as a virtue, its status as a duty becomes less important, though it does not cease to be a duty for anyone short of eternity, unless that person is a perfected saint.