Love (Does and) Does Not Seek Its Own

In the deliberation entitled, “Love Does Not Seek Its Own,” Kierkegaard develops his notion of distinctiveness [ Ejendommelighed ] vis-à-vis neighbor love. He introduces a dialectical tension between the duty to seek one’s own as a human task implicated by the divine gift of distinctiveness and the imperative to seek only the neighbor’s own. This chapter unpacks Kierkegaard’s notion of Eiendommelighed , its relationship to courage, Frimodighed [bold confidence], the love commands, and self-sacrifice . Despite his strongly self-sacrificial rhetoric, love demands the cultivation of one’s own distinctiveness, which itself must be understood dialectically as both being one’s own and not one’s own . A dialectical approach affords a more nuanced reading of Works of Love that better reflects the existential complexity of navigating the tension of self-development and self-sacrifice on the ground. To fulfill the duty to develop distinctiveness in both self and other, love must both seek and not seek its own.