Works of Love (Danish: Kjerlighedens Gjerninger) is a work by Søren Kierkegaard written in 1847. It is one of the works which he published under his own name, as opposed to his more famous "pseudonymous" works. Works of Love deals primarily with the Christian conception of agape love in contrast with erotic love (eros) or preferential love (phileo) given to friends and family. Kierkegaard uses this value / virtue to understand the existence and relationship of the individual Christian. Having help found Existentialism, he uses it and a high level of theology citing the scriptures of the Christian Bible. Many of the chapters take a mention of love from the New Testament and center reflections about the transfer of individuals from secular modes (the stages of the aesthetic and ethical) to genuine religious experience and existence. Since human experience is a key to understanding Kierkegaard, the actual relationships and experiences of disciples and of Christ are characterized here as tangible models for behavior.
Kierkegaard as a Christian ethicist (represented by this work) is likely to be considered distinct from many ways in which the religion's mainstream seems to function from the viewpoint of an outside observer. This is not only a function of Christian existentialism but also of his time period and political events occurring in his native Denmark.
Read more about Works Of Love: Themes
Famous quotes containing the words works of, works and/or love:
“Again we mistook a little rocky islet seen through the “drisk,” with some taller bare trunks or stumps on it, for the steamer with its smoke-pipes, but as it had not changed its position after half an hour, we were undeceived. So much do the works of man resemble the works of nature. A moose might mistake a steamer for a floating isle, and not be scared till he heard its puffing or its whistle.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“That man’s best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature’s infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.”
—Lydia M. Child (1802–1880)
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had to hailbomb, for twelve hours, and when it was all over I walked up.... We didn’t find one of ‘em, not one stinking dink
body. That smell, you know, that gasoline smell. The whole hill. It smelled like ... victory.”
—John Milius, U.S. screenwriter, Francis Ford Coppola (b. 1939)