Kierkegaardian selfhood as pursuit of the Greatest Commandment

Thesis

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matt. 22:37). Refusing to regard Kierkegaard’s grasp of Jesus’ injunction within the Greatest Commandment as referencing one love that is either synonymous with faith or mere sidebar concern en route to exposition of an ethics of neighbour love, this thesis examines what it means for a human being to love God per se. It is proposed that, for Kierkegaard, loving God is a spiritual act that incorporates a dynamic process of dying away in love to enact one’s death to psychogenic idols of the mind, therein striving to become a self in giving all one’s heart, soul, and mind to God and not to sundry idols or proxies for God.

Following consideration of the relationship between nihilism and love of God in Chapter I, and in contrast to studies which equate nihilism (i.e., willed negation of self and world) with, for example, irony and despair, Chapter II argues that nihilism is profitably understood as a philosophy of will arising from a trajectory of thought tracking to Arthur Schopenhauer. To begin disclosing the way in which Kierkegaardian love of God deploys dying away, which, taken out of context may sound nihilistic but in fact entirely eschews Schopenhauer’s foremost expression of nihilism, Chapter III examines Kierkegaard’s reception of Schopenhauer. Then, Chapter IV considers three deliverances of the Moravian Pietism in which Kierkegaard was raised—kenotic Christology, apophaticism, and a distinctive doctrine of grace—that shape his conception of loving God and distinguish it from Schopenhauerian nihilism. In turn, the concluding Chapter V asserts that, for Kierkegaard, to love God is to employ love’s dying away to purge oneself of adherence to idols of the mind (including Schopenhauerian knowledge of the nihil or nothingness of self, world, and God) and therein offer a love to God that is individually one’s own.

Authors: Callaway, DA

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-eovmzqp10
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Greatest Commandment; love; Kierkegaard; self; nihilism
• Subjects: Theology; Self; Nihilism in literature; Søren Kierkegaard; Ethics; Nihilism (Philosophy) in literature; Christianity; Existential ethics; Christianity and existentialism; Nihilism (Philosophy)--History; Christianity and literature; Nihilism--Religious aspects--Christianity; Continental philosophy; Nihilism (Philosophy); Love