Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love

by Amy Laura Hall

• ISBN13: 9780521809139
• ISBN10: 0521809134
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-08-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is a major study of Kierkegaard and love. Amy Laura Hall explores Kierkegaard’s description of love’s treachery, difficulty, and hope, reading his Works of Love as a text that both deciphers and complicates the central books in his pseudonymous canon: Fear and Trembling, Repetition, Either/Or, and Stages on Life’s Way. In all of these works, the characters are, as in real life, complex and incomplete, and the conclusions are perplexing. Hall argues that a spiritual void brings each text into being, and her interpretation is as much about faith as about love. In a style that is both scholarly and lyrical, she intimates answers to some of the puzzles, making a poetic contribution to ethics and the philosophy of religion.

Author Biography

Amy Laura Hall is Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics at the Divinity School, Duke University.

Table of Contents

List of abbreviations	viii
Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(10)
The call to confession in Kierkegaard's Works of Love	11	(40)
Provoking the question: deceiving ourselves in Fear and Trembling	51	(32)
The poet, the vampire, and the girl in Repetition with Works of Love	83	(25)
The married man as master thief in Either/Or	108	(31)
Seclusion and disclosure in Stages on Life's Way	139	(33)
On the way	172	(28)
Notes	200	(17)
Works cited	217	(4)
Index	221