Erotic Love: Reading Kierkegaard with and without Marion Pia Sloft 37

Erotic Love: Reading Kierkegaard

with and without Marion
By Pia Sloft
Abstract: The claim of this article is that in Sren Kierkegaards notion of love as a basic urge in
every human being we find a special dialectic between lack and surplus, between need-love and gift-love.
Through a comparison with Jean-Luc Marions description of erotic love in The Erotic Phenomenon, I
demonstrate that Kierkegaards insistence that love is greater than everything and therefore prior to both
existence and knowledge seems, on the one hand, to point in the direction of a metaphysical anchoring
of love, which would be foreign to Marion. But at the same time, Kierkegaard, like Marion, stresses that
we have a universal, human experience of love, which is anchored bodily and sensed phenomenally. This
duality points to the fact that Kierkegaard had a much more nuanced notion of love than that simple
distinction between eros and agape that Anders Nygren invented.

Key Terms: Kierkegaard, Marion, erotic love, phenomenology

It is practically a tradition in Kierkegaard research What is Love?

to view Kierkegaards notion of love in the rather
anachronistic light of Anders Nygrens well-known
differentiation between eros and agape, which hov-
ers over all later theological discussions of love.1 In
this tradition there seems to be consensus in inter-
preting Kierkegaards notion of love as straightfor-
wardly agapistic. In this interpretation Kierkegaard
is most often accused of a rather negative view of
erotic love, if not charged with arguing against it
outright.
In what follows I wish to argue for a much more
nuanced view of Kierkegaards notion of love. To
enlighten the discussion I bring in Jean-Luc Mar-
ions phenomenological insights into erotic love,
as well as Kierkegaards own description of the
sensual-erotic from the first part of Either-Or.2
In this way I hope to broaden the discussion of
Kierkegaards notion of love as well as rehabilitate
the phenomenon of erotic love in a philosophical
and theological context.
This question is just as old and just as vast as love
itself. And most people, no doubt, would think that
it is a question that simply cannot be answered. In-
deed, the true apologists of love, its most passionate
proponents, probably go a step further. They main-
tain that it is not just answering the question that
is problematicit is the very question itself. It ab-
solutely must not be posed, for it is precisely of
the essence of love to be and remain a riddle. This
argument draws sustenance from the universal ex-
perience that as soon as we attempt to explain and
give reasons for our love, it seems to vanish.
Sren Kierkegaard shares the view that love is
inexplicable and enigmatic. But that love cannot
be explained and rationally justified does not mean
that it cannot be sensed by someone who loves.
This is due to loves erotic dimension, and to the

Pia Sloft is Director of The Kierkegaard Research Centre and President of The Danish Kierkegaard Society. She teaches ethics and philosophy
of religion at The Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, and publishes in the fields of personal, social, and business ethics;
anthropology; phenomenology; and philosophy of religion.


C 2011 Wiley Periodicals and Dialog, Inc.
38 Dialog: A Journal of Theology Volume 50, Number 1 Spring 2011 March
fact that there is an intimate connection between
love and the body. It is a connection that is not, in
the first instance, sexual, but simply allows love to
be noticeable in and through the body of a person
who loves.
Plato already had said that loves fundamental
form is erotic. Jean-Luc Marion said it again, in
his own way, in his book The Erotic Phenomenon;3
and in what follows, I too wish to argue that
Kierkegaard, in some sense, shares this view of
erotic love as a fundamental and bodily situated
form of love. Kierkegaards notion of erotic love
seems to extend that of Plato, and thereby both an-
ticipates Marions insights and, with respect to the
description of love as an erotic phenomenon, also
goes beyond them. In Works of Love Kierkegaard
states:
One has sought in various ways to name and
describe how love is felt in one in whom it
is present, the state of love, or what it is like
to love. One calls love a feeling, a mood, a
life, a passion; yet this being so general a def-
inition, one has sought to describe it more
precisely. One has called it a privation, but,
note well, what the lover constantly lacks, he
nonetheless possesses; a longing, but, note
well, a constant longing for something the
lover already ownsfor otherwise it is an
unhappy love that one is describing.That
simple wise man of old has said, Love is a
son of Affluence and Poverty.4
Kierkegaard approves of this platonic interpre-
tation of love as a combination of a lack and a
surplus, and this points in the direction of a much
more nuanced view of the traditional separation be-
tween eros and agape. But let us not be too hasty
in our conclusion. Let us continue by asking a
question just as big and just as impossible as the
question we began with. Let us ask: Where does
love come from?
Where Does Love Come From?
An old proverb tells us that love is older than every-
thing else. Plato has Phaedrus assert the same thing
in The Symposium, and Kierkegaard is fond of cit-
ing both the proverb and Plato.5 But what does it
mean to say that love is older than everything else?
It could mean that love is older than everything
in the sense of greater than the person and her
experience with lovethat love per se transcends
human experience, and therefore exists before the
person exists as an experiencing subject. Such an
interpretation points in the direction of a religious
anchoring of love in a divine source. Kierkegaard
again and again repeats the declaration that God is
love from the First Epistle of John, as well as Pauls
assurance in 1 Corinthians 13 that love is greatest,
which precisely attempts to place loves source out-
side of time, prior to any human experience of and
with love.
Kierkegaard seems to share such a religious in-
terpretation of loves source. This shows itself not
just in his diligent quoting of John and Paul.
Kierkegaard says quite explicitly in Works of Love
that human love is grounded enigmatically in Gods
love.6 And the same religious conception of loves
source applies when, in the discourse Love Will
Hide a Multitude of Sins, from the Three Up-
building Discourses of 1843, Kierkegaard emphasizes
that a humans love bears a mark of Gods love.7
The divine anchoring makes love larger than hu-
man life, if we wish to speak spatially, and prior to
human existence, if we wish to speak temporally.
The latter is indeed the basis for the declaration,
which Kierkegaard comes back to again and again,
that it was God who loved first.8
But such a religious anchoring of loves source
in God raises another question. For is love, then,
not part of human nature? If one were to ask Paul
Tillich, the answer would be that love is just as
old as being itself. Love is thereby understood as
anchored ontologically. It is an inalienable part of
human nature.9 Kierkegaard also stresses that love
has its source in human nature. He poses the ques-
tion, Where does love come from, from where
does it have its origin and its source, where is the
place, where is the abode from which it proceeds?
And he answers himself with these words: Yes, this
place is hidden or is in the hidden. It is a place
in the persons innermost recesses; loves life pro-
ceeds from this place, for the life proceeds from
the heart.10
 Erotic Love: Reading Kierkegaard with and without Marion Pia Sloft
A persons interior is thus the source of loves life,
of its utterances. For this reason, we even can speak
of love making itself known in a person purely
physically; this is why, on a purely human level,
we are acquainted with love and feel it within us.
But in the continuation of the quote just cited,
Kierkegaard, as previously mentioned, also stresses
that a humans love is grounded unfathomably in
Gods love.
One can say, therefore, that Kierkegaard simul-
taneously both underscores loves religious source
and stresses that we also have a universal experi-
ence of loves power on the human levelan expe-
rience that also makes sense of the statement that
love is greater than life, and therefore overcomes
death within a purely human horizon of under-
standing. And it is here that we can find obvious
points of similarity between Jean-Luc Marion and
Kierkegaard.
Marion and Kierkegaard: The
Erotic Reduction
In The Erotic Phenomenon Marion indeed suggests
that we have a universal human experience of loves
strength and transforming power. But in the same
place he also rejects the proposition that a non-
religious anchoring of love necessarily must be on-
tological. He propounds the view that if love is
understood exclusively as a property of existing be-
ings, as for example is the case in Tillichs work,
then there is an ontological reduction. Marion, like
Emmanuel Levinas, stresses that ontology has a ten-
dency to ask only what a things essence is. And
that means that the experience of what it is to love
or to be loved acquires only a secondary signifi-
cance. Ontology says that one must be in order to
love. Marions basic assumption is the other way
around: love is the greatest, the most important,
because it comes before both being and knowledge.11
Love as Prior to Ontology
This is precisely what experience shows us, accord-
ing to Marion. Specifically, we supposedly can love
39
something that does not exist yet. Here he alludes
to the love of parents for their as yet unborn child.
And we can, again according to Marion, remain
in love with a person we no longer see or have
a relationship with, which corresponds to the way
in which Kierkegaard describes a persons ability
to preserve love even when that loves object now
perhaps belongs to someone else.12
Marion further argues that one also can love
something that no longer exists. Here we are speak-
ing of love for someone we once loved, but who
now has died. This experience of love also occupies
Kierkegaard in one of the last discourses in Works
of Love, where he dwells on precisely this love for
the deada love that, on the human level, defies
death and chooses life, by applying this capacity
to remain faithful to ones love paradigmatically as
a pattern for loving the living.13 Kierkegaard, like
Marion, here seems to be of the opinion that love
is also greater than a humans existence on a human
level, because it can defy death and choose life.
In all these ways, which are discussed by Marion
and can be recovered from Kierkegaard, universal
experience shows us that love is greater than being
and therefore prior to ontology. It therefore will be
a basic contention of the following discussion that
when it comes to the question of loves source,
Kierkegaard is fully in line with Marions phe-
nomenological description of the human experience
of loves power; yet at the same time, Kierkegaard
would not dream of abandoning the thought that
God is the source of love. Kierkegaards dialec-
tic between the human and the religious offers
us a refreshing and far more workable view of
love than Anders Nygrens dangerously oversimpli-
fied idea that love can be understood only as a
human craving to possess the other (eros), or as
a divine giving of itself (agape). Nygrens sharply
drawn line subsequently has been developed further,
particularly by C. S. Lewis and Vincent Brummers
distinction between need-love and gift-love14
a distinction that is therefore just as incapable of
capturing Kierkegaards view of love as the division
of eros and agape.
We could regard this double-anchoring of love as
Kierkegaards attempt to assimilate and reformulate
Socrates conception of eros as a middle-entity
40 Dialog: A Journal of Theology Volume 50, Number 1 Spring 2011 March
that bridges the human and the divine. In Works of
Love we find the following definition of love, which
seems to support such a view: What is it, precisely,
that binds the temporal and the eternal, what is it
other than love, which just for that reason is prior
to everything else, and remains when everything
else is over.15
Love as Prior to Knowledge
In The Erotic Phenomenon Marion further stresses
that love is not merely experienced as something
greater than beinglove is also prior to knowl-
edge. Therefore, according to Marion, it is not the
Cartesian cogito that fundamentally defines us; if
we were to insist upon that, we would end up
in an epistemic reduction. Against this, Marion
claims that we are always-already placed in an erotic
situationin the broad, Greek sense of the term
whenever we attempt to comprehend something.
Knowledge is driven by love. The erotic compo-
nent of the situation lies in the fact that we are
never neutrally placed in relation to that of which
we seek knowledge. Our cognition is always em-
bedded. This springs from a longing, a passion for
understanding, which Marion calls the erotics of wis-
dom.16 It is in this sense that the word philosophy
means love of wisdom. The person is not de-
fined by logos or being, but as an entity that hates
and loves. The person can quite simply be defined,
according to Marion, as a loving animal.
It is my contention that Marions insistence that
love as an erotic engagement precedes comprehen-
sion is a very accurate description of the sensual-
erotic, such as Kierkegaard describes in The Im-
mediate Erotic Stages or The Musical Erotic in
the first part of Either/Or. Here Kierkegaard dis-
cusses loves first, unconscious form within a per-
son, which wholly determines a persons quest to
become herself and to relate to others. The sensual-
erotic as the fundamental form of love corresponds
precisely to Marions idea that one can experience
oneself as loving someone who has not yet ap-
peared, because love is a mode of relation we bring
with us, which determines our self-relation and our
relation to the world. Let us now, therefore, take a
closer look at the sensual-erotic as the basic form
of love in Kierkegaard.
The Sensual-Erotic
The sensual-erotic is the first and most immedi-
ate form love assumes in a person. The sensual-
erotic designates an immediate, passionate urge or
desire, which the pseudonymous writer A, author
of The Musical Erotic Stages in the first part
of Either/Or, cannot imagine humans being with-
out.17 It is not sexuality or the libido that forms
the focal point of the thesis about the erotic stages.
As development of the category of the sensual-
erotic is inspired by the Greek concept of eros,
and contains a contention that love in a person
must fundamentally be understood as an erotic
striving.
The sensual-erotic imposes itself on a person as
an immediate urgean urge that is anchored both
in the body and in consciousness (even before con-
sciousness is conscious of it), which corresponds to
the way in which love is described as an essential
need to love and to be loved in Works of Love:
How deeply loves need is grounded in hu-
man nature! The first observation, if we dare
to say it, that was made of the person, and
which was made by the only one who could
truly do it, by God, and of the first per-
son, says just this. We read just this in the
holy scripture: God said, it is not good for
the man to be alone [. . .] so deeply is this
need grounded in the persons being that,
since the first persons creation, it has un-
dergone no alteration, no new discoveries
have been made, but that self-same desig-
nation has only been confirmed in the most
various ways, diversifying from generation to
generation in expression, in presentation, in
the productions of thought. So deeply is this
need grounded in the persons essence; and
so essentially does it belong to a person that
to be human, to be He that was one with
the Father, and in loves society with the Fa-
ther and the Holy Spirit, that even He who
loves the whole race, our Lord Jesus Christ,
 Erotic Love: Reading Kierkegaard with and without Marion Pia Sloft
nonetheless humanly felt this need to love
and be loved by an individual person.18
The Musical Erotic Stages describes three
stages of the sensual-erotic, which must be viewed
as different modes in which the unshakeable love-
urge expresses itself in a person. There is no sug-
gestion here that one stage supersedes the other;
instead, they describe different aspects of loves ba-
sic erotic form. All three stages are indeed imme-
diate, and the sensual-erotic thereby appears as a
fundamental, pre-conscious urge in the person. In
what follows, we will only concern ourselves with
the first two stages: the dreaming desire and the
searching desire, as these two forms of the sensual-
erotic precisely express the above-mentioned dialec-
tic between lack and surplus that is essential to un-
derstanding Kierkegaards nuanced view of love.
Lack and Surplus: Need-Love
and Gift-Love
The discussion in The Musical-Erotic Stages in-
cludes the claim that the sensual-erotic expresses
itself both as lack and surplus. Both aspects are
present in loves basic form. At the outset, the
sensual-erotic manifests itself as an unconscious
urge in the person, which causes her to long for
something other than her own selfwithout know-
ing just what it is that the longing is directed to-
ward, because it is not yet directed toward anything
concrete. The sensual-erotic is therefore the expres-
sion for a form of yearning19 in which one has a
longing even though one lacks nothing.
But at the same time, the sensual-erotic also ex-
presses itself as a surplus. This shows itself in a per-
sons urge to give herself over to the excess of life,
craving, and passion that also is contained within
the sensual-erotic. The sensual-erotic imposes itself
as something that overflows and causes the person
to turn his attention away from himself and out
toward the world. The sensual-erotic therefore con-
tains both elements of a need-love and a gift-love,
and this is precisely the dialectic between lack and
surplus that is constitutive of loves fundamental
form. According to Kierkegaard, love is an unshake-
41
able urge in the person, which presents itself both
as an urge to receive love, to become loved, and
which therefore proceeds from a lack, a need-love;
and as a craving to give love, a craving to love an-
other, which proceeds from a surplus, a gift-love.
The Dreaming Desire
Kierkegaard calls one mode in which the sensual-
erotic manifests itself in its most immediate form
the dreaming desire. The term desire (in Danish
attra) properly designates a strong desire or in-
clination, which is fundamentally sexually defined
and therefore situated bodily. But it is crucial for
Kierkegaard to clarify that the desire, in its first, im-
mediate form, is a craving that does not yet want
something determinate, and neither, therefore, is it
directed at another, concrete person.
Nor is the dreaming desire, properly understood,
sexually oriented, but it is nonetheless essential that
it is precisely the word desire that is used. The point
is that the inclination or craving that is spoken of
in the first, tentative form of the sensual-erotic is
a craving that is passionately felt in and with the
body.
At its inception, the desire is an immediate urge,
which develops within itself and is determined by
itself in unity with its naturalness. It is therefore
not the case that the desire is directed toward some-
thing outside of itself. There is no object that de-
termines the desire, for there is as yet absolutely
no object that one desires. The desire is an in-
definable intimation of something that is not yet
known. And therefore it is not a case of a cognized
longing for someone or something determinate. Yet
the desire is experienced as a sweet turmoil.
Objectless Desire
In defining the dreaming desire as objectless, there
lies an indirect challenge to the idea that it is
merely the object, and therefore the object that one
loves, that defines love. If we were to follow that
line of thought, then love for a lover or partner
42 Dialog: A Journal of Theology Volume 50, Number 1 Spring 2011 March
becomes romantic love, love for a friend becomes
friendship, love for a child parental love, for the
neighbor neighbor love, for oneself self love, and so
forth. The character of the object determines the
form of love. This is, of course, not entirely incor-
rect. And it harmonizes with, among other things,
the view of eros that Socrates propounds in The
Symposium. Plato, and the long tradition that fol-
lows him, have therefore believed that the different
forms of love are generated by variations in the
objects of love.20
But in Kierkegaards development of the erotic
stages the stress is the other way around: the desire,
at its inception, and therefore in its first, tentative
form, appears as an undefined surplus of life, crav-
ing, and passion, which in no way is directed at a
definite object and thus is not determined by an
object. The dreaming desire belongs to the subject.
The dreaming desire bursts forth in the person
as, in itself, an immediate urge, and must not be
induced first by the encounter with the other, a
beloved, or an object of desire. The dreaming de-
sire absolutely is not directed toward anything out-
side the subject. The driving force in the dreaming
desire is not a longing for (or association with) an
object. And thus this early form of erotic love is
not characterized by an element of lack. We are
not speaking of a lust-oriented love (a need-love),
which is (or contained within) Nygrens definition
of eros and the subsequent development of that
thought. The dreaming desire is therefore a form
of erotic love that is not determined by an object,
which cannot be defined as controlled by a lack, a
longing, a lust, or a genuine need.
Surplus and Wanderlust
The dreaming desire does not long for anyone or
anything. However, there is a substantial longing,
a primordial longing, which is not directed at an
object, but which develops within itself as an un-
conscious longing for longing. It is for this reason
that the dreaming desire, although undefined, is
nonetheless to be understood as a fullness, a sur-
plus, a passion that cannot be contained within the
subject. The dreaming desire imposes itself within
a person. It wants to get out, but it has no place
to go. It is not homeless; it seeks nothing and
therefore lacks nothing. But it has wanderlust. The
dreaming desire expresses itself as a surplus of be-
ing, a surplus of life, craving, and passion. In de-
scribing the dreaming desire it is therefore impor-
tant to note that the thought of love as a surplus
leads to the thought that the dreaming desire al-
ready has imposed itself, already expressed itself,
before the encounter with the other, the beloved.
As dreaming, the desire is a sort of anticipatory
pleasure, which does not yet know what it antic-
ipates. It looks forward to something that it does
not know. It is dangerously fascinated, elated, and
turbulent, but it does not know why.
Sexuality, and therefore the libido, is, as yet, only
present as a weak intimation within the dreaming
desire, and is so undefined that Kierkegaards A
does not hesitate to call the desire at this stage
androgynous: The urge is so undefined, the object
so little differentiated, that the thing desired rests
androgynously within the urge, just as in plants
He and She sit on the same flower. The desire
and the desired are joined in this unity, such that
they both are neutrius generis.21
It is therefore an aspect of overabundance that
characterizes the dreaming desire as a peculiar, un-
conscious form of gift-love. There is too much life,
craving, and passion to be able to be contained
within the individual subject. The immediate urge
opens the subject up to something, or rather some-
one who is not yet known and therefore is neither
lacked nor properly longed for. The substantial sigh
it emits is neither remorseful nor resigned, but is
nonetheless melancholic, because it springs from a
fundamental urge for an expansion that does not
yet know its direction and shape. The dreaming
desire dreams of something without knowing what
it is, and writhes restlessly in its sleep.
The Searching Desire
By contrast, the searching desire is built upon an
element of lack within the sensual-erotic as the ba-
sic form of love. But it is important to emphasize
 Erotic Love: Reading Kierkegaard with and without Marion Pia Sloft
that the elements of lack and surplus are of equal
weight and are present at the same time, as two
sides of one and the same love in its most imme-
diate form.
The seeking desire is also objectless, strictly
speaking. The seeking desire seeks something that
it can desire, but it struggles and to a certain extent
gets lost in the plurality of objects.
The searching desire is, qua searching, outwardly
directed, whereas the dreaming desire primarily
rests within itself and its own overabundance. The
searching desire wants to set out on a journey of
discovery. The longing to set out, which is al-
ready characteristic of the overabundance within the
dreaming desire, leads to the figure of the searching
desire, the desire to go out of itself and direct its
gaze toward its surroundings, to view the objects
that lie outside the self.
But it is crucial here to maintain that the wan-
derlust lies within the searching desire itself. It does
not first arise upon seeing a desirable object. The
desire seeks to go out of itself by itself, not because
it has been affected by an object in its surround-
ings. If we were to remain in the realm of metaphor
we could say that the searching desire is already on
the hunt before it knows for certain that there is a
quarry.
Passion Directed Outward
In the dreaming desire the sensual-erotic presents
itself as an infinite depth and substantial longing,
which pervades a person and directs her passion
inward in spite of the dimension of surplus. In
the searching desire the sensual-erotic appears as an
awakened desire, which directs itself outward and
seeks an object. The searching desire therefore fo-
cuses passions direction outward. The sensual-erotic
in its immediate form thus has two directions:
partly directed outward, partly moving within it-
self.22 The inward direction is described via the
dreaming desire and the aspect of overabundance.
In the searching desire this inward direction is com-
bined with the outward direction: the relation to
the other, or rather, the others.23
43
The searching desire is not, strictly speaking, di-
rected toward a determinate object, but in a certain
sense it is directed toward all objects. The plurality
of objects does indeed cause the seeking urge to
discover a range of various objects that can incite
craving and awaken the lust. The searching desire
can be understood as a relishing lust for life, one
that is not really directed at a specific other per-
son, but toward the very fact that it is able to desire
something outside of itself. The dreaming desire is
awakened, and, As soon as the desire awakens, or
rather, in and with the awakening, the desire and
the object are separated for the desire; now the de-
sire breathes free and healthy, whereas previously it
could not breathe for the desired.24 Moreover,
At this stage of the sensual-erotic all objects
are therefore equally desirable. The searching
desire enjoys enjoyment; it does not search
in order to find, but searches in order to
search, discovers in order to discover. In a
deeper sense it does not desire a specific
other person; it desires being able to desire
itself. Therefore the sensual-erotic is also, at
this stage, indeterminate both in relation to
its object and in relation to the sexual. Both
elements are responsible for the transitori-
ness that characterizes the searching desire
and makes it glittery like a firefly, incon-
stant and transitory like the summer birds
touch, and just as harmless; countless kisses,
but enjoyed so quickly that it is as if there
was only one taken from the one object what
was given to the next.25
In the moment in which the desire awakens as
a desire for someone, it is no longer determined
merely as a resting-in-itself, but is equally deter-
mined by its object. But even though the searching
desire is directed toward an object outside of it-
self, it is important to underscore that it is not
the desirability of the object that creates the de-
sire. The sensual-erotic proceeds from a substantial
longing, an unshakeable urge within the subject,
which arises as both a fullness and a privation.
The relationship between the desire and the
object therefore plays out as a peculiar dialectic
between separation and reconciliation. With the
awakening of the desire there arises knowledge of
44 Dialog: A Journal of Theology Volume 50, Number 1 Spring 2011 March
ones separation from the object. Now one desires
something outside of oneself, something, or rather
someone, which is not oneself nor is contained
within oneself. But in the same moment that this
separation is felt, there arises an urge to be unified
with that from which one is separated: But this
movement of the senses, this earthquake momen-
tarily rends the desire and its object infinitely apart
from each other; but as the motivating principle
shows itself in an instant to be one of separation,
it thereby reveals itself again as wanting to unify
what has been separated.26
It is the separation and, at the same time, the
urge for unification that drives the searching de-
sire out into the plurality of objects. Whereas the
dreaming desire lies within what we have previously
called loves aspect of overabundance, the searching
desire lies implicit within the conception of love as
founded upon a lack.
It is important to stress that these two stages of
the sensual-erotic do not succeed each other, such
that the first is abandoned in favor of the next.
Rather, as is always the case with Kierkegaards dis-
cussions of stages, the one stage is incorporated into
the next.27 Thus the substantial drive, the outward
longing, which was characteristic of the dreaming
desire, still remains a part of the searching desire,
but this substantial drive is now directed toward
an object outside of the self, whereby the surplus
that initiated the outward movement is combined
with a lack, the desire to enjoy (not possess) the
other.
The Dual Nature of Love
The dialectic between lack and surplus, between
need-love and gift-love, is, for Kierkegaard, con-
stitutive of the love that is an unshakeable urge
within the person. This dialectic can be illustrated
via the relation between the first two stages of the
sensual-erotic, but it is the same dialectic we find
again in Works of Love, which tells us that love has
two directions: So now with love. What love does,
it is, what it is, it doesand in the same moment;
in the same moment it goes out of itself (in the
outward direction) it is within itself (in the inward
direction), and in the same moment it is within it-
self it goes out of itself; therefore this outgoing and
this returning, this returning and this outgoing, are
simultaneously one and the same.28
Kierkegaards insistence that love is greater than
everything and therefore prior to both existence and
knowledge seems, on the one hand, to point in
the direction of a metaphysical anchoring of love,
which would be foreign to Marion. But at the same
time Kierkegaard, like Marion, stresses that we have
a universal, human experience of love, which is
anchored bodily and sensed phenomenally.
This duality is especially apparent in the phe-
nomenological description of the sensual-erotic as
loves first, immediate form. This duality in the
view of loves foundation and the experience of love
as a sensual-erotic urge prevents a strong distinction
between a humanly based and a religiously based
love. Further, it points to the fact that Kierkegaard
had a much more nuanced notion of love than the
simple distinction between eros and agape that Ny-
gren invented, which a whole tradition after him
also has ascribed to Kierkegaards view of love.
Endnotes
1. It is of course impossible to mention all these interpretations.
One could say that K. E. Lgstrup with the polemical epilogue to Den
etiske fordring (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1956) and later in Opgr med
Kierkegaard (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968) paved the way for such an
agapistic interpretation of Kierkegaards notion of love; Lgstrup also
established the ground for any later critique of Kierkegaard as being totally
oblivious to, if not directly against, erotic love. To mention some recent
interpretations that follow this line we can put forward Troels Nrager
in Hjertets lngsel (Copenhagen: Anis, 2003), where he directly links
Kierkegaards notion of love in Philosophical Fragments with Anders Nygren
(see p. 47, note 22); Nrager also interprets the topic of love in Works
of Love as fully agapistic in opposition to any formulation of erotic love
(p. 61). In 2007 Jakob Wolf continues this traditional interpretation of
Kierkegaards notion of love with direct reference to Lgstrup in the study
Naturlig krlighed. Kritik af pligtetik og nytteetik (Copenhagen: Anis, 2007),
57-69; and Jakob V. Olsen supports such an interpretation albeit not in a
critical manner in his book Kierkegaard, krlighed og kristendom (Fredericia,
Denmark: Credo, 2008). In his A Theology of Love (London: T&T Clark,
2010), Werner G. Jeanrond argues for a unity of love and desire, eros
and agape, continuing the above-mentioned agapistic interpretation of
Kierkegaards notion of love and concluding his chapter on Kierkegaard
with the statement that Kierkegaard and Nygren denounce human eros
in love (134).
2. Sren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (New York: Pen-
guin, 1992).
 Erotic Love: Reading Kierkegaard with and without Marion Pia Sloft
3. Jean-Luc Marion, The Erotic Phenomenon (2003; reprint, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007).
4. Sren Kierkegaard Research Centre, Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter 55
vols. (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 1997), 9:175. (This and all subsequent
Kierkegaard quotes are translated by Patric Stokes and taken from this
series, hereafter cited as SKS.)
5. Kierkegaard introduces the first of the Three Upbuilding Discourses,
Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins, with the words: What is it that
is older than everything? It is love. What is it that survives everything? It
is love (SKS 5:65), here playing upon both the proverb and Phaedrus
speech in Platos Symposium.
6. Loves hidden life is in the innermost, unfathomable, and there
again in an unfathomable connection with the whole of existence. Just
as the still lake has its source deep in the hidden wellspring, which no
eye sees, so the source of a persons love is yet deeper, in Gods love. If
no fount was at the bottom, if God was not love, then there would be
no still lake, nor would there be human love. Just as the still lake has
its source obliquely in the hidden fount, so is a humans love grounded
enigmatically in Gods. Just as the quiet lake invites you to look at it, but
through the darkness mirror image forbids you to see through it, so loves
enigmatic origin in God forbids you to see its source; when you think
you see it, then it is a mirror image that deceives you, as was the source,
that which only covers over the deeper source. Just like the ingenious,
which precisely in order to hide what it covers looks like the bottom,
so that which deceptively looks like the depths of the source only covers
over something deeper still (SKS 9:17f ).
7. For this is the secret of earthly love: that it bears a mark of
Gods love on it, without which it would remain something ridiculous,
or a stale pandering (SKS 5:83).
8. In Works of Love Kierkegaard states: Let a human, humanly speak-
ing, love God in the sincerity of the heart, alas, God has nonetheless loved
him first, God is an eternity aheadso far is a human behind (SKS
9:106).
9. Love, power, and justice are metaphysically speaking as old as
being itself. They precede everything that is, and they cannot be derived
from anything that is. They have ontological dignity. Paul Tillich, Love,
Power, and Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 21.
10. SKS 9:16f.
11. Marion, 21.
12. If love was solely a relationship between two, then the one
would constantly be in the others power, insofar as the other was a
mean person who wanted to break the relationship. When a relationship
is only between two, then the one constantly has overwhelming power
over the relationship by being able to break it, for as soon as the one
has broken it, then the relationship is broken. But when there are three,
the one cannot do this. The third is, as said, Love itself, which the
innocent sufferer in the breakup can hold on to, and so the break-up
has no power over him [. . .] But the true lover never falls away from
love, and so for him it can never come to a break-up; for love abides.
Yet in a relationship between two, can one prevent the breakup when the
other one breaks it? One should indeed think that one of two is enough
to break the relationship, and if the relationship is broken off, then it is
broken off. In a certain sense this is also the case, but if however the
lover does not fall away from love, then he can prevent the break-up,
he can perform this miracle, for when he abides, then the break-up can
never really come about. By abiding (and in this abiding the lover is in
a pact with the Eternal) he retains power over the past, such that he
transforms what is in the past, and through this the break-up exists as a
possibility in the future (SKS 9:302).
13. The work of love in remembering one dead is therefore a work
of the most disinterested, the freest, the most faithful love. So go forth
and carry it out; remember the dead, and just thereby learn how to love
the living disinterestedly, freely, faithfully. In the relation to one dead
45
you have the criteria by which you can test yourself. The one who uses
this criteria shall easily be able to shorten the most complex relationships
extensiveness, and he shall learn to loath the mass of excuses, which
actuality otherwise has immediately to hand, which say that it is the
other, who was self-interested, the other who is himself to blame for
being forgotten, because he does not bring himself into recollection, the
other who is faithless. Remember one dead, then you have, apart from
the blessings which are inseparable from this work of love, also the best
instruction in understanding how to love the living properly: that it is a
duty to love the people we do not see, but also those we see. The duty
to love the people we see cannot cease because death separates them from
us, for the duty is eternal; but therefore neither can the duty towards the
dead separate us from those living with us, such that they do not remain
an object for our love (SKS 9:351).
14. C. S. Lewis first employs the categories need-love and gift-love
to differentiate between different facets of love in The Four Loves (1960;
reprint, London: Harper Collins, 2002). This is a distinction that is also
developed further by Vincent Brummer in The Model of Love (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), although neither Lewis nor Brummer
favors a sharp distinction between need-love and gift-love. A radical dis-
tinction between a lust-oriented eros-love and a pure, giving agape-love
goes back to Nygrens now-classic study The Christian Idea of Love Through
the Ages (Stockholm: Swedish Church Diaconal Board, 1938).
15. SKS 9:14.
16. In order to attain the truth, it is necessary, in every case, first
to desire it, and therefore to love it, Marion, 2.
17. SKS 2:53-136.
18. Ibid., 9:155ff.
19. In The Concept of Anxiety Vigilius Haufniensis indeed draws at-
tention to the ambiguity that lies in speaking of a longing; that one
already at the outset anticipates what one longs for, and at the same time
he points to a clear parallel between desire and anxiety in their earliest
forms. A quote from The Concept of Anxiety for illumination: With ex-
pressions and determinations such as Longing, Yearning, Expectation and
so forth, one often overlooks the fact that these involve a pre-existing
state, and that this state is therefore present and applicable at the same
time as the longing unfolds itself. The expectant person is not put into
this state by accident etc., so that he finds himself totally alien in it, but
he produces himself at the same time. Anxiety is the expression of such
a longing; for in anxiety the state from which he longs proclaims itself,
and proclaims itself, because longing alone is not enough to save him
(SKS 4:362).
20. In his concept-analytic study of loves motivational structure Ur-
ban Forell stresses precisely the following: An important point of depar-
ture for the conceptual analysis is the elementary fact that love always
has an object, and this object also determines, to a large extent, the
loves nature and type. The Motivational Structure of Love: An Ethical and
Concept-Analytical Study (Lund: Lund University Press, 1989).
21. SKS 9:14.
22. cf. SKS 2:86.
23. The desire awakens, and just as it always happens that one
first notices that one has been dreaming the moment one awakens, so
also here, the dream is over. This awakening, whereby the desire wakes
up, this shock, separates the desire and the object, gives the desire an
object. This is a dialectical definition, which must be sharply maintained,
that when the object first exists, the desire exists, and when the desire
first exists, so does the object. The desire and the object are twins, of
which the one comes into the world not the smallest fraction of a second
before the other. But though they absolutely come into the world at
once in this way, and do not even have the interval of time between
them that twins can otherwise have, the significance of this coming into
existence is not that they are unified, but, on the contrary, that they are
separated. But this movement of the senses, this earthquake momentarily
46 Dialog: A Journal of Theology Volume 50, Number 1 Spring 2011 March
rends the desire and its object infinitely apart from each other; but as the
motivating principle shows itself in an instant to be one of separation, it
thereby reveals itself again as wanting to unify what has been separated.
The result of the separation is that the desire is torn out of its substantial
resting-within-itself, and as a consequence, the object no longer falls under
the determination of subtantiality, but instead disperses into a manifold
(SKS 2:85).
24. SKS 2:86.
25. Ibid.
26. SKS 2:85.
27. No stage exists independently. The one stage is not outside the
other and therefore it is emphasized that the expression metamorphosis
is actually more comprehensive than the expression stage: The various
stages, taken together, constitute the immediate stage, and one can see
from this that the individual stage is more a revelation of a predicate,
so that all predicates come crashing down into the richness of the last
stage, for this is the genuine stage. The other stages have no independent
existence; for themselves they are only for representation, and from this
one can also see how accidental they are when compared to the final
stage (SKS 2:80).
28. SKS 9:278.