Works of Love

Søren Kierkegaard — Works of Love: Some Christian Reflections in the Form of Discourses, translated from the Danish by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson, with an introduction by Douglas V. Steere (Princeton University Press, 1946; second printing 1949). Copyright: public domain in the United States (the 1946 copyright was not renewed); likely still in copyright elsewhere.

Kierkegaard’s greatest work of Christian ethics, published under his own name in 1847: eighteen discourses in two series on the commandment to love the neighbour — that love is a duty, that it is known by its fruits, that it is the fulfilment of the law, that it believes, hopes, seeks not its own, covers a multitude of sins and abides — against the preferential love of the poet and the lover.

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Contents (23)

1. Introduction
2. Volume I. Foreword
3. Volume I. Prayer
4. Volume I. I. The Hidden Life of Love and Its Recognition by Its Fruits
5. Volume I. II A. Thou Shalt Love
6. Volume I. II B. Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor
7. Volume I. II C. Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor
8. Volume I. III A. Love Is the Fulfilment of the Law
9. Volume I. III B. Love Is a Matter of Conscience
10. Volume I. IV. Our Duty to Love the Men We See
11. Volume I. V. Our Duty to Remain in the Debt of Love to One Another
12. Volume II. I. Love Edifieth
13. Volume II. II. Love Believeth All Things—and Yet Is Never Deceived
14. Volume II. III. Love Hopeth All Things—and Yet Is Never Put to Shame
15. Volume II. IV. Love Seeketh Not Its Own
16. Volume II. V. Love Covereth a Multitude of Sins
17. Volume II. VI. Love Abideth
18. Volume II. VII. Mercy, a Work of Love, Even If It Can Give Nothing and Can Do Nothing
19. Volume II. VIII. The Victory of the Reconciliation in Love, Which Wins the Vanquished
20. Volume II. IX. The Work of Love in Remembering the Dead
21. Volume II. X. The Work of Love in Recommending Love
22. Volume II. Conclusion
23. Translators’ Notes