Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition by Bubbio Paolo Diego

Author:Bubbio, Paolo Diego
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2014-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

Features of Kenotic Sacrifice

Works of Love can be considered in its entirety as a progressive clarification via negationis of the real kenotic sacrifice. In other words, Kierkegaard keeps introducing newer and newer distinctions and specifications and, by stressing what the true sacrifice is not, provides the reader with a “distillation” of the kenotic sacrifice, or (considering the difficulties implied in the conceptual presentation of such a dynamic) a good approximation of it.

The first and most basic distinction is that between the alleged “sacrifices” implied in relationships of erotic love and friendship, and the real kenotic sacrifice that is required of a Christian. The former “sacrifices” are only inappropriately or improperly called this way, as in reality they derive from a union or “alliance” in selfishness. Kierkegaard writes:

What the world honors and loves under the name of love is an alliance in self-love. The alliance also requires sacrifice and devotion on the part of the one it will call loving; it requires that he sacrifice a portion of his own self-love in order to hold together in the united self-love, and it requires that he sacrifice the God-relationship in order to hold together in a worldly way with the alliance that excludes God or at most takes him along for the sake of appearance. By love, however, God understands self-sacrificing love in the divine sense, the self-sacrificing love that sacrifices everything in order to make room for God, even if the heavy sacrifice became even heavier because no one understood it, something that in another sense belongs to true sacrifice, inasmuch as the sacrifice that people understand has its reward, after all, in popular approval and to that extent is not true sacrifice, which must unconditionally be without reward. (WL, 119–120)

In this passage, some fundamental features of kenotic sacrifice appear clearly. Love, as God understands it, is a love that, Kierkegaard says, is willing to sacrifice everything without reward. Additionally, the specification that people understand the “improper” sacrifice seems to suggest that, conversely, nobody will understand those who perform the “authentic” kenotic sacrifice. The sacrifices implied in the relationship of erotic love and friendship seem to maintain a reasonableness that is absent in the context of kenotic sacrifice. The reasonableness is first of all represented by the presence of a limit. “Erotic love and friendship,” Kierkegaard writes, “have a limit; they can give up all things for the other’s distinctiveness but not themselves, love and friendship, for the other’s distinctiveness” (WL, 273). Conversely, the sacrificing love is willing to make every sacrifice, for “it does not seek its own” (WL, 265–278).

So far we have been told that the real kenotic sacrifice implies a willingness to sacrifice everything without getting anything in exchange. However, the definition of sacrifice is still vague. What does Kierkegaard mean by “everything”? How radical is this sacrifice supposed to be? Should it be the sacrifice of one’s life? Or an everlasting sacrifice of one’s identity, in the form of self-denial? What does kenotic sacrifice mean, in concrete?

In

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