Works of Love by Søren Kierkegaard

Author:Søren Kierkegaard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1995-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

V [IX 267]

Love Hides a Multitude of Sins74

The temporal has three periods and therefore does not ever actually exist completely or exist completely in any of them; the eternal is. A temporal object can have many various characteristics, in a certain sense can be said to have them simultaneously insofar as it is what it is in these specific characteristics. But a temporal object never has redoubling [Fordoblelse] in itself;75 just as the temporal vanishes in time, so also it is only in its characteristics. When, however, the eternal is in a human being, this eternal redoubles in him in such a way that every moment it is in him, it is in him in a double mode: in an outward direction and in an inward direction back into itself, but in such a way that this is one and the same, since otherwise it is not redoubling. The eternal is not only in its characteristics but is in itself in its characteristics. It not only has characteristics but is in itself in having the characteristics.

So also with love. What love does, that it is, what it is; that it does—at one and the same moment. At the same moment it goes out of itself (the outward direction), it is in itself (the inward direction); and at the same moment it is in itself, it goes out of itself in such a way that this outward going and this returning, this returning and this outward going are simultaneously one and the same.

When we say, “Love gives bold confidence,” we are saying that the one who loves by his nature makes others boldly confident. Wherever love is present, it spreads bold confidence. We like to be near someone who loves, because he casts out fear.76 [IX 268] Whereas the mistrustful person scares everyone away, whereas the crafty and cunning spread anxiety and painful disquietude around them, whereas the presence of a domineering person is as oppressive as the heavy pressure of sultry air—love gives bold confidence. But when we say, “Love gives bold confidence,” we are at the same time saying something else, that the one who loves has bold confidence, as in “Love gives bold confidence on the Day of Judgment”77—that is, it makes the loving one boldly confident in the judgment.

When we say, “Love saves from death,” the redoubling in the thought is immediate: the one who loves saves another person from death, and in quite the same or yet in another sense he saves himself from death. This he does all at once; it is one and the same. He does not save another person at one moment and at another moment save himself, but at the moment he saves the other he saves himself from death. But love never thinks of the latter, of saving itself, of getting bold confidence itself; the one who loves thinks only of lovingly giving bold confidence and saving another from death.

Yet the one who loves is not therefore forgotten. No, the

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