Kierkegaard: "Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself" as a Basis for Ethics

Kierkegaard: "Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself" as a Basis for Ethics

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." [Matthew 22:37-40, AV]

"When you open the door which you shut in order to pray to God, the first person you meet as you go out is your neighbour whom you shall love. Wonderful!" [Kierkegaard, p.64]

1 Introduction

This paper is a philosophical exploration of some aspects and implications of the "second great commandment", to "love thy neighbor as thyself", which Kierkegaard called the "royal command". This is often thought to be the heart of Christian ethics [Wattles, p.8].

This agape-obligation has seemed to some to pose difficulties. Macquarrie and Kierkegaard both recognize that there has been objection. Macquarrie several times notes his opposition to the belief,

"that moral laws are the heteronomous commands of a transcendent deity who demands obedience." [p.219f]

and even worse,

"imposed on creatures from whom he is 'wholly other', a command, moreover, which they have no capacity to obey except by grace alone, while this grace, in turn, seems to be also external and has to be 'infused' from outside." [p.221]

Kierkegaard wrote that,

[to the pagan,] "this command 'You shall love' will not only surprise him but will disturb him and be an offence to him. [p.41] It may perhaps offend you — well, you know it anyway, that Christianity is always accompanied by signs of offense. Nevertheless believe it .... Do not stop believing because the command almost offends you." [p.74]

The thesis of this paper is that, setting aside the question of moral offense that has disturbed commentators from Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason) to William Empson (Milton's God), agape to neighbor makes sense only under monotheistic or specifically Christian assumptions, and therefore, the old saw, "Christianity may not be factually true, but it has a sublime ethical teaching", is problematical.

A number of issues inevitably arise in any serious discussion of agape. Some of these issues are discussed in the sections below:

2.1 How is love for God like love for neighbor?

2.2 Is God's love for me like my love for neighbor?

2.3 How is love for neighbor like love of self?