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Love, Reason, and Will: Kierkegaard After Frankfurt introduces and investigates themes common to Harry G. Frankfurt and Søren Kierkegaard, focusing particularly on their understanding of love. Several distinguished contributors argue that Kierkegaard's insights about love, volition, and identity can help us to evaluate aspects of Frankfurt's well-known arguments about love and caring; similarly, Frankfurt's analyses of the higher-order will, valuing, and self-love help clarify themes in Kierkegaard's Works of Love and other books.
By bringing these two key thinkers into conversation with each other, we may glean a new understanding of the structure of love, reasons for love or deriving from loving, and more broadly, the central ethical questions of "how to live" and to develop an authentic identity and meaningful life.
Love, Reason, and Will will appeal to readers interested in the philosophy of action and emotions, continental thought (especially in the existential tradition), the study of character in psychology, and theological work on neighbor-love and virtues.
An introduction to the philosophy of love, bridging analytic and continental philosophy and the philosophy of religion, through the writings of Harry G. Frankfurt and Søren Kierkegaard.
Brings Kierkegaard's ideas into central debates in contemporary moral psychology
Will be of use to a broad readership, including those studying Kierkegaard, existentialism, the philosophy of emotion, Christian ethics, and Frankfurt's contributions to analytic philosophy
Contributions from some of the most distinguished Kierkegaard scholars writing today
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for Parenthetical Citations
Introduction
John Davenport, Fordham University, USA, and Anthony Rudd, St. Olaf College, USA
Section 1: Love and the Ground of Love
1. The Sources and Resources of Love: A Platonic Response to Frankfurt
Charles Taliaferro, St. Olaf College, USA
2. Love and Value, Yet Again
Alan Soble, Drexel University, USA
3. The Importance of Whom We Care About
Troy Jollimore, California State University, Chico, USA
4. Frankfurt and Kierkegarard on B.S., Wantonness, and Aestheticism: A Phenomenology of Inauthenticity
John Davenport, Fordham University, USA
Section 2: Love and Self-Love
5. The Dear Self: Self-Love, Redoubling, and Self-Denial
Sylvia Walsh, Stetson University, USA
6. Giving 'The Dear Self' its Due: Kierkegaard, Frankfurt, and Self-Love
John Lippitt, University of Hertfordshire, UK
7. The Fullness of Faith: Frankfurt and Kierkegaard on Self-Love and Human Flourishing
Marilyn G. Piety, Drexel University, USA
Section 3: Love and Its Reasons
8. Selves, Existentially Speaking
Annemarie van Stee, Leiden University, The Netherlands
9. Willing and the Necessities of Love in Frankfurt and Kierkegaard
M. Jamie Ferreira, University of Virginia, USA
10. Love as the Ultimate Ground of Practical Reason: Kierkegaard, Frankfurt, and the Conditions
of Affective Experience
Rick Anthony Furtak, Colorado College, USA
11. Kierkegaard's Platonism and the Reasons of Love
Anthony Rudd, St. Olaf's College, USA
List of Contributors
Bibliography
Index
Love, Reason, and Will: Kierkegaard After Frankfurt is a superb collection of essays on two important figures, whose thought is clearly connected in a number of interesting ways, albeit with some sharp disagreements. Frankfurt's influence in analytic philosophy is immense, and relating Kierkegaard to his work is a great idea. This is one of the few books that will truly bridge the 'analytic-continental' divide in contemporary philosophy.
Anthony Rudd and John Davenport have brought together an impressive group of scholars to reflect on the intellectual encounter between Kierkegaard and Frankfurt – two philosophers who made love central to their thinking. These essays show us new facets of Kierkegaard's profound, provocative writing. They also offer refreshing and rigorous explorations of the nature and significance of human love, in both religious and secular contexts. Admirably edited by two of the finest Kierkegaard scholars of our time, this volume makes an important contribution to contemporary debates.
John Davenport is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, USA. He is the author of Narrative Identity, Autonomy and Mortality: From Frankfurt and MacIntyre to Kierkegaard (2012); Will as Commitment and Resolve (2007) and co-editor of Kierkegaard After MacIntyre (2001).
Anthony Rudd is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Olaf College, USA. He is the author of Self, Value and Narrative: a Kierkegaardian Approach (2012); Expressing the World: Skepticism, Wittgenstein and Heidegger (2003) and Kierkegaard and the Limits of the Ethical (1993). He is co-editor of Kierkegaard After MacIntyre (2001).