Love, Reason, and Will: Kierkegaard After Frankfurt

Description

Love, Reason, and Will: Kierkegaard After Frankfurt introduces and investigates themes common to Harry G. Frankfurt and Soren 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.

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).

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. * C. Stephen Evans, University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Baylor University, USA * 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. * Clare Carlisle, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Theology, King's College London, UK *