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Pia Sltoft

MLN, Volume 128, Number 5, December 2013 (Comparative Literature

Issue), pp. 1115-1131 (Article)
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DOI: 10.1353/mln.2013.0088

For additional information about this article

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The Transparency of Self-Love?

Kierkegaard vs. Frankfurt

Pia Sltoft

In Works of Love, Kierkegaard offers six precise descriptions of what

it is to not love oneself in the right way, and of how these negative
forms of self-love express themselves in a person. The text is therefore
concerned with descriptions of selfish forms of self-love as these find
expression in someone who does not love herself correctly.
These six descriptions of negative self-love are collected in a long
exposition given in the second discourse of Works of Love, which bears
the title You Shall Love (Kjerlighedens 25 / Works 17).1 In what follows,
I will break this long exposition up into its six individual descriptions,
in order to highlight the six different ways in which selfish self-love
can be expressedsix ways which all have negative implications for a
persons relation to themselves. These six negative forms of self-love are
represented by the following types:
1. The
2. The
3. The
4. The
5. The
6. The

Bustler (the Busy one)

Light-minded
Heavy-minded
Person (visibly) in Despair
Self-tormentor
Suicide

Kierkegaard offers these descriptions in the form of questions to the

reader, which suggests that we must ask ourselves whether we can
recognize these descriptions of selfish self-love from our own relationship to ourselves. This question is necessitated by the fact that self-love
1
References to Kierkegaards works will be given first to the Danish original, followed
by the English translation.

MLN 128 (2013): 11151131 2014 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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Pia Sltoft

usually keeps itself hidden or else takes a form other than its own.
For this reason, Kierkegaard connects negative self-love with doublemindedness, and in order to shed light on the significance of this I
will draw upon H.G. Frankfurts discussion of self-love in The Reasons
of Love.
1. Negative forms of Self-Love
In Works of Love, Kierkegaard first asks: When the bustler wastes his
time and powers in the service of futile, inconsequential pursuits, is
this not because he has not learned rightly to love himself? (Kjerlighedens 30 / Works 23). The bustler is someone who wastes his time,
and thereby his life, in trivial and insignificant business. The bustler
allows himself to be defined exclusively by the prevailing opinion of
the time. This is a matter of negative self-love because such a person,
who is exclusively taken up with what the times demand, overlooks
the fact that he has a self that is fundamentally intended to love itself,
and not a self that is only loveable if it lives up to the demand of the
times. The bustler is altogether too busy mirroring the spirit of the
times. And Kierkegaard does not hesitate to call this form of self-love
despair. It is a manner of despair because, properly speaking, the
bustler does not love himself, but only the self he makes himself into
by living up to the trends of the times. The self he loves is one that
others have deemed loveable on the basis of a set of contemporary,
and therefore relative, criteria.
Kierkegaard goes on to ask: When the light-minded [letsindige]
person throws himself almost like a nonentity into the folly of the
moment and makes nothing of it, is this not because he does not know
how to love himself rightly? (3031 / 23). The light-minded person,
who throws himself into the folly of the moment, is someone who
never thinks more deeply about what he is doing with himself, indeed,
never reflects at all that he has a self that does not simply take shape
by abandoning itself to the moment. The light-minded person can be
described as someone who allows himself to be lured by the pleasure
of the now, the euphoria of raw experience, the momentary fame.
The light-minded person finds it all too easy to let himself go, such
that he throws himself away. This person is thus also one who does
not know how to love himself rightly; a person who is fundamentally
in despair over himself and therefore finds it so easy to let go of it.2
2
Arne Grn claims that this description of the negative forms of self-love in Works
of Love can shed light on the analysis of despair in The Sickness Unto Death (cf. Der

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And Kierkegaards description goes on: When the heavy-minded

[tungsindige] person desires to be rid of life, indeed, of himself, is this
not because he is unwilling to learn earnestly and rigorously to love
himself? (31 / 23). Paradoxically enough, the heavy-minded person
also lets go of himselfof his selfall too easily, but for the opposite
reason to the light-minded person. The heavy-minded person wishes
to do away with himself because he views himself as something burdensomeas something he must endure, and so would be better off
without. A heavy-minded person might even attempt to drown himself in
self-abuse or self-deprivation. This shows that the heavy-minded person
does not love himself in the right way, but instead thinks of himself as
something one can master and handle, or in any case intoxicate and
numb. The depressed persons selfish self-love is therefore despair: a
despairing attempt to be rid of oneself.
Kierkegaard goes on to ask: When someone surrenders to despair
because the world or another person has faithlessly left him betrayed,
what then is his fault (his innocent suffering is not referred to here)
except not loving himself in the right way? (3 / 23). The person
who despairs because he is struck by misfortune or unfaithfulness in
the world shows precisely thereby that he does not love himself in
the right way. When disastrous events occur in nature, culture or in
relation to other people, the very foundations of our lives are shaken.
When a child dies, a loved one disappears, or we are struck by illness
or natural catastrophe, it is hard to continue to love a self that has
been treated so grievously. This is not because Kierkegaard advocates
a kind of stoic implacability when the self is hit by such catastrophes.3
On the contrary, he stresses that in all the cases just mentioned one
must sorrow, one must take things to heartbut one must not despair:
I do not have the right to become insensitive to lifes pain, because I shall
sorrow; but neither do I have the right to despair, because I shall sorrow;
and neither do I have the right to stop sorrowing, because I shall sorrow.

Begriff 54f.). In the following section I will take the opposite perspective, in that we
will allow the analysis of despair in The Sickness Unto Death to shed light on the negative
forms of self-love in Works of Love.
3
Therefore it is with good reason that Rick Anthony Furtak maintains that Kierkegaard
has a completely different approach to suffering than that of the Stoics: According to
Stoic moral psychology, emotions (or passions) are cognitive responses to perceived
value in the world, and therefore we can eradicate them by changing our beliefs
about what really matters in life. I draw upon the writings of Sren Kierkegaard to
develop an alternative philosophy according to which the emotions can be understood
as embodying a kind of authentic insightand even, perhaps, enabling us to attain a
uniquely truthful way of seeing the world (xixii).

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Pia Sltoft

So it is with love. You do not have the right to become insensitive to this
feeling, because you shall love; but neither do you have the right to love
despairingly, because you shall love; and just as little do you have the right
to warp this feeling in you, because you shall love. You shall preserve love,
and you shall preserve yourself and by and in preserving yourself preserve
love. (50 / 43)

Once again, our attention is drawn to the close connection between

love and a persons self, as well as to the fact that love and feeling are
bound up with each othereven when it comes to self-love. But what
is crucial in this quote is that despair is forbidden. Why so? If a person
despairs on the basis of the catastrophes just mentioned, she despairs
over her tormented self, and so this despair shows that she was, at
bottom, already in despairbecause she did not love herself in the
right way but only loved herself through the things she possessed: her
health, her wealth, her happiness. Such a despairing person has her
self at second hand and therefore does not really love herself, but only
what this self is in relation to others. Despair is the abandonment of
every hope. If a person despairs, she gives up herself.
Kierkegaard asks further: When someone self-tormentingly thinks
to do God a service by torturing himself, what is his sin except not
willing to love himself in the right way? (31 / 23). Through various
self-devised punishments, the person who self-tormentingly tortures
herself for Gods sake shows that she does not love herself in the
right way. She invents a suffering self in the hope that this self will be
pleasing to God. In a wider sense, the self-tormentor is someone who
in one way or another attempts to injure or disfigure herself, perhaps
metaphorically, perhaps literally. The self-tormentor simply does not
love herselfjust as little as she denies herself, in that a fundamental
element of self-torment is inventing a self that one believes that another
will love because of its suffering. That the self-tormentor is also in despair
requires no further justification.
Having radicalized the idea of self-torment, Kierkegaard concludes
by asking: And if, alas, a person presumptuously lays violent hands
upon himself, is not his sin precisely this, that he does not rightly
love himself in the sense in which a person ought to love himself?
(31 / 23). Like the heavy-minded person, someone who lays violent
hands upon herself (and who may well be heavy-minded herself), a
suicide, wishes to do away with herselfbut goes to extreme lengths.
She does not seek merely to dull the pain of her troublesome self
through self-abuse or self-denial, but takes the final step and tries to

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end that selfs life.4 Nor does the suicide love himself in the right way.5
He thinks of his self as something he can get rid of, do away with,
and he thereby volatilizes the idea that the self is something that lies
in the foundation of every person.
Kierkegaards point in these six descriptions of erroneous self-love
is to show how selfish self-love looks when we focus upon the inward
direction in a person. It is necessary to describe selfish self-loves expressions in such detail and then ask about their recognizability because
these selfish forms of self-love are not immediately accessible to observation.6 Selfish self-love hides beneath bustling, light-mindedness, heavymindedness, despair, self-torment and the wish to commit suicide,
and so cannot immediately be seen. The negative forms of self-love just
described do therefore not seem to be very transparent. Lets turn
to Frankfurts argument for the transparency of self-love and later
connect his arguments with Kierkegaards descriptions.
2. Frankfurt on Self-Love
In the third chapter of The Reasons of Love, which bears the title The
Dear Self, H.G. Frankfurt argues that self-love constitutes the purest
form of love. The qualification of self-love as pure must in no way be
understood as a moral qualification. The word pure indicates that
self-love is the form of love that most clearly meets the four criteria
4
Kierkegaard and H.G. Frankfurt have quite divergent views when it comes to suicide.
Whereas Kierkegaard understands suicide as a despairing attempt to be rid of oneself,
and thereby looks deeper than the problems that upon immediate inspection might
appear to be the suicides cause, Frankfurt thinks that suicide can be traced back to
the psychological, physical and other problems that may plague the suicidal person.
Frankfurt says: Even of people who commit suicide because they are miserable, it is
generally true that they love living. What they would really like, after all, would be to
give up not their lives but their misery (47). I will look more closely at this divergence
between Kierkegaard and Frankfurts view of self-love below.
5
Kierkegaard defines his view of suicide more precisely as follows: In the physical and
the external sense, I can fall by the hand of another, but in the spiritual sense there is
only one person who can slay me, and that is myself. In the spiritual sense, a murder
is inconceivableafter all, no assailant can murder an immortal spirit; spiritually, only
suicide is possible (Kjerlighedens 329 / Works 333).
6
Oh, there is a lot of talk in the world about treachery and faithlessness, and, God
help us, it is unfortunately all too true, but still let us never because of this forget
that the most dangerous traitor of all is the one every person has within himself. This
treachery, whether it consists in selfishly loving oneself or consists in selfishly not willing to love oneself in the right waythis treachery is admittedly a secret. No cry is
raised as it usually is in the case of treachery and faithlessness. But is it not therefore
all the more important that Christianitys doctrine should be brought to mind again
and again, that a person shall love his neighbor as himself, that is, as he ought to love
himself? (31 / 23).

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Pia Sltoft

which Frankfurt believes must be fulfilled in order for us to call a

given relation love.
Frankfurt thus sees self-love as the form of love that has the highest
degree of transparencyfollowed very closely by parents love for small
children, which according to Frankfurt has a similar transparency. Let
us take a closer look at Frankfurts arguments concerning the transparency of self-love, so that we might be able to use this as a basis upon
which to further qualify Kierkegaards understanding of self-love.
Like Kierkegaard, Frankfurt presumes that self-love is something
that naturally belongs to a person. Furthermore, he states by way of
introduction what he takes to be a general presumption that selflove is a negative quality:
It is widely presumed that for a person to love himself is so natural as to
be more or less unavoidable; but it is also widely presumed that this is not
such a good thing. Many peopleespecially when they imagine that the propensity to self-love is both ubiquitous and essentially ineradicablebelieve
that this headlong tendency of most of us to love ourselves is a grievously
injurious defect of human nature. (The Reasons 71)

Frankfurt however does not share this one-sidedly negative assessment

of self-love. He therefore wishes from the outset to distance himself
not just from the general presupposition concerning the negative
character of self-love, but also from the ethical disqualification of
self-love implicit in Kants moral philosophy, with which The Reasons
of Love is fundamentally a confrontation. Frankfurt agrees with Kant
that it makes no sense to reward someone and give her moral points
for something she did simply out of natural disposition and therefore
out of sheer desire; but nonetheless Frankfurt accuses Kants view of
self-love of being out-of-focus (76). Frankfurt uses the commandment
to love the neighbor as an argument against Kant, claiming that the
commandment that we love our neighbor as our selves does not reject
self-love as something negative, but on the contrary points towards a
way in which self-love can be understood as a moral ideal:
Indeed, it does not in any way suggest that self-love is an enemy of virtue,
or that it is somehow discreditable to hold the self dear. On the contrary,
the divine command to love others as we love ourselves might even be
taken to convey a positive recommendation of self-love as an especially
helpful paradigma model or ideal, by which we ought seriously to guide
ourselves in the conduct of our practical lives. (77)

Frankfurt argues that the commandment is not about making selflove into an ideal, but about getting us to love others with the same
intensity with which we love ourselves:

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On this reading, the point is merely that we should bring to our love of
others the same wholehearted and persistent devotion that we characteristically display toward the dear self. It is not self-love as such that is offered
as a model, in other words, but only the exceptionally fulsome manner in
which we typically love ourselves. (78)

This last interpretation of the importance of self-love for neighbor-love

lies very close to Kierkegaards interpretation. And even if Frankfurt,
unlike Kierkegaard, does not differentiate between several forms
of negative self-love, he nonetheless has the same view of self-loves
respective positive and negative connotations. Where Kierkegaard
calls negative self-love selfishness and despair, Frankfurt speaks of
self-indulgence as a negative form, which strictly speaking is not
in fact self-love: self-indulgence is something else entirely (ibid.).
Frankfurts point is that both Kant and the general view of self-love
as a privation seem to confuse self-love with self-indulgence. But a person who loves herself is precisely not self-indulgent, but is rather very
much aware of what is good for her. The person who loves herself
therefore does not allow herself to merely be controlled by her desires
and drivesquite the contrary. Self-love can therefore, precisely qua
consciousness, control the dispositions; and this is why, according to
Frankfurt, Kant gets it wrong when he completely refuses any moral
respect for self-love.
3. Self-love as the Purest Form of Love
In his wider definition of self-love as the most transparent form of
love, Frankfurt operates with four criteria (conceptually necessary
features; 78) which must be met in order for something to be called
love: 1) A disinterested concern for the well-being of the beloved. 2)
A personal relation. 3) An identification with the beloveds interest.
4) A control over the will.
The more criteria are fulfilled, the purer the form of love. The first
criterion is that a disinterested concern for the wellbeing of the beloved
must be present in the one who loves (a disinterested concern for
the well-being or flourishing of the person who is loved; ibid.). This
is such a fundamental criterion for Frankfurt that in order to be love,
love must seek the good of the beloved for no reason other than
that it is the good of the beloved. Concern for the well-being of the
beloved, with no motive other than the beloveds well-being, is naturally fulfilled in self-love, in which one simply loves oneself without
any interest other than ones own.

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Secondly, love, according to Frankfurt, is always personal. In this,

love differentiates itself from charity, for example, in that the person
one loves cannot be substituted for someone else. It is therefore a
criterion of love that it be another concrete person that is loved. This
second criterion also seems to be fulfilled in self-love, which is indeed
love for a very specific and therefore irreplaceable other person:
oneself and no other.7
Third, it is, according to Frankfurt, a criterion of love that the lover
identify herself with her beloved in such a way that she makes the
beloveds interests her own. Obviously, this third criterion of love must
be said to be satisfied quite literally in the case of self-love. But here
Kierkegaard is in considerable disagreement with Frankfurt, which
stems from Kierkegaards view that a person can love themselves in
an improper waya way which is not merely self-indulgent, but is, as
weve seen, directly in despair. The self struggles with itself in self-love.
The difference between Frankfurts understanding of self-love and
Kierkegaards is here due, first and foremost, to Frankfurts failure to
see the possible ambiguity of self-love. But the distance between them
is also owing to the fact that Kierkegaard does not share the view that
identifying with the others interests is characteristic of love. He says:
If your beloved or friend asks something of you that you, precisely because
you honestly loved, had in concern considered would be harmful to him,
then you must bear a responsibility if you love by obeying instead of loving
by refusing a fulfillment of desire. A human being, however, you shall
onlybut no, this is indeed the highesta human being you shall love as
yourself. If you can perceive what is best for him better than he can, you
will not be excused because the harmful thing was his own desire, was what
he himself asked for. If this were not the case, it would be quite proper
to speak of loving another person more than oneself, because this would
mean, despite ones insight that this would be harmful to him, doing it in
obedience because he demanded it, or in adoration because he desired it. But
you expressly have no right to do this; you have the responsibility if you do
it, just as the other has the responsibility if he wants to misuse his relation
to you in such a way. (Kjerlighedens 2728 / Works 1920)

This means that there can be a divergence between the interests of

the lover and those of the beloved. And this applies both for self-love
7
Kierkegaard, too, points out this aspect of love. This same thought is consistently
carried through in the discourse Our Duty to Love the People We See in Works of
Love: When it is a duty in loving to love the people we see, then in loving the actual
individual person it is important that one does not substitute an imaginary idea of how we think
or could wish that this person should be. The one who does this does not love the person
he sees but again something unseen, his own idea or something similar (164 / 164).

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and love for another. Perhaps I do not know what is best for myself?
Or perhaps, through my own self-insight, I know better than the
other does what the other needs? So we experience a clash. If the
lover thinks she knows better what is good for the beloved, this can
lead to a conflict that can, in extreme cases, come to look like hate
on the lovers part.
The fourth and last criterion according to Frankfurt is that love
can control the will. It is, quite simply, not up to us who we love or who
we do not love. Love is not a matter of choice, but is determined by
something that our will is unable to control. And this fourth criterion
too is, Frankfurt believes, present in self-love, because he understands
self-love as naturalwhich is why a person cannot choose to love himself by an effort of will, but does so immediately. My former account
of the six negative forms of self-love demonstrates that Kierkegaard
fundamentally disagrees on this point. According to Kierkegaard and
the analysis of the six negative forms of self-love we started out with,
we do not love our-selves immediately.
According to Frankfurt these four above-mentioned criteria together
constitute a definition of love. And because all four criteria, still
according to Frankfurt, are present in self-love in a very distinct way,
self-love can be defined as the purest form of love. Pure in the sense of
transparent. Self-love is transparent in the sense that it is the form of
love wherein we can see most clearly that all four criteria of love are
fulfilled.8 So it is not that, according to Frankfurt, self-love is the best
or most venerable form of love. He simply maintains that self-love is
the form of love that is most unequivocal and unmixed. It is thus the
form of love that is easiest to identify, and which displays the nature
of love in the clearest possible way, by allowing these four criteria to
shine through it.
Kierkegaard is of the diametrically opposed view when it comes
to the transparency of self-love, which is particularly evident in his
relation to the last two criteria which Frankfurt posits: identification
with the interests of the beloved, and the role of consciousness. This
does not mean, however, that Kierkegaard does not consider selflove to be love; but he is of the view, contra Frankfurt, that self-love
is far from transparent. The controversy is fundamentally due to
Frankfurts viewing self-love as identical with being satisfied with oneself:
Loving ourselves is desirable and important for us because it is the
8
Given these as defining features of love, it is apparent that self-lovenotwithstanding its questionable reputationis in a certain way the purest of all modes of love
(Frankfurt 80).

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same thing, more or less, as being satisfied with ourselves (97). This
is a far cry from Kierkegaards conception of self-love, regardless
of which form it takes. For Kierkegaard, self-love is murky, and this
opacity covers up the fact that, more often than not, self-love is built
upon a self-dissatisfaction, which is why the self is loved in a distorted,
a despairing, a double-minded way.
4. Double-Minded Self-Love
I have now clarified how, in Frankfurts view, the four criteria that he
posits as definitive for love are present in self-love. But we are still left
with a remarkably empty form of love. Up to this point we have been
dealing exclusively with determining self-love to be the purest form
of love. But what does it actually mean to love oneself? According to
Frankfurt, at the heart of all love is the lovers willing of the good for
the beloved. This also holds for self-love, where the lover therefore
wills the good for herself. Frankfurt now claims that what a person
loves determines what is important for her. But in that case self-love is
simply a persons love for that which the person must love. We hereby
end up with a definition devoid of content: self-love is to love that
which one loves.9 But Frankfurt does not want to leave things at that.
For he thinks that it is also possible for a person to love themselves,
even though they do not love anyone else.10 Frankfurt therefore says:
in order to obey the commands of love, one must first understand what it
is that love commands. The most rudimentary form of self-love, then,
consists in nothing more than the desire of a person to love. That is, it
consists in a persons desire to have goals that he must accept as his own
and to which he is devoted for their own sakes rather than merely for their
instrumental value. (87)

It is of course no coincidence that Frankfurts little book is titled The

Reasons of Love, and even though he stresses that love overpowers the
will, he nonetheless does not want to claim that it also wins out over
reason. Frankfurts definition of self-love therefore ends up being
that self-love is a persons desire to be committed to his own goals
for their own sake.11
9
Thus self-love seems to collapse into nothing more than a love of the things one
loves (87).
10
Love is a configuration of the will, which is constituted by various more or less
stable dispositions and constraints (ibid.).
11
When a person desires to love, what he desires is that he be in a position to act
with confident and settled purpose. [L]ove saves us both from being inconclusively

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Shortly thereafter, Frankfurt comes to discuss the double-mindedness

that can arise within someone when they love something, but do not
want to love it. But he completely fails to notice that this conflict can
also apply to self-love, something of which, as weve seen, Kierkegaard
is quite aware. According to Frankfurt, the solution to the conflict
consists in a person becoming clear about which side of the conflict
they find themselves on. To be wholehearted is to love oneself (95).
Frankfurt here alludes directly to Kierkegaard and the large confessional discourse, An Occasional Discourse, that makes up the first
section of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (En Lejligheds 115250 / An Occasional 3154) and concludes that: Self-love consists,
then, in the purity of a wholehearted will (Frankfurt 95).
Lets take a closer look at the confessional discourse. In this discourse, Kierkegaard takes James 4:8 as his starting point and then
spends about two hundred and fifty pages elaborating upon its theme:
purity of heart is to will one thing. The problem with Frankfurt referring to this confessional discourse on the idea of willing one thing,
however, is that Kierkegaards point in this discourse is utterly different
to the one Frankfurt makes: for in the discourse, Kierkegaard points
to the non-transparency of self-love.
Kierkegaard begins his confessional discourse by stipulating that
the person who in truth wills only one thing can will only the good,
and the person who wills only one thing when he wills the good can
will only the good in truth (En Lejligheds 138 / An Occasional
24). Naturally, it is this definition that Frankfurt has in mind when
he speaks of the purity of a wholehearted will. But Kierkegaards
aim in this long discourse is to show just how difficult is to become so
transparent to oneself that one can be said to will one thing: In truth
to will one thing can therefore mean only to will the good, because any other
one thing is not a one thing and the person who wills only that must
therefore be double-minded, because the one who craves becomes
like that which he craves (147 / 34).
Kierkegaard therefore highlights a number of different factors
which tell against the purity of the will, because they call into question
whether a person really is in such a frame of mind that they only will
one thing and thereby will the good. Kierkegaard says:

arbitrary and from squandering our lives in vacuous activity that is fundamentally
pointless because, having no definitive goal, it aims at nothing that we really want.
Insofar as self-love is tantamount just to desire to love, it is simply a desire to be able
to count on having meaning in our lives (90).

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At times [the discourse] has described a specific error and the state of
mind of the erring one on an enlarged scale so that one can better note
and identify what seldom appears unmixed in the minor situations of daily
life and therefore is more difficult to identify as this particular error. The
discourse, as it consistently held fast to the requirement to will one thing,
has become acquainted with many errors, delusions, deceptions, and selfdeceptions; it has tried to track double-mindedness down its hidden path,
to discover its hiddenness. (223 / 122)

In the confessional discourse, Kierkegaard seeks to magnify (forestrre) that which immediately hides itself. Through this, something
inwardthe erroneous state of mindis made knowable as something
outward, in which we can see ourselves reflected.12 The readers are
then encouraged to look inside themselves, for perhaps there they
can recognize some of the various forms of double-mindedness.13 And
maybe recognize some of the six negative forms of self-love we began
this paper by describing.
In the discourse, Kierkegaard mentions four factors that problematize the idea of willing one thing and which therefore point towards
double-mindedness as a universal human problem. The four problematic
factors are: first, only willing the good for the sake of reward (cf. 152f. /
37f.); second, only willing the good out of fear of punishment (cf. 156f.
/ 44f.); third, only willing the good in willfulness14 (cf. 169f. / 60f.);
and fourth, only willing the good to a certain degree (cf. 172f. / 64f.).
It is willful double-mindedness that generates the most problems,
and so it is this form of double-mindedness that we will consider
here. Moreover, willful double-mindedness stands out as the form of
double-mindedness that is best able to keep itself hidden, precisely
because it presents itself as being its opposite: willing one thing. The
double-mindedness of the willful person is therefore painfully difficult
to uncover:
12
To achieve this, the discourse must decisively require something of the listener, and
not merely require what has been required up to this pointthat he as reader share the
work with the one speaking. At this point it must unconditionally require his decisive
self-activity, upon which everything depends (223 / 122).
13
No, the speaker is the prompter; there are no spectators, because every listener
should look inwardly into himself (225 / 124).
14
This form of double-mindedness is harder to discover as this double-mindedness
is more cunning and concealed, is even more presumptuous than that obvious and
obviously worldly double-mindedness [of willing the good for the sake of reward or out
of fear of punishment] (169 / 60). But for Kierkegaard, there is no doubt that this
form, willing the good willfully, must also be characterized as double-mindedness: He
does not will the good for the sake of reward; he wills that the good shall be victorious;
but he wills that it shall be victorious through him, that he shall be the instrument, he
the chosen one (170 / 61).

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Such a double-minded person is perhaps more difficult to recognize in this

world, because his double-mindedness is not obvious within the world and
has no informer and no confidant in the worlds rewards and punishments,
since he has overcome the world, although by a higher deception, since
his double-mindedness is first recognizable at the boundary where time
and eternity touch each other. (171 / 63)

In all four forms of double-mindedness highlighted by Kierkegaard

in the confessional discourse we hear about cases of a non-transparency
that problematizes wholeheartednessthat very wholeheartedness that
Frankfurt highlights as characteristic of self-love. Returning to the
topic of self-love, it is clear that Kierkegaard sees this as far more
problematic than Frankfurt. I began my first section The Negative
Forms of Self-Love with Kierkegaards description of the bustler, a
person who does not love herself in the right way and therefore can
be said to be in despair. In the confessional discourse, this despair
is further qualified as double-mindedness, which corresponds to the
analysis of despair in The Sickness Unto Death: Or is not despair [Fortvivlelse] actually double-mindedness [Tvesindethed]; or what is it to
despair but to have two wills! [E]veryone in despair has two wills,
one that he futilely wants to follow entirely, and one that he futilely
wants to get rid of entirely (En Lejligheds 144 / An Occasional
30). The despairing person indeed has two wills, each pointing in a
different direction, which is why the negative forms of self-love turn
out to be despair. In the confessional discourse, Kierkegaard has this
to say of the bustler, the busy-one:
So, then, in busyness there is double-mindedness. Just as the echo lives in the
forest, just as stillness lives in the desert, so double-mindedness lives in
busyness. Therefore, that someone who wills the good only to a certain
degree is double-minded, has a distracted mind, a divided heart, scarcely
needs to be explained. But the basis may well need to be explained and
developedthat in busyness there is neither the time nor the tranquility to
acquire the transparency that is necessary for understanding oneself in willing
one thing or for just temporarily understanding oneself in ones unclarity.
(En Lejligheds 175 / An Occasional 67)

Self-love, then, is in no way straightforward and transparent according

to Kierkegaard. It possesses a murky ambiguity, which can conceal
the fact that it is fundamentally not a matter of self-love at all, but a
matter of despair.

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5. Selfish Self-Love is Despair

The basis of the descriptions of the six negative forms of self-love in
Works of Love that I began with is the fundamental assumption that all
these forms of self-love are despair. Given the descriptions discussed
above it makes sense that Kierkegaard maintains that the bustler, the
light-minded, the heavy-minded, the immediately despairing, the
self-tormentor and the suicide are all characterized by not loving
themselves in the right way. But why is this despair? This can best be
explained if we bring the analysis of despair in The Sickness Unto Death
into our discussion. In that work, Anti-Climacus distinguishes between
two fundamental forms of despair, and as we shall see, we can recognize
both these fundamental forms in the figures of selfish self-love.
In The Sickness Unto Death the two fundamental forms of despair
are described as 1) despairingly not willing to be oneself, and 2)
despairingly willing to be oneself (cf. Sygdommen 129 / Sickness 13),
which correspond to the ways in which the forms of selfish self-love
are described above: 1) selfishly not willing to love oneself and 2)
selfishly loving oneself.15 The two forms of selfish self-love can be
traced back to each other, which is also true of the two fundamental
forms of despair.16
That there are, in any case, two forms of despair in the strict sense in
The Sickness Unto Death is due to Kierkegaards understanding that
no person has created themselves. A persons self is, on the contrary,
created by something other:
The human self is such a derived, established relation, a relation that relates
to itself and in relating to itself relates to another. This is why there can be
two forms of despair in the strict sense. If a human self had itself established
15
This treachery, whether it consists in selfishly loving oneself or consists in selfishly
not willing to love oneself in the right way (Kjerlighedens 31 / Works 23).
16
In the debate between Michael Theunissen, Alastair Hannay and Arne Grn over
which of the conscious forms of despair is the most fundamental, I thus follow Hannays
and Grns position, in that I argue that despairingly willing to be oneself is the basic form
of despair. My description of the immediate self-love substantiates this claim, in that we
are here operating under the presumption that a self immediately loves itself, but that
an idea comes between the self and its original self-love such that the self cannot truly
come to love itself. It therefore tries to love itself despairingly. Theunissens standpoint
is critical of Kierkegaards own statements in The Sickness Unto Death that the basic form
of despair is despairingly willing to be oneself. Theunissen maintains, on the basis of a
critical analysis of The Sickness Unto Death, that the opposite seems rather to be the first
form i.e. it is despairingly willing not to be oneself that is the basal form of despair.
Theunissens view is published in Der Begriff Verzweiflung. Hannay discusses this view in
his article Basic despair in The Sickness unto Death, and Arne Grn in his Der Begriff
Verzweiflung. These articles are followed by Michael Theunissens rejoinder Fr
einen rationaleren Kierkegaard. Zu Einwnden von Arne Grn und Alastair Hannay.

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itself, then there could be only one form: not to will to be oneself, to will
to do away with oneself, but there could not be the form: in despair to will
to be oneself. The second formulation is specifically the expression for the
complete dependence of the relation (of the self), the expression for the
inability of the self to arrive at or be in equilibrium and rest by itself, but
only in relating to itself, by relating to that which has established the entire
relation. (Sygdommen 130 / Sickness, 14; trans. modified)

In the same way we must understand that the forms of negative self-love
distinguished through the six descriptions given in Works of Love that
I began with point back towards the fundamental assumption that a
person is not herself the source of her love. Love dwells within and is
established within every person by God. And it is only on the basis of
this idea that love is fundamentally given in every person that it makes
sense to distinguish between several different forms of mistaken self-love.
If the person herself had been the source of her love, there could
only have been one mistaken mode of loving oneself despairingly,
namely, selfishly not willing to love oneself; whereas selfishly willing
to love oneself would not have been possible. The latter presupposes
a normativity that is given in and with the presupposition that God is
the source of all love in heaven and earth also of self-love (cf. Kjerlighedens 12 / Works 3). Let us briefly consider the famous passage from
The Sickness Unto Death that postulates just this dependency of the self
upon a power outside itself, and explains this dependence on the basis
that there can be two forms of despair. It is only in a positive relation
to the power that has established or created the whole relation, the
power that has established love in the foundation of every person, that
despair can be annulled: The formula that describes the state of the
self when despair is completely rooted out is this: in relating to itself
and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power
that established it (Sygdommen 130 / Sickness 14; trans. modified).
Prior to this affirmation of a humans dependence upon God, it is
stressed that the one form of despair (despairingly not willing to be
oneself) can be traced back to the other form (despairingly willing
to be oneself), because both these forms of despair point in the same
direction: the self is oriented wrongly both in relation to itself and in
relation to the power that has established or created it.17 In the same
way, one can say that when someones self-love degenerates into a
17
Yes, this second form of despair (in despair to will to be oneself) is so far from
designating merely a distinctive kind of despair that, on the contrary, all despair ultimately can be traced back to and resolved in it. If the despairing person is aware of
his despair, as he thinks he is, and does not speak meaninglessly of it as of something
that is happening to him (somewhat as one suffering from dizziness speaks in nervous

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selfish self-love, then within that selfish self-love lies an unwillingness

to love themselves in the right way, such that the one form of selfish
self-love (not loving oneself in the right way) can be traced back to
the other form (selfishly loving oneself).18
6. Conclusion
I have now briefly pointed out the identity between the analyses of
despair in relation to The Sickness Unto Death and the descriptions of
selfish self-love in Works of Love. But what does it really mean to say that
selfish self-love is despair? Kierkegaard does not merely say that selfish
self-love can lead to despair. He says, quite directly, that it is despair.
The definition of selfish self-love as despair depends upon the
volatilization of the authentic self, the self that one shall love because
it has been bestowed upon one. In The Sickness Unto Death, despair
comes to be defined as a misrelation within the selfa misrelation
that springs from the negative ways in which the self relates to itself.
The same is the case with selfish self-love. Selfish self-love is despair
because it springs from a persons negative relation to her love and
thereby to herself. There is an unbreakable relation between a persons
self and her love, and this unbreakable relation becomes seriously
evident when we place the analyses of despair alongside the descriptions of selfish love.
But the most serious problem when it comes to self-love according to Kierkegaard is that it hides itself under various negative forms:
busyness, light-mindedness, heavy-mindedness, despair, self-torment
and suicide make it hard for us to see what is going on in self-love.
To Kierkegaard self-love is therefore by no means as transparent as
H.G. Frankfurt would like us to think. To Kierkegaard the opaqueness of self-love is on the contrary the overall stumbling block when
it comes to the assignment that every human being must take up in

delusion of a weight on his head or of something that has fallen down on him, etc.,
a weight and a pressure that nevertheless are not something external but a reverse
reflection of the internal) and now with all his power seeks to break the despair by
himself and by himself alonehe is still in despair and with all his presumed effort
only works himself all the deeper into deeper despair. The misrelation of despair is
not a simple misrelation but a misrelation in a relation that relates to itself and has
been established by another, so that the misrelation in that relation that is for itself
also reflects itself infinitely in the relation to the power that established it (Sygdommen
130 / Sickness 14; trans. modified).
18
Arne Grn therefore describes despair as a form of obsession (Subjektivitet 114).

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order to be herself: to love herself in a right way and her neighbor

in the very same way.
University of Copenhagen

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