Quotation
Last reviewed:
“The task is to love the people we see, not to seek new ones.”
Søren Kierkegaard · Existentialism (forerunner) · Modern · 1847
What does it mean?
The task is to love the people we see, not to go looking for more suitable ones. Works of Love treats love as a duty, and the duty is frustrated by the fantasy of a better object. A rival reading hears a trap: stay with the harmful person in front of you, and call the leaving a failure of love. The chapter is about not substituting an imaginary neighbour for the actual one. It is not a ban on distance from someone who does harm.
Did Søren Kierkegaard really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A compression of the chapter 'Our Duty to Love the People We See', in the spirit of Hong and Hong. Kierkegaard argues that love's duty is not to find lovable people but to love the ones given. The card shortens a chapter into a sentence.
Where it comes from
Works of Love, the chapter 'Our Duty to Love the People We See'
Approximate date: 1847.
How to use it
In a shared house in Bristol, someone is endlessly almost in love with a person they have not met and short with the people who wash up. The chapter names that pattern. It does not tell you to accept cruelty from a flatmate because they are the one you see. Duty to the actual person can include a boundary. The boundary is not what the paraphrase is denying. The paraphrase is denying the hunt for a more convenient beloved.
A mindset reading
A paraphrase is a handle. The failure is to quote it as if Hong and Hong had printed these fifteen words and stopped. The chapter is the argument. The card is the door.
Understand the philosophy
Works of Love, 1847, is signed, unlike the pseudonymous books, and it is his ethics of the neighbour. Hong and Hong remain the translation to check before the compression is treated as wording.
- love
- ethics
- self
FAQ
What does it mean?
The task is to love the people we see, not to go looking for more suitable ones. Works of Love treats love as a duty, and the duty is frustrated by the fantasy of a better object. A rival reading hears a trap: stay with the harmful person in front of you, and call the leaving a failure of love. The chapter is about not substituting an imaginary neighbour for the actual one. It is not a ban on distance from someone who does harm.
Did Søren Kierkegaard really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A compression of the chapter 'Our Duty to Love the People We See', in the spirit of Hong and Hong. Kierkegaard argues that love's duty is not to find lovable people but to love the ones given. The card shortens a chapter into a sentence.
Which work is it in?
Works of Love, the chapter 'Our Duty to Love the People We See' Approximate date: 1847.