The Failure to Love Correctly

Abstract

The book having, until now, focused on developing a substantial view of romantic love, this chapter and the next demonstrate that this view not only is consistent with the theistic position of Kierkegaard, but may also be seen as supported by it. The first step in doing so is to textually ground the conception of selfhood as an individual essence, which the chapter does by offering a close reading of The Sickness unto Death. In this text Kierkegaard analyzes despair as the failure to be the self that one is intended to be. The chapter suggests that this state ultimately proves equivalent to loving incorrectly, and thus demonstrates that the long journey to becoming oneself—which is no less the long journey to God—is necessarily carried out in the world. This paves the way for the claim of the final chapter, that loving correctly is the key to the healing from despair.