Upcoming Session - Kierkegaard Circle Topic: Evaluating the Role of Recollection in Kierkegaard, Works of Love Speaker: Ariel LaFayette Department of Philosophy doctoral student University of Toronto Time: Friday, March 28, 2025 5:00 pm –7:00 pm Place: Divinity Common Room (DCR)* Trinity College, University of Toronto 6 Hoskin Avenue, Toronto Inquiry: Prof. Abrahim H. Khan, khanah@chass.utoronto.ca, cell: 905-706-0569 Adjunct Prof. Jizhang Yi, jizhang.yi@utoronto.ca, 778-858-8720 Faculty of Divinity, Trinity College, University of Toronto 6 Hoskin Avenue, Toronto, Ontario 416-978-2522 *DCR located by stairs to dining room. Ask at Welcome Desk. Ariel LaFayette, in the PhD program at U of T, focuses on philosophy of religion in the 19th & 20th centuries. More broadly, her research interests include the history of phenomenology, Christian ethics, existentialism, and the philosophy of love (within the context of the philosophy of religion). She has presented at the World Congress of Philosophy, Rome (2024); the 17th Annual PGSO Conference on Religious Experiences at the University of Southern Florida (2024); the European Academy of Religion (2024), and the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University (2022). ABSTRACT Abstract: Søren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love offers a controversial interpretation of the commandment, “love your neighbor as yourself.” In the penultimate chapter entitled "The Work of Love in Recollecting the One Who is Dead," Kierkegaard establishes a tenuous relationship between the work of love in recollecting the one who is dead and his broader theory of neighbourly love. My presentation focuses on Kierkegaard’s claim that recollection’s love is the most faithful, free, and unselfish. After reconstructing this claim, I argue that recollection’s way of loving is not directly transferable to neighbourly love, since the latter activity runs the risk of compromising the individual's freedom and faith. I argue this point by examining some of the pseudonymous perspectives in Kierkegaard's corpus (e.g. Johannes Climacus/A from Either/Or Part 1, the "young man" from Repetition) who successfully optimize their freedom and faith through recollecting a dead beloved, but fail to satisfy the conditions of neighbourly love.