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The Radical Demand in Løgstrup’s Ethics

The Radical Demand

in Løgstrup’s Ethics
Robert Stern
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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© Robert Stern 2019
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First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
To Hans, Bjørn, and Kees, in gratitude

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements ix

Abbreviations xv
Introduction: Locating Løgstrup 1

0.1 Løgstrup and Our Obligations to Others 1
0.2 Løgstrup’s Life and Times 7
0.3 Why Løgstrup Now—and Not Before? 11
0.4 Outline 14
Part I. The Ethical Demand

1. The Ethical Demand and Its Basis 19
1.1 ‘Introduction’ 19
1.2 Chapter 1: ‘The Fact From Which the Silent Demand Arises’ 29
1.3 Chapter 2: ‘Mediation’ 44
2. The Ethical Demand and Social Norms 48
2.1 Chapter 3: ‘The Radicality of the Demand and the Social Norms’ 48
2.2 Chapter 4: ‘The Changeability of the Social Norms’ 59
3. Christian Ethics and Life as a Gift 66
3.1 Chapter 5: ‘Is There a Christian Ethics?’ 66
3.2 Chapter 6: ‘Antagonism Towards the One-Sided Demand’ 72
4. The Ethical Demand and the Failure of Love 85
4.1 Chapter 7: ‘Is the Ethical Demand Destructive on Account of Its Radicality?’ 85
4.2 Chapter 8: ‘Making Compromises with the Demand’ 94
4.3 Chapter 9: ‘The Ethical Decision’ 99
5. Ethics, Science, and Poetry 104
5.1 Chapter 10: ‘Science and Ethics’ §§1–3 104
5.2 Chapter 10: ‘Science and Ethics’ §§4–6 130
5.3 Chapter 11: ‘Poetry and Ethics’ 137
6. Forgiveness and the Limits of Ethics 145
6.1 Chapter 12: ‘The Unfulfillability of the Demand and the Proclamation
of Jesus’ 145
6.2 Conclusion 155
Part II. Engaging with The Ethical Demand

7. Normativity as Natural Law 161
7.1 Sovereign Expressions of Life, the Ethical Demand, and Natural Law 162
7.2 MacIntyre on Løgstrup and Natural Law 175
viii contents
7.3 Darwall on Løgstrup and Divine Command 183

7.4 Løgstrup, Creation, and Natural Law 190
7.5 ‘Too Much Duty, and Too Little’: On Løgstrup’s Defence of Ontological Ethics 198
8. Confronting Kant and Kierkegaard 202
8.1 From Ontological to Deontological Ethics in Kant and Kierkegaard 203
8.2 Duty for Deontologists 208
8.3 Deontology and the Emptiness of the Moral Law 210
8.4 Putting Duty in Its Place 224
8.5 Assessment 227
9. Encountering Levinas 248
9.1 Ethical Encounters 249
9.2 Finding Common Cause 255
9.3 Differences about Difference 270
9.4 Løgstrup and Levinas in Dialogue 277
10. Dealing with Darwall 288
10.1 Darwall on Moral Obligation 288
10.2 Darwall contra Løgstrup 290
10.3 Løgstrup contra Darwall 292
11. Learning from Luther 308
11.1 Luther and Løgstrup on Human Wickedness 309
11.2 How is Love of the Neighbour Possible? 311
11.3 Freedom from Ourselves: God or Other People? 314
11.4 The Problem of Agency 317
12. Interpreting Løgstrup 330
12.1 The Ethical Demand Revisited 330
12.2 ‘Life as a Gift’ Revisited 334
12.3 The Distinctiveness of Løgstrup’s Ethics 339
12.4 Coda 344
Bibliography 347
Index 363
Preface and Acknowledgements
For me to be writing a book on the work of K. E. Løgstrup may seem absurd and even
impertinent, for three reasons: I am not Danish, I am not a theologian, and I am not a
religious believer. Løgstrup, however, decidedly was Danish, was a theologian, and was
a religious believer: so with this much distance between us, how can I hope to make
much sense of his project, and put it in the right light?
In writing this book, I have certainly felt the force of this concern. Being English, not
only have I had to grapple with the inevitable linguistic issues raised by dealing with a
Danish author, but in addition I have seen clearly the apparently small but nonetheless
important differences between the two cultures. Being a philosopher, and not a theolo-
gian, I have also had to try to assimilate a number of figures, from Luther onwards, who
are clearly important to Løgstrup and his thinking, but who until recently have not
meant much to me, while likewise various theological issues and controversies that
deeply concerned Løgstrup were equally alien. Finally, and relatedly, as an atheist it is
perhaps odd to be taking such an interest in a man for whom religious belief was cen-
tral to his life, albeit not unproblematically. And added to this, of course, there is the
usual problem of doing history of philosophy of any sort, namely the distance in time
between one’s own thinking and the person about whom one is writing. Compared to
the other three hurdles mentioned above, this last one may seem relatively trivial, as
Løgstrup only died some three decades ago, so in a way this is not a fully historical
exercise at all, as Løgstrup is almost our contemporary. Nonetheless, even this diffi-
culty is not negligible, insofar as Løgstrup’s time was still different enough from our
own: not only was it closer to the trauma of the rise of Nazism and the Second World
War, and all that this entailed, but also seemingly lost intellectual influences and issues
were in play, such as Lebensphilosophie and positivism, while existentialism was in its
pomp, all of which seems somewhat alien to us now.
It will be for the reader to judge whether these hurdles have proved insuperable to
the enterprise. But viewed optimistically, it could turn out that these elements of dis-
tance from Løgstrup’s world view might be precisely what can help shed further light
upon it, at least in some respects. First, while there is a deep and wide engagement
with Løgstrup in the Danish literature, from which there is an enormous amount to be
learned, nonetheless it may be that by bringing him into dialogue with other tradi-
tions, different aspects will be revealed, and other ways opened up in which Løgstrup’s
ideas can be utilized. Second, as we will see, Løgstrup himself drew a significant dis-
tinction between theology and philosophy, so while of course it is important to see
where he stood on both sides of the divide, it is still possible to approach him with a
background that is primarily philosophical, without denying that a more theologically
x Preface and Acknowledgements
focused account of his ideas is equally an option. While much of what Løgstrup says is
intentionally compatible with a theological conception, I will suggest that his position
does not require this theology to make sense; this straddling of the theological and
secular, or the ability to sit comfortably within either or both, is, I think, a very interest-
ing feature of Løgstrup’s approach. Third, and relatedly, as we shall also see, Løgstrup
in some sense thought it was important that his views could be made intelligible and
convincing in secular terms, though how much he thought this, and how far he suc-
ceeded, is one of the many fascinating questions his work raises; but it does seem that
an atheist can approach his work and expect to learn from it, as much as a theist can—
particularly perhaps an atheist who (like me), while not believing in God, is fully pre-
pared to admit the decisive effect that this belief has had on our culture, and to think
that perhaps aspects of that culture will have to be very different if it is abandoned,
especially in the ethical domain that so much concerned Løgstrup. Finally, as we shall
also see, while Løgstrup’s intellectual context was indeed different from today, this dif-
ference is not always in our favour, as arguably some insights from his time have been
lost in our own. Equally, in some respects philosophy as it is now in the English-
speaking world is perhaps closer to many of Løgstrup’s views and concerns than ever
before, so that while he had little impact on Anglophone philosophy in the 1950s and
1960s when several of Løgstrup’s key works appeared, we may be able to better appreci-
ate his contribution today—particularly the contribution of The Ethical Demand,
which was published in 1956 and is the primary focus of this book.
Of course, this is not to say that I have resolved all the difficulties in reading Løgstrup,
and certainly my task would have been easier if I had spoken fluent Danish, been
trained as a theologian as well as a philosopher, really grasped religious thought from
the ‘inside’, and managed to totally familiarize myself with all the debates of Løgstrup’s
immediate circle and milieu. But, as Løgstrup himself is the first to remind us, we are
not sovereign over our own lives, and while I have striven to overcome these con-
straints, there are limits to what can be achieved; and while I hope I have not treated
these limitations as excuses for complacency, they may also prove positive in the ways
I have suggested, by giving me a somewhat different perspective on the material.
Moreover, as the first monograph on Løgstrup to be published in English, I would cer-
tainly expect and indeed welcome my efforts being bettered and surpassed in the
future, rather than for this to be any kind of last word. My hope, rather, is to draw
people into the circle of Løgstrup’s ideas, so that they can engage with them further,
thereby bringing him more centrally into current discussions than he is now.
Having identified the hurdles I have tried to overcome, I should certainly acknow
ledge the very important role many friends and colleagues have played in assisting me
to surmount them. I am particularly grateful to Løgstrup scholars in Denmark, who
have been especially generous and supportive: Svend Andersen, David Bugge, Anne-
Marie Søndergaard Christiansen, Hans Fink, Ole Jensen, Kees van Kooten Niekerk,
and Bjørn Rabjerg. Those who work on Løgstrup from elsewhere have also been a
great help, including Sophie Grace Chappell, Simon Critchley, Stephen Darwall,
Preface and Acknowledgements xi
Peter Dews, Josh Furnal, John Lippitt, Wayne Martin, Irene McMullin, George
Pattison, Joe Saunders, Pat Stokes, Simon Thornton, and Dan Watts. I have also received
very useful comments and feedback from others with more general interests in the
topics covered here, including Alison Assister, Dave Batho, Stephanie Collins, John
Cottingham, Fiona Ellis, Paul Franks, Fabian Freyenhagen, Béatrice Han-Pile, Terry
Irwin, David Macarthur, Michael Morgan, Eric Nelson, Diane Perpich, Martin Sticker,
Alison Stone, Susanne Jakobsen Tinley, Bernadette Tobin, and Heather Widdows.
Finally, as in many of my other projects, my colleagues and students at Sheffield have
been a considerable help and support, particularly Chris Bennett, Paul Faulkner,
Miranda Fricker, James Lewis, Hugh Pyper, Colin Roth, Yonatan Shemmer, and Daniel
Viehoff. I am also grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding
the research on which this book is based, and to Peter Momtchiloff of Oxford University
Press (and their referees) for graciously accepting the results of my efforts. On a more
personal level, my family have cheerfully indulged me in this latest obsession, and for
this (as well as for much else) I am extremely thankful and appreciative.
Finally, I have often been asked by others what possessed me to take an interest in
Løgstrup, and why—for to most he is an unknown figure. The tale may be worth tell-
ing, not because my biography is of concern to anyone other than me, but because it
may help orientate the reader in the approach to Løgstrup taken in this book. My first
encounter with Løgstrup was largely due to chance, and came when I was editor of The
European Journal of Philosophy. We had invited Alasdair MacIntyre to give the annual
Mark Sacks lecture,1 which is followed by a seminar with the speaker, who submits the
text of the lecture for us to read in advance. Professor MacIntyre sent us a paper on the
relation between French Thomism on the one hand and Løgstrup as a Danish Lutheran
on the other. Having never heard of Løgstrup, but feeling that (as editor of the journal)
I should at least be in a position to contribute something to the discussion in the
seminar should his ideas come up, I gave The Ethical Demand a cursory read before-
hand. I enjoyed what I read, at a pretty superficial level, and also enjoyed Professor
MacIntyre’s lecture and the seminar discussion afterwards (in which Hans Fink also
participated, at the suggestion of Professor MacIntyre). However, despite understand-
ing very little about Løgstrup’s work at the time, this encounter piqued my interest,
as it came in a period when I was working on a book on moral obligation, in which
the main protagonists were Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard; Løgstrup’s focus on ‘the
ethical demand’ therefore caught my attention. Moreover, in the book I was writing,
I argued that Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard are caught in an impasse, with none of their
approaches to the problem of moral obligation managing to be entirely satisfying.2
It was therefore natural for me to wonder if Løgstrup provided a fourth option, and if
so, whether it worked any better. The project that led to this book arose from that
1
The lecture was subsequently published by the journal: see MacIntyre, ‘Danish Ethical Demands and
French Common Goods’. It is discussed further below in §7.2.
2
See Stern, Understanding Moral Obligation.
xii Preface and Acknowledgements
question, which is why the issue of moral obligation provides the focus for my treatment
of Løgstrup here. As the reader will see, I believe that to a large extent my early hopes
for Løgstrup have been fulfilled, as I argue in what follows that his account of obliga-
tion is to be preferred to other positions, or at least deserves serious attention and
investigation. (And while I have never had the chance to discuss my work on Løgstrup
with Alasdair MacIntyre, he also clearly deserves my thanks, as the inadvertent catalyst
for this whole project.)
Thus, while this book aims to introduce Løgstrup to the reader who is perhaps com-
ing at him for the first time, it also approaches his work with this issue in mind. I think
such an approach is justified, as there is enough textual evidence that Løgstrup con-
cerned himself with this question of obligation, as we shall see. Nonetheless, I also try
to do enough to set out Løgstrup’s thought in a general way, particularly in Part I,
which offers a kind of commentary on The Ethical Demand. This is a long discussion,
but I think it is necessary in order to help readers lacking in detailed knowledge of
Løgstrup; those who have such knowledge may therefore choose to skip this part
(although it does also contain some interpretative proposals which may prove contro-
versial). At the same time, I hope that those already familiar with Løgstrup, or those
new readers who then want to take this knowledge in a certain direction, will then
be drawn to Part II of this book, in which the question of moral obligation plays a
more significant role. Equally, these chapters also try to give some general account of
Løgstrup’s relation to the other figures discussed (namely Luther, Kant, Kierkegaard,
Levinas, and Darwall), though the issue of moral obligation still remains central. Of
course, this does not mean that I cover all aspects of what is of interest in Løgstrup (for
example, his engagement with Heidegger is an obvious omission, as is any real discus-
sion of his later writings in metaphysics, and on art); but this book is already a long
one, so it is to be hoped that such lacunae will be excused, and addressed in future by
others, and perhaps by myself in subsequent work.
I should also add a note on certain conventions adopted in this book.
First, one issue is the question of gendered language. As one would expect from a
writer in his time, Løgstrup almost always used male pronouns for what are meant
to be gender-neutral references. In the revised edition of the English translation of
The Ethical Demand published by Notre Dame University Press in 1997 (hereafter
referred to as the NDUP translation), Alasdair MacIntyre and Hans Fink added
‘she’ and other female pronouns to make Løgstrup’s language more gender inclusive.
However, as they admit (on p. xiii of their introduction), this makes Løgstrup’s writing
sound very clumsy, and renders it almost unreadable in places. In all cases, therefore,
I have used the male pronouns only where Løgstrup clearly intended to be referring
to a man, or where he himself has written ‘he and she’; otherwise, both in the transla-
tions and in my own text, I have dealt with this problem by using the third-person
plural pronouns even in cases where a single individual is meant, in a way that I think is
becoming increasingly common (and indeed was once pretty standard), and avoids
both a pile-up of words and the arbitrariness of picking between male or female to
Preface and Acknowledgements xiii
avoid this. (For translations of texts other than Løgstrup’s, I have followed the practices
of the translator.)
Second, another issue is a more general matter regarding translation. While service-
able in many respects, unfortunately the NDUP translation of The Ethical Demand has
various weaknesses, which include not just outright errors, but also an important lack
of precision in many cases, such as a failure to use the same translation for the same
Danish word, which makes it hard to track Løgstrup’s use of terminology. In most
cases, therefore, I have revised that translation, but because this is so frequent, I have
largely left it unremarked. When the change is a fairly minor matter, I have not given
the reason for the change, but where the issue is more significant, I have put the details
in a note. I have done the same in the case of translations from other texts. Where
I quote from other primary and secondary works that have not yet been translated, the
translations are my own. (I am currently translating The Ethical Demand with Bjørn
Rabjerg in a new critical edition to be published by Oxford University Press, and this
has provided the basis for the translations used in this book. I am therefore particularly
grateful to Bjørn for his patient help with linguistic as well as philosophical matters
raised by this text.)
Third, when referring to Løgstrup’s works, I have given references to the Danish
editions, as well as to English translations (where available). Where they have been pub
lished, I have used the new Danish editions being produced by Klim in the ‘Løgstrup
Biblioteket’ series under the editorship of David Bugge, Michael Nonboe, Camilla
Rohde Søndergaard, and Peter Aaboe Sørensen. Where these new editions are not yet
available, I have referred to the original editions. In the case of works by Luther, Kant,
Kierkegaard, and Levinas, I have also referred to standard editions in their original
language, as well as English translations. For further details, see the Abbreviations and
the Bibliography. All unattributed references are to The Ethical Demand, first to the
NDUP translation and then to the Danish edition from the Løgstrup Biblioteket.
Where I refer to a chapter or section from The Ethical Demand, I precede this with ‘ED’,
to distinguish these cases from references to chapters or sections within this book.
Finally, in the Bibliography and the index I have followed the Danish practice of
putting the special characters ‘æ’, ‘ø’, and ‘å’ at the end of the alphabet, so that for example
‘Luther’ is listed before ‘Løgstrup’. However, to keep in line with the usual style in
English, I have capitalized the first letters of the main words in the titles of Danish
books and articles, even though in Danish texts these would normally be in lower case.
Abbreviations
For full publication details, please see the Bibliography.
Kant
Ak Kants gesammelte Schriften
CPR Critique of Pure Reason
CPrR Critique of Practical Reason
GMM Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
LE Lectures on Ethics
LR Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion
MM The Metaphysics of Morals
Kierkegaard
CUP Concluding Unscientific Postscript
DGA ‘On the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle’
JP Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers
LFBA The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air
PC Practice in Christianity
SKP Søren Kierkegaards Papirer
SKS Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter
SUD Sickness Unto Death
WL Works of Love
Levinas
AQE Autrement qu’Être, ou au-delà de l’Essence
DEL ‘Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas’
DF Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism
DP ‘Dieu et la Philosophie’
EFP ‘Ethics as First Philosophy’
EI Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo
EN Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other
xvi Abbreviations
ENE Entre Nous: Essais Sur Le Penser-à-l’Autre

EOI ‘Ethics of the Infinite’
GP ‘God and Philosophy’
IRB Is it Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas
LSUB ‘La Substitution’
OB Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence
SUB ‘Substitution’
TEH ‘Transcendance et Hauteur’
TEI Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l’Extériorité
TH ‘Transcendence and Height’
TI Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority
Luther
LC Large Catechism
LW Luther’s Works
WA D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe
Løgstrup
Works in English
AK ‘The Anthropology of Kant’s Ethics’
BED Beyond the Ethical Demand
ED The Ethical Demand
EIP ‘The Exaggeration of the Importance of Principles in Moral Reasoning’
EO ‘Ethics and Ontology’
M1 Metaphysics, volume I
M2 Metaphysics, volume II
Works in Danish
AKE ‘Antropologien i Kants Etik’
EBP Etiske Begreber og Problemer
EF Den Etiske Fordring
EKTIT Den Erkendelsesteoretiske Konflikt mellem den Transcendentalfilosofiske
Idealisme og Teologien
FP ‘Fænomenologi og Psykologi’
Abbreviations xvii
FVMS En Fremstilling og Vurdering af Max Scheler’s ‘Der Formalismus in der

Ethik und die Materiale Wertethik’
GS ‘Guds Skabning’
HK ‘Humanisme og Kristendom’
KE Kunst og Etik
KH Kierkegaards og Heideggers Eksistensanalyse og dens Forhold til Forkyndelsen
KMV ‘Kristendom, Metafysik og Videnskab’
KUS ‘Kristendom uden Skabelsestro’
NS Norm og Spontaneitet: Etik og Politik mellem Teknokrati og Dilettantokrati
OK Opgør med Kierkegaard
OO Ophav og Omgivelse: Metafysik III: Betragtninger over Historie og Natur
PA ‘Pligt eller Ansvar’
PSH Prædikener fra Sandager-Holevad
SK Solidaritet og Kærlighed
SS System og Symbol: Essays
ST Skabelse og Tilintetgørelse: Metafysik IV: Religionsfilosofiske Betragtninger
Works in German
EUO ‘Ethik und Ontologie’
KAV ‘Die Kategorie und das Amt der Verkündigung im Hinblick auf Luther
und Kierkegaard’
Kierkegaards und Heideggers Existenzanalyse und ihr Verhältnis zur
KHE
Verkündigung
Introduction
Locating Løgstrup
Who was Løgstrup, and why should we interest ourselves in his writings? And if his
ideas have any value, why was he not more widely recognized in his lifetime, and why
don’t his views have more impact today? These are reasonable questions, and merit an
answer. To tackle them, in this introductory chapter I will try to situate Løgstrup in his
life and times, and also set his thought against the background of one of the fundamen-
tal philosophical issues that provides the impetus for much of his work: the problem of
our moral obligations to others. I will begin with the latter issue (§0.1), before then
providing some biographical and historical context (§0.2), which will help explain
Løgstrup’s relative neglect as well as his relevance now (§0.3); then in the final section
I will set out the structure and aims of the rest of this book (§0.4).
0.1 Løgstrup and Our Obligations to Others

Although Løgstrup’s work covers a range of topics and issues, at the centre of his thinking
lies a series of fundamental questions in ethics: what ethical obligations do we have for
others? How extensive are those obligations? What is the basis for those obligations?
How do those obligations relate to other requirements, such as those of prudence, law,
and social conventions? And should we see our relation to others as involving obliga-
tions at all, or is this just a poor substitute for the relation of love?
Many of these questions can be brought into focus if we consider a case that Løgstrup
discussed himself and which clearly greatly influenced his work, namely the Good
Samaritan—or, as it is put in Danish, ‘the compassionate Samaritan’ (den barmhjertige
samaritan).1 While the priest and the Levite who pass by obviously act wrongly in relation
1 The Danish word ‘barmhjertighed’ is here and throughout translated as ‘compassion’ rather than
‘mercy’. ‘Barmhjertighed’ is the Danish translation of Greek eleos and Hebrew hesed, which Luther trans-
lated as ‘Barmherzigkeit’, and which traditionally has been translated as ‘mercy’. However, the problem with
‘mercy’ as a term in English is that it is primarily applied to cases that involve sparing someone from pun-
ishment; but this does not correspond with Løgstrup’s understanding of the Samaritan story, which instead
involves the desire to relieve the suffering of other people and acting accordingly. For this reason, ‘compas-
sion’ seems to be a more suitable translation than ‘mercy’, although previously in the Løgstrup literature
and translations (such as BED), ‘mercy’ has been used as the preferred translation, for example when
translating the sovereign expression of life ‘barmhjertighed’. One worry could be that ‘compassion’ sounds
2 Introduction: Locating Løgstrup
to the injured Jewish traveller, and the Samaritan behaves as he should in a way that
illustrates what it is to love one’s neighbour, cases of this sort still raise significant
difficulties in moral philosophy. Three levels of difficulty may be distinguished.
First, there is the action itself and how to characterize what is right about it, which
raises several questions. Are we to think of the Samaritan’s act as good but not obliga-
tory, or did he have some sort of duty to assist the traveller which the priest and the
Levite ignored? If he had a duty, does fulfilling it just consist in providing aid, or does it
depend on his intentions in doing so, and his feelings towards the traveller? If the
Samaritan has obligations to the traveller, how far do such obligations extend and how
much might they require of him? If the obligations to the traveller are based on the
latter’s needs, what kinds of needs generate obligations of this sort? Does the fact that
the Samaritan has helped the traveller create any requirement on the traveller to recip-
rocate in some way, even if it is just to offer thanks? Are there limits on the kind of
assistance the Good Samaritan might be expected to provide, and thus the degree of
self-sacrifice involved? If the traveller had not wanted assistance but still needed it,
what should the Samaritan have done then? And should the Samaritan be acting out of
a sense of duty towards the traveller at all, if this is to count as a genuine case of love or
compassion towards him, for relations like love, friendship, or compassion may not
seem to be compatible with duty as a motivation?
Second, if we think the Samaritan was under some sort of obligation to assist the
traveller, and can give an account of the nature and extent of such obligations, there is
then the further question of whether this obligation just derives from the needs of the
traveller and the Samaritan’s capacity to meet those needs, or if there is more to be said
about what makes it an obligation. For example, is the obligation based on the fact that
the traveller had a corresponding right to require assistance? Or that in not helping,
the Samaritan would have been behaving unfairly, as doubtless he himself had received
assistance in the past, or would expect it from others in the future? Or that in passing the
traveller by, the Samaritan would have been failing to display the virtue of compassion
or charity, as was required of him in the situation? Or does the obligation arise from
some sort of law or principle that the Samaritan would be violating if he failed to act?
Third, insofar as we recognize an obligation on the Samaritan here, how are such
obligations to be explained at all? A number of features of moral obligations seem to
make them problematic. First, they are said to be categorical, in the sense that they
hold independently of the agent’s own purposes and goals. Second, such obligations
too passive and thus unlike mercy is more of a merely emotional state; but it is of crucial importance to
both the Samaritan story and to Løgstrup’s use of ‘barmhjertighed’ that action is also involved: ‘Go, and do
likewise’, as Jesus replies (Luke 10:37). In this respect, Løgstrup draws a distinction between ‘medlidenhed’,
which is merely passive (and so more like ‘sympathy’ or ‘fellow-feeling’), and ‘barmhjertighed’, which
involves action (cf. BED, p. 120 note 1/NS, p. 18 note 2). However, in English ‘compassion’ also usually
involves acting, so a person who merely felt compassion but did not act would arguably not count as being
compassionate. Therefore, Løgstrup’s important distinction is captured by the use of ‘compassion’ rather
than ‘pity’ or ‘sympathy’, and so is adopted here. (I am grateful to Iona Hine, Kees van Kooten Niekerk,
Hugh Pyper, and Bjørn Rabjerg for discussion of this issue.)
Løgstrup and Our Obligations to Others 3
are meant to have a kind of rational priority or overridingness such that they rule out
other courses of action, except those based on competing obligations. Taking these
features together, they therefore appear inescapable in a certain way, as we cannot get
out of them by dropping the end to which they are the means (as we could if they were
merely hypothetical), or opt for something else that we have a greater or equal reason
to do instead. Third, moral obligations are said to hold universally and necessarily,
while this is not true of more culturally determined obligations (such as those laid
down by legal rules and norms of etiquette). Fourth, the kind of blame and censure
that can be attached to violating a moral obligation differs from that in other cases:
while if I fail to save for my pension, I may be criticized for being foolish or imprudent,
if I fail to act morally my behaviour can be resented and said to deserve punishment;
and while I can be criticized for foolishness even if I cannot behave otherwise, in the
moral case the ‘ought’ of obligation is widely said to imply ‘can’. Fifth, at the phenom
enological level, and as is arguably recognized in the etymology of the term, moral
obligation involves the sense of being bound or constrained (ob + ligare), and subjected
to a kind of imperatival force, which is not so evident in the case of other oughts and
norms. If we take the Good Samaritan to be acting under a moral obligation, therefore,
we seem to be committed to him acting under a peculiar kind of normative constraint,
where the question is whether this can be made sense of and explained.
Some philosophers have found the very idea of moral obligations with these features
to be so baffling that they have denied that they make sense at all. Or rather, they have
said they might make sense, but only on assumptions that we can now no longer
sensibly hold. This, famously, is Elizabeth Anscombe’s view in her seminal article
‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, where she argues that obligations of this sort can be made
intelligible if one allows for a divine legislator to put one under such obligations; but
once such a legislator has been rejected (which she thinks has largely happened in our
culture), then the idea lacks cogency and should be dropped.2 She recognizes, how-
ever, that alternatives to a divine command account of obligation have been tried, but
finds them all wanting, including Kantian accounts, social contract accounts, and
natural law accounts; she therefore argues that while we might still be able to talk about
a case like that of the Good Samaritan in terms of virtues, we should give up trying to
do so in terms of obligations.3
While recognizing the force of Anscombe’s challenge, however, others remain more
sanguine than her, and the options she rejected continue to be explored—as well as the
2 Cf. Anscombe, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, p. 6: ‘Naturally, it is not possible to have such a [law] con-
ception unless you believe in God as a lawgiver’. Cf. also MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 3: ‘We possess indeed
simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely, if not
entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality’. While MacIntyre’s case is
broader than Anscombe’s, nonetheless, as he notes on p. 53, he has clearly been influenced by it.
3 Cf. ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, pp. 13–15. For a broadly similar scepticism, see also Mackie, Ethics,
p. 48, where Mackie allows that ‘if the requisite theological doctrine could be defended, a kind of objective
ethical prescriptivity could be thus introduced’; but he then argues that as in fact ‘theism cannot be
defended’, he does not regard this as any threat to his argument against such ethical prescriptivity.
alternative of reversing her inference, and arguing from the fact of obligation to the
existence of a divine legislator as the source of that obligation.4 Thus, the contemporary
debate contains defences of divine command theories, together with the other options
Anscombe considered alongside variants upon them.
First, on Kantian accounts, the special normative force of moral obligations is said to
arise insofar as to act otherwise is to contradict certain fundamental principles of prac-
tical reason, such as the principle of universalizability, which individuals are commit-
ted to by virtue of being rational agents. It is this commitment that then explains the
bindingness of morality, as what makes morality inescapable to me qua rational agent
is that I couldn’t be a rational agent if I didn’t follow its precepts. This is consequently
seen as a form of self-legislation, as the obligatory force of morality comes about
through reason itself rather than any command from God, though not in a voluntaristic
way, as these principles are said to be constitutive of reason itself rather than as open
to adoption at will.5
Second, there are social command accounts that put the ground of obligation not in
God or in how practical reason of the individual rational agent is formally structured,
but in the authority each of us has over others either as individuals or as members of
the moral community of which we are part. In such accounts, this authority is often
said to be based on our status as rational agents, which then means we are able to
require things of others and thus can generate distinctively moral reasons to act that
bind them in a particular way, in a manner that explains the special obligatoriness of
moral norms.6
Third, there are also natural law theories of moral obligation, which come in two
main forms: theistic and non-theistic. According to the theistic account, we are mor-
ally obligated by certain norms accessible to us through reason because these are the
norms which govern nature as God’s creation, as the fundamental laws that we are
required to follow if that creation is to develop in the right way, given how God has
structured it and his purposes in bringing the world about at all.7 According to the
non-theistic account, the significance attached to the claim concerning God’s creation
drops out in accounting for the obligatory force of these norms; instead, to explain how
we are under an obligation to act in certain ways, it is said to be sufficient to show that
4 See, for example, Evans, God and Moral Obligation.

5 This is broadly the approach championed by Christine Korsgaard, which has generated considerable
discussion: see The Sources of Normativity.
6 For an outline of this approach, which contrasts it with the divine command model, see Wolf, ‘Moral
Obligations and Social Commands’. A prominent representative of this approach is Stephen Darwall,
whose work is discussed further below, in Chapter 10.
7 Cf. Grisez, ‘Natural Law and the Transcendent Source of Human Fulfillment’, p. 449: ‘When we under-
stand that directiveness [of the principles of practical reason] as guidance provided by our Creator, our
sense of dependability deepens, and with that the normative force of the moral ought which it generates
increases, and general moral obligation emerges . . . [D]isobeying the Creator’s guidance deprives him of
what he wished to realize in and through the cooperation [between himself and human beings]. Therefore,
whenever one is aware of a moral ought, one is aware not only of practical reason’s moral demand but of
moral obligation, of being bound to obey the Creator’.
Løgstrup and Our Obligations to Others 5
unless we do so, the operation of the world and beings in it would be damaged and
harmed, as fundamental needs of these beings would be left unfulfilled.8 This natural
law option in both forms, and the other two options of Kantianism and social com-
mand, all remain in play in the current debate, notwithstanding Anscombe’s warning
that we should drop them as inadequate in a variety of ways; at the same time, others
have continued to voice her concerns, and to amplify them.
Now, starting from a case like that of the Good Samaritan, we will see in what fol-
lows that Løgstrup has a contribution to make at all three of the levels we have identi-
fied: namely, the nature of the obligation in such situations; its normative basis; and
how the possibility of such an obligation might be explained. To summarize briefly:
according to Løgstrup, in this sort of ethical situation, the fate of the other person is
placed in your hands thereby giving you power over their life; it is then your responsi-
bility to do what is best for them, and it is this need that should be your reason for
acting, not a sense of duty or obligation or responsibility as such, which only arises
when you have already failed to see the situation in the right way. Løgstrup then argues
that the content of what you are required to do is not determined by what the other
person demands of you themselves, as what they ask you to do may be different from
what you should do in terms of making their life go well. The content of your obligation
also does not come from what is laid down by social rules, and thus prevailing social
norms and conventions. And the obligation itself comes from what is required to care
for the other, and the directive power of their needs in the situation, and not from their
rights or from the violation of some prior law as the normative basis of the obligation.
Finally, Løgstrup’s account of how such an obligation is possible is thus not by appeal to
the authority of the other person, but nor does he think it arises from God’s command
or will, or from any formal principle of practical reason, such as Kant’s principle of
universalizability. Løgstrup therefore rejects accounts of ethical obligation based on
the commands of God, or on abstract principles governing practical reason, or on
social norms, or on considerations of rights and justice. Instead, he develops a different
picture, at the base of which is his claim that as living beings we are reliant on one
another for our needs and so fall under the power of other people. As a result, to prop-
erly exercise this power they must respond to those needs, which is sufficient to explain
how demands on one another arise, and are made legitimate. However, as this reliance
ultimately requires of us an attitude of love, if we act on this dependence as a demand
or obligation as our motivating reason, we have already failed to meet it. Furthermore,
he claims, underlying this conception there is an ‘understanding of life’ which treats it
as a gift, and without this understanding crucial aspects of our ethical relation to one
another would no longer make any sense.
8 For a recent and influential attempt to argue that ‘the evaluation of the human will should be determined
by facts about the nature of human beings and the life of our own species’, see Foot, Natural Goodness,
where she makes this suggestion on p. 24.
Thus, in his main work, The Ethical Demand, Løgstrup sets out to understand what
puts us under ethical obligations to others, where he proceeds in a phenomenological
manner, trying to bring out the essential features of our ethical lives, and what they rest
upon. He starts by considering ‘the proclamation’ contained in the commandment to
‘Love your neighbour as yourself ’. He then asks how this is to be understood in purely
human, non-religious terms, and what it requires of us. He argues that to answer these
questions we must relate it to a central fact of our existence, namely that we are
dependent on one another. Løgstrup then turns to an analysis of trust in order to estab-
lish and understand this interdependence,9 where he argues that trust involves being
placed in the hands of other people, and thus being exposed to them and their power
over us. This kind of interdependence, which is a feature of our lives more generally,
gives rise to a particular kind of call or demand on the other for their aid, which he sees
as very different in kind from the sort of rights-based and reciprocal demands that
belong to ordinary social morality, the importance of which he does not deny, but
which only function against the background of the fundamental demand based on our
power over and responsibility for the other. However, unlike at the level of social
morality where we are also surrounded by norms and expectations, in the case of the
ethical demand itself, he argues, I have no right to make the demand for assistance, and
nor do you have the right to ask for anything in return for helping me. This then means
that the usual explanations for such entitlements (such as rights or contracts) cannot
apply here, and something else is needed to make sense of the ethical demand. The
only explanation for a one-sided demand of this sort, Løgstrup argues, is to relate it to a
metaphysics according to which life is a gift: for, if your life is given to you, you cannot
insist that you get something in return for helping me, while if my life is given to me, it
can explain why I have no right to ask for anything on my own behalf. In this way,
Løgstrup argues, while the idea that life is a gift goes beyond what can be established as
scientific fact, we are nonetheless entitled to accept it as valid as what underlies the
ethical demand, as the only way to make sense of it that does not in some way distort its
nature. Likewise, Løgstrup argues, to make sense of a demand which we nonetheless
find so difficult to fulfil, we must also see ourselves as judged in the light of this failure,
in a way that introduces metaphysical considerations. What all this means, and where
it leaves Løgstrup’s position in relation to the other theories outlined above, will be a
main concern in the discussion that follows.
Løgstrup can be and has been understood as contributing to several debates in
ethics, metaphysics, theology, and social theory, and clearly his work raises a number
of important questions, both interpretatively and philosophically. For example: how
tied is his position to a religious model, for which God is the gift giver, or can it be made
sense of in secular terms—and was this really his intention, given his broadly Lutheran
commitments? But if God is not the gift giver, how is the notion of ‘life as a gift’ to be
9 Rabjerg notes that Løgstrup does not use this term until Art and Ethics in 1961, but as he argues it
makes perfect sense to read it back into ED: see Rabjerg, ‘Løgstrup’s Ontological Ethics’, p. 94.
Løgstrup’s Life and Times 7
understood? Does his position involve an unacceptable slide from an ‘is’ of our
interdependence to an ‘ought’ of the ethical demand? Can we make sense of the
distinction he draws between the ethical demand on the one side and social morality
on the other, and thus can the former be given a grounding in a way that does not
involve rights and entitlements? Is Løgstrup’s ethical demand ultimately empty and
paradoxical, particularly in his claim that it is in some sense unfulfillable? How plaus
ible are the critiques of other ethical systems that Løgstrup builds on this idea, such as
his rejection of Kant and Kierkegaard? And to what extent does Løgstrup’s position
resemble the approach of those, like Levinas and Darwall, who also stress the signifi-
cance of a ‘second-personal’ approach to ethics based on the encounter between self
and other? These are also questions which will be of concern in what follows.
0.2 Løgstrup’s Life and Times

Having placed Løgstrup in some kind of intellectual context, I now turn to say some-
thing about his biographical and historical background, in order to help us better
understand his ideas.10
Born in Copenhagen on 2 September 1905, Løgstrup studied theology at the uni-
versity there from 1923, completing the degree in 1930. During his studies he followed
Frithiof Brandt’s lectures on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason for two years.11 After
graduating, he was awarded scholarships to travel widely in Europe, and to study with
some of its leading thinkers such as Martin Heidegger in Freiburg, Hans Lipps and
Friedrich Gogarten in Göttingen, and Jean Héring in Strasbourg, while also attending
lectures by Henri Bergson in Paris and Moritz Schlick in Vienna. Of these, Heidegger,
Lipps, and Gogarten had the most influence, and drew him further into the post-
Husserlian tradition of phenomenology, in which in some broad sense he always
10 For intellectual biographies of Løgstrup in Danish, see Hauge, K. E. Løgstrup: En Moderne Profet
[K. E. Løgstrup: A Modern Prophet], and Jensen, Historien om K. E. Løgstrup [The Story of K. E. Løgstrup],
translated into German as Knud Ejler Løgstrup: Philosoph und Theologe; for a briefer account see Andersen,
Løgstrup, pp. 9–15. For accounts of Løgstrup’s life in English, see the Introduction to The Ethical Demand
by Hans Fink and Alasdair MacIntyre (ED: xv–xxxviii) and the Translator’s Introduction to the Metaphysics
by Russell L. Dees (M1: i–xxiii). For a full bibliography, see Hansen, K. E. Løgstrups Forfatterskab 1930–2005:
En Bibliografi [K. E. Løgstrup’s Writings 1930–2005: A Bibliography]. Løgstrup’s own brief autobiographical
sketch can be found in ‘Selvbiografisk Skitse’ [‘Autobiographical Sketch’], in SK, pp. 158–64. Niekerk
provides a very helpful account of the development of Løgstrup’s thinking up to The Ethical Demand in his
‘Vejen til Den Etiske Fordring’ [The Road to the Ethical Demand].
11 As Løgstrup himself puts it: ‘In the first high school class I still played with toy soldiers with a class-
mate. He went on to become a general, while I without much transition went from tin soldiers to philoso-
phy. When I think of it afterwards, I must have been incredibly captivated by philosophy as it did not
weaken my interest in the least that I understood nothing—and knew that I understood nothing. For years.
Or, to be precise, for four years: two years in school and two years at the University of Copenhagen. What
it was to read and work carefully I discovered for the first time in my third year of study. At that time I had
gone to Frithiof Brandt’s exposition of the Critique of Pure Reason in two semesters (it lasted four) and was
made to discover that I hadn’t got a clue. So I became stubborn, I began again, swore that no matter how
long it would take me, I wanted to understand, and do it thoroughly. If I have learned to work well I owe it
to Kant—his scholastic concepts and unreasonable syntax’ (SK, p. 158).
remained, and to which he was first introduced by Eduard Geismar who had taught
him in Copenhagen. While in Freiburg during 1933–4, in Heidegger’s lectures
Løgstrup met his fellow student Rosemarie Pauly, whom he married in 1935 after she
returned with him to Denmark, and with whom he had five children; she was later to
translate most of his main publications into German.
Løgstrup’s first writing was a prize essay in 1932 on Max Scheler’s Formalism in
Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Value, while in 1933 he submitted his doctoral disser-
tation in which he followed Lipps and Heidegger in criticizing Husserl. The disserta-
tion passed after some difficulty at the fourth attempt in 1942, by which time the focus
had shifted to transcendental philosophy more generally, as reflected in its final title,
‘The Epistemological Conflict Between Transcendental Idealism and Theology’
[Den Erkendelsesteoretiske Konflikt mellem den Transcendentalfilosofiske Idealisme og
Teologien]. Løgstrup was ordained into the Lutheran church in 1936, and between
then and 1943 he was a pastor in the parish of Sandager-Holevad on Funen. While at
Sandager, he became involved with the group of thinkers based around the journal
Tidehverv, which was launched in 1926 and is still in print. Tidehverv (meaning ‘time
on the turn’ or ‘turn of the epoch’) was an important movement in theology strongly
influenced by Kierkegaard and with a wider social agenda;12 it was formed in reaction
against emotional pietism and came to be opposed to what was seen as the easy opti-
mism of the widely influential nineteenth-century pastor and writer N. F. S. Grundtvig
and his followers.13
Then in 1943 Løgstrup was appointed Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion
at the University of Aarhus, in the newly formed Theology faculty, and he was to
remain there until his retirement in 1975. Denmark had been invaded by Germany in
April 1940. Løgstrup had written newspaper articles analysing and criticizing Nazism
beginning in 1936, including one that attacked Heidegger,14 and was involved in the
resistance movement from 1942 onwards, living in hiding in the last year of the conflict.
His rejection of the Danish government’s policy of collaboration with the occupying
powers led him into disagreement with his friend and fellow theologian Hal Koch,
who supported the policy.15
12 For a brief account of Tidehverv and Løgstrup’s relation to it, see Niekerk, ‘The Genesis of
K. E. Løgstrup’s View of Morality as a Substitute’, pp. 62–3.
13 Some sense of Grundtvig’s outlook, and of his influence on Danish life and culture, can be gained
from the Carl Theodor Dreyer film Ordet [The Word] (1955), where Grundtvig’s views are represented by
the Borgen family, with his portrait prominently on display in their farmhouse parlour.
14 ‘Nazismens Filosof ’ [‘The Nazi’s Philosopher’]. Løgstrup and Heidegger remained in some contact
after the war; they met periodically at the ‘Alte Marburger’ gatherings centred around Rudolf Bultmann,
and Heidegger personally sent Løgstrup signed copies of some of his publications until his death. For a
recent discussion of this aspect of Løgstrup’s life, see Hauge, Løgstrup, Heidegger og Nazismen.
15 Their correspondence is published in Venskab og Strid [Friendship and Strife]. An earlier edition of
this material is to be found in Kære Hal, Kære Koste: Breve 1940–43 Mellem K. E. Løgstrup og Hal Koch
[Dear Hal, Dear Koste: Letters from 1940 to 1943 Between K. E. Løgstrup and Hal Koch]. For some discus-
sion in English of their relation, see Niekerk, ‘A Friendship on the Line: The Controversy Between Løgstrup
and Hal Koch During the War’. For a brief but telling discussion in ED which captures some of Løgstrup’s
Løgstrup’s Life and Times 9
After the war, Løgstrup published several significant articles, including ‘Humanism
and Christianity’ [‘Humanisme og Kristendom’] in 1950. This was published in the
journal Heretica, which was much more of a literary publication, and represented
Løgstrup’s move into wider cultural circles, and his engagement with contemporary
writers and poets. Around this time he also moved away from Tidehverv, as he became
disenchanted by the authoritarian manner in which it was run, and what he saw as its
world-denying theological and social stance; this break drew him into debates with its
remaining followers, particularly the Kierkegaardian Kristoffer Olesen Larsen, and
drew him closer to Grundtvig’s position summarized in the dictum: ‘Human comes
first, and Christian thereafter’ (menneske først kristen så).16
In January 1950 Løgstrup visited the Freie University in West Berlin to deliver lec-
tures on Kierkegaard and Heidegger, which were published in German under the title
Kierkegaard’s and Heidegger’s Analysis of Existence and Its Relation to Proclamation
[Kierkegaards und Heideggers Existenzanalyse und ihr Verhältnis zur Verkündigung].
Løgstrup made clear at the time that he welcomed this opportunity to repay the debt he
owed for all he had learnt while studying in Germany before the war, and to help
rebuild relations with Germany that it had damaged,17 an attitude of reconciliation
that he also expressed in arguing against the prosecution of Danish collaborators.
In the lectures, Løgstrup provides a comparative assessment of Kierkegaard and
Heidegger, and also offers a critique of both thinkers in relation to his own views.
As with other early writings, many of the themes were to reappear in a more developed
form in his first major publication, and still the one for which he is best known, The
Ethical Demand [Den Etiske Fordring], which was published in 1956.
thinking about the wartime resistance and its justification, see pp. 93–5/pp. 108–10, where Løgstrup makes
clear that the key issue was that the Nazi government represented an ‘attack on justice itself ’.
16 Cf. Grundtvig, ‘Menneske Først’. The Danish is difficult to translate, as the last phrase could also be
rendered as ‘Christian accordingly’, which suggests less a temporal relation than a constitutive one. For a
discussion of Grundtvig in Løgstrup, see M1, pp. 297–8/ST, p. 322, and M1, pp. 336–8/ST, pp. 361–3. As he
makes clear in KMV, p. 214, Løgstrup’s reading of Grundtvig was heavily influenced by the work of Kaj
Thaning, particularly his Menneske Først: Grundtvigs Opgør Med Sig Selv [Human First: Grundtvig’s
Confrontation With Himself], though their discussions go back many years. Thaning published a more
popular version of his work in English as N. F. S. Grundtvig. For further discussion of Løgstrup’s relation to
Grundtvig, see Ole Jensen, ‘Løgstrup og “Det Grundtvigske” i Dag’ [‘Løgstrup and Grundtvigianism
Today’] in his Sårbar Usårlighed: Løgstrup og Religionens Genkomst i Filosofien [Vulnerable Invulnerability:
Løgstrup and Religion’s Second Coming in Philosophy], and the essays in the collection Bugge and Schelde
(eds), Livtag med Løgstrup og Grundtvig [Grappling with Løgstrup and Grundtvig].
17 Løgstrup wrote to his hosts: ‘I thank you for your invitation and the honour you have thereby done
me. I think with particular gratitude of my studies at German universities. I remember the kind and willing
openness that was always shown to foreigners at German universities. I very much regret that because of
the exceptional situation, young Danes must forgo a stay at German universities for the purposes of further
research and education, and hope that the possibility for contact will be available again soon. For me, as for
many others, staying in Germany has been decisive thanks to its inspiration. Courage to really think
thoughts through to the end, the piercing through, that is so characteristic of German thought, is tremen-
dously exciting. I want now to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for what I owe to German
universities’; quoted by Svend Andersen in his ‘Afterword’ to the Danish edition of the lectures: KH, p. 121.
The Ethical Demand provoked considerable discussion, and in his next book Art
and Ethics [Kunst og Etik] (1961), which was a collection of essays, Løgstrup included
a ‘rejoinder’ to some of his more prominent critics. Often one of Løgstrup’s central
themes, he continued to focus on philosophy of art in his next work, Kant’s Aesthetics
[Kants Æstetik], published in 1965. This was followed in 1968 by Controverting
Kierkegaard [Opgør med Kierkegaard],18 where Løgstrup continued his debate with
Kierkegaard and Kierkegaardians that had begun in the ‘Polemical Epilogue’ of The
Ethical Demand. In 1970 Løgstrup returned to a discussion of Kant’s first and third
Critiques in Kant’s Critique of Knowledge and Reflection [Kants Kritik af Erkendelsen og
Refleksionen], the first part of which was published in an earlier short study of Kant
from 1952 (Kant’s Philosophy I [Kants Filosofi I]). Løgstrup went back to dealing with
ethics as well as politics in 1971 with Ethical Concepts and Problems [Etiske Begreber og
Problemer], which was followed in 1972 by Norm and Spontaneity: Ethics and Politics
Between Technocracy and Dilettantocracy [Norm og Spontaneitat: Etik og Politik mel-
lem Teknokrati og Dilettantokrati]. He then published two books in an intended series
of four on metaphysics, where the second two were published posthumously after his
death on 20 November 1981. The first in this series was Breadth and Fullness: Language-
Philosophical Observations [Vidde og Prægnans: Sprogfilosofiske Betragtninger], and
the fourth was Creation and Annihilation: Religious-Philosophical Observations [Skabelse
og Tilintetgørelse: Religionsfilosofiske Betragtninger], which appeared in 1976 and 1978
respectively. The second and third volumes were published under the titles Art and
Knowledge: Art-Philosophical Observations [Kunst og Erkendelse: Kunstfilosofiske
Betragninger] and Source and Surroundings: Observations Concerning History and
Nature [Ophav og Omgivelse: Betragninger over Historie og Natur], in 1983 and 1984.
Two collections of essays were also published posthumously: System and Symbol
[System og Symbol] in 1982, and Solidarity and Love [Solidaritet og Kærlighed] in 1987.
Two further posthumous publications were The Sermon and Its Text [Prædikenen og
dens Tekst] which had been written in 1938–41, and Martin Heidegger, which was
based on material that he used for teaching his students in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally,
his sermons from his time as a pastor have also been published as Sermons from
Sandager-Holevad [Prædikener fra Sandager-Holevad]. Løgstrup received various
prizes for his work, and in 1961 he was made a member of the Danish Academy.
As this brief summary suggests, Løgstrup’s range of interests was extremely wide,
and in many respects he counts as a systematic thinker, connecting together his
reflections on ethics, social life, politics, religion, nature, science, technology, art, epis-
temology, and metaphysics into an overall vision. Løgstrup’s thought also has consid-
erable historical breadth, encompassing major thinkers in philosophy such as Kant,
Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, as well as leading theologians such as Luther, Grundtvig,
and Bultmann, alongside a wide variety of figures who formed part of his intellectual
18 Controverting Kierkegaard has become the widely used translation of this title, but Opgør means
something more like ‘showdown’ or ‘confrontation’, making ‘controverting’ sound rather tame.
Why Løgstrup Now—and Not Before? 11
schooling such as Lipps and Gogarten, and contemporaries in both Scandinavia and
Europe more generally, such as Olesen Larsen and Johannes Sløk, and the analytic
philosophers R. M. Hare and Stephen Toulmin as well as Bertrand Russell, together
with writers on the arts and in psychology. This also meant that Løgstrup engaged in
debates between the various schools and traditions in philosophy and theology that
were ongoing in his time, including existentialism, positivism, emotivism, dialectical
theology, analytic philosophy, and others, where as we shall see Løgstrup himself can
perhaps best be identified in philosophical terms within the traditions of phenomenology,
and also Lebensphilosophie, while in theological terms he has often been classified as a
creation theologian19—though none of these labels apply to him unproblematically, as
we shall also see.
As with any sophisticated thinker who has had a reasonably long life, and who has
lived through a variety of intellectual influences and a time of considerable historical
upheaval, the question arises as to how far Løgstrup’s thought underwent change and
development. This issue is a matter of some debate in the literature, and is one that
cannot be gone into fully here, as our primary focus will be The Ethical Demand.
Nonetheless, issues raised by that work will lead us to consider some of the related
later writings, in which objections to the views expressed in The Ethical Demand led
to further refinement in Løgstrup’s thinking—though not, I will suggest, any very
radical break.
Having outlined one of the central issues that concerns Løgstrup in his work, and
offered a brief account of his life and writings, we can now turn to consider the recep-
tion history of those writings, and why their impact has been relatively modest, but
why this situation has begun to change and arguably deserves to go on changing.
0.3 Why Løgstrup Now—and Not Before?

The Danes have a nice way of expressing the unusual nature of Løgstrup’s reception
history—namely, that he is ‘world-famous in Denmark’.20 By that they mean that there
is a curious disjunction between Løgstrup’s standing in his home country, and that
outside it. In Denmark itself, Løgstrup was and still is a major figure in Danish intel-
lectual life, who is known not just in academic circles but also beyond them, and whose
works have sold in considerable numbers, while he is the subject of an ongoing critical
edition project and is widely taught in universities and colleges. While both theology
and philosophy in Denmark have come under many other influences—not least
through the rise of ‘analytic philosophy’ in the post-war period—Løgstrup was seen to
occupy a distinctive position, and to garner significant followers. However, this impact
19 For a helpful discussion of Løgstrup’s place in the Scandinavian tradition of ‘creation theology’, see
Gregersen, Uggla, and Wyller (eds), Reformation Theology for a Post-Secular Age.
20 Cf. Stokes, ‘Spontaneity and Perfection’, p. 275: ‘More than thirty years after his death, Knud Ejler
Løgstrup remains what the Danes wryly call verdensberømt i Danmark: “world-famous in Denmark”’.
has not been mirrored outside Denmark, especially in the English-speaking world.21
Some reflection on why this is the case provides both insight into his thought, and that
of our own.
There are, of course, some straightforward reasons for this discrepancy, of which the
most obvious is translation difficulties, where the translation into English of Løgstrup’s
works has been relatively slow and patchy,22 while in addition links between Denmark
and the English-speaking world more generally are comparatively sparse, so that even
Kierkegaard was fairly late to make an impact here.23 But of course, lack of translation
is not just a cause of neglect, but also a symptom of it, so deeper explanations are called
for in this case.
Another and more substantive explanation is a lack of understanding and
appreciation for Løgstrup’s intellectual background and heritage. As is well known,
until recently Anglo-American philosophy has been dominated by the ‘analytic/
continental divide’, where Løgstrup arguably does not fall easily into either camp. On
the one hand, his major influences fall largely on the ‘continental’ side, particularly
Heidegger, but on the other hand the way in which Løgstrup engages with these thinkers
is in a rather analytic mode. Thus, when Anglo-American philosophy was dominated
by analytic philosophy, up until roughly the 1960s and 1970s, philosophers were not
well placed to understand Løgstrup’s context and focus; but when continental
philosophy then began to be taken up in the English-speaking world after this period,
Løgstrup did not stand out as a major figure in this tradition either. At the same time,
Løgstrup’s mix of theological and philosophical interests is unusual, where again these
academic disciplines have largely operated independently of each other, and with a
degree of mutual suspicion. Finally, Løgstrup’s primary focus, which is on ethical
issues, was again until recently something of a handicap, where both continental and
analytic philosophers for different reasons tended to marginalize this field of inquiry
in favour of other concerns.
The result of these factors was to make Løgstrup’s thought ‘out of step’ with its time,
in the sense that it failed to fit in with the dominant trends in Anglo-American
philosophy of the 1950s to 1980s, whether on the ‘analytic’ or ‘continental’ side. This is
21 Løgstrup’s reception in the rest of Europe has been rather more positive, particularly in other
Scandinavian countries and especially Norway, and also in Germany, though even in the latter he is a rela-
tively unknown figure. The reception in Germany was doubtless helped somewhat by the availability of the
translations produced by his wife, as well as the fact that he lectured in Germany and had academic
contacts there, while of course here there was greater awareness of the German tradition that influenced
his thinking. Relatively recent works in German that discuss Løgstrup include Hansen, Spontaneität—
Geschichtlichkeit—Glaube, and Pŏder, Evidenz des Ethischen. The French translation Norme et Spontanéité
was published in 1997. A Spanish translation of The Ethical Demand by Kristian-Alberto Lykke Cobos is
forthcoming.
22 The first English translation of Løgstrup appeared in 1971, with Theodor I. Jensen’s translation of the
first twelve chapters of The Ethical Demand, which was subsequently lightly revised by Hans Fink and
Alasdair MacIntyre, and a translation of the final chapter by Gary Puckering was also added, in an edition
published by Notre Dame University Press in 1997. Løgstrup himself had also published a few articles in
English before his death: see ED, p. 295 for details.
23 Cf. Poole, ‘The Unknown Kierkegaard: Twentieth Century Receptions’.
Why Løgstrup Now—and Not Before? 13
reflected in the way that Løgstrup himself stood out against most of the major forms of
thinking of his period, including positivism, existentialism, Kantianism, neo-Marxism,
and others, while Løgstrup’s religious outlook was perhaps bound to make him some-
what anathema in an increasingly secular age.24 Løgstrup himself reflected on this in
the Preface to Creation and Annihilation, writing that ‘Seen through the eyes of our
epoch even when its glance is at its kindest, this book will have the appearance of a
retreating army fighting a rear-guard action before it disappears into the darkness of
anachronism’, where he then asks defiantly: ‘But—what are the eyes of the epoch?’25
However, as well as being ‘out of step’, more interestingly Løgstrup’s thought can also
be considered ‘untimely’, in the sense that many of the issues and approaches he con-
cerned himself with were not only opposed to the dominant views of the period, but
also could not be really appreciated because of this. When it comes to ethics, Løgstrup
himself offers a brief but perceptive account of the trajectory of analytic philosophy in
the first half of the twentieth century, revealing how so many of its assumptions and
starting points were at odds with his own, as it developed from G. E. Moore’s intuition-
ism, to C. L. Stevenson’s emotivism, to R. M. Hare’s prescriptivism, to P. H. Nowell-
Smith’s linguistic turn. Løgstrup characterizes these ‘four milestones’ as follows: ‘moral
propositions are understood to be rooted in intuitions; they are subsequently regarded
as the expression of an emotional reaction and a means of influencing emotions; there-
after their decisive nature is identified as that of prescribing and guiding choice, until
ultimately, ordinary language gains ground and differentiates the whole’.26 Against
this background, it is scarcely surprising that English-speaking philosophers were
ill-equipped to understand Løgstrup’s position; for as we shall see, Løgstrup shares few
of the preoccupations and starting points that drove these debates, including Hume’s
‘is/ought’ distinction, Kant’s principle of universalizability, and the method of linguistic
analysis, making his work hard to understand or appreciate by those for whom
these issues were central. Rather, his thinking is closer to other figures who at the
time were also seen as rather marginal, including Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, and
Elizabeth Anscombe.
But in addition, what makes Løgstrup’s thought truly ‘untimely’ is not just that it
could not be properly grasped by English-language philosophers when it appeared,
but also that its appreciation is much more possible now, as many of the assumptions
that so shaped ethical theory in the first half of the twentieth century are no longer
taken for granted today, and ethics has largely moved beyond them. Indeed, many
contemporary philosophers might sympathize with Løgstrup when he agrees with a
Danish commentator on this period who asks ‘What, finally, came of it all?’ and
24 This may explain why Løgstrup fared slightly better amongst theologians in America, though even
here his impact was rather small. For a brief account, see Nelson, ‘Scandinavian Creation Theology in
American Perspective’, especially pp. 243–6.
25 M1, p. 1/ST, p. 11. 26 BED, p. 101/NS, p. 34.
responds ‘Not terribly much!’27 Of course, that negative judgement may turn out to be
a mistake, and the different turn that has been taken in ethics may itself be a purely
temporary change of outlook, but the fact remains that the kind of thinking to be found
in philosophy in the present is much more hospitable to taking Løgstrup’s concerns
seriously than it was at the time when he was writing. For, as we shall see in what
follows, it becomes much easier to see what makes Løgstrup important if those
earlier debates are set aside, as they have been by the recent turn to virtue ethics, or
particularism, or certain kinds of Aristotelian naturalism, for example. In this intellectual
context, Løgstrup can be seen to have much more to offer, and be set within a frame-
work where he stands a greater chance of being understood and appreciated, as has
happened with Murdoch and others. It may thus transpire that the neglect of Løgstrup
was an unfortunate historical accident, so that the time to come to terms with his work
has arrived.
Likewise, within ‘continental’ philosophy, at least since Levinas, ethics has assumed
a centrality that it did not have previously. The debates that Levinas’s work have sparked
off, as well as the use Levinas makes (or does not make) of religious ideas within that
ethics, once again provide a much more fruitful background for appreciating Løgstrup’s
contribution here too, rather than the ambivalence to ethical questions shown by exist
entialism and Heideggerianism in some of its forms, which was the dominant mode
when Løgstrup was writing.28 More broadly still, the kind of rapprochement between
‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ schools that is going on today can only aid the kind of
rapprochement that Løgstrup himself was able to achieve in his own work and the
combination of influences it embodies. It is thus to be hoped that the mood of our
times may be more hospitable to Løgstrup than was the mood of his own.
0.4 Outline
The structure of the discussion in this book will be as follows. In Part I, I will provide a
commentary on The Ethical Demand itself, where necessary relating it to other writ-
ings. The aim here will be to clarify the nature of Løgstrup’s position, and bring out
some of the central critical issues that it raises. In Part II, I then build on this reading of
Løgstrup’s position to develop the discussion of those issues, and to connect Løgstrup’s
ideas to that of other related thinkers. In Chapter 7, I will return to the issue of moral
obligation raised above in §0.1, arguing that The Ethical Demand is best read as
27 BED, p. 101/NS, p. 34. Løgstrup is commenting on Blegvad, Den Naturalistiske Fejlslutning [The
Naturalistic Fallacy]. For a rather similar response to the ethics of this period, see Foot, Natural Goodness,
pp. 5–10.
28 Cf. Gutting, Thinking the Impossible, pp. 117–19, who remarks that for ‘the French philosophers of the
1960s . . . ethics itself was just an unfortunate remnant of the humanist folly’. Løgstrup himself notes of
Heidegger in his Berlin lectures from 1950: ‘Heidegger stresses constantly that his investigations are only a
matter of an analysis of the purely formal structure of human existence, that have nothing to do with ethics,
theology or any life- or world-view’ (KHE, p. 107/KH, p. 97). Of course, Heidegger’s relation and attitude
to ethics is a matter of some controversy: for some further discussion see Philipse, ‘Heidegger and Ethics’.
Outline 15
offering a form of natural law account, which is then further developed in some of
Løgstrup’s later works, particularly in his later conception of ‘the sovereign expressions
of life’. In subsequent chapters, Løgstrup’s position will be set alongside other thinkers
who offer valuable points of comparison to his views. In Chapter 8, I will consider how
Løgstrup departs from Kierkegaard’s account of obligation as a form of divine com-
mand ethics, as well as Kant’s attempt to explain it in terms of principles of practical
reason. Chapter 9 will offer a comparison between Løgstrup and Levinas, where, des
pite much common ground, I will suggest that there are interesting differences between
the two, particularly over whether obligation is ultimately a matter of authority and
command. In Chapter 10, this issue of authority and command in an account of obliga-
tion will take us into contemporary debates on moral obligation in Anglo-American
philosophy, particularly as arising from the work of Stephen Darwall. Chapter 11 will
consider the Lutheran background to Løgstrup’s approach, and how far his position is
vulnerable to critique from that Lutheran perspective. The book will conclude with an
assessment of Løgstrup’s contribution, and what issues remain to be explored. My hope
is that when set against these prominent alternative conceptions, Løgstrup’s position
will be seen as a significant source of insight into their difficulties, and that his distinctive
alternative will be cast in an attractive light, as offering us a deep and compelling way to
understand the nature of the ethical, and of our obligations to others.
PA RT I
The Ethical Demand
1
The Ethical Demand
and Its Basis
The aim of this part of the book is to provide a commentary on Løgstrup’s major work,
The Ethical Demand. The text consists of an introduction and thirteen chapters, where
the last is a ‘polemical epilogue’ directed against Kierkegaard and some contemporary
Kierkegaardians; discussion of this will therefore be postponed to Chapter 8, when we
focus on Løgstrup’s critique of Kierkegaard in more detail.1
This chapter will cover the ‘Introduction’ to The Ethical Demand, and the first two
chapters of the book. These provide the foundation for Løgstrup’s account of the ethical
demand, by relating it to Jesus’s proclamation to love our neighbour, while showing
how the demand grows out of the interdependence of human beings, an interdepend
ence that can be illustrated through the key example of trust. Løgstrup also defends the
claim that the demand to care for the other is ‘unspoken’ or silent, and begins to contrast
the demand to social norms, while also responding to the worry that the demand
might encourage us to ‘encroach’ on the lives of others, arguing in the second chapter
that we cannot escape this problem by seeking relationships that involve an intimacy
which somehow does away with anything to mediate between individuals.
1.1 ‘Introduction’
The way The Ethical Demand begins, and the way it ends, makes central one of its most
significant themes, namely the relation between religious belief and ethics. It does so
by beginning with a reference to ‘the religious proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth’, and
by ending with a reflection on the authority with which this proclamation was made.
Løgstrup does not immediately tell us which part of Jesus’s proclamation or preaching
he has in mind, or indeed what precisely he takes an act of proclamation to be, but
starts out by making a very general claim about any such proclamation, namely that ‘[i]f
a proclamation is not to be irrelevant to us, it must correspond to something in our
own existence. What this is can be many different things: a perplexity in which we find
ourselves, a contradiction we cannot escape, a fate we refuse to accept, expectations we
1 The NDUP edition of The Ethical Demand also contains an appendix on ‘Ethics and Ontology’ which
is taken from an article from 1960, and so will not come under this commentary, though as with Løgstrup’s
other writings it will be referred to as necessary.
20 The Ethical Demand and Its Basis
entertain, or difficulties that have piled up in front of us’ (p. 1/p. 9).2 To carry weight,
therefore, a proclamation must be something that we can make sense of in terms of our
own existence or lives, and the difficulties raised by those lives, moving us directly
from the proclamation to broadly existential and ethical issues.
In starting the text in this way, Løgstrup is taking a position in a debate that had been
raised by the theology of Rudolf Bultmann, who had made the category of p roclamation
central—or in his terminology, ‘kerygma’. Bultmann had distinguished between hear
ing the Word of God as a neutral or objective report and thus as a standard form of
communication on the one hand, and on the other hand as a call addressed to the
individual directly, based on some authority; this thus represents a form of faith that
goes beyond any grounding it could be given in philosophy or history, and which is
transformative of the individual in a profound way if the call it represents is responded
to in the right manner by the individual concerned.3 Bultmann’s position was thus
seen to raise deep questions concerning the tension between theology and philosophy,
faith and reason, acceptance of God’s Word and making that Word intelligible.
Now, while allowing that a religious proclamation cannot be established in the man
ner of some standard philosophical proposition, and thus allowing that it differs from
more ordinary forms of communication, Løgstrup argues here that it must still be
comprehensible or understandable in a broader sense, where he claims that what
makes it comprehensible to us in this way is its relation in some fundamental respect to
the nature of human life or existence; otherwise, it simply would not make any sense to
us, and the only reason to accept it would be in blind obedience to authority.4 This is
particularly problematic if the proclamation purports to have some ethical content, of
2 Here and throughout I have translated ‘tilværelse’ as ‘existence’. The NDUP translation sometimes also
translates this as ‘life’. While that is acceptable, as the Danish term also carries something of this meaning,
I think it is helpful to be consistent so that it is clear in English that the same term is being used, where this
is lost in the NDUP translation as it switches back and forth. On balance, faced with the choice, I think
‘existence’ is better than ‘life’, as ‘tilværelse’ is the term that is used to translate ‘Dasein’ into Danish.
3 Cf. Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 71: ‘Is it enough to say that faith grows out of the encoun
ter with the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God, that faith is nothing but simple hearing? The answer is yes.
But this answer is valid only if the Scriptures are understood neither as a manual of doctrine nor as a record
of witness to a faith which I interpret by sympathy and empathy. On the contrary, to hear the Scriptures as
the Word of God means to hear them as a word which is addressed to me, as kerygma, as a proclamation.
Then my understanding is not a neutral one, but rather my response to a call. The fact that the word of the
Scriptures is God’s Word cannot be demonstrated objectively; it is an event which happens here and now.
God’s Word is hidden in the Scriptures as each action of God is hidden everywhere.’
4 Løgstrup had argued in a similar way in his Berlin lectures from 1950:
The difference between proclamation—the Word in the broadest sense—and philosophy
consists also in the fact that the proclamation is not the result of an analysis; it cannot be
demonstrated; from the standpoint of philosophy, proclamation seems to be nothing but
assertions.
But that does not mean that the content of the proclamation is incomprehensible. Yet how
is it explicable that the proclamation, the content of which is not the result of an analysis,
and which cannot be demonstrated, is nonetheless comprehensible? The explanation must
lie in the fact that the content of proclamation corresponds to the purely formal structure of
human existence, that it lets itself be understood in the formal/empty determinations that
result from the analysis of the structure of human existence. (KHE, p. 108/KH, pp. 97–8)
‘Introduction’ 21
the sort that Løgstrup will go on to discuss, as we will then threaten to rob this content
of its intelligibility, and thereby render ethics itself incomprehensible. Hence, in writing
here that ‘a proclamation . . . must answer to something in our own existence’, Løgstrup
is immediately staking out his position in these debates.
However, if Løgstrup is right in what he says here, why isn’t the proclamation rendered
redundant, or something that collapses back into an existential or ethical claim of a more
familiar kind? The answer is that despite this need to ‘answer to something in our own
existence’, the proclamation may nonetheless not work in quite the same way as other
assertions with which we are familiar, so that it may ‘be at odds with everything we
have imagined’, and also bring to our attention something about our existence of which
we were not previously aware, and which otherwise we may not have recognized—
including a fundamental ‘contradiction’ in our existence (p. 1/p. 9), where what
Løgstrup himself takes that contradiction to be emerges in Chapter 8 of The Ethical
Demand. Nonetheless, Løgstrup insists, while bringing something new to light, we
must still be able then to recognize what it brings out about our existence and life ‘by
ourselves without recourse to the proclamation’, and thus as something we can make
intelligible rather than just acceding to the authority of the proclamation itself.
Thus far, Løgstrup has been speaking in very general terms, of any sort of proclamation;
but now he turns to speak of a proclamation of ‘a religious nature’, to which he then
applies the principles outlined above, so that ‘the task is to try to determine in purely
human terms what feature it is in our existence that the proclamation addresses—and
which it thereby alerts us to, possibly for the first time’ (pp. 1–2/p. 10). What this move
amounts to, and where it leaves the religious in relation to the ethical, will be one of the
central challenges raised by the book.
In the case of a specifically religious proclamation, Løgstrup identifies two central
reasons why it is necessary to carry out the ‘task’ he has identified. First, as we have
mentioned, he makes the strong claim that otherwise we will find ourselves ‘coerced’,
as the proclamation will then be something we cannot understand, and ‘faith without
understanding is not faith but coercion’ (p. 2/p. 10); thus, only if we can relate it to
something in our existence and life can we make sense of the proclamation, and only if
we can make sense of it can we act on it with understanding.5 The coercion in question
does not come about because we are directly constrained by the person who proclaims
to us; rather, if we do not understand the proclamation then we can only act on it for
illegitimate motives rather than through understanding, so that we then ‘impose it’ on
ourselves in a way that is coercive, thus turning the proclamation (even if it claims to be
a religious revelation) into ‘obscurantism’ (p. 2/p. 10).
5 Cf. KHE, pp. 108–9/KH, p. 98: ‘Faith without understanding is not faith, but coercion; the individual
imposes the proclamation on themselves not because they take it up for the sake of its content, but for other
and therefore illegitimate motives. If a proclamation is not comprehensible in the sense that it corresponds
to the structure of human existence, what would the difference then be between proclamation and obscure
superstition? Philosophy as the analysis of existence can therefore serve to distinguish between faith
and coercion’.
However, echoing what he had said previously, Løgstrup warns us not to take this
insistence on the comprehensibility of the proclamation to mean that it must fit with
our pre-existing understanding in a straightforward or banal manner, just reinforcing
what we knew already; on the contrary, it may challenge that prior understanding in
such a way that we might well find ourselves taking ‘offence’ at it (where Løgstrup is
echoing the Kierkegaardian term), and we may thus find ourselves resisting it as a
result, while ultimately it still remains comprehensible to us.
Løgstrup’s second reason for trying ‘to express in purely human terms what it is in
our existence that is disclosed to us by a religious proclamation’ (p. 2/pp. 10–11) is that
there is more to a religious proclamation than what it discloses, and to identify this
second element we need to identify the first. Løgstrup argues that there must be two
such elements, as otherwise a proclamation would be no more than a philosophical
statement about our life or existence; but qua religious proclamation it is more than
this, so that ‘the decisive thing about it is what it says over and above this disclosure
[of existence]—in other words, what message it has for the individual whose existence is
thus disclosed’ (p. 2/p. 11).6 Løgstrup is here appealing to the fact, as he does elsewhere,7
that to be preached at is different from being told something in the normal way, as
preaching (if it is effective) is something that has a more individual, inward, and per
sonal relation to and effect on the person concerned, as conveying a message to them
quite specifically, leading to a spiritual transformation; thus in discussing a religious
proclamation and what makes it distinctive, it makes sense to talk about the more gen
eral aspect as well as the more transformative one, and thus to conduct the task that
Løgstrup is undertaking here. In adopting this argument, Løgstrup may perhaps be
seen as trying to turn the tables on an opponent who insists that religious proclamation
is different from other forms of address, by arguing against this opponent that pre
cisely to get at what is different about it, we first have to see what in it can be understood
in ‘purely human terms’, to see what then remains of a distinctive religious kind.
Of these two arguments, the second may seem rather problematic, particularly in
the distinction it tries to draw between the two elements of the proclamation: what is
disclosed by it about human existence on the one hand, and its ‘message for the indi
vidual whose existence is thus disclosed’ on the other. Can this distinction be drawn,
and even if it can, is it possible to identify the first in the sort of self-standing way that
Løgstrup seems to envisage here, and so conduct a philosophical inquiry on the basis
6 I have translated ‘til’ in ‘til den enkeltes—afslørede—eksistens’ as ‘for’: but ‘til’ can also be translated as
‘to’ which is also appropriate here, to capture the sense in which the proclamation is directed to the indi
vidual concerned, in engaging them in particular.
7 Cf. KAV, which begins: ‘Proclamation falls under the category of address. That means: what is pro
claimed to a human being comes into force for them. What is proclaimed is valid for them, from the moment
that it is proclaimed to them’ (p. 249). Løgstrup contrasts proclamation with ‘communication’ [Mitteilung],
which is a more objective form of address, and must be taken up by the listener as valid for it to have an
impact on them. As noted previously, the background to Løgstrup’s discussion here and in The Ethical
Demand is the account of the kerygma or proclamation put forward by the German dialectical theologian
Rudolf Bultmann.
of considering a religious proclamation? This question becomes the burden of the final
chapter of The Ethical Demand, where Løgstrup considers Jesus as not just a ‘teacher’
conveying truths to his audience in a philosophical manner, but also transforming his
audience and their relation to God through his proclamation, thus adding the further
religious element to what can be disclosed about existence in more philosophical
terms, where it is this philosophical disclosure that is arguably the project of the preceding
chapters of the book; but as we shall see, whether even in these preceding chapters
Løgstrup in fact manages and even fully intends to keep philosophy and theology dis
tinct from one another is a central issue to be discussed, on which much turns.
The first argument concerning coercion may seem more straightforward, and can
be understood more easily, where it is of course a familiar trope of enlightenment
thinking that religion should speak to us in terms we can understand—though as David
Bugge argues, Løgstrup’s own influences here are more likely to be Luther and Jakob
Knudsen.8 However, it leaves Løgstrup with a problem to which he also returns at the
end of the book, namely if we are to reject any coercive conception of the proclamation,
what then happens to the idea that Jesus speaks to us from a position of authority,9 and
is this also coercive but in a different way?
Having discussed religious proclamation at a rather general level, Løgstrup now
focuses on ‘[t]he one thing in our existence which the proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth
touches upon more than any other’, namely ‘the individual’s relation to the other person’
(p. 3/p. 11).10 Løgstrup is here indirectly referring us to the Sermon on the Mount, and
to Jesus’s reply to one of the Pharisees who questions him concerning ‘which com
mandment in the law is the greatest?’, to which Jesus replies: ‘“You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”. This is the
greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it, “You shall love your neigh
bour as yourself ”. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’.11
Taking the proclamation to love our neighbour, Løgstrup therefore asks in accordance
with his approach outlined previously: ‘What attitude to the other human being is
implicit in Jesus’s proclamation? What view does it take of what is essential in our lives
with and against each other, and how can that be stated in purely human terms?’
(p. 3/p. 11). This is the fundamental issue referred to in the title of this section of the
Introduction: ‘Concerning the attempt to determine in purely human terms the attitude
to the other human being which is contained within the religious proclamation of
Jesus of Nazareth’ (p. 1/p. 9).
8 Bugge, Hinandens Verden: Ledsager til K. E. Løgstrup: Den Etiske Fordring [One Another’s World:
A Companion to K. E. Løgstrup’s The Ethical Demand], pp. 17–18.
9 The Danish term used in Chapter 12 of ED is ‘myndighed’. The term ‘instans’ is also translated as
‘authority’, but they have a rather different meaning, as we will discuss further in §5.1 and §6.1 below.
10 The NDUP translation has ‘neighbour’ here instead of ‘other person’, which is to rather jump the gun,
as Løgstrup does not speak of ‘neighbour’ until the next section of the Introduction.
11 Matthew 22:36–40. Cf. also Leviticus 19:18; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:25–37.
But is such a project feasible? As even Løgstrup himself allows, with an understatement
he surely intended to be provocative, the proclamation ‘in a wholly ordinary and vague
sense of the word is religious’ (p. 3/p. 11), particularly in the way that Jesus connects
the second commandment with the first commandment to love God, a fact that is
central to theological debates on these issues.12 So how can it make sense to understand
this proclamation in ‘purely human terms’? Løgstrup suggests several answers to this
concern. First, he points out that many people do in fact take the commandment to
love their neighbour seriously, even while rejecting Christianity as such—though by
adding the qualification that loving their neighbour is something they may just ‘think
they approve’ of, Løgstrup is hinting that there may be more to such love than people
complacently assume, so that the possibility of ‘offence’ remains. Second, he considers
the objection that this attitude is unsustainable, as Christian belief is inherently tied up
with loving one’s neighbour, which cannot be made sense of without it, as our attitude
to our neighbour will inevitably be reduced or made absurd unless we can relate it to
our love of God and his love for us. Løgstrup responds to this objection in a long note,
claiming that while this concern has some force, it is still not sufficient to immediately
invalidate his project of investigating the proclamation in ‘purely human terms’ at the
outset, so that the project still remains something that is worthwhile to attempt, even
if it may fail in the end (pp. 3–4 note 1/pp. 11–12 note 1). The nature of the investigation
that the book represents is thus presented as a kind of experiment, where we are left to
judge at the end whether the ‘attempt’ [forsøg] spoken of in the title of this section
ultimately succeeds.
Moreover, in the next section Løgstrup in fact exploits to his own advantage the way
in which Jesus links the two commandments, as in doing so (he argues) Jesus makes
clear using religious language just how much of our life and existence hinges on our
relationship to our neighbour, so that here even our relationship to God is decided.
Løgstrup thus follows the German dialectical theologian Friedrich Gogarten in claim
ing that this conjunction is distinctive of the Christian religion. Løgstrup argues that
this linkage in Jesus’s reply to the Pharisee raises the following crucial questions: ‘What
must the individual’s relationship to the other human being consist in, when it is here
and nowhere else that the individual’s relationship to God is decided? What must the
relationship between one human being and another involve when it is so closely tied
up with the relationship to God?’ (p. 4/p. 13).
Seen in religious terms, Løgstrup argues, if my relationship to God is decided
through my relationship to my neighbour, this shows how much God must care for the
neighbour as well as me; and because of this my relationship to God is not merely a
religious but also an ethical matter, hinging on my relationship to others. This relation
ship therefore cannot be used as nothing but a means to get into the right religious
12 See, for example, Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, pp. 84–5. As we shall see in greater detail in Chapter 11,
this issue is central to Luther’s position.
relationship to God, thereby subordinating ethics to religion.13 But more importantly

for our purposes here, seen in more human terms, the fact that Jesus makes the rela
tionship to the neighbour so central to our relationship to God shows us precisely what
in our life or existence this proclamation answers to: namely that our form of life makes
us profoundly dependent on one another, where it is this that reveals the significance
of the proclamation ‘in purely human terms’. This is the crucial passage:
If one’s relationship to the other human being is the place where one’s relationship to God is
decided, it must at the same time be the place where the existence of the other human being is
so totally at stake, that one’s failure is irreparable. So, it cannot be the case that what I withhold
from the other person in one situation, they would be able to recoup either from me or from a
third, fourth, or fifth person. If we were so independent of one another, that the words and deeds
of one person were a mere luxury in the existence of the other, so that one’s failure could always
be made good later, God’s relationship to the individual would consist in a looser relationship to
the individual’s relationship to the other human being than is the case in Jesus’s proclamation.
In short, a precondition for the close relation in which Jesus puts the relationship with God
and with the neighbour is that we are, as Luther expresses it, ‘daily bread’14 in one another’s lives.
But precisely this precondition for the close relationship in Jesus’s proclamation between the two
great commandments of the law can be portrayed in purely human terms.15 (p. 5/pp. 13–14)
Løgstrup’s position may be summarized as follows: even while expressed in religious

language, both Christians and non-Christians alike can see something of deep signifi
cance in the command to love one’s neighbour; but if so, even as a religious p roclamation
it must contain something that we can make sense of in human terms, as relating to
something fundamental about our life or existence, which explains why our relation
to God is settled by how we relate to our neighbour. What that fundamental fact is,
Løgstrup suggests, is our interdependence, namely the fact that ‘the other human being
must be pointed towards me alone, to such an extent that everything hangs on what
I (and no one else) do in that relationship’ (p. 5/p. 13). We can imagine things differently,
13 While he is not mentioned explicitly, it seems plausible to see an implied criticism of Kierkegaard
here, where elsewhere Løgstrup accuses Kierkegaard of making a mistake of this kind: cf. KHE, p. 83/KH,
p. 75, where Løgstrup argues that for Kierkegaard ‘The ethical and the religious slip away from one another.
The ethical is reduced to becoming the mere occasion of the religious life’. For further discussion, see
Niekerk, ‘Afgørets Menneskets Eksistens for Løgstrup af dets Gerninger?’ [‘For Løgstrup, Is a Person’s
Existence Decided By Their Deeds?’], p. 547.
14 Løgstrup does not give a source for this reference, but Svend Andersen has plausibly argued that it
relates to a passage in the discussion of the Fourth Petition of Luther’s Large Catechism on ‘give us this day
our daily bread’, where Luther writes: ‘Now for our life it is not only necessary that our body have food and
covering and other necessaries, but also that we spend our days in peace and quiet among the people with
whom we live and have intercourse in daily business and conversation and all sorts of doings, in short,
whatever pertains both to the domestic and to the neighbourly or civil relation and government. For where
these two things are hindered [intercepted and disturbed] so that they do not prosper as they ought, the
necessaries of life also are impeded, so that ultimately life cannot be maintained’ (WA Abt. 1, 301: 204/LC,
p. 99). See Andersen, ‘Efter Loven: Den Etiske Fordring som Luthersk Etik’ [‘After the Law: The Ethical
Demand as a Lutheran Ethic’], p. 66.
15 For a contrasting view, see for example Bultmann’s discussion of the relation between the two com
mandments in Jesus and the Word, pp. 85–6.
we can imagine worlds in which beings are somehow self-sufficient, or can easily get
what they want from someone else if we let them down, so that what we do for them
hardly matters. In such a world, the love commandment would be otiose and Jesus’s
proclamation could well be utterly different; but we do not live in such a world, which
is why Jesus makes it so crucial to his teaching—in fact, crucial enough to speak of it as
the point at which our relation to God himself is determined. It is thus this inter
dependence that, in human terms, is embodied in Jesus’s proclamation, and which
Løgstrup therefore takes as the starting point of his inquiry in the rest of the book,
where what it then means to ‘love your neighbour’ is further explored, ‘in order to
understand the silent, radical, one-sided and unfulfillable character of the demand
contained in the proclamation of Jesus’ (p. 5/p. 14; cf. also p. 7/p. 15). What Løgstrup
means by this will be the central focus in what follows, as here he introduces out of the
blue four terms that are key to the position he goes on to develop.
The Introduction then concludes with a section on ‘methodological remarks’. The
force of these remarks is a version of the warning widely attributed to Einstein, namely
that ‘everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler’. Thus, Løgstrup
cautions that while making distinctions may be useful, they can also distort the issue
under discussion by being used too rigidly or indiscriminately, as can the search for a
spurious kind of systematicity—where Løgstrup clearly has some systematic theologians
in his sights.16 As Løgstrup wryly remarks in a note: ‘If a theologian is in the least bit
systematically disposed, it is not long before they get carried away and get the knack
of grinding out concepts. But once they get started, it may be hard to stop, and if the
theologian has a tendency to verbosity, this may never happen at all’ (pp. 6–7 note
5/p. 15 note 1). Løgstrup follows Hans Lipps in attaching importance to the fact that
significant philosophical differences and insights can be uncovered in looking at words
that are often used interchangeably, but which are not in fact synonymous, such as
‘anger’ and ‘hatred’ (cf. pp. 32–4/pp. 43–6), where he is signalling here that this will be
his approach in this work, while also avoiding a procedure that is too schematic.17
Løgstrup thus positions his approach as standing between two extremes when it comes
to clarifying ‘experiences, interconnections, and outlooks on life’: on the one side there
are ‘poetic metaphors and images’, and on the other ‘degenerate philosophy, theology,
or cultural analysis which monomaniacally explains everything with the one and only
distinction’, while in-between there is the approach of drawing ‘philosophical and
theological comparisons and distinctions’, which Løgstrup himself proposes to adopt
(p. 6/p. 15). To carry through this approach, he suggests, we will have to take up a
perspective that involves the ‘interconnections, contradictions, and conflicts in our
16 Bugge notes that in an article published a few years earlier, Løgstrup explicitly criticized the Aarhus
theologian P. G. Lindhardt on this score: see Hinandens Verden, p. 24. Niekerk has argued that Gogarten
may also be a target: see ‘Vejen til Den Etiske Fordring’, pp. 31–2.
17 Cf. also the beginning of PA, where Løgstrup stresses the importance of paying attention to the different
ways in which the terms ‘duty’ and ‘responsibility’ are used in ordinary language, in order to get at their
underlying philosophical differences—but where perhaps surprisingly to an analytic philosophy audience,
he quotes Heidegger and Kierkegaard in support of his approach here. See PA, pp. 206–7.
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closest friends.
Mansur was not at home, having gone to fetch the bride; so Amor
was the only one of the Khalifa’s sons who bade me welcome.
I was shown to my quarters in the guest-cave, and our horses
were stabled in the cave passage, as on my first visit. A first-rate
gala dinner refreshed me; the table being laden with dishes and
bowls of well-cooked food, which I relished with the good appetite of
a hungry man. The Khalifa himself came to look after me during my
meal, followed by an inquisitive mob who crouched round the cave,
darkening the entrance.
The onlookers remained silent while the meal lasted, and when it
was over were hustled out, and I ordered Hamed to post himself at
the door and forbid ingress to each and all, as I desired to change
my dress and attire myself in my festal costume—a white linen suit.
When this was done, Hamed entered, leading by the hand a
sprightly eleven-year-old lad, who addressed me in pure French, and
was introduced by Hamed as his little brother Ali, who was invited to
the festival, and had arrived with his mother and sister from Gabés,
having ridden thence on a donkey.
Ali attended a French school at Gabés, and, being a bright
intelligent lad, had soon learnt to talk fluent French. He told me that
the Khalifa had said he might come and ask if I would employ him as
interpreter.
I was much pleased with this acquisition, and during the hour
which remained before the bride’s arrival, and the consequent
commencement of festivities, occupied myself, with little Ali’s help, in
gathering information on the subject of the wedding customs in the
Matmata mountains, which enabled me to more fully understand
what I witnessed later in the day, and thus add to the knowledge I
had already acquired from both Mansur and Amor, and from several
others of the better class of mountaineers.
And here I will diverge a little to describe the ceremonies that had
preceded this last great function; and, in the meantime, my readers
may picture to themselves the crowd eagerly scanning the
mountains to espy the expected little caravan led by Mansur, who
was to bring home the bride; the guests steadily increasing in
numbers, and the bridegroom in his hiding-place, listening to the
sounds of rejoicing, and perhaps dreaming of his bride-elect; whilst
muskets were being loaded, locks examined, horses saddled,
women adorned, and the bridal chamber made ready.
On his son Mohammed’s behalf, the old Khalifa discussed the
necessary arrangements with the bride’s father, who is one of the
tribe of Uled Sliman. The marriage is then concluded, but by merely
a civil contract. Before the bridegroom can be left in peace with his
second wife, there must be much feu de joie, many songs sung,
quantities of kus-kus eaten, and many preparations made in both the
bride’s and the bridegroom’s homes. In the latter especially, where
festivities must be kept up for eight days, men and women vie with
each other in making ready for great rejoicings.
It was, as my readers may remember, eight days earlier, on the
17th October, that I had witnessed the festival of the opening day. At
first the women had been mainly occupied in collecting wheat and
barley to be ground in their small stone handmills, many people
being expected; so there was much work that had to be done, but joy
and festivity would reign in Hadeij, so the village women met in the
evenings and tried to surpass each other in improvising songs.
Whilst the chorus and joyful “Yu, yu” re-echoed in the still
evenings, the men, as we have seen, sat in groups listening to the
songs of the women, the negro comic singers, and the noisy drums
and clarionets. Now and again there would be the flash of powder
and report following report, all tokens of universal rejoicing.
The two first fête days are called “Faraja.” The third, “El Henna,” is
so named after the plant, the leaves of which stain red the nails on
the hands and feet of the women. A young bride must never be
without this beautifying preparation in her new home, and every day
she must adorn herself to please and attract her husband.
On the fourth day, “Nugera,” the women again assemble and work
and sing, busying themselves with preparations for the festival.
At last on the fifth day, “Mahal,” the rejoicings begin. The
tribesmen and women arrive to devour enormous quantities of
various kinds of food, in addition to their well-loved “kus-kus.” The
negroes dance, sing, and earn much money, as they are never
overlooked by either host or guests.
The next morning, that is, of the sixth day, called “Follag,” the men
begin by again revelling in “kus-kus” and meat dishes; they require to
be well fed and strengthened, for in the evening after sunset they
must sally out to collect wood for fuel. They return in the early
morning, and then the women’s turn comes, when they will make
their last and greatest effort to render the bridal banquet worthy of
the occasion, and to do credit to themselves and to the Khalifa.
Many oxen and some score of sheep are slaughtered, for no festive
occasion passes without every man gorging until he is almost unfit to
move.
The seventh day, “El Kesuar,” is appointed for the presentation to
the bride of her dresses and ornaments. In this case this honourable
commission was entrusted to Amor, the Khalifa’s second son.
Soon after midday he swung himself into his saddle and led the
way, followed by some ten horsemen and a number of men on foot.
The latter led mules laden with the bridal gifts. On the way the riders
galloped in wildest “fantasia,” riding gallantly as they proceeded
towards the bride’s home on the other side of the mountains, whilst
muskets were discharged, and the smoke of the gunpowder rose
amongst the hills. The negro musicians, who accompanied them,
played on their flutes and beat their drums to warn the Uled Sliman
of the approach of the people from Hadeij.
These are expected, and a festal welcome prepared in the village;
for there also, during many days, great preparations have been
made, the tribe being proud that little Mena should go to Hadeij as
bride to the Khalifa’s son.
What a crowd there was the other evening, when, after sunset,
she stepped from the cave into the open court, shy and timid, to
allow herself to be seen by the men of her homestead, who had
gathered on the top of the bank, whence they could see down into
the deep courtyard to where the light flickered from the candle she
carried, and where her shadow wavered on the perpendicular walls.
For the last time they looked on her maiden form and beautiful
features, and could not but acknowledge that little Mena was a fitting
bride for Mohammed, son of the Khalifa of Hadeij.
The previous day the village women of the Uled Sliman sang the
live-long day—morning, noon, and night their joyful songs arose from
the caves.
There was no more work to be done. Enough food was provided
for their own tribesmen, and for the strangers who were to come and
fetch the bride.
After Amor and his men have done honour to the Uled Sliman by
the “fantasia” on horseback, they are led into a cave, the residence
of the bride’s father. Here they hand over the lovely clothes, and are
regaled with roast and stewed meats.
Before leaving, they pass into another room, where the women
have ranged themselves along the walls, each seated on her own
“senduk” (chest). On the head of every woman they place pieces of
money, intended for the negress who will adorn the bride, for she
must have encouragement and be paid in ringing coin to embellish
the bride, that she may prove attractive in the eyes of her future
husband.
Not until after sunset does Amor return to Hadeij, where again the
musket shots re-echo and the negroes dance and play, richly
rewarded by the spectators.
In the village of Uled Sliman there is also feasting: the last great
festival before the little girl leaves her home for ever, for next day she
must bid farewell to all those who have been so good to her, to
become the wife of a stranger, a man with whom she may be
scarcely acquainted, except by name. But she probably dreams of
her coming prosperity, and of him who will shortly be her husband
and master. Lucky for her if she does not dwell on the thought that
perhaps in seven, eight, or even fewer, years,—when she is faded,
old, and ugly,—she may become a beast of burden, and make way
for another and more youthful woman, whom she may gratefully
welcome as a help in her work.
But we will not overshadow a happy hour with such forebodings.
Sorrow may come early, but, possibly, never!
At dawn of the final day, called “Sjiffa” (a canopy), all were early
afoot in Hadeij. During the previous evening, and late into the night,
guests kept arriving from distant regions, and more would arrive that
day. People had been invited from all the villages in the Matmata
mountains—first and foremost, those of Uled Sliman, but also from
Ras-el Ned, Beni Sultan, Tujan, Smerten, Beni Aissa. Many
hundreds would assemble, and, with the men, women, and children
of Hadeij, between one and two thousand would be present.
In the Khalifa’s house, in all the caves, and in the tents, the guests
were fed in the early morning. Belkassim had his hands full, taking
care that everyone had his appointed place.
The meal soon being finished, the people flocked to watch
Mansur start with the canopy (Sjiffa) perched on the bridal camel. He
rode a donkey, and was accompanied by both horsemen and men
on foot, the latter firing off muskets and performing the most graceful
and joyous “fantasia,” whilst the negroes played gaily on flutes and
tambourines as they disappeared amongst the mountain paths.
But we must glance at the home of the bride, where Mansur is
expected to arrive some hours later.
The father of the bride had given a banquet to the men, women,
and children, and even to the negroes, followed by much feu de joie.
Towards midday, when the bride has been adorned, and only
waits to be fetched, the men of her tribe enter, and each lays his mite
on her head. All is for the negress who has dressed her and striven
faithfully that the result may be superlatively impressive.
But hark! The report of guns is heard in the distance, the men
from Hadeij are coming. Haste, oh, Uled Sliman, to receive them, for
the powder speaks, the clarionets shrill, and the tom-toms boom
incessantly.
CAMEL WITH CANOPY.
The palanquin is decorated and enveloped in many coloured

draperies. Within it is placed the bride, completely veiled, the
hangings are drawn around it, so that she can neither see nor be
seen, and the joyous procession starts homewards towards Hadeij,
Mansur leading. The bride’s mother, sister, and father follow afoot,
the negress with them—all walking immediately behind the
palanquin. Before it go the negro musicians playing.
A message was brought me that the bridal procession was to be
seen coming down the mountain. We hastened out and joined the
stream of people hurrying to a great open space, where the
“fantasia” was to be held. Thither rushed also a flock of females,
enveloped in yellow and red draperies. These were the young and
half-grown girls. They kept close together, and grouped themselves
under the shade of a palm tree. The old Khalifa sat on his mule, a
clubbed stick in his hand. He, Belkassim, Amor, and some of the
men, directed the crowd to stand in long rows on either side of the
open space.
My place, on a chair under a palm tree, was pointed out to me.
Beside me were Ali and Hamed; and the Khalifa rode up now and
again and halted near me, when we would smile at each other; while
he inquired whether I was satisfied, if I was comfortably seated, and
expressed his gratification at my presence on this festal day.
Behind me rose a rampart of earth, banked up about the palm
trees; it was tightly packed with rows of men; and above this white
crowd the palms towered into the air. Farther off the crowns of other
palms and olives were visible, scattered here and there over the
valley of which the horizon is bounded by blue mountains. Clinging
to the tops of the neighbouring palm trees I saw boys, who had
climbed there for a better view.
Behind the men stood groups of women; amongst the former
were the negro musicians, and beside these were men in silken
apparel and carrying muskets, in readiness to perform the gun dance
(or powder-play).
Far to the left, on an open space between two roads, were
gathered a number of horsemen, clothed in flowing garments and
with their silver-inlaid guns held pointing upwards, prepared to spring
forward at a given moment and pass us at flying speed.
To the right, the ground rose in a gentle incline to the caves in the
bank.
It was hot at the midday hour, and the sun burnt scorchingly in the
valley, but the attention of all was strained watching for the long-
expected procession, so no one noticed the heat.
The flutes, clarionets, and drums began to play. The boys started
running across the open space, followed and driven back by
Belkassim and his assistants, and roundly abused even by the
Khalifa himself; for the space had to be kept clear for the horses to
gallop over.
Suddenly the sound of gun-shots was heard coming from the
opposite groups. The smoke rose amongst the palm leaves, and
then I saw men beautifully dressed and wearing red caps and full
white trousers, performing the gun dance, either two or four at a
time.
Two men sprang forward from the group. The first rested his
cheek on his gun, aimed at his companion, and danced round in a
circle with little tripping steps, still steadily sighting the other, who,
opposite to him, danced in the same circle, the butt end of his gun
held in a similar position. Thus they tripped from side to side,
keeping with their guns a steady aim at each other. Then, suddenly,
a report sounded from the two guns simultaneously. The dancers
then sprang round to the staccato and nasal notes of the clarionets,
now playing in quicker time. One of the men threw his musket up in
the air to catch it again as it fell, the other whirled his whizzing round
in his hand. So they danced for a while, and then dropped into
slower measure, aiming at each other as at first, and ending by
abruptly vanishing amongst the crowd to reload their guns, whilst
others danced forward and the firing was repeated.
Two and two, aiming at each other, four men danced in a circle;
as they tripped from one side to the other, reports re-echoed and
guns whirled in the air. The sun gleamed on silver-inlaid weapons,
on the dust, the dazzling white burnouses of the men, on the women,
the palms and the olive trees, whilst the music’s monotonous nasal
clamour resounded hideously.
Then the riders to the left stirred into activity. Two men started
their horses at a gallop, forcing them along at furious speed. Like
lightning they approached, the riders leaning towards each other so
that their heads pressed cheek to cheek. Their caps seemed one red
spot, their two faces were not distinguishable the one from the other.
The rider on the right held his gun in his right hand, the other in his
left, and as they galloped they swung them to and fro and up and
down in the air. When they were quite in front of us, just outside the
group of dancers, one of them fired his gun into the ground and the
other into the air, then they parted, galloping quickly back to join their
ranks.
Other horsemen followed in the same fashion.
In El Hamma I had noticed some riders whose horses had silken
coverings flowing over their quarters, but here I saw none.
Some thirty horsemen came forward in turn to take part in the
powder-play. The dancing group did not cease firing when the riders
passed; the flutes and clarionets wildly intermingled their din—it was
deafening. But the riders’ prowess was a beautiful sight. Some of
them had no guns and only galloped past; one carried, hanging by
his saddle, a splendid long silver-mounted sword, resembling our
own old Viking swords. This I was to see used later, during the bridal
ceremony.
After some time passed in this way, I heard the sound of other
flutes and drums. The dancers and riders redoubled their exertions,
for at last the bridal procession was on the point of arriving.
Mansur on his mule came riding into the square, and was nearly
trampled on by the “fantasia” riders.
After him followed the camel with the canopy. It was led forward
by men on foot, others supporting the palanquin on either side as it
swayed backwards and forwards.
Behind the camel came some women, and the procession was
closed by a mule laden with dresses and gifts.
Just as the camel was about to halt beneath the shade of the
palm trees in front of me, two horsemen came tearing up. They fired
their guns quite close to the canopy. Their horses reared, and I saw
their forelegs right up in the air as the guns whirled over the men’s
heads.
At short intervals other riders followed, some singly, others in
couples, or even three riding side by side. In the last case, the two
outside riders leant towards the central figure. All fired off their guns
close to the palanquin, where the bride sat ensconced. She must
have been unconscious of all save the fiendish noise made in her
honour, and the unpleasant rocking motion produced by a camel’s
action.
THE BRIDE ESCORTED OVER THE MOUNTAINS.
(From a sketch by Knud Gamborg.)
The horsemen returned to their starting-point after each gallop.

The reel and gold canopied palanquin with its pointed top was now
just in front of me. The music continued, and the clatter of the
horses’ hoofs, and of shots fired into the ground; whilst the
spectators in their white burnouses stood almost motionless,
enjoying the beautiful sight. The sun shone brightly, and many drew
their hoods over their heads to protect themselves from its rays, and
the horses were white with foam from excitement and heat.
Behind a couple of the horsemen, a stark-naked negro lad,
bestriding a little jennet, came galloping up. He waved his arms and
gesticulated wildly with a stick, using it as a gun. Alas! the mule
stopped suddenly, sticking his forefeet into the ground. The negro
lad, with an indescribable grimace, threw his arms about its neck.
The mule reared with a bound; the lad clung fast and anxiously to its
neck as he still hung on, but was fated to fall, for the mule finally
plunged to one side, pitching the naked boy on to the sand. For the
first time I saw the spectators smile, some even laughed aloud. The
mule trotted off towards the hills, followed by the shouting lad, whose
unclothed form was covered with dust.
Such clowns often appear on the scene during a festival; the part
always being played by a negro.
The black boy must soon have caught his mule, for a few minutes
after his first performance he again rushed by to repeat his uncouth
“fantasia.”
After the palanquin had been present at the “powder-play” for
about half an hour, it was conducted towards the caves. The
“fantasia” being at an end, all the people followed the bride; some
going before, some behind the camel, and others alongside of it. The
whole ground seemed sown with a crop of burnouses.
The Khalifa rode up and gave directions to Hamed and Ali as to
where I was to be placed during the remainder of the function.
We took a short cut back to the Khalifa’s house, where I was
stationed on a chair, over the entrance gate through which the bride
would pass.
From my commanding position I looked down on the spot where
the women sat and sang to me on my first evening.
Gradually more and more men and boys arrived, till the slopes
were crowded. In front of the gate was Belkassim, the ubiquitous
Belkassim, keeping back the boys with his marshal’s stick. Amor was
there also, and a little later the Khalifa arrived on his mule. These
kept a small space clear near the gate. Pressed together close
beside it was a group of girls, mostly half-grown; in their light-
coloured clothes they were very effective. They chaffed one another
as they watched for the advent of the bride. By chance one of them
looked up and caught sight of me; in an instant she had imparted her
interesting discovery to the others, and many a pretty, roguish, or
inquisitive glance was cast on me. When I nodded to them, they
tittered, and the biggest girl withdrew the kerchief from before her
face.
FANTASIA.
(From a sketch by Knud Gamborg.)
The Khalifa on his mule had enough to do keeping order. His

angry voice thundered not only at the boys, but also at the men who
pushed forward to have a look.
At length the musicians and the red-topped palanquin came in
sight. Gun-shots exploded all around. Four negroes appeared,
tripping along with a swaying motion from their hips, and playing, two
on drums, and two on clarionets; the music shrieking hideously over
the hill. Behind them came the palanquin, followed by the mule with
the gifts.
A short distance from the gateway they halted, and the camel was
ordered to kneel. The obstinate beast refused; supported by the
men, the palanquin swayed from left to right. Poor little Mena: you
were to be worried yet a little longer before you were to be allowed to
leave your cage.
At last the men succeeded in making the camel kneel and in
binding its foreleg, its complaining roar mingling with the rest of the
infernal din.
The negress stood beside the palanquin, and I saw that she
conversed with the captive—perhaps seeking to reassure her. She
stretched her black arm beneath the canopy to pass in a finger-ring
which Amor handed her. It was evidently a wedding present, but
whether from Amor himself or from his brother, the bridegroom, I was
unable to ascertain.
In the meanwhile, on the small clear space in front of the gate, a
carpet had been spread, and on it a mattress, on which was placed a
large flat pan filled with sand.
The men busied themselves stripping the palanquin of its canopy
of hangings and kerchiefs, and when this was done they lifted down
the closely veiled bride and set her on the ground. The negress took
her by the hand and led her within a couple of paces of the edge of
the carpet, where they remained standing. Round it some men had
stationed themselves, holding unfolded burnouses spread above
their heads, so that carpet and mattress were hidden from view.
I could not understand what these preparations could portend,
and asked Hamed. He explained, in a whisper, that some small boys
were to be circumcised, and pointed out three men each holding a
child in his arms. These children were from two to four years old: one
of them was little Hamed, the bridegroom’s son by his first wife;
another, Amor’s son Mahmud; and the third little boy was also a
relative.
The children wore red caps with tassels richly adorned with gold
and silver ornaments, and, so far as I could make out, chains hung
about their ears and necks. They were dressed in coloured coats,
below which appeared white shirts and bare legs encircled by
anklets. The two elder children cried incessantly, as if they knew
what awaited them, but the youngest smiled and looked about him.
The music in the meantime drowned the screams of the small
boys. Belkassim disappeared beneath the coverings, and one of the
small boys was carried in. After a time he was brought out, fainting,
and was taken to the cave; the other boys followed in the same
manner.
During this ceremony, which lasted at least twenty minutes, the
bride stood, closely veiled, by the carpet. Extending her right hand,
decked with gold and silver rings, she took some leaves from a basin
held by a negress and strewed them over the covering, and, whilst
the music played and the drums boomed, I saw the slender little arm
continually moving to and fro sprinkling the “henna” leaves above the
boys and men.
At last the boys were taken away, and the carpet, etc. removed.
The maiden bride had fulfilled the first of her duties—she had
blessed the ceremony. The children being now purified, in token
thereof water-coolers were broken on the ground, I observed also
that chopped eggs and a great quantity of food were distributed to
the assembled children.
The scene I had just witnessed was so full of charm, and, above
all, so impressive, that for a moment I was almost awed by its
solemnity.
At the end of the enclosure the crowd kept moving restlessly
backwards and forwards, endeavouring to see what was going on,
for the bride was about to enter her house.
Mohammed’s first wife, closely veiled, came forward, and, taking
her rival by the hand, led her into their dwelling. On the other side of
the bride walked the negress, who for the last time, after many years
of loving care, directed her little Mena’s footsteps. On her head was
held a little mirror, whilst she herself grasped with her right hand the
hilt of a long, straight, double-edged sword, the point of which,
carried foremost, was borne by a man. “Beware! Ill befall those who
would injure this pure young woman; the sword would avenge her!”
Thus, to the screaming of the music, the young bride entered the
gate.
As soon as the door had swung-to on its creaking hinges, guns
were discharged in every direction with a deafening noise, and I was
compelled to abandon in haste my exalted seat, for the smoke nearly
choked me as the men and boys fired wildly in front of the gate.
It was then past noon, and there ensued a pause in the festivities,
the musicians requiring rest, being expected to play with renewed
vigour in the evening.
The numerous guests were fed in the dwellings and tents. Before
the meal the people collected in groups under the trees, and friends
and acquaintances conversed together. The Khalifa, who sat
surrounded by the sheikhs of the villages, requested me to seat
myself near him.
Several of these men were known to me, and I thanked them for
their hospitality; others invited me to their villages. I replied that time
was short, and I must hasten over the mountains and on to Medinin
on the plains; so on this occasion they must excuse me, for I could
not accept their invitation.
“But you have visited Judlig, Ben Aissa, Tujud, Zaraua, and many
other villages in our land. You accepted the invitations of their
sheikhs—wherefore, then, will you not also visit Beni Sultan?” said
the sheikh of that village. “Come to our ‘Ksar,’ and if you will remain
a long time you will be welcome.”
I explained that I had to go all the way to Medinin, where I was
expected, but the sheikh would take no refusal, and the Khalifa put in
his word, saying—
“You can ride to-morrow to Beni Sultan, and eat ‘kus-kus’ there;
thence you can go on to Tujan, sleep there, and next day ride
straight to Medinin.”
“But I was informed at Gabés that I could not ride a horse over the
mountain on account of the road being rough and impracticable.”
“You shall have a mule which will carry you anywhere.”
“But my horse and my Spahi’s horse, what shall I do with them?”
“I will take them to Gabés with greetings from you,” said the
Sheikh of Tujan. “I am just about to travel there to confer with the
Khalifa, and so must also the Sheikh of Beni Sultan.”
“That is all very well, but I shall not see anything of yourselves.”
“No, unfortunately we are compelled to be away, as the Khalifa
has summoned us; but the men in our villages will receive you well,
and be pleased at your visit.”
I could but consent, and thank them for their invitation.
The Sheikh of Beni Sultan was a proud, generous man, who was
said to be very wealthy.
Tujan is under the Khalifa of Gabés. This official had sent his
friend, the Khalifa of Hadeij, a fine bull and five goats as an offering
towards the feast.
For an hour I sat in conversation with the men, to whom I offered
cigarettes, the old Khalifa having a positive weakness for these, to
him rare, articles of commerce.
After sauntering for some time amongst the various groups to
greet the people, I returned to my cave. It was quite dark; I lit a
couple of candles, and occupied myself making notes of all I had
seen and heard, Mansur, Amor, and several others sitting round me,
and giving me any explanations I desired. Little Ali and his brother
were my faithful interpreters, but my work was often interrupted, so
many came to salute me, perhaps in hopes of being offered
cigarettes; and the room filled by degrees.
At last meal-time approached, and they left me. So for once I ate
all the good things in peace. Soup, ragout of fowl, roast kid, kus-kus,
bread and honey, and dates. Only Mansur remained with me, and
overwhelmed me with assurances of his friendship, which I heartily
returned.
When I had eaten, I looked out into the courtyard. The great
vaulted chamber opposite was lighted, and was choke full of men
eating amongst the pillars. Deep silence reigned, for it is not
considered correct to be noisy when eating.
In the room next my cave were Ali, Hamed, and many others,
busy eating up the remains of my meal, and in the long cavern
passage stood our horses devouring their plentiful fodder. Under the
palms, the olive trees, and beneath the tents, all were in full
enjoyment of the wedding feast.
I stepped out and went up the hill, where the stars twinkled above
me, and all was still.
Out of the caves in the heart of the earth, streaming up from the
courtyards on every side, I saw rays of light coming from the
women’s dwellings, where they and the children also enjoyed the
banquet.
It was nearly seven o’clock, and it would not be long ere the
rejoicings recommenced in the enclosure before the gate with song
music, and dancing. But the hour was also near when the
bridegroom would present himself to his bride, accompanied only by
a few friends.
As I stood, lost in thought, Ali came hastily and pulled at my
burnous, whispering that the bridegroom had sent me a message by
one of his friends, who was seeking me.
As I returned to learn particulars, I met the messenger.
“Mohammed asks if you will accompany him, Sidi. Will you? And
shall I lead you?”
I consented without hesitation, whereupon we, the messenger, Ali,
and I, started at once on our way in the dark, going through narrow
lanes in the direction of the mountains.
All around was quiet, and became even more so as we put a
distance between ourselves and the festivities. Suddenly a dog
barked in the darkness; we were probably in the neighbourhood of a
dwelling-place. Soon after, it ceased barking; we were beyond its
domain.
The messenger, who was one of the bridegroom’s intimate
friends, took my hand and led me, as he perceived that I had some
difficulty in finding secure footing, and my little Ali walked on the
other side of me, clinging to a fold of my burnous.
When we had proceeded thus some ten minutes, I made out
some dark figures before me. These were the bridegroom and his
friends. They were squatted on the ground, but rose when I
approached.
By the faint light of the stars I distinguished an average-sized man
clothed in a red burnous, beneath which showed a white haik—could
it be, perchance, my gift? On his head he wore a red fez with a
tassel. This was evidently the bridegroom.
Addressing me he said, “If you will be my friend, as you have
become that of my father and my brothers, I shall be grateful to you,
and will beg of you to accompany me shortly to my house.”
I thanked him for his invitation, which I was delighted to accept.
The bridegroom’s toilet was evidently only just completed, for a
young Jew was still present, whose father I had visited during my
first visit to Hadeij. He was very busy arranging the folds of the
bridegroom’s costume, having doubtless acted as his valet.
We all sat down together. A pleasant scent of attar of rose was
wafted from the bridegroom’s clothing towards me, and he produced
a little phial of this, and passed it to me to use from. When he
stretched out his hand, I noticed that rings glittered on his fingers,
and that he held a pocket-handkerchief, a luxury I was not
accustomed to see hereabouts.
“Are you married?” he asked me.
I answered, “Yes, surely.”
“How many wives have you?”
“I have only one.”
“Only one!”
I explained that in our country we were in the habit of having only
one wife. It was forbidden to us to have several. Why, he could not
comprehend, and at that moment I did not think fit to explain.
“See, Mohammed,” I said, “I will confess to you that it is not good
to have only one wife, for a man is her slave. Two wives must
doubtless be worse, for then there can be no peace; but I tell you
that, in my opinion, a man ought to have three wives, neither more
nor less. With that number he can pit two against each other, and
take refuge with the third; but in such case he must be careful to
vary.”
Mohammed understood my joke, and invited me at once to visit
Hadeij next time he should marry.
Lighting one of my cigarettes, I passed them round. When I was
about to offer them to the Jew, little Ali hastily pulled my sleeve and
whispered, “You must not offer him any; he is a Jew.” I did so
notwithstanding, and probably by this act fell low in Ali’s estimation,
so innate is the contempt for the Jewish race—“Those dogs!”
Afterwards I found it had been a great piece of stupidity on my
part to have shown civility to the Jew. He misunderstood it, and
became intrusive and impertinent, so that later in the evening I had
to set him down sharply, causing little Ali to laugh a laugh of
superiority.
Although much tempted, I did not try to converse with the
bridegroom about his home life, knowing that it would be considered
indelicate. For an Arab never asks even his best friend after his
wife’s health. The most he may say is, “How is it with your house?”
When we had waited there for about an hour, a man came
running in to say that it was time. We rose, and I was told that
amongst good friends it was always customary to carry the

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The Radical Demand in Løgstrup's

Ethics Robert Stern

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The Radical Demand in Løgstrup’s Ethics

The Radical Demand

To Hans, Bjørn, and Kees, in gratitude

Preface and Acknowledgements ix

Introduction: Locating Løgstrup 1

Part I. The Ethical Demand

Part II. Engaging with The Ethical Demand

7.3 Darwall on Løgstrup and Divine Command 183

Preface and Acknowledgements

x Preface and Acknowledgements

Preface and Acknowledgements xi

xii Preface and Acknowledgements

Preface and Acknowledgements xiii

For full publication details, please see the Bibliography.

ENE Entre Nous: Essais Sur Le Penser-à-l’Autre

FVMS En Fremstilling og Vurdering af Max Scheler’s ‘Der Formalismus in der

0.1 Løgstrup and Our Obligations to Others

2 Introduction: Locating Løgstrup

Løgstrup and Our Obligations to Others 3

4 Introduction: Locating Løgstrup

4 See, for example, Evans, God and Moral Obligation.

Løgstrup and Our Obligations to Others 5

6 Introduction: Locating Løgstrup

Løgstrup’s Life and Times 7

0.2 Løgstrup’s Life and Times

8 Introduction: Locating Løgstrup

Løgstrup’s Life and Times 9

10 Introduction: Locating Løgstrup

Why Løgstrup Now—and Not Before? 11

0.3 Why Løgstrup Now—and Not Before?

12 Introduction: Locating Løgstrup

Why Løgstrup Now—and Not Before? 13

14 Introduction: Locating Løgstrup

20 The Ethical Demand and Its Basis

22 The Ethical Demand and Its Basis

24 The Ethical Demand and Its Basis

relationship to God, thereby subordinating ethics to religion.13 But more importantly

Løgstrup’s position may be summarized as follows: even while expressed in religious

26 The Ethical Demand and Its Basis

The palanquin is decorated and enveloped in many coloured

The horsemen returned to their starting-point after each gallop.

The Khalifa on his mule had enough to do keeping order. His

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