Vi kommer ikke ud af os selv

Abstract

Based on the sermons of K. E. Løgstrup as a young vicar, the
article reflects on a thought-figure that is also characteristic of his later
writings: man withdraws into himself, and redemption must come from
the outside. This self-imprisonment is, not least, due to man’s self-important ‘opinions’, whether ethical or religious, that pre-vent a real interpersonal encounter. However, according to Løgstrup, also any ethics
of duty implies a (Pharisaic) ‘self-doubling’. Hence the ethical demand is
not a de-mand for ethics, as is often assumed, but a demand for love. In
this way, the notion that ‘doing one’s duty’ or ‘standing firm’ is the essence
of life, as suggested by the Løgstrup-inspired psychologist Svend Brinkmann (in his otherwise well-placed cri-tique of the ‘religion of the self’), neglects the very core of Løgstrup’s thinking. Ul-timately this notion implies a self-assertion and, from a Løgstrupian point of view, misses the sense of immediacy, of radical interdependence (i.e., with no dichotomy between self love and neighbour love), and of redemption coming from the outside when somebody else holds my life in his or her hand.