Abstract

This book sets Kierkegaard's understanding of the ethical against ethics influenced by the "ideal of disengagement." It claims that this ideal created for ethics a problematic status by abstracting the individual from the social world to become a free self-conscious being. As a corrective, Kierkegaard's reflections redirect attention to an ethical demand that has an absolute character by virtue of religious beliefs held, and to an ethics that understands the individual to be rooted in society.