Søren Kierkegaard · Kjerlighedens Gjerninger · Free to read
Works of Love
Søren Kierkegaard’s extraordinary book about what it actually means to love another person.
Read it free online in a new English reading edition. Provisional and AI-assisted, with the Danish source, editorial method and uncertainties openly documented.
A book about the work of love
Works of Love asks what Christian love requires in ordinary life: how we love the neighbour, the person before us, the difficult person, the absent person and the dead.
Kierkegaard does not offer a comfortable theory of love. He addresses the reader directly, testing admiration, preference, self-deception and the temptation to congratulate ourselves. The reading text is arranged so that the voice of the book comes first.
Three easy ways to begin
New to Kierkegaard?
Start with the reader’s guide
A short introduction to the book, its shape and the kind of reading it asks for.
Want a taste first?
Read one short passage
Meet the two artists in “Our Duty to Love the People We See”.
Ready to read?
Browse the whole translation
Choose any published discourse, with English first and further material when you want it.
A passage to begin with
Or imagine two artists. The first says: “I have travelled widely and looked all over the world, but nowhere have I found a person worth painting. No face has been so perfect an image of beauty that I could bring myself to draw it. Every face has some little fault, so my search has been in vain.” Does this prove that he is a great artist?
The other says: “I do not really call myself an artist and I have never travelled abroad. I have stayed among the small circle of people nearest to me. Yet I have never found a face so insignificant or faulty that I could not draw out a more beautiful side and discover some radiance within it. I take delight in the art I practise, which satisfies me, though I make no claim to be an artist.” Is he not the true artist? He brought something with him and found on the spot what the travelled artist found nowhere — perhaps because that artist did not bring the necessary something. Thus the second of the two was the artist.
Choose your way in
Just read
English reading text
The book itself, with the apparatus kept out of the way.
Help me understand it
Summary and structure
Reader guides and visual reading maps for orientation.
Look closely at the translation
English, Danish and notes together
Use the comparison and editorial notes when a passage deserves closer attention.
How was this made?
Translation method
Sources, limitations, revisions and the full method charter.
Now available
The First Series and eight Second Series discourses
The Preface, Prayer and all eight discourses in the First Series can now be read online. Stable passage links support sharing and reference without depending on a reader’s screen size.
Eight Second Series discourses are available. VII — Mercy, a Work of Love now carries the completed canonical reading text after its full discourse review; VIII remains an earlier provisional publication while its canonical translation and audit continue. Further discourses will follow through the same controlled process.
For readers who wish to look more closely
This edition was developed with AI assistance and compared with the Danish source. The translation method and editorial notes, together with the Translation Method Charter, explain the process, unresolved choices and limits without interrupting the reading text.
Published human scholarly translations are the gold standard. For academic quotation or citation, use one of those editions; see the guide to human scholarly translations.
Editorial note: P Maitland does not read Danish. This is a working, AI-assisted translation, open to correction and further specialist review.
Dedication: This project is named the Patricia Maitland Edition in memory of my late mother, 1938–2024.