Vi kommer ikke ud af os selv

Based on the sermons of K. E. Løgstrup as a young vicar, thearticle reflects on a thought-figure that is also characteristic of his laterwritings: man withdraws into himself, and redemption must come fromthe 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 ethicsof duty implies a (Pharisaic) ‘self-doubling’. Hence the ethical demand isnot a de-mand for ethics, as is often assumed, but a demand for love. Inthis way, the notion that ‘doing one’s duty’ or ‘standing firm’ is the essenceof 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.