Kierkegaard: "Love your neighbor as yourself" as the basis for ethics"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets -40, AV]"When you open the door you have closed to pray to God, the first person you meet on the way out is your neighbor whom you will love. Wonderful!" [Kierkegaard, p.64]1 IntroductionThis article is a philosophical exploration of some aspects and implications of the "second great commandment", "love your neighbor as yourself", which Kierkegaard called the "royal command". Yes often believes that this is the heart of Christian ethics [Wattles, p.8]. It has seemed to some that this obligation of agape poses difficulties his opposition to the belief "that moral laws are heteronomous commands of a transcendent divinity that demands obedience" [p.219f]and worse still, "imposed on creatures from whom he is 'totally other', a command which they do not accept. they can obey except by grace alone, while this grace, in turn, seems also to be external and must be 'infused' from without." [p.221]Kierkegaard wrote that, [to the pagan,] "this command' You will love' will not only surprise him, but it will disturb him and will be an offense for him. [p.41] It may perhaps offend you - well, you know anyway, that Christianity is always accompanied by signs of offense. However believe it... Don't stop believing because the command almost offends you. [p.74] The thesis of this article is that, putting aside the question of moral injury that has troubled commentators from Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason) to William Empson (Milton's God), agape towards the neighbor only makes sense in a monotheistic or philosophical context. specifically Christian assumptions, and therefore, the old saying, “Christianity may not be factually true, but it has sublime ethical teaching,” is problematic. In any serious discussion of agape a number of questions inevitably arise. Some of these issues are discussed in the following sections: 2.1 How is love for God like love for neighbor? 2.2 Is God's love for me like my love for others? 2.3 How love for others is like love for oneself?