Das Versprechen

Works of Love, Kierkegaard's ethical main work, contains numerous reflections on language and human speech. Dorothea Glöckner deals with Kierkegaard's confrontation between human and Christian linguistic usage and seeks justificatory models for the reliability of human communication. Referring to Hannah Arendt's determination of the relationship between speech and action, she shows the parallel approaches in Kierkegaard's and Arendt's ethical mode of thinking, since both of them regarded equality, how to address one's neighbor as well as an optimistic attitude towards the future as decisive criteria for reliability in speech. In analyzing the works of Hans Lipps, Hannah Arendt and Paul Ricœur, the author studies the promise as an example of the extent to which these criteria can be applied.