In Problem I of Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard addresses a biblical, paradoxical dilemma: why does Abraham abandon his ethical duty to his son and choose to kill him? More specifically, Kierkegaard explores Abraham’s “teleological suspension of the ethical.” Drawing upon the traditional notions of ethics from Hegel and Kant, Kierkegaard establishes that the ethical is the universal, in which the individual has a telos (end or purpose) in the universal (46). The ethical describes the rational and normative aspects of morality that all people should abide by, for example, how Kant’s Categorical Imperative sets up rational, universal maxims. Under this traditional notion, all actions should strive towards the universal as their end or purpose. Kierkegaard uses Abraham’s conflict between his duty to his son (his ethical duty) and to God (his duty to his faith) to underline the paradox of faith. By critiquing the objectivism of the ethical and through the paradox of faith, Kierkegaard attempts to reestablish the value of faith – faith being outside of reason.
In order to explain the paradox of faith, Kierkegaard highlights Abraham’s conflict. In the story of Abraham, Isaac represents Abraham’s ethical duty – that a father should love his son more than himself (49). Why does Abraham suspend his ethical duty? Abraham wishes to express his duty to God in order to prove his faith. Since Abraham’s telos lies in the universal, he must conform to it (and thus save his son) in order to act morally. However, if he wishes to prove his faith and to act as an individual, he is guilty of acting immorally (53-54). Abraham’s dilemma is a paradox of faith – his telos (which lies in the universal) and faith (which is outside of the universal) are in opposition. Kierkegaard describes that faith is a paradox because “the single individual is higher than the universal.” In other words, Abraham is placing his single individual relationship with the divine above his ethical duty to his son.
This paradox, Kierkegaard argues, cannot be mediated and is “inexplicable” (58). Unlike Hegel’s notion of faith, which is part of reason and knowledge, Kierkegaard’s notion of faith is not reducible to rational or conceptual ideas. Abraham’s duty to God cannot be mediated on ethical grounds because he is acting as a single individual rather than in the realm of universals. Abraham is acting outside rationality. Kierkegaard puts Abraham’s actions into perspective: Abraham is “either a murder or we are at the paradox that is higher than all mediations” (54). If Hegel is correct and the ethical is the universal, Abraham becomes lost because he remains guilty of violating his ethical duty and transforms into a murderer (58). Kierkegaard might be suggesting that we must conceive of an ultimate human goal or telos that is beyond the universal or what is rational, stressing the value of singular purposes each single individual may have.
Kierkegaard concludes that we can only understand Abraham’s dilemma as a paradox. Kierkegaard is emphasizing that faith cannot be merely an expression of the ethical as Hegel would argue. In order to acknowledge Abraham as the “father of faith,” we must have a notion that is above the ethical and that emphasizes the individual (58). However, how can we think of a non-rational (quite absurd notion) existing beyond what is rational? Although Kierkegaard is showing his readers the value of faith, Abraham’s actions still remain questionable. It seems that Kierkegaard believes that Abraham’s actions are not punishable because they are beyond rationality. Should a person's duty to God, the one-on-one relationship between a person and the divine, become his or her telos? This idea Kierkegaard may be proposing in this section is quite radical. Abraham must believe that his faith to God is stronger or more important than his duty to his son – not only a paradoxical statement, but peculiar and selfish.
This point becomes more vivid when Kierkegaard’s paradox of faith is applied to the Doomsday Killer in the Showtime series Dexter. The Doomsday Killer is carrying out his duty to God to signal the end of the world by reenacting biblical stories of the second coming, which leads to the murder of several innocent people. His accomplice is convinced that he must assist in these murderous reenactments to prove his faith to God. However, by carrying out their duty to God, they are suspending themselves from the ethical – the universal responsibility for citizens to obey society's laws against murder. Are these actions justified since they are what lie in faith, what is beyond the rational? Although sensational fiction, the Doomsday Killer highlights that there is perspectivism in religion (and the single individual) that can lead to radicalism if there is no rationalizing force present to judge our actions.
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. C. Stephen Walsh and Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge): Cambridge University Press, ISBN: 0521612691.
Man this blog really got me thinking.! Where to start? Looking at it from the top down with God being above all else I think whatever universality that apply to man and nature don’t apply to God. That being said if God says to do something like murder your own son or banish an innocent mother and son begs the question, can morals, laws and universality rules be overturned just because God told you to do it?
ReplyDeleteGod told Abraham to commit what might be considered murder. Had Abraham told anyone that he was told by god to do this I wonder can he be judged a murderer? Also, if one here to attempt to stop him would they would they be defying gods will or doing there moral duty and saving a life?
I’m interested to see how other bloggers will respond to Shanna’s post. Kierkegaard definitely makes you look at faith in a very different way. Faith being a very personal thing looks to have different degrees, the easiest being to have it and never having to prove it and the more extreme of claiming to have faith and doing something unheard of to obey and prove it.
I don't believe that murder is justified just because of faith. Why would god want us to commit murder if one of the commandments is to not kill? In the case of Abraham he thought god wanted him to kill his son but he was wrong, god wanted him to sacrifice the lamb. This shows that god may test our faith but wouldn't let us commit murder or break any of the other commandments. In the case of the people from the show Dexter, I would think they would know god does not want us to commit murder for any reason. What they are doing is going beyond the universal which is our ethical duty.
ReplyDeleteMurder is not justified in the name of faith. The actions taken by the Doomsday Killer, just like those actions taken by Abraham, are unethical. Killing your son, or other innocent people, because you believe that God has asked you to do so is irrational. One must prove the existence of God to even begin claiming justification for murdering in the name of God. In response to Tom’s comment, I believe that Abraham can be judged as a murder regardless of whether he told anyone that God had ordered him to murder. If I tell another person that I’m going to murder my brother because God told me to; it doesn’t make me any less or a murderer than if I didn’t confide in anyone. Our world would be a lot more chaotic if individuals suspended ethics because they believed that a deity told them to.
ReplyDeleteKierkegaard must have been thinking and doubting his own faith in the god of the dominating religion of Christianity his whole life. Most likely he wrote Fear and Trembling to make sense of his own faith. He probably thought; why must god put us through trial if he knows our thoughts? He must have been scarred to question scripture, as the world of god, himself. That’s why he tells us, in Fear and Trembling that (in my own words) the individual looses faith to than find it; which is what he- himself must have gone through. As Bryan questions in his post of Doubt and Faith for Sale! “Are doubt and faith really so unworthy of a lifetime’s examination” Kierkegaard spent his whole life trying to make sense of Abraham’s actions and also what he might have been thinking in that one incident to sacrifice his only son; or was it to murder him? According to Kierkegaard by doubting - faith is made stronger. Abraham might have reason that god, or divine authority, never intended for Abraham to sacrifice his only son; rather was merely testing Abraham’s faith.
ReplyDeleteIn scripture (the bible) we do not know if Abraham wonders or what is going through his mind. There is only action. Kierkegaard wonders himself, what might have been going through Abraham’s mind through the whole ordeal; in addition, to Abraham’s reasons for not questioning divine authority. For that reason Kierkegaard writes three different scenarios as to what might have been Abraham’s thought process for taking up gods test of faith by going though with an attempt to take his only son’s life.
First of all, i think killing or murder someone is totally unethical even though it's an order from god. We have the rights to make decisions whether something is right or wrong. In real life if someone said i murdered someone because god told them to, they will still be punished. If god gave Abraham a son, why would the god asked Abraham to sacrifice it later on. this seems to make no sense. Is this a test that the god gave to Abraham to open the gate for his destiny to other path or everything have to be paid with the price. This is why i think that the world is fair, if the god closes all the doors on you, they will still left a window open.
ReplyDeleteKierkegaard shows that Abraham’s actions cannot be understood through ethical terms, and that no matter what scenario you construct for Abraham’s actions, when you judge it by the values of the community, as in the ethical principles, Abraham is a murderer. Johannes de Silentio cannot make sense of Abraham’s actions – it makes no sense that Abraham is willing to sacrifice his son Issac, to whom he has an ethical duty and was promised to him by God , and what is more puzzling is Abraham’s unwavering faith that God will continue to keep his promise to Abraham , that being Issac, despite Abraham being ordered to sacrifice Issac. How do we make sense of this paradox? We can’t. I think Kierkegaard is trying to show that ethics and faith have nothing to do with one another; ethics is part of the universal, which is shaped by community, it is rational and part of a system of thought, while faith is something wholly individualistic and irrational. Kierkegaard is trying to show that there are things in experience that cannot be rationalized, and this idea seems to be contrary to some philosophers before him who believes that we can have full understanding of the world as reason works itself out towards the truth. Kierkegaard seems to be saying that certain things in experience, such as religious passion, cannot be understood rationally, so those who think that faith is part of the rational (thus something that we can move beyond through mediation), do not truly possess faith.
ReplyDeleteAs Ethan mentioned in his comment, the idea of Abraham's actions being justified is irrational. Because of this, the comment section to this post seems to be a good representation of this prediction in respect to the general opposition to Abraham's actions.
ReplyDeleteAlso, what Tom stated at the end of his comment is another interesting point of exercising faith. Would faith have any purpose or even exist if there were never situations that required actions or motivations outside of reason or norms. I would assume that in order for a religion to be able to be applied to many cultures with different norms, there needs to be faith in order to make the religion flexible enough to apply to many norms. In a way like the flexibility of a bridge to compensate for extreme winds and varying conditions.
The paradox in Abraham’s case is not the fact that he suspends his ethical duty as Isaac’s father in turn for his duty to God. Rather, it is the fact that both his duty towards Isaac and his mission to sacrifice Isaac were doth commands of God. If God commanded Abraham to care for Isaac, then it is a complete paradox for God to command Abraham to ignore that previous command in turn for this new command. It is also absurd to say that God would ask Abraham to ignore one command in favor for another because that would make God’s words nothing more than arbitrary whims. Given that, God is theoretically perfect; it is not possible for him to make arbitrary demands.
ReplyDeleteClearly one cannot admit to such a paradox and just leave it as is. There must be some sort of resolution to the paradox or else this talk of faith is a waste of time. The resolution to the paradox is what Kierkegaard notes as the “virtue of the absurd.” A unique characteristic of the Knight of Faith is the fact that he has such a virtue of the absurd. This “virtue” is the simple innate belief that God will not truly ask one to commit such a grave sin. Such a belief, in other words, is the belief that God will, at one point before things are too late, to make things all better. Abraham, as the Knight of Faith, believed (to the point of prophetic knowing) that God would not actually command him to take the life of the son in which God himself bestowed upon him. By having such an absurd faith, the paradox is resolved. However, the virtue of the absurd leads to yet another problem, which Kierkegaard has yet to answer clearly. How can one even come to have such an absurd faith?
If faith is truly beyond ethics, if they “have nothing to do with one another,” as Ethan states in his comment, how is this proven or demonstrated outside of the story of Abraham? I guess what I am struggling with is the fact that the Johannes/Kierkegaard’s theories seem to apply to no one other than Abraham. Only Abraham appears to have real faith since he made the double movement of the Knight of Infinite Resignation and the Knight of Faith. Only Abraham was given the opportunity by God to prove his faith, so only he has true faith. Having not been raised with a religion, I am certainly no expert, but I always thought that just believing in Jesus Christ and accepting him as one’s savior was equated with having faith. Believing in something that cannot be proven -- that Jesus was the son of God, was crucified, and was resurrected -- was always my understanding of what it meant to have faith, or so I gleaned as a kid from my Christian friends’ families.
ReplyDeleteJohannes/Kierkegaard seems to be saying that this alone is not truly faith. To possess true faith, you must make the double movement and become a Knight of Faith. But can this happen only when given a “test of faith” by God? If so, then isn’t Abraham the only one with true faith? Or are others tested in smaller ways everyday? I think I prefer a faith that is grounded in ethics, one where you “do unto others, as you would have others do unto you,“ no matter what some voice you believe to be God tells you.
I do not believe murder is justified by faith. I think an important point in Kierkegarrd's Fear and Trembling is that God literately ask Abraham to kill his son Isaac but he was not going to let it reach that matter. In other words, God asked Abraham for this divine duty but he solemnly asked for it to see if Abraham would be able to put his faith above all else. So the reason why God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son and go against one of the Ten Commandments was not to defy God himself or our ethics, but instead it was for the sake of ethics.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I prefer to read the Kierkegaard’s analysis of the story of Abraham as a much broader allegory, one that pertains not only to faith but the inexpressible, paradoxical nature of metaphysical thought. If you strip Fear and Trembling of its religious predisposition (if that is even possible), it becomes a perfect segue into the existentialist thought. Taken this way, the paradox Abraham is facing becomes simply a metaphor for the inherent paradoxes we encounter, wherein reason fails in the pursuit of metaphysics, much as Kant described in Prolegomena. What is unique about Kierkegaard’s contribution is the way in which he attempts to show that there are certain aspects of existence that cannot be verbalized or rationalized but may still have profound consequences in reality—he shows how forces beyond description can compel, us and he simply uses the ethical paradox of Abraham to do this. I feel like the problem he dissects—the ethical vs. the religious vs. faith can be applied to the question of freedom vs. causality that we discussed earlier in the semester, as well as other metaphysical problems. The conclusions Kierkegaard obtains from this extended thought experiment are something I think we will see in Nietzsche and other existentialists.
ReplyDeleteI wish there was a "like" button on this blog. I'd click it for your post, Jon. That is a very insightful and helpful way of viewing Fear & Trembling. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI think Kierkegaard’s paradox of faith (the Ethical v. faith) is a unique metaphysical paradox because the act of faith does not make sense and therefore, cannot be communicated intelligibly. Although freedom and causality are paradoxical notions like faith and the Ethical, we can understand both concepts and intelligibly speak about them. For example, for Hegel, freedom and necessity are in relation to each other, and the recognition of this relationship gives both terms meaning. In the case of faith, Abraham must remain silent because he cannot attain any justification in the community/ public. On p. 100, in relation to Agamemnon, Abraham cannot speak intelligibly because he cannot find a duty in the Ethical that justifies his action. If he tries to make sense of his action, he is a murderer. Since faith cannot be understood by the public, does faith have actual value?
ReplyDeleteI do see a similarity between the antinomy of freedom and the paradox of faith. For Kant, freedom and necessity exist and are understood in two separate realms of noumena and phenomena, respectively. We may be able to understand faith when it is outside the public domain and not measured up to the Ethical.
I agree with Shanna that it seems like Kierkegaard is implying that there is an ultimate telos that focuses on singularity. This concept implies, in my opinion, that the universal is a relative concept. By that I mean that the individual is given a specific purpose and the same scale does not measure their respective purpose. And this logic leads to a more confusing paradox because how can it be universal if the individual is being held to a higher ethical standard?
ReplyDeleteThere are several ways to answer Shanna’s question about justified actions. The way I tried to rational it was making an analogy of a Japanese kamikaze pilot. In World War II the Japanese kamikaze pilots would crash their planes into the enemy’s planes for the greater good of their country and their cause. Would we consider it ethical and rational for those pilots to do what they did? Did they feel it was justified? I would say it was not rational but those pilots their telos were not served until they died.