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Knights of Faith and Resignation: Reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling
Knights of Faith and Resignation brings out the richness of Kierkegaard's creative invention, the contemporary relevance of his contrasts between resignation and faith, and his probing conceptual analysis of aesthetic, moral, and religious psychology and life-perspectives. And in tracing Kierkegaard's analysis of objectivity, subjectivity, virtue ethics, passion, dilemmas, commitment, and self-reflection, Mooney brings out a striking convergence between Kierkegaard and analytic philosophy -- the tradition of Socrates, Kant, and Wittgenstein, and its more contemporary practitioners, writers like Charles Taylor, Thomas Nagel, Stanley Cavell, Bernard Williams, and Harry Frankfurt.
- GenresPhilosophy
208 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
Edward F. Mooney
19 books1 followerEdward F. Mooney is a noted Kierkegaard scholar and was Professor of Religion and Philosophy through 2013 at Syracuse University. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Oberlin College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 23, 2018
The first half of this book is very good. The second half is merely fair. Essentially, this reflects the fact that I think that Mooney has the right interpretive approach for Fear and Trembling, but when he reaches the crucial moment of interpretation, he loses the ball in the sun, so to speak, and as a result the conclusions he reaches do not live up to the promise of the work in the beginning of the book.
Mooney very correctly insists that F&T is about faith, not ethics, and that this must determine how we read everything in the Problems -- especially the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical. His interpretive program consists in building up to the account of faith and resignation -- the two knights -- and then cashing that out in the three problems. This is undoubtably and absolutely correct. Additionally, Mooney, unlike almost everyone else, has a reading of how all the early parts fit together and drive the reading of the text toward grasping the essential difference between faith and resignation and what their essence is supposed to be. He is much more attentive to the work's structure than most interpreters and I learned some interesting things from him in terms of how the early and later parts of the work reflect each other and bring the focus toward the center of the work, the two knights.
But when it comes to interpreting the knights, Mooney, it seems to me, loses his nerve. He is surely right that receptivity is one of the key ideas of faith, but he doesn't grasp how passion is necessary to the experience of absurdity. Resignation cannot *just* be giving up proprietary claim to the beloved. It is no absurdity to do that and still expect the beloved's return. He has overlooked the importance of anguish, anxiety, and despair to grasping what separates the knights from each other and from those who do not even reach resignation. And this is apparent in his account of resignation because the knight of resignation does not obtain a new object of love; rather, the object of love is transfigured, so that Dante, even after resigning Beatrice, does not stop loving her -- not at all. He loves her all the more, but only as the eternal, transfigured image who draws him into heaven, since he can have her only in Eternity, not in time.
Mooney is pretty good on finitude, infinitude, etc., but would do better if he was more precise on the meaning of these terms. I think that would have solved his problem as a greater attentiveness to what makes the lad's love for the princess infinite, eternal, etc., is how it functions in structuring his self-hood, and this structuring function is what neither knight gives up -- whereas the one who forgets does lose it.
On the whole, I do recommend anyone interested in F&T read this book, but mostly just for the beginning. There is great value there. The later parts are fairly forgettable, though there is some interest in his account of Problem 1, which -- though I disagreed with it quite a bit -- was quite interesting and worth thinking about in any case. Other readers may find it worthwhile to skim through this half and find whatever they think is worth picking over.
Mooney very correctly insists that F&T is about faith, not ethics, and that this must determine how we read everything in the Problems -- especially the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical. His interpretive program consists in building up to the account of faith and resignation -- the two knights -- and then cashing that out in the three problems. This is undoubtably and absolutely correct. Additionally, Mooney, unlike almost everyone else, has a reading of how all the early parts fit together and drive the reading of the text toward grasping the essential difference between faith and resignation and what their essence is supposed to be. He is much more attentive to the work's structure than most interpreters and I learned some interesting things from him in terms of how the early and later parts of the work reflect each other and bring the focus toward the center of the work, the two knights.
But when it comes to interpreting the knights, Mooney, it seems to me, loses his nerve. He is surely right that receptivity is one of the key ideas of faith, but he doesn't grasp how passion is necessary to the experience of absurdity. Resignation cannot *just* be giving up proprietary claim to the beloved. It is no absurdity to do that and still expect the beloved's return. He has overlooked the importance of anguish, anxiety, and despair to grasping what separates the knights from each other and from those who do not even reach resignation. And this is apparent in his account of resignation because the knight of resignation does not obtain a new object of love; rather, the object of love is transfigured, so that Dante, even after resigning Beatrice, does not stop loving her -- not at all. He loves her all the more, but only as the eternal, transfigured image who draws him into heaven, since he can have her only in Eternity, not in time.
Mooney is pretty good on finitude, infinitude, etc., but would do better if he was more precise on the meaning of these terms. I think that would have solved his problem as a greater attentiveness to what makes the lad's love for the princess infinite, eternal, etc., is how it functions in structuring his self-hood, and this structuring function is what neither knight gives up -- whereas the one who forgets does lose it.
On the whole, I do recommend anyone interested in F&T read this book, but mostly just for the beginning. There is great value there. The later parts are fairly forgettable, though there is some interest in his account of Problem 1, which -- though I disagreed with it quite a bit -- was quite interesting and worth thinking about in any case. Other readers may find it worthwhile to skim through this half and find whatever they think is worth picking over.
Displaying 1 of 1 review