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The tragic hero gives up what is certain for what is still more certain, and the eye of the beholder rests confidently upon him. But the person who gives up the universal to grasp something still higher that is not the universal, what does he do? Can this be anything but temptation?
Then how did Abraham exist? He had faith. That is the paradox that keeps him at the extremity and which he cannot make clear to anyone else, for the paradox is that he puts himself as the single individual in an absolute relation to the absolute. Is he justified? His justification is, once again, the paradox; for if he is the paradox it is not by virtue of being anything universal, but of being the particular.
But in any case the outcome in its dialectic (in so far as it is finitude’s answer to the infinite question) is totally incompatible with the existence of the hero.
She needs no worldly admiration, as little as Abraham needs our tears, for she was no heroine and he no hero, but both of them became greater than that, not by any means by being relieved of the distress, the agony, and the paradox, but because of these.
But greater than all these is that the knight of faith dares to say even to the noble person who would weep for him: ‘Do not weep for me, but weep for yourself.’
So Abraham’s story contains a teleological suspension of the ethical. He has, as the single individual, become higher than the universal. This is the paradox which cannot be mediated.
Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion,* and faith is a passion.
The duty becomes duty to God by being referred to God, but I do not enter into relation with God in the duty itself.
The paradox of faith is this, that there is an interiority that is incommensurable with the exterior, an interiority which, it should be stressed, is not identical with the first [that of the child], but is a new interiority.
Prior to faith there is a movement of infinity, and only then enters faith, nec opinate [unexpectedly], on the strength of the absurd.
Ethically speaking his relation to Isaac is this, that the father is to love the son. This ethical relationship is reduced to the relative as against the absolute relation to God. To the question, why?, Abraham has no other answer than that it is a trial and a temptation, which, as remarked above, is what makes it a unity of being for both God’s sake and his own.
on the absolute duty to God: ‘If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.’
misein [to hate], both here and in some other passages, is used per meiosin [by adopting a weaker sense] to mean: minus diligo [love less], posthabeo [give less priority to], non colo [show no respect to], nihil facio [make nothing of].
It is God who demands absolute love.
So what would be considered a sign of egoism and stupidity in a person, one is supposed with the help of an exegete to regard as a worthy conception of the deity.
The absolute duty can then lead to what ethics would forbid, but it can by no means make the knight of faith have done with loving. This is shown by Abraham. The moment he is ready to sacrifice Isaac, the ethical expression for what he does is this: he hates Isaac.
Isaac he must love with all his soul. When God asks for Isaac, Abraham must if possible love him even more, and only then can he sacrifice him; for it is indeed this love of Isaac that in its paradoxical opposition to his love of God makes his act a sacrifice.
for someone who really respects himself and is concerned for his own soul is assured of the fact that a person living under his own supervision in the world at large lives in greater austerity and seclusion than a maiden in her lady’s bower. That there may be some who need coercion, who if given free rein would riot in selfish pleasure like unbridled beasts, is no doubt true, but one should show precisely by the fact that one knows how to speak with fear and trembling that one is not of their number.
The tragic hero renounces himself in order to express the universal; the knight of faith renounces the universal in order to be the particular.
He knows it is beautiful to be born as the particular with the universal as his home, his friendly abode, which receives him straightaway with open arms when he wishes to stay there. But he also knows that higher up there winds a lonely path, narrow and steep; he knows it is terrible to be born in solitude outside the universal, to walk without meeting a single traveller. He knows very well where he is, and how he is related to men. Humanly speaking he is insane and cannot make himself understood to anyone. And yet ‘insane’ is the mildest expression for him. If he isn’t viewed thus, he is a
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he must have wished his task was to sacrifice Isaac for the universal, so as to inspire fathers to illustrious deeds
Cunctator
Fabius Maximus, known as Cunctator for his caution in war, was appointed dictator of Rome during the war with Hannibal (217 B.C.) and was five times consul (233–209 B.C.).
Nor could Abraham offer any further explanation, for his life is like a book put under divine seizure and which will never become publici juris [public property].
The tragic hero is soon finished, his struggle is soon at an end; he makes the infinite movement and is now safe in the universal. But the knight of faith is kept awake, for he is under constant trial and can turn back in repentance to the universal at any moment, and this possibility can just as well be a temptation as the truth.
Agamemnon gives up his claim to Iphigenia, thereby finds his point of rest in the universal, and now proceeds to give her in sacrifice.
he makes one movement more through which he concentrates his soul back upon the marvel. If Abraham hadn’t done that he would only have been an Agamemnon, provided it can be explained how his willingness to sacrifice Isaac can be justified other than by its benefiting the universal.
The true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher, and in this lies the deep humanity in him which is more worth than this foolish concern for others’ weal and woe which is honoured under the name of sympathy, but which is really nothing but vanity.
So either there is an absolute duty to God, and if so then it is the paradox described, that the single individual as the particular is higher than the universal and as the particular stands in an absolute relation to the absolute – or else faith has never existed because it has existed always; or else Abraham is done for;
The ethical is as such the universal; as the universal it is in turn the disclosed. Seen as an immediate, no more than sensate and psychic being, the individual is concealed. So his ethical task is to unwrap himself from his concealment and become disclosed in the universal.
Thus whenever he wants to remain in concealment, he sins and is in a state of temptation, from which he can emerge only by disclosing himself.
The first immediacy is the aesthetic,84 and here the Hegelian philosophy may well be right. But faith is not the aesthetic, or if it is, then faith has never existed just because it has existed always.
Hegel equates faith with immediate knowledge, but also with ‘inspiration, the heart’s revelations, the truths implanted in man by nature, and also in particular, healthy reason or common sense’. Of all these he says they ‘agree in adopting as their leading principle the immediacy, or self-evident way, in which a fact or body of truths is presented to consciousness’.
The category I would like to examine a little more closely is that of the interesting,
for what is certain is that to become of interest, for one’s life to be interesting, has nothing to do with what you can turn your hand to but is a fateful privilege which, like every privilege in the world of spirit, can only be purchased in deep pain.
The category of the interesting is, moreover, a borderline one, it marks the boundary between the aesthetic and the ethical.85 For that reason in our inquiry we must be constantly glancing over into the territory of ethics, while to give our inquiries weight the problem must be grasped with genuine aesthetic feeling.
In Greek tragedy concealment (and therefore recognition) is an epic survival based on a fate in which the dramatic action disappears from view, and from which it acquires its obscure and enigmatic origin.
Modern drama has given up the idea of Fate, has in dramatic respects emancipated itself; it observes, it looks in upon itself, takes fate up into its dramatic consciousness. Concealment and disclosure then become the hero’s free act, for which he is responsible.
My procedure here must be to let concealment pass dialectically between aesthetics and ethics, for the point is to show how absolutely different the paradox and aesthetic concealment are from one another.
Thus aesthetics called for concealment and rewarded it. Ethics called for disclosure and punished concealment.
olive branch about his knees
In Greece an olive branch was the symbol of entreaty.
When Amor leaves Psyche he says to her, ‘You will give birth to a child who will be divine if you say nothing, but human if you betray the secret.’
It is the demon’s lure, and the more silent one keeps the more terrible the demon becomes; but silence is also divinity’s communion with the individual.
Is this utterance publici juris [public property] or is it a privatissimum [private matter]?
So the augur’s utterance is intelligible not just to the hero but to everyone and results in no private relation to the divine.
The outcome will be as understandable to anyone as to the hero, and there is no secret writing that only the hero can read.
On the other hand, if the will of heaven had not been announced to him by an augur, if it had been made known to him in some quite private way, if it had placed itself in a quite private relationship to him, then we are with the paradox – supposing there is such a thing (since my reflections here have the form of a dilemma) – then he could not speak however much he might wish to. He would not enjoy his own silence but suffer the pain, yet for him just this would be the assurance he needed that he did right. So the reason for his silence would not be a wish to place himself as the single
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The merman was a seducer. He has called out to Agnete, with his smooth talk has coaxed from her her secret thoughts. She has found in the merman what she was seeking, what she gazed down to find in the depths of the sea. Agnete is willing to follow him down. The merman has taken her into his arms, Agnete twines hers about his neck trustingly and with all her soul she abandons herself to the stronger one. He is already at the sea-edge, bending over the water to dive down with his prey. Then Agnete looks at him again, not fearfully, not questioningly, not proud of her good luck, not intoxicated
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Re Jobs
However, as far as passion is concerned, the merman himself becomes even more unhappy; for he loved Agnete with a multiplicity of passions and has a new guilt to bear besides. The demonic side of repentance will now no doubt explain to him that this is precisely his punishment, and the more it torments him the better.
The demonic has that same property as the divine, that the individual can enter into an absolute relationship to it.
The merman stands at a dialectical extremity. If he is saved from the demonic side of repentance two paths are possible. He can hold himself back, remain in hiding, but not depend on his astuteness.
Or else he can be saved through Agnete.
