More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Started reading
January 19, 2021
In the world of spirit it is otherwise. Here an eternal divine order prevails, here it does not rain on both the just and the unjust, here the sun does not shine on both good and evil,4 here it holds true that only the one who works gets the bread, only the one who was in anxiety finds rest, only the one who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved,5 only the one who draws the knife gets Isaac.
Kind of explains the point of all the shit about abraham
If that rich young man whom Christ met on his way14 had sold all his possessions and given the money to the poor, we would then praise him as we do everything that is great and would not even understand him without working, but he still would not have become an Abraham even though he sacrificed “the best.” What is left out of Abraham’s story is the anxiety, for to money I have no ethical obligation, but to the son the father has the highest and most sacred duty. Yet anxiety is a dangerous subject for the delicate natured; therefore one forgets it, in spite of the fact that one wants to talk
...more
What constitutes the best, and why does anxiety constitute some grounds for evaluation?
splendidly. However, if it so happened that among the listeners there was a man who suffered from insomnia, then the most frightful, the most profound tragic and comic misunderstanding lies very close.
The ease with which hermeneutic confusion arises
“I am an orator; what was lacking has been the occasion. When I spoke about Abraham last Sunday, I did not feel moved at all.” If this same speaker had a modest excess of understanding to spare, then I think he would have lost it if the sinner calmly and in a dignified manner had replied: “After all, that was what you yourself preached on last Sunday.”
I'm not sure what the objective is here
The comic and the tragic touch each other here in absolute infinity. In itself the parson’s discourse was perhaps ludicrous enough but became infinitely ludicrous by its effect, and yet this was quite natural.
the effect of misunderstanding shared is both tragic and comedic
However, if the sinner was not convinced, then his situation is indeed tragic. He would probably be executed or sent to the madhouse; in short, he would become unhappy in relation to so-called actuality, although in another sense I certainly think that Abraham made him happy, for the one who works does not perish.
Misled work for the good can end in tragedy.
speaker’s? Is it because Abraham has a prescriptive right to be a great man, so that whatever he does is great and when another person does the same thing it is a sin, a flagrant sin?
gotta figure out what this prescriptive right means
If faith cannot make it a holy act to be willing to murder one’s son, then let the same judgment be passed upon Abraham as upon everybody else.
VERY IMPORTANT TO THE PAPER
The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he intended to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he intended to sacrifice Isaac. But in this contradiction lies precisely the anxiety that indeed can make a person sleepless, and yet Abraham is not who he is without this anxiety.
Personally, I do not lack the courage to think a thought whole. So far I have feared none, and should I encounter one like that, then I hope at least to have the honesty to say I am afraid of this thought, it stirs up something strange in me and therefore I will not think it.
What is the importance of a thought being too fearsome to consider
16If the lot fell on me to speak about him, I would begin by showing what a devout and god-fearing man Abraham was, worthy to be called God’s chosen one. Only someone like that is put to such a test, but who is such a person?
Knight of faith time
Having spoken thus and stirred the audience so they were really sensible of the dialectical struggles of faith and its gigantic passion, then I would not be guilty of an error on the part of the audience should they think: “Well now, he has faith to such a high degree, it is already enough for us just to hold on to his coattails.”
wtf
I cannot shut my eyes and plunge confidently into the absurd; that is for me an impossibility, but I do not praise myself for it. I am convinced that God is love;20 this thought has for me a primordial lyrical validity.
At the heart of the problem is fear
What came easiest for Abraham would have been difficult for me – once again to be joyful with Isaac! – for whoever has made the infinite movement with all the infinity of his soul, of his own accord and on his own responsibility,21 and cannot do more only keeps Isaac with pain.
it is by the commitment to faith that Abraham can return to status quo
He believed by virtue of the absurd, for human calculation was out of the question, and it was indeed absurd that God, who demanded it of him, in the next instant would revoke the demand.
whoever loves God without faith considers himself, but whoever loves God with faith considers God.
The faithless can never understand the Divine's plan
movements. I make the movements of infinity, whereas faith does the opposite; after having made the movements of infinity, it makes those of finitude.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN
The knights of infinite resignation are easy to recognize, their gait is airy, bold. However, those who carry the treasure of faith26 easily deceive because their external appearance has a striking resemblance to that which both infinite resignation and faith deeply disdain – to bourgeois philistinism.
fuck
It is now my intention to draw out in the form of problems the dialectical factors implicit in the story of Abraham in order to see what a prodigious paradox faith is – a paradox that is capable of making a murder into a holy act well pleasing to God, a paradox that gives Isaac back again to Abraham, which no thought can lay hold of because faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off.
Thesis time
Whenever the single individual feels an urge to assert himself as the particular after having entered into the universal, he is in a state of temptation, from which he can extricate himself only by repentantly surrendering himself as the particular to the universal.
Reverse it, why sir
paradox. They flirt esthetically with the outcome; it comes just as unexpectedly but also just as easily as a prize in the lottery, and when they have heard the outcome they are edified.
Yet greater than all this is that the knight of faith dares to say even to the noble person who wants to weep for him: “Do not weep for me, but weep for yourself.”85
The story of Abraham contains, then, a teleological suspension of the ethical. As the single individual he became higher than the universal. This is the paradox that cannot be mediated. How he entered into it is just as inexplicable as how he remains in it.
WELCOME TO THE MONEY QUOTE
Faith is a miracle, and yet no human being is excluded from it, for that which unites all human life is passion,a and faith is a passion.
