Classics and the Western Canon discussion
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Fear and Trembling
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
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Problems 1 and 2
Thinking about motive:In the Tuning Up section we were introduced to different ways JS believe the Abraham story could have played out. As the scenarios fold out I saw more of an emphasis being placed on community. First with Sarah (the family) and later with the faithful servant Eliezer (broader community). I think the stories were structured to demonstrate different… teleological shifts… for the Abraham of JS’s story.
Lia wrote: "He also talked about dancers landing naturally vs wallflowers landing badly and with hesitation, is that part of that movement?I agree with Thomas that the distinction is in the inwardness, in the psychology, in what they will, why they will, but it seems to me that those are the things not included in (physical) movements, they're invisible to us. "
Neat observation, Lia. I hadn't been focusing on the physical while thinking about the spiritual realm, but JS does use tons of actual references to physical movement. The dancer is a great example. Maybe... JS is using the physical because that's his frame of reference? Though ultimately flawed if we're thinking of the spiritual world. His preoccupation with the physical keeps him from making a leap of faith? Things I'll be thinking about on the re-read...
Lia wrote: "...as well as his head-scratching remark about mountains being sublime and not habitable for mermen... did remind me of Nietzsche (and his long legs.)"That made me giggle : )
Lia wrote: "...I want to challenge this reading. It seems to me that SK (or JS) is saying EITHER there is teleological suspension so that the single individual is actually, factually, naturally higher than the universal, OR there is no such suspension, so then we must condemn Abraham as a murderer. What you cannot have, what JS labors to exclude, is the middle ground..."Agreed! Every time Thomas mentions a middle ground, I feel like he’s tempting me into a dialogue. Neither middle ground (nor dialogue) have a place here.
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "Let's revisit Descartes. He worried about an evil demon (I think that's what he called it). If at the Knight of Faith's level there is only faith and no reason, then what's to stop an evil demon from disguising itself to fool you into thinking God is commanding you? Seems to me reason is needed to identify false gods."Its important to note that the movement of the knight of faith starts with the ethical/universal and the "leap" is made only with great distress and anxiety. It isn't as if the knight hears a voice and reacts by immediately following it like Descartes' demon. Abraham doesn't sacrifice Isaac (at least in SK's version) without reflection and long consideration, and his act of faith is more difficult for him than suicide. The universal for him is that he loves Isaac more than life itself, but his whole identity, his whole world, is concentrated in his duty to God. And he must choose between them. Descartes's demon is sort of a joke by comparison, an idle thought experiment dreamt up by the fireside. I suppose this is why SK treats Descartes with such derision.
Ashley wrote: "I’m either really struggling with this text, or I grasp it completely. For me, I don’t believe in God. Other people’s struggle with faith is not for me. Which, I think, is K’s point. Done and done...."To make this more meaningful you might think of it in terms of an unconditional commitment rather than religious faith. That is what later non-religious philosophers did. Such commitments are rare, but they do happen, mostly between parents and children. E.g., an otherwise wholesome, church-going, community-leader mother whose life is entirely invested in her son, and who remains committed to her son after he has committed a heinous crime. A man who is co-opted into murder out of love for his wife. A decorated soldier who betrays his country out of love for another man. In each case a truly ethical, sincerely good person is called to violate that code of ethics out of love. Not many people have commitments that strong, but I don't think it has to be a religious commitment for it to qualify as faith.
Ashley wrote: "Every time Thomas mentions a middle ground, I feel like he’s tempting me into a dialogue. Neither middle ground (nor dialogue) have a place here. "Well then, we'll just have to see about that.
Thomas wrote: "To make this more meaningful you might think of it in terms of an unconditional commitment rather than religious faith. That is what later non-religious philosophers did. Such commitments are rare, but they do happen, mostly between parents and children. E.g., an otherwise wholesome, church-going, community-leader mother whose life is entirely invested in her son, and who remains committed to her son after he has committed a heinous crime. A man who is co-opted into murder out of love for his wife. A decorated soldier who betrays his country out of love for another man. In each case a truly ethical, sincerely good person is called to violate that code of ethics out of love. Not many people have commitments that strong, but I don't think it has to be a religious commitment for it to qualify as faith....."Thanks Tom. I've thought about this quite a lot and I'm not sure if transferring this to other humans would work for me. For example, if a husband demands his wife to either choose to euthanize her beloved pet or get divorced, to see if she loves him more than her cat, it would immediately seem unhealthy, controlling, and sick. I would say the same for parent-child relationship: in a way everything good a child has comes from her parents, including her own life, but again, it seems entirely unacceptable for her parents to act as if they intend to "take her life back" to test her obedience. And even if it were acceptable in some culture (Agamemnon, for example), it stays in the realm of the ethical, not religion.
There are authoritarian regimes that demand their subjects to have that kind of relationship with them, to protesters and citizen critics, they literally proclaim "you only exist because we allow you to," implying it's proper for the state to slaughter them all if they so choose, this elevation of the state to a God-status is repulsive to me.
I'm not a religious person, I am cognitively aware of the concept of God the same way I am cognitively aware of concepts like complex number or "infinity", I might even use them abstractly, but I cannot imagine or visualize the actuality of God himself, or infinity itself, or the square root of a negative number. If I can imagine it, like a parent, a lover, a government, I would immediately deem it improper for him to put another human through this.
The religious sphere is only higher and imaginably capable of suspending the ethical because God is ostensibly outside ethics, outside temporality, from that absolute position "he" wills existence or death, God demanding the death of a child is maybe no more malicious or rancorous than, say, an earthquake or a pandemic taking innocent lives. Shift this back to any individual human, even if it's done out of love, it's still really really icky.
I do, however, find resonance in the idea of facing inevitable doom, such as losing someone or something you really love (a son, a nation, a homeland), and somehow continue loving anyway, despite the pain of the impending loss. To face that and still get up in the morning, to still put another foot forward, to keep hoping things could workout somehow, that, to me, is inspiring (but not necessarily sane or reasonable or rational or practical.)
Thomas wrote: "It isn't as if the knight hears a voice and reacts by immediately following it like Descartes' demon. "Here's the problem I have with this. The leap doesn't take place at the trial or it doesn't have to. The Knight can take the leap before the trial. Certainly Abraham has, and that's why he seems so unanxious. He's been there, done that. He's now on faith overdrive, and he just does what God commands. He's already 100% committed. And it is all the Abrahams of this world's 100% unthinking commitment that I dread.
Or . . .
It's the deuce ex machina. Abraham never believes God will follow through and God never intends to force Abraham to follow through. In which case JS needs to deep Six Abraham and find another example. He needs to disconnect his ideas from the trial of Abraham, because the trial JS is describing isn't what Abraham or God is experiencing.
Thomas wrote: "Ashley wrote: "Other people’s struggle with faith is not for me...."To make this more meaningful you might think of it in terms of an unconditional commitment rather than religious faith. ."
I have to respectfully disagree. SK has engineered his faith specifically for Christians and does not appear to conflate faith with commitment, loyalty, or even hope, which is good because they are not interchangeable with faith. This is why only Mary and Abraham passed SK's specially formulated litmus test and are considered properly faithful while the others are tragic hero's at best. There are definitely some great take-aways from this work. However, faith is not one of them. Personally I think taking SK's paradigm of faith and applying it elsewhere is just as bad as applying where SK intends. An example of an outside application would be a person playing the trust fall game alone and locked in an empty room, resigning all external worldly experience and ideas like gravity, phyisics, common sense, etc., and then falling backwards, not hoping, but pretending to some highest degree to know they will be caught.
David wrote: "This is why only Mary and Abraham passed SK's specially formulated litmus test and are considered properly faithful while the others are tragic hero's at best ..."We haven’t finished the text yet. We will read other fantastic scenarios where K.O resignation and faith could be applicable, and the common theme seems to be love itself.
I brought up Joyce’s Ulysses when Tom asked about literary representation of KOR/ KOF, I personally think Joyce and Kierkegaard are roughly dealing with the same set, the same modern condition, the same theme of resignation, exiting the universal, and returning to the universal, except Joyce is batting for team-universal (whereas Kierkegaard is mounting an assault) — it is possible to resign, resign infinitely, and after reaching the Zenith of resignation, return to the fold, and allow oneself to be healed, and retrieve what was lost, entirely without God, organized religion, etc etc. Modernity already affords that, to which the novel say “Yes I said Yes I will Yes.”
Long way to say, Kierkegaard inspired such a long wave of resonance or reaction in philosophy and literature (including the atheistic side of existentialism) because the experiences he presented are relevant even outside Christiandom (or Christianity.)
Gary wrote: "Love in the Christian context is Agape, not Eros. Agape refers to the love of God for man and of man to God, and charity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agape It is this sense in which it is said that God is love"Thanks Gary. I don’t know why it didn’t even cross my mind, I have read not a few articles on agape in other contexts but somehow Kierkegaard’s (or JS’s) “love” wedded with “movement” towards somewhere higher seems to be a modern reimagination of Diotima’s ladder (which others have also brought up in previous discussions.)
Still working on the movement bit, but, I think we’re basically saying the same thing, this isn’t just movement as in how he gets up in the morning or how a dancer lands, this is (if I read your response correctly) movement as in energia, as in possibilities becoming actualities, as in Abram becoming Abraham.
Which is way too complicated (or non sensical) and always make me want to flee.
Ashley wrote: "Do I believe in a universal morality? eh.. kinda… But Thomas mentioned something interesting… “…the single individual in his relation to the absolute is higher than the universal. As a result, the universal/ethical is reduced to the relative. Doesn't this set up a community of competing moralities, each one absolute for each individual, but relative for the rest of the community?” Why do the moralities have to be competing? I don’t have a problem with Abraham following his own faith...."Given the debates on ethics and rights is ongoing, I like to think it’s not that universal, or rather, if morality can be universal, it’s not easy or possible to find or define the whole set with any degree of clarity.
Kant’s categorical imperatives, for example, can be pretty iffy, or icky. (prohibition of lying including to the Nazi at your door asking if there are Jews hiding in your basement, for example.)
Another way to frame the consequence of not having “competing moralities” is to have one, absolute, domineering universal that nobody can opt out of, transgress against, no gray area, no exception whatsoever. There’s something oppressively inhuman about that.
It also brings me back to Thomas’ reminder about Nietzsche’s levelling — to allow the [mediocre] mass to dictate absolutely so that not even exceptional individuals may go outside the norm to perform what he passionately, authentically, individually experience as significant and the right thing to do. In democracies, for example, we believe (or at least we argue) civil (or uncivil even) disobedience improves society. This kind of messy competing moral claims is maybe more amenable to human existence than forced, coerced harmony.
Besides ... Abraham, for example, is rather quiet about it — he remained silent, he didn’t cajole Sarah about it, he didn’t challenge people to talk him out of it, he didn’t loudly defend or push his ideas, he quietly did his thing, and “his thing” being mere complete and totally submission, giving up not less than everything to God. Maybe that kind of reticence helps “competing morals” (or their agents) to coexist.
Lia wrote: "We haven’t finished the text yet. We will read other fantastic scenarios where K.O resignation and faith could be applicable, and the common theme seems to be love itself."Well good, I am looking forward to other applications. This is why I wanted to read this one for myself. I am trying to remain open minded but not so open minded my brains fall out. I am of the W.K. Clifford mindset that taking things on faith, that is without evidence or rational reasons is itself unethical. So far, making up another all encompassing god sphere of ethics where things unethical are magically transformed int the ethical has fallen well short of convincing. I never realized SK was so platonic.
... I should have emphasised the fantastic bit, in the literal senes: they’re still faery tales and unlikely romantic stories. So no Stendhal like realism, in case if I misleadingly got your hopes up.Sorry David 🤭
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "Here's the problem I have with this. The leap doesn't take place at the trial or it doesn't have to. The Knight can take the leap before the trial. Certainly Abraham has, and that's why he seems so unanxious. He's been there, done that. He's now on faith overdrive, and he just does what God commands. He's already 100% committed. And it is all the Abrahams of this world's 100% unthinking commitment that I dread.."Point taken. But I would argue that the alternative is not the deus ex machina (because according to SK the outcome doesn't matter) but to fall back on the ethical. In other words, to compromise one's commitment (or to make no commitment at all) and admit that one really has no identity as a "single individual." One person is pretty much like any other, just another fish swimming in the school of the ethical. Individuals have no authentic existence at that point; they make no life-defining commitments to anything, or if they do they break their commitments at the first sign of ethical conflict. There is no single individual at that point, just followers of customs and laws.
Thomas wrote: "Point taken. But I would argue that the alternative is not the deus ex machina (because according to SK the outcome doesn't matter) but to fall back on the ethical."Yes, I think so. Good point.
David wrote: "I have to respectfully disagree. SK has engineered his faith specifically for Christians and does not appear to conflate faith with commitment, loyalty, or even hope, which is good because they are not interchangeable with faith.."Also keep in mind that this book is not necessarily an argument for faith, Christian or otherwise. It's specifically an attack on those who claim to have Christian faith, but do not. What they have is a club membership, which is a far cry from the faith of Abraham.
If the Misfit had been a philosopher instead of a murderer, he might have written a book like this. I'm not sure if I like Mr. Silentio very much, but he's definitely got a swagger.
Thomas wrote: " One person is pretty much like any other, just another fish swimming in the school of the ethical. Individuals have no authentic existence at that point; they make no life-defining commitments to anything, or if they do they break their commitments at the first sign of ethical conflict. There is no single individual at that point, just followers of customs and laws."That's powerful. I wish I could have written that myself.
David wrote: "SK .... does not appear to conflate faith with commitment, loyalty, or even hope, which is good because they are not interchangeable with faith. ..."Commitment may not be interchangeable with faith, but somehow it seems to me that commitment is an element of the relationship between Abraham and (his?) God that allowed him to take the risk that God's promises (goodness?) would supersede the sacrifice of Issac. Now, one can ask if those promises were/should have been/could have adequate to prompt Abraham to sacrifice (kill) his son.
One can probably ask the same question of the Jesus story, where Jesus calls out, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46) Or Luke 22:42, on the Mount of Olives, where Jesus prays "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup form me; yet, not my will but yours be done." And at 46, to his disciples, "Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial."
Whether one views these as "actual events" or simply as stories retold again and again with many surrounding interpretations, many, myself included, have managed to see elements of their applicability to "real" episodes of living, whether of self or of others. Reason or logic prevails up to a point; and then one "gives up" to the universe, whether a police officer in ones community or a soldier fighting for his country or an adherent of a profession that has placed unanticipated demands with deeply conflicted consequences or a parent participating in deciding whether a friend, a family member, a child, or even self should be the contributor of that vital kidney for the life of another. Are all these far distant from how SK intended the tight case study he ascribed to his narrator should be used, or at that at the very least, would be sloppy thinking, I cannot say.
I want to go somewhere else with this rant -- the larger story and context within which SK poses his hypotheses -- the opening tabloid/me too story of Sarah with King Abimelech (Genesis 20). Or to Abraham negotiating (with God?) for the righteous lives out of Sodom and Gomorrah... (Genesis 18) Or his marriage to Keturah (Genesis 25) and progeny therefrom. Or ... But my son will get me groceries in the morning so that I can continue my self quarantine status (isolation might be the more accurate term) -- and he needs me to go finish that list for him!
David wrote: "I am of the W.K. Clifford mindset that taking things on faith, that is without evidence or rational reasons is itself unethical. So far, making up another all encompassing god sphere of ethics where things unethical are magically transformed int the ethical has fallen well short of convincing. I never realized SK was so platonic.."I've been thinking about where Silentio stands in relation to Plato. I think you're right that he's Platonic, but only up to a point. He's platonic (Socratic, really) up to the point of faith, and then it all goes out the window. He calls Socrates a knight of resignation, and that sounds right to me. Socrates exhausted reason to the best of his ability and it ended in aporia. There was nowhere else for him to go from there except idealism on a transcendental level. But he never had the faith that idealism could again become reality, by virtue of the absurd. Silentio suggests that this is where faith might begin, if one has the courage to make the leap.
What doesn't work at all is trying to make faith reasonable, ala Augustine and Aquinas. His argument seems to be that western philosophy from Plato on is simply incompatible with Judaeo-Christianity.
Thomas wrote: "Also keep in mind that this book is not necessarily an argument for faith, Christian or otherwise. It's specifically an attack on those who claim to have Christian faith, but do not. What they have is a club membership, which is a far cry from the faith of Abraham."I like this idea, because I don't find the book persuasive as an argument for faith. I liked your earlier idea that it may be a book of psychology rather than philosophy or theology, in the sense (I think) that it describes the inner life of faith or the "movements" (in the sense of evolution, transformation) toward faith.
Where the book makes sense for me is (a) as a critique of conventional religion, and (b) as a critique of philosophical, rationalist understandings of faith as a mere "stage" that can be transcended (I think SK is thinking of Kant and Hegel). So I can make more sense of F&T as a polemic.
As you say, people who turn faith into a set of rules or conventions they follow, "have . . . a club membership" but not something approaching the faith of Abraham and Mary. For JS (and SK?) faith is intensely personal, private, a unique, intimate relationship with God. He will say that (true) faith is not sectarian, that knights of faith cannot even communicate with each other, because each experience is unique (personal connection with God). I do wonder if SK feels he has this experience or if it remains aspirational (as it does for JS).
Second, I think I get his argument against Hegel and other philosophical rationalists (Kant, Descartes, Leibniz?) who see faith as a mere step in the evolution of humanity that can be transcended/absorbed within reason and ethics. (I'm mostly guessing here, just trying to read between the lines of what SK is saying.) JS seems to be saying that there is no going "beyond" faith because faith is higher than the ethical/the universal. He will say that faith is the highest passion of which humanity is capable.
So what I get from this is his passionate defense of the idea that faith is irreducible to anything else. He is trying to make a space for faith in a modern world that wants to explain it away or subordinate it to ethics/reason.
JS also seems to be saying that when you have true faith, everything else falls into place: if you love God above all things, then love of family, country, the ethical, will all fall into place somehow. So it doesn't eliminate the ethical or human love, but subordinates it to the higher passion of faith in God. He distinguishes between an individual's relation to the universal (the ethical, what is comprehensible in language) and an individual's relation to the absolute (beyond language and reason).
But the idea of suspending the ethical is where he gets into dangerous territory (and where K. has been most criticized by modern philosophers). I just wonder if it is even possible to have a private experience of the absolute that is not tempered to some extent by our reason, ethics, or a sense of proportion. Wouldn't even the most devout believer HAVE to have that voice in the back of their head that makes them question if this is what God really commands? And if they don't, are they embracing divine madness or rather psychosis?
Thomas wrote: “ He's platonic (Socratic, really) up to the point of faith, and then it all goes out the window. ” Contents aside, telling the story of a character (JS, Socrates) who mixes myths (or fables, parables) with dialectics (or logos) to get to a subject feels like a signature Plato move. I can’t tell where Socrates ends and Plato begins, just like I can’t decide which opinion or commitment or arguments belong to JS / SK.
Another, albeit perhaps naive, way of interpreting Abraham's story is that things will work out, even if they don't work out. Sorta what happens when "God", Yahwah, is interpreted as That Which Is. Sorta like "faith" humankind will continue to exist post Covid, as it did post bubonic plagues, even if many individuals will not. I think a sense of that interpretation can be found in this worship service, at brpc.org, for Sunday, June 28, where the sermon text is based on Genesis 22:1-14, i.e., the Abraham/Issac story.(Another tangential place to consider -- why were homo sapiens the only humanoid race to survive? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2... I haven't checked how far into the deep reaches of human history the Abraham story is perceived to have occurred. Was "disobedience", i.e., knowledge, integral to survival outside "the garden"?)
Ignacio wrote: "Wouldn't even the most devout believer HAVE to have that voice in the back of their head that makes them question if this is what God really commands? And if they don't, are they embracing divine madness or rather psychosis?"Silentio describes faith as a "new inwardness" and a second immediacy. The first level of immediacy is characterized by feeling, emotion, mood, etc. Faith itself is inexplicable, irrational, and unexpected, but the movement of resignation that leads up to it is not.
Socrates is the quintessential knight of resignation, and he heard a voice as well, but it only told him what *not* to do. And of course Socrates' life ended ethically, by accepting the decision of the Athenian people, however twisted that decision was. Perhaps if Socrates had decided that the "whole content of his life" was invested in his love for Crito, he would have agreed to escape. But first he would have had to renounce everything he believed about justice, which would have been a radical re-birth and totally inconsistent with his core identity, but I don't think it would have been psychotic.
I find this definition of "proper", appearing in SK's own footnote, to be disturbingIf what I say here is to have any significance, it is essential that the movement be carried out properly.¹The Misfit from our recent read of A Good Man is Hard to Find has been brought up a few times. It seems too easy for someone like the Misfit to interpret this outwardly instead of inwardly, and is what appears to have happened at the end of the story. The Misfit caused great anxiety and doubt in the Grandmother leading to her epiphany and then shot her. She then lay dead on the ground like a child smiling.
¹ For that passion is required. Every movement of infinity occurs through passion, and no reflection can bring about a movement. This is the perpetual leap in existence that explains the movement, whereas mediation is a chimera which according to Hegel is supposed to explain everything and which is also the only thing he has never tried to explain.35 Even to make the well-known Socratic distinction between what one understands and what one does not understand requires passion, and naturally still more to make the genuinely Socratic movement of ignorance. What our age lacks is not reflection but passion. In a certain sense, therefore, the age is really too tenacious of life to die, for dying is one of the most remarkable leaps. A little verse by a poet has always appealed to me a great deal because, after beautifully and simply having wished good things in life for himself in five or six previous lines, he ends like this: “a blessed leap into eternity.”
I love how the mods dragged the Misfit into this thread. But how about the granny?She was glib, smug, materialistic, entirely concerned with keeping up with the Jones, she even lived perpetually prepared for her own demise (in making sure her accessories signal membership in the “lady” class). If it weren’t for the misfit’s intervention, she would have achieved slickness unto death.
Hopefully the anxiety the Misfit caused includes the recognition of having lived her entire life without ever contemplating the significance of what it means to be her “self” (as opposed to a generic, conforming member of “good Christian lady”). Maybe confrontation with extreme situations, such as the possibility of your own personal death, induces people to (experience / suffer passion? And...) think about the “self” in relation to their entire existence, and to think about what about my existence really matters.
I suppose, for Kierkegaard, and for people who believe in the immortality of the soul, death signifies the leap from temporal existence to eternal existence, from Kronos to Kairos, and “movement” is implicated in that somehow. (After all, he did repeatedly bring up consciousness of eternity.)
I am still hung up on SK's insistence on the "proper" ways of doing things. As well as being vague or setting himself up as some sort of authority on it, I wonder if it falls into the informal fallacy of redefinition, aka, the no true Scotsman fallacy. E.g., a true person of faith does X, or a true person of faith would never do Y.
SK wrote: "What our age lacks is not reflection but passion. In a certain sense, therefore, the age is really too tenacious of life to die, for dying is one of the most remarkable leaps. A little verse by a poet has always appealed to me a great deal because, after beautifully and simply having wished good things in life for himself in five or six previous lines, he ends like this: “a blessed leap into eternity.”¹
"
What "death" means here is existential death. This is what happens when the knight of resignation renounces and surrenders whatever the "whole content of his life" is.
In infinite resignation there is peace and rest and consolation in the pain, that is, when the movement is made properly. Nevertheless, it would not be diffiuclt for me to write a whole book if I were to go through all the various misunderstandings, the awkward postures, the slipshod movements I have encountered just in my modest practice. People believe very little in spirit, and yet spirit is precisely what is needed in order to make this movement. It is essential that it not be a one-sided result of a cruel necessity, and certainly the more this is granted, the more dubious it becomes whether the movement is proper. Thus, if one thinks that a cold, barren necessity necessarily must be granted, one implies thereby that no one can experience death before actually dying, which strikes me as a crass materialism.
The ending of "A Good Man" is ambiguous to say the least, but I suspect the granmother's ephiphany came as "a cruel necessity." Had she died to a more meaningful life before she actually died, she might have been a good woman.
In the next section SK writes about the demonic as the negative counterpart to faith. If the Misfit is a knight of resignation, he fits nicely into that category.
David wrote: "I am still hung up on SK's insistence on the "proper" ways of doing things. As well as being vague or setting himself up as some sort of authority on it, I wonder if it falls into the informal fall..."I think by "proper" he means authentic. The proper movement is sui geneneris and not done for any ulterior purpose. It's ultimately irrational because the premise is unique to every individual, and can't be communicated in a way that is commonly understood. So yes, it is logically fallacious in that way. But I think it means every "true Scotsman" is no Scotsman at all. The knights are whoever they are as single individuals and no one is like another.
Thomas wrote: "What "death" means here is existential death. This is what happens when the knight of resignation renounces and surrenders whatever the "whole content of his life" is..."Not doubting you but want to check — did he explain or define “death” as existential death and not actual death anywhere in the text? I know that’s what Heidegger is really referring to when he says “death,” but in H’s case the meaning of non-actual death is made clear in the text, but I’m not seeing evidence of that in Kierkegaard’s.
If Abraham did not expect literal death of Isaac, but anticipated mere metaphorical “born again” “existential” death, kind of like taking a wafer dipped in wine but calling it cannibalising blood and flesh, then I don’t see any cause for fear and trembling.
I *think* this kind of ‘born again, renounce this world for the afterlife” doctrine is found Christianity, but not in Judaism (i.e. Abraham’s scenario.)
Lia wrote: "If Abraham did not expect literal death of Isaac, but anticipated mere metaphorical “born again” “existential” death, kind of like taking a wafer dipped in wine but calling it cannibalising blood and flesh, then I don’t see any cause for fear and trembling. "I think Silentio's argument is that Abraham's existence is entirely bound up in Isaac, and when he resigns Isaac he experiences what I'm calling an existential death. It doesn't matter that Isaac doesn't die -- Abraham has died to himself when he gives up "the whole content of his being." Whe he acquiesces to God's will, he becomes someone else. His conscience is no longer in the ethical; his conscience is God's conscience. The ethical/universal is "suspended", i.e. surrendered, and Abraham is no longer who he was.
Kierkegaard is describing a phenomenon that didn't have a name at the time, and as far as I know he didn't name it himself. Later on this way of looking at human existence would be called existentialism, but I think for Kierkegaard it was just spiritual existence.
David wrote: "I am still hung up on SK's insistence on the "proper" ways of doing things. As well as being vague or setting himself up as some sort of authority on it, I wonder if it falls into the informal fall..."In thinking about this, I’m again circling back to Socrates.
Meno asked him a simple question of whether virtue can be taught, instead of a simple yes/no authoritative answer as might be expected, Socrates ended up inducing Meno into aporia while going off on knowledge as recollection.
JS will end up admitting he is not capable of faith, as did SK (in escaping his marriage). So he (JS?) might talk about “proper” movement (faith through repetition, just like Socrates talked about how one can have “knowledge” through recollection), but he’s still pretty reticent in claiming authoritative position on “acquiring faith.”
Also, in that particular quote,
“
If what I say here is to have any significance, it is essential that the movement be carried out properly.¹”
the movement needs to be “proper” in order for what he says to have any significance — he’s not making a truth claim here, it’s not about passing on objective, universal knowledge, or Truth. It’s about significance, i.e. for something to come across as mattering to his readers, to be meaningful, to arouse passion, the “movement” needs to be proper. Pity though, this movement seems beyond rationality, I’m not sure if it’s possible to communicate or describe in public language.
Thomas wrote: "Abraham has died to himself when he gives up "the whole content of his being."... Later on this way of looking at human existence would be called existentialism, but I think for Kierkegaard it was just spiritual existence. ..."Thanks. I’m in agreement with everything you stated or interpreted here, including the interpretation of Abraham (well, Abram) as having (figuratively speaking) died and reborn as the new and improved Abraham. But I’m not sure if that justifies reading Kierkegaard’s explicit naming of death (in David’s quote) as existential death rather than actual death, especially since Kierkegaard seemed to have thought about (as far as I can tell, actual and personal) death a lot, and published writings on (actual) death and how it informs the meaning of existence. (His preoccupation with his personal death might have contributed to his decision to call off his engagement as well.)
When he exhort Christians to take literally the “duty” to hate your family and your own life as prerequisite to follow Christ, I worry that we might be watering down the harshness of the provocation if we take his remarks about “death” as not really death but just “born again” type psychological transformation. (Besides, he already has a name for that psychological movement — infinite resignation. So why call it death?)
I do not see it as a death of any sort. I just see it as that dancer who leaps and attains the height of faith for a brief moment and lands gracefully, as opposed to the ones who land awkwardly, always preparing for the next leap, ad nauseam as required. But death seems to be the final leap.
Thomas wrote: "Abraham has died to himself when he gives up "the whole content of his being." Whe he acquiesces to God's will, he becomes someone else."Did he really give up himself, though? Every human becomes someone else every day through the act of living and this would be a profound experience, which I’m sure changed him. However, Abraham is supposed to love Isaac more than anything, but he was willing to kill him for the voice in his head (with fear and trembling, but without hesitation) who didn’t even give a reason his son needed to die. Does that really seem like a loving father? If so, he’s committing existential suicide, but he still does nothing but what the voice tells him.
I know that the narrative is that Isaac was so important and special to him and Abraham was willing to “sacrifice him.” But he was willing to give Isaac up without hesitating for the ACTUAL “whole content of his being”, his absolute faith in the voice in his head, i.e. God. Abraham behaves more like he views Isaac as a prize that God decided he wanted back and he was ready with the knife.
Maybe I’m just being argumentative. Blind faith enrages me.
I would like to amend my comment #87. It is a death, but not a physical one, although it could lead to it. I am not sure what is meant by existential death, unless it is what this boxing match with jelly of a book redefines hate as a turning away from external things you love relative to your love of god.
Lia wrote: " But I’m not sure if that justifies reading Kierkegaard’s explicit naming of death (in David’s quote) as existential death rather than actual death, especially since Kierkegaard seemed to have thought about (as far as I can tell, actual and personal) death a lot, and published writings on (actual) death ..."This passage concerns the movement of resignation, and in the same paragraph he alludes to Socrates taking the hemlock and says "this moment is one of life and death." Is it literally, actually, suicide for the knight? Well, no, I don't think so. The change that Silentio is talking about is spiritual, not physical. The knight is renouncing the actuality of "the whole content of his life," but not his actual life.
In this case, it is the lad renouncing the actuality of his love for the princess. I'm calling that existential death, because his love for the princess is what defines the lad's existence. It's his identity, everything he lives for, it's what makes him who he is. His love for her is what constitutes his existence. And he is giving up on the actuality of that existence. If that's not a kind of death, I'm not sure what to call it.
Thomas wrote: "Is it literally, actually, suicide for the knight? Well, no, I don't think so. The change that Silentio is talking about is spiritual, not physical. The knight is renouncing the actuality of "the whole content of his life," but not his actual life.."I agree it is not physical suicide. I don't know about the spiritual aspect, but besides being "spiritual", since it needs to be repeated so much, I have my doubts. But I do agree with Camus who called this kind of response to our existential condition, philosophical suicide.
Aiden wrote: "Did he really give up himself, though? Every human becomes someone else every day through the act of living and this would be a profound experience, which I’m sure changed him..."I think Silentio would agree with you that every human becomes someone else every day... and this is precisely what he's protesting. Most people go with the flow, swim in the shallows, and compromise (mediate) their principles when they're tested. Kierkegaard is not arguing for blind faith; he's trying to examine what faith truly is. It isn't necessarily blind, but it is absolute. It's not contingent. No mediation, no hedging, no excuses.
He was writing for people who he thought were faithless Christians, so he chose a radical Biblical example in which faith is tested in a rather grotesque way. But I think his analysis applies to any kind of absolute commitment, however rare that sort of thing actually is. There aren't many "lads" out there, and she must have been one hell of a princess.
Thomas wrote: "To make this more meaningful you might think of it in terms of an unconditional commitment rather than religious faith. That is what later non-religious philosophers did. Such commitments are rare, but they do happen, mostly between parents and children. E.g., an otherwise wholesome, church-going, community-leader mother whose life is entirely invested in her son, and who remains committed to her son after he has committed a heinous crime. A man who is co-opted into murder out of love for his wife. A decorated soldier who betrays his country out of love for another man. In each case a truly ethical, sincerely good person is called to violate that code of ethics out of love. Not many people have commitments that strong, but I don't think it has to be a religious commitment for it to qualify as faith."I find these examples compelling as a way of understanding how we can make room for the irrational (or what surpasses reason) in our lives, in an analogous way to how K. thinks about faith. Faithfulness/unconditional love overrides ethics in the sense of the customs/values of a community. So I think this helps us get closer to K's sense of the irreducibility of faith to reason or ethics.
BUT where I think it is different is that one does not need faith to love other people and to defy reason/ethics for them. But one DOES need faith to do so for a God one cannot see or hear or touch. In a relationship of love, faith maybe is present in K's example of a man who loves a woman, "lets her go" and be free to marry someone else, is happy for her, yet continues to hope "by virtue of the absurd," that somehow he will get to be with her in the end. Another example would be of a person who is in love and trusts that their partner, though they have to go far away for a long time, will never forget them and will come back for them. This does require something like an act of faith. I'm thinking of Princess Buttercup: "My Westley will always come for me."
Ignacio wrote: "Faithfulness/unconditional love overrides ethics in the sense of the customs/values of a community."I agree this seems to be JS's argument. But is it justifiable to end the life someone if some agent that you love unconditionally asks you to?
Is there any difference if the one to be killed is anywhere along the spectrum from enemy to most beloved person?
Is there any difference if the agent asking you to kill is not god but some other agent, e.g., angel, devil, spouse, father, best friend, etc?
Does the love/committment toward the agent have to be total and unconditional, or can it be less.
If you love and are totally committed to that agent, what do you need faith for?
David wrote: "I agree this seems to be JS's argument. But is it justifiable to end the life someone if some agent that you love unconditionally asks you to?"This is why I have trouble with JS's argument for the suspension of the ethical. I think it works to some extent in the sense that we might defy rules/conventions/our own principles for love. Parents, spouses, surely do this. This love resembles the love/faith God demands.
But I don't think this argument can work with something as extreme as killing. That is why I was saying before that I believe even the most devout person would have to have some kind of ethical judgment that would give them a sense of proportion and limits to what they can/should do.
A lot of people say that they would kill anyone who hurt their child (or to protect their child). But would they really do it? And if they did, would this be an expression of love, or something else?
What about those who fight in wars? Don't they have to have faith that what they are doing is for the greater good/for the protection of those they love and care about?
(Except that both of these examples are more similar to the case of the "tragic hero" than to Abraham. God's request to Abraham and his compliance are both "absurd" and outside of rational justification.)
It’s meant to be unjustifiable unless an individual accepts the TSotE. In the next section, JS / SK makes it explicit, with an emphasis:(view spoiler)
So I agree as long as it stays within the human realm, it’s “speakable,” one can make a case and make himself understood by the community. It’s still a question of ethics and not religion.
The ethical is the universal, the comfortable affirmable normalcy and belonging that is used to “tempt” Abraham to disobey God. It’s glorious to belong to it, it can be a temptation only if Abraham comes from it, belongs to it, is habituated to respond to or conform to it.
And that’s why the sphere of religion needs to be of a higher order for the TSotE to be valid. And I agree with Tom that the point is not to defend the TSotE as universally valid, for everyone to accept this is valid justification. But rather, he wants to move Christians to choose: do you accept religion as the higher plane so that it makes sense to keep admiring Abraham, or are you going to decide you don’t have the kind of faith and stop blithely lionising Abraham’s faith (or else admit you lack faith and need to work on it.)
It’s probably also a direct attack on Hegelian “mediation” of two incommensurable oppositions that has no middle ground (the religion and the ethical.) Once theologians and academic biblical scholars “established” that religion and ethics are in absolute harmony, so that being ethical is the exact same as following Christ, Christians need not worry about these kinds of difficult choice, because, well, Kant and Hegel already solved them.
↑ That said, I recall Kant saying something somewhat similar in Groundwork: that love and duty are not the same thing, if you do something because of duty then it’s not love (eg staying in a marriage out of duty.) He also said elsewhere that reason tries to reach too far, to reach beyond what it can grasp.So who knows, maybe we could mediate Kant and Kierkegaard...
Prob. II:
“ The ethical is the universal, and as such it is also the divine. Thus it is proper to say that every duty is essentially duty to God, but if no more can be said than this, then it is also said that I actually have no duty to God. The duty becomes duty by being traced back to God, but in the duty itself I do not enter into relation to God. ””
The love for God is, perhaps, not any different than love between humans, not universalizable. As soon as you universalise it, it leaves the domain of love and becomes a mere reasonable duty.
David wrote: "Is there any difference if the agent asking you to kill is not god but some other agent, e.g., angel, devil, spouse, father, best friend, etc?..."Or country?
David wrote: "If you love and are totally committed to that agent, what do you need faith for? "I don't think it's for anything. It's a passion. I often think in this context that it's a misunderstanding to say that a person has faith, when it's actually faith that has the person. The normal reaction of any reasonable person is to fight this passion because the loss of agency produces tremendous anxiety. Any reasonable person will try to mediate this passion, rationalize it, make it aesthetically palatable, and in the process water it down. Silentio is in awe of this unadulterated, unmediated passion but he quite understandably refuses to submit to it himself.
Can someone provide a definition of "faith" from Kierkegaard/Silentio perspective? I'm lost as to what it is.Or call it to my attention from the text....
I don’t know if they have to be, but the nature of man’s arrogance suggests they will. Either way, if two people espouse two different ways of “the right way to live”— what ethics/morality is— to the same group of people, their ideas are in competition. You’re ethics (mine, too) may dictate that you should allow others to live how they want, but that’s not a universal idea. Long history of religious wars show that.