Problem 3 and Epilogue

[Lily]

Lia wrote: "Thomas wrote: “ (in Greek the term for this kind of person is "idiot.") ”

Oh hey, that’s what we call them in English as well!"

I don't know. I thought we called them "sages" or "profound." {g}

[Lia]

Sorry Lily, I was just being silly. I don’t really mean to say that people who commit resolutely to something the public cannot understand are idiots.

I don’t know if I’d call them sages, but there used to be a special place for people who are thought to be “chosen” by the divinities and therefore marked with blindness (Homer, Tiresieus) or madness (Oedipus, Cassandra), whom are both kept outside from belonging but also admired. (At least according to Foucault, who may or may not be a little bit weird or mad or eccentric if you were to view him as a historian.)

I reread Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot recently, incidentally the “holy fool” had his life transformed through his encounter with a woman called Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova, and Barashkov is derived from the Russian word for "lamb."

Coincidentally, our Merman also fell for a woman called Agnes, the name itself resembles the Latin word for "lamb", agnus (and Agnes of Rome is also associated with “lamb”).

Is that the “gift”? The “lamb”? Is that what the second movement depends on: a gift that takes courage to accept? (Which Kierkegaard himself apparently lacked?)

[Thomas]

Lily wrote: "Lia wrote: "Thomas wrote: “ (in Greek the term for this kind of person is "idiot.") ”

Oh hey, that’s what we call them in English as well!"

I don't know. I thought we called them "sages" or "pro..."

"Idios" simply means private, or sometimes peculiar, and this does describe the knight of faith, someone in an absolute relation to the absolute. Abraham can not express the paradox in common universal terms; he must be silent. Fear and Trembling is built on precisely this fault line -- the rational Greek tradition considers this intensely private and inexpressible communion with the absolute a form of "idiocy." The Judaeo-Christian tradition (or at least the existentialist interpretation of the tradition) considers it holy.

What Kierkegaard is trying to do here is express, in whatever way he can, the inexpressible. That he can do it at all is amazing to me, but the result is still a very difficult text.

[Lily]

I guess I'm going to need to take Aiden's lead and order Clare Carlisle's Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Trembling': A Reader's Guide if I am to have any hope of comprehending this thing beyond the strong gut levels I do and the insights provided here by you all. I get lost in "aesthetics" and "thesis/antithesis/synthesis" and the terminologies of philosophy and art.

I thought of our discussion here last night during the Fourth of July festivities being broadcast and listening to Jewel sing one of her signature songs ("Hands"), finding myself wondering if Kierkegaard had lived in our age, after two World Wars, the fall of the World Trade Center, the rise of our world of communication...., what he might have written...

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jewel...

I am much more attuned to the stories than to K's fight with Hegel. As I listened to Dr. Maureen Paterson this morning speak to Abraham's directions for seeking a bride for Issac (brpc.org -- July 5), I found myself asking why his particular structure of analysis around a particular story for K, rather than the broader story of Abraham/Issac. I found myself wanting/needing(?) to know more of the personalities and story of K and Regine Olsen. My ironic side wonders at the savvy(?) with which she moved on to another marriage, another commitment and life, but having become a muse whose name (being?) seems to have an eternity of its own.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

Finished up with these two sections yesterday. I'm enjoying everyone's comments, though I'm not sure I have anything cogent to add.


Thomas mentioned something at the beginning of the thread about how aesthetics fit into this discussion about ethics--

All of these examples are stories passed down--how much is truthful or based on a real event is not possible to know (though I'm thinking that the merman story is probably mythic). This may be a stretch, but Bruno Bettelheim had a theory about fairy tales in his The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales--essentially, he felt that these tales had been continually winnowed throughout the ages until they were uniquely suited to deliver messages to a child's subconscious mind; messages that would be helpful to the child's maturing psyche. These messages can not be delivered other ways, at least not effectively, because the child doesn't have the mental acuity yet to receive them any other way. And it is particularly those tales that seem objectionable to us moderns that often provide the most instruction to the child as he or she progresses from one stage of maturity into another.

Bettelheim was a Freudian, but there are aspects of his theory that are attractive to me. So when I think of these stories that Kierkegaard (or Silentus) is relating, I think of them in a similar way--stories that have been winnowed through the telling until they satisfy a particular need in the listener (and possibly the teller as well). If they didn't satisfy that need, they would have disappeared because no one would listen to them anymore.

I can't really define aesthetics other than how a work of art strikes me, the viewer, as especially apt in it's presentation or overall effect. When some action in the story jars my interior sense of 'story equilibrium', for lack of a better term, it sets up a problem I have to resolve, either by discarding the story or putting it in a different category. I think in the stories that Slentus gave us, even if they are tragic or foreign to us, they don't offend against this aesthetic idea--they have a 'rightness' to them in the same way that certain behaviors have a 'rightness' to them. That's the parallel with ethics. Whether that 'rightness' is a universal is a question I can't answer, though perhaps it's similar to Aristotle's golden mean--a set of universal ethics and aesthetics, but with room for individual variations.

Anyway...

So Abraham's actions either transcend the ethic/or he's a murderer, and the story as a story either transcends our aesthetic ideal/or it's discordant.

That isn't me trying to answer your question, Thomas--just me thinking out loud.

[Lia]

Thomas wrote: "What Kierkegaard is trying to do here is express, in whatever way he can, the inexpressible. That he can do it at all is amazing to me, but the result is still a very difficult text. "

Wittgenstein himself faced something like that (I’m paraphrasing from memory): he explained to someone (a friend? a student?) that he had in fact written part two of a book, but since it’s on the unspeakable or non-sensible or ineffable side, he has to duty to remain silent. (Is not publishing something the same as never having written it/ silence? Is that why Poldy erased his message in the sand?)

I want to imagine Wittgenstein accusing Kierkegaard of talking too much, but, from what I gathered, Wittgenstein was rather impressed with SK.

[Aiden]

Lily wrote: "I guess I'm going to need to take Aiden's lead and order Clare Carlisle's Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Trembling': A Reader's Guide if I am to have any hope of comprehending this thing beyond the strong gut levels I do and the insights provided here by you all."

For those inclined to reading commentary and analysis, I would certainly recommend Carlisle’s excellent guide. I strongly suggest attempting to tackle the text on its own first, if for no other reason than to challenge yourself as SK intended. However, as much as I’ve enjoyed this discussion, I definitely wouldn’t have gotten as much out of it without a little help.

[Thomas]

Bryan "They call me the Doge" wrote: "So Abraham's actions either transcend the ethic/or he's a murderer, and the story as a story either transcends our aesthetic ideal/or it's discordant.
."

Thanks for your thoughts on this. I'm working toward the same conclusion as you -- that there is some kind of a parallel between the relationship of Abraham to the ethical and his relationship to the aesthetic. But how does he transcend the aesthetic?

Silentio says over and over again that Abraham can not speak because he is in the paradox. The problem is that he does speak. He answers Isaac's question, but he does it in a way that isn't disclosure. He doesn't give Isaac a straight answer. Instead of saying, "Well, kid, you're the lamb," which would be absolutely cruel, he uses irony. With this irony he is able to say something that means nothing to Isaac, but is totally appropriate for the story: "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.' Silentio says Abraham fulfills himself with this comment. He never has to sacrifice Isaac; his fulfillment is in this statement.

It's a little shocking that in the end Abraham's fulfillment has an aesthetic expression. It's almost as if the paradox is not actually inexpressible... it just has to be expressed in code, like Tarquin's message with the poppies.

[Lily]

One of the things that strikes me about these stories is the issue of "obedience." In Genesis 3, it is failure to obey that gets Eve and Adam expelled from the garden. The story of Abraham is one of covenant -- to some extent, one of give and take, wherein Abraham negotiates relative to the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, but demonstrates his worthiness, trustworthiness, faithfulness (? -- the words fail in naming with "accuracy") in the story of his response to the offering demanded.

[Lily]

@1Thomas wrote: "Problem Three: Was it Ethically Defensible for Abraham to conceal his undertaking from Sarah, from Eliezer, from Isaac? ..."

I don't know that I have ever engaged in the conversation as to whether it was ethically defensible for Abraham to conceal his undertaking a priori from Sarah, but critics certainly have noted that upon his return, Abraham and Sarah never speak again, although he does mourn her death and makes provision for her burial. He himself is eventually buried with her in the cave at Ephron, a burying place that the alien Abraham purchased even though, "as a mighty prince among us," the Hittites offered "the choicest of our burial places. None of us will withhold from you any burial ground for burying your dead." (Based on NRSV)

Even though out of time order as recorded and transmitted through the ages (i.e., after the death of Sarah in Genesis 23), in Genesis 24, Isaac brings Rebekah "into his mother Sarah's tent... So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death." G 24:67 Suggesting Isaac and his mother retained closeness after the trip to the mountain, even if Abraham and Sarah may not? (Yes, one can speculate modern parallels to her character.)

(I do concur with the concept that silence kept the responsibility Abraham's and his alone -- although some would say the story telling leaves a gap for Sarah to "have known.")

[Thomas]

Lily wrote: "...critics certainly have noted that upon his return, Abraham never speaks to Sarah again, although he does mourn her death and makes provision for her burial."

Interesting observation. I would think that Abraham is not the same man when he comes down from Mt. Moriah; in some sense, he has sacrificed himself, the Abraham dedicated to Isaac and all he represents, and become a different man. On a gut level this is easy to understand. He chose to sacrifice his own son for the absolute. How could he not be transformed by this experience?

[Alexey]

Thomas wrote: "It's a little shocking that in the end Abraham's fulfillment has an aesthetic expression. It's almost as if the paradox is not actually inexpressible... it just has to be expressed in code, like Tarquin's message with the poppies."

Thank you for binding this story with the rest of the book, Tarquin's story place in the work was one of the questions that puzzled me for long. Your suggestion seems to work.

But I am not so sure that Abraham's phrase is an aesthetic expression of the paradox, the irony in Kierkegaard's understanding is not purely aesthetic but rather intermediate between aesthetical and ethical, half disclosure -- half concealment. And if it indeed expresses the paradox of the faith? It may have that meaning in Abraham's mind or may be the only answer he could give to his son in this situation, without fail the task.

[Lia]

It’s worth noting that Kierkegaard explicitly distanced himself from JS. JS’s metaphors are thoroughly commercial, materialistic. He started out by describing a bored old man obsessed with Abraham like an interesting spectacle, and kept fantasizing dead-end alt.Abraham into being. It is possible that it is part of the ironic design of the whole book that a “hero” (JS) of our age (modernity) entirely entrenched in Cartesianism can at best get to the point of admitting to lacking passion, faith, religious spirit, the same way the heroism of Socrates involves ironic embrace of his ignorance.

Tarquin sends a consequential, terrifying message to his own son, not in words (i.e. in silence), but in movement, such that the messenger himself fails to understand, but his son does. Could JS be the messenger, so that he himself remain stuck in aesthetics mode, but the message itself can still be understood through the movements?

[Alexey]

Lily wrote: "...critics certainly have noted that upon his return, Abraham never speaks to Sarah again, although he does mourn her death and makes provision for her burial."

The Bible says nothing about Sarah and Abraham since God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac, only about her death. It gives a lot of space for speculations: had it killed her, or do they still have close and very special relations like previously -- all these can easily read out of the text with so little of information.

'God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering,' was the last phrase we know Abraham addressed to his son, did they ever talked after? This journey should be transformative for both the father and the son, but how it transformed they we do not know, only that they both still had the faith in God and carried it through their lives.

[Alexey]

Lia wrote: "It’s worth noting that Kierkegaard explicitly distanced himself from JS. JS’s metaphors are thoroughly commercial, materialistic. He started out by describing a bored old man obsessed with Abraham ..."

Interestingly, I have not encountered this suggestion previously, but it would be in Kierkegaard's way.

[Lily]

Thomas wrote: "....for the absolute...."

So what is the "absolute"?

(I think of "The Godfather," of tyrannical bosses, of causes, of .... Yes, at 1:30 am, I'm being superficial.)

One of the story elements I had overlooked -- Abraham took another wife, perhaps concubines as well. Keturah gave him six sons.

Another perspective that had escaped me: The parallel between "So Abraham called that place "The Lord will provide," as it is said to this day, "on the mount of the Lord, it shall be provided." (G22:46) and Matthew 6:25-34. Tonight, as I was out driving to escape the confinement of self distancing, I listened to some of the proposals being put forward to carrying people (and economies) through the chaos of Covid. Realistic? Ethical? Hope? Trust? Faith? .... (No, I don't intend to divert the conversation here, merely to suggest the prosaic realities of "fear and trembling". And being pretty certain the sun will rise tomorrow, but not necessarily for ...)

Anyway, I came back this morning to post that I found this resource useful, as well as the Kindle sample of a Cambridge resource: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ki...

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "It’s worth noting that Kierkegaard explicitly distanced himself from JS. JS’s metaphors are thoroughly commercial, materialistic. He started out by describing a bored old man obsessed with Abraham ..."

I think what JS is promoting, above everything else, is an earnest approach to the problem. Kierkegaard seems greatly irritated by the arrogance of thinkers and exegetes, the Cartesians and the materialists, who have simplified the problem of faith and doubt out of existence.

In a similar way, Socrates was irritated by sophists peddling easy answers. And both Kierkegaard and Plato attack this over-simplification with dialectic and irony, though Kierkegaard is a little more subtle about it. Socrates always had an interlocutor to act as his foil; Silentio only has the reader, which is why I thought it so important for us to read this for ourselves without outside assistance.

Socrates always leaves us hanging, and so does Silentio; they both take refuge in ironic failure. One can't get to knowledge because the universal cannot be expressed in the particular, and the other can't get to faith because the particular is above the universal. Resolutions for these problems are for individuals to work out for themselves.

[Thomas]

Lily wrote: "Thomas wrote: "....for the absolute...."

So what is the "absolute"? "

This is the question SK asks of us, isn't it? For Abraham it was God. What is it for each of us?

[Lia]

He's definitely cajoling his fellow citizens to question their most complacent, basic assumptions, just like Socrates did to Athenians. Apparently you can skip the hemlock and still be a gadfly in Christendom as long as you use pseudonyms. BRB shopping for pseudonyms.

I started reading The Concept of Irony: With Continual Reference to Socrates/Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures, I was merely suspecting an imitation of Socrates from the style or method in FAT, I'm just finding out that SK had a thing for Socrates even very early on in his career.

At first I assumed the "dialectics in the title of the book to be Socratic back and forth sort of dialectics, but you're right, there's no interlocutor. (or rather, we are the interlocutors.) Don't quiz me on this, but I suspect whatever dialectics he's taking up is Hegelian.

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "Don't quiz me on this, but I suspect whatever dialectics he's taking up is Hegelian..."

Or both? Here he seems to be using Socratic methods against Hegelian conclusions, and the dialectic is what they have in common. Both of them describe a process. and even though Kierkegaard argued vigorously against the "system" of Hegel, he was still enamored of the dialectic process. It's just that Kierkegaard seems to think that the truth is in the experience of that process, the spiritual trial, rather than the intellectual construction.

[Lily]

Thomas wrote: "It's just that Kierkegaard seems to think that the truth is in the experience of that process, the spiritual trial, rather than the intellectual construction...."

Thanks for that, Thomas! I just dug out Russell on Hegel, and have been shaking my head... back to another round, but tomorrow, not today.

[Lia]

Wait a minute, last time I checked, admirers of Socrates are not allowed to be poets (or lyricists), much less elevate passion above reason.

Something's not adding up.

[Thomas]

Lily wrote: "Thanks for that, Thomas! I just dug out Russell on Hegel, and have been shaking my head... back to another round, but tomorrow, not today."

If you're looking for a brief overview, I can recommend Hegel: A Very Short Introduction.

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "Wait a minute, last time I checked, admirers of Socrates are not allowed to be poets (or lyricists), much less elevate passion above reason.

Something's not adding up."

The miscalculation probably starts with Socrates' greatest admirer, a poet who wrote him into a number of dialogues about his distrust of poetry and writing in general. I also wonder if Plato's love of Socrates was, um, purely rational?

I suspect that reason and passion for kierkegaard are yet another dialectical pair, like Apollo and Dionysus. One is not above or below the other, and human existence lies somewhere in the balance, or imbalance, between them.

[Alexey]

Thomas wrote: "The miscalculation probably starts with Socrates' greatest admirer, a poet who wrote him into a number of dialogues about his distrust of poetry and writing in general. I also wonder if Plato's love of Socrates was, um, purely rational?"

Or did he love real Socrates or his ideas about the teacher? Just following the Kierkegaard position that the 'real' Socrates is in Aristophanes, not in Xenophon or Plato...

Unfortunately, Antisthenes did not leave us his view (or it has not survived) -- it would be a lot of fun in comparing.

[Lia]

I read the back and forth between Tom and Alexey before bed last night, it didn't exactly "mediate" or "synthesize", what I did wake up to, was a kind of horrifying recognition (or repetition?)

I recognize this rascal, I've seen him before. He thought he could use sophisticated arguments to manipulate financial matters; his sophisticated arguments made the obviously wrong (by doxa, public consensus) seem "right," which destroys the family bond (I think the son decided he could beat his father in Aristophanes' version, in Kierkegaard, well, the "loving" father decides it is right and proper to exile one son and murder the other, and our sophisticated rhetorician would have us believe it is heroic.)

That is, I woke up to the horrible recognition that JS is a no good, very bad sophist. (Just like Socrates ... was accused of.)

[Lia]

Thomas wrote: " I also wonder if Plato's love of Socrates was, um, purely rational?"

Alexey wrote: "Or did he love real Socrates or his ideas about the teacher? "

It struck me that to "love purely rationally" and without passion is to reject the particular and sublimate that to the abstract ... like the "knight" who gave up the princess for something abstract (love love to love love?), kind of like rejecting the love for one single woman (R.O.?) for some indiscriminate love of all your neighbors, the universal ...

(what's that noise? What's that smell? Yikes, I think Nietzsche just puked over there, I hope there's an assistant professor around to mop it up.)

Didn't Socrates also reject bodily sensual love (or at least the lustful Alcibiades' advances) for something higher, more abstract, more ideal?

This reminds me of Yeats' poem, BTW:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love
And not those things that they were emblems of.

[Lia]

Thomas wrote: "I suspect that reason and passion for kierkegaard are yet another dialectical pair, like Apollo and Dionysus. One is not above or below the other, and human existence lies somewhere in the balance, or imbalance, between them."

Remember our old friend Nietzsche and his "magnificient tension of spirit"?

But the struggle against Plato, or, to use a clear and “popular” idiom, the struggle against the Christian-ecclesiastical pressure of millennia – since Christianity is Platonism for the “people” – has created a magnificent tension of spirit in Europe, the likes of which the earth has never known: with such a tension in our bow we can now shoot at the furthest goals.

(BGE Judith Norman trans/ CUP p.4)

The biggest question I have is this: did SK (or JS?) mediate, synthesize these opposing pairs into oblivion, or into smooth and unobjectionable harmony? Or did he overstate the incommensurable polar oppositions so as to preserve or even amplify the tension?

Lyrics and dialectics should not be able to coexist, and yet that's the chimera SK / JS gave us... speaking of chimera, this also reminds me of Pascal's chimera:

“What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe.”

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: " That is, I woke up to the horrible recognition that JS is a no good, very bad sophist. (Just like Socrates ... was accused of.) "

Please explain! It seems to me that Silentio is perfectly honest about the irrational nature of faith, so I'm not sure how sophistry is engaged here. He doesn't make a fallacy appear true with tricky logic; he says up front that the act of faith is accomplished by virtue of the absurd. God makes an unethical demand of Abraham, and the fact that it's unethical is the point. There's no sophistry that can make that demand ethical and Abraham's acceptance of it rational. Or am I looking in the wrong place?

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "I hope there's an assistant professor around to mop it up.."

Allow me. I have some experience in this area, and a wide array of janitorial supplies at my disposal.

[Ignacio]

Thomas wrote: "Lily wrote: So what is the "absolute"? "

This is the question SK asks of us, isn't it? For Abraham it was God. What is it for each of us?"

This is the question I think the book continues to pose (and leaves us with). If you are a secular humanist (as I strive to be), what is the "absolute" for you? I do not want to be facetious and say it is "reason" or "the universal" ... perhaps there is no absolute, only the universal?

Or perhaps, and this rings more true to me, the absolute is compassion, kindness, or belief in the fundamental equality of all human beings. These are "self-evident truths" (ha!) that exceed the rational and transcend (or ground?) the universal.

I'm pretty sure Kierkegaard or Nietzsche would not agree though ... they would see humanism as some sort of mystification ...

[Ignacio]

Even though F&T leaves me feeling like there is no resolution to its big questions, I do find it intriguing, provocative, and fascinating as a literary exploration of faith. JS admits that his objective is to make Abraham’s incomprehensibility more salient, not to explain him.

I still wonder if the aesthetic plays an important role for Kierkegaard in bringing us closer to a realm beyond reason/the universal. Is the book engaging in some sort of "aesthetic irony" in the sense that the aesthetic (beauty, art, inwardness) gives us some inkling of what he calls "the absolute"? But maybe I am (mis)reading him through Kant's aesthetics ...

JS concludes that “Faith is the highest passion in a person. . . . no one goes further.” So faith is a supplement to all other perfections: ethical, heroic, stoic (resignation). It is a perfection above perfection, but not for everyone. Religious believers say it is a gift, but JS shows how it can also be a curse, and in any case it is a struggle.

I found it enlightening that he says: “Anyone placed in such a position is an emigrant from the sphere of the universal.” "Placed in" implies that one does not choose faith; it chooses you. No one would want to be that single individual, alone ...

[Lily]

Ignacio wrote: "Or perhaps, and this rings more true to me, the absolute is compassion, kindness, or belief in the fundamental equality of all human beings. These are "self-evident truths" (ha!) that exceed the rational and transcend (or ground?) the universal. ..."

Thanks for your comments, Ignacio.

[Lily]

Ignacio wrote: "JS admits that his objective is to make Abraham’s incomprehensibility more salient, not to explain him. .."

Your "salient" sent me to the dictionary:

a : standing out conspicuously : prominent, striking especially : of notable significance b : projecting above or beyond a general line, surface, or level : jutting upward or outward : protuberant
Latin salient-, saliens, present participle of salire to leap, spring ....

[Lily]

Ignacio wrote: "...."Placed in" implies that one does not choose faith; it chooses you...."

This seems consistent with the experiences of people I have known who have expressed "faith" that has seemed above the ordinary to me..sometimes people who are living out health conditions that can only be managed, not cured -- as we generally apply that word, whether of the self or of a beloved other.

[Ignacio]

Lily wrote: "Thanks for your comments, Ignacio."

Thank you for bringing it up (and thanks to Thomas). I had been wondering throughout what exactly K. meant by "the absolute." I think I am closer to understanding it now.

"Salient" is K's word--I was quoting from memory so I didn't use quotation marks. :-) (I wonder what it is in Danish.) Here's the original context:

For I have not forgotten, and the reader will please remember, that I got involved in the previous discussion to make that subject an obstacle, not as if Abraham could thereby become more comprehensible, but in order that the incomprehensibility could become more salient, for, as I said before, I cannot understand Abraham-I can only admire him. (Hong, 112)

[Lily]

Ignacio wrote: " ..."Salient" is K's word--I was quoting from memory so I didn't use quotation marks. :-) (I wonder what it is in Danish.) ..."


"vigtig" -- if the google translation service is accurate. Unfortunately, my grandparent's adherence to an English (American?) only speaking household when my mother, aunts, and uncles were having difficulty in school lost the language for succession generations in America.

[Lily]

@61 Thomas wrote: "....He chose to sacrifice his own son for the absolute. How could he not be transformed by this experience?..."

I know it is a very different scenario, but having sat these many years among women (mothers, aunts, grandmothers, friends, ....) who routinely bring family and community issues, often of health, to prayer and to comparison with the ancient Biblical stories, the Issac/Abraham story reminds me of one I knew only too closely as it transpired: a young teenager from the Midwest suffered a brain aneurysm. His estranged parents, upon recommendations out of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, brought him to NYC for what was, those thirty some years ago now, then a leading-edge surgical treatment, one not without risk. Yes, all sorts of rational considerations led to that day. Yes, today that then young man is leading a professional life of service. But to this day, his father, in particular, can speak to the agony of that journey. And, only a couple of days ago, I read an article on the vicissitudes of brain surgery and the possibilities for results devastating to patient and surgeon alike (albeit very unlike!) despite all the advances in knowledge and technologies in these intervening years. Perhaps irrelevant to this discussion of F&T; perhaps not. But sometimes the "absolutes" of life may seem as demanding as any "absolute" of what may be labelled as "divine"?

[Lia]

Thomas wrote: "Please explain! It seems to me that Silentio is perfectly honest about the irrational nature of faith, so I'm not sure how sophistry is engaged here. He doesn't make a fallacy appear true with tricky logic; he says up front that the act of faith is accomplished by virtue of the absurd. God makes an unethical demand of Abraham, and the fact that it's unethical is the point. There's no sophistry that can make that demand ethical and Abraham's acceptance of it rational. Or am I looking in the wrong place?"

We're probably taking the word "sophist" to mean different things. What I was trying to say is that I think I recognize in SK's dramatization of JS, an imitation of Aristophanes' dramatization of Socrates as the leader of the sophists in Clouds. You're probably thinking about Plato's definition of a Sophist... which was the first attempt to define or argue what a sophist is (AFAIK,) and came after Aristophanes. I think, for Aristophanes, "sophist" merely mean something that looks a lot like a gadfly by using confusing arguments to confound and then reach unlikely conclusions, which was not always sincere, which was apparently proliferating in Athens at the time.

I'm not confident about this, this is just a hunch -- while I agree JS is depicted as earnest and sincere about faith and the absurd, the way he is portrayed in general makes him seem a little manipulative, like he's playing monkey tricks to provoke or cajole people who identify as Christians to take up a series of movements, transformations, changes.

And then of course there's the Tarquin and the mercantilist cargo metaphor bookends. You have to suspect he isn't telling us everything he really meant to do.

As you noted, after all his earnest seriousness about Abraham's paradox, he ends up with something like an aesthetic solution, based on dramatic convention, expectations, irony as a technique. (He even named Aristophanes ... and suggested that Aristophanes might have possibly "let laughter pass judgment on the perverse age.")

I'm not talking about the definition or content of "faith", I'm talking about JS's method of expressing it that is maybe a little sophist...ticate.

By the time JS got to Prob. III (or maybe before that even) he sounds kind of glib, sarcastic (I think Bryan brought this up right from the beginning.) I suspect SK wants us to notice he isn't being straight with us. (After all, readers of the Hebrew bible know what Abraham finally says at the end of the ordeal -- "here I am" -- and in the process, disobeyed God and obeyed an angel instead. Did JS conceal that from his readers by leaving that just off the page while he goes on and on and on about what Abraham might say if he were to speak?)

[Ignacio]

Lily wrote: "But sometimes the "absolutes" of life may seem as demanding as any "absolute" of what may be labelled as "divine"?"

So true. It may be that the "absolutes" we experience in life are those that put us in relation to vulnerability and mortality (our own and of those we love). Or radical uncertainty (when life or death hang in the balance).

[Thomas]

Lia wrote: "And then of course there's the Tarquin and the mercantilist cargo metaphor bookends. You have to suspect he isn't telling us everything he really meant to do.."

Fear and Trembling lends itself to esoteric speculation because it sets up the problem without resolving it. But I don't think it was meant to hide anything. Almost half the book is devoted to four prefaces, and I think the work as a whole is meant as a preface (one of many more) to his religious works. (Kierkegaard had a fondness for prefaces, apparently. He even published a book called Prefaces, consisting of... you guessed it... nothing but prefaces.)

I think his goal in Fear and Trembling was to set up the problem of faith and doubt as a serious one, and to take a stab at his contemporaries who thought otherwise. Whether he means his Knights of Infinity and their gymnastics to be taken literally is another question, and that's where the aesthetic problem enters. The leap of faith doesn't seem to be something that lends itself to literal description. Poetry and art might be necessary tools for this job.

This is a difficult book, and I want to thank all of you who devoted the time and effort and took the the pains to read it with us. This discussion surpassed my expectations in every respect and I know I will be thinking about it and turning back to it for some time.

[Ignacio]

Thomas wrote: "This is a difficult book, and I want to thank all of you who devoted the time and effort and took the the pains to read it with us. This discussion surpassed my expectations in every respect and I know I will be thinking about it and turning back to it for some time."

And thank you, Thomas, for your guidance. It really helped me get so much more out of a book that made for very difficult and, at times, frustrating reading.

I did not want to read any secondary materials, but maybe now I will look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Kierkegaard. I am also planning to add "The Seducer's Diary" to my reading list ...

[Lia]

Big thanks from me as well. I benefited so much from viewpoints I personally couldn't have came up with on my own. I especially appreciated the dialogical back and forth we had as a group, in the process, my jimmies were rustled in ways that static texts generally aren't capable of causing (as Socrates and SK would want, I suspect.)

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

Yes...thank you Thomas for guiding the discussion. I don't know that I would have kept after it without the comments here.

The copy I have of F&T also includes The Sickness unto Death. I plan on trying that one as well, after a short break. The introduction makes SuD sound as though it is an elaboration of what SK started in F&T.

[Aiden]

Adding my thanks to all who contributed and to Thomas for his able leadership. It probably would have been a good while before I read Kierkegaard (I’m still on Plato) and I’m glad I was able to get at least a general understanding of his philosophy. Every comment and point of view helped me question more and understand a little better.

[Thomas]

Bryan "The copy I have of F&T also includes The Sickness unto Death. I plan on trying that one as well, after a short break. The introduction makes SuD sound as though it is an elaboration of what SK started in F&T. ."

It is, and it is also much more explicitly Christian. It is also extremely difficult, much more difficult that F&T. But give it shot, if only so you can read one of his most famous quotes in context:

"A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation’s relating itself to itself."

That is the opening paragraph of the first part, and it only gets better from there. :)

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

Hm...

[David]

So what do you get if you combine that opening paragraph with:

Because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Episode 1: The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean.

Someone check my math, but it appears; we are the spirit of the Cosmos.

[Alexey]

Thomas wrote: ""A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation’s relating itself to itself."

That is the opening paragraph of the first part, and it only gets better from there. :)"

If he meant that the human being is the self-centred self, I am intrigued what goes after...

It was a pleasure to be part of this discussion, despite my little contribution and pathetic struggle to express my thoughts about the book. You have shown me many aspects that I overlooked in previous readings. Thank you a lot.

[David]

The frequency illusion strikes again. I could not resist sharing.