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Continental
Philosophy
Kierkegaard – The Paradox of Faith
Primary Sources:
- Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, “The Absolute
Paradox”, pp. 46-47, 49-50, 54-59, 61, 63-66 (Handout)
- God, The Bible, “Genesis”, 22:1-13 (Handout)
- Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, “Problemata: Preliminary
Expectoration”, pp. 36-43 (Handout)
- Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, “Problem I: Is There
Such a Thing as a Teleological Suspension of the Ethical?” in
KA, pp. 129-134
Background:
From the Routledge Online Encyclopedia:
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[In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard considers]
limitations in the outlook of accepted morality that make themselves
felt at certain levels or junctures of experience and are held to call
for what is termed a ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’.
The implications of this prima facie puzzling notion are explored
in Fear and Trembling, an intricately wrought study in which
Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author – Johannes de silentio
– treats as his central theme the biblical story of Abraham and
Isaac. Johannes portrays Abraham as being ostensibly called upon to
set aside ethical concerns in deference to a higher telos or
end that altogether transcends them. Such a situation is contrasted
with the predicament of what he terms the ‘tragic hero’,
the latter being someone who is forced to make a choice between conflicting
moral requirements but who in doing so still remains within the bounds
of the ethical domain. Thus although the decisions taken there may be
at an agonizing cost, the fact that they can none the less be seen to
conform to universally recognized norms renders them rationally acceptable
to others and capable of gaining their respect. This, however, is not
so in the case of Abraham, who, as a solitary ‘knight of faith’,
responds to a divine command supposedly addressed to himself alone and
having a content – the killing of his own son – that must
inevitably strike ordinary thought as being both outrageous and incomprehensible.
No attempt is made to soften the paradoxical character of such points.
On the contrary, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym sets out to underline,
indeed to dramatize, the disturbing nature of the demands which religious
faith can impose on the life and conduct of an individual. At the same
time, he takes practising churchmen severely to task for paying lip
service to a phenomenon whose awesome significance they fail to appreciate,
and he also criticizes contemporary theorists of religion for construing
an intrinsically transcendent category in terms drawn from social and
essentially secular conceptions of ethics. This was not to suggest that
from a religious point of view moral standards and principles could
in general be abrogated or overruled. It did mean, on the other hand,
that within that perspective they took on a radically different aspect,
one where they possessed a relative rather than an absolute status and
where it was the individual’s own relation to God that was paramount,
assuming precedence over all other considerations.
The claim that faith in the religious sense pertains to what exceeds
the limits of human rationality and understanding recurs in subsequent
writings that Kierkegaard referred to as his ‘philosophical works’
[e.g., the Philosophical Fragments]. Here,
however, it is discussed within a wider setting and in connection with
theoretical questions concerning the proper interpretation of religious
assertions. In each of them it is made apparent that the author totally
rejects the feasibility of trying to provide religious tenets with an
objective foundation. The belief that the existence and nature of God
could be conclusively established from resources supplied by pure reason
might have enjoyed a long philosophical career; none the less it was
demonstrably unacceptable, Kierkegaard largely echoing – though
in a summary form and without attribution – some of the objections
that Kant had levelled against arguments traditionally advanced by theologians
and metaphysicians. For by exposing the vanity of attempts to encompass
within its grasp matters that lay beyond the scope of reason, such remarks
could be said to provide salutary reminders of what was really at stake.
It was not to the spheres of impersonal judgment and dispassionate assent
that the religious consciousness rightfully belonged, but on the contrary
to those of individual choice and inner commitment.
Questions:
- What is Kierkegaard’s notion of faith?
- What is the supreme paradox of reason, and how does it relate to
the traditional “proofs for the existence of God”, and the
acoustical illusion?
- What is Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the story of Abraham?
- What are a “teleological suspension of the ethical”, the
“temptation of the ethical”, and the difference between
a tragic hero and Abraham?
- Is Abraham a murderer?
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