Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
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Problem 3 and Epilogue
For the purposes of Silentio, how does "faith" differ from "trust"? Or perhaps I should ask, within the boundaries of Silentio's discussion, ....
Thomas wrote: “ All this seems fairly straightforward, but what does it have to do with aesthetics? ... How do aesthetics and ethics interact? Can one have a legitimate moral objection to a work of art? ...Silentio says "The path I have to take is to carry concealment dialectically through esthetics and ethics, for the point is to let esthetic concealment and the paradox appear in their absolute dissimilarity. "” It seems to me that the point of the exercise is the make clear Abraham’s concealment is not in anyway comparable to the programmatic use of concealment in fiction, in arts, in drama, in poetry... even if the physical movement, the outward appearance is essentially the same.
I suspect this is also partly what this section is about:
“ [Preliminary Expectoration] — Precisely because resignation is antecedent, faith is no esthetic emotion but something far higher; it is not the spontaneous inclination of the heart but the paradox of existence. If, for example, in the face of every difficulty, a young girl still remains convinced that her desire will be fulfilled, this assurance is by no means the assurance of faith, even though she has been brought up by Christian parents and perhaps has had confirmation instruction from the pastor for a whole year. She is convinced in all her childlike naiveté and innocence”
He’s being rather repetitive about it — It seems important to Kierkegaard to make clear that faith isn’t naive, it isn’t the kind of immediate emotional responses drama or literature are engineered to provoke. It’s not about strong feelings or inclination of the heart, but rather it’s about “the paradox of existence,” whatever that means.
*Personal reaction:Ugh! Problem 3 belongs in the ocean with the Merman! Geeze! I was lost, I was bored. I was tired of reading the same words over and over again in a different order… I started to get the feeling that Danish winters contributed a bit to this ramble.
Thomas wrote: "How would the story of Abraham be changed if Abraham had announced to the family that the Lord God demanded that he sacrifice Isaac? What are the aesthetic implications? And do these help us to understand the paradox of faith any better?"If Abraham announced to the family that the Lord God demanded he sacrifice Isaac, it would seem almost like he’s asking for the family’s blessing. He doesn’t need the family’s blessing because he is responding to a higher authority.
Lily wrote: "For the purposes of Silentio, how does "faith" differ from "trust"? Or perhaps I should ask, within the boundaries of Silentio's discussion, ...."I'm interested to see what others have to say to this. I started just thinking "Well, for JS, Faith is a quality Abraham has that I don't have, and that I couldn't understand unless I did."
Anyone have thoughts on the last word? In Problem 3 he talks about the importance of Abraham's last word- "son." JS's last word in Problem 3 is "lost," and the last word in the text is "abandoned." Bleak.
Lily wrote: "For the purposes of Silentio, how does "faith" differ from "trust"? Or perhaps I should ask, within the boundaries of Silentio's discussion, .... ""Trust" sounds like an expectation of receiving something in return, and apparently faith for Silentio does not expect anything. The outcome doesn't matter. Faith is a "heroic" way of living as if the outcome were already accomplished, even if it never actually is.
I’m struggling to parse this:“Faith is not the first immediacy but a later immediacy. The first immediacy is the esthetic, and here the Hegelian philosophy certainly may very well be right. But faith is not the esthetic, or else faith has never existed because it has always existed.”
Help?
Thomas wrote: "Trust" sounds like an expectation of receiving something in return, and apparently faith for Silentio does not expect anything. The outcome doesn't matter. "I think Abraham does expect something, what he expects simply isn’t specific, or rather, he doesn’t know the exact contents of what he expects. It’s a vague, general “trust” that God knows better, whatever God wills and commands him to do is towards fulfilling His promise, and will be “love,” and “good” by God’s judgment, which is outside and above human reason.
I tend to agree with Lily that JS’s faith is akin to a personal (or interpersonal) trust within a relationship. Kind of like my cat hates the vet and all the noisy dogs there, but I think she trusts me enough, in a non-intellectual sense, to let me take her there, and let me hold her while the vet violatingly takes her temperature.
Lia wrote: "It seems to me that the point of the exercise is the make clear Abraham’s concealment is not in anyway comparable to the programmatic use of concealment in fiction, in arts, in drama, in poetry... even if the physical movement, the outward appearance is essentially the same. "In the Problem 1 and 2 thread you said something about how love cannot be a duty, or it isn't love. I wonder if his concern with aesthetics isn't along a similar line, because he seems to be wrestling with disclosure as a duty. Is he defending Abraham against the charge that he concealed his intention for aesthetic reasons?
Thomas wrote: "Lily wrote: "For the purposes of Silentio, how does "faith" differ from "trust"? Or perhaps I should ask, within the boundaries of Silentio's discussion, .... ""Trust" sounds like an expectation ..."
In Abraham's example, there is clearly trust in God's will and ability to 'return' Isaac. If the outcome doesn't matter, what the difference between resignation and faith. Kierkegaard several times underline the difference is that faith is the expectation of something and receiving it, the way it is obtained doesn't matter. But in some illustrations he gives, faith is, indeed, 'a "heroic" way of living as if the outcome were already accomplished, even if it never actually is'. Kierkegaard is famous for his consistency, clarity, and logicality.
Thomas wrote: "he seems to be wrestling with disclosure as a duty. Is he defending Abraham against the charge that he concealed his intention for aesthetic reasons?..."I think JS is saying there are three distinct beakers you can drop concealment into, and they mean different things.
In the ethical beaker, there is a duty to disclose so as to respect the agency of other rational beings, so they can make informed choices.
It’s routine, expected, cliche even, to employ concealments in art (poets lie! Wait, this piece we’re reading is a “lyric” ... should we be worried?) Moreover, in arts, concealment is used to create tension (anxiety?) that keep them “interesting” (or do I mean “curious”?)
I see this more as preemptive inoculation against a popular impulse, rather than reactionary defence:
“ I am sufficiently courteous to assume that everyone in our age—which is so voluptuous, so potent and inflamed, that it conceives just as easily as the partridge that, according to Aristotle, needs only to hear the cock’s voice or its flight over her head—I assume that everyone who merely hears the word “hiddenness” will easily be able to shake a dozen novels and comedies out of his sleeve.”(I wish I were urbane enough to plea guilty to that!)
You know what the third beaker is ... I suspect JS is saying it cheapens Abraham to conflate his tension (or anxiety) with dramatic “yeast”. Tragic heroes bask in the glory of the tears they jerk out of their audiences; Abraham joyfully endured the entire ordeal in silence, alone, with no prospect of releasing this tension through disclosure. He is no Odysseus dramatising his misadventures to earn glory and fame and loots from gullible Phaeacians. His suffering is not for the greater good, not for the audience’s tears, it’s for him alone, and for God alone, which paradoxically is one and the same. It’s entirely secretive, private, the ethical world and entertainment industry are not factors in it.
I don't get it. If Abraham had disclosed his plans, it would only have increased the sufferings of Isaac and Sarah, and furthermore made his task more difficult.
Lia wrote: "I think Abraham does expect something, what he expects simply isn’t specific, or rather, he doesn’t know the exact contents of what he expects. It’s a vague, general “trust” that God knows better, whatever God wills and commands him to do is towards fulfilling His promise,.."This sounds like blind faith of the first immediate variety. Silentio seems to think religious faith is more complicated; it has to be, in order to be fully conscious, independent, and free.
I had hoped to avoid the Hare's Nest of Hegel, but to explain the immediate it's probably necessary. Don't take this to the bank, but this is my approximate understanding of how it works:
Example of Hegelian dialectic: the parent-child relationship. The first state is one of immediate unity, where the child is fully dependent upon the parent for its life and well being. This stage is unreflective, automatic, and "blind."
As the child grows, she reflects upon herself as distinct from the parent, develops her own personality, becomes independent, and rebels against the parent as an expression of this. This stage of separation is the opposite of immediate unity can be called reflective disunity.
But then, through a process of mediation or annulment, the child recognizes the parents as individuals in their own right and chooses to love them as the people they are, while remaining distinct. This stage may be called reflective unity.
Mediation or annulment happens when two opposing tendencies undergo a synthesis. For Kierkegaard, the self is a synthesis of the finite and the infinite, commitment and detachment, the subjective and the objective, and so on. But he disagrees with Hegel that the synthesis is harmonious. The opposites are never resolved into a harmonious unity. The self is a composite of opposing tendencies, held together by the spirit (the will) and the tension between those tendencies is never fully resolved. The child as an adult loves his parents through an act of spirit, intentionally, with purpose and love, but his independence is never "annulled" or mediated into a synthesis with them.
Alexey wrote: " Kierkegaard is famous for his consistency, clarity, and logicality.."Well, this was the guy who said, "People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me."
Which, if nothing else, shows that he had a sense of humor about himself.
Kierkegaard's sense of humour is a topic of its own, but he definitely has it.
I am puzzled as to why he says: "But faith is not the esthetic, or else faith has never existed because it has always existed." He appears to be saying here that faith does not belong to the realm of the aesthetic . . . but neither does it belong to ethics. Yet, in this final section, Kierkegaard spends a lot of time on the aesthetic: from Agnete and the Merman, to Agamemnon, to the Book of Tobit, Shakespeare, Goethe's Faust, and back to Abraham. I was wondering if he was pointing to the aesthetic as a way of approaching how we can understand faith.
Our reaction to aesthetic beauty is passionate and nonrational, but it can be intense and enduring. Ultimately, I thought he was indicating that Fear & Trembling is a work of literature (rather than philosophy of religion). It is an aesthetic exploration of faith.
What he is saying is very different from this, though. He is comparing the aesthetic with the hidden, and the ethical with what is manifest or disclosed, but I'm not sure I follow the argument (or paradox) or tension he is trying to develop here ...
Thomas wrote: "I find Problem 3 and the way it unravels even more enigmatic than the rest of the book."Couldn't have said it better. I feel like the book gets more complex and puzzling rather than providing answers or resolution.
I find F&T very provocative and intriguing as a (literary, aesthetic?) exploration of faith, but I also find it deeply exasperating. I find it frustrating that paradoxes seem to be the final word on some of the very big questions the book brings up.
I feel at times as if the stage is being set for Wittgenstein and the philosophy that transpires out of attempting to associate meaning with specific words -- from hence its etymology and whence its usage.
Ignacio wrote: "I am puzzled as to why he says: "But faith is not the esthetic, or else faith has never existed because it has always existed." He appears to be saying here that faith does not belong to the realm ..."As I understand, Kierkegaard wanted to draw the distinction between 'aesthetic' and 'religious' concealment further, and thus all the examples of how concealment works. Not the distinction becomes clearer after this section than after previous.
Roger wrote: "I don't get it. If Abraham had disclosed his plans, it would only have increased the sufferings of Isaac and Sarah, and furthermore made his task more difficult."You are right, and by disclosing the task to anyone he inevitably shared responsibility, and, by the essence of the task, Abraham should have not only the ultimate responsibility but the whole and only responsibility. Thus the act could not be performed, if the truth was revealed before the resolution.
His ideas on faith and generations is a little strange.But the highest passion in a human being is faith, and here no generation begins at any other point than the previous one, every generation begins from the beginning, and the following generation goes no further than the previous one, provided the latter remained true to its task and did not leave it in the lurch.On one hand he seems to be saying when it comes to faith each generation starts from the same starting point and there is no standing on the shoulders of the previous generation. However the last sentence seems to imply succeeding generations can inherit the previous generations setbacks.
1. Why are just the setbacks inheritable?
2. What about advancements made by great religious thinkers?
I was also thinking if faith is such an individual and subjective religious experience, why is he so concerned about lumping individuals into generations?
Thomas wrote: “This sounds like blind faith of the first immediate variety. Silentio seems to think religious faith is more complicated; it has to be, in order to be fully conscious, independent, and free.” I don’t know if it has to be “more complicated,” I mostly think it has to first be chastened (I think JS called it “discipline”) with despair.
At any rates, JS surmises that Abraham did expect something (and he said specifically, which kind of contradict what I asserted about the expectancy being vague and inexact.):
“But Abraham had faith specifically for this life—faith that he would grow old in this country, be honored among the people, blessed by posterity, and unforgettable in Isaac, the most precious thing in his life, whom he embraced with a love that is inadequately described by saying he faithfully fulfilled the father’s duty to love the son, [III 73] which is indeed stated in the command:17 the son, whom you love.”
I’m glad the Hares are out of the bag; I quite enjoy watching them leap!
And WC’ers worried about not being familiar enough with the Hebrew Bible to read FAT, personally, not knowing enough Hegel (not for the lack of trying!) is the major roadblock. (But of course, JS and SK are writhing in their graves. Hegel is supposed to be easy, Abraham’s story is ostensibly the really hard one. BRB, need to get my head checked.)
Alexey wrote: "You are right, and by disclosing the task to anyone he inevitably shared responsibility, and, by the essence of the task, Abraham should have not only the ultimate responsibility but the whole and only responsibility.."This is what happens in Silentio's first revision of the story in the "Attunement": Abraham discloses the task to Isaac, but Isaac does not understand him. Presumably this is because it makes no sense -- why would God demand such a thing? And as non-sense, it can't be properly expressed by Abraham or understood, especially by a child. So Abhraham takes full responsibility by saying that he is an idolator and the sacrifice is own desire, thereby saving Isaac's simplistic child-like faith in God.
Isaac's suffering is increased, but his anxiety is resolved with an explanation he can understand, however horrific the explanation is. By Kierkegaard's reasoning in Problem 3, this way this version ends is pagan; the reason for Isaac's suffering is made public and understandable. It is somewhat similar to Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigeneia in this respect.
Lia wrote: "...personally, not knowing enough Hegel (not for the lack of trying!) is the major roadblock..."Lia -- I appreciate whatever Hegel you and others bring to the discussion. I am ignorant thereon -- not an area I have even tried, even though in the almost twenty years now since the one in which I lost both my spouse and my professional work I have certainly spent many hours with various English translations of the Bible, "old" and "new" testaments, with leaders often able to access the languages through which translations have passed. And with other readers willing to wrestle with what meaning these ancient stories may lend to contemporary lives of birth, death, health crises, responsibility, relationships, .... Ofttimes the analogies are "easy"; other times, not so much.
Alexey wrote: "...by the essence of the task, Abraham should have not only the ultimate responsibility but the whole and only responsibility. ..."Thank you for that perspective/insight onto the story, Alexey.
Lia wrote: "...BRB, need to get my head checked...."[g] I presume you are referring to the lyrics?
David wrote: "2. What about advancements made by great religious thinkers?"My understanding is that SK is referring to how those great religious thinkers come to their advancements through their own personal absolute relationship to the absolute. If the “advancements” of knowledge by religious thinkers are arrived at properly through movements of infinite resignation and faith, future religious thinkers cannot simply claim this knowledge through reading about it. They can only truly attain this knowledge through their own personal movements of resignation and faith.
The distinction seems to be between knowing something and knowing OF something. If the religious thinkers of Kierkegaard’s day learned of “truths” by reading the writings of prior thinkers, they simply know OF what those people knew and; therefore, cannot consume the information and move beyond it because that would treat those religious truths as if they were ethical truths arrived at by reason rather than faith.
Simply, if I understand, each new thinker must go through his/her own “movements” in order to claim knowledge written about by others. Reading isn’t sufficient, experience is required.
Ignacio wrote: "I find F&T very provocative and intriguing as a (literary, aesthetic?) exploration of faith, but I also find it deeply exasperating. I find it frustrating that paradoxes seem to be the final word on some of the very big questions the book brings up...."Ignacio -- You couldn't have said better what led me to vote to discuss this under what I presumed would be Thomas as moderator.
Alexey wrote: "As I understand, Kierkegaard wanted to draw the distinction between 'aesthetic' and 'religious' concealment further, and thus all the examples of how concealment works."I think you're right. He seems to be saying there is a way in which within the aesthetic realm a tragic hero can remain silent if it is to protect or save someone else. This creates a form of inwardness or individuality that resembles that of faith, but is still not religious because it is a relation to the aesthetic (meaning, to tragic dignity?) but not to the absolute.
In the relation to the divine, however, the hero does not choose silence to protect someone else or because it is the noble (i.e., aesthetic) thing to do. He simply cannot communicate or disclose his decision because it cannot be expressed in human language, it is the result of a private, unique relation to the divine, the absolute that surpasses all understanding.
He keeps returning to the same phrase to express this: "the single individual in an absolute relation to the absolute," which I'm not sure I truly understand but I think I have a general idea of the distinction he is trying to make.
I do not know why JS insists Abraham cannot speak and be understood by others. Wouldn't another like minded individual be able to understand him? JS seems to be going to great lengths to argue the case to explain and justify Abraham's actions and a reader that agrees with these arguments should be able to understand them, right? Or is it more of a subjective thing, like one person sees a color he calls blue, but we cannot know if that same blue looks exactly the same to another person.
David wrote: "I do not know why JS insists Abraham cannot speak and be understood by others. Wouldn't another like minded individual be able to understand him? JS seems to be going to great lengths to argue the ..."I think JS is making two points:
1. The trial of Abraham (and anyone’s religious trial) is unique and personal in a way that it cannot be understood by others, i.e. there is no one “of like mind” because only he is enduring this trial and only he has a direct relationship with God. Also, disclosing to someone else would alter the nature of the trial itself by him sharing the burden.
2. Abraham’s actions are outside of the ethical and aesthetic spheres (the areas defined by the norms and mores of their particular time and society) and therefore, by definition, cannot be explained or understood intellectually. It can only be understood in the religious sphere through a faith in the absurd.
David wrote: "I was also thinking if faith is such an individual and subjective religious experience, why is he so concerned about lumping individuals into generations?.."He's specifically concerned with the generation of Hegelians, popular at the time, who believed that religious faith was just a moment in the history of thought. In this system every synthesis becomes a thesis, which engenders an antithesis, which leads to a new synthesis. This line of thinking proposes that in the progress of human thought and development, faith is a synthesis, a harmonious resolution of thesis and antithesis. But in time this synthesis becomes a thesis which is opposed by an antithesis, followed by another synthesis, and in the process faith gets swallowed up, built upon, and surpassed.
For SK, faith is never a matter of harmonious synthesis. It's controlled anxiety, a way of living "joyfully and happily every moment by virtue of the absurd, every moment to see the sword hanging over the beloved's head and yet to find, not rest in the pain of resignation, but joy by virtue of the absurd..."
This seems to me to be quite different from the common idea of faith. It's hardly an opiate. Just the opposite, it seems.
Aiden wrote: "I think JS is making two points: "1. The trial of Abraham (and anyone’s religious trial) is unique and personal in a way that it cannot be understood by others, i.e. there is no one “of like mind”
OK, but my point is JS just spent an entire book explaining to us what Abraham did, how he did it, and why? JS appears to understand it enough to tell the rest of us. I am beginning to think maybe instead of, understand, he means, agree. I understand him, I just don't agree because I don't accept the theistic premises, but how many like-minded Christians have read this book and agree with the arguments?
Aiden wrote: "2. Abraham’s actions are outside of the ethical and aesthetic spheres (the areas defined by the norms and mores of their particular time and society) and therefore, by definition, cannot be explained or understood intellectually"
Again, JS just spent a good portion of the book rationally/intellectually explaining about the suspension of the ethical and how it works. It is perfectly understandable to me that for a person who believes in divine command that it quite naturally trumps any other ethical standards.
I can't find the exact quote now, and I can't remember which section it came from, but I seem to remember JS saying the point is to highlight the enormous difficulty (if not impossibility) of understanding Abraham. In fact, JS (and the bored old man in exodium) both acknowledge they cannot understand Abraham (the old man even questioned who could possibly understand him.) I read this book not as an effort to defend or to make Abraham make sense, this is a poetic effort to highlight how Abraham (and faith) does not make sense. It's not something that intellectuals can labor to prove and stamp it with QED and toss it into the booty-cabinet of progress.
In fact, in multiple sections, we end with incommensurable opposites that not even Hegel can synthesize, or so I would hope. (I may or may not fail a bunch of exams on Hegel 7 times, who knows.):
- either Abraham was a murderer at every moment or we are at a paradox that is higher than all mediations
- either there is an absolute duty to God, or else faith has never existed because it has always existed, or else Abraham is lost
- either there is a paradox, that the single individual as the single particular stands in absolute relation to the absolute, or Abraham is lost
I suspect JS is sneakily sinking a whole cargoship full of Abrahams into the abyss so as to raise the price of faith... or at least, make birth rights Christians recognize it's more expensive (or require way more efforts) than they presume.
Lia wrote: "I suspect JS is sneakily sinking a whole cargoship full of Abrahams into the abyss so as to raise the price of faith... or at least, make birth rights Christians recognize it's more expensive (or require way more efforts) than they presume."It seems the latter was his intention, and only in passing he defence faith from secular attacks. In a much more secular word, this defence takes far more attention than initially planned.
Alexey wrote: "It seems the latter was his intention, and only in passing he defence faith from secular attacks. In a much more secular word, this defence takes far more attention than initially planned.."The implication seems rather damning: In the process of absorbing or subsuming religious experience into their reasonable, rational, system(s), the academic theologians who labored to bat for (or legitimize) team-religion did more to secularize Christiandom and eradicate faith than the atheist-attackers.
I propose placing Kant: Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason in exhibit-A (in which Kant declares it a mistake for Abraham to obey God... not that I disliked Kant's position.)
Thomas wrote: "He's specifically concerned with the generation of Hegelians, popular at the time, who believed that religious faith was just a moment in the history of thought..."Isn't he legitimizing or extending the influence or legitimacy or currency of Hegel by taking up his "generational" or historicizing vocabularies and presuppositions? He might oppose Hegel (or so they say,) but ... doesn't that opposition itself add more fuels for Hegelians to synthesize?
Lia wrote: "Isn't he legitimizing or extending the influence or legitimacy or currency of Hegel "If each generation has to start from the beginning, then for the faithful, faith becomes static and would only be in thesis. Faith would never advance to the stages of antithesis and synthesis.
wait a minute, faith can’t become static “ But the person who has come to faith (whether he is extraordinarily gifted or plain and simple does not matter) does not come to a standstill in faith. Indeed, he would be indignant if anyone said this to him, just as the lover would resent it if someone said that he came to a standstill in love; for, he would answer, I am by no means standing still. I have my whole life in it. Yet he does not go further, does not go on to something else, for when he finds this, then he has another explanation. ”
Faith itself seems to not be a concept but a [double] movement, it can’t be thought, it can only be performed (or lived, existed in such a way.). The said movement doesn’t move beyond faith, and yet it’s not static.
David wrote: "OK, but my point is JS just spent an entire book explaining to us what Abraham did, how he did it, and why? JS appears to understand it enough to tell the rest of us.."Well, he says he doesn't, and his argument suggests that the only one who can understand is Abraham himself. That doesn't mean that he can't look at and describe the phenomenon and its difficulty from a detached, universal point of view. He can't understand Abraham's experience, just as no one can understand another's personal experience, but he can describe it as poets and philosophers and psychologists do, in universal terms. We can understand the universal. What we can't understand is the single individual who is above the universal in the way that JS says Abraham is.
An analogy might be romantic love. (It's probably not a coincidence that Silentio chooses the knight figure.) We are above the universal when we are in love. When I see a person in love, it looks a lot like lunacy. Talk to this person and she'll make no sense if she tries to objectively explain what she is going through. Any attempt will come out in poetry or music, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. I don't understand what that person is going through on a personal individual level, but I have had that experience and so I do know, in a detached universal way, what she's going through. Precisely what she's feeling, as the single individual, I can't understand. But I know it's not stupidity, all appearances to the contrary.
David wrote: "OK, but my point is JS just spent an entire book explaining to us what Abraham did, how he did it, and why? JS appears to understand it enough to tell the rest of us. I am beginning to think maybe instead of, understand, he means, agree."JS’s argument seems to, in fact, be the exact opposite of this.
Yes, JS does understand the paradox of Abraham’s faith, but he makes clear that his understanding and sharing of his thoughts with other thinkers is not the same thing as those thinkers (or us readers) understanding enough even to agree or disagree. He stresses how personal and individual Abraham’s trial and decision is (even stressing its incommunicability to others through violation of the ethical) and how another human being cannot possibly “truly understand” without themselves experiencing the same.
JS isn’t trying to instruct on virtue like a sophist, but rather trying to elucidate his thinking on how these movements of resignation and faith were made by Abraham and; therefore, how the individual is meant to examine and live their faith in a general, not particular, way.
JS’s invocation of Descartes Discourse on Method in the prefatory materials seems on point here. JS explains that Descartes immediately determined upon completion that he was explaining how he came to his thinking, not how others should, since his method was personal and non-transferable.
JS is likewise sharing his thinking on the ethical and aesthetic dilemmas contained in Abraham’s actions, not specifying how others can/should make the same movement since Abraham’s case was sui generis. The distinction being in the motivations, not the acts themselves.
This discussion has really helped me understand the first part of the book, but I am LOST on the demonic. The counterpart to the divine. Is it the antithesis?
Ashley wrote: "This discussion has really helped me understand the first part of the book, but I am LOST on the demonic. The counterpart to the divine. Is it the antithesis?"Whether a surreptitious action it is unethically demonic or divine under a suspension of the ethical depends on the source and the intent.
If I go further, I always stumble upon the paradox, the divine and the demonic, for silence is both of these. Silence is the demon’s snare, and indeed the more it is silenced, the more frightful the demon becomes; but silence is also the deity’s communion with the single individual.
Ashley wrote: "This discussion has really helped me understand the first part of the book, but I am LOST on the demonic. The counterpart to the divine. Is it the antithesis?"To flesh out what David said above, both the demonic and the divine are orientations outside the universal. The example Silentio gives us is the merman, a seducer who has rejected the possibility of love and sees women only as prey for his desire. The merman is an outsider to the ethical and in an absolute relation to the absolute, but with the opposite orientation of the knight of faith. The knight of faith is the single individual oriented toward love absolutely, while the demoniac is the single individual who has rejected love absolutely. Both are outside the ethical and the universal, and both are inexpressible and concealed.
In JS's story (which has a few different versions to make it extra interesting and even harder to follow) Agnes is able to rescue the merman from his loveless state by means of her innocence. (Don't ask me how innocence does this, but evidently it does.) At this point the merman has three options:
1. He can go off to repent alone in his concealment. leaving poor Agnes with a broken heart,
2. He can repent in his concealment but be a big jerk to Agnes so she feels better off without him,
3. He can be saved by Agnes by being disclosed in his guilt, and marry her. (Lucky girl!) To do this he must first make the movement of repentance (which is analogous to the movement of resignation, but more complicated and not fully explained because JS does not want to go into his complicated theory of sin) and then he must make the movement of faith.
Lia wrote: "Alexey wrote: "It seems the latter was his intention, and only in passing he defence faith from secular attacks. In a much more secular word, this defence takes far more attention than initially pl..."Do not want to argue with your thesis just shift it a little -- it is bigots and hypocrites in the Church who have made a thousand times more damage to Gospel than all the external attacks, and not all of them were universities professors. I do not want to think about Kant as one of them, but who knows...
Thomas wrote: “ Both are outside the ethical and the universal, and both are inexpressible and concealed. ” not sure if I’m reading too much into it, but Abraham “cannot speak” in a manner that is not true for the Merman:
“The demonic has the same quality as the divine, namely, that the single individual is able to enter into an absolute relation to it. This is the analogy, the counterpart to that paradox of which we speak. It has, therefore, a certain similarity that can be misleading. Thus, all the anguish the merman suffers in silence seems proof that his silence is justified. Meanwhile, there is no doubt that he can speak. So if he speaks, he can become a tragic hero, in my opinion a grandiose tragic hero.
...
Esthetics allowed, indeed demanded, silence of the single individual if he knew that by remaining silent he could save another. This alone adequately shows that Abraham is not within the scope of esthetics. His silence is certainly not in order to save Isaac; in fact, his whole task of sacrificing Isaac for his own and for God’s sake is an offense to esthetics, because it is able to understand that I sacrifice myself but not [III 159] that I sacrifice someone else for my own sake. The esthetic hero was silent. Meanwhile, ethics passed judgment on him because he was silent on account of his accidental particularity. It was his human prescience that led him to remain silent. Ethics cannot forgive this. Any human knowing of that sort is only an illusion. Ethics demands an infinite movement, it demands disclosure. The esthetic hero, then, can speak but will not.
At every moment, Abraham can stop; he can repent of the whole thing as a spiritual trial; then he can speak out, and everybody will be able to understand him—but then he is no longer Abraham. 61 Abraham cannot speak, because he cannot say that which would explain everything (that is, so it is understandable): that it is an ordeal such that, please note, the ethical is the temptation.”
I suppose the Merman will no longer be a merman if he were to disclose, just like Abram would not have become Abraham if he repented and disclosed, BUT, the actual content of the Merman’s concealment is that he is transgressing; the actual content of Abraham’s silence is actually nonsense, therefore he can at best speak but convey nothing (irony)
Lia wrote: "I suppose the Merman will no longer be a merman if he were to disclose, just like Abram would not have become Abraham if he repented and disclosed, BUT, the actual content of the Merman’s concealment is that he is transgressing; the actual content of Abraham’s silence is actually nonsense, therefore he can at best speak but convey nothing (irony)"What is interesting is that neither the Merman nor Abraham have chosen to be the way they are. Abraham has been chosen by God, and the Merman has, like Richard III, been "rudely stamp'd" and cheated by nature. Neither can speak or disclose themselves without coming back to the universal and the ethical, and this is a temptation for both of them. It's easier to be a tragic hero than an individual who can't be understood (in Greek the term for this kind of person is "idiot.")
The difference between them seems to be that the Merman's way to the paradox is through guilt and repentance, while Abraham's is through resignation. But the gift of the paradox is similarly actual and finite -- for the Merman, the gift is Agnes, and for Abraham, it's Isaac.
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!
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
Hegel: A Very Short Introduction (other topics)The Concept of Irony: With Continual Reference to Socrates/Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures (other topics)
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (other topics)
Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Trembling': A Reader's Guide (other topics)
The Idiot (other topics)
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Silentio again tries to defend Abraham against condemnation by the ethical, this time from an aesthetic approach. Abraham appears to have an ethical obligation, a responsibility, to disclose his trial and his intent to those who are most affected by it -- Sarah, Isaac, and Abraham's family servant, Eliezer. For Silentio, the universal, the ethical, is disclosure. The universal is common to everyone, as language is common, and disclosure is necessary for those who abide by an ethics that applies to the community universally. Concealment is a private matter, and keeping a secret indicates a withdrawal from the community, which is certainly a temptation for the single individual who wants to keep his unethical intentions concealed.
All this seems fairly straightforward, but what does it have to do with aesthetics? I find Problem 3 and the way it unravels even more enigmatic than the rest of the book. How do aesthetics and ethics interact? Can one have a legitimate moral objection to a work of art? (To the MIsfit, for example, in O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," who is certainly objectionable, but also fictional.)
How would the story of Abraham be changed if Abraham had announced to the family that the Lord God demanded that he sacrifice Isaac? What are the aesthetic implications? And do these help us to understand the paradox of faith any better?
Silentio says "The path I have to take is to carry concealment dialectically through esthetics and ethics, for the point is to let esthetic concealment and the paradox appear in their absolute dissimilarity." How does concealment, expressed aesthetically, help us to understand the paradox of "the single individual"?
He then presents a number of examples where aesthetic concealment is played against ethical disclosure.
The couple who secretly love each other, but neither will disclose their love. The girl is forced to marry someone else, and disclosure would have the effect of destroying the family. But by a coincidence, the man the girl is marrying finds out about her secret love, and generously frees her to join her true love.
Aesthetics here demands they remain silent, but Silentio notes that sometimes aesthetics demands disclosure, as in Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis
The Delphic Bride: should the bridegroom stay silent and get married? Or should he stay silent and not get married? Or disclose the augur's prediction to his bride?
Agnes and the Merman: What does Silentio mean by the demonic, and how is it a counterpart to the divine in the paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal? Is the movement of repentance similar to the movement of resignation?
The story of Tobias and Sarah: the threat that looms over their marriage is disclosed, and they heroically face it anyway in faith. (Silentio wants us to overlook the comic element in this story, but I am curious anyway. What makes it potentially comical? And how can such a dreadful scenario also be funny?)
How does the aesthetic function in these stories, and how does it collide with the ethical? How does the story of Abraham stack up aesthetically, and why is this important to Silentio?
Epilogue
Silentio's primary motivation has been to present faith as a challenge, a trial to be approached with earnestness and anxiety. Faith is obviously an intensely personal matter, so personal (and paradoxical) that it can't be properly communicated. Has Silentio managed at least to communicate what faith is, even in an elliptical, roundabout kind of way?