Throughout the sustained reflection on Abraham found in Fear
and Trembling, Kierkegaard appears always to have two
adversaries in mind: philosophical speculation (especially
Hegel’s metaphysics) and ethics.
Hegel maintained that Christianity was merely a pictorial
representation in concrete, colourful images of a truth that
the philosopher could apprehend by means of rising to the
standpoint of the Absolute through pure thought. To
say this, Kierkegaard knew, is to say that the philosopher
can apprehend a supposed higher unity in which God and
humankind have been brought together, “God”
now being no more than the essence of humankind.
Hegel’s understanding of religion, of course, includes his
understanding of faith. And
since philosophy “goes further” than religion, philosophy
necessarily goes further than faith -- only, says
Kierkegaard, to turn wine into water.[1] Similarly,
a society popularly imbued with Hegel’s dilution is unable
to comprehend the significance of Genesis 22 even as it
disdains the biblical narrative as no more than “bourgeois
philistinism.”[2]
Philosophy,
meanwhile, is not aware that it denatures faith, for
philosophy insists that it comprehends faith even as it
supersedes faith. In
all of this theology is seemingly unaware that its mandate
is theos,
God. Instead
theology “sits all rouged and powdered in the window and
courts its favours, offers its charms to philosophy.”[3] Theology
has prostituted itself to philosophy while preening itself
on an intellectual sophistication superior to the crudeness
of Abraham and Isaac. After
all, “it is supposed to be difficult to understand Hegel,
but to understand Abraham is a small matter.”[4] With
mordant irony Kierkegaard turns the vocabulary of “further”
back upon his opponent: overwhelmed at Abraham, Kierkegaard
glories in the fact that in 130 years the patriarch “got no
further than faith.”[5] While
“got no further” waggishly suggests that Abraham was
stalled, Kierkegaard knows that Abraham, not the
philosophical speculators, had alone moved on to existence. Existence
cannot be gained or entered upon by means of the “thought
experiments” of the metaphysicians, but only as the
detachment of “worldly understanding” is left behind in
favour of radical commitment.[6]
The radical commitment is to God; not the “God” of
philosophical constructs but the One who summons every
would-be believer to Abrahamic trial. Such
trial has nothing to do with the glib summaries of those who
“recite the whole story in cliches: ‘The great thing was
that he [Abraham] was willing to offer him the best.’“[7] Neither
is such trial the facile escape into religious ethereality
of those who speak offhandedly of a post
mortem resolution
to Abraham’s conundrum. The
trial, rather, is enduring the contradiction between promise
and command. This
contradiction is nothing less than “absurd.” As
faith paradoxically embraces the absurd (in all of this the
“this-worldliness” of Isaac and promised blessing
must be kept in mind), faith is vindicated and confirmed not
in an ethereal eternal but in the temporal: Isaac, having
been given up, is given back in this world. Isaac
lives, and the promised blessing is operative in the
temporal. For
this reason Kierkegaard underscores, for the benefit of
philosophers and romantics alike, “Abraham had faith for
this life…specifically for this life.”[8] By
way of reminder of the link between the absurd and the
temporal Kierkegaard adds, “Only he who draws the knife gets
Isaac.”[9]
The second major adversary for Kierkegaard is the realm of
ethics. Everywhere
in this part of Fear
and Trembling Kierkegaard
relentlessly contrasts the “single individual” (or the
“knight of faith”) with the universality of the ethical.
To act ethically is to embody a universal principle. Put
more sharply, to act ethically is for the agent to “annul
his singularity in order to become the universal.”[10] From
an ethical standpoint a father ought always (i.e.,
universally) to love his son more than he loves himself. For
this reason a legitimate ethical protest would be Isaac’s
crying out, “Do not do this: you are destroying everything.”[11]
In light of the legitimacy of the ethical protest, why does
Abraham set off with fire and knife, one thing only in
mind? He does so
for God’s sake and for his own sake; i.e., he does it
because God has commanded it, and he does it inasmuch as
faith exists only as faith is exercised, it being impossible
for faith to be “thought” philosophically.
As different as faith and the ethical evidently are, they
remain frequently confused. Such
confusion is manifest whenever it is argued that since the
ethical is universal, the ethical is also divine. The
argument here traces duty back to God, since ethical duty
(e.g., with respect to neighbour) is “essentially duty to
God.”[12] Perceptively
Kierkegaard draws our attention to the crucial consideration
here: “in the duty itself I do not stand in
relation to
God.”[13]
Commensurate with the aforementioned contrast Kierkegaard
distinguishes the ethical hero from the knight of faith. In
giving up himself for the universal the ethical hero enjoys
the security of knowing that others understand him and
admire him; and if his heroism is tragic too, others will
weep over him as well.[14] No
one, on the other hand, understands or admires the knight of
faith. It would
be preposterous to suggest that anyone would weep over
Abraham. Instead
Abraham can be approached only with ahorror religiosus,
akin to that with which Israel approached Sinai.[15] At
the same time there is a singular privilege vouchsafed to
the knight of faith: she alone says “you” to God, whereas
the ethical hero, related ultimately to a principle (the
ethical universal), merely speaks of God in the third
person.[16] This
lattermost point is pivotal: in the realm of ethics we do
not meet, engage, or contend with the living God himself; we
can do no more than speak about him at the level of hearsay.
None of this must be taken to suggest that the ethical is
unimportant. Kierkegaard’s
point, however, is that since faith alone is “an absolute
relation to the absolute”, the single individual determines
his relation to the universal by his relation to the
absolute, nevervice versa.[17] The
single individual may be summoned to what ethics forbids
(e.g., the slaying of Isaac), but the single individual is
never summoned to stop loving. Abraham
loved Isaac -- or else Isaac’s death was no sacrifice but
simply murder -- for Abraham was no Cain.[18] Needless
to say, however, the loneliness of Abraham (and therefore of
any believer) is his inability to make any of this
understandable to even one other human being. Since
no one can foster the understanding requisite for faith, no
believer can help someone else into faith:
“either the single individual himself becomes the knight of
faith by accepting the paradox or he never becomes one.”[19]
All that Kierkegaard has said to this point about the
ethical, the universal, faith, and absolute relation to the
absolute yields his notorious assertion concerning the
“teleological suspension of the ethical.” With
the regularity of a tolling bell Kierkegaard avers
throughout the latter half of Fear
and Trembling that
either there genuinely is such a suspension, either Abraham
does exist in an absolute relation (higher than the category
of the ethical) to the absolute (God), “or else Abraham is
lost.”[20] In
light of philosophy’s incomprehension of all that
Kierkegaard has said about the suspension, together with the
human horror that surrounds the particular absurdity
pertaining to Isaac, he does not hesitate to say that not
only is Abraham’s life the most paradoxical that can be
thought; it is so paradoxical that it cannot be thought.[21] Still,
the foregoing must never be regarded as unique to Abraham. He
is prototype, to be sure, but as such is always to be
imitated by those who have never settled for the cheap
edition of him that the church is forever trying to sell. He
remains the “guiding star that saves the anguished.”[22]
Kierkegaard repeats several times over that what passes for
faith in Christendom in fact is not; viz.,
“infinite resignation.” Infinite
resignation is a movement prior to faith; in fact it is the
last stage before faith, but never faith itself. Infinite
resignation, it must always be understood, is a movement in thought not
in existence. It
is born of a concentration of the person in a goal or
purpose which integrates that person. Infinite
resignation gains the person an eternal consciousness;
specifically an eternal consciousness “in blessed harmony
with my love for the eternal being.”[23] Kierkegaard’s
point (contra Hegel)
is that even an eternal consciousness is still only consciousness;
it is not yet existence. Faith
alone embraces existence, and does so only by means of a
“leap.” This
leap is always a qualitative transition that nothing can
precipitate or effect incrementally. Again,
infinite resignation yields peace and rest, the irreducible
pain of life being yet the occasion of a peculiar kind of
comfort – for those possessed of infinite resignation are
considered to be heroes. Knowing
themselves such, “their walk is light and bold.”[24] Infinite resignation
is the matter of relinquishing everything in
one’s own strength – and thereby finding “peace and rest and
comfort in the pain.”[25] Faith,
on the other hand, never mitigates the pain of existence
(i.e., of faith).[26]
Infinite resignation is not for that reason to be slighted. Indeed,
in infinite resignation we become aware of our eternal
validity in light of the enormity of the relinquishment. Since infinite resignation
is the end-term of relinquishment, the faith that is
distinct from religiosity (a form of Romanticism)[27] can
never be “esthetic emotion.”[28] While
infinite resignation can renounce everything, it can gain
nothing. Faith
alone – which faith has abandoned the Romantic/religious
notion that we can save ourselves as long as our love for
God is greater than our concern for earthly happiness –
gains what was granted to Abraham.[29]
We resign everything –
including our concern to achieve earthly happiness –
precisely in order, as knights of faith, to inherit
the finite.[30] Finite
Isaac, it must be said again, once given up is given back,
with untold blessing for a finite world. At
the point of infinite resignation we are convinced that the
impossible is just that: impossible -- and hence the
resignation. Faith,
on the other hand, moves “beyond” infinite resignation (here
Kierkegaard turns Hegel’s vocabulary back on Hegel himself)
and “passionately acknowledges” (i.e., endorses or owns) the
impossible.[31] The
single individual knows that we can be saved only as faith,
itself a paradox, grasps the absurd. Such
faith is forever the antithesis of the detachment of
philosophy and forever the antithesis of the immediacy of
the heart’s spontaneous inclination.[32] Such
faith is always the paradox of existence.
In light of all that has been said concerning the absurd,
paradox, leap and existence, and the fact that the single
individual can be neither understood nor admired,
Kierkegaard is correct when he contends that the believer is
finally a witness, not a teacher.[33] A
witness to what? A
witness to grace, certainly, and also a witness to faith. For
it is the single individual who alone can affirm, in the
face of the absurd, Jehovah-Jireh, “God
will provide.” And
Abraham’s total existence,
says Kierkegaard, is gathered up in that one Hebrew word. Existence, contra Hegel,
is indeed “beyond” all philosophical thought-experiments.
Kierkegaard’s exclamation remains challenging, profound, and
dismaying all at once: “No one is as great as Abraham. Who
is able to understand him?”[34]
