kierkegaard and fideism essay Flashcards
intro general
In his 1843 work Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes de Silentio (hereafter Johannes - develop on why. ‘the point of view of my work as an author’) seeks to understand the ‘father of faith’, namely, Abraham. He focuses specifically on Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac, with his concern lying in the following: ‘if Abraham represents faith, is this really what faith is about?’. However, Johannes’ exploration of faith is not confined to a detailed exploration of the figure of Abraham; it extends to wider issues of faith in contemporary philosophy. Johannes’ primary attack is on the Hegelian idea of faith as a mere ‘provisional state’ leading to successful philosophy. For Johannes, true faith cannot be so easily understood (and discarded); rather, faith is a telos beyond the realms of human conceptualisation.
intro argument
- not overly fideistic
- faith is important; Abraham is ‘knight of faith’
- but concern with faith reflects specific and wider concerns
- abraham = exemplary figure but also responding to contemporary ‘cheapening’ of faith
- faith as a process that involves double movement of renunciation and trust in absurd
- Abraham’s not like tragic heroes idealised by contemporaries, faith = difficult
intro paragraphs
faith as a higher telos transcending the universal
role of faith in teleological suspension of ethical
faith as a two-stage process involving renunciation and trust in the absurd
para 1 - Johannes’ emphasis on faith as a higher telos rooted in the religious could be deemed excessively fideistic; indeed, he views one’s duty to god as superseding the spheres of both aesthetics and ethics.
general
rejects Hegelian understanding of faith as a mere phase - faith = most difficult matter
difficulty is in individual nature - whilst aesthetics and ethics are rooted in the universal, faith lies within one’s religious and personal relation to the absolute
faith as superior to aesthetics and ethics is seen in problemata ii - is there an absolute duty to god? for J, yes
- faith is based on duty to god rather than the universal
- also has superior interiority
- universal must be considered through the lens of relationship to absolute
para 1 - knight of faith
knight of faith is not outwardly heroic
- exterior of knights of resignation resembles bourgeois philistine
- criticising contemporary bourgeoisie - they don’t realise the struggle
- knight of faith has tasted the infinite, feels pain of returning tot he universal
- Johannes’ stress on faith involving suffering is not so significantly perceived in Kierkegaard’s later Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, which although shares the idea of an absolute, religious, telos, does not carry the same sense of pathos
para 1 ao2
rejection of ethical realm = antinomian
teleological suspension of ethical - murder could be justified if willed by God
but…fails to recognise unique situation. faith is admirable but quasi-unattainable
What distinguishes Abraham’s faith is his direct relation to the divine; he suspends the universal in order to obey God yet, throughout all of this, continues to love his son.
para 1 ao2 - incomprehensible nature of paradox of faith
‘monstrous paradox’ = incomprehensible.
link to pseudonym - Whilst the pseudonym de Silentio may suggest man’s inability to successfully understand faith, it could alternatively be granting the reader autonomy to make their own judgments about faith, without the voice’s bias. I would argue for the former based on Johannes’ emphasis on the inexpressibility of faith. Indeed, Abraham’s faith compels him to silence; he is aware that he cannot successfully vocalise his faith.
not advocating antinomianism - unique case of successful undertaking of two-stage process
also commenting on state of faith in wider society
two-fold threat: hegelianims and Xian complacency
conc for para 1
Therefore, the emphasis on faith in Fear and Trembling is not too extreme; rather, in presenting the figure of Abraham as an exemplary ‘knight of faith’, Johannes is both suggesting a re-evaluation of contemporaries’ view of their own faith, whilst also providing an ideal to aspire to.
para 2 - Whilst we have established that Johannes depicts faith as the ultimate telos outside the universal, let us now turn to the ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’ required of Abraham to overcome the barrier of the universal.
could be merely reactive - distinguishing J from tragic heroes of his day
faith = paradoxical, higher than universal. actively opposing Hegelian sittlichkeit. if H upholds this, then A = murderer
hence emphasis on the individual of A - need to uphold paradox of faith and teleological suspension of ethical for A to not be a murderer
para 2 - contrast with tragic hero
Whilst the ‘the tragic hero renounces himself in order to express the universal; the knight of faith renounces the universal in order to be the particular’.
knight of faith prefers universal and yet still chooses solitude
tension between universal and particular - sense of anxiety
deromanticising A - ‘frightful pathos’ had power to ‘immortalise my name a san author’
para 2, part 3 - incomprehensible nature of paradox of faith
The incomprehensible nature of the paradox of faith is linguistically illustrated: in going beyond the universal, Abraham similarly transcends the realm of human explanation. Indeed, as Judge Williams states in Either/Or, ‘the beauty of the universal consists precisely in everyone being able to understand it’.
para 2 ao2
how can we know that we are transcending the universal if the experience cannot be described?
- J recognises this. contradiction in understanding of A. he is exemplary and yet if a parishioner killed son, he’d be executed or sent to a madhouse
For Johannes, this issue can be overcome through an emphasis on both the pain and ineffability of Abraham’s experience. It is because Abraham is silent that he is distressed.
showing emotional and linguistic difficulty
para 2 ao2 - donnelly
Donnelly argues that the very concept of the teleological suspension of the ethical is overly unnecessary, as one’s absolute duty to God simply involves a relativisation of other duties rather than a complete movement beyond the universal.
but…faith is not achieved purely through believing in god. it is a paradoxical and individual process that requires a suspension of the universal in favour of the absolute
para 3 - Although we have touched upon the renunciation of the universal required in the ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’, Johannes presents the journey of faith as a two-step process requiring both renunciation and faith in the absurd.
may be Kierkegaard’s attempt to justify his personal lack of faith in his engagement to Regine Olsen. Whilst the process of resignation involves a renunciation of the universal, Abraham’s faith carried him one step further, for he ‘believed (on the strength of the absurd) that God would not demand Isaac of him’.
mooney - autonomy and dependence
- he actively renounces universal and places faith in absurd
- but after this he becomes dependent on god’s realisation of the absurd
para 3 - agnes and merman
After renouncing his wicked intentions, the merman is faced with two paths of repentance: he can ‘find repose in the counter-paradox that the divine will save Agnete’ or he can have faith and be saved through Agnete by being disclosed.
- disclosure requires trust in absurd as , ‘when through his own guilt the individual has come out of the universal, he can only return to it on the relation to the absolute’
- green: merman and Abraham are counterparts. whilst through different means (obedience vs.sin) they both have suspended the ethical and require divine saving
merman recourses to paradox in order to return to universal - A’s motives are not so clear. ‘I cannot understand abraham’
