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Flashcards in Kierkegaard secondary Deck (38)
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1
Q

Rudd - why did K find the ethical sphere unsatisfactory

A

Social morality is unable to do justice to the uniqueness of the individual
- In E/O, Judge Williams argues for social conformity
- K places emphasis on the individual – need to figure out own salvation
There is an erosion in the modern world of the social basis for a morality of conformity to customary rules – individual becomes part of the crowd
Pluralism of a secular ethics lacks single goal in which moral life can find unity

2
Q

Rudd - teleological suspension of ethical

A

on an ethical level, A should have been imprisoned for murder. But the fact that he is praised suggests faith goes beyond the ethical in some way

  • J exposes Hegel for being contradictory in praising Abraham despite his view of ethics
  • A’s telos is outside the sphere of the ethical
  • A acted as an individual – no social roles demanded him to kill Isaac. Demand came from higher power
  • ‘If Abraham is justified in his action, he is justified as the single individual in defiance of the universal ethical norms, all of which insist that the killing of Isaac would be a great evil.’ (147)
3
Q

lippitt - concern with separation of life and thought

A

K ‘was concerned to an extraordinary degree with attempting to drive a wedge between his life and his thought, so that the latter would not be interpreted solely in the light of the former’ (2)
Part of the reason he wrote under a pseudonym
However… did he actually achieve this? Link to Regine Olsen and father’s guilt-complex
But be careful when linking F&T to biography

4
Q

lippitt - engagement

A

Broke it off due to his sadness, which he thought would make marriage impossible
He wrote, ‘I had been engaged to her for one year and yet she really did not know me’ (Hannay 2001, 157)
Regine did not see that melancholy was rooted in ‘religious collusion’
Hannay says that K viewed his situation as tragic and that he writes himself ‘into a real-life drama’ (157)
K handled break off of engagement very melodramatically

5
Q

lippitt - pseudonym

A
  • K viewed people as living in states of illusion
  • Illusions can only be overcome through making people realise that their reasons for their approach to life
  • Pseudonymic writing allowed K to face his own delusions
  • It has a pedagogical function – separates communicator from work
    ‘pseudoynmity…is one way of a communicator withdrawing’ (9)
    but pseudonym is not disconnected from work – Johannes de Silentio makes clear his own anguish in his efforts to understand Abraham – ‘Johannes is a character in his own narrative’ (9)
6
Q

k on his use of pseudonyms

A

K himself said ‘my pseudonymity…has not had an accidental basis in my person…but an essential basis in the production itself…I (have)…poetically produced the authors, whose prefaces in turn are their productions…it is my wish…that (readers) will do me the kindness of citing the respective pseudonymous author’s name, not mine’ (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Howard V, Princeton Uni Press, 1992)

Is the name Johannes de Silentio ironic??

Or is the book about silence?

7
Q

lippitt on the nature off faith vs. nature of resignation

A

‘if the very nature of resignation is the renunciation of the finite and the particular, and the very nature of faith is an embrace of the finite and the particular, how is the ‘double movement’ of faith, thus construed, if possible? …the movement of faith seems to amount to a renunciation of the movement of resignation’

possibilities:
- faith is totally incomprehensible
(but, problematic as if this is the case how do we distinguish faith from other behaviour?)
- K’s view of faith is confused
(hard given pseudonym)
- Johannes’ view of faith is confused
(J makes it clear that he finds A incomprehensible)
- we need to read Abraham’s story allegorically

8
Q

lippitt - hegel vs. K view on individual/universal

A
  • Hegelian distinction between Moralität (individual morality) and Sittlichkeit (ethical lfie)
  • Attacks Kant universalisation of ‘formalism’ (developed from Fichte). Too abstract, need to be more circumstantial
  • Kant and Hegel both view morality as rational
  • For H, idea that A viewed his individual relation to God as superior to duties to society = unacceptable
  • For J, H should have unequivocally condemned A
  • H is suspicious about idea of direct relation to divine – seems like Meinung (opinion, view. Associated with idiosyncrasy)
  • Concerned that people will be too individualistic with their morality
9
Q

lippitt - parallels between A and K

A

If we read it as a secret message to Regine, ‘just as Abraham is called by God to sacrifice that which is most precious to him (Isaac), so Kierkegaard is called to do the same (Regine)’ (139)

10
Q

lippitt - A pretending to be an idolater

A

example where A pretends to be an idolater – prefers to be hated then upset I. same with K and R
Hannay, ‘if he can make Regine believe that he is the sort of scoundrel you would expect to break off an engagement, Kierkegaard can save her from losing faith in the world’ (K: a biography 2001, 191)

11
Q

mooney rejection teleological suspension - 2 alternative explanations

A

power of ethics to guide = suspended. Reasons are frozen

  • it is not a justification but a brutal fact
  • ‘there are dilemmas and in such straits ethics cannot guide, deliver us from wrong’

the ethical is not the universal

  • rather emphasis has shifted from the act to the agent
  • ‘this focus on character, rather than prioritising conflicting duties or principles, moves the emphasis from not just what Abraham…does, but how he does it’ (151)
12
Q

lippitt - what makes A from sub-A who rode in anguish?

A

Perhaps for A it is his demonstration of a ‘kind of Aristotelian mean. This would be the mean between a deficiency of anguish…and an excess of anguish. There is an undeniable Aristotelian strain in Kierkegaard’s thought: could it be that we might closer to understand the nature of Abraham’s ‘purely personal virtue’ by seeing the Abraham who manifests genuine anguish at what he must do, yet genuine joy at ‘getting Isaac back’ as a manifestation of the mean?’ (158)

13
Q

lippitt - fear and trembling’s hidden Xianity

A
  • Is the book actually about love, forgiveness and sin?
  • Also reflects debate surrounding literal interpretation of religious texts
  • Core theme = faith
  • K viewed Xianity as forgetting own concepts e.g. sin
  • He argued that much of Xianity is closer to Socratism – i.e. salvation can be self-realised. For Xians, sin separates us from God in a significant way. Emphasis on necessity of divine grace
  • Teleological suspension of ethical = linked to God’s grace
  • Own xian commitments – Lutheran protestant
  • Fear and trembling = sacrifices necessary to achieve salvation
  • Divine command theory interpretation fails to recognise significance of God’s eventual command for A to not sacrifice I
14
Q

Daniel Conway on pseudonym

A
  • J is confessional
  • The book is about him – true, he is trying to relate to A as exemplar of faith
  • Trying to tell us to not go further than fear and tremble at A
  • J distracts us from the question of his own interiority
15
Q

lippitt - Abraham as saying something but nothing

A

Mulhall also argues that in viewing A’s response as ironic, J subconsciously aligns A with Socrates who is an ‘intellectual tragic hero’. Even if A is superior due to his faith ‘by associating Abraham with Socrates even by analogy, de Silentio undercuts a central element of his own dialectical endeavour’
….But…this makes quite a leap from irony to Socrates

But M’s argument that A does not in fact ‘say nothing’ = convincing
- ‘far from being just empty or nonsensical, these words are in fact ambiguous between two discrete possibilities: one in which the lamb is Isaac…and one in which God provides an actual lamb (and so Isaac is spared)’ (mulhall 2001, 361 but in lippit’s words on p.196)

16
Q

mulhall main issues with text

A

J’s over-emphasis on the literal interpretation of A and other texts
- Leads to contradiction of literality and A not being able to speak

J overly constructs his image of Abraham to contrast with Hegel. But whilst he rejects Hegelian ideas, he does not question their cores
- E.g. he negates Hegelian conceptions of the ethical but he ‘takes for granted the truths of Hegelian claims about the ethical by asserting that they have no application to faith…de Silentio’s hatred of all things Hegelian leads him to characterise the religious realm as a kind of mirror-image of Hegel’s view of ethics’ (203)
…..But…this assumes that J never questions the nature of H’s ethics which is untrue

17
Q

mooney - sequence of suspending the ethical and then getting it back

A

Aesthetic life comes before the ethical one

  • ‘one suspends the ethical, then gets it back. Resignation precedes receptivity’ (102)
  • ‘but this reliance on sequence is partly a heuristic narrative device. Change in self may be more or less instantaneous and may or may not involve discrete steps in an antecedently determined order of development’ (102)
  • virtues = conceptually distinct and come in stages

‘the conflict between ethics and faith, captured in the idea of a ‘teleological suspension of ethics’ does not describe a permanent rupture in the self’ (102)
- it is a passing phase in moments of change and crisis

18
Q

mooney - importance of both the individual and the universal

A

There are exceptions to the rule of the ethically universal. But end up returning to universal with an ‘enhanced ethical position – one that has space for the individual, structured by personal virtues’ (103)

Individual = most important. But, universal is also important from providing broad structure for humanity. Need universal social matrix in order to express one’s aims

The universal still leaves room for the individual’s self-interpretation

19
Q

mooney - autonomy and dependence

A

K ‘conceives the self as an uneasy tension between autonomy and dependence, self-initiative and other-dependent initiative. There is assertion or production but also witness and discovery…Isaac is returned, not wrested back by force, cunning or rhetoric’ (105)

20
Q

mooney on challenging of Hegelian assumptions

A

K shows that morality is not simply conforming with social norms

  • Moral action must be transparent
  • Morality = process of self-formation
  • Our self-articulation is faced with challenges etc. where it is forced to go beyond the universal. Once we have overcome these obstacles we can return to the universal, reformed
  • K = critical of complacency - He says himself, ‘if I had had faith, I would have married Regina’
  • ‘in faith, the sustaining values of the everyday are offered for our care…nothing less than disaster may awaken us to our humanity; but nothing less than reconciliation lets it be realised’ (111)
21
Q

Pattison - effect of pseudonym

A

K disappears behind pseudonym so we can decide how we want to respond to the book
- ‘this conforms to K’s view that subjectivity means responsibility and responsibility means individuality’ (89)

22
Q

Pattison - K as reinterpreting but still contemporary

A
  • In some ways K is reinterpreting – he rejects bourgeois and Hegelian values of his time
  • But in others he is contemporary: ‘Kierkegaardian individualism need no longer be a sign of dissolution and decay: it has the possibility of feeding the new beginnings of faith and shaping the new contexts in which God will be thought about and spoken about and the religious life practiced’ (136)
  • Concerns are ultimately the same
23
Q

hannay - who are the aesthetic works addressed to

A

‘the aesthetic works are addressed to self-professing Christians who are under the false the impression that the life they lead is a Christian one. In order to put them on the right track the author enters into the spirit of the delusion which is preventing them from embarking on it, concealing from the reader that this is what he is doing, and why’ (56)

24
Q

judge Williams in either/or on the universal

A

Judge Williams in Either/Or – ‘the beauty of the universal consists precisely in the fact that all can understand it’

25
Q

hannay on K and concealment

A

theme of concealment in K’s journals – talks about how he prevented openness with Regine to break off marriage

  • ‘it is more humble of me to remain silent’
  • K found himself unable to act according to the ethical and tell Regine the truth
  • If he had followed Judge William’s advice to transform a wish into the universal, he would have married her
26
Q

hannay - teleological suspension and telos

A
  • ‘the possibility of a teleological suspension of the ethical is that of there being some absolute end which would make it possible to construe a case of an inability to realise the universal as a justified exception to the general…validity of rights and duties’ (75)
  • tragic hero still remains within the ethical – not teleological suspension of the ethical itself as he has an ultimate telos
  • Abraham does not have a universal telos – ‘there seems to be no point of contact at all between Abraham’s action…and the universal, other than that he contravened it’ (76)
27
Q

hannay - 2 movements and necessary repudiation of judge Williams

A

1st = infinite movement of repentance = resignation
- in order to have faith, K must undertake a ‘radical repudiation of Judge William’s belief that the aesthetic can form a basis for the individual’s realisation of the universal’ (84)

2nd movement – move back to the universal ‘by virtue of the absurd’

28
Q

wisdo on euthyphro

A

‘Although Kierkegaard does not mention Plato’s dialogue, a closer look at his well-crafted address will show that it is an exercise in conceptual clarification that raises issues reminiscent of the Euthyphro dilemma.’ (221)

29
Q

wisdo on problems with viewing god as willing good

A

can we determine whether a gift is really good?
- ‘counsel aiming at edification would encourage the person to cultivate a distrust of his or her ability to identify what is really good.’ (223)

can we determine if a gift is really from God?

  • K says no human is capable of this
  • ‘the voice of doubt threatens to undermine the sense of peace by an appeal to the facts and how the world is. For this reason, he insists that we follow the advice that Paul gives to Timothy: ‘For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving’ (1 Timothy iv.4). In short, Kierkegaard claims that the believer should thank God for everything.’ (224)
30
Q

ronald green, soteriological reading

A

‘The soteriological reading of Fear and Trembling I have in mind rests on the insight that God’s call to Abraham and Abraham’s response serve in this text as symbolic expressions of God’s ability to redeem those he calls into relationship with himself, whatever their moral accomplishments or failures’ (198)

31
Q

ronald green on K own failure to effect 2 movements

A

‘The ‘two movements’ of resignation followed by faith represent precisely the stance which Kierkegaard ultimately per himself as called to but which (as Johannes proclaims of himself unable fully to achieve. While able to renounce Regine, he proved unable to make the movements of spirit that might bring her back to him Journal Kierkegaard remarks ‘If I had had faith, I would have stayed with Regine’ (97-8)

32
Q

Andrew cross - solution to contradiction of 2 movements

A

‘the solution I prose is to see the positive orientation Abraham has toward Isaac’s survival as practical, rather than cognitive’ (239)

  • A only believes that I will die
  • What J views as indicative of faith is that A nonetheless continues being committed I – he does not renounce his interest in the finite (love for I)
  • J says that A can balance both eternal and finite despite the pain of renouncing finite things
  • Faith = linked to courage
  • Explains why A is surprised when God withdraws demand
33
Q

Amy hall - relationship with god

A

‘Kierkegaard makes clear in works of love that those who would live faithfully and love truly must face God’s demand that each of us relate to God as individuals…the God relationship is prior to all other relationships and thus takes priority over all relationships’(40)

34
Q

Amy hall - Conflict of loving God and obeying God’s command

A

He continues to love Isaac despite being willing to sacrifice him
‘if God’s command to give up Isaac has come as anything other than a terrifying collision of two commitments, Abraham would not be the father of faith but, instead, a horrifying opportunist.’ (44)

35
Q

Amy hall - 2 active processes

A

2 step process of resignation and return to finite (both active processes)

  • resignation involves disconnection from universal and lower natures associated with the finite
  • faith’s return to finite after having experienced eternal leads to higher world-view. Sees pleasure in everything without attachment - have to grasp the finite back by virtue of the absurd
36
Q

Amy hall - difference between merman and A

A

‘truly faithful engagements require hope as well as deferential distance. De Silentio can only marvel at Abraham’s ability to receive Isaac back from God with gratitude. Both de Silentio and the merman fail in love partly because they do not trust that, on the other side of either resolute release or repentance, the beloved will return’ (58)

37
Q

Amy hall - Heraclitus

A

K citation of Heraclitus and the river is to suggest that whilst we encounter the river of faith every day, we have not begun to cross it. Struggle of faith = daily and permanent

38
Q

Amy hall - condition for A act to be holy

A

‘Abraham’s act is holy only if his love for Isaac is sufficient to make the act absurd’ (60)