Personally I don't think there's a lot of mileage in a discussion about whether Kierkegaard was trying to ex post facto use his books to justify to himself his broken relationship with Regine.
Who cares? What difference would it make?
Here is a bunch of complicated philosophical works that many over the years have found useful. The question might be accurate or not - but surely a more interesting question is whether Kierkegaard has anything useful for us.
I'm inclined to agree, and I think an academic philosopher would say that focusing on Regine is an ad hominem, like saying that Karl Marx was just a chronically-unemployed failed grad student, trying to rationalize his own inability to function in a modern economy. Possibly true, but irrelevant to a discussion of his ideas.
But it does make the books more of an interesting literary experience. As I said, Fear And Trembling actually contains several references to Regine, one of which apparently hides her identity with the pronoun "he".
I agree it is a fundamental part of Kierkegaard's experience. I just think there's a lot of deeper stuff there and dismissing it all as being due to jilting his fiancée is quite shallow stuff.
As far as I know Regine went on to marry someone else and had a full life, so I'm not sure it was as big a deal to her as it was to him anyway.
Excellent extractions, and as far as I am aware, they basically fill out the broad contours of my own parable of Josh and his journey through the Stages.
(SK exposes us to the most extreme demand)
Well, this is why I think the TSOTE really needs to be kept in mind as the overarching context here. As a result of the Suspension, the rules of ethics no longer apply, and God could pretty much demand ANYTHING of the aspirant Knight Of Faith, without it contradicting the protocols of the Religious Stage.
I mean, sure, you can come up with less shocking examples: maybe my wife and I sweat and slave for 25 years to pay the mortgage on our home, but the day after the last payment, when my wife is at work and the kids at school, a voice claiming to be God asks me to pour gasoline all over the inside and burn the house down, without consulting anyone else. And I obey.
Or my son asks me to mail off his application form for university on the last day for an acceptable postmark, and I agree to do that, but on my way across the bridge to the post office, the VCTBG tells me to tear up the envelope and toss the shreds into the river. And I obey.
And so on and so forth. These would all suffice as examples of actions outside the Ethical, though I don't think either quite approximates the story of God's Earthly incarnation willingly surrendering himself to a gang who are planning to have him tortured and murdered with extreme agony over a period of several hours.
Again, please excuse my ignorance, but are you really telling me that your church teaches that the only true religious are those who follow the deity to extreme lengths?
I find the association between adherence to societal norms, and the Ethical rather strange. Societal norms are by no means automatically ethical. They can be quite the opposite.
Well, yes, but like I said, a kantian would argue that...
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law"
...is just a logical formulation, like...
"If all As are Bs, and C is an A, then C is a B."
IOW, presumably unaltered by cultural variations. This is why the Ethical, as Kierkegaard sees it, is binding upon everybody.
Excellent extractions, and as far as I am aware, they basically fill out the broad contours of my own parable of Josh and his journey through the Stages.
(SK exposes us to the most extreme demand)
Well, this is why I think the TSOTE really needs to be kept in mind as the overarching context here. As a result of the Suspension, the rules of ethics no longer apply, and God could pretty much demand ANYTHING of the aspirant Knight Of Faith, without it contradicting the protocols of the Religious Stage.
I mean, sure, you can come up with less shocking examples: maybe my wife and I sweat and slave for 25 years to pay the mortgage on our home, but the day after the last payment, when my wife is at work and the kids at school, a voice claiming to be God asks me to pour gasoline all over the inside and burn the house down, without consulting anyone else. And I obey.
Or my son asks me to mail off his application form for university on the last day for an acceptable postmark, and I agree to do that, but on my way across the bridge to the post office, the VCTBG tells me to tear up the envelope and toss the shreds into the river. And I obey.
And so on and so forth. These would all suffice as examples of actions outside the Ethical, though I don't think either quite approximates the story of God's Earthly incarnation willingly surrendering himself to a gang who are planning to have him tortured and murdered with extreme agony over a period of several hours.
Again, please excuse my ignorance, but are you really telling me that your church teaches that the only true religious are those who follow the deity to extreme lengths?
Well, I'm Unitarian, so...no.
But, to re-iterate, I think Kierkegaard believes that the Ethical and the Religious are two different things, and that while any individual Christian might not neccessarily have to perform extreme actions outside the Ethical, he should be prepared to acknowledge that Christ did(*), and that that is part of what makes Christ the central figure of the faith.
I mean, is there an argument that anyone can make that surrendering oneself to torture and murder in the manner of Christ is INSIDE the Ethical?
(*) With the caveat that Christ believed he would, in some absurd way, not be killed.
Well, I think it is certainly true that Kierkegaard thought there was a high level of irony with the Danish church acting like they were a source of logical ethics.
Maybe it is overfamiliarity.
I can't really comment on church practice because I don't know enough about it - but I suspect some might say there's a difference between self-sacrifice after Christ and what happened with Abraham.
If only that it is a right, and logical thing to engage in self-sacrifice after Christ. I don't really know how the teaching works on Abraham.
I find the association between adherence to societal norms, and the Ethical rather strange. Societal norms are by no means automatically ethical. They can be quite the opposite.
Both ethics and societal norms differ from place to place as well as over time.
Situated where and when he was, though, Kierkegaard is in part, employing as @KoF mentioned, the long-existing concept of ethics held by the Greeks, and also responding to the the concept of the ethical a la Kant as well as Hegel. And there seemed to be some sort idea of social norms being universal.
Kierkegaaard's stages, or modes of life, were of course named using Danish, rather than English terms. The word and concept Kierkegaard used were the same as the German word Hegel used for his concept of the ethical sphere of life: Sittlichkeit.
I pulled out my good German-English dictionary for assistance:
Sittlichkeit (noun form): morality, morals
Sittlich (adj. form): moral, ethical
Sitte (base form noun): custom, habit, usage, tradition, practice, fashion, mode, way, propriety, etiquette, customs
Those meanings, of course, were carefully worked over by Hegel.
In Problema I in F&T, the narrator begins to build the concept in hegelian terms that he eventually calls the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical. For example in the forumlation, he says:
"The ethical, as such, is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which from another point of view can be expressed as meaning that it applies at every moment. It reposes immanently in itself, has nothing outside itself that is its τελος [goal; end; or purpose], but is itself the τελος for everything it has outside itself, and when the ethical has incorporated this in itself, it goes no further."
"If this is not faith, then Abraham is lost, then faith has never existed in the world simply because it has always existed. For if the ethical—i.e., social morality—is what is highest, and nothing incommensurable remains in a person in any other way than this incommensurability being what is evil (i.e., the singularity of the individual who must be expressed in the universal), then we need no categories other than what Greek philosophy had or what can be logically derived from those categories. Hegel ought not have concealed this fact, for, after all, he did study Greek thought."
Paragraphs 1&3, Problema 1. Fear and Trembling.
In my continuing autopsy* I was looking last night for information about the organizational structure of Fear and Trembling
Excellent extractions, and as far as I am aware, they basically fill out the broad contours of my own parable of Josh and his journey through the Stages.
(SK exposes us to the most extreme demand)
Well, this is why I think the TSOTE really needs to be kept in mind as the overarching context here. As a result of the Suspension, the rules of ethics no longer apply, and God could pretty much demand ANYTHING of the aspirant Knight Of Faith, without it contradicting the protocols of the Religious Stage.
I mean, sure, you can come up with less shocking examples: maybe my wife and I sweat and slave for 25 years to pay the mortgage on our home, but the day after the last payment, when my wife is at work and the kids at school, a voice claiming to be God asks me to pour gasoline all over the inside and burn the house down, without consulting anyone else. And I obey.
Or my son asks me to mail off his application form for university on the last day for an acceptable postmark, and I agree to do that, but on my way across the bridge to the post office, the VCTBG tells me to tear up the envelope and toss the shreds into the river. And I obey.
And so on and so forth. These would all suffice as examples of actions outside the Ethical, though I don't think either quite approximates the story of God's Earthly incarnation willingly surrendering himself to a gang who are planning to have him tortured and murdered with extreme agony over a period of several hours.
The ethical problem with Abraham's action is the proposed murder of Isaac.
Self-sacrifice is not the same thing. Even if you include the distress caused to his mother, that's an order or magnitude away from actually, you know, killing people.
Your point is even made in F&T, @KarlLB . It's an option the narrator proposes as what he would do but rejects as fulfilling the requirement of God's command to Abraham. He eliminates every alternative imaginable in the same way.
Your point is even made in F&T, @KarlLB . It's an option the narrator proposes as what he would do but rejects as fulfilling the requirement of God's command to Abraham. He eliminates every alternative imaginable in the same way.
What's the section you're refering to? I assume either the prelude, with its various counter-stories and weaning metaphors, or one of the Problems.
I'm starting the Problems right now. I think they're the parts of the book I know best.
Your point is even made in F&T, @KarlLB . It's an option the narrator proposes as what he would do but rejects as fulfilling the requirement of God's command to Abraham. He eliminates every alternative imaginable in the same way.
What's the section you're refering to? I assume either the prelude, with its various counter-stories and weaning metaphors, or one of the Problems.
I'm starting the Problems right now. I think they're the parts of the book I know best.
I'll have to find it later. I think it's in one of the Problemata. It talks about A. plunging the knife into his own breast.
What are your thoughts on Tuning Up (some translations call it Atunement).
P.S. "absurd" comes from Latin that meant "out of tune." Don't know if there is a connection with the Atunement section.
P.P.S. the other week someone over in the thread about autism and faith mentioned in her blog that passion meaning "suffering". She included a good link for reference. This illuminates the repeated phrase about faith being the highest passion. There is a lot of mental suffering in F&T.
I was just reading an article about Dolly Parton, which made me think of the Knight of Faith. According to her, she was going around the place where she lived and noticed the "town tramp" who she (Dolly) started to develop her own look based upon.
Which was scandalous to her family, her many siblings and her poor sharecropper parents. For a long time Dolly P was a figure of scorn in the press because of the look.
We've been talking about extreme metaphors for the "leap of faith", but can't we also say that Dolly made one when she broke the expectations of (almost) all around her and "broke the mould" of what people of her background were supposed to do in life?
Sorry, another thought - maybe almost everyone has *moments* of faith where they risk ridicule for a "calling". Maybe being a "Knight of faith" is something more.. substantial.. in some way
Dafling major was ready to set off for school this morning and Dafling minor was not. So Dafling major set off on her own. She had to cross two roads with no marked crossing points where we have to routinely wait for cars to go past (plus two minor roads and a traffic lit junction).
I feel in letting her do that we were renouncing our Ethical (in the Hegelian / Kierkegaardian) sense to keep her safe.
Anyway we did not come across any signs that there had been an accident on our journey to school following after.
Another thing to throw into the mix: I wonder about the link between Aristotle's ethics and the Universal/Ethical in F&T.
A very rough approximation of Aristotle (which is likely a wild oversimplification) is the Golden Mean (don't be too much in that direction nor too far in its opposite direction but find the middle) and the idea that 'ethical behaviour' is not something you do but something you *are*.
So according to Aristotle (maybe?) one can be trained into acting into certain worthy behaviours, presumably by thinking further about what is the Golden Mean in various situations.
Even with that oversimplification, I wonder the extent to which Kierkegaard is projecting that Aristotelian ideals into the Danish church - in the sense that (according to K) Christianity has become about training people to behave in certain moderate ways.
I was just reading an article about Dolly Parton, which made me think of the Knight of Faith. According to her, she was going around the place where she lived and noticed the "town tramp" who she (Dolly) started to develop her own look based upon.
Which was scandalous to her family, her many siblings and her poor sharecropper parents. For a long time Dolly P was a figure of scorn in the press because of the look.
We've been talking about extreme metaphors for the "leap of faith", but can't we also say that Dolly made one when she broke the expectations of (almost) all around her and "broke the mould" of what people of her background were supposed to do in life?
There's no real teleological suspension of the ethical there. Even if the other townspeople thought that the "tramp" was immoral, Dolly herself had likely concluded that the she wasn't, and that therefore the townspeople were mistaken. That's a step in ethical reasoning that isn't available to an aspiring Knigh Of Faith.
From a kierkegaardian viewpoint, a Knight Of Faith would have to do something that she, herself, considered immoral, but was nevertheless willing to do in obedience to God. So, eg. Dolly thinks that the "tramp" is bringing serious harm upon the town by dressing that way, then God commands Dolly to dress that way as an act of worship, and she proceeds to do so, without trying to come up with an ethical rationale for it.
Maybe Dolly thought that it was something she was attracted to and, although it wasn't part of her experience, she felt like she had to do it.
Doing something that's "attractive but outside my normal experience" isn't the criterion for a Knight Of Faith. It has to be something that the Knight herself recognizes as outside the Ethical, and likely wouldn't find attractive, except for its being commanded by God.
Even if that is what Kierkegaard meant - channeling de Silencio - why are we forced into a straightjacket?
Well, we're only in a straightjacket if we wanna discuss Dolly as a Knight Of Faith, in which case, we should follow the criterion laid out by Kierkegaard, the guy who outlined the concept in the first place. But we can still discuss her as a rebel against provincial conformity, a feminist trailblazer, what have you.
I mean, sure, if you like the poetry of the phrases "Leap Of Faith" and "Knight Of Faith", I guess you can appropriate them for a more everyday meaning of "going against the grain". I don't think it would line up with the meaning in Fear And Trembling, however.
Kierkegaard wrote F&T under a pseudonym. There are plenty of holes in the ideas within F&T as we have discussed in this thread.
In my view the whole point of Kierkegaard is to make the reader think.
I don't think there is anything much to think about from F&T if the main message one gets is that the TSoE only happens in extreme circumstances to a tiny number of people.
Kierkegaard wrote F&T under a pseudonym. There are plenty of holes in the ideas within F&T as we have discussed in this thread.
In my view the whole point of Kierkegaard is to make the reader think.
I don't think there is anything much to think about from F&T if the main message one gets is that the TSoE only happens in extreme circumstances to a tiny number of people.
Well, that message does, in fact, give you quite a bit to think about, in terms of who is a Christian and who isn't.
"The Danish Church claims to have millions of Christians in its fold, based on how many of them get baptized and show up for church every week, but, in fact, if my criterion is correct, we can't determine true Christianity based on that."
And, of course, Sartre, unconcerned with theology, extrapolates Abraham's decision-making to ALL human decisions, in that he thinks no ethical system gives anyone an obligation to behave in a certain way.
If Dolly Parton thought that embracing and emulating the "town tramp" was the right thing to do, ethically speaking, but forfeited her own good standing among the townsfolk in order to do that, then I think that she's closer to the examples of Agamemnon, Jephthah, and Brutus, than to Abraham.
If Dolly Parton thought that embracing and emulating the "town tramp" was the right thing to do, ethically speaking, but forfeited her own good standing among the townsfolk in order to do that, then I think that she's closer to the examples of Agamemnon, Jephthah, and Brutus, than to Abraham.
Not to mention Jesus - as to the embracing part, not the emulating part.
If Dolly Parton thought that embracing and emulating the "town tramp" was the right thing to do, ethically speaking, but forfeited her own good standing among the townsfolk in order to do that, then I think that she's closer to the examples of Agamemnon, Jephthah, and Brutus, than to Abraham.
Not to mention Jesus - as to the embracing part, not the emulating part.
AFF
Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. Dolly Parton embracing the "town tramp" because it's the ethical thing to do makes Dolly like Jesus?
If so, I agree, if you mean the Woman Caught In Adultery. Not so much Jesus giving himself up for beating and crucifixion.
If Dolly Parton thought that embracing and emulating the "town tramp" was the right thing to do, ethically speaking, but forfeited her own good standing among the townsfolk in order to do that, then I think that she's closer to the examples of Agamemnon, Jephthah, and Brutus, than to Abraham.
Not to mention Jesus - as to the embracing part, not the emulating part.
AFF
Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. Dolly Parton embracing the "town tramp" because it's the ethical thing to do makes Dolly like Jesus?
If so, I agree, if you mean the Woman Caught In Adultery. Not so much Jesus giving himself up for beating and crucifixion.
You know, the thing about Jesus hanging out with hookers and tax collectors - He was always getting the side eye for "keeping low company".
If Dolly Parton thought that embracing and emulating the "town tramp" was the right thing to do, ethically speaking, but forfeited her own good standing among the townsfolk in order to do that, then I think that she's closer to the examples of Agamemnon, Jephthah, and Brutus, than to Abraham.
Not to mention Jesus - as to the embracing part, not the emulating part.
AFF
Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. Dolly Parton embracing the "town tramp" because it's the ethical thing to do makes Dolly like Jesus?
If so, I agree, if you mean the Woman Caught In Adultery. Not so much Jesus giving himself up for beating and crucifixion.
You know, the thing about Jesus hanging out with hookers and tax collectors - He was always getting the side eye for "keeping low company".
AFF
Right. And if Jesus were to say "I'm gonna keep on hangin' out with these outcasts in the name of egalitarianism, and if I get crucified for that, well, so be it", then I THINK he'd be a Knight Of Infinite Resignation.
But if he gets crucified because God in Gethsemane told him to get crucified, with no comprehensible, earthly reason given, beyond that it would all work out in the end somehow, then he's a Knight Of Faith.
(Assuming the Incarnation can be a Knight Of Anything, which I'm not sure about, but you see what I mean.)
Chasing my tail all day. Love that Dolly Parton has made an appearance in a Kierkegaard discussion. I think we have maybe accomplished all there really is to do!
But, let's see if there are other angles we haven't yet explored.
I wanted to come all the way back to the beginning, now that some of you have been rereading and look a bit at the idea of "going further" that he brings up in the first paragraph of the book. This is a direct reference to the church theology that was being connected to Hegel's dialectical view of society, which popular at SKs time and among the Danish church leadership. Does anyone know specifically how this would have been playing out in "the literature" as well as from the pulpit?
"Not only in the world of business, but also in that of ideas, our times are holding ein wirklicher Ausverkauf [a real clearance sale]. Everything can be had for such absurdly low prices that in the end it becomes a question as to whether anyone will want to make a bid. Every speculative scorekeeper who conscientiously calculates the momentous progress of modern philosophy, every lecturer, teaching assistant, university student, every one of philosophy’s outliers and insiders does not remain standing at the point of doubting everything, 1 but goes further. Perhaps it would be ill timed and untimely to ask them where they really are going, but it is surely polite and modest to take it for granted that they have doubted everything, for otherwise it would indeed be odd to say that they have gone further."
There was a question maybe this morning or yesterday about an Aristotelian view of the Universal/ethical as well. How might these be connected?
I'm trying to get back to a potboiler history of Playboy magazine, but I keep digging into this Danish porridge...
PROBLEM II
Is there such a thing as an absolute duty toward God?
***
Duty becomes duty by being referred to God, but in duty itself I do not come into relation with God. Thus it is a duty to love one's neighbour, but in performing this duty, I do not come into relation with God but with the neighbor whom I love. If I say then in this connection that it is my duty to love God, I am really uttering only a tautology, inasmuch as "God" is in this instance used in an entirely abstract sense as the divine, ie. the universal, ie. duty.
***
The paradox of faith is this, that the individual is higher than the universal, that the individual (to recall a dogmatic distinction now rather seldom heard) determines his relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal. The paradox can also be expressed by saying that there is an absolute duty toward God; for in this relationship of duty the individual as an individual stands related absolutely to the absolute. So when in this connection it is said that it is a duty to love God, something different is said from that in the foregoing; for if this duty is absolute, the ethical is reduced to a position of relativity. From this, however, it does not follow that the ethical is to be abolished, but it acquires an entirely different expression, the paradoxical expression- that, for example, love to God may cause the knight of faith to give his love to his neighbor the opposite expression to that which, ethically speaking, is required by duty.
Just trying to provide the academic background for some of the positions I've been taking so far.
Anyone tempted to regard Kierkegaard only as the patron saint of office shooters is advised to read the summation posted by @Kendel a few pages back, and the ethical-paradox blah-blah I posted just above. The first gives you a good idea of the conceptual system he is proposing, and the latter a hint of the pre-existing theological controversies he is addressing.
Based on whatever I've read by and about Kierkegaard, I think he is, theologically, a soteriologist. And he seems to be proposing a system of salvation by which, not only are good works not required in any way, shape, or form, but, you could, at least theoretically, be called upon by God to do the most horribly unethical thing you could ever imagine doing.
Oh, and thanks for posting that opening bit from Fear And Trembling. Artistically, I've always pretty mixed on that one, based on my recollections, but reading it again, it does seem directed against certain identifiable philosophical tendencies of the times, rather than just sentimental lament for a supposed period when philosophy was a high-end boutique.
I assume the idea is that a lot of people know what Hegel or Kant thought, in the sense of the conclusions they came to; but that is not the same as knowing what they thought in the sense of having wrestled with the problems they wrestled with.
Not only in the world of business, but also in that of ideas, our times are holding ein wirklicher Ausverkauf [a real clearance sale]. Everything can be had for such absurdly low prices that in the end it becomes a question as to whether anyone will want to make a bid. Every speculative scorekeeper who conscientiously calculates the momentous progress of modern philosophy, every lecturer, teaching assistant, university student, every one of philosophy’s outliers and insiders does not remain standing at the point of doubting everything, but goes further.
The clearance sale! I am glad you asked. Again, the Lit student has the upper hand. Let's look at this first sentence of the book and see what is presented as we enter this philosophical treatice:
"Ein wirklicher Ausverkauf" (a genuine/real clearance sale) in the world of ideas.
So we're talking not about the world of business but of ideas. Also notice his use of German, not Danish (that would be translated to English). Throughout the book, notice his use of foreign words -- nearly all are references simply by language to Greek and German philosophy. Clever.
This is the first of many, many references throughout the book to cheapness and, related, easiness. They are all references to the ease a which one can aquire faith according to the world of ideas (philisophy) "in our time" "these days" in"this generation", now. Jds also refers to dout in similar terms.
The wares for sale in the world of ideas are cheap. Rock bottom cheap. So cheap one wonders if it's worth it even to bid. Soon he will bring in the idea of faith, which can be had with so little cost or effort, why even bother to get it? But first he brings in philosophy and doubt. Why go through the laborious, painful, risky initial process of doubt (as the ancient Greeks had done, even Descartes), when it's not necessary. And it takes so long! The task of a lifetime! Philosophy can be achieved so much easier now.
We also have a list of people he seems very much to dislike -- low level academics without intellectual authority, and who can be hired at rock bottom prices to deliver bottom-quality ideas. We will see them again when he lampoons the assistant professors later.
Philosophical insiders and outsiders! This is everyone in the world of ideas. Everyone is involved in this clearance sale.
What are they involved in? "Going further," (which is a constant motiv throughout the book) starting at the philosophical place achieved by the previous generations, and then progressing beyond it without having done the original intellectual exploration for themselves. They have not engaged in doubting the assumptions handed to them as ancient and enlightenment philosophers had done. Rather this generation is focused on progress, specifically systematic, dialectical progress that makes no serious reference to the past. The past is now irrelevant in the ever marching progress of ideas and social development.
J ds refers to Hegel by way of German in the first sentence and is criticizing the way his System (Hegel's philosophical work or concept is often referred to as "The System") is being used by the intellectuals of his day to avoid doing the hard, painful work of doubt that had been the starting point of philosophical enquiry in earlier generations.
Instead the current generation assumes they can just start with the most recent ideas of the first and "go further" without any real effort.
Soon in this preface, the cheapness of faith will be brought in.
Not having read him yet, I suspect this is where Bonnhöffer takes the concept from about 90 years later.
Thanks for the literary angle on the clearance-sale. FWIW, Lowrie translates it as "a regular clearance sale", which I think is very close to the meaning of "this is a very fitting metaphor", also contained in "genuine" and "real".
I was also a lit major, and philosophy minor. I'm guessing you paid more attention to the literature you read, though.
Just finished Problem II. It gets pretty legalistic about who's a Sectarian, who's a Knight Of Infinite Resignation, and who's a Knight Of Faith. But, as far as I can tell, it comports itself with noticable consistency. And lotsa mythology.
Certainly does.
Thoughts about the beginning of the section, where Johannes describes in terms of the TSoE what "duty to God" means? It took me a while to understand why he calls that a tautology.
I just spent a few minutes looking over the first few paragraphs again. Repititious readings over nearly a year have helped more absorb into the cortext. (Takes long enough!).
Thoughts on the Inner vs Outer as presented by Johannes -- the contrast between what he presents about them and what he says about Hegel?
Thoughts on:
Accidental incomensurability? How one's relation to the universal or the absolute are determined? Contrast between faith and spiritual trial? Egotism of faith? Discussion of Luke 14:26 & 28 and hating/loving? Life as the single individual (frightfulness vs greatness)? Description of life in the universal? in contrast to description of life of the KoF? Inability of the KoF to communicate? Buying and selling at a bargain price?
It's easy for me to get lost in SK's singular writing style and miss his point, which I tend to think is deliberate on his part. This book is carefully planned and executed. So, it all matters to some degree.
Has anyone noticed how each of the Promblemata ends with a nearly identical repetition of The Paradox, but each time it seems to have a different meaning based on the the cmphasis of the chapter?
Well, anyway. Even though it's the shortest Problema, there's plenty to talk about.
Certainly does.
Thoughts about the beginning of the section, where Johannes describes in terms of the TSoE what "duty to God" means? It took me a while to understand why he calls that a tautology.
Yeah, I was confused at first, because he says that loving your neighbour puts you in contact with "the divine, ie. the universal, ie. duty", but not with God, and I think in everyday speech, "the divine" is used as if it is synonymous with God, understood as the personal deity.
But terminological issues aside...
As an example of what Kierkegaard's getting at, think of someone who says "Well, I don't pray, but I spend time buying groceries for my sick and bedridden neighbour, and since God wants us to love others, that's basically the same as praying."
Kierkegaard would say, no, helping my sick neighbour is performing my duty, which probably IS mandated by God, but it's not the same thing as expressing my love for God via direct and individual communion with Him.
So, if I the benevolent grocery-shopper says "I obeyed God by doing my duty", going by that understanding of God(ie. a being whose existence is entirely within the Ethical), all he is really saying is "I did my duty by doing my duty."
(Not sure how Kierkegaard would square all that with "Whatsoever you do to the least of these etc", but that line is, I would assume, a bit of a challenge for ANYONE who advocates Sola fide.)
Kierkegaard defends the most pro-hate interpretation of that passage, in keeping with his theological shock-jock routine.
I'm not sure if he intends us to apply those lines to the binding of Isaac, given that Abraham apparently loves Isaac enough to want to get him back. Though considering Isaac as a physical being in the temporal world, it would certainly seem that Abraham "loved him less", as the exigetical aids would have it, than he loved God.
Book III now. But just thinking about all the mythological commentary up to this point, especially as it relates to the KoIR, I kinda read Kierkegaard the literary-critic as saying...
"Look, ya moralizing mythurgists, if ya wanna have a story about a god going berzerk and trying to get innocent people killed, don't bother with all these convoluted military and political scenarios trying to give it an ethical gloss for the earthly heroes. If Artemis is so upset about losing a bloody deer that she's willing to threaten Greece's defense until she's given a dead child in return, she's a pretty fucked-up goddess to be worshipping anyway, so who cares if Agamemnon is acting out of some noble spirit of duty to the community when he kills his kid?
Now Abraham, THERE'S a guy who stared right into the abyss...!"
Of course, not likely the intended message of Kierkegaard, given that he also points out the God of the Old Testament acting in the same way as Artemis, in collusion with both Jephthah(a Knight Of Infinite Resignation), and Abraham(a Knight Of Faith). Still, it's kinda where the story takes my post-darwinian, post-secularization thought-process.
Sorry to be truant for the discussion this week. Planner overload requires prioritization. Hope to be back soon.
Great work forging ahead all you readers!
Certainly does.
Thoughts about the beginning of the section, where Johannes describes in terms of the TSoE what "duty to God" means? It took me a while to understand why he calls that a tautology.
Yeah, I was confused at first, because he says that loving your neighbour puts you in contact with "the divine, ie. the universal, ie. duty", but not with God, and I think in everyday speech, "the divine" is used as if it is synonymous with God, understood as the personal deity.
But terminological issues aside...
As an example of what Kierkegaard's getting at, think of someone who says "Well, I don't pray, but I spend time buying groceries for my sick and bedridden neighbour, and since God wants us to love others, that's basically the same as praying."
Kierkegaard would say, no, helping my sick neighbour is performing my duty, which probably IS mandated by God, but it's not the same thing as expressing my love for God via direct and individual communion with Him.
So, if I the benevolent grocery-shopper says "I obeyed God by doing my duty", going by that understanding of God(ie. a being whose existence is entirely within the Ethical), all he is really saying is "I did my duty by doing my duty."
(Not sure how Kierkegaard would square all that with "Whatsoever you do to the least of these etc", but that line is, I would assume, a bit of a challenge for ANYONE who advocates Sola fide.)
I won't get far tonight, but I'll start here, addressing things.
I don't think this reading of "the divine" as related to the ethical/universal works. This is the IMpersonal god in the background of cultural identity and it's accompanying ethic. The impersonal god of the tragic hero, whose demands for appeasement are not personal at all, and the fulfillment of which benefit the entire community. This is the god of Brutus, Japhtha (interesting there, isn't it), and Agamemnon. There is no direct relationship with this god, no pleading for mercy out of grief of a loving father. At least the community will understand and be grateful the tragic hero does not bring disaster on the community.
This understanding is consistant with the description of humanity as a sphere:
It is a duty by its being referred to God, but in the duty itself I do not enter into relation to God, but to the neighbor whom I love. So if, in this connection, I say that it is my duty to love God, I am really uttering a tautology, inasmuch as “God” is here taken in a totally abstract sense as the divine, i.e., the universal, i.e., duty. Then the entire existence of the human race rounds itself off within itself, like a sphere, and the ethical is at once both the limit and the fulfillment. God becomes an invisible, vanishing point, an impotent thought; his power is confined solely to the ethical that fills existence. So, insofar as an individual might come up with the idea of wanting to love God in any sense other than the one specified here, he is overwrought, he loves a phantom that, if it had sufficient strength to be capable of speaking[.]
Beginning of Problema II, emphasis mine.
By performing one's duty in serving one's neighbor, one is acting ethically, an impersonal relationship with the universal god, and in line with the demands of the "social morality" -- a term that is used in other places in F&T as well.
This image of the sphere as both the limit and the fulfillment is important in the conception of a faith-relation with God. The paradox that is repeated over and over and over states that in order for faith to exist, faith must exist outside of the universal (think about the implications of this, when the church and the universal are equated) -- higher than the universal, which is the highest in fact.
According to this hegel-style formulation of faith in F&T, not only must faith exist outside the universal, it must exist in absolute relation to the absolute. That is, in exercising faith, the single, pariculated individual has moved beyond the limits of the ethical/dutiful/universal, and in a direct, absolutely unmediated relationship with a very personal God.
I would like to understand better if this was Kierkegaard's own view as well. (Based on some of his other writings, I think it was.) And, going further, understand better what he really thought his relationship to God was. I don't see in his work mysticism as I understand mysticism, but it doesn't seem to be a standard-issue traditional christian view in any sense.
I think we're basically in agreement about what Kierkegaard is saying? I'm a bit confused about your analysis of the word "divine"(as I was about Kierkegaard's use of it to begin with), but in any case, I think your presentation of the tragic hero, as represented by the Greek, Hebrew, and Roman filicides, is precise. As is your conceptualization of faith as entirely outside the universal and in absolute relation to the absolute.
Back to "the divine", you mean the impersonal god that one is serving when one acts within the Ethical? That makes sense, and I think the problem for Kierkegaard would be that following this idea of the deity is the same as following the categorical imperative, which is no more than a logical formulation. And you can't really have a personal relationship with a logical formulation.
As for Kierkegaard not being a mystic, no, he really wasn't at all, in terms of someone whose writings express a sensory experience of God or anything else supernatural. As I've been saying, I've always taken him as just a technical philosopher. He likes to use alot of examples from the bible, mythology, folklore etc, but even those, he's obviously using as subordinate illustration to his larger philosophical point, with what I personally find to be inconsistent literary panache.
re: what he himself believed, well, I lean toward thinking that Kierkegaard regards himself as having constructed the perfect explanation of how one goes about becoming a Knight Of Faith, IOW the perfect explanation for how one is saved. But I think it would actually violate this very model of salvation were he to TELL the reader that he, personally, is saved(*). So he writes as de silentio, who is explicitly portrayed as not saved, but very admiring of those who are, and adept at analyzing the process by which it happens.
(*) I'm in the middle of Book III right now, which seems to be all about concealment being unacceptable from the ethical standpoint, but a neccessity from the Religious standpoint, because you have to conceal your relationship with God in order to keep it just between you and Him.
@Kendel
..........
Back to "the divine", you mean the impersonal god that one is serving when one acts within the Ethical? That makes sense, and I think the problem for Kierkegaard would be that following this idea of the deity is the same as following the categorical imperative, which is no more than a logical formulation. And you can't really have a personal relationship with a logical formulation.
.........
As for Kierkegaard not being a mystic, no, he really wasn't at all, in terms of someone whose writings express a sensory experience of God or anything else supernatural. As I've been saying, I've always taken him as just a technical philosopher.
........
re: what he himself believed, well, I lean toward thinking that Kierkegaard regards himself as having constructed the perfect explanation of how one goes about becoming a Knight Of Faith, IOW the perfect explanation for how one is saved. But I think it would actually violate this very model of salvation were he to TELL the reader that he, personally, is saved(*). So he writes as de silentio, who is explicitly portrayed as not saved, but very admiring of those who are, and adept at analyzing the process by which it happens.
Moin!
Really, you get a for reading all that. Thanks.
I confess to having forged through the concealment options in Problema III, starting to feel dizzy with the obsessive presentation of all the arguments and examples. I felt soon that the sneak was hiding (concealing) the best parts in the footnotes, perhaps like pearls of great price. When you're done with III, and we have covered the meat of the chapter, I would like to come back to the style, which I think is deliberate.
To the Divine:
"Categorical Imperative." Thanks! I needed that term; didn't know it existed, didn't know it was Kant's. Johannes IS describing the divine as a categorical imperative. That is the point of the image of a sphere and this quote:
......as “God” is here taken in a totally abstract sense as the divine, i.e., the universal, i.e., duty. Then the entire existence of the human race rounds itself off within itself, like a sphere, and the ethical is at once both the limit and the fulfillment. God becomes an invisible, vanishing point, an impotent thought; his power is confined solely to the ethical that fills existence.
Describing the divine, the god of the ethical sphere as a categorical imperative is not a problem for Kierkegaard; it's the point of the passage. It's a problem for the state church and its members, who would like to see a relationship to God as being equivalent to doing one's duty. Doing one's duty is a good thing, but it's not faith.
Mysticism:
The challenge with reading The Lily and the Bird is that SK actually DOES talk about hearing God in what would probably be called today "meditative prayer". I must read more to understand better.
KoF, salvation, concealment:
KoF as the perfect forumulation-- maybe? I don't think SK provides a solid enough grounding in F&T to rely on it alone to indicator what SK thought.
Interesting that you bring in salvation. I'm not sure he is addressing salvation at all here. Jesus hardly comes up. Sin a bit, but mostly in conjunction with the ethical and asserting one's individuality. Certainly, there is a connection between salvation and faith, but I don't believe that SK uses F&T to address it.
However, your point about concealing religious information is interesting. I'll try to review III today with that idea in mind.
However, your point about concealing religious information is interesting. I'll try to review III today with that idea in mind.
If I'm reading the literary analyses in Problem III correctly(*), Kierkegaard thinks that true repentance requires silence, ie. you can't tell anyone, including the person you wronged, that you have repented, because it needs to stay between you and God. And I think(though I can't locate the passage again) that he compares someone who reveals his repentance to the rich man praying loudly in the temple(or one of those gospel stories along the same lines).
So where I assume he's going with all this is that, answering the question in his chapter-title, Abraham was, in fact, unethical in concealing his purposes from Isaac, but the concealment was required from the religious perspective.
(*) And Christ almighty, do I wish I could infuse Kierkegaard's content into Hemingway's writing style.
re: Fear And Trembling being or not being about salvation...
Well, let's just say it's about the nature of our relationship with God. Which for a Christian, begins, or at least takes a decisive turning-point, with salvation.
If and when you have the time and inclination, some thoughts on the maiden and the merman would be interesting to read. I confess I can't even figure out what the plot of the fairy-tale is supposed to be, much less what conclusions Kierkegaard is trying to draw from it.
I think I might be doing a little bit better with the story from Tobit about Sarah, the woman who had seven bridegrooms die before consumating their respective marriages, at least as far as the plot is concerned(Bible Gateway has helped a bit with that). Along with the presentation of Mary in Problem I, it seems to be another story of a woman facing starkly singular issues related to sex and/or reproduction, entirely alone.
Not exactly sure what the theological point of all that is, or, despite my being the barking theoretician of this thread, what all the terminology means. I suspect(or at least, hope) it will take shape in clearer form when the chapter gets back to the more familiar territory of Abraham and Isaac.
(And, yeah, it is striking, to me, anyway, how he casually conjoins pagan mythology and local folklore with bible stories, as if they all have something equally useful to tell us. I wonder how common that sorta syncretism was among theologians of the time. Nietzsche does the same thing, but he wasn't a theologian, and often pitted the various belief-systems represented in the stories against one another.)
Also, inviting @A Feminine Force, or anyone else who wants to contribute.
Comments
I agree it is a fundamental part of Kierkegaard's experience. I just think there's a lot of deeper stuff there and dismissing it all as being due to jilting his fiancée is quite shallow stuff.
As far as I know Regine went on to marry someone else and had a full life, so I'm not sure it was as big a deal to her as it was to him anyway.
Again, please excuse my ignorance, but are you really telling me that your church teaches that the only true religious are those who follow the deity to extreme lengths?
Well, yes, but like I said, a kantian would argue that...
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law"
...is just a logical formulation, like...
"If all As are Bs, and C is an A, then C is a B."
IOW, presumably unaltered by cultural variations. This is why the Ethical, as Kierkegaard sees it, is binding upon everybody.
Well, I'm Unitarian, so...no.
But, to re-iterate, I think Kierkegaard believes that the Ethical and the Religious are two different things, and that while any individual Christian might not neccessarily have to perform extreme actions outside the Ethical, he should be prepared to acknowledge that Christ did(*), and that that is part of what makes Christ the central figure of the faith.
I mean, is there an argument that anyone can make that surrendering oneself to torture and murder in the manner of Christ is INSIDE the Ethical?
(*) With the caveat that Christ believed he would, in some absurd way, not be killed.
Maybe it is overfamiliarity.
I can't really comment on church practice because I don't know enough about it - but I suspect some might say there's a difference between self-sacrifice after Christ and what happened with Abraham.
If only that it is a right, and logical thing to engage in self-sacrifice after Christ. I don't really know how the teaching works on Abraham.
Both ethics and societal norms differ from place to place as well as over time.
Situated where and when he was, though, Kierkegaard is in part, employing as @KoF mentioned, the long-existing concept of ethics held by the Greeks, and also responding to the the concept of the ethical a la Kant as well as Hegel. And there seemed to be some sort idea of social norms being universal.
Kierkegaaard's stages, or modes of life, were of course named using Danish, rather than English terms. The word and concept Kierkegaard used were the same as the German word Hegel used for his concept of the ethical sphere of life: Sittlichkeit.
I pulled out my good German-English dictionary for assistance:
Sittlichkeit (noun form): morality, morals
Sittlich (adj. form): moral, ethical
Sitte (base form noun): custom, habit, usage, tradition, practice, fashion, mode, way, propriety, etiquette, customs
Those meanings, of course, were carefully worked over by Hegel.
In Problema I in F&T, the narrator begins to build the concept in hegelian terms that he eventually calls the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical. For example in the forumlation, he says:
"The ethical, as such, is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which from another point of view can be expressed as meaning that it applies at every moment. It reposes immanently in itself, has nothing outside itself that is its τελος [goal; end; or purpose], but is itself the τελος for everything it has outside itself, and when the ethical has incorporated this in itself, it goes no further."
"If this is not faith, then Abraham is lost, then faith has never existed in the world simply because it has always existed. For if the ethical—i.e., social morality—is what is highest, and nothing incommensurable remains in a person in any other way than this incommensurability being what is evil (i.e., the singularity of the individual who must be expressed in the universal), then we need no categories other than what Greek philosophy had or what can be logically derived from those categories. Hegel ought not have concealed this fact, for, after all, he did study Greek thought."
Paragraphs 1&3, Problema 1. Fear and Trembling.
In my continuing autopsy* I was looking last night for information about the organizational structure of Fear and Trembling
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-social-political/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elements_of_the_Philosophy_of_Right#:~:text=The Philosophy of Right (as,legal%20system%2C%20and%20the%20polity.
The ethical problem with Abraham's action is the proposed murder of Isaac.
Self-sacrifice is not the same thing. Even if you include the distress caused to his mother, that's an order or magnitude away from actually, you know, killing people.
What's the section you're refering to? I assume either the prelude, with its various counter-stories and weaning metaphors, or one of the Problems.
I'm starting the Problems right now. I think they're the parts of the book I know best.
I'll have to find it later. I think it's in one of the Problemata. It talks about A. plunging the knife into his own breast.
What are your thoughts on Tuning Up (some translations call it Atunement).
P.S. "absurd" comes from Latin that meant "out of tune." Don't know if there is a connection with the Atunement section.
P.P.S. the other week someone over in the thread about autism and faith mentioned in her blog that passion meaning "suffering". She included a good link for reference. This illuminates the repeated phrase about faith being the highest passion. There is a lot of mental suffering in F&T.
I was just reading an article about Dolly Parton, which made me think of the Knight of Faith. According to her, she was going around the place where she lived and noticed the "town tramp" who she (Dolly) started to develop her own look based upon.
Which was scandalous to her family, her many siblings and her poor sharecropper parents. For a long time Dolly P was a figure of scorn in the press because of the look.
We've been talking about extreme metaphors for the "leap of faith", but can't we also say that Dolly made one when she broke the expectations of (almost) all around her and "broke the mould" of what people of her background were supposed to do in life?
Edit: here's the link: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/oct/09/dolly-parton-on-style-stardom-and-sexists-rockstar-behind-seams-my-life-in-rhinestones
I feel in letting her do that we were renouncing our Ethical (in the Hegelian / Kierkegaardian) sense to keep her safe.
Anyway we did not come across any signs that there had been an accident on our journey to school following after.
A very rough approximation of Aristotle (which is likely a wild oversimplification) is the Golden Mean (don't be too much in that direction nor too far in its opposite direction but find the middle) and the idea that 'ethical behaviour' is not something you do but something you *are*.
So according to Aristotle (maybe?) one can be trained into acting into certain worthy behaviours, presumably by thinking further about what is the Golden Mean in various situations.
Even with that oversimplification, I wonder the extent to which Kierkegaard is projecting that Aristotelian ideals into the Danish church - in the sense that (according to K) Christianity has become about training people to behave in certain moderate ways.
Not sure if that makes any sense.
There's no real teleological suspension of the ethical there. Even if the other townspeople thought that the "tramp" was immoral, Dolly herself had likely concluded that the she wasn't, and that therefore the townspeople were mistaken. That's a step in ethical reasoning that isn't available to an aspiring Knigh Of Faith.
From a kierkegaardian viewpoint, a Knight Of Faith would have to do something that she, herself, considered immoral, but was nevertheless willing to do in obedience to God. So, eg. Dolly thinks that the "tramp" is bringing serious harm upon the town by dressing that way, then God commands Dolly to dress that way as an act of worship, and she proceeds to do so, without trying to come up with an ethical rationale for it.
Maybe Dolly thought that it was something she was attracted to and, although it wasn't part of her experience, she felt like she had to do it.
F&T gives one model of the "Knight of Faith", I don't see why we have to only understand the TSoE in that light.
Even if that is what Kierkegaard meant - channeling de Silencio - why are we forced into a straightjacket?
Doing something that's "attractive but outside my normal experience" isn't the criterion for a Knight Of Faith. It has to be something that the Knight herself recognizes as outside the Ethical, and likely wouldn't find attractive, except for its being commanded by God.
Well, we're only in a straightjacket if we wanna discuss Dolly as a Knight Of Faith, in which case, we should follow the criterion laid out by Kierkegaard, the guy who outlined the concept in the first place. But we can still discuss her as a rebel against provincial conformity, a feminist trailblazer, what have you.
I mean, sure, if you like the poetry of the phrases "Leap Of Faith" and "Knight Of Faith", I guess you can appropriate them for a more everyday meaning of "going against the grain". I don't think it would line up with the meaning in Fear And Trembling, however.
In my view the whole point of Kierkegaard is to make the reader think.
I don't think there is anything much to think about from F&T if the main message one gets is that the TSoE only happens in extreme circumstances to a tiny number of people.
Well, that message does, in fact, give you quite a bit to think about, in terms of who is a Christian and who isn't.
"The Danish Church claims to have millions of Christians in its fold, based on how many of them get baptized and show up for church every week, but, in fact, if my criterion is correct, we can't determine true Christianity based on that."
And, of course, Sartre, unconcerned with theology, extrapolates Abraham's decision-making to ALL human decisions, in that he thinks no ethical system gives anyone an obligation to behave in a certain way.
If Dolly Parton thought that embracing and emulating the "town tramp" was the right thing to do, ethically speaking, but forfeited her own good standing among the townsfolk in order to do that, then I think that she's closer to the examples of Agamemnon, Jephthah, and Brutus, than to Abraham.
Not to mention Jesus - as to the embracing part, not the emulating part.
AFF
Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. Dolly Parton embracing the "town tramp" because it's the ethical thing to do makes Dolly like Jesus?
If so, I agree, if you mean the Woman Caught In Adultery. Not so much Jesus giving himself up for beating and crucifixion.
You know, the thing about Jesus hanging out with hookers and tax collectors - He was always getting the side eye for "keeping low company".
AFF
Right. And if Jesus were to say "I'm gonna keep on hangin' out with these outcasts in the name of egalitarianism, and if I get crucified for that, well, so be it", then I THINK he'd be a Knight Of Infinite Resignation.
But if he gets crucified because God in Gethsemane told him to get crucified, with no comprehensible, earthly reason given, beyond that it would all work out in the end somehow, then he's a Knight Of Faith.
(Assuming the Incarnation can be a Knight Of Anything, which I'm not sure about, but you see what I mean.)
But, let's see if there are other angles we haven't yet explored.
I wanted to come all the way back to the beginning, now that some of you have been rereading and look a bit at the idea of "going further" that he brings up in the first paragraph of the book. This is a direct reference to the church theology that was being connected to Hegel's dialectical view of society, which popular at SKs time and among the Danish church leadership. Does anyone know specifically how this would have been playing out in "the literature" as well as from the pulpit?
"Not only in the world of business, but also in that of ideas, our times are holding ein wirklicher Ausverkauf [a real clearance sale]. Everything can be had for such absurdly low prices that in the end it becomes a question as to whether anyone will want to make a bid. Every speculative scorekeeper who conscientiously calculates the momentous progress of modern philosophy, every lecturer, teaching assistant, university student, every one of philosophy’s outliers and insiders does not remain standing at the point of doubting everything, 1 but goes further. Perhaps it would be ill timed and untimely to ask them where they really are going, but it is surely polite and modest to take it for granted that they have doubted everything, for otherwise it would indeed be odd to say that they have gone further."
There was a question maybe this morning or yesterday about an Aristotelian view of the Universal/ethical as well. How might these be connected?
I'm trying to get back to a potboiler history of Playboy magazine, but I keep digging into this Danish porridge...
Really good quotes to pull from Problema II, @stetson .
What brings them up?
Anyone tempted to regard Kierkegaard only as the patron saint of office shooters is advised to read the summation posted by @Kendel a few pages back, and the ethical-paradox blah-blah I posted just above. The first gives you a good idea of the conceptual system he is proposing, and the latter a hint of the pre-existing theological controversies he is addressing.
Based on whatever I've read by and about Kierkegaard, I think he is, theologically, a soteriologist. And he seems to be proposing a system of salvation by which, not only are good works not required in any way, shape, or form, but, you could, at least theoretically, be called upon by God to do the most horribly unethical thing you could ever imagine doing.
But here stand I. I can do no other.
Oh, and thanks for posting that opening bit from Fear And Trembling. Artistically, I've always pretty mixed on that one, based on my recollections, but reading it again, it does seem directed against certain identifiable philosophical tendencies of the times, rather than just sentimental lament for a supposed period when philosophy was a high-end boutique.
The clearance sale! I am glad you asked. Again, the Lit student has the upper hand. Let's look at this first sentence of the book and see what is presented as we enter this philosophical treatice:
"Ein wirklicher Ausverkauf" (a genuine/real clearance sale) in the world of ideas.
So we're talking not about the world of business but of ideas. Also notice his use of German, not Danish (that would be translated to English). Throughout the book, notice his use of foreign words -- nearly all are references simply by language to Greek and German philosophy. Clever.
This is the first of many, many references throughout the book to cheapness and, related, easiness. They are all references to the ease a which one can aquire faith according to the world of ideas (philisophy) "in our time" "these days" in"this generation", now. Jds also refers to dout in similar terms.
The wares for sale in the world of ideas are cheap. Rock bottom cheap. So cheap one wonders if it's worth it even to bid. Soon he will bring in the idea of faith, which can be had with so little cost or effort, why even bother to get it? But first he brings in philosophy and doubt. Why go through the laborious, painful, risky initial process of doubt (as the ancient Greeks had done, even Descartes), when it's not necessary. And it takes so long! The task of a lifetime! Philosophy can be achieved so much easier now.
We also have a list of people he seems very much to dislike -- low level academics without intellectual authority, and who can be hired at rock bottom prices to deliver bottom-quality ideas. We will see them again when he lampoons the assistant professors later.
Philosophical insiders and outsiders! This is everyone in the world of ideas. Everyone is involved in this clearance sale.
What are they involved in? "Going further," (which is a constant motiv throughout the book) starting at the philosophical place achieved by the previous generations, and then progressing beyond it without having done the original intellectual exploration for themselves. They have not engaged in doubting the assumptions handed to them as ancient and enlightenment philosophers had done. Rather this generation is focused on progress, specifically systematic, dialectical progress that makes no serious reference to the past. The past is now irrelevant in the ever marching progress of ideas and social development.
J ds refers to Hegel by way of German in the first sentence and is criticizing the way his System (Hegel's philosophical work or concept is often referred to as "The System") is being used by the intellectuals of his day to avoid doing the hard, painful work of doubt that had been the starting point of philosophical enquiry in earlier generations.
Instead the current generation assumes they can just start with the most recent ideas of the first and "go further" without any real effort.
Soon in this preface, the cheapness of faith will be brought in.
Not having read him yet, I suspect this is where Bonnhöffer takes the concept from about 90 years later.
Thanks for the literary angle on the clearance-sale. FWIW, Lowrie translates it as "a regular clearance sale", which I think is very close to the meaning of "this is a very fitting metaphor", also contained in "genuine" and "real".
I was also a lit major, and philosophy minor. I'm guessing you paid more attention to the literature you read, though.
Probably more on the clearance-sale in a bit.
Thoughts about the beginning of the section, where Johannes describes in terms of the TSoE what "duty to God" means? It took me a while to understand why he calls that a tautology.
I just spent a few minutes looking over the first few paragraphs again. Repititious readings over nearly a year have helped more absorb into the cortext. (Takes long enough!).
Thoughts on the Inner vs Outer as presented by Johannes -- the contrast between what he presents about them and what he says about Hegel?
Thoughts on:
Accidental incomensurability? How one's relation to the universal or the absolute are determined? Contrast between faith and spiritual trial? Egotism of faith? Discussion of Luke 14:26 & 28 and hating/loving? Life as the single individual (frightfulness vs greatness)? Description of life in the universal? in contrast to description of life of the KoF? Inability of the KoF to communicate? Buying and selling at a bargain price?
It's easy for me to get lost in SK's singular writing style and miss his point, which I tend to think is deliberate on his part. This book is carefully planned and executed. So, it all matters to some degree.
Has anyone noticed how each of the Promblemata ends with a nearly identical repetition of The Paradox, but each time it seems to have a different meaning based on the the cmphasis of the chapter?
Well, anyway. Even though it's the shortest Problema, there's plenty to talk about.
Yeah, I was confused at first, because he says that loving your neighbour puts you in contact with "the divine, ie. the universal, ie. duty", but not with God, and I think in everyday speech, "the divine" is used as if it is synonymous with God, understood as the personal deity.
But terminological issues aside...
As an example of what Kierkegaard's getting at, think of someone who says "Well, I don't pray, but I spend time buying groceries for my sick and bedridden neighbour, and since God wants us to love others, that's basically the same as praying."
Kierkegaard would say, no, helping my sick neighbour is performing my duty, which probably IS mandated by God, but it's not the same thing as expressing my love for God via direct and individual communion with Him.
So, if I the benevolent grocery-shopper says "I obeyed God by doing my duty", going by that understanding of God(ie. a being whose existence is entirely within the Ethical), all he is really saying is "I did my duty by doing my duty."
(Not sure how Kierkegaard would square all that with "Whatsoever you do to the least of these etc", but that line is, I would assume, a bit of a challenge for ANYONE who advocates Sola fide.)
Kierkegaard defends the most pro-hate interpretation of that passage, in keeping with his theological shock-jock routine.
I'm not sure if he intends us to apply those lines to the binding of Isaac, given that Abraham apparently loves Isaac enough to want to get him back. Though considering Isaac as a physical being in the temporal world, it would certainly seem that Abraham "loved him less", as the exigetical aids would have it, than he loved God.
"Look, ya moralizing mythurgists, if ya wanna have a story about a god going berzerk and trying to get innocent people killed, don't bother with all these convoluted military and political scenarios trying to give it an ethical gloss for the earthly heroes. If Artemis is so upset about losing a bloody deer that she's willing to threaten Greece's defense until she's given a dead child in return, she's a pretty fucked-up goddess to be worshipping anyway, so who cares if Agamemnon is acting out of some noble spirit of duty to the community when he kills his kid?
Now Abraham, THERE'S a guy who stared right into the abyss...!"
Of course, not likely the intended message of Kierkegaard, given that he also points out the God of the Old Testament acting in the same way as Artemis, in collusion with both Jephthah(a Knight Of Infinite Resignation), and Abraham(a Knight Of Faith). Still, it's kinda where the story takes my post-darwinian, post-secularization thought-process.
Great work forging ahead all you readers!
I won't get far tonight, but I'll start here, addressing things.
I don't think this reading of "the divine" as related to the ethical/universal works. This is the IMpersonal god in the background of cultural identity and it's accompanying ethic. The impersonal god of the tragic hero, whose demands for appeasement are not personal at all, and the fulfillment of which benefit the entire community. This is the god of Brutus, Japhtha (interesting there, isn't it), and Agamemnon. There is no direct relationship with this god, no pleading for mercy out of grief of a loving father. At least the community will understand and be grateful the tragic hero does not bring disaster on the community.
This understanding is consistant with the description of humanity as a sphere:
Beginning of Problema II, emphasis mine.
By performing one's duty in serving one's neighbor, one is acting ethically, an impersonal relationship with the universal god, and in line with the demands of the "social morality" -- a term that is used in other places in F&T as well.
This image of the sphere as both the limit and the fulfillment is important in the conception of a faith-relation with God. The paradox that is repeated over and over and over states that in order for faith to exist, faith must exist outside of the universal (think about the implications of this, when the church and the universal are equated) -- higher than the universal, which is the highest in fact.
According to this hegel-style formulation of faith in F&T, not only must faith exist outside the universal, it must exist in absolute relation to the absolute. That is, in exercising faith, the single, pariculated individual has moved beyond the limits of the ethical/dutiful/universal, and in a direct, absolutely unmediated relationship with a very personal God.
I would like to understand better if this was Kierkegaard's own view as well. (Based on some of his other writings, I think it was.) And, going further, understand better what he really thought his relationship to God was. I don't see in his work mysticism as I understand mysticism, but it doesn't seem to be a standard-issue traditional christian view in any sense.
Gold star
I think we're basically in agreement about what Kierkegaard is saying? I'm a bit confused about your analysis of the word "divine"(as I was about Kierkegaard's use of it to begin with), but in any case, I think your presentation of the tragic hero, as represented by the Greek, Hebrew, and Roman filicides, is precise. As is your conceptualization of faith as entirely outside the universal and in absolute relation to the absolute.
Back to "the divine", you mean the impersonal god that one is serving when one acts within the Ethical? That makes sense, and I think the problem for Kierkegaard would be that following this idea of the deity is the same as following the categorical imperative, which is no more than a logical formulation. And you can't really have a personal relationship with a logical formulation.
As for Kierkegaard not being a mystic, no, he really wasn't at all, in terms of someone whose writings express a sensory experience of God or anything else supernatural. As I've been saying, I've always taken him as just a technical philosopher. He likes to use alot of examples from the bible, mythology, folklore etc, but even those, he's obviously using as subordinate illustration to his larger philosophical point, with what I personally find to be inconsistent literary panache.
re: what he himself believed, well, I lean toward thinking that Kierkegaard regards himself as having constructed the perfect explanation of how one goes about becoming a Knight Of Faith, IOW the perfect explanation for how one is saved. But I think it would actually violate this very model of salvation were he to TELL the reader that he, personally, is saved(*). So he writes as de silentio, who is explicitly portrayed as not saved, but very admiring of those who are, and adept at analyzing the process by which it happens.
(*) I'm in the middle of Book III right now, which seems to be all about concealment being unacceptable from the ethical standpoint, but a neccessity from the Religious standpoint, because you have to conceal your relationship with God in order to keep it just between you and Him.
Moin!
Really, you get a
I confess to having forged through the concealment options in Problema III, starting to feel dizzy with the obsessive presentation of all the arguments and examples. I felt soon that the sneak was hiding (concealing) the best parts in the footnotes, perhaps like pearls of great price. When you're done with III, and we have covered the meat of the chapter, I would like to come back to the style, which I think is deliberate.
To the Divine:
"Categorical Imperative." Thanks! I needed that term; didn't know it existed, didn't know it was Kant's. Johannes IS describing the divine as a categorical imperative. That is the point of the image of a sphere and this quote: Describing the divine, the god of the ethical sphere as a categorical imperative is not a problem for Kierkegaard; it's the point of the passage. It's a problem for the state church and its members, who would like to see a relationship to God as being equivalent to doing one's duty. Doing one's duty is a good thing, but it's not faith.
Mysticism:
The challenge with reading The Lily and the Bird is that SK actually DOES talk about hearing God in what would probably be called today "meditative prayer". I must read more to understand better.
KoF, salvation, concealment:
KoF as the perfect forumulation-- maybe? I don't think SK provides a solid enough grounding in F&T to rely on it alone to indicator what SK thought.
Interesting that you bring in salvation. I'm not sure he is addressing salvation at all here. Jesus hardly comes up. Sin a bit, but mostly in conjunction with the ethical and asserting one's individuality. Certainly, there is a connection between salvation and faith, but I don't believe that SK uses F&T to address it.
However, your point about concealing religious information is interesting. I'll try to review III today with that idea in mind.
If I'm reading the literary analyses in Problem III correctly(*), Kierkegaard thinks that true repentance requires silence, ie. you can't tell anyone, including the person you wronged, that you have repented, because it needs to stay between you and God. And I think(though I can't locate the passage again) that he compares someone who reveals his repentance to the rich man praying loudly in the temple(or one of those gospel stories along the same lines).
So where I assume he's going with all this is that, answering the question in his chapter-title, Abraham was, in fact, unethical in concealing his purposes from Isaac, but the concealment was required from the religious perspective.
(*) And Christ almighty, do I wish I could infuse Kierkegaard's content into Hemingway's writing style.
Well, let's just say it's about the nature of our relationship with God. Which for a Christian, begins, or at least takes a decisive turning-point, with salvation.
If and when you have the time and inclination, some thoughts on the maiden and the merman would be interesting to read. I confess I can't even figure out what the plot of the fairy-tale is supposed to be, much less what conclusions Kierkegaard is trying to draw from it.
I think I might be doing a little bit better with the story from Tobit about Sarah, the woman who had seven bridegrooms die before consumating their respective marriages, at least as far as the plot is concerned(Bible Gateway has helped a bit with that). Along with the presentation of Mary in Problem I, it seems to be another story of a woman facing starkly singular issues related to sex and/or reproduction, entirely alone.
Not exactly sure what the theological point of all that is, or, despite my being the barking theoretician of this thread, what all the terminology means. I suspect(or at least, hope) it will take shape in clearer form when the chapter gets back to the more familiar territory of Abraham and Isaac.
(And, yeah, it is striking, to me, anyway, how he casually conjoins pagan mythology and local folklore with bible stories, as if they all have something equally useful to tell us. I wonder how common that sorta syncretism was among theologians of the time. Nietzsche does the same thing, but he wasn't a theologian, and often pitted the various belief-systems represented in the stories against one another.)
Also, inviting @A Feminine Force, or anyone else who wants to contribute.