The problem I see with the Abraham analogy is, if you look at Genesis 22, Isaac does not come off the mountain with Abraham. He simply disappears.
While that is probably an interesting point about the way the story is told, the fact that the story doesn't explicitly say Isaac came down with Abraham does not mean that the story doesn't imply it.
Besides whatever was the case in the stories out of which Genesis was constructed the book as we have it is a narrative whole.
The problem I see with the Abraham analogy is, if you look at Genesis 22, Isaac does not come off the mountain with Abraham. He simply disappears.
Isaac isn’t specifically mentioned as coming down the mountain with Abraham. That’s not quite the same as saying he didn’t come off the mountain with Abraham. Nor did he really disappear as such, given that he shows up again when he gets married.
But either way, I’m not sure how Isaac not being mentioned at the end of the Binding narrative relates to what I understand Kierkegaard to be saying about Abraham and his leap of faith.
Then, there is the tradition the first-born male belongs to God anyway.
But that doesn’t come until the Mosaic law, where it’s related to the Exodus and to God saying “Israel is my firstborn.”
Besides, Ishmael, not Isaac, was Abraham’s firstborn son.
...I’m not sure how Isaac not being mentioned at the end of the Binding narrative relates to what I understand Kierkegaard to be saying about Abraham and his leap of faith.
I don't think it really does. If Isaac died on Mount Moriah, then almost everybody's understanding of the story, not just Kierkegaard's, is wrong. And if he didn't die, there doesn't seem to be any specific purpose to positing him as absent at the descent.
Honestly, if I were reading the biblical narrative, I would just assume that the writer omitted mentioning Isaac at the descent because Abraham was the main protagonist of the story.
She took her daughter to the store to buy school supplies, but the store had closed early, so she went home angry, popped a few valiums with a martini to calm down, passed out and banged her head on the coffee table, and had to get stitches.
Obviously, the daughter probably went home as well, but the main focus of the story is what happened to the mother as a result of not getting the school supplies, so she's the only one the writer bothers with after establishing the store was closed.
@stetson Thanks for letting me know.
Besides the question you had asked earlier in the thread about Abraham knowing he would get Isaac back, are there other things related to Kierkegaard that you would like to discuss? And are you content with the answers your question has received, discussion it has generated?
I haven’t read any of Concluding Unscientific Postscript yet, except a quote a friend shared months ago, which I can’t remember. Do you see connections to or divergences from F&T in CUP? In what ways does it expand one’s understanding of Kierkegaard’s thougth or message?
But I do believe, because I'm living it, that salvation (Salve: the healing of the affliction) is attainable at least in part in the here and now. It's not ALL suffering and denial - after all we pray for the kingdom here and now, as it is in heaven. It's only partly about the self negation IMO. The other part is about forgiveness and integration and Kierkegaard doesn't seem to have a lot to say about that. But maybe he does and I just didn't read that stuff.
Having hope is irreplacable, isn’t it?
Kierkegaard strikes me as a severe, uncompromising person — maybe not very good with forgiveness and integration. But someone who was determined to establish a basis for hope. You had mentioned his psychologically abusive father. I don’t remember how many of his the deaths of 5 of his 6 older siblings he witnessed. That does something to peole. It certainly would have scarred his father, who also saw the death of his first wife. From what I’ve read there is good reason that our man suffered from and attempted to deal philosophically and theologically with anxiety and existence. Some of F&T even seem to make anxiety a requirement for genuine faith, rather than something to be avoided.
SK also strikes me as very sensitive, yet unfiltered. The kind of person who was probably often told “Søren! Would you please just get over it, man!?” Clearly steeped in Romanticism, and willing to live with the pain of rejection that resulted from doing what he thought was right. But feeling the sting acutely.
@A_Feminine_Force, I want to come back to your point about the kingdom here and now, but later.
...I’m not sure how Isaac not being mentioned at the end of the Binding narrative relates to what I understand Kierkegaard to be saying about Abraham and his leap of faith.
I don't think it really does. ...
Obviously, the daughter probably went home as well, but the main focus of the story is what happened to the mother as a result of not getting the school supplies, so she's the only one the writer bothers with after establishing the store was closed.
No, no, no! Stetson. We must interpolate complexities where none exist!
I agree; it doesn't really make a difference, and there's not point in interpolating complexities, at least not of this kind. Kierkegaard has something else in mind. @stetson I like your example narrative.
One of the weaning stories in the "Tuning Up" (often referred to as "Atunement") section plays with vaguarities of who is where, when but differently.
SK demonstrates no intention to perform biblical exegesis in F&T. But rather uses biblical, extrabiblical, pagan, folk and ligerary stories -- which he deliberately and overtly alters -- to develop an argument that few if any people who claimed to have faith actually had it, certainly didn't exercise it (which means they don't have it), and that it was not what was being taught or supported in the Danish state churches.
See "III"
It was early in the morning, Abraham arose betimes, he kissed Sarah, the young mother, and Sarah kissed Isaac, her delight, her joy at all times. And Abraham rode pensively along the way, he thought of Hagar and of the son whom he drove out into the wilderness, he climbed Mount Moriah, he drew the knife.
It was a quiet evening when Abraham rode out alone, and he rode to Mount Moriah; he threw himself upon his face, he prayed God to forgive him his sin, that he had been willing to offer Isaac, that the father had forgotten his duty toward the son. Often he rode his lonely way, but he found no rest. He could not comprehend that it was a sin to be willing to offer to God the best thing he possessed, that for which he would many times have given his life; and if it was a sin, if he had not loved Isaac as he did, then he could not understand that it might be forgiven. For what sin could be more dreadful?
*
* *
When the child must be weaned, the mother too is not without sorrow at the thought that she and the child are separated more and more, that the child which first lay under her heart and later reposed upon her breast will be so near to her no more. So they mourn together for the brief period of mourning. Happy the person who has kept the child as near and needed not to sorrow any more!
Besides the question you had asked earlier in the thread about Abraham knowing he would get Isaac back, are there other things related to Kierkegaard that you would like to discuss?
Yes. Could you, or maybe @A_Feminine_Force, explain about the merman? The only non-Abraham thing I can really remember from that book is the passage on the Virgin Mary, who Kierkegaard seems to talk about as being a Knight Of Faith as well.
And are you content with the answers your question has received, discussion it has generated?
Absolutely. It's a good spectrum of discussion. I've been more focused on the hard philosophy of it(probably in keeping with the context where I first encountered Kierkegaard), but you and AFF seem alot more open-ended, as well as textually based, and I've been reading both your posts over again a few times to absorb the ideas more fully.
I think I attach more importance to the TSOTE than others here do, but again, that could be because of the academic context, and FaT being a pivotal work in existentialism's later analysis of human choice.
I haven’t read any of Concluding Unscientific Postscript yet, except a quote a friend shared months ago, which I can’t remember. Do you see connections to or divergences from F&T in CUP? In what ways does it expand one’s understanding of Kierkegaard’s thougth or message?
Honestly, I can't even remember if those passages were from CUP. But whatever it was I read in those one or two anthologies, it dovetailed closely with what I had been taught in class.
Yes. Could you, or maybe @A_Feminine_Force, explain about the merman? The only non-Abraham thing I can really remember from that book is the passage on the Virgin Mary, who Kierkegaard seems to talk about as being a Knight Of Faith as well.
@stetson
Everything I can say about F&T is fairly undigested. This is me and the text, a little help from a few guide books and what little I learned about Hegel in history and lit classes that touched Marxism. I have nothing to dovetail with Kierkegaard, except Christianity, oh, and German Romanticism.
It's possible, if you read F&T for a class, you only read through Problema I. From what I've listened to online and read about F&T, it sounds like Problema II (Is There an Absolute Duty to God?) and III (Was it Ethically Defensible of Abraham not to have Told Sarah, Eliezer, Isaac About His Undertaking?) are often ignored completely.
Problema II
-contrasts a hegelian view of "duty to God" with the idea of "duty to God" that would exist if there is a TSE; he demonstrates that this is a paradox.
-examines faith as the most extreme form of egoism, because the person of faith does not act for the good of the universal, but for one's own sake and God's.
-being in the church is the same as being in the universal/ethical, which implies that any relationship with God is mediated, thus making faith impossible.
Problema III
-the ethical/universal does not allow for concealment, and Abraham's concealment of his actions is indefensible.
-the demonic category (in contrast to the religious) is introduced, and is occupied by individuals, who exist outside the universal because of situation or nature, rather than by choice.
-Irony is discussed as a method of concealment, while using speech, and Abraham's use of irony in saying "God will provide a ram."
-The discussion about doubt, largely hidden in SK's footnotes, is worth the price of working through this chapter (even if you eventually skip some bits).
And if your prof only had you read through Problema I, you probably also missed the Epilogue which closes the bracket of the Preface, but I think gives closer to Kierkegaard's own view view of faith: It is the task of a lifetime (mentioned throughout the book) and that once coming to the point of faith, one would not merely remain standing there, but make one's life there.
You know there's so much more in the book, but those are the broad strokes that made it to my notes.
I'll try to come back to the merman soon. He's fantastic.
I THINK Problema III is what I remember as being about the distinction between a Knight Of Faith and a fanatic. If Abraham starts drawing other people into his child-killing plans, he becomes a fanatic.
And thank you very much for your extended summations and commentary. I will reply in a bit.
@Kendel
...the distinction between a Knight Of Faith and a fanatic. If Abraham starts drawing other people into his child-killing plans, he becomes a fanatic.
I have often thought that this distinction is vulnerable to the ad absurdum of...
On what he believes to be God's command, a man enlists a few friends to help him commit petty vandalism of an unused building. Fanatic.
Whereas...
On what he believes to be God's command, a man finds a way to single-handedly unleash smallpox upon the world, killing millions. Knight Of Faith.
(Though not technically an ad absurdum, since upon reading the examples, a true kierkegaardian would not abandon the distinction, but rather nod along and say "Yes, yes, that's true. The second man is a glorious Knight Of Faith.")
Oh, and @Kendel or @A_Feminine_Force, at your leisure, obviously, but can you expand on "the demonic" being outside the Universal by situation or nature, and how that contrasts with the Knight Of Faith(I assume) being outside the Universal by choice? I think I more-or-less recognized everything in Kendel's summation up until that bit.
Are your examples (vandal & and smallpox) your own, or from SK's work? I don't remember anything specifically like them in the book.
There is the one, poor parishioner who goes home to follow the example of Abraham and then is dressed down by the pastor. But I take that example to show:
-the inconsistancy between preaching and faith exhibited by the Danish clergy
-another example of the paradox of the church (where one is supposed to be at one with God) being the universal (society/public/mediated by ethics), rather than outside the universal in absolute relation with the absolute
-a demonstration of the paradox created by attempting to comprehend faith in terms of a hegelian structure. The constant tension of the practice of faith vs the etical.
Again, though, I see the story of Abraham as a tool. SK chose in Abraham the example of faith that most obviously conflicts with the ethical. And the story as written in the Bible is not nearly extreme enough for use. It must be ramped up even more. To demonstrate the incommensurability of the exercise of faith and the ethical.
The example of Mary is important. Mary, like Abraham, is outside the ethical, and utterly alone. But she is not called to murder, rather give birth in humiliation.
If we take it all down about 100 db, the everyday exercise of faith - the willingness to take the chance of believing the unprovable - is beyond the universal today.
Reading SK's sermons "The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air; 3 Godly Discourses" one sees Kierkegaard's view that the human who has faith in God can be in absolute relation to the absolute "out there", outside of society, the public, the universal or ethical. By universal standards, even this is fanaticism.
--Aah. I see I am about to cross post with you @stetson. Time to see what you wrote. And take a break from blabbing myself.
For now, I'll just clarify my examples: yes, they are mine. My point is that if we follow Kierkegaard's standard for pronouncing someone a Knight Of Faith, then we have to include the smallpox-spreader just as surely as we include Abraham, because it shouldn't matter if I'm willing to kill one innocent person or ten million, as long as I am acting entirely on my own.
Reading SK's sermons "The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air; 3 Godly Discourses" one sees Kierkegaard's view that the human who has faith in God can be in absolute relation to the absolute "out there", outside of society, the public, the universal or ethical. By universal standards, even this is fanaticism.
I know what you mean, but that wasn't how the concept of a "fanatic", under that terminology, was presented to us in class. The pivotal distinction was that the Knight Of Faith acts alone in obedience to God, whereas the fanatic tries to get others to join him.
(In contemporary terms, I think we'd say that the fanatic tries to start a movement.)
Reading SK's sermons "The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air; 3 Godly Discourses" one sees Kierkegaard's view that the human who has faith in God can be in absolute relation to the absolute "out there", outside of society, the public, the universal or ethical. By universal standards, even this is fanaticism.
I know what you mean, but that wasn't how the concept of a "fanatic", under that terminology, was presented to us in class. The pivotal distinction was that the Knight Of Faith acts alone in obedience to God, whereas the fanatic tries to get others to join him.
(In contemporary terms, I think we'd say that the fanatic tries to start a movement.)
Hmmm. Interesting. Was your prof riffing on F&T? Or is this in the book? I don't remember anything like that. He does menition a few groups, though, namely "The Assistant Professors" and the "faux" Knights of Faith, who end up as sectarians.
Can you point to where SK talks about groups in the way you described fanatics?
Thanks!
I think the prof might have been talking about what the book calls sectarians? The distinguishing contrast between a sectarian and a Knight Of Faith is that the sectarian acts in a group, whereas the Knight Of Faith acts alone.
Hm. I may have to surrender on this. "Fanatic" barely pairs at all with "Knight Of Faith". But I think the prof might've been using his own terminology. Basic idea: You can't be a Knight Of Faith if you try to get others involved in your actions.
The true knight of faith is always absolute isolation, the false knight is sectarian. This sectarianism is an attempt to leap away from the narrow path of the paradox and become a tragic hero at a cheap price. The tragic hero expresses the universal and sacrifices himself for it. The sectarian punchinello, instead of that, has a private theatre, i.e. several good friends and comrades who represent the universal just about as well as the beadles in The Golden Snuffbox60 represent justice. The knight of faith, on the contrary, is the paradox, is the individual, absolutely nothing but the individual, without connections or pretensions.
.....
The sectaries deafen one another by their noise and racket, hold the dread off by their shrieks, and such a hallooing company of sportsmen think they are storming heaven and think they are on the same path as the knight of faith who in the solitude of the universe never hears any human voice but walks alone with his dreadful responsibility.
and from the next paragraph:
The knight of faith is obliged to rely upon himself alone, he feels the pain of not being able to make himself intelligible to others, but he feels no vain desire to guide others. The pain is his assurance that he is in the right way, this vain desire he does not know, he is too serious for that. The false knight of faith readily betrays himself by this proficiency in guiding which he has acquired in an instant.
I'm thinking now about who these sectarians sound like to me. Televangelists here in the U.S. come to mind immediately! Give nothing up; lead hoards; gain the world!
But the hoards; yes, they could be the fanatics your prof was talking about. What are your thoughts about them?
As always, I'm running out of time. I want to share some bits from "The Lily of the Field...." but as you know, finding just the right bit in SK's work is challenging. I think "The Lily" is a good foil to the sectarians here.
And I still haven't gotten back to the Merman and Agnet, or to Faust. So much.
@stetson can I just mention that you are not actually tagging @A Feminine Force by what you are doing. For technical reasons the usual practice of typing ‘@’ followed by the first few letters of her name doesn’t work where one of those first few characters is a space. And as far as the system is concerned the name with underscores is not the same as the name with spaces. What you need to do is type the ‘@’ followed by double quotation marks ("), straight not curly, then her name A Feminine Force then double quotation marks again (also straight not curly).
@stetson can I just mention that you are not actually tagging @A Feminine Force by what you are doing. For technical reasons the usual practice of typing ‘@’ followed by the first few letters of her name doesn’t work where one of those first few characters is a space. And as far as the system is concerned the name with underscores is not the same as the name with spaces. What you need to do is type the ‘@’ followed by double quotation marks ("), straight not curly, then her name A Feminine Force then double quotation marks again (also straight not curly).
Hope this helps
BroJames, Purgatory Host
Hi BroJames thank you for this. I was unaware of the punctuational dynamics as well.
I did miss a few posts here - but I have regrettably lost all my notes from uni on Kierkegaard and I have a lot of "review" to undertake before I can credibly comment on those rather large bits lost to time and memory.
Though I am heartily grateful for the incentive to refresh memory and discover new nuances.
I'm now 90% that the prof's lecture on "fanatics" was based on the section you're quoting there, because those passages seem very much focused on the contrast between those acting alone and those acting in groups.
Thanks for the trouble of typing it out. I'll reply in greater detail in a bit.
I cheated, @stetson and just copied and pasted from the website I linked.
Well, you still had to slog through the whole thing to find the relevant passages. And VERY relevant it was.
I think my professor was boiling down Kierkegaard's prose in order to render the basic ideas into academic philosophy. This is probably the main reason getting our understanding of those ideas to synchronize has been a bit of a challenge here. I'm still not certain why the prof used "fanatic", rather than "sectarian", unless he was using a different translation, or thought that "fanatic" would convey the concept better to a contemporay audience.
I'm sure "fanatic" was clearer to your classmates.
I really hadn't seen "sectarian" as equivalent to "fanatic." But when I was in Germany, my German friends made it clear I, a Baptist, belonged to a sect. As a regular pracitioner, I was likely seen by the as a fanatic as well. So maybe the words are sometimes synonymous.
I'm still not certain why the prof used "fanatic", rather than "sectarian", unless he was using a different translation, or thought that "fanatic" would convey the concept better to a contemporay audience.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that "sectarian" in C19 Denmark had connotations closer to "fanatic" today, eg. "Uncle Carl used to be a pretty relaxed fellow, but after he started reading those insane religious pamphlets, he became a real sectarian, screaming bible quotes at everyone day and night."
I think it had a pretty similar connotation in late C20 Germany as well. I guess my dorm mates were surprised, when I didn't act like Uncle Carl (all that much). They became my friends in spite of my odd religiosity.
I think in the anglosphere, "sectarian" is used mostly in an academic or at least formal context, in reference to political disputes between specific religious groups, eg. the violent sectarians of the Orange Lodge.
Whereas "fanatic" would be a recognized label covering everyone from JWs refusing blood to Catholics bombing clinics to street-preachers downtown telling passers-by to quit drinking or burn in Hell. So, probably the better terminology for a late C20 anglo audience.
So, we figured out the sectarians in F&T are the fanatics. What makes them interesting to you, @stetson, Bueller, anyone?
@Martin54 brought up the question earlier what SK actually knew of the horrors that accompany living. After all, he inherited wealth (from his father, formerly a serf, who had inherited it from an uncle). Some of this has been covered already: he had a close acquaintance with death in his family; his father was a religiously severe person, whose parenting today would likely be categorized as pschologically abusive; he was physically weak and clumsy, the perfect target for bullies; his sharp wit and tongue worked well as a defense but also made him the target of social ostracism by the school bullies after they grew up .
Another question that I think is relevant is whether SK lived what he preached, and he preached a lot on paper regarding asceticism and the corrupting power of money when tied to the church and the clergy but also in regard to private life.
Thomas Millay claims in Kierkegaard and the New Nationalism (chapter 4) that SK's life approached "a traditional ascetic ideal" practiced as devotia moderna. Millay mentions a number of ways SK lived what he preached:
- he "gave a good deal of his money away to those impoverished members of Copenhagen who asked for it.
- "he spent a good deal of his own money publishing his books", and earned nothing from them. "[ S]ince he considered the writing and publication of these books part of a task given to him by God, this money should be seen in some sense dedicated or sarificed by Kierkegaard to God's action in the world." (Whether he was right or wrong about this, he lived according to what he believed he should do.)
- After living like a dandy the first few years at university, he lived a single life of prayer, devout exercises, reading and self-examination.
- From his dairies and published works Kierkegaard's committment to celibacy seems to have had little to do with sex, but was a rejection of "the typical bourgeois path to happiness (comforg), which (at his time) included marriage and family."
- SK believed that a life of obedience to God was a life of suffering. He believed that his critical writings were a task given him by God, and he suffered in a few ways because of them:
- social rejection was real. And the more focused and intense his criticism, the more intense was his rejection by his society.
- in order to write the last phase of his attack literature as he believed he was directed by God, he had to give up his pleasurable aspects of writing in order to write "in the moment," which he disliked and perceived as an ascetic practice.
- SK spent his entire life in the city of Copenhagen (one aspect of the practice of devotia moderna, where he spent a great deal of time walking in the poverty stricken parts of town, really getting to know and converse with all the residents.
I don't see Millay's (or Gardiner's, or Tudvad's, or ChatGPT's, etc) depiction of SK as the last word. I've noticed that people who have an affinity for SK or some aspect of his work, tend to write about him in a friendly light, and perhaps whitewash his flaws. My impression is that he was as complex a person as any of us and neither deserves all the good will he receives or all the derision.
My goals right now are to understand what he said and then to evaluate that for myself. I understand that his work has been greatly valued as well as feared. I want to understand why. I don't believe from what I've read so far that he is interested in "the drama of existence" if one sees it as BIG and "Dramatic" (Cecil B. Demille). This isn't about strutting or fretting on the stage. The drama, as I understand it so far, is the interior movement of thought created by anxiety of being a thinking being. It's a small space, and the movement need not be physical or even noticed, but we experience it and it affects us.
Added a space to the editorial square brackets to prevent them being read as a strike through tag. BroJames, Purgatory Host
Forgive my absence from the conversation I've been rereading F&T and it's been much more difficult than it was when I was just a child playing with childish things.
Life has asked so much of me in the interim I find I'm reading it as if for the first time, and as a completely different person. And as one who has lost her only child this is a very challenging read right now. Kierkegaard in hindsight and in the present seem to be two distinctly different voices. So much for memory.
But I'm going to persevere because ISTM that this conversation has arisen in the proper time and place in my life for some benefit I can't yet perceive.
So please carry on, I'll put in my two cents as relevant thoughts arise.
I think the fanatics are interesting to me mostly because that's one of the few parts of the classroom lectures that remain in my head to this day.
If I had to give another reason, I guess it's because they nuance the commonly posed retort that the Knight Of Faith would just be allowed to run amok and inflict horror upon mindless horror on the world, so long as he thought he was obeying God.
Forgive my absence from the conversation I've been rereading F&T and it's been much more difficult than it was when I was just a child playing with childish things.
Life has asked so much of me in the interim I find I'm reading it as if for the first time, and as a completely different person. And as one who has lost her only child this is a very challenging read right now. Kierkegaard in hindsight and in the present seem to be two distinctly different voices. So much for memory.
But I'm going to persevere because ISTM that this conversation has arisen in the proper time and place in my life for some benefit I can't yet perceive.
So please carry on, I'll put in my two cents as relevant thoughts arise.
AFF
I've had roughly the same experience re-exploring FaT for this thread, though I think it's because I only skimmed the book at university, and otherwise relied on the prof's stripped-down analysis of the epistomological and ethical implications(*).
Sorry to hear about your loss.
(*) Which, by the way, was excellent for its purposes.
Forgive my absence from the conversation I've been rereading F&T and it's been much more difficult than it was when I was just a child playing with childish things.
Life has asked so much of me in the interim I find I'm reading it as if for the first time, and as a completely different person. And as one who has lost her only child this is a very challenging read right now. Kierkegaard in hindsight and in the present seem to be two distinctly different voices. So much for memory.
But I'm going to persevere because ISTM that this conversation has arisen in the proper time and place in my life for some benefit I can't yet perceive.
So please carry on, I'll put in my two cents as relevant thoughts arise.
AFF
I've had roughly the same experience re-exploring FaT for this thread, though I think it's because I only skimmed the book at university, and otherwise relied on the prof's stripped-down analysis of the epistomological and ethical implications(*).
Sorry to hear about your loss.
(*) Which, by the way, was excellent for its purposes.
I thank my professor Yitzchak (Irving) Block (google him) - for the same reason. Many years later when I joined a ChaBaD Cassidic study group of the Kabbalah - Tanya and Zohar - I learned how profoundly Jewish mysticism has infiltrated and uplifted my wordlview. My street cred went up 1000% in that group when it became known that I studied for four years under one of the world's greatest living Kabbalists.
Maybe after this we can have a look at Martin Buber's "I and Thou".
Thank you for your thoughts. I appreciate it very much.
@A_Feminine_Force I can't imagine how hard it would be to approach this book after your loss. Do what feels right for you.
It took me 6 months to read it (last November to May), and it was a fight every inch of the way. I think this is a good place to bring up questions, if you feel like posing them publicly. You surely have the background I lack. But sometimes hashing over questions helps.
I know nothing of Kabbalism. Anything you bring in that regard will be new to me.
@Kendel
If I had to give another reason, I guess it's because they nuance the commonly posed retort that the Knight Of Faith would just be allowed to run amok and inflict horror upon mindless horror on the world, so long as he thought he was obeying God.
Sorry, I'm not seeing the connection between the two. Probably because it's late here. I was flipping through my copy here at the kitchen counter, but I'm just looking at all the words on the pages. Nothing sticks right now.
How are you both on grasping the hegelian structure he develops that includes faith (universal, ethical, telos, etc)? I had wrangled with these a lot and actually drew sketches of them which helped a lot, as silly as that is. The structure is only important, in my view, for understanding the way SK frames his descriptions of faith, not faith, a person's relationship to other people and with God. It's like learning another language.
Sorry, I'm not seeing the connection between the two. Probably because it's late here. I was flipping through my copy here at the kitchen counter, but I'm just looking at all the words on the pages. Nothing sticks right now.
That was probably framed(by me) more like a typical objection to Nietzsche than to Kierkegaard. I think the issue, put into Kierkegaard's mythological terms, would be something like "What distinguishes Abraham's violation of the Ethical from a religious fanatic's violation of the Ethical?" (And fill in your own idea of what the fanatic would do.)
The answer: Abraham acts alone.
I think the real-life equivalent-question in Kierkegaard's day woulda been something like: "What distinguishes a true Christian who believes in the Cross from the respectable burgher who donates a pew with his name on it and funds the handout of Bibles in the streets?" Answer: the true Christian acts alone.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure we're more-or-less talking about the same stuff, and I'm gonna leave the fanatics alone for now. I'll get back to you on Hegel in a bit.
I think you might be talking about paragraph 14 in Problema II.
People usually refrain from citing passages such as this one from Luke [16:26, 28]. They are afraid of letting people loose; they fear that as soon as it pleases the single individual to behave as the single individual, the worst will happen. Furthermore, people think that existing as the single individual is the easiest thing of all, and that therefore people must be compelled to become the universal. I am unable to share either this fear or this opinion, and for the same reason. Whoever has learned that to exist as the single individual is the most frightful thing of all must not be afraid to say that it is the greatest thing of all, but he must also say it in such a way that his words scarcely become a snare for someone who is confused, but rather help him enter into the universal, though his words do open up a bit of space for what is great. Whoever does not dare mention passages such as this does not dare mention Abraham either, and the belief that it is quite easy to exist as the single individual contains a highly distrurbing indirect admission concerning oneself -- for the person who really has self-respect and concern for his soul is certain that a person who lives under his own surveilance, alone in the entire world, lives more stringently and more secluded than a young woman in her virgin's bower. Of course, it is certainly true that there can be people who need to be subjected to compulsion, people who , if they were unrestrained, would run riot in selfish pleasures like wild beasts. But a person must demonstrate that he is not among them precisely by knowing how to speak with anxiety and with trembling.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling (trans. Bruce Kiermmse), 2022.
Looking at the contrast (Christian vs Fanatic) that SK - or rather de silentio - makes, I think it's important to keep in mind what is being said about the solitude and the groups themselves. Also the placement of this paragraph, right after one about the church.
Although the Knight of Faith functions as the single individual, incomprenensible to everyone else, he is in direct relation to God -- in absolute relation to the absolute. In the paragraph I transcribed above, de silentio contradicts the common belief that one who is not within the universal (i.e., ethical secular society OR the state church) will run wild. Because of the KoF's past, his existence as a single individual (who has already been a part of the universal/ethical/social morality/the church, has experienced the luxury of being understood, who has left all the comforts of the universal/e/sm/c) is different from the fanatics'. Not only is acting entirely alone, but he has left the greatness of the universal in order to do it. His past and his position in relation to the cause him to "live under his own surveillance, etc."
The fanatics/sectarians described a few pages later "attempt to escape the narrow path of the paradox and become a tragic hero at a bargain price." De silentio makes clear from the Preface that anything obtained at a "bargain price" in the world of the spirit is a sham. In that case, the sectarians have not yet entered the universal, do not participate in the ethical, have not made the first movement much less the second, cannot even act as tragic/ethical heroes.
They do have "a private theater consisting of some good friends and comrads who represent the universal as well as the untrustworthy witnesses in Gulddaasen represent justice." Inthat they operate outside the universal, where they would be expected to operate as single individuals (see the first description of the Tel. Sus. of the Eth.), they have created a substitionary space where they pretend to fulfill the telos of joining the universal, and as a group. In this way they defy public expectations to "run wild" as single individuals, although they do seem to run wild.
While the KoF is outside the universal, he is outside of it in an entirely different way (higher/above it) from the sectarians, so that his experience is in solitude and theirs is in a chattering group.
[I feel like there is still something missing here, but I've run out of time an hour ago, and must wrap up for now.]
And none of this work to understand what is on the page answers the question: Is there a teleological employment of the concepts?
Thanks alot. Again, I think we've been talking about pretty much the same thing, but reading the actual text fills in many of the particulars for me.
I was thinking all this stuff was covered in Problema III, about Abraham concealing his purpose from others, possibly because I remember the "fanatic" lecture as being near the end of the portion of the semester dedicated to Kierkegaard.
Earlier, you mentioned Kierkegaard's comnents on Mary. I actually, on my own volition, discussed that in my paper for the philosophy class, and the prof seemed not overly familiar with them.
As I recall, the main point of that passage was that Mary, like Abraham, was uniquely called to her undertaking. But your comments seemed to indicate that the Virgin Birth also violated the Ethical in some way. Is that really indicated by the text?
As I recall, the main point of that passage was that Mary, like Abraham, was uniquely called to her undertaking. But your comments seemed to indicate that the Virgin Birth also violated the Ethical in some way. Is that really indicated by the text?
I always thought this was referring to Mary's "out of wedlock" conception which, considering the mores of SK's time, might have been considered beyond the bounds of ethical behaviour.
As I recall, the main point of that passage was that Mary, like Abraham, was uniquely called to her undertaking. But your comments seemed to indicate that the Virgin Birth also violated the Ethical in some way. Is that really indicated by the text?
I always thought this was referring to Mary's "out of wedlock" conception which, considering the mores of SK's time, might have been considered beyond the bounds of ethical behaviour.
AFF
Yeah. Though an OOW conception was considered unethical because it results from OOW sex, whereas the Virgin Birth obviously did not.
Just bought a 1941 translation of Fear And Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, translated by Walter Lowrie. May or may not impact my contributions to the thread.
Thanks. I think that's just the book, which I now have, but labour appreciated.
Walter Towrie, the translator, has an endnote in which he states he would like to compile an anthology of Kierkegaard's passages on Mary, and opines that no other protestant was so engrossed with her, and "perhaps" no Catholic "appreciated more profoundly" her "unique position".
The latter, I would speculate, is because Catholics tend not to exalt the solitary aspects of disciplship, even in so singular a figure as Mary.
Jean-Luc Godard's movie Hail Mary is another protestant(Calvinist, albeit lapsed) take on Mary. I don't know if I'd precisely call it kierkegaardian, but it certainly does have that bleak, somewhat alienated quality about it.
Yeah. Though an OOW conception was considered unethical because it results from OOW sex, whereas the Virgin Birth obviously did not.
Notwithstanding what we believe about the genesis of the Jesus Child - Mary would have been alone in her experience and outside the norms of what was considered to be "moral" or "ethical" behaviour in her own time.
It's also the aspect of surrender that makes her the KofF - she was called to sacrifice her reputation and the life she hoped for - which were returned to her through her marriage to Joseph and her delivery of the boy Jesus.
Later in life she was called again to surrender her child to his fate - and yet again he was returned to her.
I can see how Kierkegaard's faith and his contemplation of this pattern might have caused him to run his own life experiment, to a very different result.
I don't pretend to be a KoF but I can feel Kierkegaard's struggle to live as if he were - living in that space between the call of God for the sacrifice with full assurance of the goodness of the unfolding events no matter how dire - and the event itself. And being able to live through and past the event because of the utter conviction that nothing belongs to me, I only borrowed from God for a time.
Hello, nice to meet you all - I surfed in having been looking online for discussions about Kierkegaard.
I'm enjoying reading all your perceptions/opinions/views of what K was talking about, he's quite the most maddening writer as different people can read the same K passage and come to completely different conclusions - which either suggests that K was an incredibly poor philosopher and writer with a jumble of contradictory thoughts; that he's incredibly difficult or something else.
My money is on the "something else" - that for Kierkegaard the questions (and in particular the correct type of question) was more important than the "right answer" because thinking hard about things is important to be fully human.
The first question posed in this thread was
What exactly does Kierkegaard mean by saying that Abraham, in obeying God's command to sacrifice Isaac, does so knowing that he will get Isaac back?
In my opinion, this is impossible to answer, because I don't think this is the kind of question K intends us to ask after reading F&T. I don't think he intends or asks us to try to understand Abraham and Isaac as "historical people", but as examplars from a religious tradition we are familiar with. From within Christendom we are told from childhood about the great faith of A&I, I think K intends to subvert the unthinking fairy story and bring back the existential shock of religious child sacrifice, essentially saying that to be truly alive, truly a believer (if we accept that the Knight of Faith is for K a desirable state to be in) then the highest religious duty is to listen to the voice telling us to destroy the holiest things we have *and then do it* without expecting a saviour from the consequences.
Which is a disgusting, horrific, terrifying conclusion to come to from a religious text!
Sorry for waffling on. The final thing I'd say is that I don't believe Kierkegaard was a Christian (and frequently said he wasn't) and I think part of his whole objective/beef was to tilt Christianity of his day into something else. So reframing him as being some kind of theologian from within the church I think is a mistake - for me he is trying to break it, turn it completely upside down, push it in a different direction. It being what it means to be a Christian, I think.
Comments
Then, there is the tradition the first-born male belongs to God anyway.
Besides whatever was the case in the stories out of which Genesis was constructed the book as we have it is a narrative whole.
But either way, I’m not sure how Isaac not being mentioned at the end of the Binding narrative relates to what I understand Kierkegaard to be saying about Abraham and his leap of faith.
But that doesn’t come until the Mosaic law, where it’s related to the Exodus and to God saying “Israel is my firstborn.”
Besides, Ishmael, not Isaac, was Abraham’s firstborn son.
ETA: Cross-posted with Dafyd.
I don't think it really does. If Isaac died on Mount Moriah, then almost everybody's understanding of the story, not just Kierkegaard's, is wrong. And if he didn't die, there doesn't seem to be any specific purpose to positing him as absent at the descent.
Honestly, if I were reading the biblical narrative, I would just assume that the writer omitted mentioning Isaac at the descent because Abraham was the main protagonist of the story.
She took her daughter to the store to buy school supplies, but the store had closed early, so she went home angry, popped a few valiums with a martini to calm down, passed out and banged her head on the coffee table, and had to get stitches.
Obviously, the daughter probably went home as well, but the main focus of the story is what happened to the mother as a result of not getting the school supplies, so she's the only one the writer bothers with after establishing the store was closed.
Besides the question you had asked earlier in the thread about Abraham knowing he would get Isaac back, are there other things related to Kierkegaard that you would like to discuss? And are you content with the answers your question has received, discussion it has generated?
I haven’t read any of Concluding Unscientific Postscript yet, except a quote a friend shared months ago, which I can’t remember. Do you see connections to or divergences from F&T in CUP? In what ways does it expand one’s understanding of Kierkegaard’s thougth or message?
Having hope is irreplacable, isn’t it?
Kierkegaard strikes me as a severe, uncompromising person — maybe not very good with forgiveness and integration. But someone who was determined to establish a basis for hope. You had mentioned his psychologically abusive father. I don’t remember how many of his the deaths of 5 of his 6 older siblings he witnessed. That does something to peole. It certainly would have scarred his father, who also saw the death of his first wife. From what I’ve read there is good reason that our man suffered from and attempted to deal philosophically and theologically with anxiety and existence. Some of F&T even seem to make anxiety a requirement for genuine faith, rather than something to be avoided.
SK also strikes me as very sensitive, yet unfiltered. The kind of person who was probably often told “Søren! Would you please just get over it, man!?” Clearly steeped in Romanticism, and willing to live with the pain of rejection that resulted from doing what he thought was right. But feeling the sting acutely.
@A_Feminine_Force, I want to come back to your point about the kingdom here and now, but later.
I agree; it doesn't really make a difference, and there's not point in interpolating complexities, at least not of this kind. Kierkegaard has something else in mind. @stetson I like your example narrative.
One of the weaning stories in the "Tuning Up" (often referred to as "Atunement") section plays with vaguarities of who is where, when but differently.
SK demonstrates no intention to perform biblical exegesis in F&T. But rather uses biblical, extrabiblical, pagan, folk and ligerary stories -- which he deliberately and overtly alters -- to develop an argument that few if any people who claimed to have faith actually had it, certainly didn't exercise it (which means they don't have it), and that it was not what was being taught or supported in the Danish state churches.
See "III" From: https://www.sorenkierkegaard.nl/artikelen/Engels/101. Fear and Trembling book Kierkegaard.pdf
Yes. Could you, or maybe @A_Feminine_Force, explain about the merman? The only non-Abraham thing I can really remember from that book is the passage on the Virgin Mary, who Kierkegaard seems to talk about as being a Knight Of Faith as well.
Absolutely. It's a good spectrum of discussion. I've been more focused on the hard philosophy of it(probably in keeping with the context where I first encountered Kierkegaard), but you and AFF seem alot more open-ended, as well as textually based, and I've been reading both your posts over again a few times to absorb the ideas more fully.
I think I attach more importance to the TSOTE than others here do, but again, that could be because of the academic context, and FaT being a pivotal work in existentialism's later analysis of human choice.
Honestly, I can't even remember if those passages were from CUP. But whatever it was I read in those one or two anthologies, it dovetailed closely with what I had been taught in class.
Everything I can say about F&T is fairly undigested. This is me and the text, a little help from a few guide books and what little I learned about Hegel in history and lit classes that touched Marxism. I have nothing to dovetail with Kierkegaard, except Christianity, oh, and German Romanticism.
It's possible, if you read F&T for a class, you only read through Problema I. From what I've listened to online and read about F&T, it sounds like Problema II (Is There an Absolute Duty to God?) and III (Was it Ethically Defensible of Abraham not to have Told Sarah, Eliezer, Isaac About His Undertaking?) are often ignored completely.
Problema II
-contrasts a hegelian view of "duty to God" with the idea of "duty to God" that would exist if there is a TSE; he demonstrates that this is a paradox.
-examines faith as the most extreme form of egoism, because the person of faith does not act for the good of the universal, but for one's own sake and God's.
-being in the church is the same as being in the universal/ethical, which implies that any relationship with God is mediated, thus making faith impossible.
Problema III
-the ethical/universal does not allow for concealment, and Abraham's concealment of his actions is indefensible.
-the demonic category (in contrast to the religious) is introduced, and is occupied by individuals, who exist outside the universal because of situation or nature, rather than by choice.
-Irony is discussed as a method of concealment, while using speech, and Abraham's use of irony in saying "God will provide a ram."
-The discussion about doubt, largely hidden in SK's footnotes, is worth the price of working through this chapter (even if you eventually skip some bits).
And if your prof only had you read through Problema I, you probably also missed the Epilogue which closes the bracket of the Preface, but I think gives closer to Kierkegaard's own view view of faith: It is the task of a lifetime (mentioned throughout the book) and that once coming to the point of faith, one would not merely remain standing there, but make one's life there.
You know there's so much more in the book, but those are the broad strokes that made it to my notes.
I'll try to come back to the merman soon. He's fantastic.
I THINK Problema III is what I remember as being about the distinction between a Knight Of Faith and a fanatic. If Abraham starts drawing other people into his child-killing plans, he becomes a fanatic.
And thank you very much for your extended summations and commentary. I will reply in a bit.
I have often thought that this distinction is vulnerable to the ad absurdum of...
On what he believes to be God's command, a man enlists a few friends to help him commit petty vandalism of an unused building. Fanatic.
Whereas...
On what he believes to be God's command, a man finds a way to single-handedly unleash smallpox upon the world, killing millions. Knight Of Faith.
(Though not technically an ad absurdum, since upon reading the examples, a true kierkegaardian would not abandon the distinction, but rather nod along and say "Yes, yes, that's true. The second man is a glorious Knight Of Faith.")
There is the one, poor parishioner who goes home to follow the example of Abraham and then is dressed down by the pastor. But I take that example to show:
-the inconsistancy between preaching and faith exhibited by the Danish clergy
-another example of the paradox of the church (where one is supposed to be at one with God) being the universal (society/public/mediated by ethics), rather than outside the universal in absolute relation with the absolute
-a demonstration of the paradox created by attempting to comprehend faith in terms of a hegelian structure. The constant tension of the practice of faith vs the etical.
Again, though, I see the story of Abraham as a tool. SK chose in Abraham the example of faith that most obviously conflicts with the ethical. And the story as written in the Bible is not nearly extreme enough for use. It must be ramped up even more. To demonstrate the incommensurability of the exercise of faith and the ethical.
The example of Mary is important. Mary, like Abraham, is outside the ethical, and utterly alone. But she is not called to murder, rather give birth in humiliation.
If we take it all down about 100 db, the everyday exercise of faith - the willingness to take the chance of believing the unprovable - is beyond the universal today.
Reading SK's sermons "The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air; 3 Godly Discourses" one sees Kierkegaard's view that the human who has faith in God can be in absolute relation to the absolute "out there", outside of society, the public, the universal or ethical. By universal standards, even this is fanaticism.
--Aah. I see I am about to cross post with you @stetson. Time to see what you wrote. And take a break from blabbing myself.
For now, I'll just clarify my examples: yes, they are mine. My point is that if we follow Kierkegaard's standard for pronouncing someone a Knight Of Faith, then we have to include the smallpox-spreader just as surely as we include Abraham, because it shouldn't matter if I'm willing to kill one innocent person or ten million, as long as I am acting entirely on my own.
Hope all is well.
I know what you mean, but that wasn't how the concept of a "fanatic", under that terminology, was presented to us in class. The pivotal distinction was that the Knight Of Faith acts alone in obedience to God, whereas the fanatic tries to get others to join him.
(In contemporary terms, I think we'd say that the fanatic tries to start a movement.)
Hmmm. Interesting. Was your prof riffing on F&T? Or is this in the book? I don't remember anything like that. He does menition a few groups, though, namely "The Assistant Professors" and the "faux" Knights of Faith, who end up as sectarians.
Can you point to where SK talks about groups in the way you described fanatics?
Thanks!
..... and from the next paragraph:
I'm thinking now about who these sectarians sound like to me. Televangelists here in the U.S. come to mind immediately! Give nothing up; lead hoards; gain the world!
But the hoards; yes, they could be the fanatics your prof was talking about. What are your thoughts about them?
As always, I'm running out of time. I want to share some bits from "The Lily of the Field...." but as you know, finding just the right bit in SK's work is challenging. I think "The Lily" is a good foil to the sectarians here.
And I still haven't gotten back to the Merman and Agnet, or to Faust. So much.
We can busy with this for a long time. : )
Hope this helps
BroJames, Purgatory Host
Hi BroJames thank you for this. I was unaware of the punctuational dynamics as well.
I did miss a few posts here - but I have regrettably lost all my notes from uni on Kierkegaard and I have a lot of "review" to undertake before I can credibly comment on those rather large bits lost to time and memory.
Though I am heartily grateful for the incentive to refresh memory and discover new nuances.
This is an absolutely smashing thread. Much fun!
AFF
I'm now 90% that the prof's lecture on "fanatics" was based on the section you're quoting there, because those passages seem very much focused on the contrast between those acting alone and those acting in groups.
Thanks for the trouble of typing it out. I'll reply in greater detail in a bit.
@A Feminine Force I'm looking forward to what you bring to the discussion.
Well, you still had to slog through the whole thing to find the relevant passages. And VERY relevant it was.
I think my professor was boiling down Kierkegaard's prose in order to render the basic ideas into academic philosophy. This is probably the main reason getting our understanding of those ideas to synchronize has been a bit of a challenge here. I'm still not certain why the prof used "fanatic", rather than "sectarian", unless he was using a different translation, or thought that "fanatic" would convey the concept better to a contemporay audience.
I'm sure "fanatic" was clearer to your classmates.
I really hadn't seen "sectarian" as equivalent to "fanatic." But when I was in Germany, my German friends made it clear I, a Baptist, belonged to a sect. As a regular pracitioner, I was likely seen by the as a fanatic as well. So maybe the words are sometimes synonymous.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that "sectarian" in C19 Denmark had connotations closer to "fanatic" today, eg. "Uncle Carl used to be a pretty relaxed fellow, but after he started reading those insane religious pamphlets, he became a real sectarian, screaming bible quotes at everyone day and night."
Whereas "fanatic" would be a recognized label covering everyone from JWs refusing blood to Catholics bombing clinics to street-preachers downtown telling passers-by to quit drinking or burn in Hell. So, probably the better terminology for a late C20 anglo audience.
@Martin54 brought up the question earlier what SK actually knew of the horrors that accompany living. After all, he inherited wealth (from his father, formerly a serf, who had inherited it from an uncle). Some of this has been covered already: he had a close acquaintance with death in his family; his father was a religiously severe person, whose parenting today would likely be categorized as pschologically abusive; he was physically weak and clumsy, the perfect target for bullies; his sharp wit and tongue worked well as a defense but also made him the target of social ostracism by the school bullies after they grew up .
Another question that I think is relevant is whether SK lived what he preached, and he preached a lot on paper regarding asceticism and the corrupting power of money when tied to the church and the clergy but also in regard to private life.
Thomas Millay claims in Kierkegaard and the New Nationalism (chapter 4) that SK's life approached "a traditional ascetic ideal" practiced as devotia moderna. Millay mentions a number of ways SK lived what he preached:
- he "gave a good deal of his money away to those impoverished members of Copenhagen who asked for it.
- "he spent a good deal of his own money publishing his books", and earned nothing from them. "[ S]ince he considered the writing and publication of these books part of a task given to him by God, this money should be seen in some sense dedicated or sarificed by Kierkegaard to God's action in the world." (Whether he was right or wrong about this, he lived according to what he believed he should do.)
- After living like a dandy the first few years at university, he lived a single life of prayer, devout exercises, reading and self-examination.
- From his dairies and published works Kierkegaard's committment to celibacy seems to have had little to do with sex, but was a rejection of "the typical bourgeois path to happiness (comforg), which (at his time) included marriage and family."
- SK believed that a life of obedience to God was a life of suffering. He believed that his critical writings were a task given him by God, and he suffered in a few ways because of them:
- social rejection was real. And the more focused and intense his criticism, the more intense was his rejection by his society.
- in order to write the last phase of his attack literature as he believed he was directed by God, he had to give up his pleasurable aspects of writing in order to write "in the moment," which he disliked and perceived as an ascetic practice.
- SK spent his entire life in the city of Copenhagen (one aspect of the practice of devotia moderna, where he spent a great deal of time walking in the poverty stricken parts of town, really getting to know and converse with all the residents.
I don't see Millay's (or Gardiner's, or Tudvad's, or ChatGPT's, etc) depiction of SK as the last word. I've noticed that people who have an affinity for SK or some aspect of his work, tend to write about him in a friendly light, and perhaps whitewash his flaws. My impression is that he was as complex a person as any of us and neither deserves all the good will he receives or all the derision.
My goals right now are to understand what he said and then to evaluate that for myself. I understand that his work has been greatly valued as well as feared. I want to understand why. I don't believe from what I've read so far that he is interested in "the drama of existence" if one sees it as BIG and "Dramatic" (Cecil B. Demille). This isn't about strutting or fretting on the stage. The drama, as I understand it so far, is the interior movement of thought created by anxiety of being a thinking being. It's a small space, and the movement need not be physical or even noticed, but we experience it and it affects us.
Added a space to the editorial square brackets to prevent them being read as a strike through tag. BroJames, Purgatory Host
Life has asked so much of me in the interim I find I'm reading it as if for the first time, and as a completely different person. And as one who has lost her only child this is a very challenging read right now. Kierkegaard in hindsight and in the present seem to be two distinctly different voices. So much for memory.
But I'm going to persevere because ISTM that this conversation has arisen in the proper time and place in my life for some benefit I can't yet perceive.
So please carry on, I'll put in my two cents as relevant thoughts arise.
AFF
I think the fanatics are interesting to me mostly because that's one of the few parts of the classroom lectures that remain in my head to this day.
If I had to give another reason, I guess it's because they nuance the commonly posed retort that the Knight Of Faith would just be allowed to run amok and inflict horror upon mindless horror on the world, so long as he thought he was obeying God.
I've had roughly the same experience re-exploring FaT for this thread, though I think it's because I only skimmed the book at university, and otherwise relied on the prof's stripped-down analysis of the epistomological and ethical implications(*).
Sorry to hear about your loss.
(*) Which, by the way, was excellent for its purposes.
I thank my professor Yitzchak (Irving) Block (google him) - for the same reason. Many years later when I joined a ChaBaD Cassidic study group of the Kabbalah - Tanya and Zohar - I learned how profoundly Jewish mysticism has infiltrated and uplifted my wordlview. My street cred went up 1000% in that group when it became known that I studied for four years under one of the world's greatest living Kabbalists.
Maybe after this we can have a look at Martin Buber's "I and Thou".
Thank you for your thoughts. I appreciate it very much.
AFF
It took me 6 months to read it (last November to May), and it was a fight every inch of the way. I think this is a good place to bring up questions, if you feel like posing them publicly. You surely have the background I lack. But sometimes hashing over questions helps.
I know nothing of Kabbalism. Anything you bring in that regard will be new to me.
Sorry, I'm not seeing the connection between the two. Probably because it's late here. I was flipping through my copy here at the kitchen counter, but I'm just looking at all the words on the pages. Nothing sticks right now.
How are you both on grasping the hegelian structure he develops that includes faith (universal, ethical, telos, etc)? I had wrangled with these a lot and actually drew sketches of them which helped a lot, as silly as that is. The structure is only important, in my view, for understanding the way SK frames his descriptions of faith, not faith, a person's relationship to other people and with God. It's like learning another language.
That was probably framed(by me) more like a typical objection to Nietzsche than to Kierkegaard. I think the issue, put into Kierkegaard's mythological terms, would be something like "What distinguishes Abraham's violation of the Ethical from a religious fanatic's violation of the Ethical?" (And fill in your own idea of what the fanatic would do.)
The answer: Abraham acts alone.
I think the real-life equivalent-question in Kierkegaard's day woulda been something like: "What distinguishes a true Christian who believes in the Cross from the respectable burgher who donates a pew with his name on it and funds the handout of Bibles in the streets?" Answer: the true Christian acts alone.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure we're more-or-less talking about the same stuff, and I'm gonna leave the fanatics alone for now. I'll get back to you on Hegel in a bit.
I think you might be talking about paragraph 14 in Problema II. Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling (trans. Bruce Kiermmse), 2022.
Looking at the contrast (Christian vs Fanatic) that SK - or rather de silentio - makes, I think it's important to keep in mind what is being said about the solitude and the groups themselves. Also the placement of this paragraph, right after one about the church.
Although the Knight of Faith functions as the single individual, incomprenensible to everyone else, he is in direct relation to God -- in absolute relation to the absolute. In the paragraph I transcribed above, de silentio contradicts the common belief that one who is not within the universal (i.e., ethical secular society OR the state church) will run wild. Because of the KoF's past, his existence as a single individual (who has already been a part of the universal/ethical/social morality/the church, has experienced the luxury of being understood, who has left all the comforts of the universal/e/sm/c) is different from the fanatics'. Not only is acting entirely alone, but he has left the greatness of the universal in order to do it. His past and his position in relation to the cause him to "live under his own surveillance, etc."
The fanatics/sectarians described a few pages later "attempt to escape the narrow path of the paradox and become a tragic hero at a bargain price." De silentio makes clear from the Preface that anything obtained at a "bargain price" in the world of the spirit is a sham. In that case, the sectarians have not yet entered the universal, do not participate in the ethical, have not made the first movement much less the second, cannot even act as tragic/ethical heroes.
They do have "a private theater consisting of some good friends and comrads who represent the universal as well as the untrustworthy witnesses in Gulddaasen represent justice." Inthat they operate outside the universal, where they would be expected to operate as single individuals (see the first description of the Tel. Sus. of the Eth.), they have created a substitionary space where they pretend to fulfill the telos of joining the universal, and as a group. In this way they defy public expectations to "run wild" as single individuals, although they do seem to run wild.
While the KoF is outside the universal, he is outside of it in an entirely different way (higher/above it) from the sectarians, so that his experience is in solitude and theirs is in a chattering group.
[I feel like there is still something missing here, but I've run out of time an hour ago, and must wrap up for now.]
And none of this work to understand what is on the page answers the question: Is there a teleological employment of the concepts?
Thanks alot. Again, I think we've been talking about pretty much the same thing, but reading the actual text fills in many of the particulars for me.
I was thinking all this stuff was covered in Problema III, about Abraham concealing his purpose from others, possibly because I remember the "fanatic" lecture as being near the end of the portion of the semester dedicated to Kierkegaard.
Earlier, you mentioned Kierkegaard's comnents on Mary. I actually, on my own volition, discussed that in my paper for the philosophy class, and the prof seemed not overly familiar with them.
As I recall, the main point of that passage was that Mary, like Abraham, was uniquely called to her undertaking. But your comments seemed to indicate that the Virgin Birth also violated the Ethical in some way. Is that really indicated by the text?
I always thought this was referring to Mary's "out of wedlock" conception which, considering the mores of SK's time, might have been considered beyond the bounds of ethical behaviour.
AFF
Yeah. Though an OOW conception was considered unethical because it results from OOW sex, whereas the Virgin Birth obviously did not.
@stetson go to page 32 in this pdf below, and then scroll up about 1/2 a paragraph. I think I've heard one passing mention of Mary as a Knight of Faith in any book or video I've looked into.
https://www.sorenkierkegaard.nl/artikelen/Engels/101. Fear and Trembling book Kierkegaard.pdf
Thanks. I think that's just the book, which I now have, but labour appreciated.
Walter Towrie, the translator, has an endnote in which he states he would like to compile an anthology of Kierkegaard's passages on Mary, and opines that no other protestant was so engrossed with her, and "perhaps" no Catholic "appreciated more profoundly" her "unique position".
The latter, I would speculate, is because Catholics tend not to exalt the solitary aspects of disciplship, even in so singular a figure as Mary.
Jean-Luc Godard's movie Hail Mary is another protestant(Calvinist, albeit lapsed) take on Mary. I don't know if I'd precisely call it kierkegaardian, but it certainly does have that bleak, somewhat alienated quality about it.
Notwithstanding what we believe about the genesis of the Jesus Child - Mary would have been alone in her experience and outside the norms of what was considered to be "moral" or "ethical" behaviour in her own time.
It's also the aspect of surrender that makes her the KofF - she was called to sacrifice her reputation and the life she hoped for - which were returned to her through her marriage to Joseph and her delivery of the boy Jesus.
Later in life she was called again to surrender her child to his fate - and yet again he was returned to her.
I can see how Kierkegaard's faith and his contemplation of this pattern might have caused him to run his own life experiment, to a very different result.
I don't pretend to be a KoF but I can feel Kierkegaard's struggle to live as if he were - living in that space between the call of God for the sacrifice with full assurance of the goodness of the unfolding events no matter how dire - and the event itself. And being able to live through and past the event because of the utter conviction that nothing belongs to me, I only borrowed from God for a time.
AFF
I'm enjoying reading all your perceptions/opinions/views of what K was talking about, he's quite the most maddening writer as different people can read the same K passage and come to completely different conclusions - which either suggests that K was an incredibly poor philosopher and writer with a jumble of contradictory thoughts; that he's incredibly difficult or something else.
My money is on the "something else" - that for Kierkegaard the questions (and in particular the correct type of question) was more important than the "right answer" because thinking hard about things is important to be fully human.
The first question posed in this thread was
In my opinion, this is impossible to answer, because I don't think this is the kind of question K intends us to ask after reading F&T. I don't think he intends or asks us to try to understand Abraham and Isaac as "historical people", but as examplars from a religious tradition we are familiar with. From within Christendom we are told from childhood about the great faith of A&I, I think K intends to subvert the unthinking fairy story and bring back the existential shock of religious child sacrifice, essentially saying that to be truly alive, truly a believer (if we accept that the Knight of Faith is for K a desirable state to be in) then the highest religious duty is to listen to the voice telling us to destroy the holiest things we have *and then do it* without expecting a saviour from the consequences.
Which is a disgusting, horrific, terrifying conclusion to come to from a religious text!
Sorry for waffling on. The final thing I'd say is that I don't believe Kierkegaard was a Christian (and frequently said he wasn't) and I think part of his whole objective/beef was to tilt Christianity of his day into something else. So reframing him as being some kind of theologian from within the church I think is a mistake - for me he is trying to break it, turn it completely upside down, push it in a different direction. It being what it means to be a Christian, I think.
Welcome to the Ship!
Yes the interface is rather unforgiving in the edit window. No matter, we will muddle through.
Glad to have you aboard.
AFF