Tag Archives: Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard on the Difference Between the Tragic Hero and Abraham

22 Sunday Mar 2020

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In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard draws an interesting contrast between Abraham and Agamemnon: both men are called upon to sacrifice a child: but Agamemnon is a tragic hero and Abraham is an example of faith. What then is the true distinction between the two?

The tragic hero is compelled to his end by an ethical demand. To fulfill his oath, Agamemnon must lead the force into war. The demand to sacrifice is daughter is tragic and painful, but it is compelled by the demand of his oath. His act is meaningful and ethical to the community.

But it is not so with Abraham. There is no ethical duty which is recognizable to anyone who watched Abraham. The soldiers who saw Agamemnon move to give up his daughter, would have a basis to understand and even sympathize with Agamemnon. But if one were to watch Abraham: his actions would make no ethical sense. There is no apparent duty.

A second and related comparison comes with the matter of disclosing his conduct.

In this section Kierkegaard first makes an observation about concealment and revelation. In the older Greek tragedies, the concealment was brought about by fate. Oedipus kills his father, but it is concealed to him. It is revealed afterward.

In the modern age, the act of concealment is brought about the character’s decision. He compares two types here. There is the esthetic concealment, where two lovers conceal to bring about their desired end. And to have the happy ending we enjoy such action.

Esthetics permits these actions, even if unethical:

But esthetics is a civil and sentimental discipline that knows more ways out than any pawnshop manager. What it do then? It does everything possible for the lovers. (75)

But ethics requires revelation: The concealment is a deception, and even if pleasing aesthetically it is repugnant to ethics. Ethics requires an explanation, a justification for the conduct. There must be a public rationale.

Abraham differs, because he cannot explain. What is there to say? He is seeking something absurd. Abraham is not merely doing something which seems outside of all ethics; he is doing something he knows cannot be true. He will kill Isaac and Isaac is the child of promise and God will fulfill his promise. This is not merely improbable; it is paradoxical.

There is no public rationale, because the wisdom of God is greater than man.

We go wildly astray if we think Kierkegaard says that faith is believing things which are untrue or improbable. That is what is often miscredited to him. Faith is not believing stupid or false things. Faith is believing that God is above human categories:

1 Corinthians 1:20–29 (ESV)

 20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

 

Some observations on the “absurdity” of faith from Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling

06 Friday Mar 2020

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Kierkegaard’s Fear and Loathing considers the fact of God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. A central concern of this work has to do with the obvious ethical problem of murder: how can Abraham be a great man of “faith” when his greatest act of “faith” is so obviously unethical?

Kierkegaard takes on this problem from multiple directions. Here, to merely get the ideas straight in my own mind, are certain elements of this text which I found most interesting and useful.

“The old saying that things do not happen in the world as the parson preaches.” (Cambridge University Press, trans. Sylvia Walsh.) Too often philosophy is too abstract, to pat; too often sermons are more platitude than help in patience.

When it comes to the question of Abraham, this book works to avoid neat theories of Abraham’s act: What could he do? God was making him do this thing. Or, well he knew that Isaac would live again in the resurrection; so what does it matter? Or Abraham knew it was some mere trial.

The work (written by a pseudonym; thus, there is some distance between Kierkegaard and the “author” of the work, does nothing to shy away from the fact this great act of faith hinges upon a murder; and thus, unethical in the fullest sense of the world. “What is left out of the Abraham’s story is the anxiety … to the son the father has highest and most sacred duty.”

The ethical makes a demand upon Abraham which runs counter to the command of God; thus, the ethical paradoxically becomes a temptation!

One aspect of the analysis lies with the common understanding of ethical as merely a culturally determined pattern for behavior. While faith may be consistent with such ethics, faith is not necessarily constrained by such ethics.

Abraham cannot kill Isaac and point to some greater ethical good. If it were, then Abraham’s killing could be justified on the ground of the greater good.  But, there is no argument of the loss of the one for the community. And yet somehow, Abraham’s act is a matter of faith. He is not a “tragic hero” who ultimately has an ethical justification for an unethical act.

Kierkegaard aims to disentangle the matter of temptation (by the ethical) from the matter of paradox.

Next, faith is not merely resignation to the greater will of God and a willingness to lose Isaac.  Kierkegaard writes at length of the Knight Infinite Resignation. This knight resigns himself to the loss because there is (again) a greater context in which the paradox of God’s command “makes sense”.

A common intellectual tactic is to resolve a present problem into an unknown future good in the world to come. There is something in the “infinite” which justifies this action in the “finite”. In such a circumstance, the present loss and conflict removes the difficulty of the command of God.

Again, the resolution of the matter is completed by resolving and dismissing the “paradox” of God’s command.

But this will not work, because Abraham does not proceed according to some platitude and hope for the vague future. Abraham expects to murder and receive Isaac in the same act: “By faith Abraham did not renounce Isaac, but by faith Abraham received Isaac.” (41)

In another place, Kierkegaard notes that Abraham was not hoping for some future but was hoping for something in this life: God had promised Abraham that Isaac was the son of promise.

How then does this work out? Abraham is tempted to the ethical; but how could God command the unethical. Abraham is tempted to merely resign himself to duty or overwhelming power, but instead expects to receive Isaac back.

Moreover, Kierkegaard rules out another escape hatch. Abraham is not believing in something merely improbable (which is another dodge undertaken in the name of faith).  Kierkegaard expressly does not mean by faith, something highly unlikely.

Rather, solves his problem by grasping it squarely and stating that faith is a paradox; it actually does hinge upon something “absurd” which we too often which to domesticate.

Abraham believed. He did not believe that he would be blessed one day in the hereafter but that he would become blissfully happy here in the world. God could give him a new Isaac, call the sacrifice back to life. He believed by virtue of the absurd, for all human calculation had long since ceased. (30)

By absurd, he does not mean “the improbable, the unforeseen, the unexpected.” (39). Before Abraham can believe that he will receive Isaac in this life, he must first fully resolve himself to the fact that Isaac is lost. He knows that Isaac is lost, utterly lost. That is the “movement” of infinite resignation. Faith then takes an “absurd” step to believe that Isaac will be restored in this life – knowing full well that Isaac is lost. Faith then says, Yes, Isaac is lost and I will receive Isaac back though he is lost.

One could ask what this dense, often difficult discussion of faith and ethics has to do with the actual life of a Christian today? I do not necessarily find myself struggling with Hegelian categories of thought on the same grounds as that faced by Kierkegaard in the 19th Century church of Europe.

The answer lies in our constant tendency tame faith in some manner.

Olivia Walsh, in her essay, “The Silencing of Philosophy” makes the observation

This idea of the absolute duty to God in faith can lead to some rather remarkable commands, such as the Gospel injunction to hate one’s “own faith and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life” (Luke 14:26 RSV) which exegetes tend to water down in typically ethical fashion.

I will testify to having heard this and similar texts being domesticated by turning the word “hate” into the phrase “love less”.  But the language itself is shocking. We can say this means hyperbole; but if so, what is the toned-down understanding of “hate”.

Moreover, Jesus in nowise ever abrogates the duties to one’s family. Indeed, he commands love even of one’s enemies. Kierkegaard helps us here by seeing the paradox in the duty toward God and human beings. There is a resignation to loss and recovery back which refuse to be resolved by ethical games or linguistic tricks.

Indeed, the Christian religion itself hinges upon the most profound of paradoxes:

2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV)

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

God made Christ sin – the one who was sinless; so that we who are sinful might become righteous. There are no ethical tricks, no linguistic tropes, no logical move which resolves the utterly paradoxical movement in this passage. Faith takes hold of the paradox in joy.

That’s also what made want to become an actor

06 Sunday Oct 2019

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That’s also what made me want to become an actor, so that by taking on another’s role I could acquire a sort of surrogate for my own life and in this exchanging of externals find some form of diversion. That’s what I lacked for leading a completely human life and not just a life of knowledge, to avoid basing my mind’s development on–yes, on something that people call objective–something which at any rate isn’t my own, and base it instead on something which is bound up with the deepest roots of my existence,* through which I am as it were grown into the divine and cling fast to it even though the whole world falls apart. This, you see, is what I need, and this is what I strive for. So it is with joy and inner invigoration that I contemplate the great men who have found that precious stone for which they sell everything, even their lives,* whether I see them intervening forcefully in life, with firm step and following unwaveringly their chosen paths, or run into them off the beaten track, self-absorbed and working for their lofty goals. I even look with respect upon those false paths that also lie there so close by. It is this inward action of man, this God-side of man, that matters, not a mass of information.

Soren Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard, Christ is the Way, Part One

18 Friday Jan 2019

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jesus_ascending_to_heaven

The Ascension, John Singleton Copley, 1775

Christ is the Way is a Sermon Three Discourses published 1851. The translation is by Walter Lowrie (Princeton University Press 1941)

Christ is the Way Part One

Acts 1:1-12, Ascension Day

The prayer:

O Lord Jesus Christ, who didst behold Thy fate in advance and yet didst not draw back; This who didst suffer Thyself to be born int poverty and lowliness, and thereafter in poverty and lowliness didst bear the sin of the world, being ever a sufferer until, hated, forsaken, mocked, and spat upon, in the end deserted even by God, Thou didst bow Thy head in death of shame — oh, but Thou didst yet life it up again, Thou eternal victor, Thou who wast not, it is true, victorious over Thine enemies in this life, but in death wast victorious even over death; Thou didst lift up Thy head, for ever victorious, Thou who are ascended into heave! Would that we might follow Thee!

The sermon:

Christ is the way. This is His own work, so surely it must be true.

And this way is narrow.

 

He then makes the observations that the narrow way is set out in Christ’s own life: “thou hast only to look at him, and at once thou dost see that the way is narrow.” Yes, Christ said this – but Christ also lived this life: “this is much more solid and much more forcible proclamation that the way is narrow … than if his life had not expressed it.”

The life of Christ was a constant comment and illustration – a proof that the way is narrow.

SK then compares the life of Christ and his preaching – being one and the same – with the life and preaching of many who came later, “a man whose life …. expresses the exact opposite, then preaches Christianity for half an hour. Such preaching transforms Christianity into its exact opposite.”

How then was Christ’s life narrow:

It was narrow in his “poverty and wretchedness” of his birth young life. It was present in his life being assaulted with temptation.

It was narrow in that he had to work to avoid being king – when so many men (“the universal human trait to aspire to be regarded as something great”) – aspire to be king.

And think of his love:

Now he performs again a work of love towards this people (and His whole life was nothing else but this), but He knew at the same instant what it means, that also this work of love contributes to bring Him to the cross

His life only proceeds into narrower straits. One could live with something difficult knowing that things will improve: but to know that they will only become more difficult, more trying is a narrow way.  He could have defended himself. He could have ended his difficulty – and so it was narrow to know his difficulty, how it would end; to know that he could also end the suffering, and then to proceed.

Yes there is an ascension – but the Ascension does not come without death. There is a way to the Ascension but it is a narrow way that leads through death.

Sin Usually Enters as a Flatter

06 Thursday Dec 2018

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For it goes so easily to join the dance of pleasure; but when it has gone apace, and it is pleasure which dances with the man against his will – that is a heavy dance! And it is so eay to give rein to the passions – audacious speed, one scarcely can follow it with the eye! – until passion, having taken the bit in its teeth, goes with a still more audacious speed – the man himself is not audacious enough to look where they are going! – carries him forcibly along with it! And it is so easy to permit a sinful thought! – it is so easy, it does not here apply as in other instances that it is the first step which costs, oh, no it costs nothing whatever, on the contrary, the sinful thought pays for itself at an exorbitant rate, it costs nothing – until at the conclusion, when thou must be pay for this first which did not cost anything; for when the sinful thought has gain entrance, it exacts a fearful price. Sin usually enters a man as a flatter; but then when the man has become a slave of sin – that is a frightful servitude, a narrow, prodigiously narrow way to perdition!

 

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves! And Three Discourses, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 86-87.

Soren Kierkegaard, The Mirror of the Word, Part 5

01 Tuesday May 2018

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In this section, Kierkegaard makes some interesting observations about resolutions — and about desire.

Finally, if we true benediction thou art to behold thyself in the mirror of the Word, thou must not straightway forget what manner of man thou art, not be the forgetful hearer (or reader) about whom the Apostle speaks, ‘He beheld his natural face in the mirror, and straightway forgot what manner of man he was.’

Kierkegaard lays emphasis upon the immediacy of the action: I have seen something of myself, I will regard that, I will do that immediately — not tomorrow. The great promise, I shall never forget is of little value. It is the not forgetting right now which is key. It is what happens “in the next hour” which matters.

He then takes this positive resolution and speaks of more damaging resolutions. The man who resolves (he choses gambling) to never gamble will almost certainly gamble. The better determination is, I will not gamble tonight. It is the immediacy which grants strength.

He refers to a hoaxing lust: one who is hoaxed by lust, and one who hoaxes lust:

Lust is strong merely in the instant, if only it gets its own way instantly, there will be no objection on its part to make promises for the whole life. But to reverse the situation so as to say, “No, only not to-day, but to-morrow and the day after, & c.” that is to hoax lust. For it if has to wait, lusts loses its lust; if it is not invited to enter the instant it announces itself,and before everyone else, if it is told that it will not be granted admittance until tomorrow, then lust understand (more quickly that the most ingratiating and wily courtier or the most artful woman understand what it signifies to meet with such a reception in the antechamber), lust understands that it is no longer the one and all, that is say, it is no longer ‘lust’. 

 

Soren Kierkegaard, The Mirror of the Word, Part 4

27 Friday Apr 2018

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Now we come to the primary purpose of discourse: What does it mean to use the Word of God as a “mirror”:

It is required that when thou readest God’s Word in order to see thyself in the mirror, thou must remember (so as really to get to the point of seeing thyself in the mirror), thou must remember to say to thyself continually, “It is I am that am here addressed, it is about me this is said.”

He calls this the “seriousness” of reading.  To explain this proposition, Kierkegaard uses an analogy and an example from the Bible. First, to explain what it means to be addressed by the Word.

King David had sinned grievously. He thought he successfully covered up his adultery and Uriah’s death. Then the prophet Nathan came to David and told a story. A rich man with a large flock had a friend come to dinner. The rich man was neighbor to a poor man whose family had only a single lamb which they had raised as a pet.  To feed his guest, the rich stole the poor man’s lamb and served it to the friend. David shocked and angry pronounced death upon the rich man. Nathan said, to David, “Thou art the man.”

Kierkegaard explains what has happened here:

Behold, this tale which the prophet recited was a story, but this, “Thou art the man,” was another story– it was a transition to the subjective.

He then gives an example how we could read the Word as Mirror. He uses the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The story entails a serious of people who should know better and who pass a wounded man on the side of the road. Only the despised Samaritan stops and cares for the wounded man. When we read this, we can easily hold a smug attitude and this and think, I am glad I am not like this priest in the story. But:

No, when thou readest God’s Word, it must be in all seriousness, and thou shalt say, “This priest is me. Alas, that I could be so uncompassionate — I who call myself a Christ — and in a way I am also a priest …

And so the Word is a mirror. We must be careful to not look at the mirror — which creates distance from the Word’s work, but look into the mirror and see ourselves reflected and exposed there. The Word of God works best and right when it exegetes the reader: it exposes the reader’s heart for examination.

[Next will be not forgetting what he have seen; and an examination of the psychology of resolutions.]

 

Soren Kierkegaard, The Mirror of the Word, Part 3

25 Wednesday Apr 2018

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Kierkegaard has explained that there is “reading and reading”. The Word is given not to be observed and interpreted, but to effect and transform. Yes, understanding what is contained in the Word is a part of understanding anything — but there is a kind of reading to understand which keeps the text trapped and distant.

He gives this analogy: a king issues a command. The public begins to “interpret” his command. The interpretations become more complex. There is an entire literature dedicated to reading and writing upon the interpretations. But at no point is command ever obeyed.

Since the Word is a “mirror” according to James, Kierkegaard also condemns a kind of reading which sees the mirror but never looks into the mirror.

To really read the Word, we must be “alone” with the Word:

Oh, to be alone with the Holy Scriptures! — and if thou are not, then thou art not reading the Holy Scriptures.

That this thing of being alone with God’s Word, that this is a dangerous business, is tacitly admitted ….

And then he makes an interesting confession:

And to my thinking it is only human that a man shrinks from letting the Word really get the mastery of him — if no one else will admit it, I admit that I do. It is human to beg God to have patience if one cannot at once do what one ought to do, and yet promises to strive; it is human to beg God to have compassion, seeing that the requirement is too exalted for one — if on one else will admit this of himself, I admit that I do it.

This coming face-to-face with God in the Word of God is a dangerous business. Perhaps the reason it does not seem so, is that we so rarely read.

Kierkegaard speaks of those who do not read the Word at all — most. Then there are those who read in some sort educated way to learn about the text — but not to let the text change them.  And that is not even the necessary reading. The reading which is needed is the reading which perturbs one, that changes one.

If we have not had the experience of asking God for patience and mercy when we read the Word, then it is perhaps because we have not read to be changed. Now I am not saying that should be reluctant to change: we must change. Instead, I am saying that we if have not read in such a way as to feel weight of the words in the Word, then we have not read rightly.

(part four will follow)

Soren Kierkegaard, The Mirror of the Word, Part Two

24 Tuesday Apr 2018

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“What is Required in Order to Derive True Benediction From Beholding Oneself in the Mirror of the Word?

“First of all, what is required is that thou must not look at the mirror, not behold the mirror, but must see thyself in the mirror.”

At this point, Kierkegaard is getting to what the Word is supposed to do to one when it is read: specifically, what does this passage in James say the Word is supposed to do when it is read. He explains this by referring to “reading and reading”:

Thus the lover [who had received a letter] had made a distinction between reading and reading, between reading the dictionary and reading the letter from the lady love.

This means that when we read the Word, we must not treat the Word as the object and we the subject in control: rather, the Word is the subject and we are the object being examined. — This is not bare subjectivity of meaning — this does not mean that there are thousand “meanings” in the text and thus all ‘readings’ are equally valid. It would be easy to understand Kierkegaard as advocating some sort of hyper-reader-response theory:

So the lover made a distinction, as regards this letter from his beloved, between reading and reading; moreover, he understood how to read in such a way that, if there was a desire contained in the letter, one ought to begin at once to fulfill it, without wasting a second.

Think now of God’s Word. When thou readest God’s Word eruditely — we do not disparage erudition, far from it — but remember that when thou does read God’s Word eruditely, with a dictionary & c., thou are not reading God’s Word …

There are words on the page, that is true. But the reading does not stop at understanding the words: the words are there to do something to the reader. The one who reads the lover’s letter is not merely engaged in an intellectual exercise; the reading is undergone to change the reader.

There is a “point” to reading the Word:

And if there is a desire, a commandment, an order, then (remember the lover!), then be off at once to do accordingly.

To which one may object, but what of all the obscure and difficult passages. Kierkegaard answers brilliantly: well there are many things you do understand. Tell you what: do all the things which you in fact can understand, and after you have done all that let us consider the obscure passages.

This gets to a matter of Hebrews 5:14. There is a correlation between our ability to uderstand the Word and our obedience to the Word. Our correspondence in life to the Word, our correspondence in affection transforms our ability to understand:

14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Cognition

Behavior                       Affection

Each of these three affect the other. Kierkegaard is explaining that if we read merely for cognition, we have not read the Word. It is not inert knowledge which one seeks, but transformation. And James 1:22 explains that one transformation which must take place is that the Word must illuminate and expose the reader: the reader is being examined and seen when the Word is rightly read.

How then is this done? What does it look like in practice?

Soren Kierkegaard, The Mirror of the Word Part One

23 Monday Apr 2018

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How to Derive True Benediction from Beholding Oneself in the Mirror of the Word

James 1:22 to the End

Fifth Sunday After Easter

 

Introduction

Kierkegaard prefaces his discourse with a note about the necessary “eloquence” of Christian preaching: it must be an eloquence of word and action:

He who is to preach ought to live in the thoughts and conceptions of Christianity; this should be his daily life — if such is the case, then (as Christianity teaches) thou shalt have eloquence enough, and just what is needed, when thou dost speak straightforwardly without special preparation. On the other hand, it is a false eloquence,  if without being concerned with these thoughts or living in them, one sits down from time to time to make a collection of such thoughts, culling them perhaps from the field of literature, and working them up together into a well-developed discourse, which then is learned perfectly  by rote and is admirably delivered, both with respect to elocution and with respect to movement of arms. No, just as in a well-appointed house one is not obligated to go downstairs to fetch water, but by pressure already has it on the upper floors merely by turning the tap, so too is with real the Christian orator, who, just because Christianity is his life, has eloquence, and precisely the right eloquence, close at ham, immediately present with him ….

For the sermon ought not to establish an invidious distinction between the talented and the untalented, it ought rather in the unity of the Holy Ghost fix attention exclusively upon the requirement that actions must correspond to words.

This idea of correspondence between actions and words is worked in the subsequent discourse on the correspondence between faith and action. There must be an integrity between what is said, and what is done.

The Sermon

Kiekegaard preaches on the following text:

James 1:22–27 (ESV)

22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

26 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Kierkegaard begins his consideration of these words with the apparent contradiction of Martin Luther: we are saved by faith alone. He then notes the nature of human depravity when it comes to works:

yet every man has a disposition either to want to have merit from works when they are to be done; or, when faith and grace are to be stressed, to want to be as far as possible liberated entirely from works.

Luther sought to work around that dual tendency:

Luther wanted to take away the meritoriousness from works and apply it in a somewhat different place, namely to witnessing for truth. Worldliness, which understood Luther radically, did away entirely with meritoriousness — and with works along with it.

Luther also notes that “faith is a perturbing thing”. Well, then if faith is a perturbing thing, “To what effect has faith, which thou sayest thou hast, perturbed thee?”

That is the trouble. And what sort of disquiet should come from faith? The disquiet of faith will seek to change things to conform to the faith — whether it is the religious order or a disquiet of “inward order.”  “A true love-affair is a disquieting thing, but it does not occur to the lover to want to change the established order.”

Kierkegaard mentioning Luther’s trouble with James suggests that perhaps Luther did not realize how easily one could twist “faith alone” to mean faith apart from effect upon one. “That does not apply to the Lutheran doctrine, but it applies to me: I have reason to know that I am not an upright soul, but a crafty fellow.”

Since I am a crafty fellow, I think to think more carefully about what is meant by this “faith alone”. “So it doubtless would be well to examine a little more carefully the subordinate clauses (works, existence, witnessing and suffering for the truth, works of love, & c.), the subordinating clauses of Lutheranism.”

It is that examination of what faith must do that occupies the discourse proper.