And now for something completely different

In the midst of all the politik, crap, and boring pointless never-ending banter/pseudo-debates going on between the holier than thou right and the victim saint martyr left, this is a fundamental arguement that is not, indeed, being addressed - and, ironically is the heart of the matter as I see it. I've been meaning to post something on the teleolical suspension of the ethical for a long while (mind teaming with thoughts), and what exactly that means. Read on, and please comment if you wish...


"This is what is terrible. Anyone who doesn't see this can always be quite certain he is no knight of faith; but anyone who does see it will not deny that the step of even the most tried tragic hero goes like a dance compared with the slow and creeping progress of the knight of faith. And having seen it and realized he does not have the courage to understand it., he must at least have some ideaof the wonderful glory achieved by that knight in becoming God's confidant, the Lord's friend, and - to speak really humanly - in adressing God in heaven as 'Thou', while even the tragic hero only adresses him in the third person." (Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard)



Kierkegaard: Problema I – Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?


Soren Kierkegaard, in Fear and Trembling, uses the biblical story of Abraham and Issac to challenge common 19th century positivist notions of science and progress with regards to faith and religion. Kierkegaard believed that Christianity was more complex then 19th century thinkers such as Ibsen and Mill perceived. People are justified through faith, not acts, and therefore to put the “ethical” forward as the driving moral force behind society one forgets the importance of the individual over the universal. Much like Mill as far as placing emphasis on the individual over society, Kierkegaard explores the concepts of faith and telos through 3 problemas, mirroring the 3 postulates of Hegelian ethical thought to illustrate inconsistencies using the acts of pure faith put forward by Abraham – acts of faith which require him to turn his back on the “ethical” in order to respond to the absolute (God). Kierkegaard took issue with the Hegelian notion of transcending faith by systemic philosophy and attempts to define what Christianity is and is not. Problema one focuses on the teleological suspension of the ethical, placing the focus on the individual, not the universal, and challenging the concept of an unbending, universal “ethical” moral standard.


Asked by God to sacrifice his only son Issac, Abraham - by complying with this request - through his faith (based in the absurd), “overstepped the ethical altogether, and had a higher telos outside it, in relation to which he suspended it” (pg 88). Abraham had faith. Faith as seen by Kierkegaard requires belief in all things absurd, for all human calculation has long since been suspended (pg 65). When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son, it is with quiet resignation that Abraham immediately moves forward to perform the task which is required of him. If he had faltered, one could not say he truly had faith. For 19th century thinkers to put the ethical over the individual, and in the place of the absolute, maintain that to act outside this “unfaltering set of moral law” is to sin, thereby missing the point in this biblical tale where the temptation to sin (the temptation of Abraham to maintain the ethical by following the course of it being a father’s duty to love his son) comes from the ethical itself. The ethical has a place, but that place is inferior to that of the individual. The ethical is not the absolute. God is the absolute, and therefore the ethical should reflect “precisely the expression of God’s will” (pg 88). Man cannot merely obey the universal when the absolute supercedes it.


Kierkegaard in this problema compares the tragic hero, Agamemnon, with Abraham. The difference is the tragic hero is operating within the ethical – he bases his decision not only on his personal duties, but upon his duties to the whole. Agamemnon’s duty is first to his country, then to his daughter. The ethical in this case is the telos, therefore there can be no teleological suspension of the ethical. Abraham, on the other hand, is asked privately to sacrifice his son, and with no greater social outcome or benefit to the whole. God simply has asked him to commit a seemingly unethical act. For Abraham, the law comes from the absolute, and the ethical should be a perfect reflection of God’s will, enabling the giver of the law (the absolute, God) to suspend the same. Abraham has moved outside of the ethical, unlike the tragic hero Agamemnon, through his faith.


It is Kierkegaard’s concept of faith which allows for the teleological suspension of the ethical, otherwise Abraham would be no more than a murderer: “When a person sets out on the tragic hero’s admittedly hard path there are many who could lend him advice; but he who walks the narrow path of faith no one can advise, no one understand. Faith is a marvel…” (pg 95). Individuals can’t be forced into a rigid standard of conventional morality, imposing abstract rules on a concrete individual. The ethical speaks to the totality; the absolute speaks to the individual.