By James Patterson
In Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard laments that “today nobody will stop with faith; they all go further … in the old days … faith was a task for a whole lifetime.”[i] Systematic philosophy sees faith as another phase of thought to be overcome, which can be adequately treated in conceptual terms. Kierkegaard holds that in these attempts, no one has grasped faith.[ii] Genuine faith is only achieved on the strength of the absurd.[iii] I aim to show how eschatological hope, hope that the Good will be finally realised by divine power,[iv] is an underappreciated aspect of his thought which, if adequately understood, enables us to see how his ethics resists many of the standard criticisms. After emphasising the essential elements of Kierkegaard’s position, I will illustrate the role of the absurd by reconsidering Kierkegaard’s relationship to G.W.F. Hegel. Correctly situating his criticism of Hegel(ians) is essential to recognising the importance of the teleological suspension of the ethical (hereafter, ‘TSOE’), and the distinction between the universal and absolute. Even a correct view of the absolute does not satiate concerns about violence, so arguments posited by alterity ethics will be considered as a fruitful development of Kierkegaard’s thought that claims to posit a more consistent ethics by exploring what is meant by the absolute. Emmanual Levinas argues that the TSOE is inessential for faith and rethinks the absolute as a commitment to others qua others. Jacques Derrida contributes that if we recognise divinity as structuring subjectivity, the traversal of the absurd is unnecessary, and the alterity ethics reading will thus appropriately restore Kierkegaard’s positive insights while discarding his problematic concepts. I will argue that these readings miss the importance of eschatological hope and the fundamental existential experience of Abraham; many of the valid concerns highlighted by an alterity ethics perspective can rather be settled by returning to Kierkegaard’s original emphasis on hope for the fulfilment of a divine promise.
The Akedeh is the Old Testament story of Abraham, a faithful man who is instructed by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac. It is traditionally seen as an example of profound faith and obedience. In response to modern views on faith, Kierkegaard examines this story closely, upholding Abraham as a figure worthy of investigation and replication. The Akedah shows the complexity of faith, since it is achieved on the strength of the absurd. Abraham had faith; he believed the ridiculous.[v] He was certain that the command from God would be the end of his son, all the while, he believed Isaac would somehow be returned to him. In a seemingly contradictory manner, he believed that he would both lose and gain his son – to understand this situation is a great task. While Kierkegaard cannot understand Abraham,[vi] he can describe the movements of faith for us,[vii] uncovering the hard-won task of genuine faith. Abraham loves his son Isaac, a gift from God. When he is instructed by the God to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham struggles to reconcile this divine command with his ethical ideal of the father’s responsibility to his son.[viii] In the face of such a command, one can only find peace and repose in infinite resignation,[ix] accepting that the particular is lost.
Overcoming infinite resignation, on the strength of the absurd, is how genuine faith is achieved.[x] Kierkegaard admits that in Abraham’s position, he would have faltered and sacrificed Isaac in despair. His “immense resignation would have been a substitute for faith” and when Isaac was returned to him, he would have had no joy in it. [xi] The true sign of faith was that Abraham hoped on the strength of the absurd and thus believed that Isaac would be returned to him. The connection between the absurd and faith is that the movement of faith must be continually made on the strength of the absurd, so that one does not lose the finite but gains it.[xii]
The first challenge in understanding faith is making sense of the TSOE as an act done in service of the absolute rather than the universal. Kierkegaard’s reasons for challenging the universal as an ethical concept is expressed in his criticism of Hegelian philosophy. Hegel’s account of ethics posits that right and duty are not determined by the individual’s feeling or sensuous knowledge, but rather a universal determination that takes the form of laws and principles.[xiii] Abraham represents the inward subject that Hegel criticises and his willingness to sacrifice Isaac demonstrates a subjectivism that asserts itself over custom.[xiv] Since his conviction is private, Abraham risks immorality.[xv] Kierkegaard challenges this view and argues for a teleological suspension of the ethical, or rather, of the universal. To display the importance of distinguishing the absolute and the universal, the attempt to sanitise this position undertaken by Jon Stewart will be considered. Stewart proposes a reconciliation between Kierkegaard and Hegel and argues that Kierkegaard’s terminology suggests he was criticising the effect of the Hegelian influence, rather than Hegel directly.[xvi] However, I contend that reconciliation undermines the significance of Kierkegaard’s break with the Hegelian perspective and obfuscates that profound difference between the absolute and universal.
Stewart proposes reconciliation on the basis that Hegel would be able to acknowledge Abraham’s position as a knight of faith “up to a certain point.”[xvii] That point being where personal convictions contravene the ethical order. On this reading, Abraham is upheld until his faith drives him to act outside the established ethical expectations of a father. However, Stewart misses that Abraham is an exemplar of faith precisely because he is willing to go past the ‘point’ Stewart suggests, where Abraham “actually attempts to sacrifice Isaac.”[xviii] It is precisely on the strength of that offence to the ethical, the absurd promoting of his inner conviction over the outer ethical order of custom, that Abraham achieves faith. Therefore, Hegel’s endorsement up to that point is meaningless. To correctly understand Kierkegaard’s project, we must draw closer attention to Abraham at that threshold.
Furthermore, Stewart draws a mistaken comparison between Abraham and political violence, since he does not recognise the significance of the absolute as a commitment distinct from the universal. He applies Kierkegaard’s account to the Burschenschaften student movements where Karl Sand, a pan-German nationalist activist, murdered a Russian noble. Stewart sees an analogue to Abraham because Sand was regarded as a pious heart and had a higher calling that suspended civil law and custom.[xix] Sand is exactly the unaccountable subject that Hegel warns against, since he responded to the political situation in a manner that was determined by his inner convictions. [xx] Sand exemplifies a passionate activist who, on the basis of his own certainty, sought to right the wrongs of the world by transgressing moral law. Much the same can be said for any political assassination. However, to compare political assassinations to the Akedah is mistaken. Abraham does not merely act for controversial reasons; he was specifically acting on his inner conviction of the absolute divine command – something much more personal. Sand certainly had great personal commitment to the cause, but the finer point is that he was acting according to some outer validation – that of the student movement. The student movement must be understood as an alternative universal in competition with the laws of German states at the time. Alternatively, Abraham acts against any ethical standard whatsoever. Kierkegaard already makes this point when he stresses that Abraham is unlike Agamemnon in his sacrifice of Iphigenia. While their actions are controversial, they still deemed these murders acceptable, and even necessary, according to some external universal ethical order. Controversy and conviction alone do not mean one is acting according to the absolute. Unlike Abraham, these figures need not traverse the absurd, because they refer to some order or ideal other than the absolute – justice (Sand), or the gods’ command (Agamemnon) – to justify their actions. Thus, Sand and Agamenon, as tragic figures, do not act on “the strength of the absurd,” rather they are tragic heroes who stay “within the ethical.”[xxi]
Stewart overlooks the fundamental distinction between the tragic hero and the knight of faith because he does not see that the absolute is distinct from the universal. This distinction is the ground for the absurd and is fundamental to Kierkegaard’s account of faith. Therefore, Kierkegaard is not susceptible to Hegelian criticisms of arbitrariness, because faith must be at odds with what is socially acceptable. So how does Kierkegaard’s account avoid the problem of evil?
Levinas attempts a more thorough reappropriation of the Akedah and Kierkegaard’s interpretation, rethinking faith and how it can be the basis for an acceptable ethics. Rather than attempt reconciliation with Hegelianism, as Stewart does, Levinas reframes faith by boldly discarding the TSOE as a conceptual explanation of how one achieves faith. Levinas instead proposes that faith should be understood as an ethics of alterity. The formulation of this ethical stance is that we are responsible to others on the basis of otherness itself, which demands absolute generosity.[xxii] Levinas posits that the ethical does not disperse generally. On the contrary, it is an individualising force, treating everyone as a unique self.[xxiii] The lesson of the Akedah is not Abraham’s commitment to sacrifice Isaac, but his obedience to the second voice that invites him back to the ethical and to spare Isaac.[xxiv] Levinas attempts to save Kierkegaard from justifying passionate violence and terror, which he associates with Nietzsche, immoralism and National Socialism.[xxv] Levinas’ solution is appealing to the singularity of the subject and mercy. Recognising the dignity of the other means that “life can be endowed with meaning, in spite of death.”[xxvi] If we accept that faith is characterised by a duty to others generally, then the absurd is not necessary to make sense of Abraham. Levinas concludes that we must read the Akedah as an example of our responsibility to others qua others. However, is it feasible to be responsible to all others? By removing the concept of the TSOE, Levinas’ account of faith risks meaninglessness, and offers even less ethical guidance than the Hegelian perspective. In trying to sanitise Kierkegaard, these views have made it unclear what exactly would constitute faith.
Derrida offers a clarification of the alterity ethics reading of Kierkegaard, by reminding us of the divine aspect of Kierkegaard’s reading of the Akedah. Derrida shows that Abraham’s faith reveals divine obligation as inherent in the structure of subjectivity, hence, the absurd is unnecessary. He claims that “if God is completely other, the figure or name of the wholly other, then every other (one) is every (bit) other.”[xxvii] The interiority of God structures subjectivity, and God’s demand is our secret that engenders a being-with-oneself.[xxviii] How is God both completely other and an inner secret of our particular subjectivity? Derrida’s point is that the divine joins these two notions and results in absolute responsibility to others. Levinas and Kierkegaard both fail to determine the limit between our responsibility to God or other beings. Since God’s nature is reflected in our subjective structuring of ourselves, we are responsible to all others. While Derrida may call this an absolute responsibility, it is beginning to appear like the universal commitments that characterise ethics generally. The ramification of this is that we cannot justify our particular acts of care or compassion in our circumstances, we cannot raise the importance of particular above the rest.[xxix] Derrida believes that while this interpretation disturbs Kierkegaard’s discourse on one level, it is reinforced at “its most extreme ramifications.”[xxx] What he means is that the paradox is set aside. Faith is no longer something achieved by traversing the absurd but instead is a recognition of an ‘absolute’ duty we have to all other beings; Abraham’s love is boundless.
Derrida draws no distinction between acts of commission and omission on his account of duty. As David Wood illustrates, while we may accept there are no a priori grounds for refusing to consider the ethical significance of a particular omission, this cannot be turned into a positive claim about our responsibility for everything.[xxxi] We can maintain Derrida’s insight into how the relationship to God structures subjectivity and responsibility, while reading Derrida’s claims about absolute responsibility as instead a “willingness to have one’s ethical habits challenged … a way of dealing with the limits of one’s responsibility.”[xxxii] Such a limited reading is the only viable one we can make without Derrida’s reading collapsing altogether. He misses the nuance of Kierkegaard’s analysis, and this goes all the way back to misunderstanding the distinction between the absolute and the universal. Derrida has taken the structure of subjective commitment to the absolute to an unbearable extreme by universalising what is necessarily a personal commitment, one characterised by absurdity. By trying to eject absurdity from an account of faith, he makes the same mistake Stewart does in attempting to reconcile Kierkegaard and Hegel. In attempting to broaden the applicability of Kierkegaard’s contribution by resolving it as an ethical system, Levinas and Derrida downplay the experience of commitment, and hope, which is a deeply personal relationship with the absolute.
The alterity ethics of both Levinas and Derrida fail to grasp the importance of faith because they leave no room for hope. An ethics that sidesteps Abraham’s paradox forecloses the possibility of faith because it reduces the divine to abstract, universalistic notions of duty. The absurd is essential for hope, it is “the content of the eschatological promise.”[xxxiii] The eschatological reading claims that the central act of faith is Abraham’s hope for the final realisation of the Good by divine power,[xxxiv] namely, that Isaac will be returned to him. Only on hope in the face of the absurd does belief, which is faith, become possible. The TSOE only laid the ground for this hope, this inner conviction which is made on the strength of the absurd. As Davenport claims, “the telos toward which Abraham suspends his ethical duties to Isaac is the absurd possibility of Isaac’s survival despite God’s requirement that he be sacrificed.”[xxxv] This is eschatological hope: an expectation of an absurd possibility.
Levinas is mistaken in his reading of Kierkegaard, since he continues to associate Abraham with passionate violence, rather than sober, withdrawn hope. Eschatological hope is not derived from political projects, only God,[xxxvi] and therefore Levinas’ concern that the TSOE leads to characteristically political violence is resolved. Any political project, despite what it says, simply cannot be eschatological hope. Divine hope in the face of the absurd is the basis for asserting inner conviction over the ethical. Faith is characterised by hope in something absolutely beyond human powers. Political justifications refer only to universal duty; they cannot ignite an absolute inner conviction which one feels at complete odds with all convention. Faith cannot occupy a particular political project. While Levinas and Derrida propose an ethics of respect for others, Kierkegaard shows that through hope we already express a love for the particular. Abraham’s hope only makes sense if it refers to a promise of adivine other, it cannot be replicated by a general duty to others. I propose that Levinas’ and Derrida’s accounts themselves create the possibility for the violence they warn against – since they are proposing convoluted ethical obligations. By reading the content of the eschatological as the absurd, Davenport sidesteps the problem of immoral acts, while maintaining that faith must be contrary to the ethical community. Acts of faith are necessarily beyond the ambit of ethical judgement. I accept that this does not mean they are beyond scrutiny – they certainly are subject to criticism. However, acts of faith are qualitatively of a different order than ethical acts. Any critique must acknowledge this distinction.
Faith is not a particular commitment to a cause or a subjective inclination; it is a traversal of the absurd on the strength of eschatological hope. Each phase of Abraham’s experience is essential, and any diminished version of faith or ethics drawn from the Akedah which downplays the absurd is not representing a genuine faith. Political violence is done in service of the ethical. Abraham’s hope is not a violent one, because it is eschatological – Isaac is only returned to him if God wills it. To read the obligation to God as extending to all others demystifies hope, it does not require that we wrestle with infinite resignation. Hope is not an excess of subjective passions. It requires strength in face of the absurd and is an intimately personal ordeal. It cannot be generalised. Eschatological hope is essential for faith, and this hope is only possible in the face of the absurd.
James is studying a dual Bachelor of Laws (Hons) and Bachelor of Arts, and a Diploma of Languages in German. His research interests include German idealism, aesthetics, and political philosophy.
Featured image: In den Dünen by Max Liebermann (1896).
Bibliography
Davenport, John. 2008. “What Kierkegaardian Faith Adds to Alterity Ethics: How Levinas and Derrida Miss the Eschatological Dimension.” In Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, 169-196. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1998. “Whom to Give to (Knowing Not to Know).” In Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, 151-174. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hegel, G.W.F. 1991. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kierkegaard, Søren. 1985. Fear and Trembling. London: Penguin Books.
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1998. “Existence and Ethics.” In Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, 26-38. Oxford: Blackwell.
Stewart, Jon. 2003. Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wood, David. 1998. “Thinking God in the Wake of Kierkegaard.” In Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, 53-74. Oxford: Blackwell.
[i] Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (London: Penguin, 1985), 42.
[ii] Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1985, 43.
[iii] Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1985, 76.
[iv] John Davenport, “What Kierkegaardian Faith Adds to Alterity Ethics: How Levinas and Derrida Miss the Eschatological Dimension,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 174.
[v] Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1985, 54.
[vi] Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1985, 66.
[vii] Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1985, 67.
[viii] Davenport, “What Kierkegaardian Faith Adds to Alterity Ethics,” 2008, 174.
[ix] Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1985, 74.
[x] Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1985, 75.
[xi] Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1985, 64-65.
[xii] Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1985, 67.
[xiii] G. W. F Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 164-165.
[xiv] Jon Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 312.
[xv] Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, 2003, 314.
[xvi] Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, 2003, 306.
[xvii] Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, 2003, 315.
[xviii] Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, 2003, 315.
[xix] Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, 2003, 321-2.
[xx] Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 1991, 164 – 165.
[xxi] Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling,1985, 87.
[xxii] Davenport, “What Kierkegaardian Faith Adds to Alterity Ethics,” 2008, 172.
[xxiii] Emmanuel Levinas, “Existence and Ethics,” in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 34.
[xxiv] Levinas, “Existence and Ethics,” 1998, 35.
[xxv] Levinas, “Existence and Ethics,” 1998, 31, 35.
[xxvi] Levinas, “Existence and Ethics,” 1998, 35.
[xxvii] Jacques Derrida, “Whom to Give to (Knowing Not to Know),” in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 170.
[xxviii] Derrida, “Whom to Give to,” 1998, 168.
[xxix] Derrida, “Whom to Give to,” 1998, 164.
[xxx] Derrida, “Whom to Give to,” 1998, 170.
[xxxi] David Wood, “Thinking God in the Wake of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 67.
[xxxii] Wood, “Thinking God in the Wake of Kierkegaard,” 1998, 68.
[xxxiii] Davenport, “What Kierkegaardian Faith Adds to Alterity Ethics,” 2008, 174.
[xxxiv] Davenport, “What Kierkegaardian Faith Adds to Alterity Ethics,” 2008, 174.
[xxxv] Davenport, “What Kierkegaardian Faith Adds to Alterity Ethics,” 2008, 173.
[xxxvi] Davenport, “What Kierkegaardian Faith Adds to Alterity Ethics,” 2008, 177.
EXORDIUM 