Kierkegaard secondary Flashcards
Rudd - why did K find the ethical sphere unsatisfactory
Social morality is unable to do justice to the uniqueness of the individual
- In E/O, Judge Williams argues for social conformity
- K places emphasis on the individual – need to figure out own salvation
There is an erosion in the modern world of the social basis for a morality of conformity to customary rules – individual becomes part of the crowd
Pluralism of a secular ethics lacks single goal in which moral life can find unity
Rudd - teleological suspension of ethical
on an ethical level, A should have been imprisoned for murder. But the fact that he is praised suggests faith goes beyond the ethical in some way
- J exposes Hegel for being contradictory in praising Abraham despite his view of ethics
- A’s telos is outside the sphere of the ethical
- A acted as an individual – no social roles demanded him to kill Isaac. Demand came from higher power
- ‘If Abraham is justified in his action, he is justified as the single individual in defiance of the universal ethical norms, all of which insist that the killing of Isaac would be a great evil.’ (147)
lippitt - concern with separation of life and thought
K ‘was concerned to an extraordinary degree with attempting to drive a wedge between his life and his thought, so that the latter would not be interpreted solely in the light of the former’ (2)
Part of the reason he wrote under a pseudonym
However… did he actually achieve this? Link to Regine Olsen and father’s guilt-complex
But be careful when linking F&T to biography
lippitt - engagement
Broke it off due to his sadness, which he thought would make marriage impossible
He wrote, ‘I had been engaged to her for one year and yet she really did not know me’ (Hannay 2001, 157)
Regine did not see that melancholy was rooted in ‘religious collusion’
Hannay says that K viewed his situation as tragic and that he writes himself ‘into a real-life drama’ (157)
K handled break off of engagement very melodramatically
lippitt - pseudonym
- K viewed people as living in states of illusion
- Illusions can only be overcome through making people realise that their reasons for their approach to life
- Pseudonymic writing allowed K to face his own delusions
- It has a pedagogical function – separates communicator from work
‘pseudoynmity…is one way of a communicator withdrawing’ (9)
but pseudonym is not disconnected from work – Johannes de Silentio makes clear his own anguish in his efforts to understand Abraham – ‘Johannes is a character in his own narrative’ (9)
k on his use of pseudonyms
K himself said ‘my pseudonymity…has not had an accidental basis in my person…but an essential basis in the production itself…I (have)…poetically produced the authors, whose prefaces in turn are their productions…it is my wish…that (readers) will do me the kindness of citing the respective pseudonymous author’s name, not mine’ (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Howard V, Princeton Uni Press, 1992)
Is the name Johannes de Silentio ironic??
Or is the book about silence?
lippitt on the nature off faith vs. nature of resignation
‘if the very nature of resignation is the renunciation of the finite and the particular, and the very nature of faith is an embrace of the finite and the particular, how is the ‘double movement’ of faith, thus construed, if possible? …the movement of faith seems to amount to a renunciation of the movement of resignation’
possibilities:
- faith is totally incomprehensible
(but, problematic as if this is the case how do we distinguish faith from other behaviour?)
- K’s view of faith is confused
(hard given pseudonym)
- Johannes’ view of faith is confused
(J makes it clear that he finds A incomprehensible)
- we need to read Abraham’s story allegorically
lippitt - hegel vs. K view on individual/universal
- Hegelian distinction between Moralität (individual morality) and Sittlichkeit (ethical lfie)
- Attacks Kant universalisation of ‘formalism’ (developed from Fichte). Too abstract, need to be more circumstantial
- Kant and Hegel both view morality as rational
- For H, idea that A viewed his individual relation to God as superior to duties to society = unacceptable
- For J, H should have unequivocally condemned A
- H is suspicious about idea of direct relation to divine – seems like Meinung (opinion, view. Associated with idiosyncrasy)
- Concerned that people will be too individualistic with their morality
lippitt - parallels between A and K
If we read it as a secret message to Regine, ‘just as Abraham is called by God to sacrifice that which is most precious to him (Isaac), so Kierkegaard is called to do the same (Regine)’ (139)
lippitt - A pretending to be an idolater
example where A pretends to be an idolater – prefers to be hated then upset I. same with K and R
Hannay, ‘if he can make Regine believe that he is the sort of scoundrel you would expect to break off an engagement, Kierkegaard can save her from losing faith in the world’ (K: a biography 2001, 191)
mooney rejection teleological suspension - 2 alternative explanations
power of ethics to guide = suspended. Reasons are frozen
- it is not a justification but a brutal fact
- ‘there are dilemmas and in such straits ethics cannot guide, deliver us from wrong’
the ethical is not the universal
- rather emphasis has shifted from the act to the agent
- ‘this focus on character, rather than prioritising conflicting duties or principles, moves the emphasis from not just what Abraham…does, but how he does it’ (151)
lippitt - what makes A from sub-A who rode in anguish?
Perhaps for A it is his demonstration of a ‘kind of Aristotelian mean. This would be the mean between a deficiency of anguish…and an excess of anguish. There is an undeniable Aristotelian strain in Kierkegaard’s thought: could it be that we might closer to understand the nature of Abraham’s ‘purely personal virtue’ by seeing the Abraham who manifests genuine anguish at what he must do, yet genuine joy at ‘getting Isaac back’ as a manifestation of the mean?’ (158)
lippitt - fear and trembling’s hidden Xianity
- Is the book actually about love, forgiveness and sin?
- Also reflects debate surrounding literal interpretation of religious texts
- Core theme = faith
- K viewed Xianity as forgetting own concepts e.g. sin
- He argued that much of Xianity is closer to Socratism – i.e. salvation can be self-realised. For Xians, sin separates us from God in a significant way. Emphasis on necessity of divine grace
- Teleological suspension of ethical = linked to God’s grace
- Own xian commitments – Lutheran protestant
- Fear and trembling = sacrifices necessary to achieve salvation
- Divine command theory interpretation fails to recognise significance of God’s eventual command for A to not sacrifice I
Daniel Conway on pseudonym
- J is confessional
- The book is about him – true, he is trying to relate to A as exemplar of faith
- Trying to tell us to not go further than fear and tremble at A
- J distracts us from the question of his own interiority
lippitt - Abraham as saying something but nothing
Mulhall also argues that in viewing A’s response as ironic, J subconsciously aligns A with Socrates who is an ‘intellectual tragic hero’. Even if A is superior due to his faith ‘by associating Abraham with Socrates even by analogy, de Silentio undercuts a central element of his own dialectical endeavour’
….But…this makes quite a leap from irony to Socrates
But M’s argument that A does not in fact ‘say nothing’ = convincing
- ‘far from being just empty or nonsensical, these words are in fact ambiguous between two discrete possibilities: one in which the lamb is Isaac…and one in which God provides an actual lamb (and so Isaac is spared)’ (mulhall 2001, 361 but in lippit’s words on p.196)
