Come Up With TWO Questions With Explanations.

 

Come up with TWO questions with explanations.  2 pages, double-spaced, Time New Roman 12

You are expected to come up with two questions that you think are most relevant to understanding assigned reading in relation to the issue of sacrifice.

For each question, you are also required to provide an explanation for the reason why you think it is important.

The attached file is the assigned reading.

Fear and Trembling

by

Johannes DE SILENTIO, 1843

(alias Søren Kierkegaard)

tr. Walter Lowrie, 1941

Table of Contents

Was Tarquinius Superbus in seinem Garten mit den
Mohnkopfen sprach, verstand der Sohn, aber nicht
der Bote. (What Tarquinius Superbus spoke in his

garden with the poppies was understood by his son,
but not by the messenger.)1 – Hamann.

Chapters Preface Prelude A Panegyric upon Abraham Problemata: Problem I Problem II Problem III Epilogue

An HTML Presentation by Siegfried

PREFACE2

Not merely in the realm of commerce but in the world of ideas as well our age is
organizing a regular clearance sale. Everything is to be had at such a bargain that it is
questionable whether in the end there is anybody who will want to bid. Every
speculative price-fixer who conscientiously directs attention to the significant march of
modern philosophy, every Privatdocent, tutor, and student, every crofter and cottar in
philosophy, is not content with doubting everything but goes further. Perhaps it would

whether he has the call and the courage to be subjected to such a test. The comic
contradiction in the behavior of the orator is that he reduced Abraham to an
insignificance, and yet would admonish the other to behave in the same way.

Should not one dare then to talk about Abraham? I think one should. If I were
to talk about him, I would first depict the pain of his trial. To that end I would like a
leech suck all the dread and distress and torture out of a father’s sufferings, so that I
might describe what Abraham suffered, whereas all the while he nevertheless believed.
I would remind the audience that the journey lasted three days and a good part of the
fourth, yea, that these three and a half days were infinitely longer than the few
thousand years which separate me from Abraham. Then I would remind them that, in
my opinion, every man dare still turn around ere he begins such an undertaking, and
every instant he can repentantly turn back. If one does this, I fear no danger, nor am I
afraid of awakening in people an inclination to be tried like Abraham. But if one would
dispose of a cheap edition of Abraham, and yet admonish everyone to do likewise, then
it is ludicrous.

It is now my intention to draw out from the story of Abraham the dialectical
consequences inherent in it, expressing them in the form of problemata, in order to see
what a tremendous paradox faith is, a paradox which is capable of transforming a
murder into a holy act well-pleasing to God, a paradox which gives Isaac back to
Abraham, which no thought can master, because faith begins precisely there where
thinking leaves off.

PROBLEM I

Is there such a thing as a teleological
suspension of the ethical?

The ethical as such is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which
may be expressed from another point of view by saying that it applies every instant. It
reposes immanently in itself, it has nothing without itself which is its telos,40 but is itself
telos for everything outside it, and when this has been incorporated by the ethical it can
go no further. Conceived immediately as physical and psychical, the particular individual
is the individual who has his telos in the universal, and his ethical task is to express
himself constantly in it, to abolish his particularity in order to become the universal. As
soon as the individual would assert himself in his particularity over against the universal
he sins, and only by recognizing this can he again reconcile himself with the universal.
Whenever the individual after he has entered the universal feels an impulse to assert
himself as the particular, he is in temptation (Anfechtung), and he can labor himself out
of this only by penitently abandoning himself as the particular in the universal. If this be
the highest thing that can be said of man and of his existence, then the ethical has the
same character as man’s eternal blessedness, which to all eternity and at every instant
is his telos, since it would be a contradiction to say that this might be abandoned (i.e.
teleologically suspended), inasmuch as this is no sooner suspended than it is forfeited,
whereas in other cases what is suspended is not forfeited but is preserved precisely in
that higher thing which is its telos.41

If such be the case, then Hegel is right when in his chapter on “The Good and
the Conscience,” 42 he characterizes man merely as the particular and regards this
character as “a moral form of evil” which is to be annulled in the teleology of the moral,
so that the individual who remains in this stage is either sinning or subjected to

temptation (Anfechtung). On the other hand, Hegel is wrong in talking of faith, wrong in
not protesting loudly and clearly against the fact that Abraham enjoys honor and glory
as the father of faith, whereas he ought to be prosecuted and convicted of murder.

For faith is this paradox, that the particular is higher than the universal–yet in
such a way, be it observed, that the movement repeats itself, and that consequently the
individual, after having been in the universal, now as the particular isolates himself as
higher than the universal. If this be not faith, then Abraham is lost, then faith has never
existed in the world … because it has always existed. For if the ethical (i.e. the moral) is
the highest thing, and if nothing incommensurable remains in man in any other way but
as the evil (i.e. the particular which has to be expressed in the universal), then one
needs no other categories besides those which the Greeks possessed or which by
consistent thinking can be derived from them. This fact Hegel ought not to have
concealed, for after all he was acquainted with Greek thought.

One not infrequently hears it said by men who for lack of losing themselves in
studies are absorbed in phrases that a light shines upon the Christian world whereas a
darkness broods over paganism. This utterance has always seemed strange to me,
inasmuch as every profound thinker and every serious artist is even in our day
rejuvenated by the eternal youth of the Greek race. Such an utterance may be
explained by the consideration that people do not know what they ought to say but only
that they must say something. It is quite right for one to say that paganism did not
possess faith, but if with this one is to have said something, one must be a little clearer
about what one understands by faith, since otherwise one falls back into such phrases.
To explain the whole of existence and faith along with it, without having a conception of
what faith is, is easy, and that man does not make the poorest calculation in life who
reckons upon admiration when he possesses such an explanation; for, as Boileau says,
“un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l’admire.”

Faith is precisely this paradox, that the individual as the particular is higher than
the universal, is justified over against it, is not subordinate but superior–yet in such a
way, be it observed, that it is the particular individual who, after he has been
subordinated as the particular to the universal, now through the universal becomes the
individual who as the particular is superior to the universal, for the fact that the
individual as the particular stands in an absolute relation to the absolute. This position
cannot be mediated, for all mediation comes about precisely by virtue of the universal;
it is and remains to all eternity a paradox, inaccessible to thought. And yet faith is this
paradox–or else (these are the logical deductions which I would beg the reader to have
in mente at every point, though it would be too prolix for me to reiterate them on every
occasion)–or else there never has been faith … precisely because it always has been. In
other words, Abraham is lost.

That for the particular individual this paradox may easily be mistaken for a
temptation (Anfechtung) is indeed true, but one ought not for this reason to conceal it.
That the whole constitution of many persons may be such that this paradox repels them
is indeed true, but one ought not for this reason to make faith something different in
order to be able to possess it, but ought rather to admit that one does not possess it,
whereas those who possess faith should take care to set up certain criteria so that one
might distinguish the paradox from a temptation (Anfechtung).

Now the story of Abraham contains such a teleological suspension of the ethical.
There have not been lacking clever pates and profound investigators who have found
analogies to it. Their wisdom is derived from the pretty proposition that at bottom
everything is the same. If one will look a little more closely, I have not much doubt that
in the whole world one will not find a single analogy (except a later instance which

proves nothing), if it stands fast that Abraham is the representative of faith, and that
faith is normally expressed in him whose life is not merely the most paradoxical that
can be thought but so paradoxical that it cannot be thought at all. He acts by virtue of
the absurd, for it is precisely absurd that he as the particular is higher than the
universal. This paradox cannot be mediated; for as soon as he begins to do this he has
to admit that he was in temptation (Anfechtung), and if such was the case, he never
gets to the point of sacrificing Isaac, or, if he has sacrificed Isaac, he must turn back
repentantly to the universal. By virtue of the absurd he gets Isaac again. Abraham is
therefore at no instant a tragic hero but something quite different, either a murderer or
a believer. The middle term which saves the tragic hero, Abraham has not. Hence it is
that I can understand the tragic hero but cannot understand Abraham, though in a
certain crazy sense I admire him more than all other men.

Abraham’s relation to Isaac, ethically speaking, is quite simply expressed by
saying that a father shall love his son more dearly than himself. Yet within its own
compass the ethical has various gradations. Let us see whether in this story there is to
be found any higher expression for the ethical such as would ethically explain his
conduct, ethically justify him in suspending the ethical obligation toward his son,
without in this search going beyond the teleology of the ethical.

When an undertaking in which a whole nation is concerned is hindered,43 when
such an enterprise is brought to a standshll by the disfavor of heaven, when the angry
deity sends a calm which mocks all efforts, when the seer performs his heavy task and
proclaims that the deity demands a young maiden as a sacrifice–then will the father
heroically make the sacrifice. He will magnanimously conceal his pain, even though he
might wish that he were “the lowly man who dares to weep,”44 not the king who must
act royally. And though solitary pain forces its way into his breast, he has only three
confidants among the people, yet soon the whole nation will be cognizant of his pain,
but also cognizant of his exploit, that for the welfare of the whole he was willing to
sacrifice her, his daughter, the lovely young maiden. O charming bosom! O beautiful
cheeks! O bright golden hair! (v. 687). And the daughter will affect him by her tears,
and the father will turn his face away, but the hero will raise the knife.–When the report
of this reaches the ancestral home, then will the beautiful maidens of Greece blush with
enthusiasm, and if the daughter was betrothed, her true love will not be angry but be
proud of sharing in the father’s deed, because the maiden belonged to him more
feelingly than to the father.

When the intrepid judge45 who saved Israel in the hour of need in one breath
binds himself and God by the same vow, then heroically the young maiden’s jubilation,
the beloved daughter’s joy, he will turn to sorrow, and with her all Israel will lament her
maiden youth; but every free-born man will understand, and every stout-hearted
woman will admire Jephtha, and every maiden in Israel will wish to act as did his
daughter. For what good would it do if Jephtha were victorious by reason of his vow if
he did not keep it? Would not the victory again be taken from the nation?

When a son is forgetful of his duty,46 when the state entrusts the father with
the sword of justice, when the laws require punishment at the hand of the father, then
will the father heroically forget that the guilty one is his son, he will magnanimously
conceal his pain, but there will not be a single one among the people, not even the son,
who will not admire the father, and whenever the law of Rome is interpreted, it will be
remembered that many interpreted it more learnedly, but none so gloriously as Brutus.

If, on the other hand, while a favorable wind bore the fleet on with swelling sails
to its goal, Agamemnon had sent that messenger who fetched Iphigenia in order to be
sacrificed; if Jephtha, without being bound by any vow which decided the fate of the

nahon, had said to his daughter, “Bewail now thy virginity for the space of two months,
for I will sacrifice thee”; if Brutus had had a righteous son and yet would have ordered
the lictors to execute him–who would have understood them? If these three men had
replied to the query why they did it by saying, “It is a trial in which we are tested,”
would people have understood them better?

When Agamemnon, Jephtha, Brutus at the decisive moment heroically overcome
their pain, have heroically lost the beloved and have merely to accomplish the outward
sacrifice, then there never will be a noble soul in the world who will not shed tears of
compassion for their pain and of admiration for their exploit. If, on the other hand,
these three men at the decisive moment were to adjoin to their heroic conduct this little
word, “But for all that it will not come to pass,” who then would understand them? If as
an explanation they added, “This we believe by virtue of the absurd,” who would
understand them better? For who would not easily understand that it was absurd, but
who would understand that one could then believe it?

The difference between the tragic hero and Abraham is clearly evident. The
tragic hero still remains within the ethical. He lets one expression of the ethical find its
telos in a higher expression of the ethical; the ethical relation between father and son,
or daughter and father, he reduces to a sentiment which has its dialectic in its relation
to the idea of morality. Here there can be no question of a teleological suspension of the
ethical itself.

With Abraham the situation was different. By his act he overstepped the ethical
entirely and possessed a higher telos outside of it, in relation to which he suspended the
former. For I should very much like to know how one would bring Abraham’s act into
relation with the universal, and whether it is possible to discover any connection
whatever between what Abraham did and the universal … except the fact that he
transgressed it. It was not for the sake of saving a people, not to maintain the idea of
the state, that Abraham did this, and not in order to reconcile angry deities. If there
could be a question of the deity being angry, he was angry only with Abraham, and
Abraham’s whole action stands in no relation to the universal, is a purely private
undertaking. Therefore, whereas the tragic hero is great by reason of his moral virtue,
Abraham is great by reason of a purely personal virtue. In Abraham’s life there is no
higher expression for the ethical than this, that the father shall love his son. Of the
ethical in the sense of morality there can be no question in this instance. In so far as
the universal was present, it was indeed cryptically present in Isaac, hidden as it were
in Isaac’s loins, and must therefore cry out with Isaac’s mouth, “Do it not! Thou art
bringing everything to naught.”

Why then did Abraham do it? For God’s sake, and (in complete identity with
this) for his own sake. He did it for God’s sake because God required this proof of his
faith; for his own sake he did it in order that he might furnish the proof. The unity of
these two points of view is perfectly expressed by the word which has always been used
to characterize this situation: it is a trial, a temptation (Fristelse).47 A temptation–but
what does that mean? What ordinarily tempts a man is that which would keep him from
doing his duty, but in this case the temptation is itself the ethical … which would keep
him from doing God’s will. But what then is duty? Duty is precisely the expression for
God’s will.

Here is evident the necessity of a new category if one would understand
Abraham. Such a relationship to the deity paganism did not know. The tragic hero does
not enter into any private relationship with the deity, but for him the ethical is the
divine, hence the paradox implied in his situation can be mediated in the universal.

Abraham cannot be mediated, and the same thing can be expressed also by
saying that he cannot talk. So soon as I talk I express the universal, and if I do not do
so, no one can understand me. Therefore if Abraham would express himself in terms of
the universal, he must say that his situation is a temptation (Anfechtung), for he has no
higher expression for that universal which stands above the universal which he
transgresses.

Therefore, though Abraham arouses my admiration, he at the same time appalls
me. He who denies himself and sacrifices himself for duty gives up the finite in order to
grasp the infinite, and that man is secure enough. The tragic hero gives up the certain
for the still more certain, and the eye of the beholder rests upon him confidently. But he
who gives up the universal in order to grasp something still higher which is not the
universal–what is he doing? Is it possible that this can be anything else but a
temptation (Anfechtung)? And if it be possible … but the individual was mistaken–what
can save him? He suffers all the pain of the tragic hero, he brings to naught his joy in
the world, he renounces everything … and perhaps at the same instant debars himself
from the sublime joy which to him was so precious that he would purchase it at any
price. Him the beholder cannot understand nor let his eye rest confidently upon him.
Perhaps it is not possible to do what the believer proposes, since it is indeed
unthinkable. Or if it could be done, but if the individual had misunderstood the
deity–what can save him? The tragic hero has need of tears and claims them, and
where is the envious eye which would be so barren that it could not weep with
Agamemnon; but where is the man with a soul so bewildered that he would have the
presumption to weep for Abraham? The tragic hero accomplishes his act at a definite
instant in time, but in the course of time he does something not less significant, he
visits the man whose soul is beset with sorrow, whose breast for stifled sobs cannot
draw breath, whose thoughts pregnant with tears weigh heavily upon him, to him he
makes his appearance, dissolves the sorcery of sorrow, loosens his corslet, coaxes forth
his tears by the fact that in his sufferings the sufferer forgets his own. One cannot weep
over Abraham. One approaches him with a horror religiosus, as Israel approached
Mount Sinai.–If then the solitary man who ascends Mount Moriah, which with its peak
rises heaven-high above the plain of Aulis, if he be not a somnambulist who walks
securely above the abyss while he who is stationed at the foot of the mountain and is
looking on trembles with fear and out of reverence and dread dare not even call to
him–if this man is disordered in his mind, if he had made a mistakel Thanks and thanks
again to him who proffers to the man whom the sorrows of life have assaulted and left
naked–proffers to him the fig-leaf of the word with which he can cover his
wretchedness. Thanks be to thee, great Shakespeare, who art able to express
everything, absolutely everything, precisely as it is–and yet why didst thou never
pronounce this pang? Didst thou perhaps reserve it to thyself–like the loved one whose
name one cannot endure that the world should mention? For the poet purchases the
power of words, the power of uttering all the dread secrets of others, at the price of a
little secret he is unable to utter … and a poet is not an apostle, he casts out devils only
by the power of the devil.

But now when the ethical is thus teleologically suspended, how does the
individual exist in whom it is suspended? He exists as the particular in opposition to the
universal. Does he then sin? For this is the form of sin, as seen in the idea. Just as the
infant, though it does not sin, because it is not as such yet conscious of its existence,
yet its existence is sin, as seen in the idea, and the ethical makes its demands upon it
every instant. If one denies that this form can be repeated [in the adult] in such a way
that it is not sin, then the sentence of condemnation is pronounced upon Abraham. How
then did Abraham exist? He believed. This is the paradox which keeps him upon the
sheer edge and which he cannot make clear to any other man, for the paradox is that
he as the individual puts himself in an absolute relation to the absolute. Is he justified
in doing this? His justification is once more the paradox; for if he is justified, it is not by
virtue of anything universal, but by virtue of being the particular individual.

How then does the individual assure himself that he is justified? It is easy
enough to level down the whole of existence to the idea of the state or the idea of
society. If one does this, one can also mediate easily enough, for then one does not
encounter at all the paradox that the individual as the individual is higher than the
universal–which I can aptly express also by the thesis of Pythagoras, that the uneven
numbers are more perfect than the even. If in our age one occasionally hears a
rejoinder which is pertinent to the paradox, it is likely to be to the following effect: “It is
to be judged by the result.” A hero who has become a skándalon48 to his
contemporaries because they are conscious that he is a paradox who cannot make
himself intelligible, will cry out defiantly to his generation, “The result will surely prove
that I am justified.” In our age we hear this cry rather seldom, for as our age, to its
disadvantage, does not produce heroes, it has also the advantage of producing few
caricatures. When in our age one hears this saying, “It is to be judged according to the
result,” a man is at once clear as to who it is he has the honor of talking with. Those
who talk thus are a numerous tribe, whom I will denominate by the common name of
Docents.49 In their thoughts they live secure in existence, they have a solid position
and sure prospects in a well-ordered state, they have centuries and even millenniums
between them and the concussions of existence, they do not fear that such things could
recur–for what would the police say to that! and the newspapers! Their lifework is to
judge the great, and to judge them according to the result. Such behavior toward the
great betrays a strange mixture of arrogance and misery: of arrogance because they
think they are called to be judges; of misery because they do not feel that their lives
are even in the remotest degree akin to the great. Surely a man who possesses even a
little erectioris ingenii [of the higher way of thinking] has not become entirely a cold and
clammy mollusk, and when he approaches what is great it can never escape his mind
that from the creation of the world it has been customary for the result to come last,
and that, if one would truly learn anything from great actions, one must pay attention
precisely to the beginning. In case he who should act were to judge himself according to
the result, he would never get to the point of beginning. Even though the result may
give joy to the whole world, it cannot help the hero, for he would get to know the result
only when the whole thing was over, and it was not by this he became a hero, but he
was such for the fact that he began.

Moreover, the result (inasmuch as it is the answer of finiteness to the infinite
query) is in its dialectic entirely heterogeneous with the existence of the hero. Or is it
possible to prove that Abraham was justified in assuming the position of the individual
with relation to the universal … for the fact that he got Isaac by miracle? If Abraham
had actually sacrificed Isaac, would he then have been less justified?

But people are curious about the result, as they are about the result in a
book–they want to know nothing about dread, distress, the paradox. They flirt
aesthetically with the result, it comes just as unexpectedly but also just as easily as a
prize in the lottery; and when they have heard the result they are edified. And yet no
robber of temples condemned to hard labor behind iron bars, is so base a criminal as
the man who pillages the holy, and even Judas who sold his Master for thirty pieces of
silver is not more despicable than the man who sells greatness.

It is abhorrent to my soul to talk inhumanly about greatness, to let it loom
darkly at a distance in an indefinite form, to make out that it is great without making
the human character of it evident–wherewith it ceases to be great. For it is not what
happens to me that makes me great, but it is what I do, and there is surely no one who
thinks that a man became great because he won the great prize in the lottery. Even if a
man were born in humble circumstances, I would require of him nevertheless that he
should not be so inhuman toward himself as not to be able to think of the King’s castle
except at a remote distance, dreaming vaguely of its greatness and wanting at the

same time to exalt it and also to abolish it by the fact that he exalted it meanly. I
require of him that he should be man enough to step forward confidently and worthily
even in that place. He should not be unmanly enough to desire impudently to offend
everybody by rushing straight from the street into the King’s hall. By that he loses more
than the King. On the contrary, he should find joy in observing every rule of propriety
with a glad and confident enthusiasm which will make him frank and fearless. This is
only a symbol, for the difference here remarked upon is only a very imperfect
expression for spiritual distance. I require of every man that he should not think so
inhumanly of himself as not to dare to enter those palaces where not merely the
memory of the elect abides but where the elect themselves abide. He should not press
forward impudently and impute to them kinship with himself; on the contrary, he should
be blissful every time he bows before them, but he should be frank and confident and
always be something more than a charwoman, for if he will not be more, he will never
gain entrance. And what will help him is precisely the dread and distress by which the
great are tried, for otherwise, if he has a bit of pith in him, they will merely arouse his
justified envy. And what distance alone makes great, what people would make great by
empty and hollow phrases, that they themselves reduce to naught.

Who was ever so great as that blessed woman, the Mother of God, the Virgin
Mary? And yet how do we speak of her? We say that she was highly favored among
women. And if it did not happen strangely that those who hear are able to think as
inhumanly as those who talk, every young girl might well ask, “Why was not I too the
highly favored?” And if I had nothing else to say, I would not dismiss such a question as
stupid, for when it is a matter of favor, abstractly considered, everyone is equally
entitled to it. What they leave out is the distress, the dread, the paradox. My thought is
as pure as that of anyone, and the thought of the man who is able to think such things
will surely become pure–and if this be not so, he may expect the dreadful; for he who
once has evoked these images cannot be rid of them again, and if he sins against them,
they avenge themselves with quiet wrath, more terrible than the vociferousness of ten
ferocious reviewers. To be sure, Mary bore the child miraculously, but it came to pass
with her after the manner of women, and that season is one of dread, distress and
paradox. To be sure, the angel was a ministering spirit, but it was not a servile spirit
which obliged her by saying to the other young maidens of Israel, “Despise not Mary.
What befalls her is the extraordinary.” But the Angel came only to Mary, and no one
could understand her. After all, what woman was so mortified as Mary? And is it not
true in this instance also that one whom God blesses He curses in the same breath?
This is the spirit’s interpretation of Mary, and she is not (as it shocks me to say, but
shocks me still more to think that they have thoughtlessly and coquettishly interpreted
her thus)–she is not a fine lady who sits in state and plays with an infant god.
Nevertheless, when she says, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord”–then she is great, and
I think it will not be found difficult to explain why she became the Mother of God. She
has no need of worldly admiration, any more than Abraham has need of tears, for she
was not a heroine, and he was not a hero, but both of them became greater than such,
not at all because they were exempted from distress and torment and paradox, but they
became great through these.50

It is great when the poet, presenting his tragic hero before the admiration of
men, dares to say, “Weep for him, for he deserves it.” For it is great to deserve the
tears of those who are worthy to shed tears. It is great that the poet dares to hold the
crowd in check, dares to castigate men, requiring that every man examine himself
whether he be worthy to weep for the hero. For the waste-water of blubberers is a
degradation of the holy.–But greater than all this it is that the knight of faith dares to
say even to the noble man who would weep for him, “Weep not for me, but weep for
thyself.”

One is deeply moved, one longs to be back in those beautiful times, a sweet

yearning conducts one to the desired goal, to see Christ wandering in the promised
land. One forgets the dread, the distress, the paradox. Was it so easy a matter not to
be mistaken? Was it not dreadful that this man who walks among the others–was it not
dreadful that He was God? Was it not dreadful to sit at table with Him? Was it so easy a
matter to become an Apostle? But the result, eighteen hundred years–that is a help, it
helps to the shabby deceit wherewith one deceives oneself and others. I do not feel the
courage to wish to be contemporary with such events, but hence I do not judge
severely those who were mistaken, nor think meanly of those who saw aright.

I return, however, to Abraham. Before the result, either Abraham was every
minute a murderer, or we are confronted by a paradox which is higher than all
mediation.

The story of Abraham contains therefore a teleological suspension of the ethical.
As the individual he became higher than the universal. This is the paradox which does
not permit of mediation. It is just as inexplicable how he got into it as it is inexplicable
how he remained in it. If such is not the position of Abraham, then he is not even a
tragic hero but a murderer. To want to continue to call him the father of faith, to talk of
this to people who do not concem themselves with anything but words, is thoughtless.
A man can become a tragic hero by his own powers–but not a knight of faith. When a
man enters upon the way, in a certain sense the hard way of the tragic hero, many will
be able to give him counsel; to him who follows the narrow way of faith no one can give
counsel, him no one can understand. Faith is a miracle, and yet no man is excluded
from it; for that in which all human life is unified is passion,* and faith is a passion.

*Lessing has somewhere given expression to a similar thought from a purely aesthetic point of
view. What he would show expressly in this passage is that sorrow too can find a witty
expression. To this end he quotes a rejoinder of the unhappy English king, Edward II. In
contrast to this he quotes from Diderot a story of a peasant woman and a rejoinder of hers.
Then he continues: “That too was wit, and the wit of a peasant at that; but the situation made it
inevitable. Consequently one must not seek to kind the excuse for the witty expressions of pain
and of sorrow in the fact that the person who uttered them was a superior person, well
educated, intelligent, and witty withal, for the passions make all men again equal–but the
explanation is to be found in the fact that in all probability everyone would have said the same
thing in the same situation. The thought of a peasant woman a queen could have had and must
have had, just as what the king said in that instance a peasant too would have been able to say
and doubtless would have said.” Cf. Sämtliche Werke, XXX. p. 223.51

PROBLEM II

Is there such a thing as an
absolute duty toward God?

The ethical is the universal, and as such it is again the divine. One has therefore a right
to say that fundamentally every duty is a duty toward God; but if one cannot say more,
then one affirms at the same time that properly I have no duty toward God. Duty
becomes duty by being referred to God, but in duty itself I do not come into relation
with God. Thus it is a duty to love one’s neighbor, but in performing this duty I do not
come into relation with God but with the neighbor whom I love. If I say then in this

connection that it is my duty to love God, I am really uttering only a tautology,
inasmuch as “God” is in this instance used in an entirely abstract sense as the divine,
i.e. the universal, i.e. duty. So the whole existence of the human race is rounded off
completely like a sphere, and the ethical is at once its limit and its content. God
becomes an invisible vanishing point, a powerless thought, His power being only in the
ethical which is the content of existence. If in any way it might occur to any man to
want to love God in any other sense than that here indicated, he is romantic, he loves a
phantom which, if it had merely the power of being able to speak, would say to him, “I
do not require your love. Stay where you belong.” If in any way it might occur to a man
to want to love God otherwise, this love would be open to suspicion, like that of which
Rousseau speaks, referring to people who love the Kaffirs instead of their neighbors.

So in case what has been expounded here is correct, in case there is no
incommensurability in a human life, and what there is of the incommensurable is only
such by an accident from which no consequences can be drawn, in so far as existence is
regarded in terms of the idea, Hegel is right; but he is not right in talking about faith or
in allowing Abraham to be regarded as the father of it; for by the latter he has
pronounced judgment both upon Abraham and upon faith. In the Hegelian philosophy52
das Äussere (die Entäusserung) is higher than das Innere. This is frequently illustrated
by an example. The child is das Innere, the man das Äussere. Hence it is that the child
is defined by the outward, and conversely, the man, as das Äussere, is defined precisely
by das Innere. Faith, on the contrary, is the paradox that inwardness is higher than
outwardness–or, to recall an expression used above, the uneven number is higher than
the even.

In the ethical way of regarding life it is therefore the task of the individual to
divest himself of the inward determinants and express them in an outward way.
Whenever he shrinks from this, whenever he is inclined to persist in or to slip back
again into the inward determinants of feeling, mood, etc., he sins, he is in a temptation
(Anfechtung). The paradox of faith is this, that there is an inwardness which is
incommensurable for the outward, an inwardness, be it observed, which is not identical
with the first but is a new inwardness. This must not be overlooked. Modern
philosophy53 has permitted itself without further ado to substitute in place of “faith” the
immediate. When one does that it is ridiculous to deny that faith has existed in all ages.
In that way faith comes into rather simple company along with feeling, mood,
idiosyncrasy, vapors, etc. To this extent philosophy may be right in saying that one
ought not to stop there. But there is nothing to justify philosophy in using this phrase
with regard to faith. Before faith there goes a movement of infinity, and only then,
necopinate,54 by virtue of the absurd, faith enters upon the scene. This I can well
understand without maintaining on that account that I have faith. If faith is nothing but
what philosophy makes it out to be, then Socrates already went further, much further,
whereas the contrary is true, that he never reached it. In an intellectual respect he
made the movement of infinity. His ignorance is infinite resignation. This task in itself is
a match for human powers, even though people in our time disdain it; but only after it
is done, only when the individual has evacuated himself in the infinite, only then is the
point attained where faith can break forth.

The paradox of faith is this, that the individual is higher than the universal, that
the individual (to recall a dogmatic distinction now rather seldom heard) determines his
relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute
by his relation to the universal. The paradox can also be expressed by saying that there
is an absolute duty toward God; for in this relationship of duty the individual as an
individual stands related absolutely to the absolute. So when in this connection it is said
that it is a duty to love God, something different is said from that in the foregoing; for if
this duty is absolute, the ethical is reduced to a position of relativity. From this,
however, it does not follow that the ethical is to be abolished, but it acquires an entirely

different expression, the paradoxical expression–that, for example, love to God may
cause the knight of faith to give his love to his neighbor the opposite expression to that
which, ethically speaking, is required by duty.

If such is not the case, then faith has no proper place in existence, then faith is
a temptation (Anfechtung), and Abraham is lost, since he gave in to it.

This paradox does not permit of mediation, for it is founded precisely upon the
fact that the individual is only the individual. As soon as this individual [who is aware of
a direct command from God] wishes to express his absolute duty in [terms of] the
universal [i.e. the ethical, and] is sure of his duty in that [i.e. the universal or ethical
precept], he recognizes that he is in temptation [i.e. a trial of faith], and, if in fact he
resists [the direct indication of God’s will], he ends by not fulfilling the absolute duty so
called [i.e. what here has been called the absolute duty]; and, if he doesn’t do this, [i.e.
doesn’t put up a resistance to the direct intimation of God’s will], he sins, even though
realiter his deed were that which it was his absolute duty to do.*

*The translator has ventured to render this muddy sentence very liberally (though he has
bracketed his explanatory additions), in order to bring out the meaning this sentence must have
if it is to express the anguishing paradox of a “teleological suspension of the ethical.” This is the
meaning Niels Thulstrup gets out of it, and he tells me that this is the translation of Emanuel
Hirsch. As S.K.’s sentence stands, without explanatory additions, it reminds me of a rigmarole l
have often recited to the mystification of my hearers: “If a man were to signify, which he were
not, if he had the power, which being denied him, he were to endeavor anyhow–merely because
he don’t, would you?” Much as I love Kierkegaard, I sometimes hate him for keeping me awake
at night. Only between sleeping and waking am I able to unravel some of his most complicated
sentences.

So what should Abraham do? If he would say to another person, “Isaac I love more
dearly than everything in the world, and hence it is so hard for me to sacrifice him”;
then surely the other would have shaken his head and said, “Why will you sacrifice him
then?”–or if the other had been a sly fellow, he surely would have seen through
Abraham and perceived that he was making a show of feelings which were in strident
contradiction to his act.

In the story of Abraham we find such a paradox. His relation to Isaac, ethically
expressed, is this, that the father should love the son. This ethical relation is reduced to
a relative position in contrast with the absolute relation to God. To the question, “Why?”
Abraham has no answer except that it is a trial, a temptation (Fristelse)–terms which,
as was remarked above, express the unity of the two points of view: that it is for God’s
sake and for his own sake. In common usage these two ways of regarding the matter
are mutually exclusive. Thus when we see a man do something which does not comport
with the universal, we say that he scarcely can be doing it for God’s sake, and by that
we imply that he does it for his own sake. The paradox of faith has lost the intermediate
term, i.e. the universal. On the one side it has the expression for the extremest egoism
(doing the dreadful thing it does for one’s own sake); on the other side the expression
for the most absolute self-sacrifice (doing it for God’s sake). Faith itself cannot be
mediated into the universal, for it would thereby be destroyed. Faith is this paradox,
and the individual absolutely cannot make himself intelligible to anybody. People
imagine maybe that the individual can make himself intelligible to another individual in
the same case. Such a notion would be unthinkable if in our time people did not in so

many ways seek to creep slyly into greatness. The one knight of faith can render no aid
to the other. Either the individual becomes a knight of faith by assuming the burden of
the paradox, or he never becomes one. In these regions partnership is unthinkable.
Every more precise explication of what is to be understood by Isaac the individual can
give only to himself. And even if one were able, generally speaking,55 to define ever so
precisely what should be intended by Isaac (which moreover would be the most
ludicrous self-contradiction, i.e. that the particular individual who definitely stands
outside the universal is subsumed under universal categories precisely when he has to
act as the individual who stands outside the universal), the individual nevertheless will
never be able to assure himself by the aid of others that this application is appropriate,
but he can do so only by himself as the individual. Hence even if a man were cowardly
and paltry enough to wish to become a knight of faith on the responsibility of an
outsider, he will never become one; for only the individual becomes a knight of faith as
the particular individual, and this is the greatness of this knighthood, as I can well
understand without entering the order, since I lack courage; but this is also its terror,
as I can comprehend even better.

In Luke 14:26, as everybody knows, there is a striking doctrine taught about
the absolute duty toward God: “If any man cometh unto me and hateth not his own
father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life
also, he cannot be my disciple.” This is a hard saying, who can bear to hear it? For this
reason it is heard very seldom. This silence, however, is only an evasion which is of no
avail. Nevertheless, the student of theology learns to know that these words occur in
the New Testament, and in one or another exegetical aid56 he finds the explanation that
miseîn in this passage and a few others is used in the sense of meísein, signifying minus
diligo, posthabeo, non colo, nihili facio. However, the context in which these words
occur does not seem to strengthen this tasteful explanation. In the verse immediately
following there is a story about a man who desired to build a tower but first sat down to
calculate whether he was capable of doing it, lest people might laugh at him afterwards.
The close connection of this story with the verse here cited seems precisely to indicate
that the words are to be taken in as terrible a sense as possible, to the end that
everyone may examine himself as to whether he is able to erect the building.

In case this pious and kindly exegete, who by abating the price thought he could
smuggle Christianity into the world, were fortunate enough to convince a man that
grammatically, linguistically and kat’ a’nalogían [analogically] this was the meaning of
that passage, it is to be hoped that the same moment he will be fortunate enough to
convince the same man that Christianity is one of the most pitiable things in the world.
For the doctrine which in one of its most lyrical outbursts, where the consciousness of
its eternal validity swells in it most strongly, has nothing else to say but a noisy word
which means nothing but only signifies that one is to be less kindly, less attentive, more
indifferent; the doctrine which at the moment when it makes as if it would give
utterance to the terrible ends by driveling instead of terrifying–that doctrine is not
worth taking off my hat to.

The words are terrible, yet I fully believe that one can understand them without
implying that he who understands them has courage to do them. One must at all events
be honest enough to acknowledge what stands written and to admit that it is great,
even though one has not the courage for it. He who behaves thus will not find himself
excluded from having part in that beautiful story which follows, for after all it contains
consolation of a sort for the man who had not courage to begin the tower. But we must
be honest, and not interpret this lack of courage as humility, since it is really pride,
whereas the courage of faith is the only humble courage.

One can easily perceive that if there is to be any sense in this passage, it must
be understood literally. God it is who requires absolute love. But he who in demanding a

person’s love thinks that this love should be proved also by becoming lukewarm to
everything which hitherto was dear–that man is not only an egoist but stupid as well,
and he who would demand such love signs at the same moment his own death-warrant,
supposing that his life was bound up with this coveted love. Thus a husband demands
that his wife shall leave father and mother, but if he were to regard it as a proof of her
extraordinary love for him that she for his sake became an indolent, lukewarm daughter
etc., then he is the stupidest of the stupid. If he had any notion of what love is, he
would wish to discover that as daughter and sister she was perfect in love, and would
see therein the proof that she would love him more than anyone else in the realm. What
therefore in the case of a man one would regard as a sign of egoism and stupidity, that
one is to regard by the help of an exegete as a worthy conception of the Deity.

But how hate them? I will not recall here the human distinction between loving
and hating–not because I have much to object to in it (for after all it is passionate), but
because it is egoistic and is not in place here. However, if I regard the problem as a
paradox, then I understand it, that is, I understand it in such a way as one can
understand a paradox. The absolute duty may cause one to do what ethics would forbid,
but by no means can it cause the knight of faith to cease to love. This is shown by
Abraham. The instant he is ready to sacrifice Isaac the ethical expression for what he
does is this: he hates Isaac. But if he really hates Isaac, he can be sure that God does
not require this, for Cain and Abraham are not identical. Isaac he must love with his
whole soul; when God requires Isaac he must love him if possible even more dearly,
and only on this condition can he sacrifice him; for in fact it is this love for Isaac which,
by its paradoxical opposition to his love for God, makes his act a sacrifice. But the
distress and dread in this paradox is that, humanly speaking, he is entirely unable to
make himself intelligible. Only at the moment when his act is in absolute contradiction
to his feeling is his act a sacrifice, but the reality of his act is the factor by which he
belongs to the universal, and in that aspect he is and remains a murderer.

Moreover, the passage in Luke must be understood in such a way as to make it
clearly evident that the knight of faith has no higher expression of the universal (i.e. the
ethical) by which he can save himself. Thus, for example, if we suppose that the Church
requires such a sacrifice of one of its members, we have in this case only a tragic hero.
For the idea of the Church is not qualitatively different from that of the State, in so far
as the individual comes into it by a simple mediation, and in so far as the individual
comes into the paradox he does not reach the idea of the Church; he does not come out
of the paradox, but in it he must find either his blessedness or his perdition. Such an
ecclesiastical hero expresses in his act the universal, and there will be no one in the
Church–not even his father and mother etc.–who fails to understand him. On the other
hand, he is not a knight of faith, and he has also a different answer from that of
Abraham: he does not say that it is a trial or a temptation in which he is tested.

People commonly refrain from quoting such a text as this in Luke. They are
afraid of giving men a free rein, are afraid that the worst will happen as soon as the
individual takes it into his head to comport himself as the individual. Moreover, they
think that to exist as the individual is the easiest thing of all, and that therefore people
have to be compelled to become the universal. I cannot share either this fear or this
opinion, and both for the same reason. He who has learned that to exist as the
individual is the most terrible thing of all will not be fearful of saying that it is great, but
then too he will say this in such a way that his words will scarcely be a snare for the
bewildered man, but rather will help him into the universal, even though his words do to
some extent make room for the great. The man who does not dare to mention such
texts will not dare to mention Abraham either, and his notion that it is easy enough to
exist as the individual implies a very suspicious admission with regard to himself; for he
who has a real respect for himself and concern for his soul is convinced that the man
who lives under his own supervision, alone in the whole world, lives more strictly and

more secluded than a maiden in her lady’s bower. That there may be some who need
compulsion, some who, if they were free-footed, would riot in selfish pleasures like
unruly beasts, is doubtless true; but a man must prove precisely that he is not of this
number by the fact that he knows how to speak with dread and trembling; and out of
reverence for the great one is bound to speak, lest it be forgotten for fear of the ill
effect, which surely will fail to eventuate when a man talks in such a way that one
knows it for the great, knows its terror–and apart from the terror one does not know
the great at all.

Let us consider a little more closely the distress and dread in the paradox of
faith. The tragic hero renounces himself in order to express the universal, the knight of
faith renounces the universal in order to become the individual. As has been said,
everything depends upon how one is placed. He who believes that it is easy enough to
be the individual can always be sure that he is not a knight of faith, for vagabonds and
roving geniuses are not men of faith. The knight of faith knows, on the other hand, that
it is glorious to belong to the universal. He knows that it is beautiful and salutary to be
the individual who translates himself into the universal, who edits as it were a pure and
elegant edition of himself, as free from errors as possible and which everyone can read.
He knows that it is refreshing to become intelligible to oneself in the universal so that
he understands it and so that every individual who understands him understands
through him in turn the universal, and both rejoice in the security of the universal. He
knows that it is beautiful to be born as the individual who has the universal as his
home, his friendly abiding-place, which at once welcomes him with open arms when he
would tarry in it. But he knows also that higher than this there winds a solitary path,
narrow and steep; he knows that it is terrible to be born outside the universal, to walk
without meeting a single traveller. He knows very well where he is and how he is
related to men. Humanly speaking, he is crazy and cannot make himself intelligible to
anyone. And yet it is the mildest expression, to say that he is crazy. If he is not
supposed to be that, then he is a hypocrite, and the higher he climbs on this path, the
more dreadful a hypocrite he is.

The knight of faith knows that to give up oneself for the universal inspires
enthusiasm, and that it requires courage, but he also knows that security is to be found
in this, precisely because it is for the universal. He knows that it is glorious to be
understood by every noble mind, so glorious that the beholder is ennobled by it, and he
feels as if he were bound; he could wish it were this task that had been allotted to him.
Thus Abraham could surely have wished now and then that the task were to love Isaac
as becomes a father, in a way intelligible to all, memorable throughout all ages; he
could wish that the task were to sacrifice Isaac for the universal, that he might incite
the fathers to illustrious deeds–and he is almost terrified by the thought that for him
such wishes are only temptations and must be dealt with as such, for he knows that it is
a solitary path he treads and that he accomplishes nothing for the universal but only
himself is tried and examined. Or what did Abraham accomplish for the universal? Let
me speak humanly about it, quite humanly. He spent seventy years in getting a son of
his old age. What other men get quickly enough and enjoy for a long time he spent
seventy years in accomplishing. And why? Because he was tried and put to the test. Is
not that crazy? But Abraham believed, and Sarah wavered and got him to take Hagar as
a concubine–but therefore he also had to drive her away. He gets Isaac, then he has to
be tried again. He knew that it is glorious to express the universal, glorious to live with
Isaac. But this is not the task. He knew that it is a kingly thing to sacrifice such a son
for the universal, he himself would have found repose in that, and all would have
reposed in the commendation of his deed, as a vowel reposes in its consonant,57 but
that is not the task–he is tried. That Roman general who is celebrated by his name of
Cunctator58 checked the foe by procrastination–but what a procrastinator Abraham is in
comparison with him! … yet he did not save the state. This is the content of one
hundred and thirty years. Who can bear it? Would not his contemporary age, if we can
speak of such a thing, have said of him, “Abraham is eternally procrastinating. Finally

he gets a son. That took long enough. Now he wants to sacrifice him. So is he not mad?
And if at least he could explain why he wants to do it–but he always says that it is a
trial.” Nor could Abraham explain more, for his life is like a book placed under a divine
attachment and which never becomes publici juris.59

This is the terrible thing. He who does not see it can always be sure that he is
no knight of faith, but he who sees it will not deny that even the most tried of tragic
heroes walks with a dancing step compared with the knight of faith, who comes slowly
creeping forward. And if he has perceived this and assured himself that he has not
courage to understand it, he will at least have a presentiment of the marvellous glory
this knight attains in the fact that he becomes God’s intimate acquaintance, the Lord’s
friend, and (to speak quite humanly) that he says “Thou” to God in heaven, whereas
even the tragic hero only addresses Him in the third person.

The tragic hero is soon ready and has soon finished the fight, he makes the
infinite movement and then is secure in the universal. The knight of faith, on the other
hand, is kept sleepless, for he is constantly tried, and every instant there is the
possibility of being able to return repentantly to the universal, and this possibility can
just as well be a temptation as the truth. He can derive evidence from no man which it
is, for with that query he is outside the paradox.

So the knight of faith has first and foremost the requisite passion to concentrate
upon a single factor the whole of the ethical which he transgresses, so that he can give
himself the assurance that he really loves Isaac with his whole soul.*

*I would elucidate yet once more the difference between the collisions which are encountered by
the tragic hero and by the knight of faith. The tragic hero assures himself that the ethical
obligation [i.e., the lower ethical obligation, which he puts aside for the higher in the present
case, accorclingly, it is the obligation to spare his daughter’s life] is totally present in him by the
fact that he transforms it into a wish. Thus Agamemnon can say, “The proof that I do not offend
against my parental duty is that my duty is my only wish.” So here we have wish and duty face
to face with one another. The fortunate chance in life is that the two correspond, that my wish is
my duty and vice versa, and the task of most men in life is precisely to remain within their duty
and by their enthusiasm to transform it into their wish. The tragic hero gives up his wish in
order to accomplish his duty. For the knight of faith wish and duty are also identical, but he is
required to give up both. Therefore when he would resign himself to giving up his wish he does
not find repose, for that is after all his duty. If he would remain within his duty and his wish he
is not a knight of faith, for the absolute duty requires precisely that he should give them up. The
tragic hero apprehended a higher expression of duty but not an absolute duty.

If he cannot do that, he is in temptation (Anfechtung). In the next place, he has enough
passion to make this assurance available in the twinkling of an eye and in such a way
that it is as completely valid as it was in the first instance. If he is unable to do this, he
can never budge from the spot, for he constantly has to begin all over again. The tragic
hero also concentrated in one factor the ethical which he teleologically surpassed, but in
this respect he had support in the universal. The knight of faith has only himself alone,
and this constitutes the dreadfulness of the situation. Most men live in such a way
under an ethical obligation that they can let the sorrow be sufficient for the day, but
they never reach this passionate concentration, this energetic consciousness. The
universal may in a certain sense help the tragic hero to attain this, but the knight of
faith is left all to himself. The hero does the deed and finds repose in the universal, the
knight of faith is kept in constant tension. Agamemnon gives up Iphigenia and thereby

has found repose in the universal, then he takes the step of sacrificing her. If
Agamemnon does not make the infinite movement, if his soul at the decisive instant,
instead of having passionate concentration, is absorbed by the common twaddle that he
had several daughters and vielleicht [perhaps] the Ausserordentliche [extraordinary]
might occur–then he is of course not a hero but a hospital-case. The hero’s
concentration Abraham also has, even though in his case it is far more difficult, since he
has no support in the universal; but he makes one more movement by which he
concentrates his soul upon the miracle. If Abraham did not do that, he is only an
Agamemnon–if in any way it is possible to explain how he can be justified in sacrificing
Isaac when thereby no profit accrues to the universal.

Whether the individual is in temptation (Anfechtung) or is a knight of faith only
the individual can decide. Nevertheless it is possible to construct from the paradox
several criteria which he too can understand who is not within the paradox. 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. This is the terrible thing which the sectarian manikin cannot
endure. For instead of learning from this terror that he is not capable of performing the
great deed and then plainly admitting it (an act which I cannot but approve, because it
is what I do) the manikin thinks that by uniting with several other manikins he will be
able to do it. But that is quite out of the question. In the world of spirit no swindling is
tolerated. A dozen sectaries join arms with one another, they know nothing whatever of
the lonely temptations which await the knight of faith and which he dares not shun
precisely because it would be still more dreadful if he were to press forward
presumptuously. 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 kight of faith who in the
solitude of the universe never hears any human voice but walks alone with his dreadful
responsibility.

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. He does not comprehend
what it is all about, that if another individual is to take the same path, he must become
entirely in the same way the individual and have no need of any man’s guidance, least
of all the guidance of a man who would obtrude himself. At this point men leap aside,
they cannot bear the martyrdom of being uncomprehended, and instead of this they
choose conveniently enough the worldly admiration of their proficiency. The true knight
of faith is a witness, never a teacher, and therein lies his deep humanity, which is worth
a good deal more than this silly participation in others’ weal and woe which is honored
by the name of sympathy, whereas in fact it is nothing but vanity. He who would only
be a witness thereby avows that no man, not even the lowliest, needs another man’s
sympathy or should be abased that another may be exalted. But since he did not win
what he won at a cheap price, neither does he sell it out at a cheap price, he is not
petty enough to take men’s admiration and give them in return his silent contempt, he
knows that what is truly great is equally accessible to all.

Either there is an absolute duty toward God, and if so it is the paradox here
described, that the individual as the individual is higher than the universal and as the

individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute/or else faith never existed,
because it has always existed, or, to put it differently, Abraham is lost, or one must
explain the passage in the fourteenth chapter of Luke as did that tasteful exegete, and
explain in the same way the corresponding passages and similar ones.61

PROBLEM III

Was Abraham ethically defensible in keeping silent about his
purpose before Sarah, before Eleazar, before Isaac?

The ethical as such is the universal, again, as the universal it is the manifest, the
revealed. The individual regarded as he is immediately, that is, as a physical and
psychical being, is the hidden, the concealed. So his ethical task is to develop out of this
concealment and to reveal himself in the universal. Hence whenever he wills to remain
in concealment he sins and lies in temptation (Anfechtung), out of which he can come
only by revealing himself.

With this we are back again at the same point. If there is not a concealment
which has its ground in the fact that the individual as the individual is higher than the
universal, then Abraham’s conduct is indefensible, for he paid no heed to the
intermediate ethical determinants. If on the other hand there is such a concealment, we
are in the presence of the paradox which cannot be mediated inasmuch as it rests upon
the consideration that the individual as the individual is higher than the universal, but it
is the universal precisely which is mediation. The Hegelian philosophy holds that there is
no justified concealment, no justified incommensurability. So it is self-consistent when it
requires revelation, but it is not warranted in regarding Abraham as the father of faith
and in talking about faith. For faith is not the first immediacy but a subsequent
immediacy. The first immediacy is the aesthetical, and about this the Hegelian
philosophy may be in the right. But faith is not the aesthetical–or else faith has never
existed because it has always existed.

It will be best to regard the whole matter from a purely aesthetical point of
view, and with that intent to embark upon an aesthetic deliberation, to which I beg the
reader to abandon himself completely for the moment, while I, to contribute my share,
will modify my presentation in conformity with the subject. The category I would
consider a little more closely is the interesting, a category which especially in our age
(precisely because our age lives in discrimine rerum) [at a turning point in history] has
acquired great importance, for it is properly the category of the turning-point. Therefore
we, after having loved this category pro virili [with all our power], should not scorn it as
some do because we have outgrown it, but neither should we be too greedy to attain it,
for certain it is that to be interesting or to have an interesting life is not a task for
industrial art but a fateful privilege, which like every privilege in the world of spirit is
bought only by deep pain. Thus, for example, Socrates was the most interesting man
that ever lived, his life the most interesting that has been recorded, but this existence
was alloted to him by the Deity, and in so far as he himself had to acquire it he was not
unacquainted with trouble and pain. To take such a life in vain does not beseem a man
who takes life seriously, and yet it is not rare to see in our age examples of such an
endeavor. Moreover the interesting is a border-category, a boundary between
aesthetics and ethics. For this reason our deliberation must constantly glance over into
the field of ethics, while in order to be able to acquire significance it must grasp the
problem with aesthetic intensity and concupiscence. With such matters ethics seldom
deals in our age. The reason is supposed to be that there is no appropriate place for it
in the System. Then surely one might do it in a monograph, and moreover, if one would

• ddc.net

Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling