Of the four exordium introduced in the beginning of
Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, I
find the third to be the most compelling, albeit the most confusing. I am particularly fond of this exordium
because it, regardless of which interpretation the reader adopts, unavoidably highlights
the tragedy of Abraham’s experience during his demonstration of faith. In spite of my enthusiasm for this retelling,
I find myself puzzled by many elements therein and do not know how best to interpret
the reading. Kierkegaard writes that “it
was a quiet evening when Abraham rode out alone, and he rode to Mount Moriah;
he threw himself down on his face, he prayed to God to forgive him his sin,
that he had been willing to sacrifice Isaac, that the father had forgotten his
duty to his son.” This interpretation of
the story is starkly different from the others in a single major way: Abraham
does not bring Isaac to Mount Moriah for sacrifice. However, despite Abraham’s solitary journey, upon
arriving at Mount Moriah alone, he seeks forgiveness for his supposed willingness
to sacrifice his son. At this point, I
find myself confused. In what way was
Abraham willing to sacrifice Isaac? Is
Abraham penitent simply because he considers
sacrificing Isaac? Doesn’t the fact that
Abraham does not bring Isaac to Mount Moriah for sacrifice demonstrate his
unwillingness to comply with God’s command?
If so, how is this retelling a proper demonstration of faith? Alternatively, it seems possible that Abraham
misinterpreted the manner in which God was testing him. Abraham may have thought that God was testing
Abraham’s love for Isaac. Surely, this
sort of test puts Abraham in a unique predicament. On one hand, he can obey God, thereby
potentially expressing the limited extent of his love for Isaac; on the other,
he could disobey God and in doing so, demonstrate his lack of faith. Either way, however, the tragedy of Abraham’s
experience in this instance becomes apparent.
Kierkegaard ends the third retelling with the
following metaphor: “When the child is to be weaned, the mother, too, is not
without sorrow, because she and the child are more and more to be separated,
because the child who first lay under her heart and later rested upon her
breast will never again be so close. So
they grieve together the brief sorrow.”
Although I understand how this analogy illustrates the misfortune
inherent to Abraham’s experience, I’m confused by Kierkegaard’s classification
of the sorrow as “brief”. Why is their
sorrow characterized this way?
Interestingly, my interpretation of that passage is completely different to yours. I understood Abraham as taking Issac to Mount Moriah as he did in all the others, at least in the first part of the section. Admittedly, it is ambiguous. Abraham is said to have "rode pensively along the way, he thought of Hagar and of the son whom he drove out into the wilderness, he climbed Mount Moraih, he drew the knife" (Kierkegaard 28). If he made this first trip alone, then on whom would he be drawing the knife? It seems to me that Isaac did accompany him, though he is not mentioned, for it would be strange for him to draw the knife on no one.
ReplyDeleteIt does indeed seem like he returns to Mount Moraih a second time (many times in fact, for he is described as "often [riding] this lonely way, but...found no rest" (29)).Perhaps this is where your confusion comes in. This second visit seems to find Abraham steeped in remorse, childless because of it, and almost experiencing a loss of faith. Moreover, as Dr J suggested in our class discussion this week, it does not seem like any of this stories or retellings show "a proper demonstration of faith" because they all attemot to make Abraham's actions understandable, sayable, explicable, when in fact faith is that which cannot be explained and remains outside the reals of the ethical or the logical. Faith is that which cannot be translated into language, because language relies on the use of universals, and faith is singular -- that which cannot be explained by the universal.
Hope this helps.
I agree with Kharys that he did not ride out there alone. Even though I find it hard to not put too much emphasis on my interpretation but more on the actually text itself, here is what I think: I think the fact that Abraham has forgot his duties to Isaac (his son), it seems as if he traveled there alone. With this in mind, the trip was metaphorically without Isaac because at that point, Isaac has already figuratively been sacrificed.
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