After all the many discussions about Kierkegaard's aim -- his actual lesson behind asserting the strenuous difficulty in acquiring faith -- in Fear and Trembling, some interesting possibilities have been teased out of the material. I will elaborate on two here.
Firstly, Kierkegaard is upping the price of faith, and therefore making Christianity as a whole more expensive. He is showing the rarity (and horror) of faith, asserting the almost inhuman courage it involves, and thus rendering faith priceless. Moreover, this is not only an attack on non-believers who disregard faith as easy, something anyone could do. It also seems to be aimed at those believers too who assert that they have faith; Kierkegaard wants to show how faith is not a commodity. He shows how the leap of faith does not involve a small gap but rather an ever-widening gulf, one that very few are selected to jump in the first place. Perhaps, then, Kierkegaard is suggesting that most people are not required to have faith in order to be Christians. Since faith is such an exclusive thing, Christians are only required to believe in God and admire, as well as respect, the suffering and strain faith requires. Rather than using Abraham as the model of faith, Kierkegaard calls him the father of faith, which suggests a guiding figure who, rather than expecting actual reproductions of his faith in his followers, requires only belief in God and his use as a great guiding figure to Christians.
Secondly, Dr J suggested a more abstact, overarching interpretation of Kierkegaard's aim. That is, Kierkegaard may be using the story of Abraham, and the faith that thereby results, as an analogy of the paradox humans are forced to face in their everyday lives. In other words, it makes visible, if not understandable, the fact that we are forced -- everyday -- to live with the paradox that I mean everything and nothing. We are required to believe both these contradictory things simultaneously. In a certain sense then, the Abraham story is able to elaborate on a fundamental aspect of human life.
Are there any other lessons in which Kierkegaard would have been interested?
To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world looks rationally back. ~~G.W.F. Hegel
I do prefer the "abstract, overarching interpretation" than a more literal reading of Kierkegaard, but I definitely think that we should attribute these readings to the twentieth century thinkers' interpretations of Kierkegaard's work. For me personally, it is for this reason that Kierkegaard's writing is interesting: to provide a context for later thought.
ReplyDelete