Reposing of the Question

Last class, we brought up the question (I think Kharys was the first to ask it), "Just what is Kierkegaard getting at in this writing?" There was a general feeling that said, "Okay, Kierkegaard's done a great job characterizing faith as that paradox of the single individual being higher than the universal, but so what? Does this mean that we should think twice and maybe look admirably on those people who show such great 'faith' by murdering their kids because they say God told them too? We still say that, as moral people, we have to condemn them, so what are you trying to say Kierkegaard?" While I don't think that Kierkegaard is advocating looking for morally objectionable situations where we can demonstrate our faith, he certainly does want to get the word out to the people around him that faith is more difficult than it seems. I think we're all curious, however, as to what the value of this awesome faith is. If faith requires us to be prepared to commit something morally blameworthy all in order to enter into some mysterious relationship where the individual is absolutely related to the absolute in such a way that he won't be able to communicate this relationship, resulting in no rest in the universal and plenty of anguish at thesingularity, then how many Christians would jump for the chance at having faith? But perhaps that is the whole point that Kierkegaard wants to make to the community around him, but it's still difficult to find something unmistakeably positive about faith. It almost makes more sense to read Kierkegaard as a criticizer of Christianity, showing what kind of nutty things the Christian has to commit to in order to be faithful. It's really ironic that Kierkegaard is actually a Christian himself.

I don't have a positive thesis to put forward here, but I have re-articulated the sentiments we had over "what the point" of all this is about. For comments, I think it might be insightful to provide a defense for why we should consider faith as something intrinsically valuable. From Kierkegaard, it seems sort of taken for granted that faith is good and something to be achieved, but his description of it makes the value of its attainment very dubious.

Questions about the Third Retelling

                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?

Abraham's Breasts

During our last class we had discussed Kierkegaard’s Exordiums and their potential meaning. In the beginning of the Exordium is the tale of a man who greatly admires the story of Abraham. As the man grows older “his enthusiasm for it became greater and greater, and yet he could understand the story less and less” (9). This man wants to witness the events leading to Abraham sacrificing Isaac so that he may better understand the nature of Abraham and its meaning for faith.

Because this man is incapable of understanding the paradoxical nature of faith, the man ponders over four potential scenarios of how the events took place, and concludes each scenario with an analogy to a mother trying to wean her child from her breast.

In the first scenario, Abraham says to himself: “I will not hide from Isaac where this walk is taking him” (10). Abraham explains to Isaac that he is to be sacrificed, which Isaac could not understand. Abraham, in order to offer a motive for Isaac to understand, pretends to be a homicidal maniac where, “his gaze was wild, his whole being was sheer terror”. This of course is a noble sacrifice on Abraham’s part, for he had severed his bond of father and son so that Isaac may not lose faith in God and instead lose faith in Abraham. Johannes concludes the first scenario with the analogy of a mother blackening her breast so that the child may be weaned, which is very much like the scenario Abraham had done for his son.

In the second scenario Abraham loses faith in God, and includes an analogy of the mother concealing her breast. In the third scenario Abraham rides out alone to Mount Moriah to beg forgiveness from the lord, and is concluded with a mother and child mourning over the weaning, for never will the child be as close to the mother as it had been when suckling her breast. The fourth scenario is of everything going to plan, but Isaac notices that Abraham is holding the knife in despair. Forever after Isaac’s faith is lost. The concluding analogy is a remark of how a mother has more solid food for her child to feed upon.

In all of these instances, the man is trying to conclude the kind of faith Abraham must have had for in order to act as he did. And each analogy corresponds to the tale written. I believe that the analogy represents the father Abraham, the son Isaac, and finally the Lord. What other connections do you see amongst the analogies and the short stories?

Faith's Disturbing Repercussions

In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard argues for the importance of faith and the way in which it has been reduced to a diluted, cheapened form, making it something people think is easy to have. Thus he offers the story of Abraham and Isaac, and suggests the inverse through it: that doubting and knowledge is easy -- anyone can doubt -- whereas faith is one of the most difficult qualities to develop. This because faith involves a paradox, that is, something singular that cannot be communicated logically because it cannot make use of universals. The story of Abraham and Isaac, then, involves the most unequivocal paradox and therefore exemplifies faith. At the moment that Abraham is about to slay Isaac, he believes with all his being two contradictory things: that Isaac will and will not die, that God has both kept and broken his promise. Faith involves the teleological suspension of the ethical, as is illustrated in this emblematic example, because Abraham's experience is a singularity and therefore moves above the ethical (because it exists in the realm of universals). In this way, Kierkegaard suggests the limits of philosophy and the way in which it fails to capture the unsayable, irrational, unmediatable, and singular that is found in faith. Philosophy is unable to appreciate the formidable and unreaceable nature of faith in other words.
While I think I am able to brush the contours of understanding here, I am unable to understand how this argument can be applied practically. If the irrationality and singularity of faith is applied in practice, it seems to involve worrying repercussions, and I can't seem to see beyond these consequences. Maybe it wasn't Kierkegaard's aim for it to be applied practically, but surely he wanted faith to be something that is adopted, or rather taken up as "a task for a whole lifetime" (Kierkegaard 23). If this is the case, then how would Kierkegaard respond to cases in which people literally emulate the story of Issac and Abraham, except without the happy ending? This is no insignificant worry, for there have been instances of exactly this. A few years ago I read an article about a mother who drowned her four kids, claiming that God had told her to do it. There seems to be a whole collection of reports on this; here is a link to a similar article http://articles.cnn.com/2004-04-03/justice/children.slain_1_deanna-laney-jury-rules-god?_s=PM:LAW.
How are these examples any different from the story of Abraham, except that 'God' allowed them to go through with the murders? Surely, then, by Kierkegaard's logic, these murderous mothers are even better exemplifications of faith, because they actually had to go through with the murder.  Why are these mothers categorised as insane, while Abraham is considered the "father of faith"? For there is no way to show that these women didn't actually hear God, in the same way that there was no way to prove that God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son. Like Abraham, in fact, these women satisfy the fundamental characteristic of faith: the belief in the proof of things that can't be proved.
In brief, I find the irrationality and incommunicability of faith extremely disturbing. It seems to me like a facade behind which to hide, but maybe that is because I have been sold the 'cheap' version of faith and I'm entangled in and too attached to universals. But even if this is so, Kierkegaard's assertion that faith transcends the ethical realm (because of its dependence on universals) and therefore that it suspends the ethical, seems to result in horrific actions such as the ones mentioned above. What good is Kierkegaard doing then? What is his aim? Because to me all it seems to do is exonerate or excuse these people when they are insane and in fact the need help. I am open to anyone showing me that I have completely missed the point!

Faith and Kierkegaard

Rewinding back to our class on Tuesday, I have done some serious thinking. Doing so, I have adapted my ideas a little better to the text.

This is the third time I am reading Problem I, so this text is not that brand new to me. Honestly, every time that i do read it, though, I am learning new things or I change my ideas. This time I have came to the conclusion that if I were to follow Kierkegaard's idea of faith, I absolutely would agree with him. Kierkegaard's faith is a submission into a paradox. This is true in the sense that if you count irrationality a paradox. And this is what Kierkegaard says himself. When an individual moves beyond the ethical realm, they are moving beyond rationality (or beyond the rationality that can be explained with this telos). This is where I agree with Kierkegaard. Honestly, it may seem like in class that I had a problem with Kierkegaard, I really do not think that he is wrong. But reading this text, I am forced to be skeptical and to ask questions (especially in a text that draws from religion).

Kierkegaard believes that faith is cheapened by the general public. Our model of faith, honestly, lacks understanding from so many of the religious. While Abraham's story is definitely one of a kind, people do not really understand why it is that way. (A) I believe that he is right that he embraces the paradox. (B) He is able to manifest his faith into a test that shows his faith. But also (C) where God has chosen a covenant with him prior to testing his faith.

In the Merriam-Webster, it says, "firm belief in something for which there is no proof."

Dr. J is right in saying that faith is a paradox. While Abraham's story of faith is special, it is not because of the faith, but because he had the opportunity to prove it. However, ordinary people everyday believe in something for which there are no proof. This is not special, even though it is paradoxical. The two things that (in the ethical) cannot happen is the belief and the "no proof". In the ethical, beliefs needs evidence or reason for it.

Even though faith is a belief in the paradox, please tell me how embracing a paradox is special. This is including the idea that there are no real thresholds for faith; if you have it, you have it. But religious people, who believe that there is life after death. This is a belief in the paradox. I am talking about a textbook definition of faith and paradox. While Abraham's story is special because he could prove his faith, faith is not nearly impossible to obtain.

Please tell me what you think.

Back to the Bible

After our conversation on Tuesday, I decided to dust off my New Oxford Annotated Bible and look back over the story of Abraham. One dispute we were having was about the covenant that God makes with Abraham concerning his fathering of nations. According to my translation, God says “this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:4). One question that was raised was whether or not Isaac was necessarily the fulfillment of this covenant. While it is true that Abraham actually had a son before Isaac with the slave Hagar, my translation at least makes it pretty clear that the covenant God is making with Abraham not only names Sarah as the mother but tells Abraham to name their son Isaac and that it is through him that He will keep his covenant: “your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him” (Genesis 17:19). This passage shows that God’s covenant rests on miracle that Sarah, in her old age, bore a son. Even though this was a miracle, there isn’t really any reason for Abraham to think that God might establish another covenant with him through another son.

As for the actual passage of the binding of Isaac, God says too Abraham “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you” (Genesis 22:2). While God doesn’t explicitly say that He won’t provide another son if Abraham kills Isaac, He does emphasize the fact that Isaac is Abraham’s only son, and that he is a son Abraham loves. This is obviously a big deal for Abraham, yet he complies without complaint. He also briefly discussed whether Abraham could have known that God wouldn’t actually make him sacrifice his own son. Before Abraham tells Isaac that the Lord will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, he tells the two attendants: “stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you” (Genesis 22:5). While this might suggest that Abraham assumes that both of them will be returning, it could also be Abraham concealing the true purpose of their travels from Isaac. When the angel comes down to stop Abraham from killing Isaac, he says “for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me” (Genesis 22:12). This wording seems to indicate that what Abraham needed was fear and devotion. This makes it seem like Abraham was being praised for trusting in God and being willing to sacrifice his son for His sake, instead of believing in a paradox.

What, if any, does this textual evidence suggest? Does it support Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the Abraham story? In what ways might the translation play a part in the way we understand this story today?

Unsettling Paradox?

I generally understand people’s volunteered (as opposed to forced) involvement with religion (whether it be routine or on an as-needed basis) to be sought out as a comfort. I am in Community Psychology and today we were talking about stress and the ways people cope with stress. There is extensive research and empirical evidence around the ways in which people turn to religion as a coping mechanism. I think that a “higher power” and something bigger than an individual helps the individual to cope with things that are uncontrollable and hard to understand.

I realize that there is a great difference between religion and the concept of faith that we were talking about yesterday, but I think they are linked if the cheapened version of faith gave way to religion and religious organization today. What I’m wondering (the point of all this rambling) is, if the purpose of religion/faith (at least for many) is to find comfort, is it possible that we utilize religion in a way that includes true faith (as according to Kierkegaard)? Could people find “having faith” in the paradox fulfilling in the way they find organized religion fulfilling? If Kierkegaard explains faith as accepting paradox, does this imply that being a person of “faith” (be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, anything) involves accepting paradox, though it may be unsettling? Then where is the comfort and safety of religion? Or maybe coming to find peace with the paradox is the path of finding faith and religion becomes obsolete? Maybe this is where the “cheapened” version comes into play. People are under the impression that faith/religion/spiritual life should be the “easy” and comforting counterpart to the rest of life that is hard to understand.

Four Passages from Marx

With this post, I’d like to address a few of Marx’s points one by one and see what everyone thinks:

1.      1.  “The whole of society must fall apart into the two classes—the property-owners and the propertyless workers” (70). 

Surely, at least in the modern day, to proclaim that all of society must fall into one of two classes is reductive.  Even if one regards the delineation of classes as defined by the ultra wealthy vs. everyone else, it mustn’t be the case that the latter group consists only of propertyless workers.  Doesn’t the diversity inherent to the working class in a modern setting indicate the existence of some combinatorial progression?

2.      2.  “The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power of its own confronting him; it means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien” (72). 

Do you think that Marx is referring to the worker’s labor as objectified or the objectification of the product of the worker’s labor or both?  This seems to me a potentially crucial differentiation.  Is it possible to experience one without the other?   

3.      3.  “If his own activity is to him an unfree activity, then he is treating it as activity performed in the service, under the dominion, the coercion and the yoke of another man” (78).

This passage makes me wonder whether or not it is possible to be a free, uncoerced member of the working class.  Is it possible for a worker to feel as though he, under any conceivable circumstances, would perform the same activities?  Would such a mentality relinquish the worker from his worker status? 

4.      4.  “The laws of political economy express the estrangement of the worker in his object thus: the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the more value he creates, the more valueless, the more unworthy he becomes; the better formed his product, the more deformed becomes the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous becomes the worker; the mightier labour becomes, the more powerless becomes the worker; the more ingenious labor becomes, the duller becomes the worker and the more he becomes nature’s bondsman” (73). 

Although I understand much of what Marx is saying in this passage, I’m confused by his assertion that “the more value [the worker] creates, the more valueless, the more unworthy he becomes.”  Why is it that the worker’s continued productivity results in progressive devaluation?  I’m inclined to believe the reverse, despite my (admittedly tepid) agreement with the rest of this quotation. 

Estranged Labor as Phenomenology

For this post I want to characterize our reading on "Estranged Labor" in a way that haven't yet, namely as phenomenology. This characterization will help us see the philosophical lineage between Hegel and Marx a little more.

By phenomenology I mean the usual definition as a descriptive account of how things appear to us. The descriptions we attach to objects in phenomenology do not necessarily "inhere" in the object if no one were there to experience it. In fact, in the phenomenological analysis that Marx is doing here, we would hardly say that the product of labor has the property of "being alienated," even when there is no worker. That just doesn't make any sense. It is vital then to understand that Marx's writing in "Estranged Labor" is a phenomenological account of how things appear to the worker, and in each and every case the thing (whether it is the product of labor, himself, his species being, or his fellow human) appears as alienated.

The connection between Hegel and Marx gets fleshed out here because phenomenology is an entirely new kind of philosophy that did not really exist before them. Since Aristotle, when philosophers speak of things like "predicates," (which, simply defined, are just qualities that can be said about a given object) the predicates usually, if not always, carry the sense with them that they are predicated upon the object regardless of anyone's perception of them. For Hegel and Marx it seems that these kinds of predicates are altogether uninteresting, since both of them are much more concerned with what we add to the object in our experience of it. And that last part of that statement might be able to extend our philosophical lineage back to Kant and his "Copernican Revolution" (meaning the philosophy's shift to focusing on how our minds and experience constitute nature) but I won't explore that here.

Is my description of Marx's account of "Estranged Labor" as phenomenology appropriate? Are there more prevalent connections between Hegel and Marx's philosophies that stand out other than this one?

The Communism To Come?

The term ‘communism’ or ‘communist’ is often thrown around as a kind of pejorative; however Marx has a very specific concept in mind when he uses it. There are a couple passages where Marx discusses communism in the 1844 manuscripts, but this is perhaps one of the most interesting: “If we characterize communism itself because of its character as negation of the negation, as the appropriation of the human essence which mediates itself with itself through the negation of private property – as being not yet the true, self-originating position but rather a position originating from private property, […]” (Marx-Engels 99). There is a foot note attached to the ellipses saying that the rest of the manuscript was torn off. What we get in this passage is the antecedent to a conditional statement. What appears to have been torn off is the consequent to this conditional. What could the consequent of this conditional be? Is he saying that it might be bad to conceive of communism merely as the negation of the negation?

We perhaps get a hint by looking to the next couple paragraphs. Marx alludes to simply looking at the Hegelian conceptual structure when talking about communism. “In order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of communism is completely sufficient. It takes actual communist action to abolish actual private property” (ibid). Communism, as the transcendence of private property, is not merely the idea of this transcendence. What Marx is saying here is that theorizing will not actually do anything. While he is still using Hegelian language or negation and transcendence, the apparatus he is using is radically different. This difference seems to go beyond Hegel in a way that is not simply ‘turning him on his head’. However, Marx does seem to want to preserve the Hegelian notion of the inevitability of history.

Immediately after the passage above where he seemingly wants to move away from Hegel, he argues that “History will come to it; and this movement, which in theory we already know to be a self-transcending movement, will constitute in actual fact a very severe and protracted process” (ibid). Here Marx wants to continue his distinction between the way private property is transcended in theory and in actuality, or in practice. By saying that in ‘actual fact’ the transition away from private property will be severe and protracted, it seems like Marx wants to say that communism will not simply arise on its own. There isn’t a simple movement of ideas where the desired end result will come about no matter what. It seems like something else is needed, vis. real, actual revolution by the proletariat. However Marx begins the passage with the phrase ‘History will come to it’. This seems to suggest that the revolution will come regardless.

What exactly is Marx arguing for when it comes to the communist revolution? Does he move beyond Hegel’s conception of history, or does he simply inverting it? How exactly is the communist revolution determined by the material conditions of the present?

Feeding the Masses

In the Manuscripts of 1844 Marx explicates the fundamentals of his interpretation of history as well as his predictions for the future generations where the probable proletarian revolution will lead to communism. This is the supposed goal for humanity, and Marx goes into great detail to explain the inevitability of such a situation. In a previous post I wrote of the Occupy movement as a change in the world’s Geist so that I may use the Hegelian term and explore the notion of political and economic change in hopes of providing a reasonable answer. After finishing the manuscripts of 1844, I am once again inspired to try and connect our text to our modern day and age, but due to my lack of certainty inside the occupy movement, I would like to describe my musings from reading Marx.

History for Marx is the story of human being’s alienation from the life of being producers. In the nineteenth century a producer faced much greater difficulty in comparison to the people in the modern era. Of course the benefits are not universal; people in third world countries (or even countries that treat its citizens like third world citizens) still participate in dangerous working conditions and human exploitation is still rampant around the world while in first world countries, the scandals of human exploitation and poor work conditions are muted by the daily press. Yet amongst the horribleness that comes from the present era, life has had numerous benefits included. Yet it is these socialist-inspired benefits that have been keeping the work force contained and fed. The challenge for many of the world citizens is no longer the fear of having an arm crushed inside a giant mechanic machine, but it is now instead the withdrawal of being taken out of the system. Our culture has begun to love the system we work for. There is certainly discontent amongst the system, but as a majority more people are more than willing to accept a certain position so long as it provides certain benefits that help the worker (for now I would like to refrain from using proletariat) and keep the worker in place. Our new challenge for making the transition into the new stage of history is simple. How do we live without what we have now?

The American author John Steinbeck wrote a short story that slid into his Magnum Opus The Grapes of Wrath, where a farmer is forced to interact with the men from the bank who have been hired to bulldoze the farmer’s house. During the whole meeting the farmer continuously asks who he needs to shoot and kill in order to keep his land and home, and repeatedly hears the answer that there isn’t a man to shoot. There is only the machine. An unfeeling machine that can take and only take, and no one can kill it. So 21^st century, where do we start?