Is Abraham "behind the world"?

In the Preface, Nietzsche references his separation of theology from morality and that he stopped looking for origins of good and evil “behind the world” (5). This statement and his subsequent writing bring up two questions for me in terms of relating Nietzsche to Kierkegaard.

1. Regarding our conversations about whether or not there is a religion grounding the telos of the ethical… if theology is separated from morality of Nietzsche, how does this relate to Kierkegaard’s understandings of the groundings of the ethical. I’m sure the answer to this will arise in our readings of Nietzsche, but I generally think of lessons in theology as grounding the origins of “good” and “evil” and our rules of what are good and bad actions as being received from theological teachings.

2. Would Nietzsche consider the Abraham story to be something that is “behind the world” or part of our actual experience? If thinking of morality in terms of God is to not look at historical/anthropological evidence, how would the Abraham story classify? Would Nietzsche count it as something that is part of human history? Or something that is a “lesson” from God, something “behind the world”? In reading his later discussion on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity I would think that Nietzsche would consider the development of these religions as part of the history of people that concepts of “good” and “evil” came from, as he describes the evolutions of the language, but Nietzsche does not want to consider the story of Adam and Eve as the origin of good and evil? Nietzsche’s references to the writings of Tertullian at the end of Essay One would give me reason to believe that he would consider the actions/repercussions of the Abraham story as legitimate contributions to the evolution of “good” and “evil”, however I’m not sure that Nietzsche would agree with the way Kierkegaard describes the story. Does Kierkegaard refer to the story in a too “behind the world” way for Nietzsche?

Towards Kierkegaard's Lessons

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?

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.