Jot down your thoughts about what Kierkegaard means by the "teleological suspension of the ethical". What makes Abraham a "knight of faith", according to Kierkegaard?
Write down definitions for Kierkegaard's notions of "the aesthetical", "the ethical", and "the religious" as they are used in Chapters 3 through 5. Be sure to include the differences among these concepts in your notes. When is the leap of faith necessary, according to Kierkegaard? Could you, or would you, make such a leap? Is there a place for reason and reasoned argument within Kierkegaard's view of life?
Listen to this discussion of Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death. As you listen to the lecture, consider answering the following questions: What is Kierkegaard's "three-step system", as discussed in the lecture? How is this system relevant to you as an existing human being? What does Kierkegaard mean when he says that "the sickness is not unto death"?
Consider the distinction between authentic and inauthentic despair, according to Kierkegaard. How is despair related to the tension, in human existence, between the finite and the infinite?
Read this article on Kierkegaard. As you read, jot down the different stages of life's way, according to Kierkegaard. Then, list examples that illustrate a person's being in any one of these stages. Consider whether or not you have ever been in Kierkegaard's aesthetic stage. If you have, what was that like? If you have not, would you want to be? Why or why not? As he wrote in his diary: "I was a thousand years too old for her.
His target was the "system" as he mockingly put it of G. Hegel, the great philosopher of idealism. He attacked Hegel's attempt to systematize all of reality; Hegel, he said, left out the most important element of human experience: existence itself.
Kierkegaard felt that no philosophical system could explain the human condition. The experience of reality—the loss of a loved one, the feelings of guilt and dread—was what mattered, not the "idea" of it.
Hegel emphasized universals; Kierkegaard argued for decision and commitment. Hegel sought an objective theory of knowledge upon which everyone could agree; Kierkegaard believed in the subjectivity of truth—meaning that truth is understood and experienced individually. Existence, he believed, is actual, painful, and more important than "essence" or "idea. As Kierkegaard once wrote, "My life has been brought to an impasse, I loathe existence….
Where am I? What is this thing called the world? What does this word mean? Who is it that has lured me into the thing and now leaves me there? Who am I? What one does with that fact really matters. He considered that claim—that he had a handle on reality— a form of arrogance. As it is, he is merely comic. Kierkegaard insisted that faith has truth that facts may not be able to explain. Here he is encouraging the searching minds of the young.
Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that every youth is capable of overcoming Hegel, far from it. If a young person is conceited and foolish enough to try that, his attack is inane. No, the youth must never think of wanting to attack him; he must rather be willing to submit unconditionally to Hegel with feminine devotedness, but nevertheless with sufficient strength also to stick to his question-then he is a satirist without suspecting it.
The youth is an existing doubter; continually suspended in doubt, he grasps for the truth-so that he can exist in it. But for an existing person pure thinking is a chimera when the truth is supposed to be the truth in which to exist. Having to exist with the help of the guidance of pure thinking is like having to travel in Denmark with a small map of Europe on which Denmark is no larger than a steel pen-point , indeed, even more impossible.
This would have been discerned long ago if pure thinking had not maintained itself with the aid of a reputation that impresses people, so that they dare not say anything except that it is superb, that they have understood it-although in a certain sense that it is indeed impossible, since no one can be led by this philosophy to understand himself, which is certainly an absolute condition for all other understanding.
The point of indirect communication is to position the reader to relate to the truth with appropriate passion, rather than to communicate the truth as such. It draws on irony, the comic and is high-spirited, in order to get thoughts into motion prior to action. A deliberation is a weighing-up, as a propaedeutic to action. It seeks to build up the faith that it presupposes.
Kierkegaard published many of his Edifying Discourses in short collections to accompany particular pseudonymous texts, then later published them again in larger collections. These are particularly intimate addresses to the sincere Christian, who strives to deepen the subjective passion of faith through confession and through acceptance of divine forgiveness.
This was aimed at subverting our focus on worldly goals in order to refocus on other-worldly goals. Our struggle to accept divine forgiveness can become mired in despair, including the second-order despair over the impossibility of forgiveness of our sins and the demonic despair of defiance in which we refuse to accept forgiveness.
The first is the aesthetic, which gives way to the ethical, which gives way to the religious. The aesthetic stage of existence is characterized by the following: immersion in sensuous experience; valorization of possibility over actuality; egotism; fragmentation of the subject of experience; nihilistic wielding of irony and scepticism; and flight from boredom.
The figure of the aesthete in Either-Or Part One is an ironic portrayal of German romanticism, but it also draws on medieval characters as diverse as Don Juan, Ahasuerus, and Faust. Johannes the seducer is a reflective aesthete , who gains sensuous delight not so much from the act of seduction but from engineering the possibility of seduction. His real aim is the manipulation of people and situations in ways which generate interesting reflections in his own voyeuristic mind.
The aesthetic perspective transforms quotidian dullness into a richly poetic world by whatever means it can. That is, the aesthete uses artifice, arbitrariness, irony, and wilful imagination to recreate the world in his own image.
The prime motivation for the aesthete is the transformation of the boring into the interesting. This type of aestheticism is criticized from the point of view of ethics. It is seen to be emptily self-serving and escapist. It is a despairing means of avoiding commitment and responsibility. And it is self-deceiving insofar as it substitutes fantasies for actual states of affairs. But Kierkegaard did not want to abandon aesthetics altogether in favor of the ethical and the religious.
As far as the aesthetic stage of existence is concerned what is preserved in the higher religious stage is the sense of infinite possibility made available through the imagination.
But this no longer excludes what is actual. Nor is it employed for egotistic ends. Aesthetic irony is transformed into religious humor, and the aesthetic transfiguration of the actual world into the ideal is transformed into the religious transubstantiation of the finite world into an actual reconciliation with the infinite.
Language and all other media of representation belong to the realm of the ideal. No matter how eloquent or evocative language is it can never be the actual. Therefore, any representation of faith is always suspended in the realm of ideality and can never be actual faith. In fact Johannes Climacus acknowledges this implicitly when at the end of Concluding Unscientific Postscript he revokes everything he has said, with the important rider that to say something then to revoke it is not the same as never having said it in the first place.
His presentation of religious faith in an aesthetic medium at least provides an opportunity for his readers to make their own leap of faith, by appropriating with inward passion the paradoxical religion of Christianity into their own lives. These works include those by Anti-Climacus, who represents the Christian point of view par excellence , beyond where Kierkegaard placed himself. Kierkegaard also used many biblical figures and stories with poignant and striking effect in the religious writings he published under his own name.
As a poet of the religious Kierkegaard was always preoccupied with aesthetics. In fact, contrary to popular misconceptions of Kierkegaard which represent him as becoming increasingly hostile to poetry, he increasingly referred to himself as a poet in his later years all but one of over ninety references to himself as a poet in his journals date from after Kierkegaard never claimed to write with religious authority, as an apostle.
His works represent both less religiously enlightened and more religiously enlightened positions than he thought he had attained in his own existence. Such representations were only possible in an aesthetic medium of imagined possibilities like poetry. It is used to denote both: i a limited existential sphere, or stage, which is superseded by the higher stage of the religious life; and ii an aspect of life which is retained even within the religious life. These social norms are used as reasons to make sense of, or justify, an action within a community.
Even human sacrifice is justified in terms of how it serves the community, so that when Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia he is regarded as a tragic hero since his community understands that the sacrifice is required by the gods for the success of the Greek expedition to Troy Fear and Trembling. Kierkegaard, however, recognizes duties that cannot be justified in terms of social norms. That is, Abraham recognizes a duty to something higher than both his social duty not to kill an innocent person and his personal commitment to his beloved son, viz.
However, he cannot give an intelligible ethical justification of his act to the community in terms of social norms, but must simply obey the divine command.
In order to raise oneself beyond the merely aesthetic life, which is a life of drifting in imagination, possibility and sensation, one needs to make a commitment.
That is, the aesthete needs to choose the ethical, which entails a commitment to communication and decision procedures. The metaethics or normative ethics are cognitivist, laying down various necessary conditions for ethically correct action. These conditions include: the necessity of choosing seriously and inwardly; commitment to the belief that predications of good and evil of our actions have a truth-value; the necessity of choosing what one is actually doing, rather than just responding to a situation; actions are to be in accordance with rules; and these rules are universally applicable to moral agents.
The choice of metaethics, however, is noncognitive. There is no adequate proof of the truth of metaethics. The choice of normative ethics is motivated, but in a noncognitive way. The Judge seeks to motivate the choice of his normative ethics through the avoidance of despair. For Judge Wilhelm, the choice of normative ethics is a noncognitive choice of cognitivism, and thereby an acceptance of the applicability of the conceptual distinction between good and evil.
Therefore it is possible, as Johannes de Silentio argues was the case for Abraham the father of faith , that God demand a suspension of the ethical in the sense of the socially prescribed norms. Since public reason cannot decide the issue for us, we must decide for ourselves as a matter of religious faith. These analyses amount to a subtle moral psychology, which borders on virtue ethics. It is not enough simply for God to issue a command; we need to hear and obey. But obedience is not straightforward.
We can obey willingly or begrudgingly. We can refuse altogether. We can be selectively deaf, or be so filled with our egotistical desires that we are altogether deaf to our duties. In order to obey we first need to cultivate faith, since obedience to a divine command is nonsense unless we at least believe the command has come from God. To imagine the enormity of the consequences of sin, yet to relish the possibilities of freedom, engenders anxiety.
We need to learn to navigate the treacherous maelstroms of despair, to recognize the self-absorption of demonic states, to veer away from prudence and vanity, and to avoid mere conformity to social mores. We need to cultivate hope, patience, devotion, and above all love. But we also need to be vigilant about our capacity for self-deception and be prepared to suffer for love and for our ultimate spiritual identity.
Kierkegaard styled himself above all as a religious poet. The religion to which he sought to relate his readers is Christianity. The type of Christianity that underlies his writings is a very serious strain of Lutheran pietism informed by the dour values of sin, guilt, suffering, and individual responsibility.
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