{"agent_id":"kierkegaard","agent_name":"Søren Kierkegaard","slug":"the-teleological-suspension-of-the-ethical-fear-and-tremblin","label":"The teleological suspension of the ethical (Fear and Trembling): is Abraham's case moral monstrosity?","topic":"The teleological suspension of the ethical (Fear and Trembling)","question":"Is Abraham's case moral monstrosity?","position":"De Silentio's argument is structural: if Abraham is the father of faith, his case shows there is a higher than the universal-ethical. The ethical-as-universal — the Hegelian Sittlichkeit, the moral law as Kant articulated it — admits no exception, since the universal is what makes the ethical the ethical. Abraham's case stands outside this: the religious individual stands in absolute relation to the absolute, and that relation suspends the ethical-as-universal teleologically. This is not a license for arbitrary violation of moral concern; it is the recognition that the religious sphere is not reducible to the ethical sphere. De Silentio himself cannot understand Abraham — he stands before the knight of faith in incomprehension and admiration.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"De Silentio's argument is structural: if Abraham is the father of faith, his case shows there is a higher than the universal-ethical.","n":[]},{"t":"The ethical-as-universal — the Hegelian Sittlichkeit, the moral law as Kant articulated it — admits no exception, since the universal is what makes the ethical the ethical.","n":[]},{"t":"Abraham's case stands outside this: the religious individual stands in absolute relation to the absolute, and that relation suspends the ethical-as-universal teleologically.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"This is not a license for arbitrary violation of moral concern; it is the recognition that the religious sphere is not reducible to the ethical sphere.","n":[]},{"t":"De Silentio himself cannot understand Abraham — he stands before the knight of faith in incomprehension and admiration.","n":[2,3,4]}]],"texts":"Fear and Trembling, Problema I ('Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?'), Problema II, Problema III; the structural argument that the ethical-as-universal must be suspended if Abraham is the father of faith. Reception: Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981) — Kierkegaard makes ethics arbitrary; Emmanuel Levinas, Proper Names — ethics as first philosophy; the Kantian-rationalist critique; C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh, Cambridge Texts edition (2006); Edward Mooney, Knights of Faith and Resignation (1991).","works":["Fear and Trembling, Problema I ('Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?'), Problema II, Problema III","the structural argument that the ethical-as-universal must be suspended if Abraham is the father of faith"],"reception":"Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981) — Kierkegaard makes ethics arbitrary; Emmanuel Levinas, Proper Names — ethics as first philosophy; the Kantian-rationalist critique; C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh, Cambridge Texts edition (2006); Edward Mooney, Knights of Faith and Resignation (1991).","status":"The most-discussed problem in Kierkegaard. MacIntyre charges that the framework makes ethics arbitrary; Levinas charges abandonment of ethics-as-first-philosophy; the Kantian-rationalist tradition reads the suspension as moral monstrosity. Mooney and Evans/Walsh defend de Silentio's structural argument while distinguishing the ethical-as-universal from moral concern more broadly.","era":"1813-1855","discipline":"Philosophy, Theology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Fear and Trembling","page":"pp. 30–31","canonical":"","quote":"All of us are in need of a healing of self that can only be made possible by faith, in which, like Abraham, an individual has \"an absolute relation to the absolute\" (p. 48). We are not all predisposed by natural or historical circumstances to become demonic, but we are, according to the doctrine of original sin, in some way predisposed to lose our way as human beings.","label":"Fear and Trembling, pp. 30–31"},{"n":2,"work":"Fear and Trembling","page":"p. 25","canonical":"","quote":"What does Johannes mean in saying faith norms as involves such a \"paradox?\" He does not mean, I think, that faith requires a belief in what is logically contradictory. Rather, faith requires a belief that makes no sense from the point of view of \"worldly wisdom,\" a belief that contradicts what appears to be the case. Normally, a person who deviates from social norms is just a bad person.","label":"Fear and Trembling, p. 25"},{"n":3,"work":"Fear and Trembling","page":"p. 88","canonical":"","quote":"This standpoint cannot be mediated, for all mediation occurs precisely by virtue of the universal; it is and forever remains a paradox, inaccessible to thought.","label":"Fear and Trembling, p. 88"},{"n":4,"work":"Fear and Trembling","page":"pp. 20–21","canonical":"","quote":"We let Isaac actually be sacrificed. Abraham believed. He did not believe that he would be blessed one day in the hereafter but that he would become blissfully happy here in the world. God could give him a new Isaac, call the sacrificed one back to life. He believed by virtue of the absurd, for all human calculation had long since ceased. (pp.","label":"Fear and Trembling, pp. 20–21"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"kierkegaard-contra-hegel-and-the-system","label":"Kierkegaard contra Hegel and the system: does the system have any place for the existing individual?"},{"slug":"pseudonymity-and-indirect-communication","label":"Pseudonymity and indirect communication: are the pseudonymous works Kierkegaard's views?"},{"slug":"truth-as-subjectivity-cup","label":"Truth as subjectivity (CUP): is this relativism?"}]}