Abraham and Dilemma: Kierkegaard's Teleological Suspension Revisited

Author(s): Edward F. Mooney

Source: International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 1986, Vol. 19, No. 1/2 (1986),
pp. 23-41
Published by: Springer

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40019183

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
IntemationalJournal for Philosophy of Religion 19:23-41 (1986).
©1 986 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht. Printed in the Netherlands.

ABRAHAM AND DILEMMA: KIERKEGAARD'S TELEOLOGICAL

SUSPENSION REVISITED

EDWARD F. MOONEY

Sonoma State University

The Genesis story of Abraham and Isaac can seem, in turn, fascinating and r
lant, a story of integrity and a story of betrayal, of steadfast loyalty and of m
derous cruelty. What are we to make of God's demand that Abraham sacrifice
son? Worse, how are we to respond to Abraham's willingness to honor that d
mand? In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard bears witness to the depths of conf
triggered by this enigmatic and awful trial, to the difficulty of coming to s
stable overview of the issues, profound and central as they must be. Kierkeg
focuses these issues in the notorious question: Can there be a teleological susp
sion of the ethical? Can Abraham be defended in setting ethics and Isaac asid
Can his loyalty be seen as anything but morally abhorrent and wildly irrational?
Kierkegaard is not alone in finding within this story a sign of Abraham's gre
ness, a cause for the accolade "father of faith," or, indeed, "knight of fa
But on what grounds, this praise? Given that Abraham is caught in a cruel test
commitments, it is natural to think that he is a knight of faith because he ma
the right choice. He opts for God over Isaac, faith over ethics, unreason
reason. But how can that choice underwrite greatness? Wouldn't it be better
throw down the book, to frankly admit what our untutored conscience woul
declare anyway, that Abraham has made the wrong choice, and that Kierkega
is sadly, greatly, deluded in his effort to glorify such outrage?
If one refuses such wholesale dismissal, as I must, one may try to show th
appearances aside, Abraham does not overthrow reason or ethics, at least not
a really damaging way. But this tactic can fail. In trying to make it reasonable
moral -at least not that bad - for Abraham to have sided with God against Isa
the intensity of Abraham's dilemma will be diluted. Surely it will be bad, terr
bad, no matter what Abraham does. Can turning one's back on God be an impro
ment on turning one's back on Isaac? To start a plausible interpretation, one m
challenge an assumption that to my knowledge has gone unchallenged in the la
literature on Fear and Trembling. Why assume that Abraham has made the r
choice? I don't mean it would have been better to have rejected God, but
assume that in this crisis there is an objectively correct response?2
If we take Abraham's choice to have been correct, we undercut an aspect of

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 24

story that Kierkegaard sees as fundamental, the aspect which provides Fear and
Trembling its title. If Abraham could know, or we could know, that he had picked
the "right" alternative, then there would be no terrifying dilemma, no fear and
trembling. But surely Kierkegaard's aim is not to ease Abraham's crisis but to in-
tensify it, to portray its terribleness unflinchingly. We are not meant to walk
away with a pat priority rule: "Always obey God, no matter the cost, no matter
the ethics!" That would only support precisely the rationalistic complacency
Kierkegaard is at pains to attack. Having a rule for breaking the deadlock of even
the worst imaginable dilemma, reason would have triumphed, things for Abraham
would be clearcut, settled. But if this is indeed a story of fear and trembling, there
can be no such rationalistic solution available. There is no "right choice" for Abra-
ham to make.
There are evident difficulties reconstructing the Kierkegaardian perspective as
a sustained and coherent argument. It is not an accident that critics have torn their
hair over the text. He is anything but direct in presenting his views; at times he
seems committed to incompatible standpoints; and he can revel in apparent contra-
diction and paradox. But the effort to forge a coherent view yields substantial
rewards. It would be pleasure enough to straighten out some obstacles to holding
the Biblical story in perspective, or to make sense of a notoriously difficult Nine-
teenth Century text. But the benefits go deeper.
Struggling with the text forces us to work through issues whose bearing goes
beyond the matter of Abraham's particular dilemma. Unraveling the text is un-
raveling our thinking about the forms and limits of morality, the connections
between reason and ethics, the notions of a personal, categorical calling or duty and
of moral deadlock or dilemma, the role of faith in getting us through the crisis of a
moral "blind alley," the difference between judging and act and judging an agent,
the connections between faith and reason. Fear and Trembling brings into promi-
nence ubiquituous and problematic features of our experience that are all too easily
denied or distorted both in conventional assumption and in philosophical theory.
The task is to lay out a reading of Fear and Trembling that preserves the fun-
damental sense of Abraham's dilemma, with the corollary that there can be no
rationally "correct" solution to his crisis; a reading that preserves an integrity for
reason and ethics even as their limits become starkly displayed, and that discovers
the basis for Abraham's greatness in the way he lives through his dilemma - not
in what, but in how he chooses.3 His way is necessarily dark, his justification
obscure; but the accolade "knight of faith," well-earned.

Sartre and dilemma. It is a shop-worn platitude that life is problematic. There

are problems of insufficient resources, knowledge, resolve, or good will; problems
generated by a conflict between self-interest and regard for others; difficulties re-
solving conflicts within the self or between persons or groups; problems responding

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 25

to even-so-many other painful constraints of our world. Most of these problems

have imaginable, if not immediately achievable, solutions. We lack knowledge to
cure cancer, but we continue appropriate research; we lack will or training to
achieve a personal or political goal, but we ponder the obstacles and plot strate-
gies to overcome them. Dilemmas present us with problems of an altogether dif-
ferent order. We can hardly imagine what a solution would be like. We move
beyond the problematic to the tragic, the absurd, or, as some have said, the irra-
tional.
Recall the dilemmas faced by Abraham or Antigone, by Captain Vere in Billy
Budd or Sophie in Sophie's Choice. On pain of losing both children to the Gestapo,
a mother chooses one child to be spared - condemning the other. On pain of
weakening the rules of the sea in time of war and revolution, a captain meets the
requirements of the law - executing the saintly boy he loves. Abraham is faced
with inescapable and conflicting demands, to love and protect his son, and to love
and obey his God. To fulfill one is to deny the other; yet to deny either will be
terrible. These are problems without solution. Of course we can imagine altering
a detail here or there to lessen the intensity, make the situation less an impossible
deadlock. What if one of Sophie's children were already sick or crippled? What if
Captain Vere were beginning to doubt the cruel discipline and tradition of the
Royal Navy, or if Isaac were one of a dozen children and Abraham a young man
of twenty-eight? But by the same token, we can imagine altering details to restore
the terrible balance, to reinstate the deadlock. No decision procedure exists to
provide a "correct" resolution to these problems, and none can be imagined. Such
dilemmas are the refutation of a complacent rationalistic optimism which holds
that if only we think hard enough, we will uncover a reasonable, ethical solution
to all life's problems. They challenge the rationalistic presumption that for every
situation of great human consequence, ethics and reason can provide clear gui-
dance, a correct solution, and justificatory assurance that will save us from wrong.
Furthermore, they can be telling evidence of the depths of human vulnerability
and care, the pervasiveness of suffering, and of the fragile yet awesome resilience of
human integrity.
Our oldest myths and greatest literature memorialize these terrible but revelato-
ry crises of the human spirit. But with the exception of a few thinkers, philoso-
phers, surprisingly, have turned the other way. Perhaps they thought that to coun-
tenance unsolvable problems would cast general doubt on reason. Or perhaps, as
ordinary mortals, they recoiled before the challenge dilemmas present, turned
their gaze to other, more tractable problems. But whatever the explanation, it is a
striking fact that dilemmas have been denied by the mainstream traditions in
ethics, whether Kantian, Utilitarian, Intuitionist, or Aristotelian.4 It is especially
striking when one further reflects that dilemmas display the conflict, and hence in
practice the inevitable partial loss, of our most significant values. They display
conflict where everything can seem at stake; just when we most need help or
guidance, reason is impotent. Kierkegaard and Sartre stand out as conspicuous
exceptions in this general picture of philosophy's neglect or denial of dilemmas.

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
26

Sketching in Sartre's view of dilemmas will prepare us for Kierkegaard's more com-
plex example.
In "Existentialism is a Humanism," Sartre recounts the dilemma of a young
man who came to him for advice.5 He could join the Free French in England,
thus taking an active part in the struggle to overthrow the Nazi occupation; or he
could stay in Paris to care for his ailing mother, who otherwise would be alone
and unattended. Sartre draws from his example several lessons: that there is no
code or highest principle or divine guideline that can settle the matter; that the
youth is thus forced back on his own resources and must assume responsibility as
an autonomous agent for whatever choice he makes; that his dilemma reveals our
situation to be fraught with anxiety, anguish, despair. We find here a critique of
complacent rationalism, and a recognition that dilemmas are both the fulcrum of
such a critique and also deeply revelatory of human freedom and vulnerability.
But Sartre takes his attack on rationalism too far. Because the young man must
choose, and because that choice will reveal his values, Sartre assumes that moral
principles and values must therefore be no more than a matter of choice. But if
this were so, there would not be a rational solution to any morally significant
problem; nor, paradoxically, would there be human dilemmas.
We know this man is in a dilemma precisely because principles lay claim to his
allegiance and are not merely a matter of choice. We know he cares for his mother
and recognizes obligations toward her that, other things being equal, he would
readily act to fulfill. We know he is an opponent of fascism, and that, other things
being equal, he would readily take up arms to resist it. In this situation, of course,
he can satisfy the demands of one principle only by denying the demands of the
other. He is in a dilemma precisely because to deny either is so terrible. But if his
principles were merely a matter of choice, he could choose to throw out his con-
cern for his mother, or his objections to the Nazis, thus avoiding his dilemma com-
pletely. But we cannot choose a dilemma to disappear merely by choosing that
one of the principles causing the dilemma not really be our own, or not really be
binding or relevant.
A critique effective at some levels can be allowed to cut too deeply. For Sartre's
critique to succeed - and the lesson will apply equally to Kierkegaard - there
must remain the notion of a justified principle or conviction, one that has rational
weight or bindingness independent of an agent's choice or desire or whim.6 Far from
supporting irrationalism, the critique of rationalistic complacency that both Sartre
and Kierkegaard embark upon requires that reason have force. Neither Sartre nor
Kierkegaard can be the irrationalists they sometimes portray themselves to be.

II

Universal and particular. For Kierkegaard, as for Sartre, dilemmas are crucial,
revelatory moments. This is clearly true for Fear and Trembling, which is built
around Abraham's crisis. But it pervades Kierkegaard's thought in a more general

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 27

way, from his concept of subjectivity to his picture of "stages on life's way,"
where dilemmas mark the key transitions and the stages themselves can be de-
scribed in terms of the dilemmas to which they are a response. To his chagrin,
however, Kierkegaard finds an age blissfully ignorant of the depth of experience
dilemmas expose; an age that seeks salvation through an ethos of "my station and
its duties" - as if one's station were always evident and duties never conflicted;
an age that consoles itself with a preposterous belief in inevitable progress; an
age that flaunts a naive confidence that all can be understood, and understood
to be for the best; an age that is oblivious to passionate inwardness, and would
not recognize a dilemma if it struck between the eyes. The dramatic evocation of
Abraham's dilemma is meant to awaken an age, an audience, from such thoughtless
complacency.
Any dilemma is bad enough, but Kierkegaard wants to distinguish Abraham's
dilemma, the dilemma of faith, from the dilemma of tragic heroes. Both Agamem-
non and Abraham must sacrifice a child. But in Kierkegaard's view, a tragic dilem-
ma is a conflict entirely within the realm of ethics, a conflict between universal,
"objective" principles. (Although the young man Sartre counsels is not a tragic
hero, his choice or situation can be seen as tragic.) Abraham's dilemma, however,
involves a non-moral element, Here a universal ethical principle and a non-moral
religious demand are in conflict.
A duty can be taken to be universal if it is binding on all persons as persons,
or on all persons within a given role or position or relationship.7 If I am a servant
or debtor, I have certain obligations binding on me that derive from my role or
relationship and would bind anyone else in that role or relationship. They may
of course be overridden by other claims or obligations, but they nevertheless have
some hold on my conduct, and they have that hold regardless of desires or in-
terests I may have to the contrary. When Agamemnon must kill his child we have
tragedy rather than senseless murder because duties attached to his role as parent
and to his status as a person are counterbalanced by duties attached to his role as
king, head of state, preserver of the common good. One might speak of a contrast
between private and public obligation. But both sorts of duties or claims are, in
Kierkegaard's terminology, in the realm of the universal. Anyone positioned as
Agamemnon is positioned would be caught in the same fix.
A duty or requirement can be taken to be individual or particular when a claim
binds only me; it is derived from my personal commitment to goals or projects
whose accomplishment necessitates the acts I feel bound to perform; it is not con-
nected with duties or responsibilities attached to a public office or position which
I occupy; and I would not expect anyone else necessarily to feel so bound.8 A great
number of the ends to which we devote our lives are individual or particular in this
sense. Painting or politics, research, prayer, or personal relationships, hang-gliding
or horticulture can present us with demands that are inescapable in the sense that
for us, though perhaps for no one else, they are essential to the maintenance of the
self, or better, are the pillars and beams that create its structural integrity. In
responding to such individual demands, we are not just doing what we want to do,

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
28

or what all things considered would be good for us, individually. They are neither
moral nor prudential nor selfish, though they are, in a profound sense, self-re-
garding.9 They concern integrity, what we must do to be the particular persons we
are, with this character, this self, this identity. Self-making, self- confirming and
self-renewing, they often are displayed dramatically in crisis. Although" typically it
is a moral component of the self that is revealed under trial - one discovers "Here
I stand; I can do no other" - the component can be non-moral, as well.
With regard either to ourselves or to others, we are at some risk in determing
what is essential to the self. The integrity- defining core of essential convictions,
commitments, principles, or cares, and the categorical demands it generates, is not
static but dynamic, capable of growth, reform, and radical conversion. How one
discovers or shapes integrity through such sometimes startling change is not an easy
matter to describe or understand. But the difficulties of analysing the relevant con-
cepts, and the perhaps greater difficulties of knowing in a particular case whether
integrity has been confirmed or betrayed, should not lead us to discard the issue or
deny the phenomena.
We see, then, that the realm of the particular or individual, what elsewhere
Kierkegaard calls subjectivity, concerns the non-universalizable and personal, things
we must do to preserve and create integrity of self; and it can include commitments
that issue in the most exemplary acts, whether moral or non-moral. The commit-
ment to go "above and beyond the call of duty," for example, would be a non-
universalizable, and hence for Kierkegaard non-moral demand, that nevertheless
could result in the most exemplary moral acts. And it should be noted that the
realm of the individual or subjective, as Kierkegaard depicts it here, is not the
shallow subjectivity connected with selfishness, whim, erratic promptings of desire,
or the thoughtless, arbitrary, or gratuitous.

Thus far, we have tried to clarify Kierkegaard's contrast between the universal and
the individual in order to depict one of the respects in which Abraham's dilemma
is more than a tragic dilemma. Now we can turn to the other distinguishing feature.
Abraham, unlike the tragic hero, must remain silent about his plight. This means
that compared with the tragic hero, Abraham's justification is much more elusive
- Kierkegaard would say utterly elusive.

Ill

Abraham 's silence. Kierkegaard has the intuition that it is difficult to convey to
others, especially to relative strangers or 'the public at large,' the urgency of per-
sonal demands. What I find absolutely compelling so far as my own life is con-
cerned, you may find trivial, distasteful, incomprehensible, or dangerous. In con-
trast, institutionalized requirements, being essentially public and "objective,"
have an urgency that is taken for granted and easy to communicate. The tragic hero
can count on being understood, even in the midst of his dilemma, because he

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 29

can count on a large background of socialized agreement about the relevant uni-
versal rules. However, a command from God, in Kierkegaard's view, is not a public,
objective matter. It is utterly private. Combining a dubious piece of Hegelian meta-
physics with dramatic exaggeration, Kierkegaard holds, mistakenly, that subjective
claims on the self are not just difficult to communicate but totally ineffable.
For both Hegel and Kierkegaard, communication requires the use of universal
concepts. The particular or individual, in this view, is a dark, ineffable, some-
thing-I-know-not-what. God's command to Abraham is particular; it concerns no
one else. Therefore Abraham cannot communicate his plight. But clearly, beyond
the dubious Hegelian assumption that particulars can't be described or communi-
cated, there's an equivocation here on "particular." The sense in which Abraham's
calling is private and particular is not the sense in which, for some metaphysical
idealists, particulars defy description. Kierkegaard plays on these confusions to
support his view that Abraham can have nothing to say in his defense as he pre-
pares to sacrifice Isaac. The knight of faith, unlike the tragic hero, must undergo
his ordeal in silence. He is isolated, alone, "incommunicado."
Although it is clear that Abraham's silence cannot be defended on the grounds
of metaphysical necessity, when it comes to communicating his plight, he does
operate under a severe handicap. Imagine how much easier things would be if
faith were conceived as a matter of universal demands. To be a Jew or Christian
then would be to occupy a certain position, say "God's servant," and one of the
objective requirements of that position would be obedience. If this were so, one
could still be in a dilemma, but one's public could understand. There would be a
painful but intelligible clash of objective, universal requirements.11
But Kierkegaard will have none of this. Faith concerns the individual, the sub-
jective. To be a Christian can never be reduced to adhering to an objective code or
ethic. Faith comes into play in a context of demands that one neither could nor
would want to universalize. Thus Abraham's dilemma removes him partially from
the community of understanding and accountability within which moral issues are
articulated, argued, and resolved. A source of consolation available to the tragic
hero, or to a deluded "objective" Jew or Christian, is closed to Abraham. Adding
to his difficulty will be the understandably acute suspicion and resentment of the
public. Having a stake in the maintenance of principles governing all members of
the moral community, the public will naturally refuse to acknowledge "exceptions"
that threaten the solidarity of that community. They have a great stake in denying
the personal or subjective, for all too often it will mask the selfish or immoral.
Finally, insofar as our self-understanding derives in part from the internalization
of universal standards, to that extent a challenge to the universal will be a chal-
lenge to the coherence of the self. Since self-understanding is partially linked with
my ability to make sense of myself as if before a public, the loss of that audience
threatens my confidence that I know myself. Abraham will question his convic-
tions, his certainty. But a halting inarticulateness as one attempts to convey the
urgency of a personal calling or requirement, especially when it conflicts with a
universal requirement or a silence imposed by the knowledge of the other's in-

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
30

ability or unwillingness to comprehend or accept are crucially different from the

silence Kierkegaard suggests - one that is metaphysically inevitable.
Having outlined the nature of Abraham's dilemma, we can now raise the central
issue of justification. Can the suspension of ethics ever be legitimate?

IV

Subjectivity and reason. Reason and justification are hobbled in any instance of
dilemma. The balanced opposition or radical incommensurability of principles or
considerations that creates a dilemma neutralizes the justificatory and directive
force of reason. Taken singly, each option is grounded. So reason is in effect. But
it is not effective in picking out the alternative one should pursue. But to admit
this break in reason's implementary power is not to embrace irrationalism. To
have power, reason need not be omnipotent.
The romantic protests of Sartre, Kierkegaard, and others against the claims of
reason derive in part from this sense of hurt, that reason is not all-powerful. But if
reason broke down utterly, it would not matter what one did. There would be no
reason to fear or resist any course of action. And clearly most "irrationalists"
would not accept this consequence of their view. Sartre will not respond to the
youth who asks advice, "Don't forget the other alternatives: you conjoin the Nazis,
or shoot yourself, or take up stamp collecting." The very dilemma which threatens
reason is itself constituted by reason. But there is an extra challenge to rationality
when the dilemma is caused by a conflict between the subjective and universal,
the particular and ethics.
There is a powerful Platonic and Kantian tradition that denies rational status
to the subjective or personal. The subjective is seens as the realm of blind desire
or compulsion, of whim, pre-rational inclination, or bias. Furthermore, as we have
seen, in the public arena - the primary locus of justification and accountability -
subjective and personal considerations have nothing like the weight of universal
rules and principles, socially articulated and enforced. The requirements of the
"individual" cannot be read off our public positions in the way ethical require-
ments often (and for Hegel, always) can be. Finally, given the human penchant for
rationalization and selfishness, the personal is understandably suspect. We have
here a package of philosophical and conventional assumption. But accepting this
rough picture can be extremely distorting. Insofar as the convictions we have
characterized as personal or subjective articulate the structure of a self in a careful
and coherent way, they are anything but thoughtless, whimsical, or arbitrary, the
products of blind desire or compulsion. Their rationality is displayed by placing
them not within a pattern of public rules and expectations but within the coherent
patterns of action, belief, and conviction that constitute a personal perspective, a
character or self.
To endorse the usual linkage between rationality and objectivity does not com-
mit one to the further assumption that rationality is linked exclusively to the ob-

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 31

jective. This would follow only if the sole contrast to objectivity were the shallow
subjectivity associated with bias or the arbitrary. But if the contrast to objectivity
is the sort of deep subjectivity associated with integrity, then it is absurd to deny
that the subjective can be a source of rational grounds for action or of material
that rationally clarifies a self in its integrity.
If I take up a life of research or art, this can reasonably be called a private,
personal decision. And insofar as we identify the objective with universal rules,
the decision springs from no such rule, and hence is subjective. But if my decision
is deliberate and takes good account of my situation, talents, and desires, and of
the claims of others, it can be as rational a decision as anyone could make. Deep
subjectivity is amenable to rational explication and elaboration. But the model
of rational elaboration it suggests will contrast sharply with models rooted in public
modes of accountability. To elaborate personal or subjective rationales is less like
preparing a lawyer's brief or a physicist's proof than like a novelist articulating the
perspective of a fictional character, or friends conversationally revealing themselves
to each other. But to explore such rationales or perspectives is the primary route
to self-understanding or self-knowledge, and not at all a rejection of reason or
rationality. This is a different pattern of rational explication, not, as tradition
would have it, simply the default of rationality.
There is no need, then, to follow Kierkegaard and many of his critics in identi-
fying reason exclusively with the reasonableness of conventional bourgeois ethics
or the universal claims of Kantian Reason. Not wishing to sully the passionate,
subjective struggle for faith or integrity by such an association, Kierkegaard di-
vorces that struggle from the objective and mounts a defense of the irrational
and subjective. But this concedes too much to the opposition, whether Hegelian,
Kantian, or conventionalist. One can grant Kierkegaard's concern for the subjec-
tive and his sense that justification is handicapped when partially removed from the
public arena without taking the further suicidal step of linking "deep" subjectivity
to the irrational.
If subjective convictions elaborated as rationales can have some justificatory
or explanatory weight, can they ever have enough to override public, ethical con-
siderations? Aren't moral reasons by definition always supremely dominant? This
common assumption, too must be challenged. We may not be able to specify in
advance a general class of considerations that will serve to exempt one from the
demands of ethics. It would be silly to suppose for example that vocational or
religious reasons per se override ethical ones. But we don't need a thesis that
grand or sweeping. All we need is the more limited and sensible thesis that strong
non-moral reasons can sometimes override weak moral ones.
Gauguin can be decisively justified in breaking a trivial appointment to com-
plete a personal project, especially if the project is of unusual importance and
apologies are made. And there is some justification for Gauguin's leaving his family
for Tahiti even granted that in the nature of the case a defense would most likely not
be decisive.12 Whether the balance tips up or down or remains poised, or instead, the
conflicting values are incommensurable, the point is that non-moral considerations

This content downloaded from

fff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
32

have weight when pitted against moral ones. Kierkegaard does not need, and in
fact ought to resist, any general theory of the relative stringency of particular and
universal demands, the demands of faith and the demands of ethics. All he needs
is the thesis that in some cases ethical considerations do not predominate. Specif-
ically, they need not hold sway in matters most urgent to the integrity of the self,
in matters of categorical calling, conviction, or demand.13

Teleological suspension . Now we are in a position to pull these strands of analysis

together in an interpretation of the teleological suspension of the ethical.
What gets suspended in Abraham's case is the power of ethics to guide or provide
decisive justification. Ethics is not abolished. At no point does Abraham relax his
intense love of Isaac, a love universally required of fathers. His dilemma is caused
by a counterweight, his sense that God's demand must also be honored. He is
gripped by a subjective conviction - not a shallow whim or desire, but a demand
crucial to the integrity of the self. And though this demand is not a matter of
public rules or principles, there is no need, on that account, to see it as irrational.
What is lost in our picture of Abraham in saying that he feared God, he loved God,
that God had demonstrated his trustworthiness in providing Isaac? If Abraham is
to survive, his trust must now prevail. Such considerations or rationales support or
ground Abraham's obedience.14 Of course, they are neither immune from criticism
nor decisive, for in his case it seems equally true that if he turns his back on Isaac
he will be lost. This is a no win situation. But the question is not whether reasons
for obedience are decisive but only whether they exist and have weight, weight
sufficient to oppose the public, ethical considerations. Ethics is suspended because
reasons are incommensurable or equally balanced; it cannot show Abraham the
way out of the dark.
This account of the teleological suspension and Abraham's dilemma is consistent
with one large and central theme of Kierkegaard's text. But claims that point in a
different direction also crop up in Kierkegaard's analysis.15 He gets seduced by the
notion that one side in this terrible standoff must show its superiority, and that it
is clearly faith which is superior. Although he is sometimes tempted by this second,
and in my view dangerously mistaken view, it violates his own deepest aims.
There are, then, two radically different ways to take the teleological suspension
of the ethical. If we stress the outcome of Abraham's crisis, the choice of God over
Isaac, then we may be tempted, as Kierkegaard sometimes is, to think that the
teleological suspension is a principle meant to justify that choice, to reveal the
rational basis for Abraham's decision. As such the principle would be advanced as
an objective, universal guide. However, if we stress Abraham's dilemma itself, then
we should take the teleological suspension not as a principle that clarifies or justi-
fies a choice but as a description of a brutal fact: that in dilemmas such as Abra-
ham's, ethics cannot guide, cannot deliver us from wrong, cannot justify our

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 33

choices. To the extent that Kierkegaard flirts with the view that his principle cap-
tures the "objective" solution to Abraham's dilemma, namely that faith over-
rides ethics, then he undermines his own best insight, that there is no objective
solution to Abraham's crisis. Letting Abraham seem justified guts his dilemma of
its pathos.
Recall Sartre's example of dilemma. We never learn how the young man chooses.
This dramatizes the dilemma, leaves us poised within it. Sartre's point would be
weakened if he told us the outcome; for then we would set out to simplify the
situation retroactively by making the choice seem in retrospect the natural, in-
evitable thing to have done - no matter whether it was to aid his mother or to
fight for France.16 So with Abraham. We are apt to say that since he chooses God,
naturally he thinks faith to be the overwhelming good in his situation. But why
believe that making a choice confers dominance on the alternative chosen? Doesn't
the obscurity of his crisis outlast his choice and God's later appearance? Were
Abraham asked again to sacrifice Isaac, would the solution then be more evident?
When Kierkegaard contrasts Abraham with a fanatic, he stresses that Abraham
has no teaching, that there is no lesson to be learned from the outcome.17 But if
faith overrode ethics in some decisive way - say, in the way ethics itself can over-
ride desire - then there would be a clear teaching, a lesson to be imparted about
what to choose. Since God withdraws his demand, if Abraham were forced to
undergo his trial a second time, presumably it would then be easier. The outcome
of his initial crisis would seem to demonstrate the correctness of his choice. But
there is nothing obvious about Abraham's choice, either before or after it is made.
Although God's intervention relieves the crisis, it does not remove the cloud of
obscurity that hangs over the situation. The decision would not be easier a second
time. Abraham is great not for choosing what is correct, but for the way he lives
through his dilemma.
If the teleological suspension cannot justify Abraham's choice - if nothing
can - is it therefore irrational? This would follow only if all acts without justifi-
cation were unjustified. But in addition to those acts that reason can show to be
unjustified and those it can show to be justified are those that are undecidable,
about which reason can produce no verdict. The outcomes of dilemmas are the
most dramatic instances of this class of acts, acts that are neither justified nor
unjustified, neither rational nor irrational. Concerning whether Abraham's choice
was correct, no answer can be given; so his decision to obey is without justifica-
tion - but not on that basis unjustified or irrational.
To sustain this interpretation, which takes faith and ethics to be in a standoff
with neither side superior, we must make sense of Kierkegaard's oft-repeated re-
mark that in faith, the individual is superior to the universal.18 This cannot mean
that faith overrides ethics. But what can it mean? Understood in a certain light,
this apparently troublesome remark can be seen to further rather than frustrate
our analysis. As I see it, Kierkegaard is referring not to the comparative weight of
individual considerations versus those of ethics but rather to the focus of atten-
tion and locus of power. In dilemmas the isolated individual becomes the para-

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
34

mount, dominant object of our riveted gaze; and insofar as he or she survives the
test, it is due to inner, personal resources, not to the outward support of Reason.19
The universal is the realm of public rules that determine right and wrong for
any and all in a given role or relationship. For ethics, as Kierkegaard sees it, the
question is: What rule applies? Since a rule takes precedence over the desires or
eccentricities of the individual, the universal is superior. But in dilemma, the
individual is alienated from this public sphere. It gives no guidance or support,
especially when one horn of the dilemma, as in faith, is constituted by considera-
tions of a subjective, personal nature. Here the question is not: What rule applies?
but the more inward and agonizing question: Given an irreconcilable conflict of
rationales, what can I possibly do? The focus shifts from act to agent, from what
is done to the vulnerability of the doer. The suffering of the agent overshadows
the now ineffectual rules. The individual must become superior to the universal:
everything will hinge on the strength and resources of the soul caught in this cruel
test.

Experiencing the plight of persons caught in a dilemma, our usual appraising

faculties may be momentarily paralyzed - as theirs are. We may doubt we have
the right to judge as we sense the apparent impotence of the agent to extricate
herself, and realize that her powerlessness is ours, as well. But to the extent that
appraisal regains a grip, its grip will not be on the act or outcome but on the in-
dividual who has become the object of our awe or pity, our repulsion, attraction,
or praise. In tragic conflicts and trials of faith, public rules become but one ele-
ment in a complex personal struggle. The issue becomes survival of the isolated
self. There may be utter breakdown or insanity. Or, as in Sophie's Choice, there
may be prolonged attrition, a wasting away. Or the individual may rise above the
paralyzing conflict of ineffectual requirements and exhibit through courage, vul-
nerability, integrity and hope, a claim to greatness.20

VI

Refusing God. I want to elaborate on Abraham's greatness by considering a provo-

cative outcome of the interpretation I have given of the teleological suspension.
The perhaps startling result is that Abraham could have been great, almost a knight
of faith, even if he had refused God. Kierkegaard never spells out this possibility,
and I leave it to others to speculate on his reaction.21 It does not seem impossible
to me that he would have accepted it. In any case, considering the possibility of
Abraham's legitimate refusal of God's command carries my reading through to its
proper conclusion.
If the teleological suspension of ethics describes or exemplifies the incapacity
of reason to justify Abraham's choice, then he cannot be great because he resolved
his situation through making the correct choice, And if there is no correct choice,
then it cannot be wrong for him to have refused God.22 But why, or how, if this is
true, is he a knight of faith? If we do not praise him for his choice, what is the

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 35

basis for our admiration?

In other contexts, Kierkegaard makes it clear that faith concerns not primarily
beliefs we hold to be true ("God is to be obeyed!"), but the manner of our holding
those beliefs, how we believe. Abraham earns the accolade "knight of faith" for
the way he lives through his crisis, for the quality of his subjectivity. He undergoes
his crisis vulnerable to the spiritual suffering it entails, displaying integrity, courage,
and hope. Neither diminishing nor denying the urgency of the conflicting demands
upon him, he refuses to throw aside or suddenly reevaluate the convictions that
underlie his integrity: that nothing can be more important than love for Isaac
and nothing worse than losing him; that nothing can be more important than love
of God and nothing worse than losing Him. He confronts unflinchingly the spiritual
suffering this conflict entails and believes, in hope, that things will turn out all
right whichever alternative he picks. Losing neither God nor Isaac nor himself, his
integrity will remain intact. Paradoxically, this hope stands in conflict with his
sense that he is in a terrible dilemma. It does not relieve but intensifies his suffering.
How can one believe from the midst of such a crisis that things will turn out all
right? For the tragic hero, things are terrible - period. For the knight of faith
things are terrible - and yet.... Underlying the sense of crisis there is the silent but
powerful assurance that all is not lost - even, perhaps, the hope that since with
God all things are possible nothing will be lost. That Isaac will be returned cannot
be a rational assurance. Is it even intelligible that one could simultaneously believe
both that Isaac will be lost and that Isaac will be returned? Is this insance? Abra-
ham must believe that all struts of rational assurance have been broken, yet there
is hope. Such conflicting beliefs can measure different aspects of care, reveal dif-
ferent levels of the self.23 Hope is an assurance without grounds. It is a measure of
the resources of faith, which carry us through impossible situations where the con-
flict of opposing rational considerations threatens to tear the self apart. It can mark
the thin line between survival, sanity, and crackup. The support of reason is stripped
away, but something divine remains.24
If Abraham's greatness lies in his vulnerability to the deepest sort of spiritual
suffering, and in the strength and hope which carry him through, then what he
chooses is not crucial. Since the accolade 'knight of faith' rests on something other
than his decision to obey God, Abraham could have refused God's demand yet re-
mained a knight of faith. This may seem the last straw, a crowning absurdity to
the interpretative line I have traced through Fear and Trembling. Perhaps a tragic
hero who let his country fall rather than sacrifice his child could remain a tragic
hero. But how could Abraham refuse God and remain a man of faith! Let me retell
the story, this time with a new twist. We must come to see as vividly as possible
that even if Abraham denied God, if he denied Him in the right way, most of Kier-
kegaard's points would survive unscathed.25
Imagine Maharba (Abraham backwards), who heard God's terrible request. He
knew he could not comply and knew that in refusing God he would put at risk
his life and the life of his people. Nevertheless he also believed, absurd as it seemed,
that even in refusing God he would not lose Him, that the relationship would not

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
36

be finally severed, that since "with God all things are possible," God would neither
desert nor destroy him. With fear and trembling he sat before the mountain. Never
did his trust falter; nor did his resolve to refuse. It was God, not Isaac, who would
be sacrificed and returned. After a vigil of three days, Maharba's steadfastness and
courage, integrity and faith, were rewarded. God appeared to Maharba and released
him: "You have been a good servant, holding fast to your integrity, relinquishing
neither your trust in Me nor your love for Isaac. With a prodigal hope you believed
that your trust would be acknowledged, even as you defied me. For this you will
be remembered as the father of faith."
Neither Abraham nor Maharba walk away with a principle glowingly vindicated.
Neither could rejoice in having made the correct decision. Both emerge with faith
and integrity tempered through trial, stronger for their ordeal, and saved. Saved
not by hitting on the right response, but first, by being terribly vulnerable to the
full complexity of the dilemma they face, refusing to falsify in the name of sim-
plicity the intractableness, the darkness, of the struggle they endure; and second,
by being open to a groundless but mysteriously empowering assurance and trust.
It is a drama of paradoxical demands, inescapable decision, fundamental risk, and
enabling hope.

vn

I have said that most - not all - of Kierkegaard's points remain unscathed in the
tale of Maharba. But surely we must find some way to distinguish Abraham from
Maharba. Their faith cannot be utterly identical. But if neither the acceptance of
some dilemma-resolving priority rule like "Always obey God" nor the inexplicable
and brute fact that Abraham, unlike Maharba, obeys, can helpfully serve to distin-
guish these faiths, what 'can? Let us review the course of the argument.
We have arrived at a sense for faith indirectly, not by considering the content
of beliefs, but by focusing on dilemmas. I have tried to display a limit to the power
of reason to direct us away from evil or wrong, to display its powerlessness even to
help us distinguish the lesser of two wrongs. Lacking decisive rational grounds,
we proceed anyway, in hope, lucidity, and courage, forming and confirming our
integrity in the process.
Keeping faith amounts to not letting our moral or spiritual being collapse under
the strain of such groundlessness. This can seem like a self-initiated power - we
keep faith, by our efforts. And so, in part, it must be. Our own effort cannot be
discounted. But keeping faith can also seem less like a bootstrap operation than
like an other-initiated empowerment, as an enablement whose source is mysterious,
for which we are thankful but which we cannot claim to direct or command: faith
rests in our keeping. This is a basic, inclusive sense of faith, one that the non-
religious as well as the religious may come to acknowledge as present in their lives.
Religious faith is basic faith articulated as a God-relationship.
The enabling power that gets us through dilemmas intact may or may not be

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 37

given a religious articulation, and religious articulations can vary. Unlike Sartre's
youthful man in crisis, but like the Biblical Job, Maharba articulates his faith
religiously. He stays connected to God, even in his refusal, a refusal not unlike Job's
rebellion. This shows that religious faith need not imply exceptionless obedience
to God. There is plenty of room for argument, refusal, disagreement. And the
"lightness" of such disobedience or refusal is ultimately confirmed by God, ac-
quiring thereby the stamp of religious authenticity.
Both Mahabar and Abraham survive dilemma, their moral-spiritual being intact;
they rightly see this survival as dependent on resources beyond ethics or reason;
and they articulate this dependency in terms of a God-relationship. All this pro-
vides the crucial background to Kierkegaardian faith. But Abraham's faith is not
Maharba's. As Kierkegaard has it in Fear and Trembling, the Knight of Faith must
first have been a Knight of Infinite Resignation. Renunciation of the world must
preceed or accompany a faithful commitment to God. For Abraham, there is
nothing of substance left in the world in whose name he could refuse God. Abra-
ham can't protect Isaac against God's command, because resignation requires
that Isaac be given up. Maharba, on the other hand, displays a sort of inverted re-
ligious faith. God is resigned, given up, as all the while Maharba hopes to get Him
back. He undergoes, as it were, a teleological suspension of the religious.
Maharba, like Job, is a religious refuser. Disobedience is compatible with re-
ligious faith. But he cannot refuse and be faithful as a Kierkegaardian Knight of
Faith - not because Kierkegaard rules out disobedience, but because he rules in
resignation as a presupposition of faith. Abraham can articulate who he is in terms
of such resignation, and in terms of the simultaneous trust that Isaac will be re-
turned. This provides him (and others) with a rationale for his choice, a way to
describe his integrity, even if only retrospectively, after the crisis has passed. But
such an elaboration of his being and identity, his self-understanding, will fall ter-
ribly short of a rational justification for his choice. And this is an offense to reason
- or at least to a commonly encountered complacent, dilemma-denying brand of
Rationalism.
I tend to think, with Kierkegaard, that in the end we are meant to be struck
dumb by Abraham - not provoked to construct a defense or consoling explica-
tion. Our inability to just rest in awed and painful silence stems from our inability
to countenance dilemma. His act, we suppose, had to be either right or wrong.
And as philosophers, theologians, or just decently thoughtful persons, we set out
to make the case, one way or the other. But if I am right, dilemmas leave an ir-
reparable crack in the circle of comprehension and justification. Before such
terrible events, philosophy and reason themselves must experience an agonizing
vulnerability.26

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
38

NOTES

1. Any number of critics have found Kierkegaard's - more precisely, Johannes de Silentio
- seeming endorsement of Abraham's decision irrational or morally perverse. See Brand
Blanchard's polemic "Kierkegaard on Faith," The Personalist 49 (1968), 5-23. Walter
Kaufmann, sympathetic to many writers commonly dismissed as irrationalist, charges
Kierkegaard with having "... rashly renounced clear and distinct thinking altogether."
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (New York: The New American Library, 1975),
p. 18. Johannes himself is deeply troubled: "But. ..when I have to think of Abraham, I am
as though annihilated... every moment I am repelled.... I strain every muscle to get a view
of it- that very instant I am paralyzed." S^ren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans
Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 44. Hereafter, FT. This
last quote should establish, if nothing else does, that Kierkegaard's aim is not simple com
mendation of Abraham's obedience.
2 . John Donnelly comes close to the idea that there may not be a correct solution to Abraham's
problem. He sees that Abraham both ought and ought not to sacrifice Isaac. But he inge-
niously suggests that Abraham has a third option beyond obedience and refusal: Abraham
could abstain. The difficulty is distinguishing such an abstention, practically, from simple re-
fusal. Could Abraham really have replied to God: "Look, I'm not refusing your command
- I'm just abstaining from an impossible decision!" See John Donelly, "Kierkegaard's
Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals, ed. Robert L. Perkins (University: University
of Alabama Press, 1981), pp. 115-140. For further recent literature, see Alastair Hannay,
Kierkegaard (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982); Gene Outka, "Religious and Moral
Duty: Notes on Fear and Trembling" in Religion and Morality, ed. Outka and Reeder
(Garden City: Anchor Books, 1973), pp. 204-254; and Edmund N. Santurii, "Kierke-
gaard's Fear and Trembling in Logical Perspective," Journal of Religious Ethics 5 (1977),
225-247.
3. There are issues that fall outside my present interest in justification: for example, the
spiritual meaning of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, its differentiation from
resignation and simple-minded obedience. I explore these in "Understanding Abraham:
Care, Faith, and the Absurd," in Perkins, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, op.cit. See
note 23, below.
4. A dismissive attitude, intended, perhaps, partly in irony is nicely expressed by R.M. Hare
"There are, it is true, some people who like there to be what they call 'tragic situations'
the world would be much less enjoyable without them, for the rest of us; we could have
much less fun writing and reading novels and watching movies, in which such situations
are a much sought-after ingredient." See "Moral Conflict" in The Tanner Lectures on
Human Values.
Although generally neglected by the major traditions in ethics, a number of recent
writers in the analytic tradition have tried to give realistic and sensitive accounts of di-
lemmas, often as part of a broad critique of the mainstream Kantian and Utilitarian
claims that ethical theory must feature impartiality, overridingness, and determinate-
ness. See especially Bernard Williams "Ethical Consistency," in Problems of the Self
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), and "Conflict of Values" and "Persons,
Character and Morality" in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981);
Ruth Barcan Marcus "Moral Dilemmas and Consistency," The Journal of Philosophy
27 (3) (March 1980); Thomas Nagel "War and Massacre" in Mortal Questions Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979). My own account of dilemma, though not its applica-
tion to Kierkegaard, is greatly indebted to these discussions.
Dilemmas have figured prominently as tests for an opponent's theory, or as not-yet-
worked- out puzzles for one's own theory. But the possibility that there might be in-
tractable problems for any theory whatsoever was taken seriously only by skeptics. In
fact, it can be seen as a major aim of mainstream theories to provide determinate, over-
riding principles that would block the very possibility of unsettleable cases.

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 39

5. Reprinted in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Meridian, 1956). See Charles Taylor's helpful commentary on this case in his "Responsi-
bility for Self," in The Identities of Persons, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkelay:
University of California Press, 1976).
6. My account here and throughout does not depend on a special theoretical interpretation
of justified principles or convictions. It relies only on a pre-theoretical sense of the dif-
ference between acting in a way that is evidently whimsical, arbitrary, or irrational at the
intuitive level, and acting in a way that can be backed, at least initially, by reasons. Thus I
do not raise the question of the "ultimate" justification of principles or convictions. The
intuitive sense of justification I rely on is one any non-sceptical theory must take account
of. The convictions that one shouldn't harm others or lie are, for my purposes, prima facie
justified convictions. Of course, they may be called into question by theoretical considera-
tions or by situations of conflict. I am not assuming that to be effective at the intuitive
level reasons must rest on ultimate foundations, or that any conflict between reasons must
be only apparent, resolvable at a "deeper" level. The conflict of justified principles can
create a situation where there is no justified choice.
7. I have tried here to capture both the Hegelian and the Kantian strand in the picture of
ethics drawn in Fear and Trembling. In other works, Kierkegaard gives contrasting charac-
terizations of the ethical. (For complications in delimiting the ethical generally, see note
9, below.) I use "individual" and "particular" interchangeably as contrasts to "the uni-
versal." The Hongs seem to prefer "individual," while Lowrie seems to prefer "particular":
Fear and trembling, trans, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 19S3); Fear and Trembling, trans. Walter Lowrie, op.cit.
8. That everyone should have particular, identity- defining projects can be universally re-
quired. The particular project I choose, piano or politics, cannot be universally required.
Universally, everyone must become an individual.
For somewhat different ways of characterizing requirements that are not a matter
of universal rules, and hence can come into conflict with an ethics that takes such rules
to be central and overriding, see Nagel "Fragmentation of Value," in Mortal Questions,
op.cit.; and Williams "Persons, Character and Morality," in Moral Luck, op.cit.
Although there is a circularity built into the first element of this characterization
(duty flows from commitment, yet commitment is experienced as a response to duty), I
take it to be non-vicious, and parallel to the fact that moral duty will be felt as binding
only on those with a commitment to "the moral point of view."
9. How precisely to delimit the domain of ethics is a much- contested issue. Accepting a
roughly Kantian-Hegelian position, as I do here, makes sense of Kierkegaard's critique.
It would, of course, be possible to blunt his critique by adopting a different criterion
for 'the moral.' For example, if supremacy or overridingness were taken as the key feature
of the moral, then whatever is overriding in a given situation becomes, by definition, a
moral consideration, and ethics could only be suspended if two "supreme" considerations
conflicted, leaving neither one "overriding." Or one could develop an extended notion of
'position' such that a personal commitment to a person or to God could be characterized
as flowing from such a position, rather than, say, from a subjective affectional tie; this
would keep the personal within the moral. Or one could try universalizing even the sorts
of demands Kierkegaard or Kant or Hegel would characterize as subjective. However,
each of these strategies, it seems to me, exact an unacceptable cost. And even were this
not the case, one would still have dilemmas, intractable moral problems. Only now they
would be located within ethics, rathers than between ethics and something outside ethics.
(See note 1 1 , below.)
10. On change of self, see Taylor's "Responsibility for Self," op.cit.; and Herbert Fingarette's
"Self-insight as Self- discovery, Self-realization, Self- creation," in On Responsibility (New
York: Basic Books, 1967).
1 1 . Both Donnelly and Evans take the view that what I have called a personal requirement

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
40

-Kierkegaard's 'particular' - is still an ethical or rational requirement, connected with a

special position or relationship which Abraham has with respect to God. Thus they try to
keep Abraham out of the absurd and within the ethical. (See note 9, above.) But they
fail, in their otherwise subtle and persuasive essays, to give an adequate account of the
conflict that must then arise within the ethical, between moral, even "absolute" duties.
Donnelly, op.cit.; and C. Stephen Evans. "Is the Concept of an Absolute Duty Toward
God Morally Unintelligible," in Perkins, op.cit., pp. 141-151.
12. See Williams, "Moral Luck," in Moral Luck, op.cit.; and Nagel, "Moral Luck," in Mortal
Questions, op.cit.; for a discussion of this stock example.
13. Williams talks of 'categorical desires' which lay the groundwork of personal life, apart
from which the demands of morality would be ineffective, since there would be no life
for them to be directed at. (One could as well speak of 'categorical relationships, relation-
ships apart from which life would become meaningless.) Williams imagines a challenge to
ethics from such 'categorical desires' which resembles the challenge Kierkegaard depicts
as arising from "the individual." "Life has to have substance - so the impartial system
can't be all; and at the limit, it will be insecure." Moral Luck, op.cit., p. 18. See also, Julia
Annas, "Personal Love and Kantian Ethics in Effi Briest," Philosophy and Literature 8
(1) (April 1984), 15-31.
14. For another account that takes seriously the idea of Abraham's having reasons for obe-
dience, see Louis P. Pojman, The Logic of Subjectivity: Kierkegaard's Philosophy of
Religion (University: University of Alabama Press, 1984), pp. 85-86. There is also the
point that insofar as Abraham takes God to be a law-giver, obedience is an outright re-
quirement. See note 24, below.
15. "Faith is precisely this paradox, that the individual as the particular is higher than the
universal, is justified over against it...." (my emphasis). FT, p. 66. Elsewhere, he is more
tentative : "His justification is once more the paradox ; for // he is justified it is not by
virtue of anything universal, but by virtue of being the particular individual." (My empha-
sis, FT, p. 72.)
16. Kierkegaard himself falls prey to this sort of retroactive simplification when he considers
the tragic hero. On his view, the hero at the moment of choice reduces the alternative
not taken to the status of desire, thus "finding rest in the universal." "The ethical relation
...he reduces to a sentiment." FT, p. 69. I thank Alastair Hannay for calling this to my
attention.
17. "The true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher"; he "feels no vain desire to goad
others." FT, p. 90. For a good treatment of Kierkegaard's distinguishing the Knight of
Faith from the fanatic, see Outka, op.cit.
18. See note 15, above.
19. There is a second, related, apparent problem for the interpretation I have been giving:
Kierkegaard does not say merely that ethics is suspended; it is teleologically suspended,
suspended in the name of a higher good. As we have seen, this cannot mean that faith
is a good higher than ethics, in some objective sense. Faith is, however, higher than desire,
which is the source of the more familiar challenges to ethics. We could say, then, that in
Abraham's case ethics is not suspended 'from below' but from a higher good, a good
higher than desire. (This reading suggests a way to conceive the 'spheres' of existence
which I cannot develop here : the suggestion is that faith is not another sphere in compe-
tition with and utterly distinct from ethics, but rather a standpoint from which the
claims of ethics become relativized, seen from 'the outside;' and part of that standpoint
is the acknowledgment (of one in the ethical sphere) that no sphere can be self-suffi-
cient, self-justifying, completely determinant, with its foundations within itself.)
20. "They became great not because they were exempted from distress, torment, and para-
dox, but they became great through these." FT, p. 76. If one common misreading of
Kierkegaard's suspension of ethics is that faith justifies where reason doesn't, another is
that we ought to seek out crisis, dilemma, in order to test and sharpen our faith. But

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 41

dilemmas are just there, whether we like it or not. We needn't go looking for them.
21. In the "prelude" to Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard imagines various ways Abraham
might have failed the test God has put to him. Perhaps it is only because he is interpreting
the Biblical text, in which the ending is already established, that Kierkegaard forgoes the
opportunity to exercise his dialectical imagination on alternative outcomes - such as
Abraham's refusal of God's command.
22. Refusal can't be the wrong alternative', neither can it be the right alternative. It's plain
wrong to refuse God, and it's plain wrong to kill Isaac. But as between two plain wrongs,
if one is forced to choose, there is no wrong alternative, in the sense that it would be
right to do the opposite.
23. This point is developed extensively in my ''Understanding Abraham: Care, Faith, and the
Absurd," op.cit. The requirement that Abraham sacrifice Isaac tests Abraham's capacity
to care for Isaac selflessly, unpossessively, in full assurance that he will (paradoxically)
both lose Isaac - which tests his care as grief - and regain him - which tests his care as
joy and welcome. There, I focused not on the matter of justification, but on transforma-
tions in the modalities of care and attachment, especially, the shift from resignation to
faith. Abraham learns that faith must run deeper than the knowledge that promises or
contracts - even God's - will be fulfilled. In the present context, I explore how Abraham
must experience the limits of reason, justification, and ethics.
Annette Baier asks how participants in a Rawlsian original position can have confi-
dence that others will hold up their end of the bargain, given our knowledge of human
nature. As I read her, a secular faith - a trust and hope sustained in the face of objective
uncertainty - supports our participation in the 'agreements' underlying and constituting
the institutions of morality. See Annette Baier, "Secular Faith," in Revisions, eds. Stan-
ley Hauerwas and Alasdair Maclntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1983), pp. 203-221.
On the need to acknowledge conflict between beliefs at the personal level, and the
tendency of the public, 'objective' realm to challenge the personal by leveling out such
conflict, consider the following from Williams: "...the public order, if it is to carry con-
viction, and also not to flatten human experience, has to find ways in which it can be
adequately related to private sentiment, which remains more 'intuitive' and open to
conflict than public rules can be. For the intuitive condition is not only a state which
private understanding can live with, but a state which it must have as part of its life,
if that life is going to have any density or conviction and succeed in being that worthwhile
kind of life which human beings lack unless they feel more than they can say, and grasp
more than they can explain." Williams, Moral Luck, op.cit., p. 82.
24. One can distinguish the resources of faith (that carry us through dilemmas) from the
requirements of faith (which can cause us dilemmas), and both from the objects of faith.
Each of these dimensions can be characterized as divine. It would require a separate essay
to explore the connections between these different dimensions of faith. For a profound
discussion of the connections between God, obedience, and law, which raises issues not
unlike those found in the Abraham story, see Herbert Fingarette, "The Meaning of Law
in The Book of Job," in Revisions, eds. Hauerwas and Maclntyre, op.cit., pp. 249-286.
25. I wish to thank Alasdair Hannay for pointing this out to me, forcing a revision of an
earlier draft of this essay .
26. For helpful comments and encouragement I am grateful to Harvey Siegel, Phil Temko,
Diane Romaine, Alastair Hannay, and John Donnelly.

This content downloaded from

200.3.145.12 on Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:22:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms