Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling

Ars Disputandi Volume 4 (2004) ISSN: 1566 5399 Iben Damgaard Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN, DENMARK By John Lippitt (Routledge Philosophy Guidebook Series), Routledge, London, 2003; ix + 218 pp.; hb. ¿ 45.00, pb. ¿ 9.99; ISBN: 0-415-18046-5. [1] A strange epigraph from Hamann is quoted in the opening of Fear and Trembling: What Tarquin the Proud said in his garden with the poppy blooms was understood by the son but not by the messenger. (Quoted p. 138) [2] The epigraph refers to a story of a king of Rome whose son, having become a military leader in Gabii, sent a messenger back to his father asking advice on what to do next. Unsure whether he could trust the messenger, Tarquin gave no direct reply, but walked with the messenger in a poppy eld, striking the heads off the tallest poppies. On returning to Gabii, the messenger relayed this strange behaviour to Tarquin's son. The son but not the messenger understood that the secret message was that he should put to death the leading citizens of Gabii. [3] Considering this opening of Fear and Trembling, the puzzling question of what this book is really about is inextricable interwoven with the question of how it goes about it. The importance of the indirect communication of the book is recognized and emphasized in John Lippitt's recommendable commentary on Fear and Trembling. Lippitt takes the pseudonymity of the book seriously, and in the nal chapter 7, he addresses the question of how reliable Johannes De Silentio is as an author. Johannes appears as a character in his own narrative, and he repeatedly informs us that he himself lacks faith, and yet he is passionately engaged in trying to understand Abraham, the biblical patriarch whom he considers the paradigm exemplar of faith. Lippitt takes us into an interesting discussion drawing on Martha Nussbaum's theory of moral perception of the ethical difference between relating oneself to an exemplary other in admiration and imitation, a distinction which stems from Practice in Christianity. Lippitt defends Johannes against the accusation of being a mere admirer of Abraham arguing that there is an ethically and religiously signi cant middle ground between admiration and imitation, and that this is where Johannes, the engaged observer, stands. [4] Johannes has an outsider's view on faith; and there is thus more to be said about faith and ethics than Johannes `the silent one' is able to say. Lippitt's book succeeds in addressing this surplus of the issue at stake. [5] Lippitt follows Fear and Trembling chronologically. Chapter 2 and 3 takes us into an interesting consideration of the multiple beginnings of Fear and Trembling which amounts to not only a `Preface' but also an `Attunement', a c May 13, 2004, Ars Disputandi. If you would like to cite this article, please do so as follows: Iben Damgaard, `Review of Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling,' Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi. org] 4 (2004), paragraph number. Iben Damgaard: Review of Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling `Speech in Praise of Abraham' and a `Preamble from the Heart'. These multiple beginnings have to do with the dif culty of telling and understanding the story of Abraham and Isaac. In the `Attunement' we are told the story of a man haunted and intrigued by the Abraham narrative, and Lippitt argues that there are good reasons to suppose that this man is identical with Johannes. (p. 22) This haunted man imagines four different variations on the Abraham narrative. Each of these four versions portray what Lippitt calls a `sub-Abraham' that presents a plausible response from someone faced with the trial of Abraham. Each narrative closes with a paragraph on a mother weaning her child; and the relation between each weaning metaphor and the respective variation on the Abraham narrative is carefully shown by Lippitt. What these `sub-Abrahams' have in common is that each of them is prepared to obey God and hence go through with the sacri ce and yet none of them is according to the haunted man (Johannes) as admirable and great as `the Abraham'. Lippitt fruitfully employs this observation to stress that `simple willingness to obey God's command is no guarantee of what Johannes means by faith ' (p. 29) at the very least, how God's command is obeyed is a crucial factor. [6] If we are to understand Abraham's faith there is thus good reason not to focus too much on Abraham's obedience to God's command, but rather on Abraham's anguish. In chapter 3 on the `Preamble from the Heart' the exploration of the different ways of (mis)telling the story is thus focused on how the story is often made too easy on the hearer as when it is stressed that: `it was only a trial'. What is usually left out of the story of Abraham is Abraham's anguish. Neither the teller nor the hearer of the story is prepared to `labour and be heavy laden' in relation to the story. (p. 35) Lippitt points out how the important Kierkegaardian theme of rst person appropriation is at stake when Johannes repeatedly asks his reader to judge for himself whether he has the courage to respond as Abraham did. Relating to the story of Abraham requires self-examination. (p. 52) [7] The emphasis in this chapter on the `Preamble from the Heart' is rightly laid on a comprehensive discussion of what Johannes means when he claims that faith is a double movement of in nite resignation and faith. If resignation is the renunciation of the nite (Isaac), while faith is an embrace of the nite in the paradoxical belief (`on the strength of the absurd') that one will receive the nite (Isaac) back, how are we then to make sense of the claim that resignation is an element within faith as the rst part of the double movement of faith? Lippitt discusses the extensive secondary literature on this question, and he draws on Ronald Hall who argues that resignation is a necessary element within faith in so far as faith includes resignation as a possibility it continually must destroy and negate. Faith must in every moment resist the temptation to resign from a wholehearted embrace of this world. This interpretation seems problematic when we consider Johannes' claim that Abraham `must know that Isaac is to be sacri ced. If he doesn't de nitely know that, he hasn't made the in nite movement of resignation.' (Quoted p. 66) Lippitt seeks to answer this problem, by claiming that Abraham in a certain sense has made the movement of resignation, since he has `resigned' in the sense that he has steeled himself for the eventuality that if his faith is misplaced, then he will sacri ce Isaac. But insofar as he has faith he Ars Disputandi 4 (2004), http://www.ArsDisputandi.org Iben Damgaard: Review of Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling does not believe that this trust in God is misplaced. (p. 72) Lippitts conclusion is: `at the point of pulling the knife, Abraham, while convinced of the impossibility, humanly speaking (FT 75) of keeping Isaac, has such faith and trust in God that he believes despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary that he will not lose Isaac.' (p. 69) Lippitt emphasizes that belief `on the strength of the absurd' does not mean believing two contradictory propositions. Rather, Abraham's belief that Isaac will be spared is absurd from the perspective of `human' reason, and thus especially for an observer such as Johannes, who admits that he can only make the movement of resignation. [8] Lippitts points out how this distinction between in nite resignation (which generalises and abstracts) and faith (which embraces the particular) anticipates what is about to become the central concern of the three problemata, i.e. the relation between the universal and the particular. (p. 76) [9] The relation between the universal and the particular is brought out in chapter four on problemata I and II. Each of the three problemata begins with the assertion that the ethical is the universal. Lippitt seeks to show that this is a conception of ethics which is characteristic of both Kant and Hegel who in different ways insist that ethical demands are universal. (p. 89) Lippitt points out that it might appear as if Johannes here offers us a de nition of the ethical, yet each problemata and the book as a whole is in fact written: `in order to question the very assumption that the ethical is the universal.' (p.81f.) [10] If the ethical is the universal, the public, then Abraham's story contains a teleological suspension of the ethical, since Abraham as an individual stands outside the ethical altogether. Abraham's faith is the paradox that the individual is higher than the universal. Speaking adequately about Abraham's trial implies that we make clear how Abraham differs from a tragic hero, who is caught in a dilemma within the ethical. Johannes therefore tells the stories of tragic heroes as Agamemnon, Jephthah and Brutus. In each story a father is prepared to sacri ce his child for something which is argued to be ethically `higher' (as the wellbeing of the whole society), and a justi cation for the tragic hero's action within the ethical is therefore possible. The tragic hero is therefore `the darling of ethics', in contrast to Abraham who cannot be accommodated in the ethical, understood as the universal. [11] An important feature of the ethical, understood as the universal, is openness and disclosure, and this is particularly considered in chapter 5 (on problemata III and the epilogue). In trying to distiguish between a divine and a demonic silence, we are told the stories of different poetic gures, whose silence and anguish is contrasted to that of Abraham. Lippitt points out very well how these narrative gures indirectly shed light on the story of Abraham. He addresses the question whether the story of Agnete and the merman plays a pivotal role in the book as a whole, and he returns to this issue again in chapter 6 bearing the title: `What is Fear and Trembling really about?' (p. 135). [12] In this chapter Lippitt discusses a wide range of secondary litterature (including Levinas and Derrida) in an attempt to show the different levels of how the (secret) message of Fear and Trembling can be interpreted. According to Ars Disputandi 4 (2004), http://www.ArsDisputandi.org Iben Damgaard: Review of Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling Lippitt there is much to be said for a `Christian reading' of Fear and Trembling as it is presented by Stephen Mulhall. (p. 172) By `Christian reading' Lippitt refers to a reading that argues that the issue of sin and grace is crucial for understanding what is at stake in the book, and that Abraham's ordeal can be read allegorically as a pre guration of Christ's Atonement, so that the real `secret message' of the teleological suspension of the ethical is to make space for a conception of the ethical that includes grace. (p. 170) [13] I will restrict myself here to comment only on the issue of sin and ethics. This is where the story of Agnete and the repenting merman reappears, since it is in relation to this story that Johannes goes further than elsewhere in his book by explicitly addressing the problematic relation between sin and ethics: `An ethics that ignores sin is an altogether futile discipline, but once it postulates sin it has eo ipso [thereby] gone beyond itself (. . . ) once sin makes its appearance ethics comes to grief precisely on the question of repentance'. (Quoted p.166) Lippitt states: `an ethic with sin (and forgiveness) at its heart is a radical break with ethics as otherwise conceived' (p. 167f.). I agree with this, and I believe this interpretation can be taken further than Lippitt takes it, if we consider the development of the concept of a `second ethics' in the introduction to The Concept of Anxiety which is carried out with reference to this passage in Fear and Trembling. Ethics runs aground on the sinfulness and repentance of the individual, and the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis therefore claims: `Either all of existence comes to an end in the demand of ethics, or the condition is provided and the whole of life and of existence begins anew' (p. 17, Hong Translation). This `second ethics' proceeds from actuality, it does not ignore sin, it presupposes dogmatics, and it can be characterized as an `ethics of repetition' since the individual in God's forgiveness receives a new beginning from outside as pronounced in II Corinthians 5:17: `Behold all things have become new'. Vigilius Haufniensis' comment on Fear and Trembling in relation to the issue of a second ethics gives us a new starting point for discussing Fear and Trembling's role in the development of the conceptions of ethics in Kierkegaard's authorship, which Lippitt unfortunately does not pursue perhaps because it would exceed the scope of an introduction. [14] Lippitt's book is a well written introduction to Fear and Trembling which takes us into engaging close readings of the primary text and illuminating discussions of the extensive secondary literature on this intriguing text. One of the remarkable strengths of this book lies in its ability to reveal the philosophical potential of the narratives that springs up everywhere in Fear and Trembling. Ars Disputandi 4 (2004), http://www.ArsDisputandi.org