Danielk wrote:
What would be K's motive to simply tell a tale of faith in God? The bible does that sufficiently I think. So for me it is enough reason for me to ask," what other motive might K have for writing what he wrote?"
-----LK4: yes I agree. K is not simply writing a book that says Abraham has faith, nor, One should have faith in oneself.
Well, Kierkegard chose to write about the story of Abraham because that's what Kant, Hegel, and the Danish Hegelians did.
Kant wrote that Abraham ought to safely disregard the command from "God" in the Religion within Limits of Reason Alone;
while Hegel, in the Lectures, thought to reduce faith as part of his rational System; something that can be overcome (or to go further than faith)
-----LK4: nice jutapositioning and comparison. I think the Bible and the Classics were all they really had to go on. Eurocentrism has a tight effect on how the world was understood and the Greeks and the Bible were big ones for the view.
In our time nobody is content to stop with faith but wants to go further. It would perhaps be rash to ask where these people are going, but it is surely a sign of breeding and culture for me to assume that everybody has faith, for otherwise it would be queer for them to be . . . going further. In those old days it was different, then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, because it was assumed that dexterity in faith is not acquired in a few days or weeks. When the tried oldster drew near to his last hour, having fought the good fight and kept the faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten that fear and trembling which chastened the youth, which the man indeed held in check, but which no man quite outgrows. . . except as he might succeed at the earliest opportunity in going further. Where these revered figures arrived, that is the point where everybody in our day begins to go further.
I pretty much agree with much of what AS said. The absolute is God, the universal is morality for men, and the individual is Abe; all of us are bound by the universal, me, you, Abe, Joe, Jane, and everyone.
----LK4: this (above) is really an empty statement. Its like having a plate of food and saying "the plate holds the food".
What do you mean by all of us are 'bound'? I think this is a pivotal statement for our reading here, what we are discussing .
If the universal is the highest, then what Abraham did is wrong and there's no way to call Abraham anything other than a murderer. IF, and it's a big IF, the individual became higher than the universal and entered into a relation with the Absolute, then Abe can be considered the father of faith. At the end of every problemata, K always says a variation of this:
I am not sure what you mean, or in what context you are placing the 'big If'.
are you saying that 'if indeed there could be such a man as Abraham?' or 'if indeed there is a God?', or 'if there is faith?' , or 'if one can have faith?' , or what?
you seem to make grand staments that are nothing more thatn the text is gving us but yours is out of context. And it seems you are making a point but then the point is what we are discussing, I thought. You are imprecise.
Problemata I
The story of Abraham contains therefore a teleological suspension of the ethical. As the individual he became higher than the universal. This is the paradox which does not permit of mediation. It is just as inexplicable how he got into it as it is inexplicable how he remained in it. If such is not the position of Abraham, then he is not even a tragic hero but a murderer. To want to continue to call him the father of faith, to talk of this to people who do not concern themselves with anything but words, is thoughtless
Problemata II
Either there is an absolute duty toward God, and if so it is the paradox here described, that the individual as the individual is higher than the universal and as the individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute / or else faith never existed, because it has always existed, or, to put it differently, Abraham is lost, or one must explain the passage in the fourteenth chapter of Luke as did that tasteful exegete, and explain in the same way the corresponding passages and similar ones.
Problemata III:
So either there is a paradox, that the individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute / or Abraham is lost.
If one doesn't want to accept that idea that someone can transcend the laws and morals of men to enter into a personal relation with God (the Absolute), then one must always condemn.
crappo AS is right here: "What k is suggesting is that if Christians and society for that matter were really honest they would have to do away with certain rules they make for all." Actually, if they were really honest, they would keep the rules they make for all, and they would do away with the Christian religion:
I am mere human honesty. I want honesty. If that is what this race and this generation want, if it will uprightly, honestly, frankly, openly, directly rebel against Christianity and say to God, "We can, but we will not be subject to this authority"—but observe that it must be done uprightly, honestly, frankly, openly, directly—well then, strange as it may seem, I am for it; for honesty is what I want. And wherever there is honesty I can take part. An honest rebellion against Christianity can only be made when one honestly admits what Christianity is and how one is related to it. -- Attack Upon Christendom
...for example: you have laid out these large quotes here as if they summarize the whole meaning of what we are discussing, or at least you point. why didnt you just post a link to a whole transcript of
Fear and Trembling and then put "I agree with what he said. It is meaningless to do so. It is as if you are agreeing with nothing. Or think K is so obvious one can sum it up by iterating his text.
Sure, K says he wants honesty, but this quote is completely out of context. What is honesty? In the quote you post here it could be taken to mean that one simply has to be honest, as if is one is honest with oneself then we have the solution. Obviously K was saying more than "hey you guys, why dont you just be honest, huh? Gosh, you guys are so stupid because you are not honest".
Ks whole point in this last is indicated in
F and T; it is indicated in that he is frustrated with that people do not understand what he is saying. (nod to the Witt post above)
another example of your small mindedness in you appraoch:
As the individual he became higher than the universal. This is the paradox which does not permit of mediation. It is just as inexplicable how he got into it as it is inexplicable how he remained in it.
The individual higher than the universal does not permit mediation; it is inexplicable.
If I posit the individual as the potential for 'you' as in 'us', the humans in thr world, then we have lost the meaning of what K os saying is the individual.
K is
speaking of himself, and inso is considering how he might understand Abraham
since K himself sees what such a Kinght of Faith may be. It is
not faith or honesty within onesself, for that is contradictory to having the paradox. Which is to say, if this meaning in the previous sentence is gained (honesty to oneself or being true to oneself) then Abraham is lost -- and
this is what K is indicating when he repremands the so-called Chrsitians.
K is considering this and in considering this he finds it futile, for as soon as he might begin to understand Abraham he loses it, and so he wonders how Abraham could have remained in it. It is a paradox that K himself can even conprehand this -- for how could he? How could K comprehend that which is paradoxical -- not in understanding, but in its nature: that nature which is Abraham. Somehow K knows, can see the Knight of Faith, can recognize its movements. It is not the individual, for the individual is K coming upon the Knight of Faith. The individual is the one who is caught in this paradox; not Abraham, not the group not society: It is not the consideration of what one might do or what we should think. It is the paradox of the individual who sees but cannot understand the Kinght of Faith.
Problema 2: the individual is not the individual. If the individual is the individual then faith has existed at all times for everyone and means nothing, and Abraham is lost.
P3:So either there is a paradox, that the individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute / or Abraham is lost.
If there is a paradox, then the individual is not the individual and as such is higher than the universal (de facto: the universal is the medation of the individual as such) or the individual is asserted as the individual and Abraham is lost to the universal that is mediation.
If what you have posted above means as much then it is merely a situating of terms which denies us agreement. But then I would say again: you are imprecise in your situating of terms.
We cannot snip and paste peices of K to fit our little world of ideas, for then we lose what he is saying. It is such little ideas that K decries (the universal). We cannot skip the preface for it is there that K sets up his considerations. If we skip it then we fall into the Abraham story as we know it; K sets up another slightly skewed version of what is going on in order to place the situation (drawn in the Problematas) to view.
I would say that the honesty of which he sepaks is tha which one cannot achieve on its own. And that because the individual asserts itself into all that can be known, he therefore is contained in the universal even as he asserts that he is Christian, or spiritual, or ethical in the general senses. Indeed, this is why Christ is needed in the universal sense.
Does anyone have a take on what the Merman story might mean?
