(SUNY Series in Philosophy) Edward F. Mooney - Knights of Faith and Resignation - Reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling-State University of New York Press (1991)

Knights of
Faith and Resignation

Reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling
Edward F. Mooney
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

Knights oj
Faith and Resignation
Once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough to

immortalize my name. It will be read and translated into fc;>reign
languages. People will shudder at the terrible pathos which the
book contains.
SUNY Series in Philosophy
George R. Lucas, Jr., Editor
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1991 State University of New York
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Marketing by Dana E. Yanulavich
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mooney, Edward E, 1941-

Knights of faith and resignation : reading Kierkegaard's Fear and
trembling / Edward E Mooney.
p. cm. - (SUNY series in philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-0572-9 (acid-free). -ISBN 0-7914-0573-7 (pbk. acid
-free)
1. Kierkegaard, Spren, 1813-1855. Frygt og b:even.
2. Christianity-Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series.
BR100.M675 1991
19R'.9-<1c20
90-36515
CIP
109R7654321
For
Penny,
Again
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Note on Translations xv
1 Masks and Commitment: An Introduction

The Writer and His Masks
Reason in Transfonnations
The Christian Assumption
An Overview
2 Ordeals of Meaning: Art, Deed, and System 19

Preface: Commerce, Spirit, and Hegel's System
Attunement: Finding the Symbolic Key
Speech in Praise of Abraham: Art and Admiration
3 Ordeals of Love: Preamble from the Heart 43

The Knight and His Princess
Finite /Infinite, TemporallEternal
Resignation vs. Faith
Proprietary Claim and Selfless Concern
Receptivity and Return
The Absurd
Abraham: Dread and Joy
4 Ordeals of Reason and Ethics: Dilemmas and Subjectivity 63

Preserving Fear and Trembling
Sartre and Dilemma
Universal and Particular
Abraham's Silence
Subjectivity and Reason
vii
viii Contents
5 Ordeals of Reason and Ethics: Suspensions and Faiths 79

Suspension as Dilemma
Irrationality, Faith, and the Fanatic
Refusing God
Faiths, Secular and Religious
6 Ordeals and Reconciliations: Getting Isaac Back 91

Resignation, Humility, and Value
Suspending the Universal: Individual Worth
Gift and Giver
Essential Humanity: The Universal Returned
7 Ordeals and Reconciliations: Faith and Moral Virtue 101

Clarifications
Kant, Kierkegaard, and Hidden Inwardness
The Invisible Knight
The Tale Retold
8 Ordeals of Silence: Ethics and Transformations 113

Disclosure
Marks of the Ethical
The Limits of Ethics
Ethics Transformed
9 Ordeals of Silence: Faith and Concealments 127

Silences Once More
Kinds of Concealment
Writing and Redemption
10 From Socrates to Abraham: An Epilogue 137
Notes 143
Bibliography 173
Index 181
Preface
Focusing on the Genesis story in which God commands Abraham to sacrifice

his son-and then relents-Fear and Trembling seems as disturbing as the
biblical tale itself. It is not surprising that studies canvassing Kierkegaard's
work as a whole, or portions of his authorship, typically sidestep this
provocative and often terrifying collection of rhapsodic evocations, dialecti-
cal excursions, and biting satire. Is this an unchecked apology for blind obe-
dience to an erratic and apparently amoral God? Despite his repeated invoca-
tion of "the absurd" and his attack on "philosophy," Kierkegaard does not
defend fanatical devotion, propose an overthrow of ethics, or embrace a wild
irrationalism. No doubt Fear and Trembling appears at times as a reductio ad
absurdum of biblical faith. But there is a deeper, more varied and nuanced
story to be told.
This widely read and somewhat scandalous text gives us nothing less
than a perennially required Socratic call to selfhood, an auspicious invitation
to take our !!!Q.t.al anQ.§rirjw~J'yQf!1!Q!:U!i.th~.p..dmg!Y.J~ls.inJif~~~oeath the
illusion of aesthetic or anti philosophical irrationalism we find a subtle and
multifaceted a~\tnLQt:.m.Qrp.-tpe.Y~Jsmment; of-enjoyment, .ethics •.and.faith.
We come to see that to move into faith is to undergo a number of ordeals; tri-
als of love, ethics, and reason, of alienation and affiliation, of speech and
silence. Weathering these ordeals is becoming a "knight of faith." It is becom-
ing an individual with depth and int~rity, tempered by sUfferi,-!g but at home
in.1h.~~Qdg •.lIn.dergirded by a §'1!Ying rela~i~n_ship to an ab~ good.
Surprisingly, at this writing there is still no book-length commentary in

English on Fear and Trembling} Much has been written that clarifies
Kierkegaard's aesthetic and ethical stages of spiritual development or that
unravels the concepts of faith found in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript
and Philosophical Fragments. Either/Or, Sickness Unto Death, and even
Works of Love have received deserved attention. But Fear and Trembling
remains either an enigma whose code has yet to be broken or a work whose
message is so crude and unsettling as to be best left discretely to one side. 2
ix
x Preface
This "dialectical lyric," as its author calls it, is a performance of stun-

ning virtuosity. But its appeal is not merely lyric or aesthetic. In orchestrating
a familiar biblical story, it provides a sustained and subtle analysis of the
relationships between self and communi!y, ethics and faith, reason and com-
mitment; between love and resignation, satisfaction and sacrifice, art and
system. The difficulty of holding in focus such an extravagant variety of
themes partially accounts for the absence of extended commentaries. But a
number of more specific difficulties also impede a straightforward reading of
the text.
The subtitle, "dialectical lyric," is apt. Conceptual analysis alternates
with evocative, lyrical narration. Dialectical argument interweaves with
story, metaphor, and allegory. The work is written under a pseudonym,
"Johannes de silentio," whose very name suggests caution. To complicate
matters, Johannes admits he has neither attained nor can understand the faith
that attracts him. How can he write about something he cannot understand?
The structure of the book--or rather, its fragmentation-is daunting. It's not
easy to identify a beginning or end, a single central argument.
Finally, there is the brute shock of the story, a shock so severe that
Abraham seems more a monster than a paragon. Johannes seems perversely
to intensify rather than tame this apparent outrage, the terrible pathos of what
we shudder to call faith. Fear and Trembling starts from a secular standpoint.
From this position-inhabited, as Kierkegaard sees it, by most of his con-
temporaries-distinctively biblical or Christian concepts and ideals go large-
ly unheeded. lie writes to awaken the spirit. Yet, knowing the Abraham
story, how can we anticipate anything but an offensive tract in defence of
blind obedience?
Kierkegaard has been allied with existentialism, humanistic psycholo-
gy, crisis theology, and French post-structuralism; with Heidegger and Sartre,
Carl Rogers and Erik Erikson, Tillich and Barth, Derrida and de Man. He has
also influenced literary figures, from Ibsen and Auden to Walker Percy. With
the exception of Sartre, however, I make no attempt to connect my discussion
directly to these figures or movements. I have tried to bring out another con-
nection, a striking convergence between Kierkegaard and analytical philoso-
phy-the tradition of Socrates, Kant, and Wittgenstein, and its more contem-
porary practitioners, writers like Harry Frankfurt, Stanley Cavell, Thomas
Nagel, Martha Nussbaum, Bernard Williams, and Charles Taylor. 3 In a differ-
ent idiom, they tum out again and again to be working Kierkegaardian terrain.
I have let the discussion widen naturally, letting Kierkegaard's stories,
analysis, and provocations engage contemporary work in moral and religious
psychology, ethics, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics. Despite his semi-
nal position in a number of intellectual traditions, Kierkegaard has been
widely dismissed in English-speaking philosophy. I have tried to make his
Preface XI
presence more vivid and contemporary. For Kierkegaard as for us, the ta~k i,
to care for objective knowledge and reason without depleting another C<lre. III
an age set fast to wear them down or let them wither from neglect, he works
against the tide to shore the fragile strengths of self and spirit.
Berkeley. CA.
January, 1991
Acknowledgments
In somewhat different form. several chapters have appeared. or are about to

appear. elsewhere. Chapter 2 is to be included in the International
Kierkegaard CommentalY: Fear and Trembling. and Repetition. ed. Robert L.
Perkins. 1991; Chapter 3 is based on "Understanding Abraham: Care. Faith,
and the Absurd," in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals.
ed. Robert L. Perkins, 1981; Chapters 4 and 5 are adapted from "Abraham
and Dilemma: The Teleological Suspension Revisited," International Journal
for the Philosophy of Religion, October 1987; a version of Chapters 6 and 7
will appear in Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of Community, ed. George
Connell and C. Stephen Evans, 1991. I've had the pleasure of reading early
drafts of parts of this book to a number of congenial audiences. I would like
especially to thank Steve Evans for organizing the St. Olaf College
Kierkegaard Conferences. and John Donnelly for managing the 1989
Kierkegaard gathering at The University of San Diego. In addition. thanks are
due to Sonoma State University for a Faculty Research Grant for 1987. and
The National Endowment for the Humanities for providing a 1988 Summer
Stipend that sped this work along.
The Kierkegaardian text itself is to be acknowledged. this "dialectical
lyric" that arrests. teaches. and finally frees. Equally, a number of persons have
accompanied me through this venture, some through thick and thin, some from
an appreciative distance. Their presence deserves acknowledgment.
In the background have been my teachers, who "saw the youth and set
the task," especially Herbert Fingarette. Fred Hagen, Henry Bugbee. and Mer-
rill Ring. Michael Donovan. Bob Perkins. Kurt Roggli. Dianne Romain. Bruce
Russell. Harvey Siegel, Steve Simon, Phil Temko. and Steve Webb. friends all,
have read parts of this book. and tendered it welcome reception and critique. In
ways both personal and professional, Alastair Hannay, John Donnelly. and
David Wisdo have given me models of what's best in Kierkegaardian care and
criticism. Nicolai Meador has helped wonderfully in the final preparation of
the manuscript. Finally. Kailen. Dan. Laura. and Penny have endured these
obsessions. lifted my spirits. and seen me through. To each. warm thanks.
xiii
Note on Translations
In the interest of keying my commentary to an inexpensive, easily accessible

tra.ls1ation of Fear and Trembling. and because of the vividness and energy
of his style, my quotations throughout are from the Penguin translation by
Alastair Hannay.1 Page references are fIrst to the Hannay translation. fol-
lowed in brackets by the corresponding pages in the Princeton translation by
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong-an invaluable but more expensive vol-
ume that contains a wealth of useful scholarly notes and apparatus. 2 The third
page citation, also in brackets, is to the Danish fIrst edition of Kierkegaard's
Collected Works; Fear and Trembling is found in Vol. 3. 3 Readers may also
want to consult the Lowrie translation, for many years the only available
English version. 4
xv
When you are philosophizing, you
have to descend into primeval chaos.
- Wittgenstein
My program . .. consists in
constantly making distinctions.
-Johannes Climacus
How many live in such a way as to have

renounced or gained everything, how many
are simply honest enough to know what
they are and what they can and cannot be?
-Johannes de silentio
1
Masks and Commitment:
An Introduction
People think the world needs a republic, and

they think it needs a new social order, and a
new religion, but it never occurs to anyone
that what the world really needs, confused
as it is by much learning, is a Socrates.
-Anti-Climacus·
a modem Dante, who narrates a complex, at

least in part Kantian-inspired journey through
the self.
-R. Z. Friedman 2
Should philosophy, amongst its other con-

ceits, imagine that someone might actually
want to follow its precepts in practice, a
curious comedy would emerge.
-Johannes de silentio)
ALTHOUGH IT WAS hardly more than a backward provincial capital among

the cultural centers of Europe, mid-nineteenth century Copenhagen was the
hub of Denmark's "Golden Age" of literature and art. It was a time of creative
ferment in which Kierkegaard played a leading if vastly unappreciated part. 4
He was eccentric, unpredictable and eclectic in his creative invention: writer
2 Knights of Faith and Resignation
and critic, moralist and psychologist, preacher and gadfly-a poet against
poetic life, a Christian against Christendom, a thinker against Philosophy.
In the seven years between 1843 and 1850, Kierkegaard published
more than two dozen books. On October 16, 1843, Fear and Trembling
appeared, produced by Johannes de silentio. On the same day, Repetition was
printed under a different pseudonym. These two books were accompanied by
a small volume of character-building "uplifting" or "edifying" discourses,
printed under Kierkegaard's own name. A scant eight months earlier, his
authorship had begun in earnest with the publication in two hefty volumes of
Either/Or. There he presented his readers with what would become recog-
nized as a classic "existential choice": either an ironic, aesthetic, and rela-
tively rootless life, marked by alienation from self; or a more grounded ethi-
cal existence, which required choosing to become a self. In the next two and
a half years he published an early "psychological" work, The Concept of
Anxiety, the more dialectical Philosophical Fragments, the literary Stages on
Life's Way, and fmally the massive Concluding Unscientific Postscript, an
unconcluding satirical deflation of bourgeois-Hegelian moral and intellectual
pretenses. By any standard, this is a phenomenal explosion of literary and
intellectual activity.
A relatively short book, Fear and Trembling is nevertheless a crucial
volume in this production. Ostensibly, it is Kierkegaard's commentary on the
biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, the story of God's demand that Abra-
ham bring his son to be sacrificed on Mt. Moriah. In fact, Kierkegaard takes
this occasion to range widely beyond the biblical text-to raise doubts about
his countrymen's understanding of ethics and faith, to awaken them from
spiritual complacency, to probe the possibilities for individual life in an age
that threatens to level all to a sleepy collective mediocrity. His "knight of
faith" and "knight of infmite resignation" are gallant heroes ready to battle
for a worthy self, a self properly related to itself, to its social and personal
context, and to God.
Kierkegaard subtitles this evocation of moral and religious conscious-
ness Dialectical Lyric, which I take to mean "philosophical lyric." Kier-
kegaard himself would resist. For him, philosophy is a pejorative he reserved
for bankrupt intellectual system-building. Unfortunately, others have adopted
this equation of philosophy with abstract, detached and impersonal theorizing.
Nearly twenty years ago, Louis Mackey presented Kierkegaard as "a kind of
poet," and since then, a debate has continued over whether to characterize this
author as lyrical or dialectical, poet or philosopher. 5 But why choose?
A hallowed tradition places poetry and philosophy sharply at odds, a
tradition begun, but also first challenged, by Plato. Failing to question this
radical bifurcation, however, only impoverishes philosophy, especially our
moral philosophies. As Martha Nussbaum has reminded us,
Masks and Commitment 3
Very few moral philosophers, especially in the Anglo-American tradi-

tion, have welcomed stories, particulars, and images into their writing on
value. Most have regarded these elements of discourse with suspicion.
As a result, contrasts between the mixed and the pure, between story and
argument, the literary and the philosophical are ... sharply drawn ... 6
A major part of her literary and philosophical effort has been to soften the
lines between literature and philosophy, thus enriching our moral discern-
ments. And Kierkegaard's (or Johannes's) aim in this "dialectical lyric" is to
soften these borders, thus awakening our capacities for moral self-reflection.
The depth and scope of a Dante or Plato, a Kierkegaard or Nietzsche, is sure-
ly sufficient to earn the accolade "Poet and Philosopher." Hume's Philo
reflects that in considering Quman pain or misery, it is "[t]he poets, who
speak from sentiment, without a system, ... whose testimony has therefore
the more authority."7 Yet the display of human vulnerability and the articula-
tion of aesthetic, moral, and religious realities that engage it, is an aim not
just of poets, but-despite Philo-of Hume, as well. If nothing else is said on
behalf of Kierkegaard as a philosopher. we should acknowledge the avowed-
ly dialectical works he writes with Socrates as their hero.8 He may be anti-
systematic, and in pursuit of a paradoxical wisdom that is ignorance, but
Socrates is hardly antiphilosophical. At some level, Kierkegaard's love of
Socrates is a love of philosophy.
A fIrst-time reader of Fear and Trembling, especially a reader of philo-
sophical bent, will be struck by this enigma of a hybrid lyrical-dialectical
text. But there are other enigmas, as well. There is Kierkegaard's use of
pseudonyms, each with a distinct perspective on the issues at hand. Why
adopt this technique? Why disguise one's moral position? Then there is this
writer's fascination with "the absurd," his apparent irrationalism. Should a
prudent intellectual even open such a book? Finally, by self-description,
Kierkegaard is a Christian author, through and through. How can this com-
mitment not prejudice his accounts?
The Writer and His Masks
Along with the slogan "truth is subjectivity" and the idea of a "leap offaith,"
Kierkegaard's three-stage scheme of personal development retains a secure
position in his legacy. The aesthetic, ethical, and religious spheres of life are
given striking portrayals in his pseudonymous works. Somewhat surprising-
ly, however, Stages on Life's Way is the only book to identify exactly these
three as the crucial stages.
Either/Or describes a divide between two stages, the ethical and the aes-
thetic, with the latter ornately subdivided. "The crowd" of Two Ages seems to
represent a preaesthetic stage. And in Concluding Unscientific Postscript,
Johannes Climacus divides the third, religious stage in half, contrasting "Reli-
giousness A," a Socratic religious consciousness, from "Religiousness B," a
more recognizably Christian consciousness. As if this were not enough, he
then introduces the further intermediate stages of irony and humor.
There are even more twists to the idea of a simple three-rung ladder of
personal development. For example, Abraham seems to represent a religious
stage somewhere between Religiousness A and Religiousness B. Richard
Schacht suggests the sequence Socrates, Abraham, Christ, as representing the
major shifts in religiosity.9 And Merold Westphal has suggested that there is a
religious stage beyond the Postscript's Religiousness B. In his view, this stage
is articulated in the late religious works, often called the attack literature. to
Thus we might have as many as four religious stages, and overall upwards of a
dozen distinct life-views. Granting these complications, however, Fear and
Trembling can still be placed in a rough way both within the corpus of
Kierkegaard's authorship and within the scheme of his "stages."
In Either/Or a paradigmatic ethical personality, a certain Judge
William, tries to coax a nameless figure identified only as "A" out of his aes-
thetic perdition. Whether his momentary whim is pleasure or idle reflection,
the aesthete fails at realizing a self; and as the judge addresses him, this
young man seems already to dimly sense his failure. He fails, so the Judge
declares, because he fails to choose himself-a formula the judge prefers to
the Socratic dictum, "know thyself." The first stage of self-formation is to
accept the task or project of self-formation. One strives to become the very
self one is. Even as Kierkegaard refrnes the details of later stages and marks
their discontinuities, he maintains this early view, that one's fundamental
responsibility in life is to become oneself.11
If a rough contrast between aesthetic and ethical life-views is estab-
lished in Either/Or. a subsequent transition from the ethical toward the reli-
gious is explored in Fear and Trembling. Abraham's willingness to sacrifice
Isaac presents an apparently intractable conflict between ethics and faith.
The security and comforts of respectable civic virtue and conventional ethics
are put at risk. In fact, reason and sanity themselves seem at stake. As a
paragon of the religious sphere, Abraham seems to believe not only that it is
fit to sacrifice one's son on God's demand, but also that the very God who
requires Isaac will also provide for his safe return. How can one count on a
God who gives and takes at whim? What could be more irrational-at least
from the standpoint of a modem "enlightened" age?
If Johannes puts ethics and reason to the test, our task will be to show
that they survive this ordeal. Kierkegaardian faith is not simply blind obedi-
ence held "by virtue of the absurd."
Mush Ulld Commitmellt 5
Our present focus, however, is the question of ma\ks or pseudonyrn~.

We can begin with Johannes de silentio himself, a writer who characterize ...
himself as a freelancer. He confesses a weakness for poetic expression. and
suggests that his standpoint is aesthetic. 12 What is an aesthetic standpoint?
Unfortunately, the answer is not simple. The pseudonymous literature
as a whole might be considered an "aesthetic production," given Kierke-
gaard's clearly aesthetic technique of speaking through pseudonyms, rather
than in his own voice. But there is a second, narrower sense of the term. Here
an aesthetic pseudonym is not just any Kierkegaardian pseudonym. He would
be one with a particular style, a particular "aesthetic" passion: one who rev-
eled in his command of story-telling, dramatic evocation, poetic description,
and satire, to the exclusion of more dialectical, analytical, or psychological
techniques. An "aesthetic standpoint" would refer to a kind of writing or
invention rather than the standpoint of a pseudonym generally. Finally, an aes-
thetic standpoint might refer to a way of life rather than a kind of writing or
the fact of pseudonymity. A person, fictive or otherwise, can live in the aes-
thetic sphere, conduct a life under its categories of appraisal, rather than under
moral or spiritual ones. On this complex threefold measure, the author "A,"
whose papers are collected in Either/Or, would be an aesthetic author on all
counts: He lives in the aesthetic life-sphere, presents his work as a literary
experiment, and does not have the name Kierkegaard. Johannes Climacus of
the Postscript. however, would satisfy only one of the three criteria: He is a
pseUdonym. Otherwise, he uses mainly dialectical techniques and seems to
occupy a stage in life higher than the aesthetic.
Johannes de silentio defies easy categorization. He is a pseudonym, but
a pseudonym who writes not simply lyric, but dialectical lyric. Although he
often describes himself as one who speaks poetically. who will adopt an aes-
thetic manner or approach. he also unequivocally denies that he is a poet. He
complicates matters further by calling himself a tragic hero, and a knight of
resignation. So perhaps he lives under ethical or even quasi-religious cate-
gories.13 But however we decide the issue of Johannes's standpoint. it is clear
that he does not occupy the religious sphere of life. Yet this is the sphere he
attempts to fathom.
Should we credit an account of religious life from a writer who admits
that he does not fully understand the categories he works to articulate?
Kierkegaard castigates the burghers of Copenhagen for covering over a
chasm between their apparent moral and religious beliefs and the actual con-
duct of their lives. careers lived at the farthest remove from the hard
demands of ethics or Christianity. But why should Johannes de silentio be
better equipped than his neighbors to report on the state of spiritual life in
Denmark, or to suggest appropriate corrections? Perhaps, his scathing cri-
tique and his purported "discovery" of a "teleological suspension of ethics"
-that is, a sphere higher than ethics-merely demonstrate his ignorance,

show that he is an untrustworthy guide.
What could be the rationale for Kierkegaardian pseudonyms? In this
fictive gallery, in addition to Johannes de s}lentio, we encounter Victor Eremi-
ta (editing the papers of "B," addressed to "A" in Either/Or), Nicolaus
Notabene, author of some Literary Prefaces, Johannes Climacus, author of the
Fragments and Postscript, and later even Anti-Climacus, author of Sickness
Unto Death. Surely it was no secret in Copenhagen whose pen worked behind
the masks! This odd convention is not an author's doomed attempt to hide
himself from his public. 14 Rather, Kierkegaard sees its pedagogical resources
for the task at hand, its capacity to bring light to a benighted age.
How can he correct the moral confusions he finds rife in his time? How
does he teach a town or an age that it radically misunderstands existence, that
it fails to grasp the true import of those virtues, ideals. convictions. and stories
that should-but do not-round out and enrich the substance of its daily life?
What can possibly persuade, when misunderstanding runs so deep?
Throughout his authorship, Kierkegaard wrote short collections of "edify-
ing" discourses, quasi-sermons meant to explore spiritual issues and biblical
texts in a way that would transform, build up, and inspire his readers. IS These
were direct religious appeals. But the homiletic format, by its very familiarity,
limited the desired impact. Of course. a sermon, pep-talk, or graduation address,
will inspire! And with this recognition. we drowse off. Toward the end of his
life, Kierkegaard confronted his public more directly in a series of vitriolic
attacks on the Danish Church hierarchy. Like the discourses, this polemical
"attack literature" was signed in his own name. But his most original creation
was a stable of fictive authors whose confessions, letters, disquisitions, paro-
dies, and polemics define the multiple perspectives of the "stages on life's way."
The aim is to expose radical and widespread misunderstanding. But it
may be ineffective to launch a broad frontal attack on the public at large, or
on a local congregation. An indirect method focused on the individual may
be le;;s liable to backfire. The use of pseudonyms is a pedagogical strategy. It
works by first drawing readers one by one into a life-view. The view is
meant to appeal inwardly. as if in fact it could be one's own. Having estab-
lished a sympathetic bond with the reader. the pseudonym can then expose,
from within that intimate relationship, its limitations and inadequacies.
When successfully deployed. this technique corrects and transforms by
insuring that one becomes fully identified-intellectually and emotional-
ly-with the perspective that is developed. Then. when inevitable instabili-
ties emerge, the underlying critique is experienced as self-critique, rather
than as presumptuous judgmental attack. And the corresponding motivation
to seek some sort of resolution, through further emotional, imaginative. and
decisional labor. is experienced as self-motivation.
Musks urld COfllfllirfllC'1/I 7
Because individual choice, responsible freedom, plays so large a part

in the transformations Kierkegaard encourages, many critics see the conver-
sion to a new framework, the choice of a new stage, as arbitrary.'6 In After
Virtue, Alastair MacIntyre accords Kierkegaard a considerable honor. He
sees him as a penetrating philosophical critic, along with J lume and others,
of the suspect "Enlightenment Project" in ethics-the search for a single,
omnicompetent, and rational guide to moral action. But MacIntyre also
depicts Kierkegaard-mistakenly-as endorsing a thoroughgoing subjec-
tivism. When it comes to moving between life-spheres, the individual pur-
portedly faces a "groundless choice." At the theoretical level, this creates a
dizzying kind of stage-relativism. Those wonderful catchphrases, "the leap
of faith" and "truth is subjectivity," lend credence to these views."
If Kierkegaard fails to give an explicit objective standard for assessing
better from worse stage-shifts, this failure is taken, by MacIntyre and others,
as evidence of fundamental irrationality. But Kierkegaard's moralistic and
dialectical critiques are not irrationalist. Neither are the shifts from one life-
sphere to another. His much advertised "irrationalism" is less a critique of
reason or deliberation than an exasperated reaction to the bloated intellectu-
alism, hyperrationalism, and antiindividualism of his time.
Reason in Transformations
In moments of personal crisis, the structure of one's situation and its internal
conflicts are experienced as a conflict of reasons. In addition, reason sheds
some light on ways to resolve--or not to resolve-the crisis. Our situation
may be vastly underdetermined by reason. There will be risk, obscurity, and
doubt in any crucial transition. However, in the midst of a shift from one life-
view or scheme to another, we are not utterly at a loss for rationales. Though
reason may lack sufficient force to settle issues decisively, it is far from
weightless in the reflective, deliberative process.
As instabilities within a given life-sphere emerge, the sense of anxiety,
constraint, and need for change will increase. And as the source of frustration
becomes focused, there will emerge a specific reason for altering the particu-
lar circumstances that create this frustration. Other things being equal, it can-
not be irrational to act in the hope of diminishing conflict and pain. In addi-
tion, the richer one's personal history, the more one will have undergone in
the way of suffering, imaginative reflection, and self-transformation. This
means that the futility of some strategies or options will be apparent. One's
failures in previous stages will provide reasons to avoid aspects of those
frameworks or orientations.
Finally, portraits of new ideals, new spheres of existence, display rea-
sons as options to the individual in transitional crisis. Although they are not
self-authenticating proofs of the superiority of the possibilities they propose,
neither are these portraits, on that score alone, irrational proposals. They
provide maps of possible escape and fulfillment, of refuge from alienation
and suffering. Of course, the major philosophical tradition from Descartes
through Kant identifies reason largely with Pure or Theoretical Reason and
describes its goal as providing demonstrations meant to persuade "any ratio-
nal being." But why assume that this allegiance to Pure Reason, commend-
able in itself, exhausts the domain of reason?
Imaginative, narrative portrayal can playa number of crucial roles in
reflective deliberation. It can provide diverse models of the good life and of
the several ways we can fail in its pursuit. As Hilary Putnam has it, philoso-
phers provide "moral images" of the world, pictures of how virtues and rules
"hang together" in a moral life. 18 We need narrative images rich enough to
inspire worthy action. Philosophical narratives playa central role in the prac-
tical moral task of imagining another person's reality or perceptions and in
imagining development in one's own moral sensibilities and sensitivities.
And they speak in the reflective exploration and articulation of human expe-
rience generally. 19
When sensitively addressed to the specific needs and capacities of a
listener, Kierkegaard's literary and dialectical excursions provide an ample
reservoir of reasons for change. In fact, we can think of the overall project of
his authorship as a passionate exercise in rational critique. 20
Presupposing central requirements of rationality like respect for consis-
tency and truth, Kierkegaard argues, for example, that a bloated Hegelian
intellectualism is absurd, for it neglects our true condition. His critique of
various foolish or incomplete forms of life appeals to our sense of what is fit-
ting for a human being. And despite the formidable difficulties, it is reason
that will finally pry real from fake devotion, better from worse religiosity.
Take the transition from aesthetic to ethical existence. The judge in
Either/Or says to the aesthete, in effect, "Look! Your life need not be lost. It
could be like this!" And in pointing to a different and better life, he provides
appropriate and potentially compelling reasons for change, reasons which
provide a critique of the aesthete's present situation, an analysis of its intol-
erability, and a model for conversion, for its happy resolution. If later we
challenge the Judge's authority or standing to recommend, that will be
because we have come upon a concrete reason to doubt the sufficiency of his
perspective. And so forth. Standards of evaluation may be plural and shifting
in import, enriched or depleted as dialogue continues over time. And in mat-
ters of personal change, it is surely vain to hope for a single argument-stop-
ping standard to remove all uncertainties. But this by no means entails that
moral or spiritual change is arbitrary or based on groundless choice.
Musks ul/(l COfllfllilflU'lI1
Some argue that Kierkegaard's final "stage on life's way," the life-view
of the Postscript's "Religiousness B," provides a compelling, overarching
standard. This standard is purportedly adequate to rationally ev,lluate and
rank stage-shifts. McKinnon. for example, seems to hold this view: "The
early pseudonymous works can be seen as a carefully orchestrated justifica-
tion of Christian belief which, taken together, show that it is only Christiani-
ty which properly accentuates existence and guards against the 'forgetful-
ness' of philosophy."z' I think it is unlikely that the pseudonyms attempt or
accomplish this task. Exploring this proposed larger Kierkegaardian strategy,
however, is something to set aside. It would mean considering the pseudony-
mous authorship as a whole, and would take us too deeply into the subtleties
of Johannes Climacus's skepticism about traditional justifications of faith. In
the Postscript he advances a skepticism that seems at odds with any philo-
sophical attempt to justify Christian belief.
One can take the critique of reason that we find in the Postscript or in
Fear and Trembling to be overstated, as both McKinnon and I do. And one
can take this critique to be part of a larger but nonetheless rational strategy.
For example, one could see Kierkegaard's aim as the rational illumination
of the need for religion, and the neglect and distortion of that need by the
complacency and self-deceptive devices of his contemporaries. Either of
these rational critiques would fall short of a justification of Christian faith.
In any case, Kierkegaard's project is clearly not a philosophical defense in
the traditional mode.
I think Johannes de silentio provides a reflective and persuasive
account of faith. But this project is not pursued through straightforward
appeal to universal abstract standards or principles meant to recommend
themselves to "any rational mind." Though some of his aims and conclusions
may resemble those of Mill, Aristotle, or Kant. Johannes does not argue in
their style. Instead, his justifications-<lr better. his explications-are
advanced through imaginative, narrative portrayal, through lyrical dialectic.
Kierkegaard may forego the search for a single universally persuasive
standard for moral or spiritual advance. But this abdication does not taint
the search for individually persuasive, locally addressed reasons for change.
These reasons could be called subjective or personal in several senses. Their
mode of delivery is intimate, personal. They are not addressed to a public at
large, or meant to convince "any rational person," but are directed sensitive-
ly to a very specific individual, geared to respond to her needs. And with
regard to the content as well as the manner of delivery, these reasons con-
cern the life-project, the individual identity, of a particular person-not
what might be required universally for a public at large, or for "any rational
being." Later, I will argue that such "subjective reasons" are in no sense
inferior or second best citizens in the world of rational discourse. When
appropriately deployed, they are persuasive, and rightly SO.22

Kierkegaard's method respects the responsibility and autonomy of the
reader. who must struggle through a process of assimilation and disharmony
on the way to fInal acceptance of a saving resolution. This deliberative pro-
cess is bypassed if one is merely the passive target of a hectoring moralistic
appeal or if one is given reasons that fail to "get through" for lack of sensi-
tivity to the particular person addressed-however attractive such reasons
might seem to "any rational mind."
This may seem too "subjective" an approach. But then. perhaps in such
matters we retain an exorbitant expectation. Traditionally, ethics has hoped
for a single, universally persuasive standard for the evaluation of human
existence, one that bypasses any consideration of "merely contingent" indi-
vidual need, character, or psychology and is not in conflict with other persua-
sive universal standards. But is reliance on concrete, familiar, and more par-
ticular "subjective" appeals less rational than the (so far unfulfIlled) hope for
a single abstract and omnicompetent moral standard?
Discussing Hume, Annette Baier characterizes a view of the function
of moral reflection that might be Kierkegaard's:
[He reserves] the title of really moral response to the reflexive turning
of [our] capacities for sympathy, for self-definition and for conflict
recognition on themselves, leading to sympathetic comparative evalua-
tion of different styles of self-definition, styles of watching for and
managing conflicts, of inhibiting or cultivating sympathy. The Humean
concept of 'reflexion' performs the same sort of job as Kantian rea-
son-it separates the mature and morally critical from the mere con-
formers. 23
Rational reflection can be self-corrective leading to improved standpoints

without reliance on an articulated universal standard of Reason.
The strength of Kierkegaard's pedagogic device-producing multiple
perspectives addressed to particular individuals-has liabilities. If one rela-
tivizes the critique of a given way of life to the standpoint of a particular
pseUdonym, then it becomes risky either to generalize the scope of that cri-
tique or to identify a view advanced by a pseudonymous writer as
Kierkegaard's opinion. Some proposals are set out only provisionally, later to
be revised or rejected. Others clearly belong to a pseudonym and simultane-
ously belong to a central cluster of unwavering Kierkegaardian convictions.
Thus the fact that an opinion is voiced by a pseudonym is not evidence that
Kierkegaard disavows that opinion.
Real though it is. this difficulty is somewhat offset by the fact that later
pseudonyms comment on earlier ones. In addition, Kierkegaard himself eval-
Masks al/d COnlmi/mt:1II II
uates their specific contributions and describes the overall strategy of hi~
authorship. We can find sueh maps to his productions in The Point of View of
My Work as an Author, in the "First and Last Declaration" found in the
Postscript, and in the Journals. Unfortunately, even the remarks made in his
own voice cannot always be trusted.:4 Nevertheless, on many issues. there is
enough continuity of theme across pseudonyms and between pseudonymous
and non-pseUdonymous works to allow us to make provisional claims. not
just about Johannes de silentio's views, say, but also about Kierkegaard's
views in Fear and Trembling. And we can often leave the matter open. In
any case, the difficulty is neither accidental nor perverse. In the interest of
reflective autonomy. we are made to work through this interpretative maze.
gathering clues as we go. There are no secret maps or shortcuts.
When we place the pseudonymous authorship against the background

of those works that Kierkegaard signs with his own name, unsettling worries
about attribution can fade. The cumulative effect of these critiques sinks in.
Their riclmess. variety and scope ensure a standing with the roughly contem-
poraneous achievements of Marx or Nietzsche. of Hegel. Dostoevsky, or
Freud. 25 They form one of the great diagnostic critiques of our age, of our
collective misperceptions, mistaken aspirations, and pervasive malaise. But
as important as this social critique of his "disenchanted" times is his relent-
less self-examination.
There is a personal, confessional path in his works. His broad moral
and spiritual psychology is also self-revelatory. And in this we fmd a parallel
with Dante. At the opening of the Divine Comedy we find the poet-narrator
midway in the journey of his life. He fmds himself anxiously lost in a dark
forest, searching his way. His ensuing travels through Hell and Purgatory to
Paradise trace the wanderings of a soul that both judges its world and is in
search of itself, the path depicted as a gradual ascent from darkness to light.
Perhpps we have in our poetic, philosophical Dane a modem Dante, narrat-
ing "a complex journey through the self," tracing a search for substance
amidst emptiness, light amidst dark.26
The Christian Assumption
His curious menagerie of pseudonyms raises one sort of stumbling block for
readers. Kierkegaard's Christian commitment can raise another. To what
extent can he speak to those who fail to share his fervent devotion? Can he
be taken seriously in a secular, or at best religiously pluralistic. age?
The chapters that follow mark my own try at tracking the value in
Kierkegaard's vision, especially in Fear and Trembling. These several stud-
ies. rather than any summary pronouncements. must serve as my best answer
to a general skepticism about religious matters. Nevertheless. let me make
one or two preliminary. cautionary observations.
The complex critique of Christendo.m and simultaneous affumation of
a more authentic religiousity that we fInd in Kierkegaard has an interesting
parallel in the mixture of critique and commitment found in the novels of
Dostoevsky. On first reading The Brothers Karamazov. for example. one is
moved by Ivan's account of the brutal suffering of children and convinced
that this suffering presents insurmountable obstacles for belief in a benign
and all-powerful God. The novel seems to present a devastating critique of
Christian assumption. The devoutly religious fIgures. Alyosha and Zossima,
can seem ghostly at fIrst, little more than convenient foils for Ivan's impas-
sioned accusations. The subtlety of their spiritual stance and the shallowness
of Ivan's is likely to appear only on later readings. The cruelty of his
voyeuristic fascination with evil is not likely to register early. Fear and
Trembling likewise appears differently in different lights, the apparent horror
of faith being more vivid initially than any more subtle account that might
emerge with time.
Whatever his fInal agenda, Kierkegaard starts with largely secular,
even preethical perspectives. Johannes de silentio is not a Christian author,
and stops short of discussion of specifically Christian faith. Only gradually,
and by discrete degrees. does Kierkegaard move toward an analysis of reli-
gious consciousness and the proposal. fmally, of a specific mode of faith.
His writing spans psychological. moral. and aesthetic themes that are
explored independent of their possible ramifIcations for a religious way of
life. In Fear and Trembling and the Postscript. for example, we have concep-
rual-experiential clarifications of anxiety, love, commitment, and despair;
vivid portraits of aesthetic and moral lives; critiques of life in a soulless,
"disenchanted" market society; sketches of life within the categories of irony
or humor or within a kind of Socratic religious humanism; and portrayals of
Abraham's Old Testament faith. It should be easy enough to recognize our-
selves in. and learn from, many of these portraits and critiques, none of
which presupposes a narrowly Christian framework.
And we should not rush to judge what "Christianity" might mean. either
in general or for Kierkegaard. Evaluations need time to take their appropriate
shape. It is too easy to know in advance that Marx would make us Commu-
nist. that Hegel is an Idealist, that Dostoevsky sides with the Russian Church.
that Nietzsche proclaims "God is Dead." To take early comfort from these
"facts" distracts us from what lies beneath these easy words: critiques meant
to unseat our ruling presumptions, disturb our categorical schemes.
We "know" that Kierkegaard is Christian, writes as a Christian, and
wishes fiercely to disabuse his countrymen of the illusion that they are already
Masks and COfllmi'llw,,' 11
Christian-precisely that they might bt'come Christian. But to "know" all thi,
in advance, presumptively, is to make Kierkegaard dispensablc. both for tho\c
who endorse and for those who reject his agenda. Why read on?
As a good student of Socrates, Kierkegaard begins with a skcptical
challenge: We only think we know what ethics. or faith. or Christianity mean.
The world of Christendom is not a world of faith. But as the language of
ethics and faith is common coin, the Socratic task is to strip us of the illusion
that we know what this language purports. How easy-yet how absurd-to
take from this prodigious writer an evening's entertainment. perhaps. some
tidbit to add to our conversational repertoire! In the bargain, we can leave
our convictions comfortably intact!
The idea that we are already familiar with the meaning and importance
of ethics or faith must be "teleologically suspended"-suspended in the light
of a higher goal. We are asked instead to start skeptically, to unfreeze our
settled views. This gives some hope that whatever insight may gradually
emerge will be built up properly, in a piecemeal, dialectical way, as the
stagewise progressions that Kierkegaard maps out suggest that it should.
There is no formulaic shortcut to understanding this Christian writer.
For however deep his religious devotion. his commitment defies, and is
meant to defy, simple creedal articulation. Clearly he is someone halted,
stopped, and then drawn by those familiar yet unsettling stories of God and
his faithful, faithless children-someone moved by wonder, love and terror
to knit tales on tales of God, spin narrative fabrics of care and folly. crisis
and repose. despair, faith. and resignation.
Of course, keeping presumptions in check is especially hard in the case
at hand. How can we not prejudge the issue? Fear and Trembling deals with a
terrifying incident in Old Testament history about which. it seems. we can
hardly remain either ignorant or neutral, an incident so offensive to an "enlight-
ened" moral or religious sensibility that it had perhaps better be left in obscuri-
ty. w.hy even begin a story that seems to promote blind obedience to God, obe-
dience to a God cruel enough to demand one's child? Yet as in the case of
resisting a presumptive "knowledge" of ethics or Christianity, here. too,
Johannes will have us resist immediately "knowing" what this ordeal implies.
Its meaning emerges gradually, drawn out slowly page by page. tale by tale.
An Overview
Listed in the left column is Johannes's table of contents for Fear and
Trembling. The corresponding chapters in this book are listed in the right col-
umn. Where Hannay's translation of section titles differs from other render-
ings, I give the alternatives in the notes.
Fear and rremblinf Knights o.fFaith and

Dialectical Lyric Resignation
1 Masks and Commitment
Preface 2 Ordeals of Meaning

Attunement28
Speech in Praise of Abraham 29
Problemata .
Preamble from the Heart 30 3 Ordeals of Love
Problema I
Is there a teleological suspension
of ethics? 4'5 Ordeals of Reason
Problema 11 6,7 Ordeals and Reconciliations
Is there an absolute duty to God? }
Problema III 8,9 Ordeals of Silence

Is Abrahamjusti/ied in his silence?31
Epi/ogue
10 From Socrates to Abraham
(In Chapters 4-7, I treat Problemas I and II together; they raise a single
broad and complex issue.)
The narrative, poetic side of Johannes de silentio's venture suffers in

commentary, especially in abstract summary. Nevertheless, an overview will
be helpful. My reading of Fear and rrembling starts in Chapter 2. An open-
ing "Preface" takes us from the busy world of the Danish marketplace
toward the world of spirit. Then "Attunement" or "Prelude" presents a strik-
ing quartet of variations on the Abraham story. Each variation highlights, by
what it omits, an essential feature of the faithful version of the story. "Speech
in Praise of Abraham" or "Eulogy," is a third preface. Here Johannes reflects
on the difficulty a poet must have in approaching his subject. How can he
adequately convey his adoration? These short dramatic scenarios, exhortative
pleas, and reflective passages create an imaginative space to contain our
moral, dialectical, and religious thinking. They describe ordeals of meaning.
trials of word, deed, and theory to stem a haunting threat of nihilism.
In Chapter 3, I explore still another preface, "Preamble from the
MaJk.\' and Com",ilmt'nl 15
Heart." (The usual translation, "Preliminary Expectoration," though pcrhap'

true to a Latin root, is especially awkward, producing overtones of coughing
and disease rather than lyrical and heartfelt effusions,) In this introduction to
the "Problemata" we first meet a pair of heroes, the knights of faith and res-
ignation. These guardians of human spirit present alternative ways to cope
with the risks and vulnerabilities accompanying a life of commitment. love,
or care. Here the struggle for faith is seen as an ordeal of love, a test of our
capacity for selfless care. And here we grapple with Johannes's view that
faith is acquired "on the strength of the absurd."
Following these mUltiple prefaces or rehearsals. Johannes confronts the
problems that inspire his specifically analytical or philosophical efforts. He
presents them as three queries, reminiscent of clever examination questions:
Is there a teleological suspension of ethics? Is there an absolute duty to God?
Can Abraham's silence before Isaac and Sarah be justified? But these arc
more than daunting theoretical challenges. They inscribe personal ordeals of
love. reason, and affiliation. of speech, and hope. And they not only inscribe.
In sum, they recreate, as nearly as telling can, the trial that Abraham must
undergo, the ordeal of faith. 32
In Chapter 4, I prepare the ground for understanding Kierkegaard's
infamous "teleological suspension of the ethical." Drawing on discussions of
moral dilemmas by Sartre and contemporary analytic philosophers. I argue
that this suspension can be read as the outcome of intractable conflict
between exceptionless requirements. Dilemmas present an ordeal of reason
and ethics. Describing this ordeal, Johannes distinguishes universal ethical
demands from more particular, subjective commitments that are essential to
character and personal identity. And he brings out a potential conflict
between such universal demands and particular ones, a conflict that can
numb and silence.
Abraham must obey God, and Abraham must love and protect his son;
yet he cannot do both. I argue in Chapter 5 that the "teleological suspension"
doe~ not represent the offensive principle that one must set ethics aside. even
kill one's son, if God so demands. Instead, it describes an unhappy but not
uncommon fact of moral-spiritual life. We can undergo a terrible clash of
irreconcilable requirements, leaving ethics impotent to point the way. Abra-
ham's ordeal is a story of dilemma where a terrible decision must be made,
largely in the dark. I end with a thought experiment. At least in part faith is a
strength and hope that gets us through dilemmas that test our moral integrity.
Could we invert Abraham's ordeal. having him refuse God's command?
Could he survive this refusal, integrity intact? Is dispute or disobedience
compatible with religious faith? This leads us to distinguish religious from
secular articulations of faith.
The faith Johannes sketches is more than the power that gets us through
dilemmas. There is also a specific expectation of faith, the trust or hope that
Isaac will be returned-and in this life. Crisis is answered by reconciliation.
alienation displaced by affiliation. This suggests an alternative reading of
ordeals of ethics and faith. In Chapter 6, I present the teleological suspension
as a moment of transitional confusion and conflict as an old view is given up
and one is readied to receive the new. One receives not only a new Isaac, but a
new moral orientation, as well. We are accorded stewardship of our essential
humanity, represented as a cluster of moral and religious virtue.
The contrast between an initial conventionalist view of ethics which
must be suspended, and a revised "post-suspension" ethics is filled out in
Chapter 7. How does an individual possessed of inward virtue express her-
self through the universal, through the social matrix in which we find our-
selves immersed? Faith is not a rejection of the social or worldly, but the
ability to live within it, in a certain way. And I develop a parallel between
Kant's good will and Kierkegaard's emphasis on the personal virtues.
Whereas Kant depicts our essential humanity as deriving from a rela-
tionship to an impersonal absolute, Sovereign Reason, Johannes depicts
ethics and our essential humanity as a gift from a personal power. One
achieves one's humanity by "relating absolutely to the absolute," to a Good
that grants us our particularity, the very selves we are and will become. This
parallel also clarifies the respect in which a knight of faith might be both
Abraham and, more surprisingly, a simple shopkeeper, someone apparently
exempt from any dramatic test of faith, someone who lives happily, graceful-
ly, in the full embrace of community.
Johannes's final dialectical section explores a knight of faith's silence.
r turn to "Problema III" in Chapters 8 and 9. In the course of this wandering
"problema," Johannes attempts yet another characterization of ethics and the
possibilities of its suspension. This allows us to review once more the overall
argument of this strange and demanding text. And I end Chapter 9 speculat-
ing briefly about the silences in Kierkegaard's own life, the secrets behind
his broken engagement to Regine Olsen and his undertaking a literary life
both polemical and confessional, both lyrical and dialectical.
The paths toward discovery of a moral-spiritual self in Fear and Trem-
bling are reminiscent of the paths Socrates traverses through the pages of the
Republic. Plato opens his dialogue, we recall, with Socrates returning from
the noisy business of a public festival. He carries us rust into a fantastic city-
soul constructed by dialectical imagination, then witnesses his construction's
decline, and at last deposits us back in the ordinary world, transfonned, mus-
ing poetically on the destiny of the soul. Kierkegaard's text likewise carries
us lyrically from the business world of Copenhagen into a fantastic-yet-
familiar biblical scene, dialectically takes that scene apart, and returns us
then to the ordinary world of commerce, musing urgently on last things.
Mush WId Commitmt'flt J7
My accounts of knights of faith and resignation close in Chapter I () with

reflection on Socrates and faith. It's striking that Johannes decides to conclude
this powerful book not just with final words on Abraham, as we would expect,
but with thoughts on Socratic death and immort.dity. As Johannes ha~ it,
Socrates gives up his life and becorr.es immortal the moment he hears the
Athenian death sentence. Here we have the relinquishing of worldly life to
gain eternal life. This loss and gain seems to parallel the loss and return of
Isaac. There are, as we shall see, essential differences. But however much sep-
arates a stoic resignation from Old Testament faith, a Socratic giving up and
getting back from Abraham's "double movement," the stakes are remarkably
similar: At risk are self and value, time and eternity.
One can flourish and flounder in the terrain of insight long before its
shape becomes clear. With its contrasting movements, moods, aching disso-
nance and redeeming joy, Fear and Trembling has seemed at times as
demanding and impossible a task for words as a late Beethoven Quartet. And
one can then proceed, it seems, only on the basis of the very faith the work
inscribes. Johannes de silentio describes his task as taking "a journey to the
mountain" with Abraham. These words could as well describe the present
task: to consider the meaning of that journey of father and son as Johannes
and Kierkegaard project it-its ordeals of love, reason, and silence; its
moments of crisis and reconciliation; its trials of faith and resignation.
2
Ordeals oj Meaning:
Art, Deed, and System
I am not a poet, I only practice dialectics.
The present author is no philosopher, he is ...

a freelancer....
-lohannes de silentio l
The same vision has often come to me ....

[It] always says the same thing: "Socrates,
make music and compose."
-Socrates 2
FEAR AND TREMBLING opens more than once. In addition to the brief preface
Proplir, there are three other beginnings to the text. Here I will consider the
Preface, "Attunement," and "Speech in Praise of Abraham.") The fourth start
to this dialectical lyric, the lengthy and romantic "Preamble from the Heart,"
deserves separate treatment, which is provided in Chapter 3.
A word of caution as we begin. For all its underlying unity of theme
and purpose, Johannes's work darts from image to claim, from question to
paradox, from lyric to parable to argument. It weaves its fabric in ways that
can seem haphazard, and for all its brilliance, frustratingly incomplete. This
creates obvious difficulties for a helpful reading that stays reasonably close
to the text. Too quick or abstract a reconstruction will leave a false sense of
order, system or finality; yet too loose or desultory a review-perhaps stay-
ing closer to the original-will fail to provide the needed orientation and
insight. I have tried to find a middle path.
19
Preface: Commerce, Spirit, and Hegel's System
A clue to the world Kierkegaard addressed in Fear and Trembling is found in

a framing symmetry. The book opens in It Preface and closes in an Epilogue
some one hundred pages later not with words on Abraham and his ordeal, but
with allusions to the bustling world of business, to the thriving Danish mar-
ket-economy. That is the world we are assumed to inhabit. It is the world we
are invited, or perhaps provoked. to vacate for the duration of our reading.
And after multiple forays of questionable success toward the dark center of
faith, it is the world to which we are at last returned.
At the close of Fear and Trembling, we find Johannes de silentio, our
dialectical mentor and guide, observing how easy it is in the world of com-
merce to manipulate prices by dumping cargo, thereby reducing supply.
Looking back on his work, he asks ironically whether perhaps in his writing
he has been employing a similar maneuver in the world of spirit. In effect,
throughout the pages that precede this Epilogue, Johannes has been using his
dialectical and imaginative skills to raise the price of faith, to make it less a
cheap commodity available to all, for which no one has to work-as if faith
were something that could be automatically claimed as a natural birthright in
this enlightened democratic age.
Has he raised the price of faith artificially by dumping goods? In fact,
he adopts no such crude maneuver. If anything has been dumped, it has been
the shoddy, worthless, and counterfeit; and if the price has been raised, it is
because Johannes has brought out the true worth of spiritual goods.
Shifting from the Epilogue back to the Preface, we find Johannes
opening his tract with the image of a clearance sale, where everything can be
had at a discount. Can prices drop so low that no one will value the product?
In this case, the marketed item is faith, or more broadly, the aims of human
spirit: virtues like courage, love, and trust; integrity and good cheer; and
moral or religious overviews of what we are and where we should be head-
ing. His aim in Fear and Trembling is to reverse a deflationary trend that
threatens to cheapen these aims to worthlessness.
These goods of human spirit do not arrive like ambulatory or linguistic
competence, simply with biological or social maturity. Nor are they acquired
like voting or welfare rights simply by virtue of membership in a moral or
political community; nor are they acquired through coordinated collective
action, like shareholder's profit "earned" by shrewd investment. 4 They can-
not be had "on the cheap" but are priceless and available only on the basis of
our passionate individual striving. Their attainment accurately reflects the
individual labor we contribute to their development,s
As striking as the use to which our author puts these market metaphors is
the bare fact that he employs them at all, and so prominently. They open and
Art, Deed, alld System 21
close his book. It is as if commercial, capitalist activity now provides the

common coin for discourse, for metaphor, so that even an essay devoted to a
topic as distant from trade and barter as the story of Abraham and Isaac must
nevertheless be framed in the most fashionable argot. The market and its ideol-
ogy have become the alpha and omega of our (once) moral and spirituallives. 6
Kierkegaard derides the corrupting influence of bourgeois commercial
ideology. The image of capitalist investment comes up again in "Preamble
from the Heart," when Johannes mockingly asks whether love relationships
are to be construed as investments on which one awaits a profitable return.
But in the Preface, this line of analysis is set quickly aside. Perhaps the bare
suggestion that faith and moral integrity are commodities with an exchange
value or market price is devastating enough. In any case, we move from
metaphors of commerce to satires of Danish intellectual life.
As Kierkegaard sees it, the proper role of intellect or thought in a

human life has become distorted, not just overblown in aspiration, but totally
misdirected. This has come about partly through the influence of a pruden-
tial, marketplace mentality. To engage in thinking, to be thoughtful or reflec-
tive, now means calculating one's personal advantage. But another corrupt-
ing influence is an abstract intellectual style shaped by trite rationalist and
idealist cliches.
Kierkegaard directs his scorn at a fashionable jargon that penneated
parlor, cafe, and classroom discussion, setting the tone for cultural and reli-
gious debate. 7 According to this prevailing quasi-Hegelian current, Spirit,
whether construed as human or divine, was a dynamic, active force in histo-
ry, moving restlessly toward its realization in Freedom and Reason. But this
pUIported advance of Spirit through History seemed, from Kierkegaard's
angle, to be utterly misconceived. It did not culminate in a person attaining a
unique and individual moral or religious character, nor in a person's contri-
butiqns to civic welfare, nor even in artistic production or activity. Spirit
reached its apex in a daunting Philosophical System, an impersonal edifice of
professorial construction.
"The System," or at least the facsimile that Kierkegaard attacked, was a
grandiose attempt to capture all matter, all life, all spirit, in an overarching
conceptual structure. 8 This structure would embody universal knowledge and
truth. Darkness, ignorance, or doubt would be forever banished. And as
Johannes mockingly paints it, this was not merely the idle fancy of an isolated
thinker, locked in an ivory tower. It was as if the reading public at large sensed
that Truth was already harnessed; as if posters announcing this momentous
event were already printed and ready for general distribution.
This bizarre optimism was comic, or dangerous, on at least three
scores. Faith was seen as only an early, relatively childish phase in the
inevitable progress of Reason or Spirit. Second, individuals and their tasks

had significance only as they contributed to Spirit's larger world-historical
mission-that is, persons counted only as they became assimilated into a
social collective. And finally, God, inste~d of being a distant and fearsome
Other, or incarnate in a forgiving Son, was incarnate in the political and eco-
nomic institutions of Christendom--of Danish Christendom, no less!9
In a moment, we will expand on these points. But first, let me com-
ment on a repeated phrase that at least for the Preface, becomes a tenn of art.
Johannes continually plays on the idea of "going further."
In both the Preface and the Epilogue, this phrase alludes to the pre-
tence that one can outgrow religion, that one can easily proceed to a spiritual
position well beyond faith. "Going further," one can attain a Godlike grasp of
human essence and destiny. The pervasive struggle for personal advance is
thereby obscured. Doubts or uncertainties are nicely smoothed over or erased
through clever intellectual "solutions" to life's deep-set conflicts or opposi-
tions. And this good fortune is as accessible as the daily paper: The System
is duly simplified and distributed by professors, pastors, and theologians for
an eager and expectant citizenry.
Faith is tied up with life's pervasive doubts and uncertainties. But the
present age, it seems, has outgrown these fears. The skeptical challenges of
Descartes or the ancient skeptics seem entirely forgotten.
In the final sentences of the Epilogue, Johannes reflects ironically on a
disciple of Heraclitus who tried to "go further" than the master, replacing the
philosopher's notions of fragmentation and flux with the "improved" notions
of completion and rest-the disciple thinking that he had thereby advanced.
If the construction of the Hegelian System is finished, then spirit is complete
and at rest. Human and divine are fused, God and humankind, identical!
There remains no fragmentation, indetenninacy, or doubt; no movement or
action. But the "advance" this knowledge purports is then the completion-
and so the elimination-of life itself!
Persons develop amidst inescapable uncertainties, conflicting needs,
and unfinished tasks. They are haunted and inspired by demanding ideals.
Surely, the attendant need for individual decision amidst risk is not a defect
but a touchstone of human spirit. Responsible choice is ineradicable and pre-
cious in our uncertain coping, an essential phase in self-articulation. Whatev-
er pressure or suffering such uncertainty may bring, it is linked to our ines-
timable value as responsible, developing individuals, as the particular
persons we are and will become. Yet none of this, in Johannes's view, can be
acknowledged by difOciples of the System. They aver that doubt has been
overcome, that the need for decision or faith in navigating life's uncertain
straits has been outgrown, that happiness is at hand in a collective identity
beyond all individual choice or responsibility.
Art, Deed, and System 23
This brief three-page Preface to Fear and Tremhling identifies in

microcosm, as it were, a number of focal concerns not only of the book as a
whole, but of Kierkegaard's entire authorship. It will help to summarize
these interlocking themes.
The Strenuousness oJ the Socratic, Skeptical Task
For the Greek skeptics and Descartes, it was a notable practical achievement
to attain doubt or the standpoint of skeptical critique-the opposite of a naive
phase to be quickly outgrown. Unlike advocates of the System, who can
report to any freshman a trick for overcoming doubt, Descartes undertook his
skeptical project only haltingly, havingfinished a formal education, and in his
maturity. Given that purveyors of the System claim to have passed beyond
doubt, Johannes finds it odd that no one speaks about how such doubt is to be
originally undertaken--even if such skepticism is only a prelude and is ulti-
mately surpassed. For Johannes, even to begin the task of methodological
doubt seems prodigious. His satire suggests that disciples of the System, far
from having "gone further" than doubt, have merely wished it out of exis-
tence. Equally suspect is their self-styled ease in "going further" than faith.
The fllusory Goal oj Objectiue System
Johannes takes the goal of the System to be fantastical. It sets Absolute

Knowledge as the telos of life, as the proper and essential human fulfillment.
This is an utterly unattainable goal, either for an individual or a community.
But more important, it is also deeply undesirable. Its achievement would
scuttle the most precious features of our lives, our standing as passionate,
responsible individuals, undeceived in complex lives at risk, engaged in the
unfinished and uncertain tasks of self-articulation.
The fllusory Goal oj Social Assimilation
Johannes is skeptical not just about the prospect of an absolute knowledge,

but about the tenns on which it is made available: Apparently one has only to
maintain one's "membership-in-good-standing" in Danish society. In the
Epilogue, he mocks the idea that one can be carried forward, advanced spiri-
tually, merely by being in a generation or epoch taken to be more advanced
than its predecessor. I/istorical progress, if there is such a phenomenon, has
no bearing on individual progress. In Johannes's view, each individual strug-
gling for spiritual advance starts at precisely the same point as any other
individual in any other epoch. In the realm of spirit, one cannot simply
inherit the purported achievements of one's forebears}O
The nlusion of a Truth that

Neglects Personal Subjectivity
Even if there were a System, complete or only half baked, why should that
concern Johannes? He wants a truth by which he can live, that speaks direct-
ly, individually, to him.1I As Kierkegaard writes elsewhere, he needs "the
idea for which I am to live and die." These words come from the youthful
Gilleleje Testament of 1835:
What I really need is to get clear about what I must do. not what I must
know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What mat-
ters is to fmd a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I
should do; the crucial thing is to find the truth which is truth for me. to
find the idea for which I am to live and die .... This is what I needed to
lead a completely human life, and not one merely of knowledge,12
As Johannes has it in the Preface, a personal relationship to a Truth or Idea is

all-important. "Even if one were able to render the whole of the content of
faith into conceptual fonn, it would not follow that one had grasped faith,
grasped how one came to it. or how it came to one. "13
Johannes thinks of the System as a work of science, of abstract knowl-
edge. In his age, as he puts it, "passion has been done away with for the sake
of science. "14 He fears that in sustaining an exclusive interest in objective
pictures of the world, the engaged or passionate moral self will be forgot-
ten,ls In fact, the move away from an engaged subjectivity, when pursued too
single-mindedly, can become a move toward self-loss. One cannot know
what it is to grasp or be grasped by faith-or truth-from a position that
excludes one's self-presence. one's self-engagement.
Ultimately, as I will argue in Chapter 4, Johannes's commitment to
subjectivity should not exclude, and in fact requires. a commitment to objec-
tivity, properly conceived. But given the heat of battle, he makes no attempts
here to distinguish sorts of objectivity or subjectivity. And because the objec-
tive, detached standpoint of science or the System is one he rejects in favor
of the standpoint of the responsible self, Johannes calls himself (in this con-
text) not a philosopher but a poet. 16
The Fear the System will Coopt the Writer's Effort
Finally, as he closes the Preface, Johannes worries about the System

swallowing his own writing. More generally, he worries about the corrosive
effect an all-inclusive academic edifice could have on literature, dialectic,
and art works. The systembuilders, he fears, will chop his thought into bits,
Art, Deed. and System 25
parceling out its insights, making each an authorless sentence in an emerging

Grand Encyclopedia. Hegel in fact entitled one of his works The Ency-
clopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences-an attempted compendium of
"knowledge" from natural history to art, from logic to religion.
Johannes does not abandon these several themes. He returns to them

again and again in the course of his lyrical analysis. But now he moves for-
ward. "Attunement" can be read as a second preface. Here Johannes sets out
a quartet of striking parables, vivid sketches of Abraham misunderstanding
his task.
It is no accident that following his prefatory remarks on System, doubt,
and "going further," Johannes presents lyrical retellings of the Abraham
story. He begins not with a definition or principle but with a concrete exem-
plar of faith. He then raises doubts about our understanding of this exemplar,
and speaks (or writes) less as a philosopher or dialectician than as a poet, a
storyteller. "Attunement" gives four versions of the Abraham story. By open-
ing his discussion in this way, Johannes forces us to confront narrative
images, to engage in imaginative-empathetic labor. These images or narra-
tives will not cohere into a simple system. They appeal in the first instance
not to an abstract, theoretical Reason, but to imagination and passion. And
their symbolic form leaves us free to collect their import inwardly and indi-
vidually. There is no dictionary or translation code to ease our deciphering,
no hint that deciphering can ever be complete.
Perhaps, the secret de silentio keeps is that even in adopting his more
promising, antisystematic aesthetic and dialectical approach, no complete or
adequate paraphrase of faith is fmally possible-however eloquent one
might be in showing what faith is not. or in providing portraits that approxi-
mate the original, portraits that provide hints about faith.
Attunement: Finding the Symbolic Key
In the sketches of the journey to Mt. Moriah, each less than a page in length,
Johannes de silentio warms up-and warms us-for his imminent and
extended lyrical performance. This sets an interpretative atmosphere for
reading. I follow Hannay in calling this second preface "Attunement." Oth-
ers have offered "Prelude" or "Exordium." 17 But in my view the musical
resonances of attunement are especially apt, for they suggest tuning an
instrument and ear for what is to follow.
The versions need tuning. Each attempt is slightly off-key-dose, but
not quite right. So this is not a musical prelude or overture providing frag-
ments of material that are later developed at length. It is a set of false starts.
We hear a virtuoso in the wings intently going over a passage, varying it this
way and that, working around its center. The passion and technique are unmis-
takable. The brevity and incompleteness, tantalizing. In an age of mediocrity,
and from the likes of Johannes, even false ~tarts shine forth like gems.
This preparatory quartet is placed in the nostalgic frame of memory,
almost of fairy tale. The section begins, as do all such tales, with a formula:
"There once was a man ... " This man mused about Abraham, about the story
he had learned as a child. So there is a tale within a tale, a tale that this man
recalling his childhood remembers. And fmally, the man of the tale muses by
telling tales about that tale. In these fIrst few sentences, then, we are quickly
shunted a full three levels from straightforward description of a purported
worldly event.
Actually, the start of this section is even more complex. This tale about
a man remembering a tale and then spinning tales on it is told by a pseudonym
whose name is "silence." And each tale about Abraham is meant to distort the
biblical story, to remain silent about it. Why these multiple involutions?
At one level, we are being told that Fear and Trembling is not a set of
simple declarative propositions giving a systematic portrait of faith. Second,
these narratives within narratives repeatedly defer interpretative responsibili-
ty away from Kierkegaard, toward the reader. This method not only pre-
serves a complex truth from oversimplifIcation, it also puts responsibility for
grasping that truth where it belongs, with the reading, listening self. Finally,
discovering the box within a box, the story within a story, keeps us in the
mode of expectancy, wonder, and childlike surprise. We are not recipients of
a lifeless fact or doctrine, but on a self-involving journey of discovery. At
each tum. we are made to ask. Is this finally the end-the smallest box, the
truthful tale? Compare the ease and certainty of the System's delivery of the
Truth! And compare what it delivers: afinished Truth!
This path of discovery, full of wonder. questioning. and always provi-
sional, mirrors our condition. Our identities, at least in part. are stories within
stories. childhood scenarios embellished by adolescent dreams. tempered by
mature experience, bound by family history. carried by complex cultural nar-
ratives .... Human lives then appear as multiple quests for identity, as history.
biography and autobiography. always under revision. in tentative draft. and
our own responsibility in the telling. IS We are the wondering child discover-
ing a new tale of what might be and the weary octogenarian in possession of
a rich and weighty tale. yet perhaps disappointed that the telling is still
incomplete. For just as the versions Johannes now tells do not quite do the
job, so even at the end of Fear and Trembling we may doubt whether the
final version. a tale encasing the golden key. has at last been fumished. 19
Perhaps dialectic and lyric themselves are forms that are always unfin-
ished. As a different Johannes. Johannes Climacus of the Postscript has it:
Art. Deed. and System 27
"Dialectic is really a benevolent ministering power, which discovers and

helps to find where the absolute object of worship is .... [It) does not itself
see the absolute. but it leads the individual as it were up to it."20 We may sus-
pect that in this dialectical lyric we are repeatedly led only up to the truth,
never simply given it, whether in perception or definition. In the end, we
have multiple nested versions, prefaces within prefaces, none of which gives
us quite what we sought, our "object of worship," the true story of faith.
Even the closest version is told by an author who remains silent. Perhaps
only for one having achieved faith, and not for the seeker, can the truth be
seen whole and clear. But then Johannes's path, the path of insight, disap-
pointment, and new discovery, is also our path, if we are seekers, still inquir-
ers-thus the only path, and so the path we must pursue.
Johannes de silentio knows he must focus not on exotic settings or

extraneous detail but on Abraham's lonely journey itself, how he left his wife
Sarah and proceeded for three days toward the mountain with Isaac, whom
God had demanded. Each sketch is set off, one to a page, headed by a Roman
numeral. After the sketch, there follows a separate sentence or two giving the
moral of that particular version of the story.
First let me summarize the sketches. Then I will consider the accompa-
nying morals.
I. Abraham does not conceal the purpose of the journey from Isaac;
but Isaac cannot understand how or why he should be required in
sacrifice. Abraham tries to console and comfort him. But this fails,
so Abraham turns his back, "climbs the Mountain again," and this
time dons the mask of a madman. He presents himself to his son as
a murderous idolater who has neither faith in God nor love for his
son. In that way, he hopes, Isaac may retain his faith in God.
II. Abraham performs God's will and receives Isaac back. But he
never recovers from the ordeal. He lives on, his "eyes darkened."
old and joyless.
III. Abraham proceeds to the mountain, but at the last moment throws
himself down before God. begging forgiveness for having foolishly
thought that God could be cruel enough to demand Isaac. But he
lives on in confusion. For why is it a sin to be willing to sacrifice
what one loves most? And ifit is a sin to be willing to sacrifice one's
son, how can he hope to be forgiven for something so terrible?
IV. As Abraham draws the knife, Isaac sees that his father's hand is
clenched in anguish. Seeing his father's despair, Isaac loses his
faith.
Now we know from his journals that Kierkegaard experimented with

still further versions of the story. each meant to show what faith is not. 21 And
as the text proceeds. additional variations are suggested. many in bare. single
images. Abraham merely resigns Isaac. ,"dull with grief;"22 he thrusts the
knife into his own breast;23 he seeks to hide. to avoid the task.24 or doubts.
hesitates. 2s He lacks courage: "If God wants Isaac. let Him take him,"26 He
loses joy. is merely resigned,21 Abraham forgets the journey, either by sacri-
ficing Isaac immediately28 or by taking a "winged horse" to Moriah. 29 He
wants to set an illustrious example for all fathers;30 he speaks. and speaks the
wrong words at the wrong time;3l he lies to Isaac.32 God kills Isaac. relieving
Abraham of the task. 33 Abraham wavers. cannot make up his mind. 34
We have ample material here to see what faith excludes. Responding in
faith cannot lead others away from faith; nor can it be meant as a lesson
intended to bring others toward faith; it cannot leave one ultimately con-
fused. troubled or in despair; it cannot require pretense or deception. On the
positive side. faithful response means weathering complex ordeals of silence.
love. courage. hope. and understanding.
From these dozen shorter versions of the Abraham story as well as from
the four preliminary versions. we see that the main theme is not whether God
exists-that is presumed throughout; nor is it whether God. in some general
sense. requires obedience-that, too, is presumed throughout. Even in the
imaginary case III. where Abraham decides he was mistaken in thinking that
God required Isaac. the general virtue of obedience is not at issue, but only
the specific demands of this occasion. More important. simple willingness to
adhere to God's command is no guarantee of faith. So the point of the tale
cannot be. in de silentio's view. that Abraham must obey. whatever the cost.
Each of the Abrahams sketched in the initial quartet is ready to obey.
yet none is the father of faith. And the willingness pictured here. whether
hedged or wholehearted. is never simply rote. rigid. or blind. Each of these
Abrahams has eyes open to the terrible ordeal he is asked to undergo.
Although a willingness to honor God's command is a background assump-
tion. it is not the crucial aspect of faith.
What will distinguish the knight of faith from his cousin. the knight of
infinite resignation or some other failed Abraham. is not obedience. The
faithful knight is distinguished by the quality of his attunement to others. to
the world. to himself. and to God: by the quality of his joy and dread; by the
spirit with which he gives up the object of his love. believing all the while
that he will surely get it back.
These preliminary tunings, narrative variations on the biblical tale. are
not just fancy dress on an otherwise naked warning about what specific acts
or duties God might enjoin-absolute obedience. say. or the sacrifice of a
child. The evidence is varied and persuasive.
Art, Deed, alld SYJ'tem 21)
Tales within Tales
Each retelling is not a factual report but the musing of a man recalling
something vague and indistinct from childhood. Even the reality of the man
whose musings these are is fanciful, for the section begins, as we have seen,
with the fairy tale opening "Once {upon a time} there was a man .... "
Repetition of Detail
In Johannes's performance, unlike my abbreviated summaries, each retelling

repeats the familiar details: departing the house, approaching the mountain,
receiving the ram. Fairy tales, even when told with variation, are meant, like
good music, to be heard with variation and in toto, again and again. They
aim to induce an experience, one we enjoy reliving or must be made to relive
or remember. It is harder to imagine joyful expectancy (or dreadful anticipa-
tion) woven through enterprises more exclusively calculative or cognitive-
the arithmetic of a budget, the facts of a routine court case, the structure of a
theological argument.
Multiplicity of Versions
The tale is retold four times in "Attunement" and in over a dozen other ways
in the remainder of the text. This iteration reminds us that Johannes is not
establishing a factual record from which a clear-cut principle can be drawn.
Rather, by considering skewed variations, he circles from the outside, as it
were, isolating the narrative-symbolic space within which an effective inter-
pretation wiII fall. This narrows the margin of error. And jUdging from the
number of versions that miss the target, whatever sense is fmally retrieved
from that space is not likely to be transparent or immediately obvious, cap-
turable in a rule or slogan.
Symbolic Ascent
The phrase and he climbed the mountain gets repeated in two of the versions
like a musical refrain, encouraging us to hear it symbolically as referring to
Abraham's inner journey, his deliberations. Confirming this interpretation,
we read in the final sentence of "Attunement": "every time {the man] came
home from the mountain in Moriah, he collapsed in weariness, and said .... "J~
Clearly, the journey has become metaphor, symbol. Now the narrator has
made the journey to the mountain. Not just Abraham, but the man remember-
ing has made that journey, and made it more than once.
Abraham, Mother. and Child
Finally, there are the enigmatic "moral-of-the-story" appendages to each

version. These are cast as refrains that in bQth stylistic formula and overt sym-
bolic content drive us from literal construals. Here are the opening and closing
sentences of the flrst refrain:
When the child is to be weaned. the mother blackens her breast. for it
would be a shame were the breast to look pleasing when the child is
not to have it . ... Lucky the one who needed no more terrible means to
wean the child!
Each of the four begins "When the child is to be weaned" and ends a few
sentences later "Lucky the one who" or "Lucky the child" making the format
musical.
Explicit allusion to mother and child is strangely absent in the remain-
der of Fear and Trembling. But here Johannes takes the archetype of mater-
nal nurturance to be fundamental to faith. It is presented on an equal footing
with the more prevalent and expected images of paternal governance and
dominion. 36 What clues can this imagery of mother and child provide?
The morals-of-the-story concern the apparently harsh methods a moth-
er must use in weaning her child ("blackening her breast"), the anxiety she
thereby endures, and the resultant risk to the child, who now depends on a
new source of nurturance. Most significant is the bare fact that the essence of
the patriarch's faith is rendered here in the imagery of motherhood. These
vignettes describe an ordeal of love and separation. of anxiety and hope. The
issue is not who instigates the ordeal, or even whether it should be com-
menced, but how to wean the beloved. The maternal process of weaning, as
Johannes depicts it, leaves no grip at all for the notion of obedient compli-
ance with an external, terrifying demand.
If the child weaned is Isaac, then the issue is how to make Isaac free.
As we will see, God's test requires Abraham to undergo a complex shift in
his relationship to Isaac and to his world generally: a shift whose terrors and
anticipated rewards are not unlike those of a mother weaning her child. One
confronts the painful loss of an immediate relationship, needing all the while
the faith that the relationship will not be utterly broken.
Alternatively, the child in the morals of these tales might be Abraham.
In this case the test becomes his capacity to be weaned from a potentially
harmful misrelationship to God, a relationship that would keep him unfree.
Can he endure an apparent rupture from God with faith intact-believing
that God's beneficence will ultimately prevail? On this reading, Isaac is only
a pawn in the field of Abraham's spiritual development. It is possible, and
Arl. Deed. and System 31
likely, that these last two possibilities coincide, that we are meant to see both
Isaac and Abraham set free through this ordeal.
The framework of mother and child is not an outcropping of anoma-
lous imagery. It reinforces Fear and Trembling's fundamental themes. To
achieve independence-in-relationship. separation that simultaneously
acknowledges profound dependence, is the exacting project of Kierkegaar-
dian selfhood. As Johannes Climacus puts it in the Postscript: "The highest
degree of resignation that a human being can reach is to acknowledge the
given independence [freedom, separateness] in every man, and after the mea-
sure of his ability do all that can in truth be done to help someone preserve
it."31 More specifically, resignation of something of utmost value (in this
case, the child to be weaned), coupled with the assurance that it will be
returned, is Johannes de silentio's basic characterization of faith. Faith is the
process of weaning the child and welcoming its return. It is a "double move-
ment" of giving up and getting back.
In the sentence immediately preceding this quote, Johannes Climacus
makes a decisive claim: "no one is so resigned as God; for He communicates
in creating, so as by creating to give independence over against himse/f."J8
This suggests that God undertakes the movement of infmite resignation. If
so, why not also the movement of faith? God as father, we might say, like
Abraham, gives up his son, trusting all the while that he will be returned,
transformed.
Apparently this "double movement" can characterize the structure of a
therapeutic relationship, as well. Given my frequent use of the phrase giving
up and getting back to characterize faith, I was startled to read that the psy-
chotherapist Winnocott saw his task as "long-term giving the patient back
what the patient brings .... If I do this well enough, the patient will find his or
her own self, and will be able to exist and feel real."39 Parents, God, and thera-
pists are apparently tasked to give independence over against themselves, pre-
serviPig through communication the inviolable individuality of the other.
The image of mother and child suggests, then, that God can be character-
ized not only as an instigator of spiritual growth, as a taskmaster, but also as a
more beneficent, even maternal, source of rescue, refuge, and nurturance. 40
The divine becomes not only a power that sees us through the uncertain ordeals
of self-transformation, the trials of love and reason, of silence and solitude. It
also returns the wonder of a world, a peopled world, into our keeping.
Speech in Praise of Abraham: Art and Admiration
The improvised portraits in "Attunement" are tossed off by a virtuoso

interpreter. Next comes a eulogy, "Speech in Praise of Abraham," reminis-
cent of the Symposium's speeches in praise of Love. Both Plato and

Kierkegaard prepare the way for more exacting dialectical argument by poet-
ic, lyrical preludes. And both writers find it natural to carry out their
inquiries through dramatic embodiment .of contrasting exemplars, "living"
examples and near-examples of faith or love. They articulate their investiga-
tions through story, myth, drama, and personification.
This third preface conveys Johannes' fervent admiration for that
ancient hero, Abraham. Paradoxically, he praises what he cannot fully com-
prehend. If his speech can only praise Abraham, perhaps this is because
Johannes is only a poet. As a mere observer. he lacks the moral or religious
resources to be a hero of faith. 41 But in his own ironic way, he tries to make a
virtue of this defect.
Praise establishes distance between admirer and admired, a distance
that may ultimately undermine a more intimate appropriation of the signifi-
cance of Abraham's faithful deed. Our imaginative/conceptual depictions fall
short of their inner and outer correlates. There is the imponderable figure we
admiringly, haltingly attempt to depict; and then there is the state of our
souls, yearning but shallow, lacking the faith we so admire. Both art and
being fall short. This twofold fissure-between art and satisfaction, and
between life and satisfaction-has an aural equivalent in the silence that
remains at the center of all attempts to grasp what Abraham is about.
The hero who lives valiantly and the poet who sings his praise are
God's answer, Johannes tells us, to a desperately bleak view of the world:
if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power

that twisting in dark passion produced everything great or inconse-
quential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath
everything, what would life be then but despair? If it were thus, if there
were no sacred bond uniting mankind, if one generation rose up after
another like the leaves of the forest, if one generation succeeded the
other as the songs of the birds in the woods, if the human race passes
through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the
desert, a thoughtless, fruitless whim, if an eternal oblivion always
lurked hungrily for its prey and there were no power strong enough to
wrest it from its clutches-how empty and devoid of comfort would
life be!42
But it is not so, Johannes argues. We have hero and poet to bear witness to
the fullness and comfort of life. The hero answers in Deeds, and the poet in
Song, in lyrical commemoration of the hero and his deeds. Each needs the
other. Without both, life would appear "empty and devoid of comfort." But
because these words and deeds exist, we know that there is spirit. an "eler-
Art, Deed, alld System 33
nal consciousness in man."4l A Schopenhauercan world of senseless repeti-

tion must be false.
Should we accept this argument on behalf of the poet and hero? Why
assume that if we were no more than participants in or witnesses to an eternal
round, then there must be a "wild fennent" or "insatiable emptiness" at the
bottom of things?
For those aware of Nietz.'iche 's response to Schopenhauer, the parallels
with Johannes's view in this passage are striking. Schopenhauer's contrast
between a wild, cyclical, and unfathomable "will to live," on the one hand,
and on the other, the saving illusions of art is taken up by Nietzsche in The
Birth of Tragedy as the celebrated contrast between Apollonian and
Dionysian powers. The fonner provide a kind of artistic, orderly overlay on
the unrestrained energy of the latter, Later, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Niet-
zsche proposes the idea of Eternal Recurrence as a description of and
response to the cyclical round of existence. Recurrence depicts reality "as it
is." But it serves simultaneously as a test of one's capacity to love and affinn
existence, through and through, despite its terrifying endlessness and appar-
ent lack of final purpose. The idea of eternal recurrence tests an agent's cre-
ative power, through word or deed, to transform the aspect under which the
relentless cycles of earthly life appear,44
In his study of nineteenth-century conceptions of human nature, histor-
ical change, and revolution, Bernard Yack suggests that the ability of
Kierkegaard's knight of faith to affirm existence through and through despite
the haunting specter of senseless repetition is a response to nihilism on a par
with Nietzsche's celebratory "Yes" to nature's endless repetitions. 4s And
given the widespread suspicion of Kierkegaard's religious temperament, it is
striking that he goes on to call the knight of faith's response "more honest."
More honest, presumably, because Kierkegaardian faith is offered frankly
"on the strength of the absurd." In contrast, Nietzsche (so it might be
claimed) offers his life-affinning stance as a philosophical position with
quasi-rational backing, The knight of faith, however, has no access to a meta-
physical doctrine for which comforting arguments could be given.
Poetry and Inhabitation
Johannes says that without hero or poet our lives would merely mimic the
cycles of nature. Our existence would be without spirit, akin to birds in song or
falling leaves. In his view, this must be depressing. But "-'ily assume that this
"eternal round" would exclude a "sacred human bond" or spell a terrifying
senselessness? Perhaps our lives are essentially ceremonial, not in the hollow,
but in the richest sense of the word-their repetitions calling out, reaffirming,
and reenacting both value and a "sacred human bond"?46 Furthem10re, how
rare or spectacular must the artist or hero be? Who is the hero, who, the poet?
Could they be quite ordinary participants in the passing scene?
Consider the following affirming, appreciative reaction to natural cycles
of birth and death:
On the water mayflies are hatching. Like sparks from a burning log, they
pour out from the depths .... Sitting on the bank, W. is as under a tent; an
insect snow is falling all over him & he is gazing up, overcome .... He
doesn't heed me when I call & then I see what it is. The flies are falling
into the water.... The water is innundated & all are dead.
Looking at me, W. says, "Isn't it beautiful? For all to rise & fall for
the same beautiful necessity? Wouldn't it be beautiful for us to rise up
in light & fall in unison, serving only nature?"47
Not everyone can share, or understand this response. Kierkegaard (or

Johannes) apparently could not. In the novel just quoted, Wittgenstein's
friend David Pinset is made to respond in disbelief: "I am appalled. I say, 'I
think it is jolly good for flies, but not for men. To have all the generations
fall like that in unison? How can you possibly call that idea beautiful? '''48
We might or might not endorse this purportedly Wittgensteinian, or
perhaps Schopenhauerian, portrait of a self-contained, beautiful, and exclu-
sively natural "eternal recurrence." In any case, if the testimony of poet or
hero can negate a terrifying cyclical scene, how, exactly, does this occur?
In attesting to an "eternal consciousness in man," does the poet or hero
actually see a reality beyond, or through the apparent senselessness? Or is it
rather that by their strength and talent they impose or make some sort of
meaning? And if the latter, can this go on without self-deception? How
imposing must a hero's action be, how thick, a poet's dreamlike art-spun gar-
ments, to persuade us of a deep, sustaining sense, to shield us from an under-
lying emptiness? But to take the artist's transfiguring ;)ctivity as distorting
and self-deceptive, as a covering over or covering up of underlying sense-
lessness, is at best unflattering. Perhaps, there is a more generous reading of
Johannes de silentio's view in this passage (and its parallels in Schopenhauer
and Nietzsche). We might see the artist's saving work as a uniquely human
way of coping, a way of witnessing and participating that ceremoniously
redeems itself in the very process of its enactment.
Consider the artist's work, both process and product, as a kind of
building, assembling and joining that is not just sheltering from the wind, but
establishing a home. Stanley Cavell describes such activity in the lyrical
writing of Heidegger, Thoreau, and Emerson: "What they are building is
writing ... their writing is the accomplishment of inhabitation, the making of
it happen, the poetry of it. "49 Writing, in this view, is an activity of inhabita-
Arl, Deed, alld Sy.rlem 35
tion, the poetry of building a haven, a home. (And if we enter "soul" or "spir-
it" for "writing" in these sentences, we hear the parallel between art and life.)
The values involved are not merely material or instrumental, but in essence
quite other. A well-caulked house can enfold an utter wasteland; a loose-
roofed shed, enclose a home.
A musical perfonnance or artful phrase may at times serve only to
drown out ugliness or shield us from a seething dark. But a phrase or song
may give us more than welcome shelter from the wind. A space of insight or
epiphany can be created for rich inhabitation. Poetic activity can witness and
testify to saving meanings. Embodying creative powers of reception and
transfonnation, it can build a phrase or line or world of intrinsic worth, lift-
ing artist and audience alike. "A predicate or two can reveal a whole
world."so Perhaps Johannes sees the artist as creating from the void, imitating
God. More likely, such self-redeeming activity prefigures faith's "double
movement," the reciprocal movements of giving up and getting back.
The metaphor of solitary building can be supplemented by a more dia-
logical model that captures the experiential give and take of authoring. As
the British critic Hennione Lee puts it, the writer provides "a record of
exploration and disclosure, loss and repossession, ... of finding, losing and
recreating experience."S1 In stepping back to admire, evoke, and describe, the
poet loses a pre-reflective relationship to the hero. Her reflective admiration
may be laced with fear that she faces in fact only a senseless whirl or fear
that her art can not do justice to her idol. s2 The poet's faith, then, would be
her hope that this dreaded loss of meaning in fact will not be final. S) He lev-
els the old, anticipating a "repossession," a building of the new. Not just a
work, or home, but also, as Johannes later has it, a "clean edition of
himself."54 He has trust, held "on the strength of the absurd," in the saving
efficacy, the redeeming powers, of Art.
Abraham's faith will be resigning Isaac and having the expectation,
strangely fulfilled, of getting him back. The artist's faith will be resigning the
immediate sense of the world, struggling with the loss that this entails, yet
maintaining the expectation, uncannily fulfilled, of getting it back-partly
through poetic labor, through recreating experience, but partly through muse,
as gift. This is what Johannes calls "the faith of the poet. "55 And if there is
poetic faith as well as religious faith, then perhaps there is ethical faith as
well. And so as many faiths as fonns of despair or failure. As many, plus
one-the faith that does not fail.
Beholding and Being
There is an uneasy, self-congratulatory note in Johannes's praise of the poet.

The hero, he says, is the poet's better nature. A hero lives out in deed a virtue
the poet can only admire from afar with envy and amazement. Yet, in the
next breath, Johannes reminds us that the poet transfigures the hero's deed in
memory, giving it the touch of eternity. So perhaps the poet is the hero's bet-
ter nature. Without the artist's commemofative song, the hero would/all into
oblivion. But should a poet place himself thus above his idol? From the
standpoint of religious faith, this seems a questionable vanity.
First there were purveyors of the System elevating themselves to God's
equal; now there is the poet raising himself to Abraham's equal, or even high-
er. Twice, Johannes repeats a refrain: "It is human to sorrow with the sorrow-
er, but greater to have faith and more blessed to behold the believer.".56 This
could mean--quite flattering to the artist-that it's better, "more blessed." to
behold faith than to have it. Or it might mean only that it's better to behold
and have faith than to merely sorrow in resignation with the sorrower.
Is the essential flaw of the poet to value beholding over being? Per-
haps. Yet these self-flattering remarks also ring with nervous bravado. The
ambiguity is pervasive. At the end of his speech, Johannes proclaims: "Ven-
erable Father Abraham! Thousands of years have slipped by since those
days, but you need no late-coming lover to snatch your memory from the
power of oblivion: for every mother tongue commemorates yoU."S7 Do these
words deny the poet's claim to self-importance? Or do they instead reassert
it in patronizing, mock-modest disguise? The awkward self-consciousness of
the speaker hints at an inner insufficiency in the aesthetic stage of existence,
a defect evidenced in a double irony. Johannes tries to write about faith from
only a poetic standpoint of beholding. And he failingly tries to live. to be.
from that merely poetic standpoint.
Paradox and Suspension of Meaning
The faith of the poet, says Johannes, is his faith in his hero.~8 He sings of
Abraham, of the measures of his greatness. which are the greatness of what
one loves. of what one expects or hopes. and of what one strives with. Lov-
ing and wrestling with God while expecting the impossible mark the great-
ness of Abraham, who "conquered God by his powerlessness." Johannes
spares no eloquence, paradox, or exaggeration:
There was one who was great in his strength, and one who was great in
his wisdom, and one who was great in hope, and one who was great in
love; but greater than all was Abraham, great with that power whose
strength is powerlessness, great in that wisdom whose secret is folly,
great in that hope whose outward form is insanity. great in that love
which is hatred of self.59
Art. Deed. and System 37
How can wisdom be fol/y. strength be powerlessness. hope be insanity?

One could dismiss this passage as obscurity. or nonsense. But there is a
more plausible and generous approach. Pairing these opposites-love and
hate. wisdom and folly, strength and powerlessness-does more than amuse
or awaken us from slumber. These clashing juxtapositions alert us to the pos-
sibility that wisdom, strength, hope and love acquire a new level of meaning
when used in the elaboration of faith. But what new meaning? And why
delivered as paradox?
One possibility is that faith/u/love and strength meet a higher standard
than worldly love and strength-the love being so unlike worldly self-love
that it appears to the uninitiated as neglect or hatred of self; the strength
being so unlike worldly self-aggrandizement that it appears to the uninitiated
as powerlessness; the hope, so extravagant, that it appears insane. Our con-
cepts develop and gain their grip in familiar, worldly contexts. Yet, if
Johannes is correct that faith is not a childhood acquisition, then the religious
meaning of hope, strength, and love cannot be acquired simply in childhood
or automatically, naturally, in adulthood.
Put another way, the concepts of faith apply to a dimension of thought
and experience other than. or perhaps richer than, the strictly conventional,
worldly, or ordinary. It follows that expanding the meaning of a concept like
love from a familiar to a not-just-worldly context will be achieved only at the
price of some apparent distortion. Paradox expands the conceptual and moral
space we ordinarily reserve for a term, say love. by stretching that space to
include what seems to be its opposite-in this case, hatred of self. There is a
kind of linguistic confusion that accompanies moral or spiritual growth, a
kind of "teleological suspension" of (ordinary) meaning. 60
We can also fmd a mock-Hegelian dialectic at work here as Johannes
depicts the enlargement and transformation of a conceptual and experiential
domain. A concept (say, love) is negated, becoming its opposite (say, hatred
of self). Then that negation is itself (partially) negated, creating a new, pre-
sumably more complex and complete sense of the concept in question. We
must now comprehend, say, love-that-is-hatred-of-self. However, the full
richness of this last "negation" does not occur primarily on the page, in the
written prose. For Johannes, it occurs in the reader's struggle to give an
interpretation that will constitute the second phase of this "double-negation."
How are we to grasp the concept of love-that-is-hatred-of-self? Paradoxical
formulations stretch the mind, expand the space of possible meaning. But
only later, as we consider "Preamble from the Heart" and the "Problemata,"
will we be able to jill in the possibilities that are only hinted at here. We have
the clue. for example, that faithful love is utterly removed from self-
love-but little more. Later, Johannes expounds at length on faith as an
ordeal of love.
38 Knights 0/ Faith and Resignation
We should note, too, that it is not just the primary term (say, love) whose
meaning is altered in a paradoxical juxtaposition but also the meaning of the
striking qualifier (for example, hatred of self). Just as it would be absurd to
think that being ready to kill one's child, literally and without qualification, is
a mark of faith, so, it is absurd to think that literal self-hatred or unqualified
powerlessness or simple folly are authentic marks offaith. Johannes warns, in
a later section of Fear and Trembling, of speaking in a way that "words
[become] a pitfall for somebody on the loose."61 Among other things, I take
this to be a warning against a commonplace interpretation of powerlessness,
hatred ofsel/. a hope that is insane, a wisdom that isfolly.62
The measures of Abraham's greatness, then, are conceived as extraor-
dinary capacities for love, hope, strength, and wisdom. Johannes mentions,
almost in passing, that Abraham hopes for what is humanly impossible,what
cannot be gained by will alone-in this case, the return of Isaac. And he con-
tinues by elaborating this virtue of hopefulness.
Faith and Yout11fu.l Hope
One might expect a jeremiad, a Job-like story of the suffering of this man at
the hands of God. Abraham "became a stranger in the land of promise," in
exile from the "land of his fathers. "63 God had promised Abraham a son;
through that son, he would become father of his race. Abraham waited, grew
old, and was childless. Yet he had faith, an uncanny hope and unsorrow in
circumstances where one's deepest desire seems thwarted.
Abraham's desire is for a son, for God's promise to be fulfilled. He
believed that "all the nations of the earth should be blessed in his seed."64 As
time passed, and the promise, to earthly eyes, seemed less and less likely to
be honored, he did not lament or despair.
Johannes then imagines some "counter-Abrahams," Abrahams failing
to have faith through lack of hope. One variation has Abraham withholding
the best he has. He begs God that Isaac's faith not be darkened, then raises
the knife, plunging it into his own breast. M Another variation has Abraham
doubting that Isaac will be returned. He is surprised by the appearance of the
ram. Rather than a fulfillment of the "impossible hope" that should have
been his faith, he considers Isaac's return an accident or "fluke."66 There is in
this section another "counter-Abraham" failing for lack of hope.67 Here the
ordeal is set earlier, when he is still childless.
After a number of years waiting patiently, Abraham reluctantly con-
cludes that he has in fact misunderstood the promise. God had not meant to
bless him with a son. Addressing God, Abraham thinks: "I will give up my
desire, it was my only desire, my blessed joy. My soul is upright, I bear no
secret grudge because you refused it."68 Offhand, this might look like a way
to continue, and to sustain one's faith in God. After all, Abraham's belief in
God is intact. He trusts in God, and willingly resigns the temporal. But this is
an unfaithful Abraham. Faith is not such belief and resignation: "for it is
great to give up one's desire [and retain a belief in God J, but greater to stick
to it having given it up; it is great to grasp hold of the eternal but greater to
stick to the temporal after having given it Up."69 Here is the fundamental con-
trast that underlies the argument of Fear and Trembling. the contrast between
resignation and faith.
Resignation gives up temporal expectations, love, and home. It is
mixed with grief and sorrow, with suffering and broken dreams. Faith, too,
gives up the expectation that temporally speaking anything like the promised
fulfillment is possible. But simultaneously it sticks to the expectation that
worldly fulfillment will nevertheless occur-by means that temporally
speaking seem absurd. The ordeal of faith is the struggle with this "absurdi-
ty," that one "sticks to the temporal after having given it up."
In "Preamble from the Heart," this ordeal is traced out in tenns of love.
Abraham will give up a possessive attachment to Isaac yet not dilute his
love. Giving up the temporal and getting it back is then a test of selflessness,
a test of care. In "Problemata," the ordeal of faith is traced out in tenus of its
challenge to reason, ethics, and speech. Love, reason, and affiliation at fust
appear lost-and then, uncannily, returned.
The contrast between a disillusioned "realism," or resignation, and a
hopeful unsorrowing faith is continued with a metaphor of age. What one
gives up but gets back in Johannes's lyric is now not love or Isaac or reason
but youth. Abraham was not "dull with grief," but he "believed, and there-
fore he was young; for he who [only in a shallow worldly sense] always
hopes for the best becomes old, deceived by life, and he who is always pre-
pared for the worst becomes old prematurely; but he who has faith, retains
eternal youth."70 Johannes distinguishes an outward miracle of faith-the
commonplace interpretation-from an inward wonder of faith-the religious
understanding of wonder or marvel.
Reflecting on the miracle that Abraham and Sarah were blessed in old
age with a child, he write'S:
Outwardly, the wonder of faith is in Abraham and Sarah's being [phys-

ically] young enough for it to happen according to their expectations;
in a deeper sense, the wonder of faith lies in Abraham and Sarah's
being young enough to wish, and in faith's having preserved their wish
and through it their youthfulness. 71
A faithful hope makes Abraham or Sarah young-not biologically, surely,

but spiritually. The miracle is not really that someone their age might be
blessed with a child. The deeper wonder is Abraham's capacity to spiritually
modulate his existence. Later, Johannes gives prominence to fear and trem-
bling. But here he sings a complementary theme, that faith embodies a
youthful hope and joy.
Like the poet who commemorates his hero, and through his song
makes a wasteland habitable, so Abraham, through faithful care and unsor-
rowing hope, transfigures what would otherwise be a senseless struggle with
"the raging elements of creation." It is a struggle with growing old, with los-
ing the chance for children, with losing one's child. And when the ordeal is
successfully passed, resignation is displaced by hopeful faith.
Temporality and Renewal
The first test of Abraham's faith is whether he can believe that in their old
age God's promise will be fulfilled. Johannes reminds us that this is followed
by a second test that seems to mock the first. Could Abraham believe that
even as God demanded Isaac, Isaac would be returned? And now for a few
pages in this "Speech in Praise," Johannes casts Abraham's ordeal of faith,
his ordeal of meaning, in the broadest possible terms. It is now seen as a
struggle with time.
"He had fought with that subtle power that invents everything, with
that watchful opponent that never takes a nap, with that old man who out-
lives everything-time itself. He had fought with it and kept his faith. Now
all the horrors of the struggle were to be concentrated in a moment."72 Deci-
phering the story of Abraham and Isaac is deciphering our temporal exis-
tence, articulating our immersion in time. "Temporality is what it all turns
on."73 Wrestling with time is wrestling with the enigmas of birth, death, and
change of self. It is wrestling with the enigmas of loss and renewal.
The issue Johannes raised at the start of his speech now returns. Is
there an "eternal consciousness," a spiritual foothold from which we can
manage, or be helped in managing, our struggle with time? Buttressed by the
presence of the poet's admiring words and the hero's worthy deeds, faith's
answer is Yes. And the time that eternity transforms and redeems is the span
of this life. "[HJe who has faith retains eternal youth."74 Sarah's faith kept
her yOllng. And if faith can keep age at bay, it also has impossible powers
over one's past, in fact, over one's own engendering. Whoever works, has
faith, "gives birth to his oWllfather."75
There is H vaguely blasphemous ring to this phrase. Is this the God-like
artist speaking, who can create even himself from nothingness? Or is the idea
that through faith, my self is given new birth, through the engendering power
of a new father? On this view, the father whose faithful work provides the
condition for his son's return, a new son, also provides the condition, it
seems, for newly being himself a son. Just as the ethical and Isaac are given
up and then returned, so now the father is returned, transfonned. 76 But how-
ever we read this enigmatic claim, that in faith one "gives birth to his father,"
we surely confront a wonder of faith, the marvel, forward and backward, of
faith's mastery of time!
A half-dozen pages from the end of Fear and Trembling, Johannes
returns to the theme of temporality and renewal as he meditates on the death
of Socrates. There he claims that Socrates becomes immortal before he dies.
He gains a kind of immortality in this life, an access to eternity that gives
him mastery in his struggle with time. 77 As he closes his "Speech in Praise,"
however, Johannes recalls a hero whose faith surpasses even Socrates':
Abraham had faith and had faith for this life. Yes, had his faith only
been for a future life it would indeed have been easier to cast every-
thing aside in order to hasten out of this world to which he did not
belong. But Abraham's faith was not of that kind. [I]t was for this life
that Abraham beIieved.1 8
The struggle with time and things preserved and perishing within it is one's
active, full responsibility. The strength of resignation assists in the battle
with loss, suffering, or death. But Abraham's strength is greater. By his own
hand he brings about the loss that threatens his love and hope. Yet alI the
while, and unlike Socrates, he maintains an uncanny hope for the return of
the world, in this life.
Johannes de silentio winds down his speech with the self-conscious-

ness with which he began. His is "the spirit of remembrance." In com memo-
ratioA of his hero, he must sing "round to everyone's door." "If he remains
thus true to his love, if he struggles night and day against the wiles of obliv-
ion, which would cheat him of his hero, then he has fulfilled his task, he is
united with the hero."'9 But how closely united? An aesthetic connection is
achieved through imagination rather than through action or passion. Can this
link redeem or transfonn the heart? Perhaps not poetic praise but romantic
love will be the better connection, the better clue to faith.
The poet admires, but recognizes that, as admirer, he lacks what his
hero possesses. Johannes is as always ambivalent about the solidity of the
ground from which he works. His has been an ordeal of meaning, a struggle
to rescue sense from senselessness. Johannes addresses the patriarch directly,
asking that Abraham "forgive him who would speak in your praise if he did
not do it correctly. "80 But whatever his failings in commemorating his hero,
or in the life from which his verse sings forth, the artist has not sunk so low
as those purveyors of the System who have not even a clue as to what the
task demands. For all his failings, the poet, we are told:
will never forget that you [Father Abraham] needed a hundred years to
get the son of your old age, against every expectation, that you had to
draw the knife before keeping Isaac; he will never forget that in one
hundred and thirty years you got no further than faith.BI
3
Ordeals of Love:
Preamble from the Heart
Love, after all, has its priests in the poets ....

But about faith, one hears not a word.
-Johannes de silentio·
To acknowledge affliction means saying to

oneself: "I may lose at any moment, through
the play of circumstances over which I have
no control, anything whatsoever I possess,
including those things which are so intimate-
ly mine that I consider them as being myself.
There is nothing that I might not lose."
-Simone WeiJ2
I can still save my soul so long as it is more

important for me that my love of God
should triumph in me than my worldly hap-
piness .... He who lacks this romanticism
has sold his soul.
-Johannes de silentio)
THE PREFACE, "AlTUNEMENT," and "Speech in Praise of Abraham" open

an imaginative moral and religious space within which discussion can
unfold. The ensuing "Problemata" set a number of dialectical questions. But
43
before tackling these questions, Johannes provides a lengthy "Preamble from

the Heart." That we have yet another preface-this the fourth-reminds us
once again that this is no all-embracing rationalist System Johannes is writ-
ing, but a lyrical dialectic, an imaginative heartfelt investigation.
"Attunement" nests tales within tales, making it difficult to know
when, and at what level, a tale really begins. This is in part a strategy to keep
us in the mood of open expectancy, wonder, and responsible interpretative
alertness. Delaying the start of Fear and Trembling by producing multiple
prefaces likewise guards against too rapid an assumption that we have found
the key, the start and finish, to Johannes's argument. The nearly always pre-
mature conviction that we have got it right, grasped the picture, whole, clear,
and fmished, is precisely the complacency and dogmatism that Kierkegaard
combats. 4
Johannes indulges his love of rhetorical techniques: parable, story,
oxymoronic juxtaposition ("the strength that is powerlessness"), poetic
depiction, and allusion to works in the literary tradition. In this respect, he
occupies an aesthetic position, a position at least partly construed as a posi-
tion of love: love of the sensuous, love of sentences, love of another.s In this
"Preamble from the Heart," Johannes introduces the lad in love with his
princess, the knights of faith and resignation, and the notion that faith is
belief held "on the strength of the absurd."
Hannay's rendering, "on the strength of the absurd" seems an improve-
ment on the more conventional "by virtue of the absurd," which can imply
too passive a relationship, as when X is true merely "by virtue of' the defmi-
tion of Y. "Strength" resonates well with the imagery of battle and struggle at
the heart of Johannes's depiction of Abraham's ordeal. And it provides the
fitting parallel: it is not by his own strength, but on the strength of the
absurd, that the faithful knight is empowered.
The idea of gaining faith, Isaac, one's love, or one's "princess" "on the
strength of the absurd" is not a justificatory dogma but a dialectical weapon
meant to break up dogma. to rattle the easy assumption that God's ways are
those of any respectable middle-class inhabitant of Danish Christendom. It is
also, as we will see, a description of how things seem to one caught in the
midst of a fundamental shift in moral-spiritual orientation. We find beneath
the polemic against rationalist complacency an exploration of human rela-
tionship, a lyrical evocation and dialectical analysis of separation and attach-
ment, of care and its display in grief, joy and welcome.
The lad and his princess are portrayed in a romantic story of unrequited
love. We are given another clue-if still only an ambiguous one-about Abra-
ham's faithful love of God and love ofIsaac. Although the lad-princess/Abra-
ham-Isaac analogy will be instructive, it is also imperfect. It may be, in fact,
that no analogy or explication, in Fear and Trembling or elsewhere, can give a
Preamble from the /leart 45
completely adequate account of faith. 6 The truths of faith are frustratingly

problematic. We grasp them, if at all, tentatively, uncertainly.
As the speakers in Plato's Symposium each approach their topic from a
new position, so we move in this multi-voiced inquiry from a speech in
praise of Abraham to a preamble celebrating love. Yet not quite a celebration.
For just as the poet's admiration is laced with pain at his mere beholding, so
"Preamble from the Heart" sketches what seems at fust to be largely an
unhappy love. Faith is sketched here as an ordeal of love.
The Knight and His Princess
In the overall scheme of Fear and Trembling, resignation is a transitional

stage between shallow unbelievers and heroic paragons of faith. Following
Johannes's procedure, I will often refer stereotypically to knights of faith or
resignation as men. But actually, JohaIUles knows better. As he says, "Knight-
hood makes no distinction between man and woman. ''7 And he allows that in
addition to tax gatherers, shopkeepers, and (most surprisingly) professors of
philosophy, "poor serving maids" can be such knights. At times he suggests,
invoking an equally untenable stereotype, that faith might come more easily
to women, as when he speaks of someone "sewing the shirt of infmite resigna-
tion" that protects them from sorrow. 8 But ultimately, as he says, distinctions
between knighthood's social types are "absolutely immaterial.''9
Occupying this transitional stage on the way to faith is "the knight of
infinite resignation." Although Johannes gives us several portraits one is cen-
tral and developed at length. A young lad falls in love with a princess, and
the whole content of his life consists in this love. Yet unfortunately, nothing
works out. His love caIUlot be realized. It cannot be translated from aspira-
tion or ideal into reality. How does he face this pain, this ordeal?
The slaves of misery, the frogs in life's swamp, naturally exclaim

"Such love is foolishness. The rich brewer's widow is just as good and
sound a match." Let them croak away undisturbed in the swamp. This
is not the manner of the knight of infinite resignation, he does not
renounce the love, not for all the glory in the world. 10
Though caught up in an unhappy love, the youth is not shaken by cir-

cumstance or opinion. Someone less knightly, with less integrity or courage,
would be swayed by the mediocre "slaves of misery." What is their
miserable advice? If love for the princess is uruealistic, they say, it should be
given up and forgotten. Soon enough, there will be someone else to love. But
the knight scorns such "reasonable" counsel. Though it cannot be "translated
into reality," he guards his love nobly. It is "the whole content of his life"
(even if only an "ideal content").11 This knight:
will have the strength to concentrate .the whole of his life's content and
the meaning of reality in a single wish. If a person lacks this concentra-
tion, this focus, his soul is disintegrated from the start and then he will
never corne to make the movement [of resignation], he will act pruden-
tially in life like those capitalists who invest their capital in every kind
of security so as to gain on the one what they lose on the other.l 2
The lad's life is concentrated in the "single wish" (or commitment) to love
his princess. To renounce that love would be to lose the defming, stabilizing
center of self and world. All would be shattered. This characterization of the
knight of resignation revives the critique of market ideology begun in the
Preface and revived in the Epilogue. It launches a wonderful play on the con-
trast between investing in capitalist versus faithful "securities."
To invest concern over a number of interests without a unifying focus
will disperse and dilute one's identity, one's integrity. This dispersal of con-
cern, "hedging one's bets," means that emotional "investments" will be cau-
tious, tentative, a matter of prudential calculation. What fails here will be
made up for there. This utilitarian or capitalist approach lets the worth of
relationship be set by market conditions, by collective impersonal judge-
ments of the public at large. How escape this sad parody of personal rapport
or intimacy?
Johannes believes that interests must be focused and focused on an
appropriate object. A rich and fulfilling life requires "an absolute," or "abso-
lutes," around which its "relative" pursuits can be orientedY But doesn't the
capitalist concentrate his life around a single commitment or "absolute": the
desire that his "personal assets" outweigh his losses? Two considerations
dilute this criticism.
Johannes addresses a populace whose behavior and avowed belief are
at odds. Behaviorally, they show an overriding commitment to gains as mea-
sured by commercial market standards. Yet there is stilI pervasive lip service
to non-commercial values: to family, friends, religion or civic service. In the-
ory, God or love or good should be supreme; in fact quite lesser values reign.
So there is either dishonesty about the importance of moral or spiritual val-
ues or else a confusion all around, a weakening dispersal of interests with no
clear consciousness of their proper ordering. Second, insofar as a capitalist
commitment becomes transparently dominant. it is open to obvious criticism.
The contrast between a crudely ultilitarian calculation of benefits to
self, on the one hand, and, on the other, the reflective weighing of deeper and
incommensurable ideals and values is sensitively explored in a classic essay
Preamble from the lIeart 47
by Charles Taylor.!" In "Responsibility for Self," Taylor calls the person who
can only decide his self-defining course in terms of a single pleasure/pain.
cost/benefit criterion a "weak evaluator." "Strong evaluators," in contrast.
organize their lives and make self-defining decisions partially in terms of
cost-benefit calculations. But more important, they also articulate themselves
in terms of qualitatively distinct and often incommensurable values or ideals.
In Sources of the Self. Taylor calls these ideals than which nothing deeper
lies and around which a life is oriented. "absolutes."u
Honor. Love. or Justice, Civic Duty or Family Life, are "absolutes"
with familiar names. Although they can be reflectively weighed, their rela-
tive importance answers to no single standard of measurement. Not only will
persons differ among themselves about the relative significance or power of
one "absolute" or ideal as against another. Within a single life, the way they
are ordered or ranked and how they are seen to bear on a particular issue can
seem a difficult process to describe or understand. If the relative importance
of what we care about is often transparent, just as often it will be only vague-
ly sensed and elude easy description. In any case, these several "absolutes"
cannot be cashed out in a quantitative single-standard of costs and benefits.
We asked whether a "capitalist commitment" could be the defming
center of one's life. But this is to ask whether we can remain only "weak"
evaluators. Can we take relationships to God, friends. family. or the Good as
items of merely quantitative value? Are these relationships "investments,"
"securities" that fluctuate in worth-while we, no doubt, attentively manipu-
late our "stock? Do we payout our "moral" concern in measurable incre-
ments, working always to maximize a profitable exchange? Not if our goal is
to become strong evaluators, with complex selves to shape and discover.
Johannes mocks would-be "errand runners" of the spiriLI6 Life is more
than a prettified stock exchange. The knight of infinite resignation enters the
battle against such capitulation to commerce. He is no opportunist, no specu-
latol'in paying relationships. In love with his princess, the knight of resigna-
tion takes his love as a deep and sustaining value, not to be casually dis-
persed over the field of possible investments.
He is distinguished by his courage. He has independence of mind, is
unswayed by "what others would think" about the "foolishness" of his love.
He is "self-sufficient." However deep his love, he is free from dependent
need: "He has grasped the deep secret that even in loving another one should
be sufficient unto oneself.... it is only lower natures who find the law for
their actions in someone else, the premises for their actions outside them-
selves."j7 This self-sufficiency is described later as a protective shirt "sewn
in tears," the shirt of infinite resignation. "The secret in life is that everyone
must sew it for himself; and the remarkable thing is that a man can sew it just
as well as a woman. "18 Self-sufficiency and courage also appear in his refusal
to be self-deceived about his loss. He is completely candid with himself. He

does not run from the pain, or pretend that after all perhaps he didn't love
her, or that the impossible can somehow be gotten around.
Unlike the "slaves of misery," the knight of resignation advances along
the path toward faith. But what accounts for his specific title? Why a knight
of resignation? Johannes de silentio speaks abstractly of "renouncing the
fmite," "gaining an eternal consciousness," and "transforming temporal love
into an eternal one."19
Finite/Infinite, Temporal/Eternal
Kierkegaard has little interest in objective, physical descriptions of Nature.

His concern is with personal, existential perspectives. These perspectives
articulate the moral, aesthetic, and spiritual meanings and values that orient
and inform a human life. Like more obvious ideals or "absolutes"-Honor or
Love----concepts like the eternal or the infinite also shape and energize inter-
pretive outlooks. They are windows that frame evaluative positions through
which we meet the world in action and understanding. Such existential per-
spectives reflect a particular way things seem to a given individual, regard-
less how widely the perspective may be shared. They are the way things
seem at a particular time in personal development. These subjective, person-
ally "owned" positions can be located within a larger, more "objective" his-
torical time of community and culture. But as' Bernard Williams has it, in
matters of orienting a life: "I must deliberate from what [and where) I am.
Truthfulness requires trust in that."20 In the same vein, Thomas Nagel avers:
"the seductive appeal of objective reality depends on a mistake. It is not the
given. Sometimes ... the truth is not found by traveling as far away from
one's personal perspective as possible. "21 The personal speciticity of such a
perspective is a life-requirement.
A concept like the eternal figures in Kierkegaard's existential, subjec-
tive perspectives. It then evokes a context of practical, personal concern. Its
elaboration spins a web of interpretative narration to capture and display its
meaning. We cultivate imaginative responsiveness to the way meanings open
up within a life, to their resonances within a real or fictive individual's expe-
rience. The utterly objective "view from nowhere," in Thomas Nagel's apt
phrase, existentially gets us nowhere. 22
What would it be like to be caught up entirely in the hourly whirl of
things, imprisoned by the press of time, never gaining a vantage point out-
side of, and looking over, the frantic temporal flux? The story of faith. as we
have seen. is a story of struggle with temporal existence. the search for sav-
ing meanings in an unstable. cyclical world. For the knight of resignation, to
Preamble from the J/eart 49
gain "eternal consciousness" would be to gain a vantage point free from the
constricting push and pull of the many petty things that shape the ordinary
flow of time.
Finite and infinite are similar perspective-defining contrasts. One
enmeshed in the finite would be attached only to particular, worldly things,
blind to ideals that overarch particulars, or to totalities (such as Nature or
Creation) from which particulars separate or emerge. One would then lack
access to soul, spirit, or God, "absolute objects," as Hegel called them-and
much else besides: for example, freedom, morality, or hope!2l In making the
"movement of infmity," the knight of resignation wins some freedom from
the push and pull of worldly things. In touch with liberating "infmite" totali-
ties, ideals, or "absolutes" like God or spirit, he gains some leverage, some
advantage, over the weight of petty attachment.
A full treatment of these contrasts between temporal and eternal, finite
and infmite, would take us to Sickness Unto Death. where Kierkegaard (or
"Anti-Climacus") actually defines the self as a relationship to these contrast-
ing polar factors, to the relationship between fmite and infinite, eternal and
temporal, freedom and necessity.24 But perhaps enough has been said to give
us a sense of how these abstractions can function within a personal, existen-
tial perspective.
The knight's tie to his princess is the unifying focus of his identity. The
loss of this anchor reverberates throughout his existence. He will lose orien-
tation, meaning and a sense of reality. But he is no ordinary youth. In fact, he
is a knight. distinguished by exceptional strength, skill, and courage. So the
loss of the fmite is not utterly shattering. Though he has lost rapport with the
princess, something remains.
In renouncing the princess, the knight discovers (or generates) a new
perspective. His life is no longer focused by concern for a fmite individual.
His standpoint is now outside the flux of petty, worldly things. It represents
the possibility of surviving the crushing loss of the princess, a point of lever-
age from which the old frames of experience can be abandoned. The loss
now is only partial-not the utter loss of point of view itself. In this new-
found "eternal consciousness," the Iaiight discovers "peace and repose and
consolation in the pain. "25
Hardening oneself to sorrow by renouncing particular intense relation-
ships resembles the stoic reaction to a world of pain and trouble. One seeks
immunity from the disturbances of disappointment, anger or guilt. By with-
drawing care, the self shields itself from injury or affliction. By renouncing
the fmite, one defeats its power to provoke passionate, painful reaction. But
unlike the stoic who extirpates his love or attachment to the world, the knight
of resignation transforms it. His "object of worship," his grounding and ori-
enting absolute, is now "the eternal being."
Movements of resignation are almost successful. But unfortunately a

haunting shadow of concern for worldly things remains. The knight's glance
at the fInite is sorrowful, perhaps a trace bitter. 26 But there is also warmth and
vitality in his demeanor, for this knight's 'resignation is not the rather cold
stoic commitment to an ideal of freedom from attachment and reactive emo-
tion. The God or absolute he embraces is a God of love, a love "totally
incommensurate with the fmite.''27
Through resignation, then, the knight wins a threefold transfiguration
of existence. TransfIgured fust is the tie between the knight and his princess:
An earthly, fmite love becomes an idealized, eternal love. Then, the object of
love is transfigured: A love of the princess becomes a love of God. 28 And
fmally, the lover himself becomes transfIgured: His integrity now is based
not on a fmite tie to another, but on his "eternal consciousness," on his grasp
of a point of leverage on the finite.
Resignation vs. Faith
The knight of resignation has made a considerable advance on the "slaves of

misery," the burghers, bishops, or thinkers who take faith to be easily won,
something naturally acquired by dint of one's parentage, say, or place of
birth. He knows independence and does not "fInd the law for his action in
others."29 Even greater, however, is the knight offaith's achievement. Resig-
nation is but a halfway house, not a destination. Something is surely wrong
with wholesale renunciation of the fInite, a defect promptly corrected by the
knight of faith. Like his worthy predecessor, this new entry in the lists of bat-
tle renounces the finite. But strange to say, he wins it back again. He gains an
eternal love, but temporal loves are his as well. He is at home in the eternal,
but happy also in the midst of the world.
Abraham is a central prototype of faith. 30 For the moment, however,
we will consider another faithful figure. In "Preamble from the Heart,"
Johannes imagines a comic encounter with a knight hardly resembling Abra-
ham at all--or so it seems. This unassuming gentleman looks for all the
world like a tax collector:
Here he is. The acquaintance is struck, I am introduced. The moment I

first set eyes on him, I thrust him away, jump back, clasp my hands
together and say half-aloud, "Good God, is this the person, is it really
him? He looks like a tax-gatherer!" Yet it is indeed him. I come a little
closer to him, watch the least movement in case some small incongru-
ous optical telegraphic message from the infinite should appear, a
glance, expression, gesture, a sadness, a smile betraying the infinite by
Preamble from the fleart 51
its incongruity with the finite. No! I examine him from top to toe in
case there should be some crack through which the infinite peeped out.
No! He is solid through and through.3l
Being at home in the fmite, the knight looks ordinary enough. There is in his
demeanor no betrayal of the infinite, of a soul withdrawn or distanced. But
however pedestrian he may seem in appearance, Johannes is sure it is a
knight offaith that he encounters.
[He] belongs altogether to the world, no petit bourgeois belongs to it

more. One detects nothing of that strangeness and superiority that mark
the knight of the infmite. This man takes pleasure, takes part in every-
thing, and whenever one catches him occupied with something his
engagement has the persistence of the worldly person whose soul is
wrapped up in such things .... if one didn't know him. it would be
impossible to set him apart from the rest of the crowd. 32
Kierkegaard is often saddled with the view that because the knight of
faith cannot be readily distinguished from the tax-collector, merchant, or
Philistine, no one but the faithful person herself can know if she is of faith.
But both the preceding passage and the one that follows show that
Kierkegaard did not believe it was impossible to distinguish the knight of
faith from others. The difference can be perceived by the attentive observ-
er-though no explicit criteria for discrimination is offered for the uninitiat-
ed or skeptical. And of course the risk of misperception, of misidentification
remains, even for the most refmed religious sensibility.33
The knight's delight in earthly things. his joy, is the token of his having
welcomed the fmite. But how, then, is he different from a similarly ordinary
person who has never undertaken the difficult movement of resignation?
JohaRnes provides this knight a delightfully banal test. When set against the
pathos of Abraham's ordeal, this "trial" can only be taken as comic relief:
Towards evening he goes home, his step tireless as a postman's. On the

way it occurs to him that his wife will surely have some special little
wann dish for his return, for example roast head of lamb with vegeta-
bles .... As it happens he hasn't a penny, and yet he flflTIly believes his
wife has that delicacy waiting for him .... If his wife doesn't have the
dish, curiously enough. he is exactly the same.><
He is not unsettled or disappointed when his dish is "impossible" (as

the lad's love, earlier, was impossible). This is the sign of his renouncing the
finite. But he also shows a delightful anticipation of his meal, even if it
should be taken away. And this is the sign of his harmony with the fmite.
This "movement" toward the fmite after having given it up, this readiness to
accept the world back, on new tenns, is a "movement" his identically pedes-
trian unfaithful twin cannot make.
The not-yet-faithful merchant will be embarrassed or thrown off stride
by the world's unfolding this way rather than that. But not the shop-keeping
knight of faith. He welcomes, and is ready to welcome, all. He is unper-
turbed by change. Yet unlike the knight of resignation, he has in no way
diminished his care for even the least particularity of his existence.
Abstractly, Johannes de silentio characterizes the shopkeeping knight
in this way:
this man has made, and is at every moment making, the movement of
infmity. He drains in infinite resignation the deep sorrow of existence,
he knows the bliss of infmity, he has felt the pain of renouncing every-
thing, whatever is most precious in the world, and yet to him fmitude
tastes just as good as to one who has never known anything higher, for
his remaining in the finite bore no sense of a stunted, anxious training,
and still he has this sense of being secure to take pleasure in it, as
though it were the most certain thing of all. And yet, and yet the whole
earthly form he presents is a new creation on the strength of the
absurd. 35
Both the knight of resignation and the knight of faith make "movements of
infinity," gain an "eternal consciousness" that inures them to change. Being
resigned, it would not hurt the young lad to learn that his beloved has mar-
ried another.36 But Johannes also implies that the youth would be embar-
rassed were love suddenly to become possible again-for he has written her
off, temporally speaking.37
It is precisely in this respect that the lover lacks faith. For in addition to
the "movement of infinity" or resignation, a knight of faith can make the
move back into the world, fmding the taste of the finite good. Unlike the per-
son resigned, he would happily accept the beloved's return. He has not sealed
himself off from joy. He knows more than resignation's withdrawal and grief.
If he can understand the knight of resignation, Johannes is frankly baf-
fled by the knight of faith. How can one renounce fmite life, yet embrace it
in joy? With his flair for the dramatic he speaks of faith as a capacity for "the
impossible." Faith achieves its goal "on the strength of the absurd." It is not
on his own strength, but through mysterious empowerment from elsewhere
that he succeeds in this "second movement," in being fully ready for the
return of the finite. This empowerment is from God, and "for God, all things
are possible." 38
Johannes has no interest in clearing up this tangle of paradox. What a

delicious affront to those "reasonable people" who think the path to faith is
wide, well-marked and smoothly paved-no doubt traversable in a day! And
how easy, for them. to get even further than faith! Johannes speaks of faith
acquired "on the strength of the absurd" partly to deride such complacency.
But there is more to his invoking "the absurd" than a thin rhetorical ratio-
nale. There are specific complexities of faith that prompt Johannes to appeal
to "the absurd," or a capacity for "the impossible."
Proprietary Claim and Selfless Concern
If we have cared for a fine old watch and suddenly it is stolen, we may feel
not only sorrow but anger. Care is linked to proprietary rights. It gets
entwined with possessiveness and a capacity for hurt, should possession-
related rights be violated. One way to cancel this capacity for hurt is to
renounce our proprietary claims. If we disown our possessions we may be
saddened if they are lost or taken but we will be spared the added pain of
knowing that our rights have been violated,
Much of the stoic hardening of the self to disappointment and change
can be interpreted as narrowing the area of proprietary claim. A person is
rich, one could say, in proportion to that which he is willing to give Up.39
Giving something up, we cannot be hurt by its being taken away.
Johannes speaks of the knight of resignation as "renouncing his claim"
on the princess, "renouncing the whole of temporality;" he "infmitely
renounces claim to the love which is the content of his life,"40 Renouncing all
claim to the princess, he saves himself from hurt should she marry another
and from hurt coming from the fmite generally. But the fact that the youth
would find the return of the princess an embarrassment indicates that the
pric6 he has paid for diminished hurt is diminished care. He would be embar-
rassed by her return because in some sense he has ceased to care: "he pays
no further finite attention to what the princess does. "41
But not all cases of love or care are tied up with proprietary claim. I
may enjoy and warmly anticipate the appearance of a sparrow at my feeder.
Yet I would claim no rights over this object of my enjoyment. The matter of
its life and death is something over which I have no claim, Of course, I
would feel indignant were someone maliciously to injure it. But in the course
of things, the sparrow will go its way. Meanwhile, I will adjust myself to its
goings and comings.
A concern that foregoes proprietary claim one could call a selfless con-
cern.42 Such concern or love would be care entirely distinct from the asser-
tion of rights-unless one wanted to speak of the right of the object cared for
to its own independence. As we have seen, the connections between love,

weaning from dependency, and conferring independence run deep in Fear
and Trembling. 43 My joy at the return of the sparrow need be no less for my
lacking proprietary claim over it; and my care need be no less for my lacking
bitterness or indignation, should it be lost forever.
We can now see how the knight of faith can both renounce and enjoy
the fmite. He sees or knows in his bones that renouncing all claims on the
fmite is not renouncing all care for it. The knight may be Abraham, tax-col-
lector, mother, or serving maid. In any case, she is at home and takes delight
in the fmite. She cares for the worldly with a selfless care, for she has given
up all proprietary claim, all vested or egoistic expectation. The knight of res-
ignation, on the other hand, cannot distinguish, blurs together, these sorts of
concern. The lad's care for the princess is sadly diminished as he renounces
his claim. To him, it seems impossible that one might renounce all claim and
yet in a worldly sense still love. For the lad as for Johannes himself, only on
"the strength of the absurd," through a capacity for "the impossible," could
one both resign and preserve one's love.
Receptivity and Return
The knight of faith retains an openness to joy and to the possibility of love
that the knight of resignation sorely lacks. In a way that combines admiration
and self-pity, speaking now as a knight of resignation, Johannes reflects on
the lucky one who has faith:
By my own strength I can give up the princess, and I shall be no sulker,

but shall find joy and peace and repose in my pain; but with my own
strength I cannot get her back again, for all that strength is precisely
what I use to renounce my claim on her. But by faith, says that mar-
velous knight, by faith, you will get her on the strength of the absurd. 44
Having renounced all claim to the princess (but not all care for her), the
faithful lover is ready to welcome her back. He has the strength, courage, or
faith to say, "I shall get her on the strength of the absurd." But he cannot
force or coerce her return. Through an open readiness to receive her, but-
tressed by the faith that he will get her back, he welcomes her, if she is given.
The knight of resignation, using all his strength for renunciation, lacks faith
that love is still possible. He blurs his renunciation. Care as well as claim is
renounced, leaving him in no position to warmly receive the princess, were
she miraculously to be given.
The knight of faith works to get the princess back, then, only in the
sense that he guarantees that the ultimate obstacle to her return-lack of

receptivity-will be absent. He does not by his own strength effect her return,
but provides the required condition: He is ready in welcome. He does not
believe that he can get around the impossible. But neither does he believe
that what is impossible for him is impossible for God. In Johannes's view
each person gets, spiritually speaking, exactly what she or he deserves. 4s So
he has confidence that once the lover has put himself in complete readiness
for the princess, in due time she cannot but be given.
The Absurd
It is not on the strength of reason or calculation, and not on the knight's

spiritual or moral prowess, but on the strength of the absurd that the
beloved will be acquired. Invoking "the absurd" works polemically against
a complacent rationalist optimism. Its rosy confidence in unlimited human
potential and collective self-sufficiency mixes at least three distinct and sep-
arable elements.
There is the philosophical idea that reality can be captured without
remainder by some essentially simple conceptual scheme, a System with no
dark spots before which reason must confess its ignorance. Then there is the
market-inspired idea that any momentous decision can be managed by calcu-
lation of benefits and burdens. Thus, even with love, marriage, or faith, one
sets out to determine one's best bet. And there is also the self-aggrandizing
idea that faith is an early, childish phase in the steady upward development
of human rationality, a phase now easily understood-and dismissed! Still
other considerations lie behind Johannes's embrace of "the absurd."46
Johannes de silentio, like all but one of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms, is
someone placed outside the circle of biblical faith.47 He is at most a man of
resigAation who admires the paradigm, but cannot, as he says, understand
what he admires. In the Postscript. Johannes Climacus calls this a weakness
in Johannes de silentio's argument: How can he admire what he can't grasp
(or, on other accounts, even reliably perceive)?48 But do we always compre-
hend the sky or song or landscape we unreservedly admire? Can we 'always
give an outward mark, a perceivable sign, that to the uninitiated will readily
distinguish greatness from its counteneit? Just this sort of "paradox" or
"absurdity" is for Kierkegaard a prod to philosophical reflection. The invoca-
tion of the absurd is not an abnegation of thinking but its instigation.
By his own account Johannes cannot make the discriminations open to
someone within the circle of faith. This raises the possibility that the knight
of faith might reject the idea that he will get the princess back only "on the
strength of the absurd." At the least, it opens the possibility that the absurd is
not prominent or salient in his sense of things. In Kierkegaard's directly reli-

gious works, the concepts of "the paradox" or "the absurd" appear hardly at
all. Perhaps these terms describe faith only as it seems "from the outside" to
one approaching faith, to a merely aesthetic or dialectical author. 49 Because
the poet-narrator lacks the conceptual-experiential repertoire available to the
marvelous figure he venerates, the knight of faith appears, to the poet. to
have acquired faith "on the strength of the absurd."
Johannes, or the youth in love with his princess, or a stoic self in resigna-
tion cannot discriminate giving up all claim to the princess from giving up all
care for her. They believe (falsely) that the knight of faith has given up a/l care
(in his renunciation) and yet still cares (in his faith)--an absurdity indeed! In
addition, there is the poet-narrator's understandable sense that the knight of
faith is involved in some sort of logical contradiction. The faithful knight
believes that "with God all things are possible." He has hope that his love will
be returned. Yet he also knows that in worldly terms she is lost. Hope is not a
calculation of outcomes about which one might decline or accept a given
risk-say, as one might risk capital, "hoping" for a good return. Nor is hope an
optimism or pessimism about such outcomes. In worldly terms, the princess is
lost, but hope gives one strength to envisage unworldly possibilities, and to be
ready to accept even those wild possibilities one cannot now envision.
So faith believes-impossibly, says silentio--both that the princess is
lost (a belief that separates the knight of resignation from those not yet
resigned, who embrace a shallow optimism) and that she will be returned (a
belief that separates the knight of faith from the knight of resignation). Some
seekers will partially understand what they have not yet quite attained. What
now appears to Johannes (and to most inquirers this side of faith) as a wild
hope or an unintelligible contradiction in beliefs can be understood as a com-
plex test of care.
A surface absurdity remains: Love is and is not possible; the princess
will and will not be returned. But these conflicting beliefs do not simply can-
cel each other out. A kind of deep structure opens up to ease the logical
offence. They function as separate measures of commitment and care. Care is
measured as a person's capacity for grief and dread. and as a person's
capacity for joy. welcome. and delight.
The belief that love is impossible (or that the princess is lost) measures
a capacity to acknowledge real loss. without which one's care would be
exposed as shallow and weak. The capacity to feel deep loss-to care-is
authenticated as the youth does face the loss of his princess, rather than flee
or evade the fact. The belief that love is possible (or that the princess will be
returned) measures a capacity for joyful welcome of what may be given: a
capacity to acknowledge the blessings of existence, appearing wondrously.
without warning or rationale.
An inability to rejoice for unbidden gifts marks a cramped and guarded

care. Denying the possibility of joy (through bitterness, resignation or "com-
mon sense") depletes and poisons the well-springs of care. If the lad could
move beyond resignation, if he could envision the unworldly possibility of
the princess's return, such hope would show that he had remained open to an
"impossibility": that occasions for worldly joy had not been utterly erased,
even in his moment of grief.
The "slaves of misery" fail the test of care as capacity-for-grief by
refusing to acknowledge that a person could feel the sort of deep loss felt by
the youth. But these unbelievers also fail the test of care as capacity-for-joy.
Johannes showers contempt on their bland optimism, their fear of sorrow,
contrasting it with real hope and joy, real resignation and grief. The hopeful
confidence of the knight of faith is not "the pitiable lukewarm apathy that
thinks, 'there's surely no need, it's not worth worrying before the time,' the
miserable hope that says, 'Who knows what may happen, it's possible certain-
ly'-these distortions belong to life's wretchedness, and these infinite resig-
nation has already infmitely scorned."50 Having passed the test of care as
grief, the faithful knight moves beyond resignation by facing the test of care
as redeeming joy. This is the marvel of faith's "double movement," a condi-
tion that we may admire and seek, however "impossible" it may be to attain.
Depth and complexity arise in the self through the interplay of these
opposed vectors of care: joy is tempered by grief; loss, tempered by hopeful
receptivity. Johannes recognizes that the requirement that these conflicting
capacities be measured simultaneously may result in the appearance of a per-
son capable of neither-the capacity for one, as it were, undermining at that
moment the capacity for the other. As he puts it: "Those who wear the jewel
of faith can easily disappoint, for their exterior bears a remarkable similarity
to what infmite resignation itself as well as faith scorns, namely the bour-
geois Philistine."51 But faith takes this risk-that embodying this opposition
of vfilctors, this "contradiction," merely muddies the waters and allows one to
pass for a Philistine.
The "absurdity" that seems to entangle the knight of faith exemplifies a
more general point concerning logic and emotion. Authenticity may not just
permit but require that we acknowledge the simultaneous presence of "con-
tradictory" emotions. One can feel both love and hate of a demanding mas-
ter, both disappointment and delight at the failure of a colleague, both anger
and relief at a snub. Dialectical analysis can clear the air of outright contra-
diction lurking here. But it is also true that conflicting feelings are often
"illogically" intertwined. And in advance of unraveling their "illogical" tan-
gles, personal integrity can require that one first fully acknowledge the
painful ambivalence and tensed complexity of one's emotional or tempera-
mental stance.52
So when JohaIUles invokes "the absurd" there is an element of polemi-

cal exaggeration: He is averse to an overweening rationalistic optimism. In
addition, from his standpoint, the contrast between renunciation of claim and
renunciation of care collapses: Absurdly, it appears that the knight of faith
cares and yet has given up all care; and without care, how can he hope to
have the princess returned? Finally, from a logical standpoint, the knight
appears to hold contradictory beliefs: He both will and will not have the
princess returned.
JohaIUles avers that with God, "all things are possible." 53 It is not that
God can both return and not return the princess. The capacity of faith is nei-
ther the capacity to believe God capable of two mutually exclusive actions,
nor the capacity to believe two incompatible propositions. It concerns a
capacity for care. Not only in religious faith, but also in the poetic faith
implicit in expansion of our aesthetic sensibilities, care must be plumbed,
and plumbed in opposed directions. So too, the faith that accompanies any
radical growth or change of self. Care will be tested both as dread of what is
about to be lost and as welcome of the new and uncertain, about to be
received. These temperament- or character-defming beliefs or emotions will
be ambiguously mixed and must be acknowledged as mixed. Craving an
early peace or cognitive simplicity, we are lured to deny one or the other vec-
tor in this tensed ambivalence. But faith is not just love. It is an ordeal of
love, a struggle to meet the impossible demands of care.
Abraham: Dread and Joy
Abraham's world has revolved not around a princess but around Isaac and
God. Suddenly that world is put at risk. He must visibly and dramatically
reenact, as it were, the movements of resignation and faith. His willingness
to sacrifice his son betokens his renunciation of all claim to Isaac. Yet that
sacrifice is predicated on his unceasing love. He has not lost care for the
finite; he is ready at every moment to welcome him back.
Johannes writes that the task of faith is "to live happily and joyfully ...
every moment on the strength of the absurd, every moment to see the sword
hanging over the loved one's head, and yet to fmd not repose in the pain of
resignation, but joy on the strength of the absurd."s4 Of course, Abraham
does not just see the sword hanging over the beloved; he is asked to wield it.
But what will it sever? And how can this be an occasion for joy? How does
this "two-edged sword" both "slay and save"? S5
From the standpoint of faith, the pain of renunciation is the loss of the
proprietary claim, the sense that one has ultimate dispositionary rights over
the object of one's deepest devotion. Abraham's willingness to sacrifice
Preamble from lire Hearl 59
Isaac shows in the most dramatic way imaginable his severing of the posses-
sive tie. To Johannes. and perhaps even to Abraham. it will seem dangerous-
ly close to losing Isaac outright. Yet Abraham has faith that Isaac will not be
lost. In severing the tie. a selfless care is renewed and released.
God will demand the son's sacrifice to halt the father's "immortality
project"-the misguided but all-too-human attempt to master time and death
through "possessing" the son. and the son's sons. to eternity. 56 In demanding
Isaac, God curbs this ultimate will-to-power. The idea is not just to humble
Abraham, to knock him down. The story depicts, at least in embryo. a
father's ordeal of liberation and fulfillmentY "Attunement" puts the task of
faith as a struggle to set mother and child free within the bonds of love. Here
the motif returns: how to grant fathers and sons the separateness-in-Iove each
will need and deserve.
The journey to Mt. Moriah describes an ordeal of love. Although our
author tries us with the dizzying view that Abraham may be murderous, he
also claims unequivocally that at no point does Abraham diminish his love.
Without such selfless care, "every thought of offering Isaac would not be a
trial, but a temptation."SB This love is "a precondition without which the
whole affair becomes an act of wickedness."'9 A murderer aims to get rid of
someone. 60 But at every moment, Abraham is ready to welcome Isaac back:
"he received Isaac back with joy, really heartfelt joy ... he needed no time for
preparation, no time to adjust himself to finitude and its joy."61 Never does he
relax his care.
A ritual such as sacrifice is an outward expression for an inward act.
Undoing possessiveness excludes self-pity, the sense that one is merely a
passive victim of pain. Abraham cannot chalk up his loss-if it occurs-to
some cosmic necessity or tragic fate. He does not merely live through that
suffering, as he would had God just snatched his son away. He is an active
and inward participant in this ordeal, a co-initiator of his suffering .
• Johannes believes that his contemporaries sidestep the self-imposed
pain of sacrifice. By remembering only that Isaac was returned. the difficulty
is brushed aside. So Johannes resolves to force it into view: "If I myself were
to talk about him, I would first depict the pain of the trial. For that I would
suck all the fear. distress and torment out of the father's suffering. like a
leech. in order to describe all that Abraham suffered, while still believing. "62
But there is more to this ordeal than pain, for faith involves not "repose in
the pain of resignation," but "living happily and joyfully." Abraham is not
that unlike the jaunty tax man. He delights in finite, worldly life.
Abraham's unceasing love of Isaac betokens a joy in Isaac's existence
and in worldly life as a whole. He does not succumb to hatred or bitter resent-
ment of God. The paths of suicide or despair are not his. 61 In "Attunement"
Johannes imagined Abraham getting Isaac back. but being so embittered by
God's request that he was thereafter unable to care. In another alternative, he

has Abraham plunging the knife into his own breast. But these are not ver-
sions of faith. Acknowledging the inexpungable facts of parting and loss,
Abraham's joy, interwoven with fear and trembling, is present inwardly as his
capacity to afftrm existence through and through. This capacity for joy is
linked to his faith that Isaac will be returned, and returned in this life-a wild
hope that both presupposes and expresses deep acceptance and delight. 64
Johannes cannot understand the sense in which Abraham might believe
that "with God, all things are possible." For him, the phrase either signals the
shabby optimism of a confused and pitiful hope or shows that, "on the
strength of the absurd," God can return Isaac to Abraham's care, even though
Abraham has severed all care. But stepping back, we see that Abraham mer-
its Isaac's return by maintaining a selfless love. He sustains his care even
through the threat of its loss in the painful severing of proprietary claim and
in the crisis of joy and grief that attends all fundamental change.
This saving assurance that Isaac will be returned is not a rational basis
for faith. It is not optimism based on a calculation of one's likely worldly ben-
efits. Nor can there be any thought on Abraham's part of deserving or earning
his hoped-for reward. As Johannes Climacus puts it in the Postscript: "It is
necessary to risk everything, to invest absolutely everything in the venture, to
desire absolutely the highest telos; but it is also necessary to prevent this abso-
lute passion [faith or hope] from acquiring even the color of earning or
deserving an eternal happiness."6s Later, we explore the possibility that a
ground for one's identity might include a stance of hopeful receptivity. But
then hope is less a ground for faith than its fundamental expression and dis-
play. It is the existential counterweight to resignation's dread and grief.
Abraham's openness, his receptivity to the possibility of return even as
he gives up all rights in the matter, substantiates his faith and makes fitting
his reward:
Here there prevails an eternal and divine order, here it does not rain
upon the just and the unjust alike, here the sun does not shine on both
good and evil, here only one who works gets bread, and only one who
knows anguish finds rest, only one who descends to the underworld
saves the loved one, only one who draws the knife gets Isaac. 66
Here, Johannes reflects on a divine order that will reward Abraham. As spec-
tators placed comfortably with the poet who beholds, we are permitted a
thought forhidden the father of faith.
"Preamble from the Heart" reveals the vulnerability and deep sustain-
ing power of love-its power to survive the threat or reality of devastating
Preamble from the Heart 61
loss. The ordeal of love is a preliminary if prominent sketch of faith. If it per-

suades. we will have taken a stride along Johannes's path. the lyrical. dialec-
tical evocation of faith. We will have glimpsed the fme-structure of care and
attachment. grief and selflessness. courage. risk. and change of self-venera-
ble concerns as old as the pursuit of wisdom itself. however frequently we
find them cast aside.
4
Ordeals of Reason and Ethics:
Dilemmas and Subjectivity
Their eyes at the same time see and weep,

construe and are borne away. It is not an
Hegelian attitude.
-Martha Nussbaum I
I must deliberate from what I am. Truthful-

ness requires trust in that.
-Bernard Williams 2
THE ANALOGIES OF POETIC admiration and of unrequited love provide

frames through which Johannes can project his outlines of faith. It appears as
an ordeal of meaning: The poet works to assist his hero's battle with time
and oblivion; or it appears as an ordeal of love: The speaker lays bare tissues
of grief and joy, attachment and unselfish care. But now the projective lens,
the terms of discourse and the angle of vision are changed. How can faith be
aligned with objectivity, universality or rational justification? Under
Johannes's dialectical scrutiny, the trial of faith now appears as an ordeal of
reason and ethics.
Each "Problema" in Fear and Trembling introduces a Hegelian defini-
tion of ethics and proceeds dialectically to show that such a definition cannot
accommodate Abraham's faith. Thus Johannes forces us either to reject Abra-
ham, condemning him ethically, or to reject the Hegelian perspective. "Prob-
lema I" asks if there can be a "teleological suspension of ethics." The question
63
is multiple: Does ethics consist only in appeals to "the universal"? Where do

the private concerns of particular persons, of the individual, fit in? Can non-
universal, "particular" requirements, say, commands from God, override uni-
versal social rules? "Problema II" asks if there is an absolute duty toward God
surpassing our familiar universal ethical duties. I consider "Problemas I and
II" together in this and the following three chapters. Then, in Chapters 8 and
9, I consider "Problema III," a test of moral speech and silence.
Despite its unabashed lyricism, "Preamble from the Heart" contains a

number of dialectical or philosophical ideas. The concepts of resignation,
faith, the infinite, eternal, and absurd are artfully suspended in narratives, in
stories of the lad and his princess, of the simple shopman, of Agamemnon
and his daughter, of Abraham and Isaac. However, as we tum from the
"Preamble" to the "Problemata," the relationship between dialectic and lyric
is reversed. Stories become suspended in a discursive structure. They serve
as illustrations or clarifications in a fundamentally analytical or dialectical
progression.
So far, I have tried to stay close to the poetic surface of the text, to con-
vey its texture and color. But the more dialectical sections that we now
engage require a change in strategy. To get perspective on Joharutes's frag-
mentary, mobile, yet insistent forays, we will need some analytic frames
raised above the swirling pools and eddies of his prose.
Preserving Fear and TrembUng
From whatever angle-intellectual, aesthetic, moral, or spiritual-the story

of Abraham is enough to set one's hair on end. It can seem, in tum, fascinat-
ing and repellant, a tale of integrity and a tale of betrayal, of steadfast loyalty
and of murderous cruelty. How can Abraham be admired? Can his faith be
anything but wildly irrational?3 Johannes himself is deeply troubled: "But
when I have to think of Abraham, I am virtually annihilated ... I am constant-
ly repulsed, and my thought, for all its passion, is unable to enter into it."4
Johannes neither discusses nor defends Abraham's obedience. How could he
defend-why would he defend-a knight who "annihilates" or "repels" him?
Despite his "annihilating" paralysis, however, Johannes wrestles with the
text: with Abraham and the unruly rush of ideas and passions the tale evokes
and barely contains.
If Abraham is caught in a cruel test of commitments, it might be that he
is admirable because he makes the right choice, opting for God over Isaac,
faith over ethics, obedience over reason. But how can that choice be justified
or underwrite his greatness? Wouldn't it be better to admit what an untutored
Dilemmas and Subjectivity 65
conscience would declare anyway, that Abraham has made the wrong choice,
that Kierkegaard is deluded in his attempt to glorify such outrage?
If one resists such quick dismissal, one might try to show that appear-
ances aside, Abraham does not overthrow reason or ethics, or perhaps not in
a really damaging way. But this move can backfire. In trying to make it rea-
sonable and moral-at least not that bad-for Abraham to have sided with
God against Isaac, the intensity of Abraham's dilemma will be diluted. Yet
surely it will be bad, terribly bad, no matter what Abraham does. Can turning
his back on God be an improvement on turning his back on Isaac?
I suggest that we question a premise that has gone virtually unchal-
lenged. Why assume that Abraham has made the right choice? I do not mean
it would have been better to have rejected God. I mean that we should ques-
tion the premise that in this crisis there is an objectively correct response.
There is a deadlock of considerations--one both ought and ought not to obey
God, one both ought and ought not to protect Isaac. If this deadlock is
massive enough, it will undermine the very possibility of there being a cor-
rect response.
In a perceptive analysis, John Donnelly sees correctly that Abraham
both ought and ought not to sacrifice Isaac. s But he ingeniously suggests that
Abraham has a third option beyond obedience or refusal: Abraham, he sug-
gests, could abstain. But how, in practical terms, could one distinguish
abstention from simple refusal. Could Abraham really have replied to God:
"Look, I'm not refusing your command-I'm only abstaining!" The terrify-
ing options, to refuse or obey, seem fixed.
Indeed, if we knew too easily that Abraham's choice was "correct," the
master theme of Fear and Trembling would be undercut. If Abraham or we
could know that he had picked the "right" alternative, then there would be no
dilemma-at least not one this intense. But surely Kierkegaard's aim is not
to ease Abraham's crisis but to amplify it, to portray its terror 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 encourage the moral
complacency Johannes is at pains to attack. Having established a rule for
breaking deadlock of the worst imaginable sort, Reason would be vindicated;
for Abraham. things would be relatively clear-cut. But if this is indeed a
story of/ear and trembling. there can be no such rationalist solution. Perhaps
from some "God's eye" point of view there is a "right choice." But neither
we nor Abraham can occupy that viewpoint. If there is. in some universe, a
"right choice," it is securely veiled from our eyes.
Dilemmas have differing structures. There are cases where considera-
tions are in such intense deadlock or are so radically incommensurahle that
all hope for decisive guidance is wiped out; no best path is discernible. Then.
there are cases where considerations conflict. even terribly, but we are never-
theless confident which path is best or even necessary. However, despite this
conviction, fear and trembling remains, for in the nature of the case we open-
ly violate a strict requirement around which we have constructed a life. Fur-
thennore, the better or necessary path may be discerned without our having
the confidence that there exists a principle or priority rule to justify that
steady discernment; or if one senses that a justifying rule or principle might
exist, we can lack the confidence that we can know or articulate it. Even if
Abraham is confident about what he must do, in Johannes's view he neither
knows nor can articulate a justifying principle. At least in part, I will argue,
the infamous "teleological suspension of ethics" marks a moment when jus-
tification falls away. There is a third sort of dilemma. Here, considerations
conflict, one discerns the better course, and one has at hand a priority rule
or principle that justifies one's choice. Nevertheless, one might stilI feel fear,
guilt, or remorse, for having to neglect, even with good reason, an important
consideration. But this latter is not Abraham's suffering.
I will draw on the discussion of dilemmas provided by Sartre, Thomas
Nagel, and others.6 This will highlight the role of particular, nonuniversal, or
"subjective" considerations in the infrastructure of moral life. And it will call
into question th~ prospect for rationally justifying deep-set personal or sub-
jective concerns. In some dilemmas, subjective claims can neutralize or sus-
pend the power of ethics to provide univocal direction, thus putting persons
at risk and reliant on faith. Here is a reading of the teleological suspension
that conveys the fundamental sense of Abraham's dilemma, that preserves an
integrity for reason and ethics even as their limits become starkly displayed,
and that reveals Abraham's greatness to be a matter of how he lives through
his dilemma. His way is necessarily dark, his justification absent or obscure,
but the accolade knight offaith, well-earned.
Sartre and Dilemma
In full lives, suffering is endemic. We are tried by painful deficits of

knowledge, resolve, resources, or good wilI; by conflicts between self-inter-
est and regard for others; by struggles within the self or among persons or
groups; by innumerable limits of worldly life. Many of these can be negotiat-
ed, managed, or contained. We lack a cure for cancer, but continue to search;
we lack training or will to go on, but devise strategies to cope; as we are
able, we work to minimize harm; we struggle against egoism, our own and
others. But dilemmas can present challenges of a different order. We become
enmeshed in the tragic or, as some have said, the absurd.
Recall Agamemnon, Captain Vere in Billy Budd or Sophie in Sophie's
Choice. 7 On pain of losing both children to the Gestapo, a mother chooses
one child to be spared--<:ondemning the other. On pain of weakening the

rules of the sea in time of war and revolution, a captain meets the require-
ments of law-executing the saintly boy he loves. On pain of letting his city
be destroyed, a father destroys his daughter. Abraham is faced with
inescapable demands, to love and protect his son, and to love and obey his
God. To fulfiIl one is to deny the other; yet to deny either will be unimagin-
ably terrible.
Of course we can consider altering a detail here or there to lessen the
pain, make the situation less deadlocked. What if one of Sophie's children
were already sick or crippled, or if Captain Vere were beginning to doubt the
cruel discipline and tradition of the Royal Navy? What if Isaac were one of a
dozen children and Abraham, a young man of twenty-eight? Alteration of
detail can diminish conflict. But equally, it can restore a terrible balance,
reinstate a deadlock.
As Johannes has sensed, dilemmas are a powerful refutation of compla-
cent rationalism. They undennine the view that if only we think hard enough,
and are helped by the appropriate philosophical principles or System, we wiIl
finally uncover the solution to each of life's moral or spiritual problems. But
why grant this unqualified optimism? Why assume that for every issue of
great consequence, ethics or reason can provide clear guidance, a correct solu-
tion, and justificatory assurance that will save us from wrong?
Dilemmas reveal the depths of our vulnerability and care, the pervasive-
ness of suffering, and the fragile yet awesome resilience of human integrity.
Our oldest myths and greatest literature attest to these revelatory crises of
human spirit. But surprisingly, philosophers often tum away or discount their
challenge. Take the attitude expressed by Richard 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."s
To countenance unsolvable problems may cast too general a shadow on
reason. Or perhaps, as ordinary mortals, we recoil before the challenge dilem-
mas present, turning our gaze to other, more tractable matters. Whatever the
explanation, it is striking that the possibility of ultimate dilemmas-problems
that may be intractable for any theory whatsoever-has been denied by main-
stream ethics, whether Kantian, Utilitarian, or Intuitionist. Perhaps Aris-
totelians, Humeans, skeptics, or existentialists fare better. In any case, it is an
explicit aim of much mainstream ethical theory to provide detenninate, over-
riding principles precisely to block the possibility of moral deadlock. 9
In a much-discussed example from "Existentialism Is a Humanism,"
Sartre recounts the ordeal of a young man who came to him for advice. 10 The
youth 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. We
have a conflict here between two "absolutes," the puB of Politics or Justice,
and the contrary pull of Family or Filial. Devotion.
From this tale, Sartre draws a number of lessons. Like Kierkegaard, he
scorns a complacent bourgeois rationalism: there is no code, highest princi-
ple, or divine guideline that can settle the matter; we are forced back on our
own resources; as autonomous agents we must assume responsibility for
whatever choices we make; our situation is fraught with risk, anxiety,
anguish, and despair. But Sartre takes his attack too far. The youth must
choose, and this choice will surely reveal his values. But from the fact that
choice is necessary, it does not follow that moral principles or values are
merely a matter of choice. Sartre concludes far too much. He verges toward
embracing the view that every choice is as risky and indeterminate as this
youth's. But matters are even worse. If Sartre's account were true, dilemmas
themselves would disappear.
This young man is in a moral crisis precisely because for him, princi-
ples are more than a matter of choice. They command his allegiance, and are
not merely adopted as choice might prompt. He cares for his mother, recog-
nizing obligations toward her that, other things being equal, he would readily
act to fulfill. He is an opponent of fascism; other things being equal, he
would take up arms to resist it. These are constraints on his will. If his prin-
ciples were a matter of arbitrary choice, he would be blessed with an attrac-
tive and painless solution. He could throw out his concern for his mother or
for France. But moral crisis cannot so easily be disposed of. Dilemmas do
not disappear by simply choosing to disown, discount, or reinterpret the prin-
ciples or values that cause us our suffering. Such willing and casual adjust-
ment would empty a self of substance, compromise its integrity, exact an
impossible price in hypocrisy and self-deception.
In the unfolding of life, a will is bent, shaped, and constrained by val-
ues so deeply rooted that they form the basis of moral and spiritual identity.
They constitute a self sufficiently complex to have dilemmas crop up in its
path. Such a self may in part, "produce" or "make," itself, as Sartre, in a fac-
tory idiom, assertively declares. But a self with depth and integrity will also
acknowledge. discover, or testify to values in some sense independent of its
will. These are "absolutes" that orient a self, in the daily round and in crisis. II
Sartre's young man cares for his mother and country, as the lad cares for his
princess, the poet. for his hero. Only the "slaves of misery" can choose their
cares to disappear. For Sartre's critique of Reason to succeed, there must
remain the notion of embedded principle or conviction, background assur-
ance that has rational weight or bindingness independent of an agent's imme-
diate desire. or whim.
Dilemmas and Suhjectivity 69
There is no need here to provide a sophisticated account of what gives

a principle or conviction rational weight. A commonsense grasp of the differ-
ence between acting whimsically or arbitrarily and acting reasonably will
suffice. Any moral theory must take account of the intuitive convictions that
one shouldn't harm others or lie. At some point, in a particular instance, they
may be called into question. But to be proper and effective at the intuitive
level, reasons need not rest on articulated theoretical foundations.
The critique of complacency that both Sartre and Kierkegaard pursue
requires that reasons have force. Neither thinker can be the "irrationalist" or
"absurdist" their critics sometimes depict. Although their rejection of any
System pretending to provide comprehensive, determinate guidance is well-
taken, it does not, and logically cannot, undermine reason in toto. Reason
need not be omnipotent.
Universal and particular
That dilemmas are revelatory moments is clearly assumed in Fear and

Trembling. But the idea pervades Kierkegaard's thought in more general
ways. His concept of subjectivity or personal identity is built on extreme ten-
sions between opposed vectors of the self. In Sickness Unto Death.
Kierkegaard (or Anti-Climacus) defines the self as a relationship to the juxta-
posed "contradictory factors" of finite and infinite, temporal and eternal,
necessity and freedom. The task of selfhood is working through these con-
flicting factors or allegiances. Dilemmas, deep conflicts or "contradictions"
mark the crucial transitions on his "stages on life's way." In fact, the stages
themselves might be defmed in terms of the dilemmas or conflicts to which
they are a response. 12 But Kierkegaard faces an age blissfully unaware of the
truths that crisis and dilemma reveal. He finds an age embracing a shallow
etho!: of "my station and its duties" (as if one's station were always evident
and duties never in conflict); an age consoling itself with a ludicrous belief in
inevitable progress, flaunting a naive confidence that all can be understood,
and understood as for the best. He fmds an age oblivious to passionate
inwardness, that would miss a dilemma if it struck between the eyes.
Johannes distinguishes the ordeal of faith from the trials of tragedy.
Both Agamemnon and Abraham must sacrifice a child. But tragedy falls with-
in the realm of ethics. A pair of universal, "objective" principles collide. But
Abraham's dilemma is different. If ethics is no more than "the universal," then
Abraham's action falls partially outside the ethical. He is subject to a nonuni-
versal and therefore apparently nonmoral demand-in this case, a religious
requirement. It is a demand made only on Abraham, not on the faithful or
fathers in general. It is addressed to him as the particular individual he is.
A universal duty will bind all persons as persons or all persons within
a given role or position or relationship.13 If I am a servant or debtor, I have
certain binding obligations that derive from my role or relationship. These
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 regardless of desires or interests I may have to the contrary. When
Agamemnon must kill his child we have tragedy rather than senseless mur-
der because the obvious duties attached to his role as parent and to his status·
as a person are counterbalanced by equally pressing duties attached to his
role as king, as head of state and guardian of the common good. One might
speak of a contrast between private and public obligation. But in Johannes's
terminology, both sorts of duties fall in the realm of the universal. Anyone
positioned as Agamemnon would be caught in the same fIx.
A duty or requirement is individual or particular when it binds only me,
in the sense that its force derives primarily from my commitment to goals,
projects, or "absolutes" whose recognition commands the acts I feel bound to
perform. The requirement is not directly connected with duties or responsi-
bilities attached to a public offIce or positions I happen to occupy. And I
would not expect anyone else to feel bound, or as bound, as I do. 14 A great
number of the ends to which we devote our lives are in this sense individual
or particular. Painting or Politics, Research or Prayer, Moral Purity or Per-
sonal Relationships, Family Life, Fame, or Honor can present us with
demands that appear inescapable or absolute in the sense that for us, though
perhaps for no one else. they are essential to the maintenance. stability, and
integrity of the persons we are and will become. Kierkegaard speaks of a self
"relating absolutely to the absolute."1S Such inescapable ideals or overarch-
ing goods make absolute demands on the self. As Charles Taylor has argued.
they provide energizing frameworks within which a self fInds meaning and
orientation, the framework of what matters, and what matters most.
Two brief points of clarification before we proceed with Kierkegaard's
characterization of "individual" or "particular" requirements. There is a cir-
cularity built into the fIrst element of the characterization of duty given here:
Duty flows from commitment. yet commitment is experienced as a response
to duty. But I take this circle to be auspicious, wide, and embracing. It paral-
lels the fact that moral duty will be felt to be necessary, and hence motivat-
ing. only to those with a prior commitment to "the moral point of view." Sec-
ond, that selves should be bound by particular, identity-defining projects can
be universally required. Everyone must become an individual. But neither the
particular project I choose or feel bound to pursue-piano or politics-nor
its comparative importance among other commitments, can be decided by
appeal to what is universally required.
Commitments that ground action in pursuit of such framing individual
goods are character or identity-supports. But such commitments function

also as reasons: Not merely instrumental but self-articulating, self-expres-
sive, self-elaborative reasons. Developing narrative rationales for ourselves
or for others is providing self-inte'l'retation. It is part of constructing our sto-
ries of self-identity. In Taylor's apt phrase, we are "self-inte'l'reting ani-
mals. "16 The ordeals of meaning and love reveal that calculations of costs or
benefits, rehearsals of social duty, or simple allegiance to Reason cannot
relieve us of the deeper demands of selfhood. The ongoing task of reflective
self-articulation, requiring reason and imagination, action and passion, is an
"absolute" as none other can be.
In responding absolutely to such absolutes, we are not doing what we
merely want to do or what, all things considered, would be good for us. The
poet's bond to his hero or the lad's to his princess count for more than this.
Each is bound in a way that articulates or elaborates the basis for what he must
do to be-and to maintain-the particular person that he is: a person with this
character and no other, with this self, with this identity. Self-making, self-con-
finning, and renewing, these reciprocally related commitments and absolutes
and the extended rationales they encase become dramatically displayed in cri-
sis. Often a moral component of the self is revealed under trial-Here I stand;
I can do no other! But the component can be nonmoral, as well.
The integrity-defining core of essential convictions, commitments,
principles, or cares is not static but dynamic. So, too, the categorical goods
or absolutes to which the self is related and from which demands on it are
reflexively generated. We are capable of growth, reform, and radical conver-
sion. How one discovers or shapes integrity through such sometimes startling
change is not an easy maller to describe or understand. 17 But a sense of the
complexity or even ineffability of change, or a worry whether integrity has
been confinned or betrayed in a particular instance, should not lead us to
abandon the phenomena. The self is acknowledged reflexively, its integrity at
leasrpartly witnessed and discovered.
The realm of the particular or individual-what Kierkegaard elsewhere

calls subjectivity-might seem to be of supreme human worth. It concerns
actions, motives and commitments required for personal integrity. Yet from the
standpoint of the audience that Johannes addresses, an ethical demand will
always be "universal," never be addressed to the individual as such. Neverthe-
less, such personal commitments can surely result in heroic and morally exem-
plary acts.!8 Acts of generosity or kindness beyond what can reasonably be
required in general, counsels of perfection that "ask the extra mile," that inspire
goodness beyond what can be universally expected, are apparent exceptions to
the ethical construed as the universal. 19 For Johannes, Abraham's response to
God's demand will also exemplify such an admirable exception.
Because one of the conflicting demands upon him is not universal but
particular, Abraham's dilemma is more than tragic; it is an ordeal of faith.
The other distinguishing feature of the faithful knight is silence. Abraham,
unlike the tragic hero, cannot speak ahoyt his plight.
Abraham's Silcncc
The urgency of "subjective" requirements is difficult to convey to others,

especially to the relative strangers who constitute "the public at large." What I
find to be absolutely compelling so far as my own life is concerned, you may
reasonably fmd trivial, distasteful, incomprehensible, or dangerous. Institu-
tional requirements, in contrast, being essentially public and "objective," have
an urgency that is widely shared and therefore easy to communicate. The trag-
ic hero can count on being understood, even in the midst of his dilemma,
because he can count on a large background of socialized agreement about the
relevant universal rules. However, a command from God, in Kierkegaard's or
Johannes's view, is not a public, objective matter. It is utterly private.
Presuming a dubious piece of metaphysics, Johannes holds that subjec-
tive claims on the self are not just difficult to communicate, but totally ineffa-
ble. The knight of faith, unlike the tragic hero, must undergo his ordeal in
silence. He is isolated, alone, "incommunicado." For both Hegel and
Johannes, communication requires the use of concepts, "universals." By their
nature, universals pick out features of a class of objects, and hence can not
pick out whatever might make something the unique, particular that it is. The
individual, in this view, must be a dark, ineffable, something-I-know-not-
what. This is the first--questionable-step in Johannes' argument.
The second, perhaps less dubious step, is the assumption that God's
command to Abraham is particular in the sense that it concerns no one else.
Rather than a public requirement bearing on all fathers, it is addressed pri-
vately to Abraham and binds only him. Third, because communication
requires the use of concepts and because Abraham is addressed by God as a
particular, Johannes concludes that Abraham cannot communicate his plight.
But the assumption that particulars can not be described or communicated
is at least controversial. Furthennore, there is a glaring 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 descrip-
tion. Johannes plays on these confusions to support his view that as Abraham
travels to Mt. Moriah, he can have nothing to say in explication or defense.
Although Abraham's silence may not be metaphysically imposed, sure-
ly he operates under a handicap. Imagine how much easier communication
would be if faith were conceived as a matter of universal, public 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. This would keep Abraham out of the absurd, subjective,
or ineffable. He would remain within the confUles of rational ethics. Abra-
ham would still experience contrary pulls, between love of Isaac and love of
God. But his public could understand. There would be a painful but intelligi-
ble clash of objective, universal requirements. lO
But Kierkegaard will have none of this. Faith concerns the individual,
the subjective. To be a Christian can never be reduced to following an objec-
tive code or creed or ethic. In faith the question of whether a demand is uni-
versal does not arise. The subject is addressed by the divine in a personal
mode, or called by private conscience, or moved by deep and private intu-
itions. For Abraham, what counts is what he must do, not what anyone must
do who is roughly in his shoes. This removes him partially from the commu-
nity of understanding and accountability within which moral issues are typi-
cally articulated, argued, and resolved. A source of consolation-appeal to a
public code-available to the tragic hero or to a deluded "objective" Jew or
Christian is closed to Abraham.
But the knight of faith has further difficulties in communication. These
can be brought out by considering the audience who would be addressed,
were Abraham to try to explain or justify himself. His public would be suspi-
cious, resistant. A community has a stake in maintaining the principles gov-
erning its members, codes that defUle its "character" or moral identity. It will
resist "exceptions" that threaten solidarity. All too often the personal masks
the selfish or immoral.
Finally, our self-understanding derives in part from the internalization
of universal standards. The ability to make sense of myself is linked to the
ability to present myself to myself, as if before a public. So the loss of a
comprehending audience threatens my confidence that I know myself. Abra-
ham 'will question his convictions, his certainty.
There may be 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 there may be a silence imposed by knowl-
edge of the other's inability or unwillingness to comprehend or accept. 21 But
these silences are crucially different from the silence Johannes depicts-<lne
that is metaphysically inevitable.
Subjectivity and Reason
We have outlined a way to picture the components of Abraham's dilemma. It

is a clash between a personal, particular requirement and a universal, public
one. Now we can raise in a more general way some questions about subjectiv-
ity, reason, and justification, concepts central to the idea of a rational ethics.
Reason and justification are hobbled in any instance of dilemma.
Taken separately, each option defming the dilemma is grounded, has its
prima facie rationale. So reason is in effect. But it is not effective in picking
out the alternative one should pursue. The radical incommensurability or
balanced opposition of independently grounded considerations creates
dilemma. The power of reason to provide clear and determinate justification
or direction is neutralized. Reason can exclude any number of options as
trivial or mistaken, thus narrowing the area of permissible response. It can
nevertheless lack the power to isolate the required response. But to admit this
break in reason's implementary power is not to embrace irrationalism.
Power need not be omnipotent.
If reason were to break down utterly, it would not matter what one did.
There would be no reason to fear or resist any course of action. It would be
indifferent whether one obeyed or refused God, protected or betrayed one's
friend. And only the most extreme cynic or nihilist would accept this position.
Sartre may fancy himself a romantic "irrationalist." But he will not say to the
youth tom between family duty and antifascist passion-"Well, don't forget
the alternatives: you can join the Nazis, or shoot yourself, or take up stamp
collecting!" The dilemmas that threaten Reason are constituted by reasons.
There are extra challenges to rationality when the conflict is between a
subjective and a universal consideration, between what JohalUles calls "the
particular" and "the universal." Mainstream Platonic and Kantian traditions
in ethics deny any rational or justificatory status to the "subjective" or "par-
ticular." It is taken as ungoverned desire or compulsion, as whim, inclination
or bias, as the erratic, arbitrary, or gratuitous. 22 In the public arena, subjective
considerations have nothing like the weight of universal rules and principles,
which are socially articulated and politically enforced. "Individual" require-
ments cannot be read off a public role or position. And given a human pen-
chant for evasion, rationalization and selfishness, the subjective is suspect.
But this wide-ranging suspicion is misconceived. In the broadest sense of
these terms, reason and objectivity are fully compatible with a full-blown
Kierkegaardian subjectivity.
Johannes de silentio accepts the commonplace view that if we take
seriously the claims of the personal or subjectivity, then objectivity is at risk.
But in fact, Kierkegaard's aims require that he preserve objectivity, coupled
to a passionate subjectivity. Only a particular version of objectivity is at risk.
Let me distinguish four sorts, only the last of which is at odds with
Kierkegaard's project. 23
Reflective objectivity is at work in the Socratic thoughtfulness and care
with which we consider our commitments, viewpoints, and projects.
Johannes encourages us to pay attention. to be dialectically alert. somewhat

detached. as we reflect on our concems--even as the need for action or con-
viction inevitably brings such reflection to a halt. Kierkegaard has no love of
the arbitrary. whimsical, or thoughtless-a sort of subjectivity that he
rejects-and rightly so.
Moral objectivity is manifest in the requirements that are attached to
social positions or expressed in general moral principles or rules. Johannes
does not deny but affirms that fathers must love their sons, that Agamemnon
must be responsible to his people. As we noted, for there to be dilemmas,
there must be something like binding objective principles at work. 24 Addi-
tionally, there is in another's pain or suffering something real, something
there to confront. Its moral salience is a matter of perception. 2$
Ontological objectivity is related to moral objectivity, but broader.
Conducting lives as responsible agents, we presume a reality that we con-
front. something discoverable or to which we can testify whose nature is nei-
ther wholly made by us nor radically altered in our effort to gain access to it.
As regards God's existence or the centrality of love or trust or freedom in the
essentially human. there is a truth of the matter-however uncertain and
momentary our grasp of it may be. For Kierkegaard only an engaged subjec-
tivity can gain access to such independent reality. But such reality, whether
moral or nonmoral. whether physical or spiritual, surely exists. Truth and
value are not mere human projection. The task of selfhood is to relate to an
absolute, not to fabricate an illusion.
Impersonal. imperial objectivity is the single, elusive target of
Kierkegaard's dialectical attacks. Imagine an age or ideology that set out to
undermine any trace of the individually personal in its hard-headed, "scien-
tific" or "rational" view of things. In a familiar mechanistic guise, the world
would be redescribed in exclusively material terms. "Prescientific" notions of
consciousness and value, of selves and intentions. would be replaced by
mechanistic, biological. or chemical "equivalents." Computer flowcharts or
physiological maps of the brain would replace our sadly primitive "folk psy-
chology." In its Hegelian guise, this imperial objectivity might not seem
impersonal. Spirit, Reason. Freedom and Consciousness remain essential
components of the Hegelian System of Absolute Knowledge. But both ver-
sions of this imperial objectivity underplay or neglect the importance of
responsible individual agency. An exclusively impersonal perspective cannot
give a plausible account of the thinker who creates. endorses. learns. or
teaches an objective theory or system, whether Hegelian, or mechanistic. It
erases the flesh and blood speaker (or writer) who engages others in rational
debate, who does research, and who nearly always lives a more or less rich
life apart from such theoretical activity. Where is the agent who makes end-
less decisions, hour by hour, month by month, for which she is responsible?
This quixotic goal of utter impersonality can even attract Kantians and utili-
tarians. But to seek such a standpoint is to seek what Thomas Nagel aptly
calls the view from nowhere. It is the view of nobody in particular. and so,
alas, of nobody.
In reflective objectivity, detachment from the subjective is typically
episodic. We step back to get perspective on our engagements, theoretical or
practical; to get a moment of insight or repose, or to consider our doubts or
an aesthetic or scientific wonder. But this detachment naturally alternates
with immersion, with rich and pre-reflective engagement in our lives. There
is a shuttle between standpoints, some more objective, some more subjective,
with none claiming an ultimate superiority or an exhaustive privilege. But
impersonal, imperial objectivity works relentlessly to erase awareness of our
passionate placement in a world. It is a fantasy of finality, of escape from the
exigencies of practical moral life.
Johannes works to preserve a realm of personal responsibility, free-
dom, and inwardness-a region of subjectivity. Yet the age seems to feed a
voracious objectivity bent on devouring our confident engagements in the
world. To battle that sort of trend is a reasonable endeavor. A simultaneous
commitment to .reflective, moral, or ontological objectivity is in no way
impugned. In fact, it isfrom a commitment to this initial triad of objectivities
that Kierkegaard mounts his defense of subjectivity.
Johannes extols concern in striving for Truth or Reality; passion in
pursuing our moral tasks; inwardness infusing our actions, commitments,
and convictions. A reflective, responsible "deep subjectivity" is our way as
engaged agents of grappling with the obstacles to a rich and fulfilling ex is-
tence. 26 Obsessive and reiterated erasure of our placements in life leaves
hardly the trace of an essential truth, only a shadow of meaning or identity.
Under the banner of "the individual" and "subjectivity," Kierkegaard revers-
es the pressure.
Personal or subjective convictions articulate the structure of a worthy
self. To that extent, they can furnish coherent moral grounds for conduct.
Provided the character they form has worth and integrity, they are anything
but thoughtless, whimsical, or arbitrary, the products of blind desire or com-
pulsion. Their role in justification and explanation is displayed by placing
them within narrative patterns of action and belief, within stories of character
and moral growth. 27
If I take up a life of research or art, this can be called a private, person-
al decision. Insofar as objectivity is associated with universal rules. the deci-
sion springs from no such rule and hence is subjective. But if my decision is
deliberate and takes good reflective account of my situation. talents. and
desires and of the claims of others. it can be as rational or objective a deci-
sion as can be made. The mode of rational elaboration. however. will not
resemble a lawyer's brief or a physicist's proof. We are more likely to find

lyrical dialectic--or perhaps discourse resembling a novelist's imaginative
articulation of perspectives from which characters meet the world, perhaps
speech resembling a confession, or an intimate dialogue of friends opening to
each other. Exploring such narrative perspectives is the primary route to self-
understanding. We have here an alternative pattem of rational explication,
not, as tradition would have it, simply the default of rationality or
objectivity.28
There is no need, then, to follow Johannes (and many of his critics) in
identifying reason exclusively with the reasonableness of conventional bour-
geois ethics, the progress of Hegelian Spirit, or the universal claims of Kan-
tian Reason. Not wishing to sully the passionate, subjective struggle for faith
or integrity, Johannes divorces that struggle from "the objective." But this
concedes too much to the opposition. Johannes's legitimate concem for the
subjective, and his sense that justification is handicapped when partially
removed from the public arena, does not entail a rejection of objectivity or
reason.
We can now retum to the structure of Abraham's dilemma. A particular,

religious requirement is pitted against a universal ethical one. We may grant
that subjective convictions elaborated as narrative rationales can have some
justificatory or explanatory weight. But as Johannes puts it, "Can there be a
"teleological suspension of the ethical?" Can the "particular" undennine the
dominance of the "universal"? We begin a full scale reading of the suspension
of ethics in the following chapter. But let me make a preliminary remark.
We may not be able to specify in advance a class of considerations that
will preempt the demands of a universalizing ethics. There is no need to sup-
pose, for example, that vocational or religious reasons per se override ethical
ones. But a thesis that grand or sweeping is not required; all that we need is
the more limited thesis that strong nonmoral reasons can sometimes override
weak moral ones. Gauguin can be decisively justified in breaking a trivial
appointment to complete 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 the defense would be problematic. 29
The balance may tip up or down or remain tantalizingly poised. The
conflicting values may remain frustratingly incommensurable. But in any
case, it's clear that self-expressive, subjective considerations, whether they
are taken to be moral or nonmoral, can have some weight when pitted against
commonplace "universal" considerations.
Johannes does not need, and ought to resist, any overarching theory of
the relative stringency of particular versus universal demands, of the demands
of faith versus the demands of ethics. Producing an objective principle to

resolve such conflict-for example, the principle that faith outweighs ethics
-would undermine his project entirely. All that he needs is the milder thesis
that in some cases, objective, universal considerations need not predominate.
Specifically, they need not hold sway in matters most urgent to the integrity of
the self, in matters of categorical calling, conviction, or demand. 30
5
Ordeals oj Reason and Ethics:
Suspensions and Faiths
Life has to have substance-so the impartial

system can't be all; and at the limit, it will
be insecure.
-Bernard Williams I
the seductive appeal of objective reality

depends on a mistake. It is not the given.
Sometimes ... the truth is not found by trav-
eling as far away from one's personal per-
spective as possible.
-Thomas Nagel 2
WE CAN Now return to the question posed in "Problema I": Can there be a
teleological suspension of ethics? There are at least three ways to answer Yes
to this query. Only the ftrst is clearly objectionable. On a superfIcial but
widespread reading, the "teleological suspension" is a doctrine purporting to
justify an obedience to God. It proposes a terribly misguided principle by
which faith's higher telos or goal, obedience. is provided a warrant. It is
assumed that Johannes takes this warrant to have overriding force against
competing ethical claims. But on both textual and moral grounds. this pro-
posal is indefensible.
The most satisfactory and complete reading takes the teleological sus-
pension to describe a moment of transitional conflict. There is unsettling
79
confusion in the shift from an ethics identified exclusively with "the univer-
sal" to a more complex ethicoreligious orientation. Experienced from within
by someone caught in this transition, there will be crisis that seems like a
suspension of ethics. But only a commonplace morality that absolutizes the
claims of community, communication, and reason is set aside. Later, this
conventional morality will be integrated within a broader ethicoreligious per-
spective. 3 The just claims of the universal will be honored. But now they are
placed within the primary claims of subjectivity.
For the moment, I pursue an intennediate interpretation. drawing on
the framework we have just established. I take the suspension of ethics to
describe a terrible deadlock where inescapable requirements clash. It depicts
an ordeal of reason which leaves an individual without comfort of moral
assurance or defmitive guidance.
Abraham's ordeal is finally more than this clash of rational require-
ments. Kierkegaardian faith is giving up and getting back, losing the object
of one's love while believing every moment that it will be returned. The
framework of dilemma casts light only on the moment of crisis, leaving the
second movement of reconciliation in shadow. This blurs the distinction
between resignation and faith. 4 The knight of faith and the knight of resigna-
tion face a terrible dilemma and accede to God's command. Yet only the
knight of faith has hope that worldly life will be returned. Furthennore, the
telos, the higher good, in the name of which the suspension occurs, remains
obscured. Despite these objections. this provisional construal of suspension
as dilemma is worth pursuing: It dramatically focuses a critique of Reason; it
secures a contrast between subjective and objective considerations; and it
suggests a general characterization of faith. secular or religious.
Suspension as Dilemma
Framed as dilemma. what gets suspended for Abraham is the power of ethics
to clearly guide or justify. Ethics and reason are in force: at no point does
Abraham relax his love, a care universally required of fathers. His ordeal is
caused by a counterweight. his sense that God's demand must also be hon-
ored. Reasons are in deadlock. Abraham is gripped by a conviction crucial to
his integrity. He feared and loved God, a God who had demonstrated his
trustworthiness in first providing Isaac and who remains the vital center of
his existence. s This "absolute" is the frame within which Abraham's life has
substance. If he is to survive as the particular he is. a subjective rationale
must be honored. His obedient response is partially grounded. Of course. this
rationale is neither immune from criticism nor decisive. If Abraham turns his
back on God. he will be lost; equally, he will be lost if he turns his back on
Suspensions and Faiths HI
Isaac. If reasons for obedience are not decisive, they nevertheless exist and
bear against more public, institutional considerations.
Seeing Abraham's compliance and God's subsequent reward, we may
think that the teleological suspension decisively grounds or justifies the out-
come. We crave a definitive basis for Abraham's decision, a guiding light: In
cases of conflict, Let God override ethics. But the teleological suspension is
not a justifying principle. It describes a brutal fact. There are dilemmas and
in such straits, ethics cannot guide, deliver us from wrong. To be seduced by
the alternative would undermine Johannes's own best insight. An objective
solution would gut this ordeal of its pathos.
But Johannes tempts us with an alternative: "Faith is just this paradox,
that the single individual as the particular is higher than the universal, isjusti-
fied before the latter . ... "6 Elsewhere, the possibility of justification is again
introduced: "His justification is, once again, the paradox; for if he is the para-
dox, it is not by virtue of being anything universal, but of being the particu-
lar."7 A justification which is a paradox is hardly a straightforward justifica-
tion! Johannes might mean, positively, that in the widest scheme of things,
individuals. and the particular convictions that give them substance and iden-
tity, are "justified" in the sense that in that scheme they have status. a status
higher than the social or universal. But here, let me stress the negative point.
Faith can not justify actions in defiance of the universal.
Johannes wants to preserve the conviction that in some sense faith is
superior. In this terrible standoff, Abraham might be gripped by the conviction
that it is God who must at last be honored. In such an ordeal, one plumbs one's
convictions reflectively, as best one can. Through various routes not exclud-
ing the possibility of revelation, and surely including the cultivation of one's
subjectivity, an alternative may achieve a compelling salience. 8 But to
acknowledge this salience-say, the salience of God's command-is not to
suddenly possess an objective justification, an escape from the dark .
• The Sartrean youth might feel in his bones that he belongs with the
Free French. Yet he cannot show that this path is objectively correct. And he
might doubt that anyone could uncover a deadlock-breaking principle. Alter-
natively, he might sense that if only he could frnd or articulate it, a rule or
principle could justify his path. Or he might confess an utter loss about what
to choose, what could guide: Suffering complete paralysis, the breakdown of
any effective motivational structure, a potentially transforming ordeal would
instead become crushing defeat.
Sartre dramatizes the youth's dilemma by leaving us poised within it.
We never learn how or if he chooses. If we were shown the outcome, we
might set out to retroactively simplify. reconstructing the case to make the
result seem all but inevitable, the natural thing to be done. Johannes himself
falls prey to this tidying impulse. Considering the tragic hero, he writes thai
82 Knights 0/ Faith and Resignation
at the moment of choice, the hero reduces the alternative not taken to the sta-
tus of desire, thus "fmding rest in the universal. .. , [H]e reduces the ethical
to a sentiment.''9 How much easier this makes the hero's defense!
We think that because Abraham' obeys, he must take faith to be the
overwhelming good: a dilemma-resolving absolute. And if he discerns faith
as his good, then he must know his path is correct. But finding one's path
confers no objective dominance on the alternative chosen. In a justificatory
sense, nothing is clarified either by Abraham's choice or by Isaac's return.
The obscurity of Abraham's ordeal outlasts his decision.
If faith overrode ethics in some decisive way-say, in the way ethics
itself can override desire-then there would be a lesson to be imparted:
Abraham chose wisely. correctly. If he were then forced to undergo his trial a
second time, presumably it would be easier. The happy outcome of the first
ordeal would exempt him, if not from further tests, then at least from such
intense future fear and trembling. But there is nothing obvious or inevitable
about Abraham's choice, either before or after it is made. The knight of faith
"feels no vain desire to show others the way."JQ In part, this is because there
is no general lesson to be learned about what acts to undertake or forego.
Divine intervention relieves a crisis. Isaac is returned. But a frightening
cloud of obscurity remains. Abraham is to be praised neither for obedience
nor for a wise choice. We cannot recommend his decision heartily to others.
Irrationality. Faith. and the Fanatic
Johannes can drift toward the view that Abraham is unjustified in his faith.
And if rational deliberation admitted only "universal" requirements, this
would follow. A jury wedded to conventionalist assumptions should find
against Abraham, unanimously. But there is no need to take such a narrow
view of reasons for action. Abraham's faith provides a rationale for action.
To lack decisive justification is not to be unjustified or irrational. Reasons
can't force this decision; they are in deadlock. But this shows that rationality
is in effect. It preserves its domain. One might assume that something called
a teleological suspension of ethics would justify or pennit any crime, if only
one believed and obeyed God. But in Kierkegaard's account, the knight of
faith is no unthinking zealot or fanatic. The area of reason's inefficacy, the
circle of pennissibility, is narrow and sharply etched. II
Despite God's command, the knight must show unwavering love for
others. especially his kin. Though God requires Isaac, Abraham's
love for his son is unceasing. But the murderous fanatic typically
harbors hate indifference, or contempt for his victim.
Suspensions and Faiths 83
• The knight of faith cannot believe that he (or she) is making a gener-
al point. delivering a direct. univocal teaching or setting an exam-
ple: "[He] feels no vain desire to show others the way.... The true
knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher."12 He has no simple ide-
ology to convey, no justification to offer. Yet the zealot or fanatic
typically sees himself as partisan of a cause, pledged to bring "truth"
directly to the benighted.
• The knight of faith is caught in a clash of more or less legitimate

claims. No mailer which choice is made, something bad is done. But
the fanatic is typically committed to action that not merely lacks
decisive justification, but is decisively unjustified-for example,
murder, plain and simple.
• The knight of faith will have demonstrated herself to be of exem-

plary moral character. Even through the duration of its suspension,
she must happily anticipate the return of ethics and the universal.
Only the sort of moral paragon Abraham had become or someone
like the shopkeeper who is not under moral suspicion can initiate the
double movement of faith. But a fanatic is typically neither a stal-
wart member of the moral community, nor one who happily and
expectantly welcomes his victim's return. True, the knight of faith is
"incognito," and so might adopt a number of masks. Yet as Johannes
Climacus avers, he cannot be a "robber, thief, or murderer. "13 (Nei-
ther can he be, as silentio has it, a "straggler" or "vagrant genius." 14)
• The knight cannot take just anything as a message from God. As

Johannes Climacus has it in the Postscript. the vehicle for sending
divine instructions could not be "a very rare and tremendously large
green bird whistling in an unheard of manner."ls Yet the fanatic often
takes orders from the most bizarre sources. ("Son of Sam," the New
York City postal clerk serial murderer, received orders from a dog.)
• The knight of faith is a narrative construct. a fictional ideal-type.

We interpret this story symbolically. "Attunement" can be read as an
allegory of liberation, of freeing Isaac or Abraham. "Preamble from
the Heart" can be read as an allegory of love. The selflessness of
Abraham's tie to Isaac and his care, his capacity for grief and joy, are
tested. The "Problemata" can be read as dialectical jousts. They try
the strengths of reason, ethics, and speech. Is zealotry, fanaticism, or
dogma inherent in a mother weaning her child, a lad in love with his
princess, a father's selfless devotion, or a dialectical trial of ethics,
reason, convention, and speech?
Johannes is aware of the danger that someone will misinterpret his account,
"will go off the rails and do likewise."16 He worries that his "words [will
become] a pitfall for someone on the 100se."17 He knows the risks he incurs,
and the risks a faithful knight must dare to shoulder. Nevertheless, alert to
the pitfalls, he pursues his quarry, this terrifying marvel. For the knight rep-
resents saving possibilities. The dangers of missing these are as great, if not
greater, than the dangers of being led hopelessly astray.
We have listed some considerations that screen the faithful knight from
fanaticism. Some are conditions of circumstance: The knight does not seek
out dilemma, but is unhappily saddled in it. Some are interpretative or
henneneutical: If the knight can be Abraham or a serving maid or a shop-
man, then we are forced away from reading the story as advocating sacrifice
on demand. Other considerations involve depth of character. To be a knight
of faith is to have had one's soul tempered through ordeals. If this picture of
souls transformed is accurate, then there is no deep conflation of the fanatic
and faithful.
Now we can consider the idea that the individual is superior to the uni-
versal, filling out the positive interpretation we promised earlier.
Attention shifts in dilemmas from acts or principles to agents or charac-
ter. The isolated individual locks our riveted gaze. The outward justifying sup-
port of social context or Reason fades out, its salience diminished. We con-
front the wonder and terror of persons in ordeal. The familiar moral question
asks What role or rule applies? It takes the universal as superior. Rules or
roles take precedence over the desires, eccentricities, or projects of the indi-
vidual. But in moral crisis the individual is partially alienated from the public
sphere. The question then becomes What can he possible do? A senlle of the
vulnerability of the actor supplants an easy referral to what ill generally done.
An exclusive allegiance to "the universal," to the public, objective realm,
can empty a person of sublltance. The objective order has a momentum of its
own that challenges the personal: leveling it out, smoothing it over, eliminating
eccentricities, self-interest, private devotions, and sentiments. But as Bernard
Williams eloquently warns:
the public order. if it ill to carry convictIOn, 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. 18
Suspensions and Faiths 85
In her discussion of Greek tragedy and ethics, Martha Nussbaum con-

tinues this thought. Suffering and conflict at the "intuitive" level is some-
thing we live with. Moreover, our painful vulnerability is fatefully interwo-
ven with what is most precious in our uncertain coping. '9 Had we been
granted by luck or the divine a conflict-free existence, there would be ines-
timable loss: loss of a strange but staying human radiance. Being shielded
from moral struggle, exempt from ordeals of spirit, we would lack depth,
dignity, the subtle if flawed beauty and strength of individual character. Such
ordeals-grieved, feared, sometimes sought or even welcomed-forge
beings with worthwhile lives who can "feel more than they can say, and
grasp more than they can explain."
Experiencing the plight of persons caught in moral crisis, our usual
appraising faculties are momentarily paralyzed, as theirs are. Struck by the
struggle of the agent to extricate herself, we sense that her speechless vulnera-
bility is ours, as well. We may then doubt we have the right to judge. There
may be utter breakdown or insanity; prolonged attrition, as in Sophie's
Choice: or the individual may rise above the paralyzing torment of conflicting
requirements, exhibiting through courage, integrity and hope, a claim to great-
ness. Paradoxically, the individual is now enabled to become superior to the
universal. 20 And to the extent that our appraising faculties regain a grip, she
alone, he alone, becomes the focus of our awe or pity, praise or condemnation.
Refusing God
This provisional reading of the teleological suspension produces a startling

consequence. A great deal of what Kierkegaard deems important to faith is
compatible with Abraham refusing God's demand. Dilemmas describe the
incapacity of systematic ethics or Reason to sufficiently justify either compli-
ance or refusal. It's plain wrong to refuse God and it's plain wrong to kill Isaac.
Forced to choose, neither alternative is demonstrably worse than the other.
But if we do not praise Abraham for what he chooses (say, compliance)
then it must be for how he chooses. And the text supports this conclusion. Vir-
tually all the failed Abrahams nevertheless comply with God's demand. The
knight of resignation, too, gives up his love while falling short of faith. 21 So
mere obedience cannot distinguish faith. How Abraham survives is key.
Johannes attacks his countrymen's comforting illusion that they
already possess the truth. The convictions that God exists or is to be obeyed
or is love become cheap platitudes, mere abstract, creedal recitations, mean-
ingless ceremonial compulsions. For Johannes, it is not the verbal content of
belief that is under suspicion, but how a belief is held or recited: in stupor or
passion, as bourgeois decorum or in profound wonder or terror. How are
these familiar beliefs related-or misrelated-to identity? Are they windows

to the soul, revealing inward ordeals of love, meaning, or faith or mere aes-
thetic cover?
What sets Abraham apart is a hope specific to his ordeal, transcending
both in particularity of content and in passion of embrace the common stock
of creedal platitudes. He hopes he will get Isaac back. Harbored, anchored in
his soul, this hope holds fast. But it is tied in agonizing tension with an
opposed conviction that he must give Isaac up. These "private," "intuitive"
convictions sway in uneasy, fearful rhythm with general knowledge that
fathers are to cherish their sons, and with the passionate conviction that he
loves Isaac, will love him through and through.
A sword exposed successively to terrible extremes of heat and cold
becomes hardened steel. The metal retains its shape but emerges from its
exposures tempered, transformed. So with Abraham. His convictions, hopes,
and fears, each essential to his shape and substance, are subjected to a temper-
ing ordeal. Tempering this complex of confidence, belief, and care is temper-
ing a person, this fragile, strong and suffering Abraham. Vulnerable in expo-
sure, his courage, steadfastness, and hope are refmed. Through a process we
dare not, cannot comprehend, he emerges from fire the same yet transformed.
Neither diminishing nor denying the urgency of the conflicting
demands upon him, he refuses to throw aside or suddenly reevaluate the
basis of 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 for God and nothing worse than losing Him. "[Such knights] became
greater not ... by ... being relieved of the distress, the agony, and the paradox,
but because of these."22 Faith's hope is not a good bet or gamble; it is
unnerving trust despite reason's negligible support.2J In hope, he holds that
things will tum out all right, that at last he will lose neither Isaac nor God nor
himself. It shimmers in the uncertain light prepared by dilemma. For the
tragic hero, things are terrible, as they are for the knight of faith. And yet for
faith, beneath the din of crisis, or whispered through it, is the barely articula-
ble confidence that all is not lost-perhaps even the uncanny expectation
that because with God all things are possible Isaac will be returned.
The resources of faith that carry us through dilemma can be distin-
guished from the requirements of faith, which can cause us dilemmas. And
both can be distinguished from the objects of faith. Hope is a measure of the
imponderable resources of faith, which can carry us through the roiling cur-
rents of care that threaten to tear the self apart. It can mark the thin line
between survival, sanity, and crackup.
Could faith's hope carry one through a refusal of God? Let me retell
the story, this time inverted. In this retelling, Abraham's refusal is clear but
complex; he nearly remains a knight of faith.
Suspensions and Faiths H7
Maharba {Abraham backwards] hears God's terrible command liis

gaze turns toward the mountain, then lovingly toward Isaac. lie knows
that in refusing God he will put his life and the life of his people at
risk. But he also believes, absurd as it seems. that even in refusal his
God will not be lost. He will give Him up. and get Him back. In hope
he believes that "with God. all things are possible." So God will nei-
ther desert nor destroy him. Never does his trust falter; nor despite
fear and trembling, does his resolve to refuse. It is God. not Isaac, who
will be resigned-with the uncanny expectation of His return.
Maharba keeps his vigil three full days. Then God appears to
release and reward him:
"You have been a good servant. Maharba. holding fast to your
integrity, relinquishing neither your trust in Me nor your love for
Isaac. With a prodigal hope you believed your love would be acknowl-
edged even as you defied Me. For this you will be remembered as the
father offaith."
Neither Abraham nor our un-Abraham, Maharba. can walk away with princi-
ple glowingly vindicated. Neither can rejoice in having made the objectively
correct decision. They emerge tempered through trial, stronger for their
ordeal, and saved. Saved not by hitting on the "right" response, but by being
terribly vulnerable to the full complexity of the dilemma they face. refusing to
falsify the intractableness. the darkness, of the struggle they endure; and by
being open to a groundless but mysteriously empowering assurance and hope.
Faiths, Secular and Religious
Johannes's portrait is somewhat effaced in this tale of Maharba. Maharba and

Abraham embody contrasting faiths. Yet neither the acceptance of some
dilemma-resolving priority rule like "Always obey God!" nor the inexplica-
ble and brute fact that Abraham (unlike Maharba) complies can plausibly
distinguish them. How, then, can we characterize their differing sensibilities,
the contrasting frames which articulate their faiths?
By considering dilemmas, faith has emerged in the space of reason's
inefficacy. sustaining our moral or spiritual being from collapse under the
threat of groundlessness. It can seem like a self-initiated power-we keep
faith, by our efforts. And so. in part. it must be. But faith can seem less a
bootstrap operation than an empowerment. an enablement whose source is
mysterious, for which we are thankful, but which we cannot claim to direct
or command: we rest in faith's keeping. An inclusive. elementary faith is
focused by this sense of enablement in ordeals. Articulated as a God-rela-
tionship it becomes religious faith. Articulated as a commitment to nonreli-

gious values or framing "absolutes" it becomes secular faith.
As Johannes has it, the faith of the poet is his belief in his hero. The
hero becomes "the object of worship," the "absolute" around which his life
of praise and phrasemaking is built. The hero's deeds become an enabling
source of energy and activity. The artist's faith encompasses a "double move-
ment," the hopeful belief that resigning the immediate sense of things will
not entail their ultimate demise, the trust that sense can be recreated through
labor and a watchful muse.
Perhaps the institutions of morality themselves are based on a sort of
secular faith. In a provocative essay, Annette Baier reminds us of the fragile
standing of participants in a social contract, the negotiators say, in a Rawl-
sian "original position. "24 They must decide what principles shall govern.
But how can they have confidence 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 or hope sustained in the face of objective uncertainty-sup-
ports our participation in the multiple implicit agreements that weave the
fabric of our morality. Reasonable contracts rest on such faith.
There is also a faith contained in acknowledging the wonders of creation,
natural or human. Here our sense of powerlessness and dispensability before
the object of our "worship" or awe is set against an opposed sense, not of
diminishment. but of intimacy. Through consciousness we share in the
grandeur we confront. This tensed ambivalence might receive a secular articu-
lation, as it does in Thoreau, or in great music or architecture. Or it might
receive a religious articulation, as in the tale of creation sung from the Whirl-
wind in Job.
Perhaps a faith partly secular, partly religious, is implicit in the Greek
depiction of a self attuned to the Good as the energizing source of value. H
Whether poetic or moral, secular or sacred, faith can be traced through crisis,
a tempering of commonplace conviction, and final acknowledgment of sav-
ing, transforming powers that get us through.
Typically, religious faith will elaborate the pole of Other as the source of
enablement, whereas purely secular faith will instead elaborate our capacities
to be self- and world-making, creators on our own. But as Rorty cautions, "the
danger of self-enactment is the inability to acknowledge others." And perhaps
thinking of Lear. he adds "when we start looking like gods to ourselves," the
risk is "cruelty and madness."26 Surely somewhere between Promethean and
self-abnegatory poles lies an articulation of elementary faith that gives due
place to human strength and ingenuity without neglecting our fraiIities, our
deep and precious interdependencies. In Problema III, Johannes mocks a
Promethean ethic of triumphant self-sufficiency_ Whether Abraham, shopman,
or serving maid, the knight of faith will be more tuned to human limitations.
Suspensions and Faiths R9
Unlike Sartre's youth, but like the biblical Job, Maharba articulates his
faith religiously. Even in his refusal, not unlike Job's rebellion, he stays
bound to God. Religious faith does not entail unwavering, unquestioning
obedience. Job wins divine approval despite his protest. God condemns the
"friends," who with patronizing arguments, try to quell his rebellion. 27 There
is room for protest, qualified refusal, even episodic despair.28
Both Maharba and Abraham survive ordeals, acknowledging depen-
dance on resources beyond the sufficiencies of rational ethics. And they
articulate this dependence as a God-relationship. But as Johannes has it, the
knight of faith must first have been a knight of infinite resignation. Renunci-
ation of the world must precede or accompany a faithful commitment to
God. 29 Here our counter-Abraham fails.
Abraham gives up Isaac as a precondition of receiving him back. This
resignation leaves nothing of worldly value whose preservation could ground
refusal. Maharba's refusal betrays a worldly attachment which cancels this
essential precondition. For Abraham, faith begins with the loss of the finite.
the loss of the princess and of Isaac, the loss of the comforts, reasons, and
talk of the commonplace. Though Abraham cannot know (objectively) that
God comes before any worldly good, no matter how cherished, and cannot
know (objectively) that resignation of the worldly must precede a proper
faith, nevertheless, he exemplifies and enacts faith's "double movement," the
essence, as Johannes has it, of biblical faith.
Maharba temporarily resigns God, believing all the while he will get
Him back. Perhaps we have here a kind of "teleological suspension of the
infmite!" But from the standpoint of Fear and Trembling. this is not faith. It
fails not because Johannes rules out disobedience but because he rules in res-
ignation of the world as a precondition of faith. Abraham's faith is in part the
elementary faith that gets us through. He shares with his counterpart a wild
but sustaining hope that the object of his love will be returned. But not just
any giving up and getting back will do. As Johannes has it, only Abraham
starts properly, by "dying to immediacy," by losing Isaac and the world.
With Johannes, I think we are meant first to be struck dumb by Abra-

ham-not provoked to quick defense or consoling explication. Our inability
to rest in awed and painful silence stems in part from our inability to counte-
nance dilemmas. His act, we suppose, had to be 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 correct, dilemmas leave an
irreparable crack in the circle of comprehension and justification. Before
such terrible events, philosophy and reason themselves must experience an
agonizing vulnerability and seek their enabling faiths.
6
Ordeals and Reconciliations:
Getting Isaac Back
[The knight of faith] knows it is beautiful to

be born as the particular with the universal
as his home, his friendly abode, which
receives him straightaway with open anns
when he wishes to stay there.
-Johannes de silentio 1
This possessing [of a self] is not-it is the

reverse of-possessive; ... it is the exercise
not of power but of reception. Then the
question is: On what terms is the self
received?
-Stanley Cavell 2
ABRAHAM'S CRISIS IS hypnotic. Johannes can barely contain his restless,

ambivalent fascination. But this focus on a single terrifying moment of truth
can blot out a wider vision. Is faith primarily, or only, the heroic weathering
of ordeals? Mesmerized by the horror, we may forget that faith is not relin-
quishing Isaac, or not only that.) Unlike the knight of resignation, the faithful
knight embraces the hopeful trusting expectation that Isaac will be restored.
He anticipates and is granted the return of simple worldly life. 4
The resigned knight gives lip the worldly. This recalls an otherworldly
"yearning for the beyond," the alienation Hegel called "unhappy conscious-
91
ness."S But from Johannes's standpoint, a monastic or stoic estrangement

from the world is in fact unfaithful: "[the knight of faith] is happy, only he is
heir apparent to the finite, whereas the knight of resignation is a stranger, a
foreigner. "6 If Abraham raising his knife is paralyzing, there are less terrify-
ing images to contemplate. Quite ordinary people-tax-collectors, poor serv-
ing maids, even professors of philosophy--can be knights of faith.7 The
shopkeeping knight is at home in the world, apparently beyond dilemma, cri-
sis, or any spectacular suspensions of ethics. But how can a pedestrian shop-
keeper also be an immortal hero? Is his battle only a fading memory? Is he,
shall we say, retired?
Kierkegaard fears complacency if our attention drifts from terror to the
comforting daily.s But the return of Isaac is the return of the simple social
fabric within which ordinary lives will flourish. To lose the reconciliatory,
worldly dimension of faith is to lose half the truth.
Resignation, Humility, and Value
However difficult it may be to enact, resignation is at least intelligible.

Johannes understands this "movement of infinity," this transfer of devotion
from worldly objects to something beyond. There is honor in relinquishing a
world that identifies faith with child-like absence of doubt, difficulty, or sac-
rifice; that encourages the conflation of God's will and Reason; that lets
ethics collapse into social convention. But admiring Abraham's faith is nei-
ther easy nor intelligible. Devotion shifts away from the world, but is simul-
taneously hospitable toward it. "On the strength of the absurd," Abraham can
do "the impossible." He gives Isaac up and gets him back.
Earlier we sketched this "absurdity" as an ordeal of love that tests con-
flicting aspects of care. Alastair Hannay provides an alternative fornlUlation.
The story symbolizes the "formal features" of the "compound attitude" of
faith: The belief that Isaac must be resigned suggests that "nothing in the
world has value simply because one values it;" the opposed belief, that Isaac
will be returned, suggests that "things have their value nonetheless, but ... on
their own account and from God." In faith, we are ready to accept things
cherished back "on a new basis," their "status clarified.''9
The first element in this "compound attitude" corresponds to resigna-
tion, glossed by Hannay as the view that "nothing in the world has value
simply because one values it." I take this to mean that however important to
us our cares may be, anything that possesses real value will possess it
regardless of our attitudes toward it.
Johannes presupposes an objectivity of moral value. He never doubts
that fathers should love their sons or that Abraham should love his God.
Gelling Isaac Back 93
Without this independence of moral value, we could not account for error in
evaluative judgment; we could not misplace our cares, mistake our values.
We cannot dictate or detennine at will the meaning of those evaluative con-
cepts whose web provides sense for our lives, individually and collectively. to
Third, this presumption of value-independence or -objectivity reflects the
sense that meaning dawns. comes to us unbidden, in wonder, insight, or sur-
prise. It can seem to arise from a source deeper and other than ourselves.
even when such bestowal appears so apt to our particular subjective needs
and aspirations that it seems virtually to have been chosen. This insight is
linked to resignation.
Being human, Abraham can become trapped in his desires. However
intense and sincere his attachment, he must acknowledge Isaac's indepen-
dent worth, his value apart from a father's heartfelt care. Love can mask a
self-preoccupation, a distorting proprietary claim. In this light, objectivity is
passionate appreciation of the separateness of the other. The valuable is a
center of energy and worth independent of my immediate subjective
response. Resignation silences self-preoccupation, the thought that value
issues from our command, or is property on which we can stake a claim.ll
This move toward a reflective, moral objectivity is linked to humility. 12
While acknowledging risk, uncertainty, and the possibility of error, I also
acknowledge a standard, an absolute, by which I can measure growth toward
more fitting perceptions of persons and the world. This standard, rather than
my subjectivity, is the true center of things. What I admire, cherish, or
respect I do not scheme to possess, manipulate, or control.
The humbling of the will through resignation is a kind of Socratic wis-
dom of ignorance. We know not from whence value dawns. But we acknowl-
edge an objective source that transcends our powers to possess or fully com-
prehend. But as Johannes has it, faith is more than this Socratic acknowl-
edging-of ignorance, this resigning of presumption. One relinquishes a world-
ly control of mundane value; but in faith one affirms its value nonetheless.
Johannes believes that worldly things have value not on his account, but, in
Hannay's phrase, "on their own account and from God." The "second ele-
ment" in the "compound attitude" of faith readies us to accept things back,
"on a new basis," their "status clarified."
Resignation is a preparatory move, not a final resting place. We are
readied not for despair or estrangement from the finite, through and through.
That would be to remain a knight of resignation, or worse. Things are of
inexplicable, abundant value, present to be received and cherished in their
own right. In faith we exercise trust or reception. n The readiness is all. 14
The faithful knight, prepared for what now may be given, opens toward
meanings bestowed.
Suspending the Universal: individual Worth
If value is in some sense independent of we who value, it is also independent

of "the universal"-those norms embedded in social convention and practice.
Since they reflect only an aggregate of individual valuings, they are no more
solid than a string of any given individual's relatively capricious choices.
Within a Hegelian or conventionalist context, the universal is the locus
of evolving social conventions and the implicitly rational structures that·
underlie them. It is also the purported home or final resting place of the self
in its journey toward meaning or fulflllment. But if assimilation to the uni-
versal becomes "the absolute," the object of our aspiration and worship, then
the individual must become an insignificant vanishing point. As Kierkegaard
sees it, a conventionalist-rationalist goal eliminates anything like separate,
individual persons, each of priceless worth. Personal realization becomes a
travesty. One becomes lost in the crowd.
"Giving up the universal" is giving up an assimiIationist goal of human
development. In faith, the importance of individual identity or character out-
ranks conventional practice. Individuals are more than abstract vanishing
points whose significance hinges on absorption into the social. But a focus
on persons in their solitary integrity will appear unethical to one who adopts
the standpoint of the Rationalist System. Moving beyond assimilation will
appear possible only "on the strength of the absurd."
"Becoming subjective" is in part renouncing the universal for the partic-
ular. The structure of one's subjectivity, one's priceless worth, can be spelled
out as a complex of virtues that provide standards for self-evaluation. To
abjure the universal as the dominant seat of value is to see that individuals
generally and, more especially, the particular individual you or I happen to be,
become "justified." We acquire some ultimate, inalienable standing in the
broadest scheme of things. This standing or worth is constituted by a triad of
rersonal virtues: freedom, integrity, and trusting reception or faith. To move
beyond the universal is to move toward freedom, integrity, and faith.
We discover, as Johannes has it, that "the individual is higher than the
universal" and "justified over against it;" the particular person is "not subor-
dinate but superior" to the universal. IS Faith is "higher" than social, civic, or
rational morality. But not because it provides grounds for overriding ethics or
because it marks out a specific way of life that can easily be distinguished
from a more conventional life. Faith is "higher" because for someone having
weathered its ordeals. it can be felt, retrospectively. to have transformed and
completed a moral outlook all-too-familiar yet finally provisional. Faith
enscribes space for a new· ethics. Conventional practices and codes are now
complemented by a self-structure of inward virtues.
Throughout the period of writing Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard
worried if there could be legitimate exceptions to morality. Could one, say,

break a marriage engagement without moral fault? Dilemmas provide one
model for a person's inability to fulfill moral demands and so of there being
"exceptions." But we can now sketch a different model. The teleological sus-
pension of ethics describes a phase in individual development. a phase where
the crucial issue is becoming an individual distinguishable from, and pos-
sessed of worth "higher" than, the universal. 16 Assimilation will not do. One
lives "outside" convention to the extent that one fmds one's personal worth
and identity irreducible to convention. But this is compatible with living
quite happily (and perhaps invisibly) within convention.
The universal is a necessary but not sufficient source of personhood. If
freedom from the universal can be achieved by will alone, to establish a self
requires more. One cannot just "bootstrap" oneself into a new identity by a
solitary "existential choice." An abundant self draws on powers bestowed.
Neither chosen nor possessed, it is received. And the power that bestows sig-
nificance to the individual also returns the universal, making possible a reli-
gious life amidst worldly, finite goods. John D. Glenn Jr. puts it this way:
"recognizing the contingency and relativity of every fmite good [the knight of
faith] neither takes it as secure and absolute nor expends all his energy in spir-
itually distancing himself from it; but he accepts all that he possesses as a gift
from the hand of God, to be enjoyed and loved as such, yet to be released, if
need be. "17 And he adds: "faith both relativizes and restores the self's ethical
self-relation."IB One becomes an individual by relating to an absolute Good.
The receptive self then becomes curator of the values of the everyday, values
whose easy acceptance marks the faith and joy of the simple shopman.
We will return to fill out this picture of suspending and then getting
back the universal in the ongoing development of particular selves. But here
let me pause on the idea of bestowal o/value.
Gift and Giver
To attack assimilation as an absolute for persons is commendable enough.

Equally, one might join Johannes in protesting the conceit that individuals
are wholly self-creating.l 9 Apart from biological and sociological realities,
in self-development we draw on powers and energizing values larger than
ourselves. If things have value in their own right, perhaps it can be pictured
as flowing from some deeper source. To recognize a kind of Platonic or
Christian absolute Good acknowledges the experience of inspiration or
empowerment, brakes our self-preoccupations. There is surely a place in the
panoply of human virtue for a receptive humility--cognitive, moral, or spir-
itual. But whatever the value of receptivity-to-bestowal, one might resist
articulating this virtue in tenns of a Beneficent Other.20

That there is an absolute or God so placed as to return Isaac or to pro-
vide a ground of value or to underwrite individuality is for Kierkegaard an
assurance of faith. 21 A bare impersonal belief in the existence of such a God
or absolute holds little interest for him. The question is how such an absolute
becomes acknowledged or refused, becomes or fails to become the orienting
frame for a self underway and at risk. The conceptual and narrative resources
of biblical theism provide a natural context for elaborating a number of per-
sonal virtues, among them the virtue of trusting receptivity. But gratitude for
the gift of a new life, a new Isaac, a new universal, cannot underwrite or
prove the presence of a Giver.22 One might express a deep gratitude for life
yet be quite puzzled or agnostic about the proper target of one's thanks. Per-
haps, as Cavell suggests, if we exercise reception, "the question is: On what
terms is the self received?"23 Clearly they need not be theistic.
For most humans, at least those we admire, the sense of an absolute or
set of absolutes that confer meaning and set direction is an inescapable fea-
ture of their lives. A Good that provides orientation, or in Cavell's phrase,
sets "the tenns on which the self is received," seems essential. So Charles
Taylor argues convincingly in Sources of the Self:
We come here to one of the most basic aspirations of human beings,

the need to be connected to, or in contact with, what they see as good,
of crucial importance, of fundamental value. And how could it be oth-
erwise, once we see that this orientation in relation to the good is
essential to being a functional human agent?24
God or Reason, Fame or History, Artistic Expression or Family Life

are goods that make possible the identification and elaboration of daily plea-
sures and disappointments. They set standards against which the relative
honors, contentments and fulfillments of common life are measured. These
absolutes, goods of intrinsic and preeminent worth, are displayed in narra-
tive visions of a complex and fUlfilling life. The task of selfhood is their dis-
covery, articulation, and coordination. Their embodiment in fruitful action
marks the drama and repose of the everyday as well as the shape of life's
larger tragedies and tales of faith. Such absolutes chart the distant, elusive,
and largely unattainable stars of aspiration and regard.
These ideals are absolute in the sense that there is nothing greater, no
higher standard, no more encompassing frame, in tenns of which our lives
make sense or gain importance and direction. Again, as Taylor has it: "The
issue for us has to be not only where we are, but where we are going. And
although the first may be a matter of more or less, the latter is a question of
towards or away from, an issue of yes or no. So an absolute question always
frames our relative ones."2~ To respond to our absolute question Where are
we going? we articulate or attempt to articulate the loose array of absolutes
that frames a way of life, that infuses my life with meaning.
How we conceive of such absolutes, articulate their detail, frame or
resolve conflicts between them, will vary and remain contestable. But the
requirement that there be such absolutes, such fundamental frames or stan-
dards, seems inescapable. This is my sense of Johannes Climacus's
Postscript remark: "The postulate [of God] is so far from being arbitrary that
it is precisely a life-necessity. It is then not so much that God is a postulate as
that the existing individual's postulation of God is a necessity."26 As we saw
earlier, Climacus speaks of dialectic as the "ministering power" that "discov-
ers and helps find where the absolute object of worship is."27
Dialectic. lyric or otherwise, discovers our gods, our cares. Though it
may not compel others, a biblical God is the absolute for Kierkegaard or
Johannes. Their sense of this Absolute is embedded in their readings. selec-
tive, critical and afflrming. of numerous narratives, creeds and traditions.
These readings. in tum, shape the presence and absence of meaning in the
currents and still spots of their lives.
The idea of a self bestowed is given weight by stories of God; and sto-
ries of God give weight to the virtue of alert, trusting receptivity. There is a
natural. if not necessary, connection between the ideas of gift and giver. of
reception and bestowal, of gratitude and acknowledgment of God. These
pairs are not arbitrarily coupled but joined in reciprocally reinforcing per-
spectives, each projecting some ground, some legitimation or intelligibility
on the other. The interpretative circle is auspicious. Lyrical dialectic brings
out the connections and clears the view for their perception.
Absent the possibility of proofs or the legitimacy of brute indoctrina-
tion, two questions stay open: Can this absolute provide us. one by one, with
orienting conviction? If it can not, or not immediately. what more in the way
of phirosophical or lyrical explication could lead us to embrace a specifically
theistic or Christian faith? Acknowledging uncertainty about the conferred
grounds of our identity, our lives. is a root-theme of Kierkegaardian faith. Its
trusting assent is given amidst ultimate risk.
To forego closure on this issue is itself dialectically apt. Philosophy
cannot force acknowledgment or deliver the object of its concern or venera-
tion: it can only minister. or assist.
Essential Humanity: The Universal Returned
If conventional value must be "suspended," why not just reject it. or adopt a
new table of values? For Abraham. wanting Isaac back is clear enough. But
'.
why generalize? Why welcome back the universal, more or less in toto?
There is a sense in which Kierkegaard's. critique does not undermine
but bypasses attack on the bulk of commonplace social, rational, or civic
morality. One should keep one's promises, care for one's kin, neither lie,
steal, nor kill. The mistake is to absolutize these tenets, or think they form an
ordered whole whose unity is transparent to reason. The bulk of civic morali-
ty provides threshold requirements of decency, and in that sense is more or
less indispensable. But these requirements are not supreme or complete ide-
als in terms of which a human life can be expressed. Having been initiated
into some degree of moral sociability, we embark on the larger project of
becoming subjective, becoming selves. At some point, these minimal
requirements will seem dethroned if not destroyed. A child will learn abso-
lutely not to lie or punch or play with fire. Then the trouble begins. In any
case, social morality alone is often insufftcient for moral action or under-
standing. It is not simple, complete, or univocal but ambiguous and complex.
A faithful knight might appear ordinary. She might accept the bulk of
commonplace social virtue and by good luck or skill avoid spectacular occa-
sions of dilemma or crisis. But we could still ask how such a life is possible.
Whether a person's bearing is dramatic or unassuming, heroic or quite ordi-
nary, the absolute gives to the individual the varied and complex resources of
the universal through which she or he will express an identity. Johannes de
silentio puts the idea dauntingly as follows: "the single individual who, hav-
ing been subordinate to the universal as the particular, now by means of the
universal becomes that individual who as the particular stands in an absolute
relationship to the absolute."28
Being first subordinate to the universal (while the goal was assimila-
tion), the individual now exploits the universal, and is beholden only to the
absolute, an absolute that underwrites his individuality. Hannay expands on
this passage:
Abraham acts as though someone could be properly human prior to the

expression of his or her humanity in the universal, so that the universal
becomes an expression in turn of a humanity pre-established, as it
were, at the level of the particular and no longer the category in which
humanity is established. 29
The universal does not establish our "particular humanity" but is a vehicle for
its expression. What gets expressed "predates," at least logically, the occa-
sions of its expression.
This is a formulation of the structure of faith that Johannes de silentio
cannot fully grasp. Abraham remains largely an enigma to him. But Fear
and Trembling reflects forward to the Postscript and Sickness Unto Death.
Getting Isaac Back 99
Taking a field of vision wider than Johannes himself can enjoy, we can
sketch the process whereby one's essential humanity is expressed.
Any characterization of the essentially human must give due recogni-
tion to language, biology, tradition, training, and culture. A minimally fash-
ioned outcome of these acculturating processes we could call a "proto-self,"
or as Kierkegaard might call it, an immediate self. One's essential humanity
can then be taken as a dual capacity that one exercises in relationship to this
initial, proto-self.
First, one can step back and reflect on what is bequeathed by biology,
training, or convention. One can then take the proto-self one finds oneself
thus more or less saddled with in a particular way. Inwardly in reflective
judgment and outwardly in action, we alter, endorse, or deny portions of this
immediate self.
This is a uniquely human capacity, the essence of personhood. As
Harry Frankfurt puts it in a classic series of papers, it is the capacity for "sec-
ond order" care or desire, the capacity to care about our (more or less given)
cares, and to have that second-order care alter or articulate a given self.30
Here is how Judge William puts the matter in Either/Or:
[The person] has himself, then, as an individual who has these talents,
these passions, these inclinations, these habits, who is under these
influences, who in this direction is affected thus, and in another thus.
Here then, he has himself as a task, in such a sort that his task is princi-
pally to order, cultivate, temper, enkindle, repress, in short, to bring
about a proportionality in the soul, a harmony, which is the fruit of the
personal virtues. 31
Being able to occupy such a position over-against the given proto-self

(the self with these habits, these passions, and so forth) is a moral virtue. a
uniquely human excellence. And the exercise of this virtue brings forth a
harmony, a proportionality in the soul. To"inhabit a position permitting the
exercise of such virtue is both to possess (at least part of) one's essential
humanity, and a condition of expressing that humanity through the universal.
Judge Williams calls this an exercise of the personal virtues. They in
fact form a family of virtue, each having a familiar name.
Freedom: One acknowledges and exercises one's capacity to endorse or

reject (aspects of) the proto-self and its projects conditioned by the universal.
Responsible Individuality or Integrity: One renounces the assimilation-

ist ideal and endorses responsible individual development ("becoming sub-
jective") as the properly human goaL
Trusting Receptivity or Faith: One exercises not power but reception.

Through a newly acquired humility, one fmds oneself vulnerable both to the
intrinsic value of persons or things and to an ultimate source of their value
and life-bestowing power: One establishes (or fmds oneself established in)
"an absolute relationship to the absolute."
This trio, freedom, integrity, and faith, constitutes our essential human-
ity. The progressive acquisition, articulation, and strengthening of these
virtues mark the movements from proto-self to full selfhood, from a pre-
moral or "aesthetic" through an ethical stage, and then on to a faithful posi-
tion in the world. Though there may be many an inward heroism in growth
toward fuller selfhood, a free, faithful, and responsible person need not
appear extraordinary or heroic, need not appear like the wonder and terror
that is Abraham.
7
Ordeals and Reconciliations:
Faith and Moral Virtue
There is a beauty in the willingness to love

someone in the face of love's instability and
worldliness .... There is a certain valuable
quality in social virtue that is lost when
social virtue is removed from the domain of
uncontrolled happenings.
-Martha Nussbaum.·
in faith, I receive everything.

-Johannes de silentio2
THE IDEA OF our humanity as a cluster of moral and religious virtue is not
something upon which Johannes de silentio has a fInn grasp. After all, he is
baffled by the knight of faith. Nevertheless, the idea has considerable textual
support, complements Johannes's aims in Fear and Trembling, and strength-
ens our overall grasp of this dialectical text. It fIts well with later Kierkegaar-
dian themes found in the Postscript and in Sickness Unto Death. But this
reading seems to present a relatively static picture of human essence. How
does this square with the familiar Kierkegaardian themes of movement. of
development by stages, and of conflict between perspectives? In addition, we
have characterized the virtues of our humanity as gifts, and the crowning one
as receptivity. How does this square with the idea that virtues are excellences
we strive to attain?
101
Clarifications
The tasks of selfhood-realizing our humanity, suspending the ethical,

getting Isaac and the universal back-are processes of character- or identity-
formation, more or less grounded in and structured by the personal virtues of
faith, freedom, and integrity. Such excellences of self are ideals and always
achieved as a matter of degree, in one respect or another. There is no once-
and-for-all in getting faith, transcending conventionality, or achieving one's
essential humanity. And we should expect some uncertainty in determining
whether minimal levels of achievement have been attained in the exercise of
each of these person-shaping powers. Each has its cheap yet barely distin-
guishable counterfeit.
Furthermore, we have been speaking throughout of movements, steps,
temporal sequences. One is immersed in aesthetic life before the ethical
emerges. One suspends the ethical, then gets it back. Resignation precedes
receptivity. The paradigms of faith are sequentially ordered: Socrates, Abra-
ham. Christ. But this reliance on sequence is partly a heuristic narrative
device. Change in self may be more or less instantaneous and mayor may
not involve discrete steps in an antecedently determined order of develop-
ment. What is crucial is logical or structural rather than temporal priority.
An individual may express an aesthetic life-view in some parts of her
life, failing thereby to possess or exercise the full virtues of her humanity. In
another segment of her life she may express an ethical or religious virtue.
Kierkegaard depicts characters more or less representative of a given life-view.
But our actual lives typically lack such tidy narrative unity and completeness.
We are admirable or ethical in this respect, shameful or aesthetic in that.
The familiar Kierkegaardian "stages," "spheres" or "life-views" may
be taken as the elaboration of one or another voice in this trio of personal
virtues. But although each virtue may be conceptually distinct and "all-or-
nothing," it is unrealistic to suppose that it becomes embedded in an individ-
ual, concrete life either instantaneously or through and through. We work to
increase the areas of our strengths and excellences and to diminish the
domains of weakness or vice. We develop the color. power and flexibility of
each voice, and tune to, if we cannot always control. their rhythmic and tonal
ensemble, whether fortuitous or intended, classically poised or racked in rel-
ative discord.
The conflict between ethics and faith, captured in the idea of a "teleo-
logical suspension of ethics," does not describe a permanent rupture in the
self. Instead, it marks the everpresent possibility of discord among virtues and
principles, especially in moments of change and crisis. From a position suffi-
ciently distanced from the tensions of a specific ordeal, the disharmony
between ethics and faith signals only a passing phase. 3
Faith and Moral Virtue 103
Evidence for a rough harmony among religious and moral virtues lies
in the images of domestic knights of faith-the shopman, the serving maid,
the professor. As we have seen above, Glenn speaks of relativizing finite
goods, and the restoration of the self's "ethical self-relation."4 The virtues of
affiliation and civic virtue can be squared with faith. As Hannay puts it:
by adopting a telos outside the ethical [the knight of faith] is not

putting himself above morality so much as extending morality's uni-
verse; and although he places himself outside the self-sufficient univer-
salist ethics [and hence inside an ethics of inward virtue], he still feels
the contrary feel of that [universalist] ethics .... ~
The faithful knight is not proposing that: "the value ordinarily attributed to
conventional moral practice may be revoked at any time by non-moral divine
imperative ... [but that] there can be morally motivated exceptions to the rule
that ethical norms apply universally. "6 The moral (and, in part, religious)
virtues of faith, responsibility, and freedom may provide a subjective basis for
questioning the dominance of universal ethical rules. And the return of the
(now dethroned) universal coincides with the embrace of an enhanced ethical
position-one that has space for the individual, structured by personal virtues.
The universal, as Johannes occasionally acknowledges, is essential for
the formation and maintenance of what we have called a proto-self and for the
subsequent expression of our essential humanity. It provides roles and rules
that define the broad array of possibilities for relationship, for conduct, and for
varying life-strategies through which, for better or worse, one can hope to pro-
ject a worthy humanity. The individual for Kierkegaard is of preeminent worth.
Nevertheless, the social matrix is the inescapable field of one's endeavor, the
arena wherein that worth, however problematically, can find its expression.
Expressing oneself through the universal cannot mean that all of its
possibilities are endorsed or exploited. For one who has "suspended the ethi-
cal," convention or tradition is a highly variegated and complex set of
options, materials, or opportunities that one may use to greater or lesser
effect in the unfolding of a particular life. Being ready to exploit the univer-
sal does not yet tell mt:-what could?-which portions, and in what mea-
sure, are to become vehicles for my expression. The career I pursue, the way
I reveal my filial concern, the form my civic participation assumes, the
friends that I seek-each will become part of my identity made intelligible
by social norms and possibilities. But there is room within that social matrix
for an unimaginably large number of possible lives, only one of which can
and will be mine. From the standpoint of faith, to accept the universal is not
to accept a rigid life-plan that imprisons the self in deadening uniformity. It
leaves ample elbow room for the personal.
Let me consider related issues. Is Kierkegaardian faith merely trusting

receptivity? And if virtue is by and large a matter of disciplined accomplish-
ment, how can Jaith qualify as a virtue? After all, we are repeatedly remind-
ed that faith is not attained on the knight's strength, but on "the strength of
the absurd."
To interpret faith only as trusting receptivity is to simplify its complex-
ity for Kierkegaard. The virtue of receptivity is a minimal requirement for
what we have called an elementary faith. Such openness toward bestowed
goods can be given a secular or nonbiblical articulation. Yet for someone
becoming a Christian, faith must involve the "offense" of the "absolute para-
dox," the Incarnation, and the obstacle of Sin.7 These complexities of Chris-
tian faith might prompt us to divorce it from the broader virtue of trusting
receptivity. On the other hand, we could take these complexities as an invita-
tion to deepen our grasp of one prominent, refined, and multi-faceted articu-
lation of elementary faith. A narrative continuum might link elementary or
secular with Christian faith.
Making faith a virtue can be challenged from other directions. Is faith
really an achievement?8 One objection is that faith provides what the will
alone cannot: for example, forgiveness. Some defects of action, character, or
circumstance just can't be overcome by effort. Yet with increased moral con-
sciousness we can develop a painful sense of responsibility for ineradicable
fault, for something the striving self can't overcome on its own. Such moral
stain can be somewhat eased by efforts--efforts, say, to make amends. But
often it can only be forgiven, not worked off.
In addition, if faith is a "double movement," the second movement
seems to be initiated by another-at least not by the self, which is primarily
receptive. Doesn't virtue involve an active striving and commitment? The
aesthete, to escape his corruption, must pursue virtue. Resignation and faith
require weathering ordeals: strength, and effort are required. But striving for
faiTh might be self-defeating: like trying to be effortless. Can humility, spon-
taneous thankfulness, or receptivity be pursued? Becoming a self is a task we
undertake. Yet the enablement that gets us through appears finally as gift, as
power bequeathed. Perhaps faith is like the action of keeping still, cousin to a
stunned and quiet suhmission, an alert but yielding immobility.
Our ability to master is limited. Perhaps not all virtue is a matter of
striving, mastery or possession. To possess a virtue like good-heartedness or
humility needn't mean that we can bring about at will the specific excellence
the virtue names or the particular good it provides. Jon EIster makes this
point epigrammatically: "There is hubris in the view that one can be master
of one's soul-just as there is an intellectual fallacy in the view that every-
thing that comes about by action can also be brought about by action.''9 Hap-
piness or love or understanding may come ahout through our varied doings.
But we may lack an effective recipe, a procedure, to bring them about.

Rough guidelines can be sketched for the achievement of some ends or the
cultivation of some traits of character. To the initiate these may appear as
platitudes; to others, deep obscurities or paradoxes. ("Just be natural!")
Whatever the steps recommended, it does not follow that they can be imple-
mented at will by the self to whom they are addressed}O
As any lover or musician. parent or teacher knows. our excellences are
not entirely at our command. Nor do we always understand their source. We
can wonder at the genesis of an artful phrase. a social touch, our way with
tools. Kierkegaard conceives the self as an uneasy tension between autono-
my and dependence. self-initiative and other-dependent initiative. There is
assertion or production but also witness and discovery. Self and environing
world are at last as much gift as heroic achievement. Isaac is returned. not
wrested back by force, cunning, or rhetoric.
Another source of hubris is a misplaced stress on critical self-con-
sciousness. What appears as ethical work or commitment can in fact be aes-
thetic self-regard: Am [looking well? David Wisdo describes this danger in
an insightful essay on Simone Weil. And his description suggests a rationale
for the invention of quite ordinary faithful "knights:"
the sophisticated moral agent. who possesses a rich and highly nuanced
vocabulary to describe his actions and give shape to his moral life. runs
the risk of making this kind of activity an end in itself. The temptation
is to aspire to a kind of moral virtuosity by attending to the many ways
his actions might enhance the richness and depth of his moral reper-
toire. Although the moral vocabulary of the ignorant peasant might be
much more limited and impoverished than that possessed by the Aris-
totelian person of virtue, the peasant is much less likely to succumb to
the temptation of viewing his actions as a means to render his life a
'moral work of art. II
There is real risk in characterizing Johannes's hero as a hero, a knight of

faith joining battle for moral and religious virtue. If faith is a quest. Johannes
also correctly depicts it as "absurd," quixotic. But it is far from inevitable
that the pursuit of virtue degenerate into narcissistic self-regard. or that it
involve inflated presumptions of self-sufficiency. To recognize the limits of
one's power is a virtue. One must know. as Johannes reminds us, "what we
can and cannot do. "12
The knight of faith is not a proud. resourceful champion. jousting for
his princess before an assembled crowd. With his invention of the shopman.
Johannes nearly makes this point explicit. Were he closer to faith. not merely
an admiring outsider. he might have seen outright that faithfulness is distinct
106 Knights oj Faith and Resignation
from the colorful world of knights. Yet as unhappy romantics, as poets in

search of celebrity, adventure and the spectacular, this is the world toward
which we and Johannes too easily gravitate.
These knights of faith and resignation seem to promote an absurd will-
to-power, an overweening will-to-master mortality and time. Yet faith is cul-
tivating the opposite: a trusting receptivity, an openness toward whatever
may be given. It is the simplicity, humility and playfulness of the shopman:
no hero, but a "poet of the ordinary," who gives his loving regard toward the
least of fmite objects. 13 The shopkeeper or serving maid embody virtue with-
out needing a grandstand or a banner raised to accomplishment. Attaining
self is not a task to master solo. Whatever the knight's ordeal, work, or suf-
fering, at last he receives himself, welcomes himself thankfully as gift.
Kant, Kierkegaard. and Hidden Inwardness
Various philosophers have appeared in the course of our discussions: Hegel

and Socrates, Nietzsche and Sartre. Kant, too, lies powerfully in the back-
ground. Although I have tried to minimize historical comparisons, it will
help in this interlude to consider a parallel between Kant and Kierkegaard.
One might assume that these two moralists--one a champion of Reason, the
other a celebrated "irrationalist"--could only meet as adversaries. This is far
from true. On a number of counts their perspectives converge. 14
To be trained to keep promises and refrain from cheating is central to
conventional morality. We become acculturated to take a number of practices
as self-evident, binding duties. But Kant proposes that one could be perfectly
trained in this respect and yet express nothing of moral worth. For Kant,
one's essential humanity involves acting from a particular stance, from a par-
ticular motive. The state of my SUbjectivity, the purity of my will, is the cru-
cial factor. An aspiring moral agent must learn to supplement conventionally
approved behavior with inward moral virtue, with purity of will.
How to alter or clarify a mixed or muddled will is not something Kant
spells out. He avoids a developmental approach. Nevertheless one might imag-
ine a critical moment in becoming a Kantian when conventional, appropriate,
and "dutiful" conduct becomes "teleologically suspended." One would imag-
ine a crisis as one sets aside the presumption that conventional acts of promise-
keeping, say, or truth-telling, represent worthy moral achievements. The pre-
tence that honesty in accord with duty has moral worth would be suspended in
the light of a higher good. One would grasp, or be grasped by, a quite superior
telos essential to the structure of our humanity. Relating absolutely to this abso-
lute, each person is bequeathed a priceless worth, a ground for self-respect, and
a basis for respect for others. For Kant, this absolute is purity of will or Reason.
Failh a"d Moral \'irru(' 107
Having faith in this "higher good" is suspending one's tendency to

absolutize conventional moral conduct; but it is also readiness to accept
"duty" back on a new basis. After the teleological suspension, I keep my
promise not just in accord with, but from duty. For both Kierkegaard and
Kant, the moral and spiritual center is how I. as a particular. express myself
through convention. For both, "the universal becomes an expression ... of a
humanity pre-established, as it were, at the level of the particular. "15 And the
structure of that "pre-established" humanity is strikingly similar: freedom.
integrity, and trust in (or respect for) an absolute are virtues that define a
fully human self, at home in a conventional matrix.
To become truly moral, Kant requires that our motives reflect Reason's
imperatives. Kierkegaard finds the transcendental locus of obedience else-
where, giving the absolute another name. For his part. Kant makes an explic-
it critique of Abraham, one which challenges Johannes's account. Reason,
Kant writes, ought to have halted Isaac's sacrifice. In the Groundwork he
suggests that confronted with a choice between Reason and Christ, our alle-
giance should be to Reason.'6 Nevertheless, the structural parallel remains. If
Reason is the absolute for Kant, then it is an absolute relationship to this
absolute, and a recognition of one's dependence on it, that underwrites one's
full humanity.
Finally, both Kant and Kierkegaard depict an unsettling tension
between nonnative urgency and epistemic uncertainty. Salvation hinges on
purity of motive construed as a correct relationship to God or Reason. Yet the
marks of having attained this inward purity remain tantalizingly obscure.
Objective uncertainty will accompany our passionate commitment to the new
te/os governing our lives. Though our aim is purity of motive, there can be
no proof that our motives are pure. Here is the Kantian parallel to Johannes's
problem of detecting the simple knight of faith. There are conceptual-and
to the trained or sensitive observer. perceptual--differences between pure
and mixed motive. between Philistine and knight of faith. But in neither case
is a sure-fire criterion for practical identification spelled out.
Crucial moral contrasts can rest on perceptual cues which defy transla-
tion into explicit differentiating criteria. We can hear unmistakable irony in a
voice; know that a scream is false, only a child's mimic of terror. We can see
a lie written on his face; feel the hatred in a "playful" tease. If perceptual
cues are not salient, if they fail to strike another, it may be difficult. if not
impossible, to spell them out. So with the essential moral cues at hand. How
do we kno ..... that what we intend in good will or good faith has not been sub-
tly infected by self-interest? There is risk, uncertainty. and moral anxiety at
the heart of these accounts." Yet despite the dark. we strive for a Purity. God.
or Good we can never fully know we have attained or are even reliably
approaching.
For both the faithful knight and for Kant's moral agent self-assessment
is primary. The beam in one's own eye should loom larger than the mote in
one's neighbor's. Nevertheless, this uncertainty applies equally to assessment
of others, which again suggests due caution in approaching Abraham. Rather
than providing a model for outward behavior, the startling horror of the
upraised knife is intended symbolically to highlight an otherwise elusive
aspect of inward virtue. It marks the moment when will is purified.
The story of Abraham and Isaac need not be taken ... as a literal
description of what a person must be prepared to do if he is to be said
to have faith. It can be read as an allegory in which Abraham's actions
symbolize some general features of a religious consciousness rather
than illustrate the sort of deeds expected of someone who has that con-
sciousness. 18
Are there marks to tell us when an allegorical or symbolic interpretation is

appropriate? Johannes warns against readings that provide "tasteful explana-
tions," warns against interpretations that water down "words [that] are to be
taken in as terrifying a sense as possible." Such misplaced effort "ends up in
drivel rather than terror. "19 But who dares say which inward transformations do
not raise nightmares, which shifts in moral perception are in/act unterrifying?
Upraised knives can be unmistakable objective evidence. A more
inward teleological suspension is harder to spot. Abraham is kin to the shop-
man; he can't be that terrifyingly out of line. The upraised blade threatens a
severing of allegiances; and its remaining only upraised reminds us that the
severing, however crucial, is only a prelude to welcoming reconciliation.
The Invisible Knight
Johannes de silentio has promised to focus on the lonely journey to the

mountain. That itself shifts our gaze from the moment of sacrifice. And the
shopkeeping knight reminds us that there is not just a journey to the moun-
lain, but also a return, a return of and to a simple life in the embrace of the
universal. This ordinary fellow is gracefully reconciled with the world. Here
again is lhe portrait, beautifully drawn:
"Good God, is this the person, is it really him? He looks just like a tax-
gatherer." ... He is solid through and through. His stance? Vigorous, it
belongs altogether to finitude, no smartly turned-out townsman taking
a stroll out to Fresberg on a Sunday afternoon treds the ground with
surer foot; he belongs altogether to the world, no petit bourgeois
belongs to it more. One detects nothing of the strangeness and superi-

ority that mark the knight of the infinite. This man takes pleasure.
takes part in everything. and whenever one catches him occupied with
something his engagement has the persistence of the worldly person
whose soul is wrapped up in such things. 20
What chilling test has this burgher undergone? What qualifies him as a
knight of faith?
He drains in infmite resignation the deep sorrow of existence. he

knows the bliss of infinity. he has felt the pain of renouncing every-
thing, whatever is most precious in the world, and yet to him fmitude
tastes just as good as to one who has never known anything higher....
he has this sense of being secure to take pleasure in it, as though it
were the most certain thing of al1. 21
The shopman is not in extremis or subject to agonizing ordeals. He has

received the universal back, and leads an outwardly unexceptional life. But
he is faithful and therefore exceptional. His acting in accord with convention
has in no way tricked him into a false unqualified or absolute respect for
convention. His loyalty lies elsewhere, not with the assimilationist ideal. In
some inner gesture, hidden from our view, the shopman resigns the universal,
undergoes its "teleological suspension," and then joyfully welcomes it back
as a vehicle for the expression of his humanity:
Faith's knight ... knows that it is glorious to belong to the universal. He

knows it is beautiful and benign to be the particular who translates
himself into the universal, the one who so to speak makes a clear and
elegant edition of himself.... He knows it is beautiful to be born as the
particular with the universal as his home, his friendly abode, which
receives him straightaway with open arms when he wishes to stay
there. l l
Yet the possibility of suffering, isolation, or dilemma, are everpresent.

occasioned by the stringent demands of freedom, integrity. and receptivity.
Johannes adds a sobering caution: "But [the faithful knight) also knows that
higher up there winds a lonely path, narrow and steep; he knows it is terrible
to be born in solitude outside the universal, to walk without meeting a single
traveller."23 Together, solitary crisis and answering reconciliation animate
Johannes's lyrical, dialectical effort. And the last word is worldly affiliation:
"It must be wonderful to get the princess, and yet it is only the knight of faith
who is happy. only he is heir apparent to the finite."24
The Tale Retold
Isaac comes from his father's loins. Paternity has its rightful claims. Then in
a shattering event, the son is lost---only' to be returned, no longer now his
father's possession. He rests in Abraham's keeping, on loan, as it were, from
God. Here is a test of reason and care, a humbling of possessive will, an
ordeal to confirm his essential humanity.
The story challenges a number of Hegelian assumptions: for example,
that morality is adherence to social norms, that duty to God is essentially
social duty, that moral action must be "transparent," must wear its justifica-
tion and intelligibility on its sleeve. But the tale also models a process of
self-formation. As a distillate of biology, tradition and convention, a proto-
self appears, only to suffer the trials of self-articulation, the ordeals of resig-
nation and faith. Woven from countless social practices, our projects, essen-
tial segments of our identity, are repeatedly put at risk. They encounter
resistance from circumstance and competing ideals. Inevitably they become
subject to critical reflection. Then, to varying degrees, they are reaffirmed or
welcomed back, transformed. With luck, effort, and aid, we tend an increas-
ingly moral self, nourished by a relationship to a barely articulable but pow-
erfully present absolute good.
The trials of faith are inevitably linked to this process of socialization
and identity formation. As Kierkegaard writes in Training in Christianity:
"there is no established order which can do without fear and trembling. Fear
and trembling signifies that one is in the process of becoming."2S The ongo-
ing movements of giving up and getting back are given their essential social
context.
The tale sharply mocks complacency. We grandly assume ownership or
mastery or certainty of saving power, say, through membership in the crowd
or through pursuits of pleasure or learning or status. There can be compla-
cency about the objects I pursue. Chasing status, I neglect the tasks of self-
hood. Or there can be complacency in presumption. I attempt to will or attain
success of the relevant sort on my own. To achieve virtuous self-sufficiency,
one envisions the triumph and glory of knighthood. Blind to the limits of
one's competence, to the pervasive possibility of dilemmas and defeating cir-
cumstance. one expects to erase evil through good will and strength alone.
But this is vain. For Johannes or Kierkegaard, the world is morally. spiritual-
ly. unmasterable. The recognition of limit may trigger a crisis of morale.
Why continue the battle? But it may also open and empty the self. Enable-
ments can seem to flow from an absolute. may dawn, enter to enlighten and
restore. Values are conferred to me as the particular individual I am. apt to
my needs midway in the unfolding of my humanity.
As if to forestall a confusion between convention and the true basis of
Faith and Moral Virtue III
our humanity. Kierkegaard avails himself of a biblical story of similar intent.

We confront the primordially human frighteningly stripped of the comforts
of the ordinary: an essence both terribly fragile and terribly strong. Like the
moment of vision delivered from the Whirlwind at the end of Job. the father
is now silenced. now a vessel of trusting receptivity: Strong in integrity. frag-
ile in buffeting circumstance. Through the medium of a dream. a song. a tale
in the night. we see allegiance. virtue. stripped bare. But a story meant to
make unmistakable this contrast between our humanity and the context of its
expression is not a proposal to reject common decency.
Startling revelations help us see. They are not prescriptions to teach us
what to dO. 26 The exposure of fragile virtue is not a command to cast off all
that clothes our humanity. protects our vulnerability: "[The individual] does
not ... divest himself of the manifold composite gannent of the finite in order
to clothe himself in the abstract attire of the cloister. "21 We suffer skepticism.
withdrawal. and retreat-the loss of the finite and our Isaacs. But the gar-
ments of the everyday-<lecencies. good food. friends. and play-are not
abjured. Abraham and shopman are inside and outside of a single fabric. As
Kierkegaard confesses, "If I had had faith. I would have married Regina."28
In faith. the sustaining values of the everyday are offered for our care. As
Johannes has it. we taste "the sublime in the pedestrian."29 Nothing less than
disaster may awaken us to our humanity; but nothing less than reconciliation
lets it be realized. 30
8
Ordeals of Silence:
Ethics and Transformations
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must

be silent.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein l
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.
-Bernard Williams 2
"PROBLEMA Ill" FILLS almost a third of Fear and Trembling, making it the
broadest section in an already verdant jungle of a text. Is Abraham justified
in remaining silent, especially before Sarah and Isaac? They are the ones
who stand to suffer most for the good he thinks he serves. To mark paths
through this overgrown terrain, I set my reflections in this chapter under four
headings: disclosure, the marks of the ethical. the limits of ethics, and ethics
transformed. Then, in the following chapter, I consider silences once more,
kinds of concealment and writing and redemption. Socrates appears at the
end of this final "Problema." I consider his fate in Chapter 10.
113
Disclosure
The king who must sacrifice his child for the survival of the city presents his
case publicly, as we would expect. Given a terrible conflict of obligations,
Agamemnon's situation is tragic. There can be no decisive justifications
here. Nevertheless, his accounting will provide a partial defence, a rationale
that will be readily understood, if not fully accepted, by his public. Perhaps,
this willingness to hear him out should not surprise us. After all, it's they, the
citizens. who stand to benefit by her death. But will she comprehend? Is
Agamemnon sufficiently concerned for her pain?3
In tragic cases whatever one does is wrong or terrible. But this does not
absolve one from giving accounts. In his discussion in "War and Massacre,"
Thomas Nagel suggests that a person must be ready to provide reasons that
are at least intelligible-if not finally acceptable or welcome-to those one
afflicts.4 One must be pained by the suffering one unhappily or necessarily
inflicts; and that pain must be disclosed to whomever one hurts. This is more
than floating a convenient rationale or excuse. And it is more than sincerely
giving a plausible explanation. It is acknowledging the hurt they will under-
go, through being pained by it, and displaying that pain as one's own. This
sort of moral openness toward others, being with them appropriately in times
of tragedy, is part of what Johannes means by the ethical duty to reveal one-
self. But the notion of disclosure is broader than this.
The view of ethics Johannes assumes, and then challenges through the
example of Abraham, is assimilationist. Moral community removes the barri-
ers that separate individual souls. Persons become transparent to one another.
Minimally this discourages lying and falsehood and promotes accountability
for our actions. But more important, the ideal of mutual transparency
expands to the larger community the intimacy common within good families
and friendship.
Children, we could say, begin their moral growth as empty "bare par-
ticulars." Only gradually do they take on the trappings of social value and
tradition. As Johannes puts it, "the child is determined precisely by the
outer"; that is, he takes his cues from others. In contrast, the appropriately
developed adult is self-directed, "determined" by "the inner. "5 A test of a
child's having assimilated public or familial norms is her capacity to reveal
this inwardly duplicated moral self-structure, as occasions arise. If a child
does not steal, this may be because she does not value the available object, or
because she is afraid of punishment. 6 By requiring exposure of the motive
behind action or inaction, we gauge the person before us.
Conversely, if persons erect barriers, refuse the ideal of transparency,
this can be read as a rejection of a community's right to hold its members
accountable. The public has a clear stake in continuing the moral traditions it
Ethics and Transformations 115
embodies and sustains. Reserving a domain of privacy can be rooted in pride,

guilt or indifference. In any case, it is a refusal of the assimilationist ideal.
For Hegel, our destiny is shared, involving reciprocity and commitment to
common goods. The ideals of civic responsibility and familial intimacy, of a
common life lived openly in the embrace of the universal, are realized only
as we become transparent to one another. But Abraham breaks this ideal of
community and communication. If he is a paragon, then reciprocal revelation
among persons cannot be a requirement, either for personal or public ethics.
In Abraham's case, such revelation is impossible: not because he would
rather forget the obligation to speak. That would be common culpability.
Johannes holds that, in the nature of the case, Abraham's words will be unin-
telligible. Whatever his will in the matter, it will be literally impossible to
speak.
As we have seen, Johannes inherits a Hegelian argument.' Language is
a string of concepts, and these concepts are universals in the sense that they
pick out features common to a group of objects. The difference between this
pot and just another similar pot, from the standpoint of concepts, will be
ineffable. To make the distinction, we stand mute and point. What makes a
particular be this particular eludes description. God addresses Abraham as a
unique particular. and his relation to God embodies that raw particularity.
His identity and its ground are thus obscured, erased from language, stopped
from speech.
There might be other reasons for Abraham's inability to speak. But for
Johannes it is enough that a Hegelian account is at hand. For the general
strategy of the "Problemata" is to show that if one accepts a Hegelian
assumption, then one will face an unwelcome consequence. In this case, we
are forced to conclude that because Abraham is silent, cannot fulfill his obli-
gation to disclose, either he is unethical, or his ethics needs revision. But
there is much more than a challenge to Hegelian assumptions in "Problema
III." There is a striking portrait of Socrates as he faces death before the Athe-
nian public. There are mUltiple literary examples of concealment, from
Agamemnon to Gloucester to Faust. We have extended variations on the tale
of Agnete and the Merman. And in the course of these wandering explo-
rations, Johannes gives a thumbnail sketch of ethics, a sketch as brief as it is
provocative.
Marks of the Ethical
Johannes considers a theatrical treatment of two lovers. Each has some

reason to feel unfit for marriage. To protect the other from suffering, both
hide their affections. But surely, Johannes notes, speaking as the omnipotent
116 Knights of Failh and Resignation
playwright, some aesthetic imagination can repair this unhappy state of

affairs. With a clever tum of events, we can contrive to save the lovers:
aesthetics is a respectful and sentimental discipline which knows more

ways of fixing things than any assistant house-manager. So what does
it do? It does everything possible for the lovers. By means of a coinci-
dence, the respective partners in the projected marriage get wind of the
other party's noble decision. Explanations follow. They get each other
and as a bonus the rank of real heroes as well; for notwithstanding they
have had no time even to sleep on their heroic resolutions, aesthetics
sees it as if they had bravely fought for their goal over many years. 8
He then continues in the following rich but rambling passage:
But ethics knows nothing either of this coincidence or this sentimental-

ity.... You can't argue with ethics, because it uses pure categories. It
doesn't appeal to experience. . .. Ethics has no coincidence, so no
explanations follow; it doesn't flirt with thoughts of dignity, it puts an
enormous burden of responsibility on the hero's frail shoulders; it con-
demns as presumptuous his thought of wanting to play providence in
his action, but also condemns him for wanting to do likewise with his
suffering. It enjoins the belief in reality and the courage to contend
with all its tribulations, rather than with those bloodless sufferings he
has taken upon himself by his own responsibility; it warns against
putting faith in the calculating shrewdness of reason, more treacherous
than the oracles of the ancients. It warns against all misplaced magna-
nimity. Let reality decide the occasion, that is the time to show
courage. 9
We can cull, or construct, from this difficult passage several striking claims
about aesthetics and ethics.
Freedomfrom Fortune
aesthetics knows more ways of fixing things than any assistant house
manager.... Ethics knows nothing of this coincidence
From an aesthetic standpoint contingent outcomes or chance occur-

rences can make a life better or worse. The playwright can make fortune
smile on otherwise hapless lovers. And, of course, my own life is a drama of
sorts. Being in the right (or wrong) place at the right (or wrong) time, being
blessed with talent or cursed with deformity can make all the difference. And
Ethics alld Trans/ormatiolll' 117
I can sometimes "fix up" these fortunes or misfortunes to make my story

happy or sad, go this way or that. To an extent, I can script my life.
But ethically speaking, my worth, the quality of my life, does not
depend on fortune. My character or soul can possess appropriate virtue-say,
be free and responsible-whatever my circumstances. And in the case of a
particular action, I will have done the right or wrong thing, based not on
clever scripts or on chancy outcomes but on intent. There is no moralluck.1O
Justificatory Transparency
You can't argue with ethics .... Ethics has no coincidence {or fortune},
so no explanations follow
In the aesthetic sphere, there is no end to rationalization, explanation,

or justification. Things can be explained and explained away---endlessly.
Like Hume, Kierkegaard sometimes suggests that reason is not autonomous
but only responsive, a "slave" to commitment, passion or care. It can clear
out, clarify and to some extent coordinate the disorderly world of the senti-
ments. But Reason is not master of the house; it does the bidding of others. If
from the standpoint of a detached Pure Reason, the scratch on my finger is
no more or less important than the deaths of thousands, then reason can justi-
fy anything and nothing. Only our cares make the difference. As Climacus
puts it in the Fragments, Reason says "Yes and No to the same thing."11
When faced with bizarre or even immoral behavior, how easy to cast
about for rationalizations, explanations to put things in a better light! There
are, of course, legitimate explanations in ethics. Ethically, we must reveal
ourselves, explain. But I take Johannes's point to be different. In ethics we
must beware the abundance of ready-made excuses. There is no explaining
duty ~way. One does one's duty or else fails. And what one's duty is does not
need elaborate derivation, justification, or explanation. Even in complex
cases or dilemmas, it is transparent. Transparently, Abraham must love Isaac,
must love God. However in aesthetic dimensions of life, we devote endless
time and energy to explain why a proposal is pennissible, or why a course of
action is in fact the best available. And there are always those dishonorable
grabs for pennission to compromise, lie, deceive, or needlessly harm.
Necessity
{ethics} uses pure categories . ... It condemns as presumptllous his

thought of wanting to play providence in his action . ... Let reality
decide the occasion
Under aesthetic concepts, we map policies, weigh options, negotiate for

the best outcomes. But ethics delivers necessities. We can, of course, reject a
moral stance, if we are willing to pay the price. Moral necessities presuppose
a primordial freedom. But once we embrace a moral point of view, acting
from that standpoint, we are bound by its requirements. If transparent in con-
tent, duty is also absolute in stringency. How common-and corrupt-the
contrary view that everything at every moment is up for grabs. This is the
"practical" or "aesthetic" view that values or standards are optional, everopen
to revision, negotiation, or neglect. Policy is infmitely flexible! But if I live
morally the particular duties that constrain me are set and inescapable. Neither
I nor the occasion, but reality-moral reality-will dictate.
In doing what I must, I do not "play providence" with myself. In fanta-
sy, I might layout a "life-plan" as if I were a playwright, the author of my
fate.l 2 But moral life is not the interesting task of mapping out attractive pos-
sibilities, laying out goals or objectives. Johannes scorns the benevolent aes-
thete who scans the alternatives and then chooses "magnanimity." Minimiz-
ing the suffering of others will put him in a good light. He modestly awaits
recognition, an honoring banquet. His goodness grows with its price in self-
sacrifice and inconvenience. At the end of the second "Problema," Johannes
reflects on "this foolish concern for others' weal and woe which is honored
under the name of sympathy but which is really nothing but vanity."i3 The
"do-gooder," the self-conscious benefactor, "plays providence with himself."
He seeks opportunities to better his run. But moral virtue scores no points.
For ethics, it is enough that I respond as I must-as reality, in the occasion,
will dictate. As Iris Murdoch has it, truly moral response includes a quality
of attention, of seeing: letting the reality of another's particular need or suf-
fering sink in.14
Nonconsequentialism
It doesn't appeal to experience . ... it doesn't flirt with thoughts of

dignity . ... It enjoins the belief in reality and the courage to contend
with all its tribulatiolls, rather than with those bloodless sufferings he
has taken upon himself by his own responsibility, it warns against
putting faith in the calculating shrewdness of reason, more treacherous
than the oracles of the ancients
Under aesthetic perspectives we work for happiness, dignity or love,

ends, we might say, that will improve the quality of life. But in Johannes's
demanding view, duty is ethic's sole concern. Ethics refuses a wary, calculat-
ing eye on outcomes. The "calculating shrewdness of reason" distracts us
from motive and duty. And in sufficiently clever hands, it "justifies" just
EtJrics a/ld Trall.iformatiollJ I 19
about anything. Kierkegaard rejects an ethics whose aim is a collective

increase in wealth, education, enjoyment. Ethics cannot be the pursuit of
nonmoral satisfactions. Utilitarian projects or egoistic ventures, in their prop-
er place, are acceptable and desirable. But these are not ethical pursuits. The
ethical task, the human task, is personal and subjective: to become the moral
and spiritual beings we are; it is self-realization.
Orientating oneself in terms of this "absolute good" is not as easy as
declaring oneself ready to maximize, through rational distributive policies,
an identifiable commodity like wealth or service or public honor. In a pru-
dent and entrepreneurial society, the goal of becoming a person becomes
buried. But even if moral growth were revived as an acknowledged "abso-
lute," it still might be true that the task of becoming a self can be only pur-
sued indirectly. So duty, rather than self-realization, should be given the
prominent billing.
Getting a self is not simply a matter of achievement. How could it be a
person's explicit or immediate aim? If parts of personhood may be effective-
ly pursued, not so, the pattern. There are only sideways paths for getting a
self. Hedged by binding duties, we pursue a constellation of nonmoral cares,
one by one. And we may pursue specific ethical values or "absolutes," as
well. The deeper pattern, the pattern of self, might then coalesce, as it were,
behind our back. It would emerge indirectly as a loose and shifting constella-
tion of cares. A self received or found eludes direct apprehension, perhaps
appearing only retrospectively as a shadowed presence from the past or
prospectively as a beckoning call from the offing. In either case, it would not
be clearly sketched, self-consciously pursued, or confidently possessed. Self-
hood is not a "bloodless suffering [we] have taken upon [ourselvesl."15
Freedom from fortune, justificatory transparency, necessity, and non-
consequentiaIism are the features of ethics found in this passage from "Prob-
lema III." To complete the list, we should add two more marks of the ethical,
by now familiar.
Disclosure
Aesthetically it may be permissible to conceal; ethically, we are required to

reveal, to conduct the open if painful exchanges of intimacy.
Universality
Aesthetically, the odd, idiosyncratic, or unique may have value, and

religiously, the individual has supreme value. But ethics concerns the univer-
sal: what is required of anyone in a particular role or relationship or what is
required of all persons as persons. With this appeal to the universal goes the
assumption that we can meet moral demands. However lacking we may be in
intelligence, talent, beauty, or wealth, we are equal, so Kierkegaard believes,
in our moral capacity-our capacity to respond with integrity to the manifold
occasions demanding moral response.
If this explication clarifies at least one conception of ethics that
Johannes advances, it also clarifies-or complicates-our conception of the
"lower," aesthetic sphere of existence. Aesthetic life can mean an erotic or
fun-loving existence. Or in Kierkegaard's more specialized sense, it can
mean a stance toward the passing scene that is disengaged, poetic, or even
"philosophical." But in the passages just considered, an aesthetic stance also
includes the stance of prudential and upright citizens planning for the good
of their community, benevolent souls sacrificing for the welfare of others. In
fact, it seems to be any standpoint falling below a rather strict requirement of
"duty for duty's sake."
Given the shopman exemplar of faith, it seems clear that "the aesthet-
ic" is not dropped when one enters "the ethical." Citizens, ethical citizens,
must pursue business and pleasure. But these pursuits are now qualified by
dependence on a "higher good," the moral requirement. Just as "the abso-
lute" returns to the attending faithful the resources and comforts of the uni-
versal, so the ethical person gets back the comforts and rewards of the aes-
thetic: an aesthetic now relativized, its status clarified. Planning for
beneficial outcomes, explaining policy, giving alms from a tender heart are
indispensable in civilized life. But these goods are now subordinate to the
demands of duty and tasks of selfhood.
Ethics responds to the inadequacies of a merely aesthetic life. But as

we know, Fear and Trembling shows that ethics itselfis not free from insuffi-
ciencies. What are its limits? Almost as an aside, Johannes warns that taken
by itself, ethics would drive one crazy. "You can't argue with ethics, because
it uses pure categories. It doesn't appeal to experience ... and, far from mak-
ing a man wise, if he knows nothing higher it will sooner make him mad."16
The Limits of Ethics
Fear and Trembling puts us through a succession of ordeals that try our
patience, reason, and care, that expose conflict and instability in any number
of conventional views. Can we defeat the threat of emptiness that lurks
beneath the surface of our lives? Such apparent groundlessness opens an
ordeal of meaning. Poetic celebration and heroic deed are offered as
response. Can the romantic youth in love with his princess resign his passion
Ellrics and Trall.r;jormaliofl.f 121
without losing all care for her? Johannes opens an ordeal of love. How can
we survive tragic or religious dilemmas, where all options immerse us in
evil? Kierkegaard opens an ordeal of rational ethics. There is the trouble of
Abraham's mad hope that Isaac will be returned. This "absurdity," added to
and complicating the earlier ordeals, opens the ordeal of faith. There is the
challenge of Abraham's silence. And in the final pages of this text, Johannes
opens yet another ordeal. This last provocation is barely mentioned, but fun-
damental. It addresses any ethics that takes a good and fulfilling life as with-
in grasp of our unaided will.
A Hegelian ethics is broken by the particularity of one's God-relation-
ship, the particularity of one's identity, and the inexpressibility of one's partic-
ularity. But there might be an ethics that could successfully incorporate partic-
ularity. Earlier, we argued that subjective claims have a crucial place in the
fonnation of our individual identities. One's personal virtues, fonning an
essential humanity, can have substance prior to their expression in the univer-
sal. If that essential humanity incorporates a subjective religious commitment
to God or some other absolute placed within a cluster of essential personal
virtue, then this would head off a scandalous collision between ethics and
faith. But Johannes now says that ethics taken by itself could "drive one mad."
And he has in mind a critique that would apply even to this newly proposed
ethicoreligious stance. Johannes opens this final ordeal by alluding to sin.
Are we accountable for faults we do not knowingly bring upon our-
selves, or ones so deeply lodged in the self that they are virtually ineradica-
ble? This topic, so offensive to an enlightened age, is only peripheral to
Johannes' concern. Like Job, Abraham is faultless. However great the moral
suffering he endures, it is in no way rooted in personal/ault. But if the topic
has no bearing on Abraham, why does Johannes bring it up? Perhaps he
senses that his audience is misled if he deals only with a rare specimen. a
faultless biblical hero. A nonnally fragile and sensitive human being will
face further ordeals than Abraham.
By the time we are capable of reflective self-criticism. our characters
are both partially formed and more or less stained. Looking back, it will
appear that we have done wrong. even though at the time of the doing. as
children, we were not fully responsible. Further. we will seem already joined
to a wider circle of humanity, starting with family but stretching outward. We
will feel more or less proud-and stained-by multiple accidents of birth.
race, gender. fortune. or nationality. And we may already have confronted
dilemmas, settings we cannot escape without doing some wrong. To the
extent we are sensitively reflective, we find ourselves burdened by ineradica-
ble fault, by responsibility we can neither evade nor discharge. We accept a
command to seek perfection. to shun evil. to follow good. to amend harm we
have caused or discover. But the more serious this command appears. the
more sweeping in scope and stringency, the more impossible the task it sets.
We should strive to accomplish the right or the good; we work toward
moral goals that however challenging, are perceived as humanly attainable.
But sin uncovers a personal fault or defect, incurred often unknowingly, or
through accidents of circumstance or fortune, for which one feels intimate
and proper responsibility-a retrospective responsibility so well entrenched
that it seems virtually inconceivable that one could extract either the fault or
the weight of accountability for it by one's own strength, unaided. To make
one's striving intelligible or one's undertakings bearable, one is forced, it
seems, either to weaken one's moral demand and sacrifice moral fibre, or
else to seek help--not just worldly or everyday assistance, however comfort-
ing or strengthening it may be, but divine, unfathomable assistance.
Repentance is an ethical task. Being aware of one's moral failings and
being concerned to correct them is the highest aim of the ethical person. But
sin makes this aim absurd. For the stronger one's moral commitment, and the
more exact one's moral perception, then the less excusable one's failings will
appear to be. In a note, Johannes puts it this way: "Once sin makes its appear-
ance, ethics comes to grief precisely on the question of repentance. Repen-
tance is the highest ethical expression, but for that very reason the most pro-
found ethical self-contradiction."11 The more one grasps the extent of needed
repairs, the more one is impressed by one's powerlessness to effect such
change. This conflict will appear inescapable. Wouldn't it be better to have
been denied moral knowledge? Is there no hope for innocence regained? For
cleaning out these Augean stables, more than a Hercules is required.
Some may appear free from this grief or absurdity. Perhaps they relax,
blind to their deepest moral liabilities. Perhaps strange fortune exempts them,
for good or ill, from the ordeals of moral advance. Or perhaps, like the shop-
keeping knight, they have access to a faith providing powers of enablement
and self-forgiveness that go well beyond the resources of the ordinary human
or ethical: "when the single individual by his guilt has come outside the uni-
versal, he can return only by virtue of having come as the single individual
into an absolute relationship to the absolute."18 Unless one has recourse to
such extramoral resources or is willing to curtail one's awareness, then
inevitably as one's moral perception sharpens, the pain and cognitive disso-
nance become unbearable. Being liable for what one cannot undo and often
did not knowingly undertake will drive one insane. Johannes puts the enigma
this way: "An ethics that avoids sin is an altogether futile discipline, but once
it has postulated sin, it has eo ipso [thereby] gone beyond itself."19
The stage is set for the entrance of specifically Christian categories of
redemption and forgiveness, articulated in the Postscript's "Religiousness
B," and in the Christian Discourses. Forgiveness and redemption provide
renewal. In Fear and Trembling we have God providing Abraham a new
Isaac, a new world, in a sense, a new self.20 But Abraham's ordeal, however
ghastly, falls short of the ordeal of sin. In his moment of crisis, he is in
utmost need. But his need is not the torment of a soul afflicted by inex-
pungable guilt or sin. He has no need for Christian faith.
The floundering of ethics on a humanly inexpungable fault and the
relationship of Abraham's faith to a fully Christian or to a Socratic ethicoreli-
gious faith fall largely outside the scope of Fear and Trembling. But
Johannes is always looking sideways at alternative viewpoints, at other
pseudonyms. Each work in the Kierkegaardian corpus in various ways mir-
rors or recalls or anticipates the others. So in Fear and Trembling; Johannes
alludes to sin and forgiveness. But unable to say more on a theme that
escapes the frame of his discourse, he abandons his remarks.
There is a second aside I wish to note in this third "Problema." It too

marks a limit to ethics. The aside is not about sin, but about coupling aesthet-
ics and faith. In passing, Johannes darkly suggests that the solution to the
ordeal of silence is to have aesthetics "work hand in hand with religion."21
The remark is left dangling. But some elaboration will help us to see the con-
tinuity of Fear and Trembling, from the Preface and "Attunement" tluough
"Problema 111."
Religion provides a "second immediacy." If aesthetics is coupled with
ethics, and is then placed in the overall embrace of faith, the stark austerity
of the ethical will be relieved. The unyielding stringencies of duty will be
softened with the return, through the receptivity of faith, of daily enjoyments,
simple goodness, and worldly satisfactions. In contrast to the milder ethic of
Either/Or, the duty-laden ethic of "Problema III" leaves no room for senti-
ment or beauty, no room at this inn even for love. 22 Though at its worst and
alone an aesthetic existence is shallow and sentimental, when joined to reli-
gion, it-not ethics-is the conduit for a life of love and attachment, attuned
to tM touch of the ordinary and particular. 23
To be attuned to immediacy, to the color and taste of the world, is to
enjoy an aesthetic connection. But aesthetics can also refer to a way of writ-
ing. It is tluough mastery of literary techniques that Johannes manages, how-
ever failingly, to display the ordeals and reconciliations of religious con-
sciousness. From "Attunement," where he tells tales within tales, tluough his
"Preamble from the Heart," to "Problema III," where he adopts, as he says,
an aesthetic standpoint to discuss Abraham, Johannes de silentio indulges his
lyrical, rhetorical talents. The vehicle for interpreting life-spheres or the
movements between them, and for prodding a listener forward, is not, for
Johannes, philosophical proof or directly edifying or confessional address.
Dialectical excursions, prominent and essential, are contained by a primarily
narrative, symbolic, storytelling frame. 24 Aesthetics is needed to "give
124 Kniglrts of Faitlr and Resignation
weight" to the argument. 2S And at the end of "Problema III," we have

Socrates composing, dialectic in song.
Ethics Transformed
The limits of ethics are exposed in the idea of teleological suspensions. A

teleological suspension challenges the purported universality and omnicom-
petence of rational ethics. Prospectively. in a situation ripe for personal con-
version, the suspension will appear as a dilemma, an ordeal of self and sanity
that can be weathered only with the aid of extraordinary assistance. Retro-
spectively. the suspension will appear as a kind of Hegelian aufhebung. the old
ethics taken up, cancelled-yet-preserved in a new and richer habitation. Per-
hUps sin prompts a kind of teleological suspension-a cancelation and trans-
formation of some feature of ethics as one moves (or is moved) to the reli-
gious sphere. In any case, each of the six aspects of the ethical that we have
noted will be cancelled and transformed as one moves toward the religious.
Enough has been said about the challenge to the universal that arises
from the particularity of religious concern. And it is clear that the ethical
requirement of disclosure is suspended. Freedom from moral luck, fortune,
or contingency is also cancelled. For God, "all things are possible."26 Grace
can be conceived as religiously modulated luck. There is good fortune at
work in the return of self and world. The stringency, the nonnegotiable
necessity. of ethical requirements is also softened. Here, Johannes's warning
about sin comes to bear, for it is not only dilemmas that destroy innocence,
that place us unavoidably in the wrong.27 The more exact we become moral-
ly, the less we can satisfy the moral demand. If this ordeal can be weathered
by appeal to a Christian solution, the stringency of the moral demand will be
cancelled yet transformed. In the new religious sphere the concepts of for-
giveness and atonement will enter. Justificatory transparency gets "suspend-
ed" as one moves toward the religious. At least for one this side of faith,
absurdity, paradox, and offense to reason cancel the clarity of the ethical
requirement. Finally, non-consequentialislll also gets suspended. There is a
new goal that emerges in the Postscript: the striving not for any social or
worldly outcome, but for our individual eternal happiness.
If crisis is answered by reconciliation, then cancellations or suspen-
sions foreshadow returns. Perhaps such cancelling-and-preserving occurs at
each stageshift, as Merold Westphal suggests. 2R If so, then "teleologicul sus-
pcnsion" is just another name for a Hegelian alljhe/mllg. Aesthetics is sus-
pcnded and then preserved in a new subordinate status within ethics, as we
see in Either /01: Ethics is suspended and then preserved in a new subordi-
nute status within the religious sphere, as we glimpse in Fear and Tremhlillg
and see full face in the Postscript. In the new "postsuspension" ethicoreli-
gious sphere, each mark of the ethical reappears, preserved and transfonned:
universality. in that all persons are required to face God; disclosure. in that
each must reveal himself or herself to God; absence from fortune. because
God is not arbitrary: a "divine logic" prevails, it "does not rain on the just
and unjust alike;"29 justificatory transparency. because God's wish becomes
clear; necessity. because there is nothing more stringent than his command;
non-consequentialism. because there is no higher goal devotion can serve;
and speech. disclosure in a confessional, ceremonial, or liturgical mode.
9
Ordeals oj Silence:
Faith and Concealments
a predicate or two can reveal a whole world.

-Johannes de silentio l
So hard at best is the lot of man, and so

great is the beauty he can apprehend, that
only a religious conception of things can
take in the extremes and meet the case. It
seems to me there are a few things everyone
can humbly try to hold onto: love and
mercy (and humor) in everyday living: the
quest for exact truth in language and affairs
of the intellect: self-recollection or prayer:
and the peace, the composed energy of art.
-Robert Fitzgerald2
IN A HEGELIAN PERSPECTIVE, particulars are inexpressible through deficit.

A description specifies something's qualities, each named by a concept
whose meaning is universally shared. If one strips off features of an
object-say its color, size, taste, and so forth-then there is nothing left to
describe. Its particularity or presence, its "that-ness," its bare "being-there,"
eludes expression. But certainly neither Abraham's identity nor the unique
relationship on which that identity is based, is inexpressible only because
concepts with shared meanings have been stripped away. The doctrine of the
127
inexpressibility of bare particulars gives Johannes all he needs to force a

Hegelian retreat. But more can be said on behalf of Abraham's silence. It can
come, so I believe, not from a deficit, but from a surplus of meaning. There
is a turbulence of meanings packed into Abraham's identity, the situation he
confronts, and his relationship to God.
When Johannes speaks of "the absurd" or "paradox," opposed mean-
ings do not simply cancel each other out. For example, in cases of dilemma,
each of the conflicting demands taken separately has force. Their continuing
to have force creates dilemma. The opposed meanings of these demands
remain vibrantly in effect, in tensed juxtaposition. Abraham is mute not from
deficiency, brought about, say, because in his particularity there is nothing
left over for concepts to express. What gets cancelled in dilemma is not
meanings, but the capacity of these meanings, when summed or collected, to
provide univocal direction or unambiguous intelligibility.
Caring for what one has given up, joining the fmite and infmite, embody-
ing a strength that is powerlessness-these contraries are the nodal points
around which Johannes turns his inquiry. Because the expression of either term
in these linked pairs will seem to eliminate the other, one fmds it impossible to
speak. This is especially true when one is struggling to become a Christian, to
become ethical-when one fmds oneself in the midst of a shift in life-perspec-
tives. There is too much. too much agonizing turbulence. to easily express.
Silences Once More
There is desperation beyond description, experiences that strike us dumb, an

elusive preciousness in the world that envelops us. Johannes says of Abra-
ham that "His distress and anguish cannot be conceived in general."3 Words
fail to convey the requisite power, weight, or intensity along their ordinary
\'ectors of meaning. Abraham's love of Isaac can be inexpressibly intense.
His love of God can also be inexpressibly intense, doubling his painful
silence. And since the vectors of his love for Isaac and his love for God point
in opposite directions, we have a three-fold tension that strikes us dumb.
Other plausible roots of the ineffable include things invisible because
taken-for-granted. Like the air we breath or the ground that supports us, they
are largely left unspoken. But the tacit familiarity of the everyday is only
contingently ineffable. Unspoken aspects of my world can be called to atten-
tion and sensitively articulated. Still, in any local circumstance, more that is
crucial remains unsaid than said. One could say our lives are grounded in an
encompassing yet systematically tacit, and so elusive, mystery.4 In uttering
this sentence, I cannot begin to utter all that makes it intelligible, its genesis,
its special force here; its utterability.
Fa;th and Concealments 129
There is a related source of the ineffable, the inexhaustibly rich com-

plexity of the everyday. We become tongue-tied at meeting a friend or silent
at parting because no word seems adequate to the moment. A powerful sense
of shared past and open future, of weighted memory and beckoning anticipa-
tion, impinge with such additive force that there is nowhere in utterance to
begin or end. A multiplicity of overlapping meanings vie for simultaneous
expression. Each would be fust, and none last. One wants, impossibly, to
capture the world in a word, on the head of a pin.
Abraham's silence is entwined around these several roots. There is
inexpressibility of the bare particular, caused by conceptual deficit. There is
inexpressibility of a sUIplus intensity of meaning, where that surplus extends
along a single vector and a related ineffability caused by the rich complexity
of the everyday; fmally, a tripled inexpressibility where intense and complex
meanings are aligned in radically opposed juxtaposition. This dialectical tur-
bulence creates a kind of linguistic "black hole," a powerful vortex that
seems to suck words in and spew them out in semianarchic but revelatory
confusion, as when we have a "wisdom that is folly," "love that is hatred of
self," or even a "teleological suspension of the ethical."
Johannes has been interested in inescapable silence. And only the fust
of these roots of the ineffable is purported to be strictly inescapable. In prac-
tical terms, however, the fetters on speech deriving from other sources are
recurrent and in particular settings, impossible to defeat. This will be true
even if, from a wider, more detached perspective, they are seen as mitigated,
as only momentary or provisional blocks to utterance. An enigmatic scene, in
the moment unspeakable, is conveyed later in poetry, drama, or mystical
song. In the case of dialectical renderings, one follows out the juxtaposed
contraries-"a love which is hate," "a wisdom that is folly"-noting the
qualification each term makes on the other, and what their fierce coupling
reveals. Love takes up (what appears as) hate, wisdom takes up (what
appear!; as) folly; and the union is not barren.
In the midst of a change in life-views, there will be moments when
meanings are confused, a phase of ineffability. But Johannes exaggerates its
permanency. The process of mitigating this speechlessness is fraught with
danger, liable to failure and misunderstanding. But it is not impossible. As
the run of Kierkegaard's authorship reveals, what at fust the aesthete cannot
understand. later is absorbed and utterable. What appears absurd to silentio is
to a more refined consciousness not so opaque. s Perhaps even the "absolute
paradox" of the Incarnation is not so absurd to one suitably initiated.
Johannes condenses paradox epigrammatically, fixing "a wisdom that
is folly." In biblical parables, paradox is stretched out narratively through the
course of a tale. Working through the parable is working through a paradox.
Take the parable of the prodigal son. 6 Welcomed back by his father, the
wasteful son is given a joyful feast. Is this fair to the brother who is faithful,
prudent? From a worldly point of view, the father's conduct will seem unjust
toward the deserving son--even a "love that is hate." There is a bizarre
inversion of justice here: love is attached to foolish squandering and blind to
faithful care. It is an inversion not unlike Abraham's upraised knife. Yet an
enigma that at fIrst leaves us dumb is not finally intractable.
The parable is not meant to teach that it is fair to slight a deserving son
and reward a profligate. It is meant to force us through paradox to a new
stage of perception. One comes to see not worldly but religious love or jus-
tice. A religiously modulated love is neither earned nor deserved. It flows
outward, not blind to but independent of performance: A love linked to who
we are, potentially and in essence souls of priceless worth. In worldly terms,
a showering of conditionless love is both mad and offensive. But religious
terms cut through the worldly.
Like the father who rewards an undeserving son, Abraham's love takes
a turn toward madness. But the lesson is not to prefer God to Isaac, as if
Isaac's life were a negligible loss. It is quite other. Religious love can violate
expected expressions, can be conditionless in scope; and so in worldly terms
seem hatred or folly.
One works reflectively, imaginatively, to spell out the worlds and the
transitions between worlds these paradoxes or enigmatic tales encapsulate.
To the extent we succeed, our speechlessness is eased. The paradoxes appear
more tractable, the turbulences not utterly anarchic or opaque. Despite their
immediate shock, we wrestle these absurdities, pursuing Abraham through
his silencing ordeals. A lonely journey, lyrical and dialectical, repeatedly tra-
versed traces expansion in vision, change in perception of love and reason
and silence. Coming partially to fathom what Abraham is about, we have
faith that his faith is at least haltingly utterable-as he must himself to
escape outright insanity.
There is considerable interplay between conflicts that underlie the

ordeals of speech and the ordeals of meaning, love, and rational ethics. Col-
lectively, these conflicts and their resolution describe the ordeals of faith and
resignation. Each moment of conflict, paradox, or absurdity may leave us
speechless. BUI each clash marks only a qualified challenge to reason or
love, a dashing only of Rationalist hopes.
Kierkegaard surveys Ihe shape of a moral life by charting ils limits and
the reasons and passions that inform it. He has no aim to abolish reason, urge
a life of undisciplined emotion, or advocate an absurdist existence. Perhaps
we should review in schematic form the conflicts integral to this journey and
reconnaissance-the emotional and cognitive clashes that lead Johannes
repeatedly to sumrrlon "the absurd."
Faith and Concealments 131
• Abraham faces dilemma. is subject to "irrationally" conflicting

demands: he must obey God and love Isaac. From the standpoint of a
complacent rationalism. his predicament seems absurd.
• Faith requires a modulation in turbulently conflicting emotions; this

can seem either an intelligible ambivalence, or "absurdly" embracing
contradictory beliefs.
• By our own strength. we can make the fust movement of faith. But
the second movement-the exercise of reception---depends for its
completion on powers beyond our ken or control. Absurdly, we are
asked to seek what can only be given; to work at what we can only
hope to achieve.
• The transition toward faith is a movement from universal to particu-

lar-yet communication requires the resources of the universal.
Hence the movement will elude easy description or seem absurd.
• That God commands Abraham's loyalty despite erradically promis-

ing yet delaying, granting yet demanding, and finally returning a son
can appear absurd-or worse.
• Shifting from one life-sphere to another is something like a Kuhnian

paradigm shift.' From my present position. the yet-to-be-adopted
position looks absurd. Johannes de silentio writes as someone this
side of faith, for an audience not yet faithful Yet as one more or less
settles into a faithful position. the "absurdity" recedes: "When the
believer has faith, the absurd is not absurd-faith transfonns it, but
in every weak moment [or before the transfonnations of faith] it is
again more or less absurd to him. "8
• An absolute good seems "absurd." By defmition, there is nothing

deeper in tenns of which its adoption can be based. Setting a frame
of justification, it seems groundless. But there can be cross-checks
between "absolutes," between orientating frames that animate our
lives; and their plausibility can be enriched by their elaboration in
extended narratives, personal and cultural. Not just any devotion can
count as faith. Though the adoption of such absolutes is underdeter-
mined. especially as one views things prospectively. it is not free
from rational constraint.
Should it surprise us that Johannes, with some mix of impatience and scorn.
asks rhetorically "How many nowadays understand what the absurd is ... ?9
Kinds of Concealment
Most of "Problema III" is spent distinguishing the necessary silence of faith

from related silences, some of which ate culpable. Quiet can mean deceit, as
when a scoundrel conceals his true aims. Either/Or presents "The Diary of
the Seducer" who brings hann, not only to the seduced, but to himself, a self
concealed in despair. Silence can be comic, as when amused bystanders let
an innocent flounder in the dark. Concealments provide the common stock of
theater, folk-tales, novels, and entertainment generally. But Abraham's
silence is not comic. He is not concealed from a truth to which others have
access. Nor is it deceitful. He is not concealing truth to mislead. There is also
aesthetic and demonic silence. 1o
If the deceiver makes excuses or hides from himself the extent of his
lie, this shows his embrace of evil is not unreserved. But the demonic has no
such reserve. Knowingly, defiantly he sets himself against value or God. The
Good may be feared. It drives a deceiver into hiding. But the demonic figure
is openly rebellious. 11 In contrast, an aesthetic heroine may keep certain facts
in reserve for benevolent reasons, to protect another. She suffers in silence
that another may prosper. She may even take modest pleasure in her suffer-
ing, sensing a "moral" virtue in such sacrifice.
But none of these is Abraham. He cannot speak even if he so wills; and
he sets himself not against but devoutly with his God. Like the aesthetic
hero, the knight of faith painfully conceals. But unlike this hero, the knight
conceals for no social aim (such as saving another), nor as a voluntary pro-
ject aimed at some transparently intelligible good.
Writing and Redemption
In considering these paradigms of silence, we are reminded that in his own

life Kierkegaard endlessly probed the defensibility of breaking his engage-
ment to Regine Olsen. They had been engaged for sixteen months when for
no apparent reason he abandoned her. He loved her even as he fled and main-
tained that love until his death. He left what remained of his estate to her,
though she had been by then long married and had had virtually no contact
with him since the break.
Fear and Trembling was written as Kierkegaard struggled with the
contradiction of giving up his beloved-for no apparent reason. He grap-
pled relentlessly with this sacrifice, this flight. It represented a broken
promise, a refusal to disclose to her or to others his reasons; it represented
great suffering to one he loved, and a renunciation of family life (which for
Johannes is the culmination of ethics).11 His writing is labor to find, to unify
himself. It was itself an ordeal, a tortured self-inquisition.

His concealment was not deceitful; there was no ulterior motive he
could find. Neither was he a tragic hero, for his secret was concealed from
Regine, from his contemporaries, and even from his future readers. His jour-
nals, too, conceal. Perhaps he was a knight of resignation. Was he the youth
who found his love "impossible"-and so reshaped it as eternal love? But if
so, what made his love impossible?
If he were a knight of faith, the break could be partly understood. Per-
haps he was giving up his beloved, believing with a wild hope that she would
be returned. But both his adoption of pseudonyms and his journal confes-
sions show that Kierkegaard did not fancy himself a faithful knight. He con-
fesses that ifhe had had faith, he would have married Regine. Johannes, too,
admits he is not the faithful knight he struggles to describe. His lyric dialec-
tic is triggered by its author's pain, but it is no untoward attempt to justify
breaking an engagement, breaking a heart.
The most likely candidates for the structure of Kierkegaard's ordeal are
the aesthetic or demonic hero, or the knight of resignation. Was he perhaps
protecting Regine, but refusing the better course: to disclose his reasons? If
so, he violated an ethical injunction and ran the risk of indulging in a shallow
martyrdom. Was he then defiant before the good? Neither the aesthetic nor
demonic possibility would have been flattering. Perhaps he pictured himself
a resigned knight, transcending the ethical injunction to reveal, deeply
acknowledging his loss, but not strong or trusting enough to be a knight of
faith. In fact, his painful reflections on his break--encoded, as it were, in
Fear and Trembling-accentuated the need to go beyond the paradigm of
Abraham's suffering and faith. 13
The Abraham tale as well as his own life pointed the need for specifi-
cally Christian concepts of fault and miraculous redemption. This is not to
say he measured up to the ideal he describes in Works of Love, the Christian
Discou,.ses, and elsewhere. But he needed a new standard of assessment.
This new measure would seem compelling as he became increasingly aware
of the defects in the array of paradigms for life that he had sketched in vari-
ous works up through Fear and Trembling. They could neither fully capture
the structure of his ordeal nor point the way beyond it. He would then be
moved to enlarge his experimental repertoire, rendering additional complex
yet vivid models of a full and truthful life. These new measures would in one
sense be fully known to him. Had he not been raised a Christian? Yet in
another sense, they were awaiting his discovery.
What can we know of the torments that carried-<>r drove-him
through these paths, painful and exhilarating as they must have been? What
can we know of the crisis he must have undergone and his subsequent adop-
tion of authorship over marriage? A plausible account contrasts Kierkegaard's
despair at the loss of Regine-a loss perhaps commanded by God-with

Abraham's faith as he suffered his mandated loss. Kierkegaard's ambivalent
fascination with Abraham is then the ambivalent lure of a knightly faith he
lacked and feared and longed for. The poet's praise of the hero is Kierkegaard
writing from his weakness, praising an idol, a fictive hero he's made. It was an
artifice that could both bring out and divert from his quandary. Sylviane
Agacinski suggests other connections. 14
She links the broken engagement with the son's knowledge of his
father's sin. His mother, first a household serving maid, was seduced by the
father. The maid was betrayed, but also his father's first wife, who was only
recently deceased. The father married the woman, now pregnant with the
first of Kierkegaard's six siblings. Kierkegaard saw the family as cursed, a
curse now bearing its poisoned fruit. Five of his siblings were to die before
he was twenty-three, and by that date his mother, too, had died. Within the
next few years leading up to his engagement to Regine, he would also lose
his father and best friend.
His father's severe melancholy is usually attributed to his youthful curse
of God. But taking into account these sexual betrayals, more than a peasant
youth's angry curse is seething here. Whatever guilt attached to the early
curse would be compounded by the father's guilt at betraying his first wife
and the servant who would become his second. Either guilt, conveyed to the
son, could damage, perhaps even cripple, him. Perhaps this is the secret he
claimed would never be revealed, the secret that lay behind his break with
Regine and the assumption of authorship:
if I were to have explained myself [to Regine), I would have had to ini-
tiate her into terrible things, my relationship to my father, his melan-
choly, the eternal night brooding within me, my going astray ... and
where was I to seek a safe stronghold when I knew or suspected that
the only man I had admired for his strength was tottering?1S
In Kierkegaard's eyes his mother, too, would have been stained by the
father's betrayals. His voluminous papers, journals, and letters, replete with
references to the father, echo with a haunting silence about her. Never is she
mentioned. 16 Whatever his outward protestations, it is quite plausible that he
found himself guiltily unable to forgive either mother or father. Did he suffer
a flawed inheritance? If his origins and thus he were polluted, he could not
risk Iransmifling that corruption through marriage and family.17
Books, words, became his solace and competing heirs. His use of
pseudonyms. too, reflects a struggle with legitimacy. His name, his moral
legitimacy, were radically in question. Masks then became tools to probe.
complicate, and blur his identity. They permitted him to affirm and to deny
that he was his father's son. It took time and distance, speech and silence, to
work through the terrible and terribly dark complexities of this son's relation
to father, mother, neighbor, and God. Perhaps only a Christian faith, focused
on forgiveness and the gift of a new life, could speak to one so imprisoned
by inherited fault, a fault that he desperately thought he should, but helpless-
ly could not, forgive or erase.
Though my concern with Fear and Trembling has not been biographi-
cal, it is worth remembering that Kierkegaard addressed his writing to issues
in some sense inescapable for all persons, by no means excluding himself.
The penetration of his exploration drew energy from the intensity of his soli-
tary ordeal and from his courage in confronting this suffering, undertaking a
lonely "journey to the mountain" through various literary and dialectical
inventions: This marvel of a text among them.
10
From Socrates to Abraham:
An Epilogue
Faith ... is a passion. Wisdom is like cold

grey ash, covering up the glowing embers
-Ludwig Wittgenstein l
it is great to grasp hold of the eternal but

greater to stick to the temporal after having
given it up
all human life is united [in] passion, and

faith is a passion
-Johannes de silentio2
JOHANNES WINDS DoWN his dialectical lyric with a discussion of tragic

heroes and Socrates. This makes an appropriate symmetry. In the Preface,
commercial metaphors are followed by reflections on Descartes and the
Greek skeptics, thinkers who provided a necessary corrective for their times.
In the Epilogue, commercial images return, and Heraclitus, the dark philoso-
pher, is counterpoised to a sunlit Hegelian presumption to Knowledge. And
at the end of "Problema III," as Johannes readies us for the Epilogue, he
reflects on the figure who was for Athens what Kierkegaard was for Copen-
hagen: a gadfly and skeptic. a master of irony in the service of a moral and
spiritual ideal, a necessary and negative corrective for the age.
Socrates figures in Johannes's discussion primarily as an "intellectual
137
tragic hero," or, as Kierkegaard elsewhere has it, an "ironic ethicist. "3 The
tragic hero can reveal himself, as ethics requires. His revealing gesture is the
terrible action by which he gains his immortality. Socrates, in contrast, being
an intellectual tragic hero, has as his 'culminating gesture a speech-his
defence before the Athenians who vote his death.
Socrates is a recurrent figure in Kierkegaard's authorship. The Concept
of Irony with Constant Reference to Socrates was Kierkegaard's first book.
Socrates figures prominently in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, where
he embodies a kind of religious humanism. His ironic detachment calls into
question a staid, unreflective ethics of civic virtue. Through resignation, he
gains access to a realm of eternal value. achieving thereby a kind of immor-
tality. What attracted Kierkegaard was his intellectual daring, his suspicion
of dogma and indifference to system, and his commitment to care for the
soul as the highest human aspiration.
We are told that Socrates' skepticism aligns him with resignation's
"movement of infmity."4 This suggests that Socrates is at least an ethical fig-
ure, one who verges on the religious in his grasp of "the eternal." He is called
an intellectual tragic hero, and also an aesthetic phenomenon-in fact, "the
most interesting person who ever lived. "S But being an aesthetic phe-
nomenon does not mean that Socrates belongs to the aesthetic life-sphere.
"The interesting" is a borderline predicate or category of analysis, marking
the gap between the aesthetic and the ethica1. 6 A quasi-aesthetic category like
"the interesting," apt for the illumination and criticism of stories, drama,
music, and other art works, may apply to a person. But the fact that Socrates
can be considered an aesthetic phenomena does not mean that his life is
determined exclusively by aesthetic categories of appraisal, whether sensu-
ous or reflective.
Socrates can be an aesthetic marvel; also, an intellectual tragic hero
and therefore ethical. His sacrifice of wealth, fame and ordinary desire is a
resignation of the world, making him appear to be a knight of resignation.
halfway to faith. This apparent confusion of categories merely illustrates a
central feature of the Kierkegaardian dialectic of moral and spiritual develop-
ment. In the shifts toward ever greater selfhood, a new stage takes up, trans-
fonns, and qualifies an earlier one. Aesthetics is not canceled by ethics, but
integrated into a new perspective that complements and completes it. Ethics
is not abolished by the religious, but is instead transformed and qualified by
it. The categories of a "lower stage" have some hold on one in a "higher"
stage. The faithful shopman delights in anticipation of his meal (an aesthetic
anticipation), and still honors family obligations (an ethical allegiance). For
the faithful knight, however, these aesthetic and ethical affiliations no longer
dominate, are not foundational or ultimate.
This puzzle about how to describe Socrates mirrors a puzzle about
From Sorrale.f 10 Ahraham 139
Kierkegaard's authorship as a whole. Johannes abruptly distances himself

from philosophy. "I am no philosopher," he crows. He aligns himself with
poetry and literary art. 7 Yet toward the end of Fear and Trembling. he con-
fides, "I am no poet, 1 only practice dialectics."8 And dialectics is a Socratic,
philosophical art. This ambiguity is reflected among commentators. Louis
Mackey sees Kierkegaard as "A Kind of Poet"; Robert L. Perkins, "A Kind
of Epistomologist"; Alastair Hannay, a "para-philosopher"; and Westphal, an
"anti -philosopher. "9
Clearly, Kierkegaard is forcing us to reassess the presumed antithetical
functions, of philosophy and poetry, dialectics and art. A "dialectical lyric" is
a gerue rooted in yet transcending narrow construals of both philosophy and
art. Whatever the power of his verse, Johannes is not poet rather than
philosopher. Kierkegaard and Johannes are gadflies and dialecticians, at least
partly Socratic. In Johannes de silentio's reflections on the last speech of his
Athenian hero, we fmd just this working combination of dialectical explo-
ration and symbolic, paradoxical expression. Is it poetry or dialectics when
Johannes boldly claims that "the intellectual hero will become immortal
before he dies" ?10
Earlier, we encountered the enigma of a strength that was powerless-
ness, a love that was hatred of self, a wisdom that was folly. a hope that was
insane-and the paradox of faith. that one could give up an object of value
and simultaneously believe that it would not be lost. In each of these cases,
the tensed juxtaposition of opposites forces us dialectically into new insight.
Meanings are pushed out of the ordinary range of their application. Some
vectors of their sense are wildly expanded or distorted. "Love" or "ethics"
become religiously modulated. madly linked, for example, to "hate." We are
blinded, forced to revision.
Now as he considers Socrates, Johannes performs similar feats with the
concepts of death and immortality. Here is the hero at his trial.
He hears his death sentence. That instant he dies. Unless you grasp that
it requires all the strength of spirit to die, that the hero always dies
before his death. you will not come particularly far in your observa-
tions on life. So as a hero Socrates is required to stay calm and at ease,
but as an intellectual hero he is required to have sufficient spiritual
strength at the fmal moment to fulfill himself.ll
Socrates dies from hemlock, yet becomes immortal before he dies! He both
dies and does not die as he hears the sentence. This paradox is unknotted by
allusion to its place within an extended narrative. Strangely, it opens the story.
Plato begins the Phaedo with Socrates rubbing his legs, his shackles
having been just removed. He is free in these last moments to converse, free
from despair, from fear of death. And if we think of death's power as the
power to diminish the quality of our present living, then in those last
moments of Socrates' life, we have an image of death's defeat. The life of
the spirit, it seems, is determined by other than biological or physical cate-
gories. And what will sustain that life is the manner of its taking, the manner
in which Socrates conceives of his passing. A fearless stance toward perish-
ing gives him some ,.e/uge from perishing.
Throughout, Johannes has been concerned with temporality, how we
conceive and cope with the passage of time and the things of value that flow
within it, arriving, passing, wondrously. In "Speech in Praise of Abraham,"
Johannes put the issue in terms of what would keep the patriarch young,
whatever his biological age. Later, in "Preamble from the Heart," Johannes
declares that Abraham's reward, Isaac or agelessness, will be provided not in
the next, but in this life}2 The span of a life, the course of a lifetime, is still
the central concern. The aim of the hero is immortality, an agelessness won
by a sort of spiritual strength; and achieved in this life. Socrates is immortal
from the moment he hears his sentence. J3
The sentence delivers a master-test of the power of others to alter the
conduct of his life. It is a test of his self-command. In earlier encounters with
danger, on the battlefield or in contest with his political enemies, Socrates
had shown no fear. But neither was death as much a certainty then as now.
Perhaps his earlier indifference was only apparent. His bluff called, perhaps
he will now recant to save his (biological) life. But he does not recant. His
lighthearted quip at the sentence confirms that his soul lies elsewhere.
Socrates has resigned the physical dimensions of his life, taking their
import in purely spiritual terms, locating his essential humanity in a cluster
of capacities that give him distance on the worldly. He locates that humanity
in freedom, integrity, and self-command, capacities that transcend the biolog-
ical. The "movement of infinity" gains him "an eternal consciousness," an
immortality in this life. But he pays a price, a price many might find destruc-
tively high.
As Martha Nussbaum has eloquently argued, in giving up his vulnera-
bility to particular objects of love, to particular relationships, erotic, philial,
or familial, something precious in our conception of the human is sacri-
ficed. 14 Moving toward the universal and divine may offer protection from
the uncertainties and corruptions of the everyday. But it also exiles us from
the real values of the finite and commonplace, goods accessible only as we
risk the pain their inevitable loss entails: "part of the peculiar beauty of
human excellence just is its vulnerability. The tenderness of the plant is not
the dazzling hardness of a gem .... Contingency, an object of terror and
loathing, may turn out to be at the same time wonderful."u Socrates avoids
this risk. He is lIot Abraham, who willingly confronts contingency as laden
From Socrates to Abraham 141
with "terror and loathing." Renouncing the uncertain riches of worldly life,
Socrates does not nourish a wild hope that they can be restored.
It is harder to resign than to hold on, doggedly and narrowly, to the
world, blind to the repose and truth an eternal consciousness can provide. We
admire Socrates for his Willingness to relinquish his hold on (fmite) life in
his grasp of another (infinite) life. But Johannes de silentio sees the greater
test as a relinquishing matched by a simultaneous opening expectancy, a
prodigious hope that the relinquished will be returned. The greatest test is a
test of trusting receptivity toward the unexpected and unbounded generosity
of this life, the immeasurable fortune that is God, the Unknown. 16
Johannes speaks of the "little mystery" that it is better to give than to
receive. But then he speaks of the "great mystery" that it is harder to receive
than to give. 17 Perhaps the first mystery is tended by the knight of resigna-
tion, whereas the second is the preserve of the knight of faith. If giving is
also giving up, then the parallel is exact: resignation's little mystery "Better
to give up (or give over) than to grasp or get" is answered by faith's greater
mystery, "But harder to welcome, to receive than to give up." And in that
simple contrast, we find Johannes's reservation about Socrates.
To escape a painful vulnerability, Socrates devotes himself to resigna-
tion. His is not a mere denial of the value of worldly attachment, a kind of
nihilism, but a resignation powered by an embrace of eternal virtue, an abso-
lute good that gives him leverage against the weight of the worldly. Philoso-
phy, as he says in the Phaedo. is a rehearsal for death, a letting go of the
world. As Kierkegaard would have it, his dialectical advance is "dying to
immediacy." A difficult performance, to say the least!
"Dying is a most remarkable leap."ls Like Socrates, whose practice of
dying Plato caned philosophy, the simple shopman and Abraham also antici-
pate their death in this manner. Letting go, resigning the world, they grasp
the virtues of honesty, courage, freedom, and integrity-virtues that secure
an eternal consciousness because they are not conditioned by threat, tempta-
tion, or corruption from worldly influence. But in addition, as knights of
faith they do more. Through prodigious hope, they remain linked and open to
worldly attachment, to relative value and daily enjoyments. This is no hard-
ening of the self toward the finite. Resignation is complemented by trusting
receptivity. On the strength of the absurd, they have faith that the world can
remain theirs, will be returned, even as it is released. And strangely their
faith is fulfilled.
Notes
Preface
I. Several recent book-length commentaries in English are devoted to

Coneluding Unscientific Postscript or to Philosophical Fragmellfs: C. Steven Evans,
Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript: The Religious Philosophy of Johannes CIi-
macus (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983); Robert C. Roberts, Faith.
Reason. and History: Rethinking Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments (Macon,
Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1986); Harry A. Nielsen, Where the Passion Is: A
Reading of Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments (University Presses of Florida,
1983); Louis J. Pojman, The Logic of Subjectivity: Kierkegaard's Philosophy ofReli-
gion (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1984); and Jeremy Walker,
Kierkegaard: The Descent into God (Toronto: McGill-Queens University Press,
1985). Kierkegaard's directly religious works are covered in John W. Elrod,
Kierkegaard and Christendom (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981).
There have been no comparable book-length studies of Fear and Trembling. We have
Robert Perkins' important collection Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical
Appraisals (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1981), and Intemational
Kierkegaard Commentary: Fear and Trembling and Repetition, also edited by Perkins
(Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1991). These essays are typically concerned
with partial aspects of the text. General commentaries on Kierkegaard's work will
characteristically devote extended chapters or chapter sections to Either/Or, the
Postscript, or Sickness Unto Death. James Collins, The Mind of Kierkegaard (Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983); Stephen Dunning, Kierkegaard's Dialec-
tic of Existence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985); Louis Mackey,
Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971);
Gregor Malantschuk, Kierkegaard's Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1968); Pojman's The Logic of Subjectivity; George J. Stack, Kierkegaard's
Existential Ethics (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1977); and Mark C.
Taylor, Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship: A Study of Time and the Self
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975) are excellent studies, attesting to a
resurgence of interest in Kierkegaard among English-speaking philosophers and
scholars. Yet each devotes less than ten pages (and some less than a single pllge) to
Fear and Trembling. Elrod provides an important footnote to Fear and Trembling in
Kierkegaard and Christendom; his earlier Being and Existence in Kierkegaard's
143
144 Notes
Pseudonymous Works (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975) fails to

mention this central text. Exceptions to this neglect are Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), which has a full chapter on Fear and
Trembling; his comprehensive introductory essay accompanying Kierkegaard's Fear
and Trembling, translation with introduction (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1985); the final chapter of Mark C. Taylor, Alterity (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987); and Sy1viane Agacinski, Aparte: Conceptions and Deaths of S~ren
Kierkegaard, translated by Keven Mewmark (Tallahassee: Florida State University
Press, 1988).
2. Ronald M. Green speaks of Fear and Trembling as a "cryptogram;" but his
decoding differs markedly from mine. "Deciphering Fear and Trembling's Secret
Message," Religious Studies 22 (1987).
3. For explicit links between these analytical philosophers and Kierkegaard's

claims in Con eluding Unscientific Postscript, see my "Kierkegaard our Contempo-
rary: Reason, Subjectivity, and the Self," Southe,." Journal of Philosophy 27 no. 3
(Fall 1989); Alastair Hannay Kierkegaard (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1982); his "Refuge and Religion," in Faith, Knowledge, and Action, ed. George L.
Stengren (Copenhagen: Reitzels Forlag, 1984); and The Gramlllar of the Hearl, ed.
Richard Bell (New York: Harper and Row, 1984). For discussion of Wittgenstein's
debt to Kierkegaard, see Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgenstein's Vienna
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973); James C. Edwards, Ethics without Philoso-
phy: Wittgenstein and the Moral Life (Tampa: Florida State University Press, 1984);
Charles L. Creegan, Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard (London: Routledge, 1989): and
James Conant, "Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and Nonsence," in Pursuits of Reason, ed.
Cohen, Guyer, and Putman (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1991). Hilary
Putnam discusses Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard on religious belief in his Gifford
Lectures, forthcoming. Stanley Cavell reprints his classic essay comparing
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, "Existentialism and Analytical Philosophy," in
Thoughts out of Class (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988). For a discussion of
the overlapping interests of Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Austin, and Deconstruction-
ists, see Christopher Norris, The Deconstructi!'e Tum: Essays in the Rhetoric of Phi-
losophy (London: Routledge, 1987); Hubert Dreyfus and Jane Rubin document Hei-
degger's massive debt to Kierkegaard in "You Can't Get Something from Nothing:
Kierkegaard and Heidegger on How Not to Overcome Nihilism," Inquiry 30 (1987).
Note on Translations
I. S~rC'n Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling, trans. with an Introduction,

Alastair Hannay (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985).
2. Fear and TrC'lIIhling :lI1d Repetitiol/, trans. and ed. How:Jrd V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).
3. S¢ren Kierkegaard, Sallliede Vaerker, ed. A. B. Dr:lchmann, P. A. Heiberg,

Notes 145
and H. O. Lange, 20 vols. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962), first edition. For those
with access to only one of the Danish editions, the Hongs' translation and edition of
Fear and Trembling has a useful page collation for all three Danish editions. In the
fll'st Danish edition, Fear and Trembling is found in Vol. 3; my note citations give
bracketed page numbers to that volume.
4. Fear and Trembling and Sickness Unto Death, trans. Walter Lowrie (Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968).
Chapter 1
1. The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Alastair Hannay (Hannondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1989), p. 124.
2. "Morality and the Morally Infonned Life," Midwest Studies in Philosophy
13 (1988), p. 155.
3. 124 [98: 146]. (See note 12, below, for key to citations.)
4. An excellent introduction to the relevant social, economic and political

background is found in Bruce Kinnmse, Kierkegaard's Golden Age Del/mark
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). Also helpful are the essays collected
in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Two Ages: The Present Age alld tile Age
of Revolution-A Literary Review, vol 14, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, Ga.: Mercer
University Press, 1984).
5. Louis Mackey, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet (Philadelphia: University of
PelUlsylvania Press, 1971).
6. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek
Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 187.
7. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 10, many editions.
8. See Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript and The Concept of
/rOilY. Socrates also figures in Fear and Trembling. See Chapter 10.
9. See Richard Schacht, "Kierkegaard's Phenomenology of Spiritual Develop-
ment," Hegel and After (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975).
10. See Merold Westphal, "The Teleological Suspension of Religiousness B,"
Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of Community, ed. George COlUlell and C.
Stephen Evans (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 199 I). The knight of res-
ignation might define a fifth stage in religious consciousness, or perhaps be assimilat-
ed to the Postscript category of Religiousness A, Socratic religiousness: See Stephen
N. Dunning's discussion in Kierkegaard's Dialectic of Inwardness: A Structural
AI/alysis of the Theory of Stages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985).
II. Stephen Crites argues that Kierkegaard pennits each pseudonym some lati-
tude in producing a map of "the" essential stages, or variations on stages, as might be
146 Notes
appropriate to that particular pseudonym's immediate purposes. After all, no

pseudonym is supposed to be giving us the flnal anti-Hegelian System. But even
given the increasingly involuted complexity of the stage-scheme, a basic contrast
endures-between aesthetic (and pre-aesthetic) stances where the self is uncommit-
ted, unattached to any responsibly chosen identity projects, and the several ethico-
religious stages where a more or less successful life-sphere has been responsibly cho-
sen. See Stephen Crites, "Pseudonymous Authorship as Art and as Act," in
Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Josiah Thompson (Garden City,
N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1972). In rough agreement with Crites, and taking his clue from
a Postscript remark, Alastair McKinnon argues that the library of alternative life-
views can flnally be boiled down to a single "either-or": "either the aesthetic on its
own terms, or religiousness B, including within it, as dethroned or subsumed stages,
religiousness A, the ethical, and the aesthetic" (my emphasis). See Alastair McKin-
non "Kierkegaard," in 19th Century Religious Thought ill the West, ed. Ninian Smart
et. a!. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 189. See also Louis P. Poj-
man, "Kierkegaard's Phenomenology of the Stages of Existence," Faith, Knowledge,
and Action: Essays to Niles Thulstup, ed. George L. Stengren (Copenhagen: Reitzels
Forbg, 1984); and C. Steven Evans, Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript: The
Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities
Press, 1983), Chapter 3.
12. 116 [43: 94]. (First citation is to Hannay's translation; the bracketed cita-
tions are first to the Hongs's translation and then to the relevant page in the third vol-
ume of the first Danish edition of Kirkegaard's Collected Works. See Note on Trans-
lations.) In "Problema III," Johannes says he will approach the whole matter of
Abraham's silence aesthetically 109 [82: 131].
13. 90 [7: 59] for denial that he is a poet; 64 [34: 86) for "tragic hero" and
"knight of resignation." See Dunning, KierkegaJrd's Dialectic, for a discussion of the
difference between resignation and the Postscript category "Religiousness A."
14. The adoption of "false identities" might have been a strategy for covering
himself against himself, rather than for covering himself from his public. These
masks might be part of a protective maneuver by a son embarked on a dangerous path
of self-discovery-<langerous, because of a complex of family events and relation-
ships that had placed his name, his legitimacy, in question. For an elaboration, see
Sylviane Agacinski, Aparte: Conceptions and Deaths of S¢rell Kierkegaard, trans.
Kevin Mewmark (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1988), p. 238 ff., and
Chapter 9, subsection "Writing and Redemption."
IS. Kierkegaard himself rejected the idea that these "upbuilding" or "edify-
ing" discourses were sermons, pointing out that he had no authority to preach.
16. Alastair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1981). For a critique of MacIntyre on Kierkegaard, see Peter J. Mehl,
"Kierkegaard and the Relativist Challenge to Practical Philosophy." Joumol of Reli-
gious Ethics 14 (1987); see also the discussion of reason and "groundless choice" in
Chapters 4 and 5.
Notes 147
17. Alastair McKinnon points out that "leap of faith" is hardly a Kierkegaar-
dian tenn of art, but an invention of commentators. The closest Kierkegaard comes to
this phrase is a passing Postscript reference to "the leap" over "Lessing's ditch." See
McKinnon, "Kierkegaard."
18. Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1988) p. 80.
19. For recent explorations of this theme, see Stuart Hampshire on imagina-
tion and reason in Illnocellce and Experience (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1989); Charles Taylor on reason and narrative in The Sources of the Self: The
Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989);
Sabina Lovibond, Realism and Imagination in Ethics (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1983); and Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness.
20. The remainder of this paragraph is lifted, more or less intact, from
"Kierkegaard Our Contemporary: Reason, Subjectivity and the Self," Southern Jour-
nal of Philosophy 27 no. 3 (Fall 1989). In that article I distinguish between a "hyper-
rationalism," on the one hand, and "irrationalism," claiming that Kierkegaard prac-
tices a domesticated, "finite" rationalism that works the middle ground between these
extremes. Hilary Putnam argues for the contrast between an excessive Rationalism
and a Humean, Kierkegaardian, or Wittgensteinian reasonableness in his Gifford Lec-
tures, forthcoming.
21. "Kierkegaard." See also the sensitive discussion by Hannay in "Refuge
and Religion" in Faith, Knowledge, and Action.
22. See Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1986), and my review of Nagel, "Living with Double Vision: Objectivity and
Subjectivity in Human Understanding," Inquiry 31 (1988). For a useful introduction
to some of the recent British literature on reason, subjectivity, and particularity, see
David McNaughton, Moral Vision (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988). On the matter of
finding alternatives to the traditional search for a single rational standard, see Annette
Baier, Postures of the Mind (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), and
"Hume:·A Women's Moral Theorist?" Women and Moral Theory, ed. Eva Feder Kit-
tay and Diana T. Meyers (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987); Lawrence R.
Blum, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1980); his "Iris Murdoch and the Domain of the Moral," Philosophical Studies 50
(1986); and my essays "Kierkegaard Our Contemporary," and "Gender, Philosophy,
and the Novel," Metaphilosophy 18 (July/October 1987).
23. See "Hume: A Women's Moral Theorist?" p. 53.
24. See the helpful discussion by Evans, Kierkegaard's Fragments and
Postscript. Kierkegaard sometimes writes that none of the views expressed in the
pseudonyms is his own. This is implausible.
25. From the immense literature making rough comparisons among these crit-
ics, consider Bernard Yack, The Longing for Total Revolution (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1986); Ernest Becker, "The Psychoanalyst Kierkegaard,"
148 Notes
The Denial of Death (New York: The Free Press, 1973); Hannay, Kierkegaard, Chap-
ter 9; Perkins, ed., International Kierkegaard Commentary: Two Ages; and Schacht,
After Hegel. For Heidegger's debt to Kierkegaard, and for the link between Heideg-
ger's and Kierkegaard's critique of modem culture and the shallow options it pro-
vides for personal identity, see Hubert L. Dreyfus and Jane Rubin, "You Can't Get
Something for Nothing: Kierkegaard and Heidegger on How Not to Overcome
Nihilism," Inquiry 30 (1987).
26. R. Z. Friedman, "Morality and the Morally Informed Life."
27. See Note on Translations.
28. "Exordium" is the Hongs's rendering, "Prelude" is Lowrie's.
29. "Eulogy" is the Hongs's rendering, "A Panegyric upon Abraham" is
Lowrie's.
30. "Preliminary Expectoration" is both the Hongs's and Lowrie's rendering.
31. I have abbreviated "Problema III." In full, it reads "Was it ethically defen-
sible of Abraham to conceal his purpose from Sarah, from Eleazar, from Isaac?"
32. Ordeal is meant to span both the idea of Abraham's trial or test and his
susceptibility to temptation. For a discussion of contrasts between trial, test, tempta-
tion, and spiritual trial, and of the Danish terms so translated, see John Donnelly,
"Kierkegaard's Problema I and Problema II: an Analytic Perspective," in
Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Birm-
ingham: University of Alabama Press, 1981); Mark Lloyd Taylor, "Repetition and
Scripture: On the Abraham and Job Stories in Kierkegaard's Fear alld Trembling and
Repetition," Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision, Connell and Evans; and Dunning.
Kierkegaard's Dialectic of Inwardness. See also Chapter 3, note 58.
Chapter 2
1. 116 [90: 138]; 43 [7: 59].

2. Plato, Phaedo. (6O-e).
3. These are Hannay's translations. The Hongs provide "Exordium" and
"Eulogy on Abraham" for" Attunement" and "Speech in Praise of Abraham."
4. At the close of the Preface, Johannes contrasts the values he works to pre-
serve from those that his townsmen hope to realize through investment in the new
Copenhagen bus system: 43 [7: 59].
5. As Johannes puts it, "only he who works gets the bread." 57 [27: 79].
6. The comparison with Marx is irresistible. See Alastair Hannay.
Kierkegaard (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), Chapter 9; Bruce Kirmmse,
Kierkegaard in Goldell Age Dellmark (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990);
Notes (4')
Robert L. Perkins, ed., International Kierkegaard Comme1l1ary: Two Ages: The Pre-
sellt Age and The Age of Revolution-A Literary Review (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Uni-
versity Press, 1984), especially Chapter 7; Sylviane Agacinski, Aparte: Conceptiolls
and Deaths of S~ren Kierkegaard, trans. Kevin Mewmark (Tallahassee: State Univer-
sity of Florida Press, 1988); and Mark C. Taylor, Alterity (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1987).
7. A vulgarized Hegelianism was fashionable, the original being much too
complex for wide dissemination or comprehension.
8. The actual relationship between Kierkegaard and Hegel and the way to
properly characterize Hegel's project are matters of controversy. Some see
Kierkegaard's critique as misplaced, because ill-informed. Others see his attack as
directed at popular simplifications and distortions of Hegel. Still others recognize the
enormous debt to Hegel that lies beneath his caustic and satirical rejection. My aim
here is neither to explore these issues nor to altempt an accurate picture of Hegel.
Instead, I try to characterize the sort of Hegelian figure that Kierkegaard targets,
whatever the resemblance to "the real Hegel." For a balanced discussion of the rela-
tionship, see Hannay, Kierkegaard. David Wisdo gives a fine account of some of the
connections in "Inwardness and the Moral Life: An Interpretation of S0ren
Kierkegaard" (diss., Columbia University, New York, 1986). Among the many recent
introductions to Hegel, see Robert C. Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1983); Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1975); and Merold Westphal, History and Truth in Hegel's Phe-
nomenology (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979).
9. The link between God and economic-technological advance is put strikingly
in the following announcement made in Paris eight years after Fear and Trembling
was published: "The spinning jenny and the railroad, Cunard's liners and the electric
telegraph, are to me ... signs that we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the
universe; that there is a mighty spirit working among us ... the Ordering and Creating
God." Lord Kingsley, the Crystal Palace, 1851, quoted in Paul Kennedy, The Rise
and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conf/ict 1500 to 2000
(New York: Random House, 1987), p. 158.
10. The role of culture and tradition in providing the necessary (but not suffi-
cient) condition for moral and spiritual growth is discussed in Chapters 6 and 7. See
also the essays collected in Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of Community, ed.
George Connell and C. Stephen Evans (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press,
1991).
11. Readers familiar with Kierkegaard will recognize here the germ of the
Postscript slogan, "Truth Is Subjectivity." For a discussion of this and related
Postscript ideas, see my "Kierkegaard Our Contemporary: Reason, Subjectivity, and
the Self," Southern Journal of PlIi/osophy 27, no. 3 (Fall 1989).
12. Journals alld Papers, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, (Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press, 1967-1978), entry 5100. For an excellent discussion of
this youthful testament and the continuities between it and Kierkegaard's subse4uent
150 Notes
work, see George Connell, To Be One Thing: Personal Unity in Kierkegaard's

Thought (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1985).
13. 43 [7: 59]; my emphasis.
14. Ibid.
15. See Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1986), and my review of this book, "Living with Double Vision: Objectivity
and Subjectivity in Human Understanding," Inquiry 31 (June 1988).
16. Just as it would be a mistake to think that objectivity and subjectivity pre-
sent an intractable "either/or," so it would be a mistake, as we have seen, to take
philosopher and poet as mutually exclusive labels. Johannes himself is not consistent
in his self-characterizations (as this chapter's epigraph suggests). He can be, I would
argue, in turn a philosopher (or dialectician) and poet--and moralist, and religionist.
Johannes calls himself not a poet but a dialectician: 116 [90: 138]. Elsewhere he
likens himself to a tragic hero: 64 [34: 86]. In the Preface he calls himself "free-
lancer," a kind of all-around critic: 43 [7: 59]. He has his own reasons for distancing
himself from "the philosophers" and evading others' attempts to easily categorize his
role. Furthermore, allowing him the appellation poet does not commit us to the view
that all he says is merely part of an impressionistic, relativistic free-for-all. For an
array of arguments on this issue, see Louis Mackey, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971); Hannay, Kierkegaard, Chap-
ter I, where the title paraphilosopher is suggested; Louis J, Pojman, The Logic of
Subjectivity: Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Religion (Birmingham: University of
Alabama Press, 1984); and Robert L. Perkins, "Kierkegaard: A Kind of Epistemolo-
gist," Journal of the History of European Ideas (forthcoming).
17. "Prelude" is Lowrie, "Exordium," the Hongs. The Danish, Stemming, or

"atmosphere," can suggest "setting an atmosphere" for a discussion or inquiry. If we
count "Preamble from the Heart" as a preface, this is the second of four beginnings.
We might take the epigraphic parable from Hamman on the title page as a fifth pref-
ace. On this deferral of beginning, and its satire of the Hegelian System, which both
can and cannot have a preface lying outside itself, see Mark C. Taylor, "Introduc-
tion," Prefaces, Sl'Iren Kierkegaard, trans. William McDonald (Tampa: University of
Florida Press, 1989).
18. See Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self; Tire Makillg of the Model'll Idellti·
ty (Cmnbridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); and Daniel Dennett, "Why
We Are All Novelists," Times Literary Supplemellt (Sept. 15, 1988). For a
philosophical account of the role of early childhood "scenarios" in the constitution of
personal identity, see Ronald deSousa, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1987). Johannes speaks of "making a clean edition of himself,"
103 [76: 24].
19, The multiple versions, tales within tales, mimic in function the prefaces to
prefaces. See note 17.
Notes 151
20. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, (trans. Swenson [Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 438). Compare Hannay: "What we are to under-
stand is faith as the end of understanding." Kierkegaard. p. 89.
21. Several additional versions from the Journals and from early drafts of
Fear and Trembling, mostly overlapping those cited here, are collected in the Hongs's
edition, pp. 239-271.
22. 52 [18: 71].

23.54[21:73].
24. 55 [21: 74].
25. 56 [22: 74].
26. 62 [32: 83].
27. 64 [34: 86].
28. 66 [36: 87].
29. 80 [52: 101].
30. 104 [76: 125].
31. 142 [118: 163-164].
32. Ibid.
33. 143 [119: 164].
34. Ibid.
35. 48 [14: 67]; my emphasis.
36. Although there are numerous passages in his voluminous papers and journals
that concern his relationship with his father, astonishingly. Kierkegaard is totally silent
about his mother. For an interpretation, see Chapt. 9: and Agacinski, Aparre, pp. 238 ff.
37. Postscript, pp. 232 ff.

38. Ibid.
39. Wendy Lesser, review of Winnocott's works, The East Bay Express,
December 15, 1989.
40. Wittgenstein remarks in Culture and Value (trans. Peter Winch, ed. G. H.
Von Wright and Heikki Nyman [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980], 46e)
that the Christian religion is a "refuge" only for one in "utmost torment" or need. For
an interpretation of this remark that takes such Kierkegaardian or Wittgensteinian
faith to be a solution to a problem that both secularists and believers can grasp, see
Alastair Hannay, "Refuge and Religion," Faith, Knowledge, and Action: Essays 10
Niels Thulslrup. ed. George L. Stengren (Copenhagen: Reitzels Forlag, 1984).
152 Notes
41. Postscript, p. 447. JohaMes Climacus notes an additional problem for de

silentio: Because the hero of faith has no outward marks to distinguish him, how does
JohaMes know whom or what to praise? On perceiving moral salience without being
able to formulate outward criteria, see Chapter 7, subsection "Kant, Kierkegaard, and
Hidden Inwardness."
42. 49 [15: 68].
43. Ibid.
44. Among dozens of studies, see Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Lit-
erature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985); Authur C. Danto, Niet-
zsche as Philosopher (New York: Macmillan, 1965); Richard Schacht, Nietzsclle
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988); and Tracy Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche
and the Politics of Transfiguration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).
45. See Bernard Yack, The Longing for Total Revolution: Philosophical
Sources of Social Discollfent from Rousseau to Marx and Nietzsche (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 354 ff. For detailed comparisons, see Stephen
Crites, '''The Blissful Security of the Moment': Recollection, Repetition, and Eternal
Recurrence," Robert L. Perkins, ed., International Kierkegaard Commentary: Fear
and Trembling and Repetition (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1991); and M.
Jamie Ferreira, "Repetition, Concreteness, and Imagination," Imemational Journal
for Philosophy of Religion, 25 (1989). See also, Dreyfus and Rubin on the pervasive
tendency in each of the "stages on life's way," toward cover-up in "You Can't Get
Something for Nothing: Kierkegaard and Heidegger on How Not to Overcome
Nihilism," Inquiry 30 (1987).
46. See, for example, Herbert Fingarette, COlifucius: The Secular as Sacred
(New York: Harper and Row, 1972).
47. Bruce Duffy, Tile World as I Found It (New York: Ticknor and Fields,
1987), p. 196. The passage purports to be an excerpt from the diary of David Pinset, a
friend of Wittgenstein.
48. Ibid.
49. "Thinking of Emerson," The Senses of Walden, expanded ed. (San Francis-
co: North Point Press, 1981), p. 134.
50. \10 [83:131].
51. Hermione Lee, Willa Catller: Double Lives (New York: Pantheon, 1990),
quoted in San Frallcisco Chronicle Review, April 15, 1990, p. 5.
52. The danger, as Rorty has it, is that in reconstructing a philosopher (or a
hero), we have "unwittingly substituted foolish little silhouettes for the men them-
selves." See "The Philosophy of the Oddball," Tile New Republic 74 (June 19, 1989),
p.41.
53. Johannes speaks of poetic faith at 49 [15: 69].
Notes 153
54. 103 [76: 124); my emphasis.

55. 49 [15: 69J.
56. 51 [17: 70).
57. 56 [22: 74).
58. 49 [15: 69).
59. 50 [16: 69).
60. On the work of biblical enigmas, riddles and parables in transforming
moral consciousness, while trading on the background ordinary moral perspectives,
see Bernard Harrison, "Parable and Transcendence," Ways of Readillg the Bible, ed
Michael Wadsworth (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981), pp. 190-212. I thank
Yukio Kachi for this reference. Also relevant throughout is M. Jamie Ferreira, Trans-
forming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1991). See also Chapter 9.
61. 102 [75: 123).
62. See Chapter 9 for another treatment of these paradoxical juxtapositions.
63. 50 [17: 69].
64. 51 [17: 70].
65. 54 [20 f: 73).
66. 55 f. [22: 74].
67. The failed Abraham that I list last is actually the first in "Speech in
Praise."
68. 52 [18: 70).
69. Ibid.; my emphasis.
.
70. Ibid .
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. 78 [49: 99); my emphasis.
74. 52 [18: 70).
75. 57 [27: 79): my emphasis. This ambiguity about the poet's power is under-
lined in the Postscript: Does the poet create or instead observe the past? Has
Johannes created Abraham? p. 447.
76. For discussion of the return of Isaac and the universal, See Chapters 6 and 7.
77. See Chapter 10.
78. 53 f. [20: 72): emphasis in the original.
154 Notes
79. 49 [15: 68-69].

80. 56 [23: 75].
81. Ibid.; my emphasis.
Chapter 3
1. 62 [32: 84].
2. Simone Weil, "Human Personality," The Simone Wei! Reader. ed. George A.
Panichas (New York: David McKay Company, 1977), p. 332. Quoted and helpfully
discussed in ways altogether pertinent to Kierkegaard in David Wisdo's "The Fragili-
ty of Faith: Toward a Critique of Reformed Epistemology," Religious Studies 24
(March 1989).
3. 78 [49: 99].
4. Kierkegaard wrote a book (under the pseudonym Nicolaus Notabene) enti-
tled Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Occasioll may Require. This
is now in the Kierkegaard alld Post-Modernism series, trans. and Introduction by
William McDonald (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1989). In the book's
Foreward, Mark C. Taylor discusses the strategy of delaying beginnings, and hence
endings, by multiple prefaces.
5. He characterizes himself in other ways, as well, identifying himself with the
quasi-ethical position of resignation and with the position of a thinker, a dialectitian.
6. In this view, the accounts that we do have would eliminate false views and
point the way toward, although falling short of, a positive account. For an argument
that even Abraham falls short of being a knight of faith, see Mark Lloyd Taylor,
"Repetition and Scripture: On the Abraham and Job Stories in Kierkegaard's Fear
and Trembling and Repetition," Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of Community,
ed. George Connell and C. Stephen Evans (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities
Press, 1991).
7. 74 [45: 96].
8. Ibid. He suggests, stereotypically, that women might be closer to faith than
men at 127 [101: 148]. See Wanda Warren Berry, "Judge William Judging Women"
(unpublished).
9. 67 [38: 89].
10. 71 [41 ff.: 92].
II. 70 [41: 92J.
12. 72 [42 If.: 93J.
13. See Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modem Idelllily
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 43-46; and Chapters 6 and
Notes 155
7. C. Steven Evans discusses the contrast between absolute and relative ends in
Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press,
1983), Chapter 9.
14. See Charles Taylor, "Responsibility for Self," retitled "Human Agency," in
Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
15. Taylor, Sources, pp. 43-46.
16. 72 [43: 93].
17. 73 [44: 94].
18. 74 [45: 96].

19. 72 [43: 93].
20. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1985), p. 200.
21. Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1986), p. 27.
22. Ibid. See his final chapter, "Birth, Death, and the Meaning of Life."
23. Hegel had identified soul, spirit, and God as "absolute objects." See Ivan
Soli, IlIIroduction to Hegel's Metaphysics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1969), Chapter 4; and Robert Solomon, III the Spirit of Hegel (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1983) pp. 28~81.
24. For extended development of these contrasts, see Alastair Hannay, "Spirit
and the Idea of the Self as a Reflexive Relation," in International Kierkegaard Com-
mentary, Sickness Unto Death, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University
Press, 1987); Hannay's Introduction to his translation of Sickness Vnto Death (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin Books, 1989); and Hubert L. Dreyfus and Jane Rubin, "You
Can't Get Something from Nothing: Kierkegaard and Heidegger on How Not to
.
Overcome Nihilism," Inquiry 30 (1987) .
25. 74 [45: 96].
26. 72 [43: 93].
27. 63 [34: 85].
28. Those with an interest in tying the story to Kierkegaard's own experience
will see an obvious grappling with his renunciation of Regine Olsen, to whom he was
then engaged. Whether such a transfiguring of his love for her into a love of God was
a self-deceptive cover-up of an unworthy motive, or in fact was an act of resignation
is much contested. See Chapter 9, subsection "Writing and Redemption."
29. 73 [45: 95].
30. Mark Lloyd Taylor argues that Abraham is a prototype of faith but does not
fully qualify as a knight of faith: Johannes never explicitly calls him this, preferring
156 Notes
"father of faith." This wedge between Abraham and the knight of faith proper pennits
the latter honor to be reserved for the knight of Christian faith. But even accepting Tay-
lor's argument, Johannes's vagueness on this issue should not blunt the broader point:
Given the great distance between his audience and any grasp of the subtlety of faith, the
reader will not be that deceived by calling Abraham a knight of faith. The rUler dialecti-
cal discriminations can be made later. See Taylor, "Repetition and Scripture."
31. 68 [39: 91].
32. 68 [39: 91]; my emphasis.
33. We return to this issue in Chapter 7, subsection "Kant, Kierkegaard, and

Hidden Inwardness." The idea that the "invisible" knight is visible to a perceptive
enough observer is suggested in the Postscript, p. 150.
34. 69 [39: 91].
35. Ibid.
36. 73 [44: 95].
37. Actually, JohalUles uses the idea of being embarrassed were the cherished
object returned to characterize his own response as a person merely resigned (not yet
a knight of faith), had Isaac been returned to him. 65 [35: 86]. But the case is clearly
meant to parallel the case of the lad and princess.
38. 75 [46: 97]; my emphasis.
39. This has been said by Thoreau; but I have not been able to locate the
source.
40. 78 [49 ff: 99 ff]; 77 [48: 98], and 75 [46: 96].
41. 73 [44].
42. See Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Schocken Books,
1971). The applicability of the contrast between claim and care to the case at hand is
inspired by Henry Bugbee's "Loneliness, Solitude, and the Twofold Way in Which
Concern Seems to be Claimed," Humanitas 10 (November 1974).
43. See Chapter 2, subsection "Attunement," on the Postscript cOlUlection
between God's love and his conferring independence over against himself.
44. 78 [49 ff: 99 ff].
45. 57 [27: 79].
46. I give a final account of Johannes's motivations to speak of the absurd in

Chapter 9, subsection "Silences Once More."
47. The late pseudonym Anti-Climacus, author of Training in Christianity and
Sicklless Ullto Death, is the likely exception; he seems to speak from within the circle
of faith.
Notes 157
48. Postscript, p. 447.

49. For an extended defense of the view that faith seems irrationalist or absurd
only to those who are pre-Christian, see, for example, Alastair McKinnon's chapter
on Kierkegaard in 19th Century Religious Thought in the West, vol I., ed. Ninian
Smart et aI. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and "Paradox and Faith
in Kierkegaard," in The Challenge of Religion Today, ed. John King-Farlow (New
York: Watson Publishing International, 1976).
50. 66 [37: 88].
51. 67 [38: 89].
52. On the ambivalence of emotions and their role in constituting personal
integrity, see Ronald de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1987).
53. 75 [46: 97]; my emphasis.
54. 79 [50: 100]; my emphasis.
55. 61 [31: 83].
56. The phrase immortality project is Ernest Becker's in The Dellial of Deat"
(New York: The Free Press, 1973).
57. The perspective of the son is not utterly neglected: "he who works will
give birth to his own father." 57 [27: 80]. (See Chapter 2, "Speech in Praise of Abra-
ham," for a discussion of this remark.) Does God's demand and later retraction raise
the issue of infanticidal aggression on the part of the father? See David Bakan, The
Duality of Human Existence (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), Chapter 4. Everything in
Kierkegaard's account points against this interpretation.
58. 61 [31: 83]. A "temptation" is a test in which God presents Abraham with
a command or order he must resist: God tempts him to do wrong. A trial, or ordeal,
on the other hand, involves carrying out, rather than resisting, a most difficult order or
task; it t;ies our capacity to do right. For controversy on the contrasts between trial
and temptation, see John Donnelly, "Kierkegaard's Problema I and Problema II,"
Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Birnl-
ingham: University of Alabama Press, 1981); Stephen N. Dunning, Kierkegaard's
Dialectic of Inwardness: A Structural Analysis of the Theory of Stages (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985); and Taylor, "Repetition and Scripture."
59. 65 [35: 86].
60. See Chapter 5, subsection "Irrationality, Faith, and the Fanatic."
61. 66 [37: 88].
62. 81 [53: 102].
63. 54 [21: 73].
158 Notes
64. 53, f. [20: 72).

66. 57 [27: 79).
Chapter 4
1. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1986), p. 72.
2. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 200.
3. Any number of critics have claimed both that Kierkegaard endorses Abra-
ham's decision and that he embraces irrationality. See, for example, Brand Blanchard's
polemic "Kierkegaarcl on Faith," The Personalist 49 (1968); or Walter Kaufman's
charge that Kierkegaard "rashly renounced clear and distinct thinking altogether," Exis-
tentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (New York: New American Library, 1975), p. 18.
4. 62 [33: 84).
5. See John Donnelly, "Kierkegaard's Problem I and Problem II: An Analytic

Perspective," in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals, ed. Robert L.
Perkins (Binningham: University of Alabama Press, 1981). For further recent litera-
ture dealing with the teleological suspension, see Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard (Lon-
don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), Chapter 3; and the Introduction to his transla-
tion of Fear and Trembling (Hannondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985); Ronald Green,
"Deciphering Fear and Trembling's Secret Message," Religious Studies 22 (1987);
Gene Dutka, "Religious and Moral Duty: Notes on Fear and Trembling," Religion
and Morality, ed. Dutka and Reeder (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1973) pp.
204--254; Edmund N. Santurii, "Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling in Logical Per-
spective," Journal of Religious Ethics 5 (1977) pp. 225-247; and Philip Quinn,
"Moral Obligation, Religious Demand, and Practical Conflict," in Rationality, Reli-
gious Belief, and Moral Commitment, ed. Audi and Wainwright (lthica: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1986).
6. Sartre, "Existentialism Is a Humanism," in Existelltialism from Dostoevs/..y

to Sartre, ed. Kaufman; Thomas Nagel, "War and Massacre," in Mortal Questions
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Nussbaum, The Fragility of Good-
ness, Chapts. 2 and 3; Christopher W. Gowans, ed., Moral Dilemmas (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1987).
7. Melville's story Billy Budd is found in several editions. Styron's novel

Sophie's Choice is also a popular film.
8. See "Moral Conflict" in The Tanner Lectures 011 Humall Values, vol 1. (Salt
Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1980), p. 175, reprinted in Moral Dileml//as, ed.
Gowans, p. 211.
Notes 159
9. A number of recent writer.; in the analytic tradition have given sensitive

accounts of dilemmas, often as part of a broad critique of mainstream Kantian or Util-
itarian theories. I have learned especially from Bernard Williams, "Ethical Consisten-
cy," in Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), and
"Conflict of Values" and "Persons, Character and Morality" in Moral Luck (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Ruth Barcan Marcus "Moral Dilemmas
and Consistency," Journal of Philosophy 27 (March 1980); Nagel "War and Mas-
sacre;" and Nussbaum's comprehensive account, "Aeschylus and Practical Conflicts,"
Chapter 2, The Fragility of Goodness.
10. Reprinted in Kaufman, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. See
Charles Taylor's helpful commentary on this case in "What Is Human Agency?" in
Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), also
appearing as "Responsibility for Self' in The Identities of Persons, ed. Amelie
Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).
11. Charles Taylor argues that a moral self requires relationship to such an
"absolute" good. See Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).
12. Hannay, "Refuge and Religion," Faith, Knowledge, and Action: Essays to
Niles Thulstup, ed. George L. Stengren (Copenhagen: Reitzels Forlag, 1984).
13. I have tried here to capture both the Hegelian and the Kantian strands in
the picture of ethics drawn in Fear and Trembling. In other works, for example, the
Postscript, Kierkegaard gives a different characterization of the ethical. In Chapters 7
and 8, I explore the structure of an ethics more refined and person-centered than the
relatively formal one described here.
14. For somewhat different ways of characterizing non-universal moral
requirements, see Larry Blum, "Iris Murdoch and the Domain of the Moral," Philo-
sophical Studies 50 (1986); Nagel "The Fragmentation of Value," in Mortal Ques-
tions and The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); and
Wi11iam~, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.
15. 85 [56: 106 ].

16. "Self-Interpreting Animals" is the title of Chapter 2 in Taylor's Human
Agency and Language.
17. In addition to Taylor's Sources of the Self and "Responsibility for Self,"
see Herbert Fingaretie "Self-insight as Self-discovery, Self-realization, Self-creation,"
in On Responsibility (New York: Basic Books, 1967); The Self in Transformation
(New York: Basic Books, 1963); and Self-Deception (New York: Humanities Press,
1969).
18. For an interesting exploration of some puzzles about characterizing the
"more than moral" or supererogatory, see Gregory W. Trianosky, "Supererogation,
Wrongdoing, and Vice: On the Autonomy of the Ethics of Vutue," Journal of Philos-
ophy 83 (1987).
160 Notes
19. How to delimit the ethical domain is contested. Accepting a roughly Kan-
tian-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." (1) We could take supremacy or Qverridingness as the key feature of the
moral. Then whatever is overriding in a given situation becomes, by definition, a
moral consideration, and ethics could be suspended only if two "supreme" considera-
tions conflicted, leaving neither one "overriding." (2) We could develop an extended
notion of "position" such that an individual commitment to a person or to God could
be characterized as moral, a move that would keep parts of the personal within the
moral. Or (3) we could try universalizing even the sorts of demands Kierkegaard or
Kant or Hegel would characterize as subjective. Although I cannot argue the case
here, each of these strategies seems to me to 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, rather than between ethics and some-
thing outside ethics. For explorations of these and other options, see Williams, Ethics
and the Limits of Philosophy; Nagel, The View from Nowhere; and Blum, "Iris Mur-
doch and the Particular," and note 20, below.
20. Both Donnelly and Evans take the view that what I have calIed a personal
requirement-Kierkegaard's 'particular' -is still an ethical or rational requirement,
connected with a ~pecial position or relationship which Abraham has with respect to
God. Thus they try to keep Abraham out of the ineffable and absurd. But they fail, in
their otherwise subtle and persuasive essays, to give an adequate account of the con-
flict that must then arise within the ethical, between moral, even "absolute" duties.
One can draw the map so that God's command falIs within the domain of the ethical
without it following that obedience to that command is an overriding duty. The inef-
fable or the absurd now arise not from the particularity of God's command but from a
conflict between two moral requirements of roughly equal stringency. John Donnelly,
"Kierkegaard's Problem I and Problema II;" and C. Stephen Evans, "Is the Concept
of an Absolute Duty Toward God Morally Unintelligible?" Kierkegaard's Fear and
Trembling: Critical Appraisals, ed. Perkins.
21. I am reminded here of Christ's silence before the Grand Inquisitor in Dos-
toevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.
22. Blum, "Iris Murdoch and the Domain of the Moral."
23. See my "Living with Double Vision: Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Human
Understanding," Inquiry 31 (1987); and "Kierkegaard Our Contemporary: Reason,
Subjectivity, and the Self," Southern Journal of Philosophy 27, no. 3 (Fall 1989).
24. Of course, Johannes does not believe that in the long run ethics can be
ollly such objective rules, principles, or position-related requirements. Such an ethics,
as we will see in the following chapter, must be supplemented by an ethics of charac-
ter or virtue-hence the need to suspend this preliminary conception.
25. For an excellent discussion of the "objectivity" of moral responsiveness
construed as sensitive perception in particular situations, see Lawrence Blum "Moral
Perception and Particularity," Elhics (forthcoming), and "Iris Murdoch and the
Domain of the Moral."
Notes 161
26. The phrase deep subjectil'iry is Roger Poole's. See his provocative To ....ard
Deep Subjecti\'iry (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).
27. See Taylor, Sources of tile Self.
28. See Hilary Putnam's discussion in "Wittgenstein and Religious Belief,"
The Gifford Lectures, (forthcoming).
29. See Williams, "Moral Luck," in Moral Luck; and Nagel, "Moral Luck," in
Morral Questions, for a discussion of this stock example. Also one needs here the
contrast between rationally required acts and the weaker sense of rationally permitted
acts. Subjective demands can be rational at least in this weaker sense. See Nagel, The
View From Nowhere, p. 200, ff.
30. Williams talks of "categorical desires" that 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," relationships apart from which life would become meaningless.)
Williams imagines a challenge to ethics from such "categorical desires" that resem·
bles the challenge Kierkegaard depicts as arising from "the individua!." See also,
Julia AMas, "Personal Love and Kantian Ethics in Effi Briest," Phi/osophy and Lit·
erature 8 (April 1984); and Marcia Baron's reply, "Was Effi Briest a Victim of Kan-
tian Morality?" Phi/osophy in Literature 12 (April 1988).
Chapter 5
I. Bernard Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), p. 18.
2. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press),
p.27.
3. See Merold Westphal, "Abraham and Hegel," in Kierkegaard's Fear and
Trembling: Critical Appraisals, ed. Robert L. Perkins, (Birmingham: University of
Alabama Press, 1981).
4. When the dilemma is described generally as a clash between loyalty to God
and duty to Isaac, then there is no distinction between faith and resignation. However,
one could describe the clashing requirements in a way that would bring out the essen-
tial contrast between resignation and faith: (a) one must give Isaac up, and (b) one
must fully believe one will get Isaac back, on the strength of the absurd.
5. For another suggestion that Abraham might have reasons for obedience, see
Louis P. Pojman, The Logic of Subjectil'iry: Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Religioll
(Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1984), pp. 85-86.
6. 84 [55: 106]; my emphasis.
7.90 [62: 111].
8. For "plumbing one's intuitions," see Charles Taylor, "What IS Human
162 Notes
Agency?," Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1985).
9. 87 f. [59: 109]. Alastair Hannay c!,lIed this passage to my attention.
10. 107 [80: 128].
11. For another contrast between the knight of faith and the fanatic, see Gene
Dutka, "Religious and Moral Duty: Notes on Fear alld Trembling," Religiol/ al/d
Morality, ed. Gene Dutka and John P. Reeder Jr. (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1973).
12. 107 [80: 128].
15. 103 [751 124].
16. 60 [31: 82].
17. 102 [75: 123].
18. Williams, Moral Luck, p. 82.
19. See Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1986).
20. Faith is clearly higher than desire; and desire is the most familiar source of
challenges to ethics. We could say, then, that in Abraham's case ethics is not suspend-
ed 'from below' but from a higher good-a good that is higher than desire, even if no
higher than ethics.
21. The exception is Abraham plunging the knife into his own breast: 54 [21: 73].
22. 94 [65: 115].
23. Hannay provides a sense in which to sustain hope despite reason's nonsup-
port is not necessarily self-deceptive or pathological. See "Refuge and Religion,"
Faith, Knowledge, al/d Action: Essays to Niles Thulstrup, ed. George L. Stengren
(Copenhagen: Reitzels Forlag, 1984).
24. See Annette Baier, "Secular Faith," in Revisions, ed. Stanley Hauerwas
and Alasdair MacIntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), and an
insightful critique by Nicolai Meador (forthcoming).
25. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Schocken Books,
1971); Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modem Identity (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989).
26. In the first quote, Rorty is approving a claim of Stanley Cavell. See "The
Philosophy of the Oddball," New Republic 74 (June 19, 1989), p. 41.
27. For further discussion of the Book of Job, see Herbert Fingarette, "The
Meaning of Law in The Book of Job," Revisions, ed. Hauerwas and MacIntyre; my
Notes 163
"A Renewal of Self and World: The Book of Job," Cross-Currents 20, no. 2 (1972);
and R, Z. Friedman, "Evil and Moral Agency," /ntemational Journal for the PhiloJ()-
phy of Religion 24 (1988).
28. "Lord, help Thou my unbelief." Eli Wiesel tells the following story: Sev-
eral Jewish elders interred in a death camp argued over how God could have aban-
doned them to such suffering. They found God in the wrong-and then prayed.
29. I wish to thank Alastair Hannay for vigorously pursuing this point, forcing
a revision of an earlier draft of this chapter.
Chapter 6
1. 103 [76: 124].
2. Cavell, "Thinking of Emerson," The Senses of Walden, al/ Expallded Edi-

tion, p. 135. Cavell's early essay (1968) comparing Wiugenstein's /1II'estigations and
Kierkegaard's Postscript has always seemed to me a model for bringing these two
thinkers and the traditions they have come to represent into fruitful dialogue and
mutual aid. See Stanley Cavell, "Existentialism and Analytical Philosophy" reprinted
in Thoughts out of Class (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988).
3. Another liability, also distractive, is more general: "Sensation-mongering
philosophers have a great fondness for deeds that make noise." Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, in The Govemmefll of Polal/d, trans. Willmoore Kendall (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishers, 1972), p. 96.
4. Of course to speak of the expectation that Isaac will be returned as being
"consoling" cannot mean that Abraham can have forgotten the pain of the trial, or that
God is justified in setting the ordeal, or that Abraham is justified in his response; nor
can referring to the expectation as "hopeful" mean that Abraham is exempt from the
anguish of losing Isaac. (See Chapter 4.)
5. "Hegel explains that in [faith] ... 'What is present is only this going out on
my part,' this aiming to reach what is remote; I remain on this side with a yearning
after the beyond,' For Kierkegaard, this 'longing is the umbilical cord to the higher
life'; for Hegel, it is 'the ceaseless sigh of the self-estranged spirit'," Mark C. Taylor,
Joumeys to SelfllOod (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 269.
6. 79 [50: 100]; my emphasis. See also 126 [100: 148]. Johannes Climacus
discusses monastic otherworldliness as a failure of faith in the Postscript, for exam-
ple, p. 359.
7. 67 [38: 52].
8. He warns repeatedly against a "consequentialist" focus on "the outcome"-
as if Isaac's return could justify faith. Justification, in that sense, is out of the question.
9. Hannay, Introduction to Fear alld Tremblil/g (Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1985), p. 24.
164 Notes
to. For an extended Wittgensteinian defence of realism or objectivity in

ethics, see Sabina Lovibond, Realism and Imagination in Ethics (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press 1983). See also Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: Tile
Makil/g of Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989).
11. See Chapter 3.
12. See Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Schocken Books,
1972); Lovibond, Realism and Ethics; and Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), Chapter 11.
13. Cavell, "Thinking of Emerson," The Senses of Walden, p. 135.
14. Shakespeare, Kil/g Lear.

15. 84 [55 ff: 105-106].
16. Merold Westphal suggests that "teleological suspensions" occur at each
Kierkegaardian stage-shift. These transformations both cancel and preserve the form
and content of a lower stage as one moves dialectically higher in a kind of repeated
Hegelian aufhebullg. So, for example, the passage into the ethical can be seen as a
"teleological suspension" of the aesthetic. See "The Teleological Suspension of Reli-
giousness B ," in Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of Community, ed. George Con-
nell and C. Stephen Evans (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1991).
17. John D. Glenn, Jr. "The Definition of the Self and the Structure of
Kierkegaard's Work," in Illtematiol/al Kierkegaard Commentary, Sickness Unto
Death (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1987), p. 20.
18. Ibid.,p21.
19. On the limits and powers of bootstrapping, see Ronald de Sousa, The
Rationality of tire Emotiolls (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986); his account of the
possibility of feeling contrary emotions simultaneously is also helpful. In Sicklless
VI/to Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1980), pp. 13-14, Kierkegaard speaks of the Power or Other that
constitutes the self.
20. For a good discussion of some of these issues as they arise in Either/Or,
see George Connell, "Judge Williams' Theonomous Ethics," in Foulldations of
Kierkegaard's Visiol/ of Community, ed. Connell and Evans; and Hannay, "Refuge
and Religion," Fait/I, KI/owledge, and Actiol/: Essays to Niles TlllIlstl/p, ed. George
L. Stengren (Copenhagen: Reitzels Forlag, 1984),
21. An alternative to taking Kierkegaard to have dogmatically or uncritically
presupposed Christian belief is to take him as proposing Christianity as a solution to a
universal spiritual problem that precedes this specific solution. This possibility is
worked out by Hannay, in "Refuge and Religion." This lauer allernative saves
Kierkegaard from the charge of having been curiously and uncharacteristically uncrit-
ical about adopting the Christian standpoint. Having diagnosed the hypocrisy and
thoughtlessness of his time, why not just chuck the religious framework and its daunt-
Notes 165
ing tasks altogether'? Kierkegaard believes that there is a deep fissure in our existence,
an emptiness that familiar answers to "the problem of existence" merely gloss over or
deny. Only recourse to the extra-natural resources of Christianity, in his view, can
heal this breach.
22. Confucius, Thoreau, and Heidegger endorse the virtue of receptivity to

gifts without detailed specification of a correlative Giver. For discussion focused on
rehabilitating the idea of gratitude for the beneficence of nature, without positing an
agent to whom one addresses gratitude, see Lloyd Reinhardt, "Gratitude and Blasphe-
my: Some Gaps in Moral Space," E"viro1lmellfal Philosophy, ed. Mannison, et al.
(Canberra: Australian National University, 1980).
23. Thinking of Emerson: my emphasis.

24. Sources of the Self, p. 42
25. Ibid. p. 47. Compare Kierkegaard's Postscript claim that the task in life is
to relate absolutely to absolute ends, and relatively to relative ones, p. 371, and the
discussion by C. Stephen Evans in Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript: Tire Reli-
gious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press,
1983), pp. 163ff.
26. Postscript, p. 179, note.

27. Ibid., 438; my emphasis.
28. 84, f. (56: 106].
29. Hannay, "Introduction," Fear and Trembling, p. 30.
30. See Harry Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,"
Journal of Philosophy, January 1971, collected with other related papers in The
Importance ofWlrat We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988);
Charles Taylor, "Responsibility for Self'; this article is retitled "What Is Human
Agency?" in Human Agel/cy and LAI/guage (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985). I discuss these papers in "Kierkegaard Our Contemporary: Reason, Sub-
jectivity'and the Self," Southern Journal of Philosophy, Fall 1989. See also R. Z.
Friedman, "Morality and the Morally Informed Life," Midwest Studies i1l Plrilosoplry,
13 (1988).
31. Eitlrer/Or, Vol. 2., pp. 266-67, trans. Walter Lowrie and D. F. Swenson
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971).
Chapter 7
1. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge

2. 77 [49: 98].
166 Notes
3. McKinnon argues that the pseudonymous works generally present "contra-

dictions" or dishannonies only for pre-Christian life-views, conflicts that are resolved
in the final move into Christianity. That is, a Christian would find no destructive
opposition between ethics and faith. He also argues that Kierkegaard's remark,
regarding his love for Regine, that "If only I had had faith, I would have married,"
shows Kierkegaard's belief in the compatibility of conventional or civic virtue and
faith. Alastair McKinnon, "Kierkegaard," 19th Century Religious Thought ill the
West. vol. I, ed. Ninian Smart et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
4. Chapter 6.
5. Kierkegaard (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 78, my interpo-

lation.
6. Ibid., 79; Hannay's emphasis.
7. I return to the challenge that sin poses for ethics in Chapter 8.
8. For an excellent discussion of this issue, see Robert M. Adams, The Virtue
of Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), especially Chapter 1.
9. Jon Elster, Sour Grapes: Studies ill the Subversion of Ratiollality (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. vii. I thank David Wisdo for calling
this to my attention.
10. For more on virtue and the "athletic virtues" subject to the will, see Robert
C. Roberts, "What is a Virtue?" Philosophical Review. April, 1984.
11. Wisdo, David, "Simone Weil on the Limits of Virtue," Religioll alld Intel-
lectual Life, 13 July 1989.
12. 126 [101: 148]
13. I thank James C. Edwards for the ideas in the last three sentences, con-
veyed to me in private correspondence.
14. For an attempt at rapprochement between Kant and the sort of "virtue
ethics" I describe here as Kierkegaardian, see Robert B. Louden, "Can We Be Too
Moral," Ethics. January 1988. Direct and extended comparisons with Kant are found
in Peter J. Mehl, "Kierkegaard and the Relativist Challenge to Practical Philosophy,"
.!oumal of Religious Ethics. vol. 14, 1987; and R. Z. Friedman, "Kierkegaard: Last
Kantian or First Existentialist," IlIfernatiollal Journal for Philosophy of Religion.
1982, and "Morality and the Morally Informed Life," Midwest Studies ill Philosophy
13 198M; Perkins, "For Sanity's Sake: Kant, Kierkegaard, and Father Abraham,"
Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals. ed, Robert L. Perkins (Birm-
ingham: University of Alabama Press, 1981); and C, Steven Evans, Kierkegaard's
Fragments alld Postscript: The Religious Philosophy of Johanlles Climacus (Atlantic
Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983),
15. Hannay, Introduction to Fear alld Tremblillg (Hannondsworth: Penguin

Books, 1985), p. 30.
Notes 167
16. Kant, StrIfe of the Faculties. Prussische Akademie Ausgahe. 7:43, quoted
in Perkins, "For Sanity's Sake", p. 59; and Groundwork. Sect. II, many editions.
17. See Postscript. p. ISO.

18. Hannay, Introduction, p. 23.
19. 100[72: 121].
20. 68 [39: 89-90].
21. 69 f. [40: 91].
22. 103 [76: 124].
23. Ibid.
24. 79 [50: 99-100].
25. Training in Christiallity. trans. Walter Lowrie (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1941), p. 89; my emphasis.
26. Charles Taylor (Sources of the Self) joins Iris Murdoch (The SOl'ereigllt),
of Good) in lamenting the obsession in moral philosophy on rights, acts, and obliga-
tion, to the exclusion of visions of animating goods.
27. Postscript. p. 367. Johannes de silentio contrasts the resigllation of the
monastary withfaith at 126 [101: 148].
28. McKinnon, "Kierkegaard."
29. 70 [41: 92].
30. I'd like to thank David Wisdo for suggesting the resonance with Thoreau,
and the way of putting things in these last two sentences. A Thoreauvian pattern of
skepticism, withdrawal, and reconciliation through writing is discerned by Stanley
Cavell in The Sellses of Walden (San Francisco: Northpoint Press, 1981). See also
Cavell's "The Uncanniness of the Ordinary," The Tallller Lecture 011 Humall Values
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), reprinted in III Quest of the Ordi-
nary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). Kierkegaard explores this pattern
of being stripped of the world as a necessary preparation for acknowledging a deeper
ground of the self in Sicklless VlltO Death.
Chapter 8
I. Tractatus Logicus Philosophicus. trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuiness

(Altantic Highlands, N.J.: Hummanities Press, 1971), Proposition 7.
2. Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). p. 82.
3. For a convincing argument that he is not sufficiently caring, see Martha C.
168 Notes
Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1986), Chapter 3.
4. Thomas Nagel, "War and Massacre," Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1979). •
5. 97 [69: 118].
6. Earlier, Johannes makes the point this way: If a rich young man "gave away
his possessions because he was bored with them, then his resignation is in a sorry
state." 78 [49: 99].
7. Cf. Chapter 4, subsection "Abraham's Silence."
8. 112 [85: 132].
9. 113 [86: 133].
10. For contrary views, see Williams' essay "Moral Luck" in the book of that
title; and Nagel's response, "Moral Luck" in Mortal Questions.
II. Philosophical Fragments, p. 66.
12. The idea of a "life-plan" is central to John Rawls's A TheO/y of Justice
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971)
13. 107 [80: 128].
14. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Schocken Books,
1971).
15. For a helpful discussion of Kierkegaard's "soul-making" ethics, see C.
Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript: The Religious Philosophy of
.Iohwllles Climacus (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983), Chapter 5.
16. 113 [86: 134].
17. 124, note [98: 145].
18. 124 [98: 145]. Johannes is speaking here of a paradox of guilt and repen-
tance just this side of the paradox of sin and forgiveness, See Robert M. Adams,
"Involuntary Sins," Philosophical Review, 1985. See also The Virtue of Faith
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
19. Ibid.
20. On a "new Isaac," see 139 [115: 161].
21. 119 [93: 143].
22. Among Kant commentators there is an ongoing debate about the place of
love in an ethics of duty, See Julia Annas' attack on a "heartless" Kantianism, "Per-
sonal Love and Kantian Ethics in Efli Briest," Philosophy in Literature I! (April
1984); and Marcia Baron's response, "Was Effi Briest a Victim of Kantian Morality,"
Philosophy ill Literature 12 (April 1988).
Notes 16!J
23. 124 [98: 145). Johannes writes "On the whole, were poetry to attend to the
religious aspect, and to the inner feeling of its characters, it would command themes
of much greater importance than it now occupies itself with." Ill! (91: 139), note.
24. "It will be best to look at the whole matter in a purely aesthetic way... .-
109 [82: 131).
25. 110 [83: 131). See Bernard Harrison, "Parable and Transcendence," Wuys
of Reading the Bible, ed. Michael Wadsworth (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble,
1981), for a discussion of how stories and parable expand moral vision and effect
moral transformation.
26. 75 [46: 97).
27. Ruth Barcan Marcus notes the rationale for a theory of original sin implicit
in the phenomena of moral dilemmas in "Moral Dilemma and Consistency," Journul
of P hi/osophy, March 1980.
28. To my knowledge this interpretation of the teleological suspension as an
Hegelian aufhebung, was first suggested in a paper read by Westphal at the SI. Olaf
College Kierkegaard Conference, June 6, 1988, entitled "Kierkegaard's Teleological
Suspension of Religiousness B," to appear in FoundatiOlls of Kierkegaard's Visioll of
Commullity (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1991). On the stages gener-
ally, see Chapter 1. Although McKinnon does not invoke the Hegelian notion, he sug-
gests a similar preservation of a dethroned life-view within a higher one. In his view,
the stages on life's way boil down to a single alternative: "either the aesthetic on its
own terms, or religiousness B, including within it, as dethroned or subsumed stages,
religiousness A, the ethical, and the aesthetic," "Kierkegaard," 19th Celllury Reli-
gious Thought ill the West, vol. I, ed. Ninian Smart et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge
29. 57 [27: 79).
Chapter 9
1. 110 [83: 131).
2. Quoted in the poet-translator's obituary, Tire New York Times, early 19805.
3. 137 [113: 149); my emphasis.
4. See Gilbert Ryle, "The Systematic Elusiveness of the 'I' ," The Concept of
Milld (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1949), p. 195 ff.; and William H. Poteat, "Birth,
Suicide, and the Doctrine of Creation" Mind (1959).
5. Alastair McKinnon points out that Kierkegaard's directly religious writings
leave out all reference to "the paradox" or "the absurd," "Kierkegaard." 19th CentlllY
Religious Philosophy ill the West, vol. I, ed. Ninian Smart et al. (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1985).
170 Notes
6. See Bernard Harrison's treatment of this parable, and others, in "Parable

and Transcendence," Ways of Reading the Bible, ed. Michael Wadsworth (Totowa,
N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981).
7. See Thomas Kuhn's classic The Structure of Scielltific Revolutiolls (Chica-
go: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
8. Journals and Papers, vol. 1, p. 110. (And see note 5, above.)
9. 127 [101: 148].

10. Roughly half of the pages of this longest section of Fear and Trembling are
taken up with literary parallels to the Abraham and Isaac story. TIle four types of
silence or concealment that I mention here are filled out with numerous examples,
insightfully described. In addition to stock types ("a young girl," "two lovers," etc.) are
discussions of Socrates (to whom we return in Chapter 10), Agamemnon (again),
Shakespeare's Gloucester, Agnete and the Merman, Faust, Tobias, and Axel and Val-
borg. Given more space, each should be reviewed in detail. See Carol Keeley, "The
Parables of Problem III," Robert L. Perkins, ed. International Kierkegaard Commel/-
tary: Fear and Trembling and Repetition (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1991).
11. This is the characterization of the demonic given in COllcept of Anxiety.
The illustration of the demonic in Fear and Trembling, the long discussion of Agnete
and the Merman, is relatively compl~x. It is not, in my view, a clear case of defiance.
The best discussion I know, contrasting the Merman's "suspension of the universal"
and Abraham's, is in Alastair Hannay, Introduction, Fear and Trembling (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985).
12. Johannes writes of Abraham that "the ethical had no higher expression
than that of family life" 136 [112: 158]. The Postscript "post-suspension" ethics
places no such obvious emphasis on family life or marriage. The ethicoreligious
paradigm here is Socrates, someone who can appear dismissive and cavalier toward
the claims of family. Consider Socrates' remarks in the Crito about care for his sons,
or his dismissal of his grieving wife and child from his death chamber.
13. Perhaps mirroring Kierkegaard's own thoughts with regard to his struggles
over marriage and self-understanding, Johannes de silentio says that to understand
Abraham he needs "a new category." He needs, I have suggested, the categories of
Christianity that are not yet explicit either for Johannes or in the tale itself. On Abra-
ham's failure to fully be a knight of faith, see Mark L. Taylor, "Repetition and Scrip-
ture: On the Abraham and Job Stories in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Rep-
etitioll," Foundations of Kierkegaard's Visiol/ of Commul/ity. ed. George Connell and
C. Stephen Evans (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1991).
14. Sylviane Agacinski, Aparte: Conceptions and Deaths of S(!ren Kierke-

gaard. trans. Kevin Mewmark (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 198!!), pp
23!! ff. See also, Mark C. T;lylor Alterity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
19!!7), Chapter 10, pp. 320, ff.
IS. Joumals IV A 107, p. 43.
Notes 171
16. This massive silence makes even more remarkable the fact, noted in Chap-
ter 2, that in the initial quanet of variations on the Abraham story, the "moral" is
offered in terms of a mother's relationship to her child.
17. Gregor Malantschuk has this to say about the connection between Fear
and Trembling and the broken engagement: "The hidden meaning in Fear and Trem-
bling. , . could not consist in her learning that she was sacrificed as Isaac was sacri-
ficed by Abraham, ". but in enlightening her as to .....lIy she had to be sacrificed ....
Kierkegaard simply wanted to tell Regine that he himself was being sacrificed, and
therefore he had to sacrifice her," Kierkegaard's Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1971), p. 236 ff, Kierkegaard's sacrifice occurred, I take it, on learn-
ing of his inherited corruption. That was his father's upraised knife.
Chapter 10
1. Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch, ed. G. H. Von Wright and Heikki
Nyman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 56 c. I thank Nicolai Meador
for alerting me to this quote, and for supporting this project with passion and faith.
2. 52 [18: 70]; 95 [67: 116].

3. The first phrase, 140 [117: 162]; the second, Postscript, p. 450.
4. He suggests Socrates is a knight of resignation, 71 [42: 93]. Cf. Stephen
Dunning, who argues that the resignation of Fear and Trembling can't be equivalent
to the Postscript's Religiousness A: Kierkegaard's Dialectic of Inwardness (Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985).
5. For the title tragic hero. 141 [117: 164]; for his being "interesting," 110 [83:
132); my emphasis.
6. 110 [83: 132).
'J. 43 [7: 59].
8. 116 [90: 138].
9. Louis Mackey, Kierkegaard, A Kind of Poet (Pittsburgh: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1971); Roben L. Perkins, "Kierkegaard: A Kind of Epistomolo-
gist," Journal of the History of European Ideas (forthcoming); Alastair Hannay,
Kierkegaard (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 8 ff.; Merold Westphal.
"Kierkegaard's Sociology," International Kierkegaard Commentary: Two Ages: The
Present Age and the Age of Revolution-A Literary Review vol. 14, ed. Roben L.
Perkins (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984).
10. 141 [117: 162-163]; my emphasis.
11. Ibid.
12. See Chapter 2.
172 Notes
13. In a note to the passage on 141 [117: 162-163], Johannes proposes that
Socrates fulfills himself-realizes himself spiritually-in his quip that he is surprised
at the small margin of votes against him. He had anticipated more anger. At that
moment he is immortal.
14. See Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1986), especially Chapters 6, 11, and 12. She argues that
Plato himself is ambivalent about the price Socrates pays. R. Z. Friedman, in "Moral-
ity and the Morally Informed Life," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13 (1988), agrees,
arguing that Socrates takes himself (incredibly) to be both morally successful and
happy, happy to die; whereas Plato seems to paint a picture closer to tragedy, suggest-
ing (as against Socrates) that the good man can be harmed, can suffer.
15. Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, pp. 2, 53.
16. A generosity, of course, strangely mixed with evil. Among several treat-
ments of theodicy, see R. Z. Friedman, "Evil and Moral Agency," [ntematiol/al Jour-
1101 for Philosophy of Religion 24 (1988); and John T. Wilcox, The Bittemess of Job
(Detroit: University of Michigan Press, 1889), and my "A Renewal of Self and
World: The Book of Job," Cross-Currents 20, no. 2 (1972).
17. 129 [104: 151].

18. 71 [42: 92]. Johannes also writes "to say that no one may experience death
before actually dying, ... strikes me as crass materialism." 75 [46: 96].
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Index
Absolute: good, ix, 70, 95-96, 107, 110, Bell, Richard, 144 n.3
119, 131, 141, 159 n.l1; objects, 49; Berry, Wanda Warren, 154 n.8
paradox, 104, 129; passion, 60; Billy Budd, (Melville's), 66-67
"relating absolutely to the absolute," Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche's), 33
16,47,98,100,106-107,122 Blanchard, Brand, 158 n,3
Absolutes, 16,27,46-5068,70-71,75, Blum, Lawrence L., 147 n.22, 159 n.14,
80,82, 88,93-98, 100, 106-107, 110, 160 ns.19, 22, 25
118-120, 122, 155 n.7, 160 n.20, 165 Brothers Karamazol' (Dostoevsky's), 12,
n.25; as orienting frames, 46-47; 160 n.21
Charles Taylor on, 47, 70, 96, 159 n.ll Bugbee, Henry, 156 n.42
Absurd, ix, 3, 4, 15, 33, 35, 44, 52-53,
54-60, 69, 92, 103, 105, 112, Capitalist, market economy, 16, 20-21,
124-125, 129-131, 141, 156 n.46, 46-47,55-56,119,134,149n.9
160 n.20, 169 n.5; as limit of under- Categorical desires, Williams on, 161 n.30
standing, 151 n.20; rationales for Cavell, Stanley, x, 34, 91, 96, 144 n.3,
invocation of, 55-58, 130-131 162 n.26, 163 n.2, 164 n.13, 167 n.30
Adams, Robert M., 166 n.8, 168 n.18 Character, 21, 24, 76, 84-85, 94, 160
Affiliation, ix, 15-16,39, 109, 138. See n.24. See also Self-identity
also Intimacy; Civic virtue Christ, 4,102, 107, 160 n.21
After Virtue (Alastair MacIntyre's), 7 Civic virtue, social morality, 4, 47, 94,
Agacinski, Sylviane, 134, 143f n.l, 146 98,101,103,106,110-111,114-115,
n.14, 148. n.6, 151 n.36, 170 n.14 119-120, 138, 166 n.3; and family
Annas, Julia, 161 n.30, 168 n.22 life, 170 n.12
Aristotle, 9, 67, 105 Collins, James, 143 n.1
Assimilation, 22-23, 94-95,109,114-115 Commitment, 56-57, 64, 70-7 I, 76, 104,
Auden, W. H., x 107, 117
Austin, John, 144 n.3 Conant, James, 144 n.3
Confucius, 165 n.22
Baier, Annette, 10, 88, 147 n.22, 162 Connell, George, 149 n.12, 164 n.20; and
n.24 Evans, 149 n.1O
Bakan, David, 157 n.57 Contingency, coincidence, fortune, moral
Baron, Marcia, 161 n.30, 168 n.22 luck, 10, 43, 95, 101, 116-117,
Barth, Karl,x 121-122, 124-125, 140-141; Nagel
Becker, Ernest, 147 n.25, 157 n.56 and Williams on, 16X n.1O
181
182 Index
Contradiction, 56-58, 69, 122, 132, 166 106, 121, 140. See also Virtue;
n.3. See also Absurd Receptivity; Freedom; Integrity
Creegan, Charles C., 144 n.3 Eternal, 36, 39-41, 48; consciousness,
Crites, Stephen, 145 n.l1. 152 n.45 ·32,34,40,49-50,52,140-141
Eternal life. See Immortality
Dante, 1,3, II Ethics, different conceptions of, 147 n.
Danto. Arthur C., 152 n.44 22,159 ns.13, 14, 160 ns.19, 20, 24,
Deconstruction, 144 n.3 25; (Chapts. 6, 7, 8); features of,
deMan, Paul, x 114-120; limits of, 120-123; soul-
Demonic, 132-133, 170 n.11 making, 168 n.15; transformation in,
Dennett, Daniel, 150 n.18 124-125. See also Civic virtue; Moral
Derrida, Jacques, x justification; Secular faith; Teleologi-
Descartes, Rene, 8,22-23, 134 cal suspensions; Virtue
deSousa, Ronald, 150 n.18, 164 n.19 Evans, C. Steven, 143 n.I, 145 n.lI, 147
Dilemma, IS, 65-69, 80-82, 110, 124, n.24, 155 n.7, 160 n.20, 165 n.25, 166
128 (Chapts. 4, 5); kinds of, 65, 66; n.14, 168 n.15; and Connell, 149 n.lO
tragic dilemma. 67, 69. 114. 121, 159 Evil, and theodicy, 12, 162 n.27, 163
n.9, 160 ns.19, 20,161 n.4; and origi- n.28,I72n.16
nal sin, 169 n.27 Existential perspective, 48-49
Disclosure. 113-115, 125, 132, 138. See Existentialism, x, 67; and analytical phi-
also Silence; Revelation losophy,x,144n.3,149n.ll,163n.2;
Divine Comedy (Dante's), II and "groundless choice," 7, 95, 146
Donnelly, John, 65, 148 n.32, 157 n.58, n.16; and Kant 106-108, 166 n. 14.
158 n.5, 160 n.20 See also Absurd; Sartre
Dostoevsky, Feodor, II, 12, 160 n.21
Doubt, uncertainty, 22-23, 25-26, 73, Faith, double movement of, 17, 28, 31,
88,93,97, 107-108. See also Skeptic; 35, 40, 52 60, 80, 83, 86-89, 92-93,
Descartes; Socrates 95,104-105,109-110,120,123,131,
Dreyfus, Hubert, and Rubin, 144 n.3, 147 141, 161 n.4; elementary. 87-89,103;
n.25, 152 n.45, 155 n.24 and fanatic. ix. 27, 82-84, 162, n.11;
Duffy, Bruce, 152 n.47 invisible knight of. 108-109. 152
Dunning, Stephen, 143 n.1, 146 n.13, n.4I, 156 n.33; poetic, 35-36 .• 58, 88;
148 n.32, 157 n.58, 171 n.4 and Religiousness A. 4, 145 ns.IO, II,
146 n.13; and Religiousness B. 4. 9.
Edwards, James C., 144n.3,166n.13 122. 145 n.II, 169 n.28; secular. 15.
Either/Or. See Kierkegaard 88; shopkeeper knight of. 16. 50-52,
Elrod, John W., 143 n.1 59, 83. 92. 9!!. 103, 105, 107, III.
Elster, Jon, 104 122, 138; Socratic. ix. 93, 139-141.
Emerson. Ralph Waldo, 34 145 n.1O
Emotions, ambivalent clash in, 57, 64, Ferreira. M. Jamie, 152 n.45. 153 n.6O
91, 130, 134, 157 n.52, 164 n.19. See Fingareue. Herbert. 152 n.46. 159 n.17.
also Love; Joy; Grief 162 n.27
Enablement, empowerment, 44, 52, Finite, 48-49; attention. 83
87-88,95,110,122 Fitzgerald. Robert, 127
Erikson, Erik, x Forgiveness. 104, 122-124, 134-135,
Essential humanity, 16, 23. 75, 97-IOO. 168 n.18
Index IX3
Fortune. See Coincidence lIeidegger, Martin, x, 34, 144 n.3, 147

Fragments. See Kierkegaard, Philosoph- n.25, ](i5 n.22
ical Fragments Heraclitus, 22, 134
Frankfurt, Harry, x, 165 n.30; on second- Hong, Howard Y., and Edna If., xv, 144
order care, 99 n.3, 148 ns.3, 28, 29, 30, 150 n.17
Freedom, 7, 30, 49, 94, 99, 140. See also Hope, 16,30,36,38-41,56, S5-S7, SB,
Essential humanity 90,95,96,133,141,163 n.4
Freelancer, 5, 19, 150 n.16 Humanity, full selfhood. See Essential
Freud, Sigmund, 11 humanity
Friedman, R. Z., I, 162. n.27, 165 n.30, Hume, David, 3, 7, 10, 67, 117, 147
166 n.14; on Socrates 172 n.14; on n5.20,23
evil, 172 n.16 Humility, 93, 95, 100, 104, 106
Hyper-rationalism vs reasonableness,
Gauguin, Paul, 77 7-11, 147 n.20. See also Reasons;
Gift, 16, 35, 40, 95-97, 101, 104, 106, Moral justilication
131, 134, 165 n.22. See also Faith;
Receptivity Ibsen, H., x
Gilleleje Testament (Kierkegaard's), 24, Identity. See Self-identity
149n.12 Identity project, 9, 146 n.14
Giving up and getting back. See Faith, Imagination, 6, 9,14,16,41,43-44,71,
double movement of; Receptivity 77,130,147 n.19, 153 n.60. See also
Glenn, John D., Jr., 95, 103 Moral perception; Narrative; Poet;
Gowans, Christopher W., 158 n.6 Poetry and philosophy.
Green, Ronald M., 144 n.2, 158 n.5 Immortal, 17, 41, 138-140, 172 ns.13,
Grief, 56--57, 60 18; immortality project, 59, 106
Independence, 31, 54, 156 n.43. See also
Hamman, Johann Georg, 150 n.17 Self-sufficiency; Integrity
Hampshire, Stuart, 147 n.18 Individual. See Particular, Subjective
Hannay, Alastair, xv, 13, 25, 44, 92-93, Inexpressible, ineffable. See Silence
98, 139, 143 n.l, 147 n.21, 148 n.6, Infanticide, 157 n.57
149 n.8, 150 n.16, 151 ns.20, 40,155 Integrity, ix, 15, 20-21, 46, 50, 57, 68,
n.24, 158 n.5, 162 ns.9, 23, 163 n.29, 70-71,78,85-87,94,99, 109, 140.
164·n5.20,21,170n.ll See also Moral identity; Character;
Hare, Richard, 67 Self
Harrison, Bernard, 153 n.60, 169 n.25, Intimacy, 6, 9, 77, 8R, 114-115, 119
170n.6 Intuitionist, 67
Hegel, G. E, Hegelian, 2, 8, 11, 12,21, Intuitions, intuitive, 69, 73, S4-86, 113,
25, 37, 49, 63, 72, 75, 77, 94, 106, 161 n.B
110, 114, 121, 127, 134; au!hebung,
124, 164 n.16, 169 n.2R; double- Janik, Allan, and Toulmin, 144 n.3
negation, 37; and Kierkegaard, 149 .Tob, 38,88-S9, Ill, 121
n.8,155n.23, 159n.13, 160n.19, 163 Joy, 17,28,40,51-52,54,56--60, 109
n.5; System, Kierkegaard's mockery Judge William. See Kierkegaard
of, 2, 19, 21-22, 23-25, 28, 36, 42, Justitication. See Moral justilication
44,55,69,75,79,94, 145f, n.II, 150
n.17; unhappy consciousness, 91 Kachi, Yukio, 153 n. 60
184 Index
Kant, Kantian, x, 8-10, 16, 67, 74, Louden, Robert B., 166 n.14
76-77, 106-108, 159 ns.9, 13, 160 Love, ix, 15,20-21,36, 116, 120, 123,
n.19, 166 n.14, 168 n.22 130, 132, 140, 168 n.22; eterna11ove,
Kaufman, Walter, 158 n.3 • 77, 133; selfless care or love, IS, 39,
Keeley, Carol, 170 n.lO 53-55, 93; separateness-in-Iove,
Kennedy, Paul, 149 n.9 30-31,44,53; (Chapts 3, 4). See also
Kierkegaard, S0ren: and Christian com- Independence; Weaning
mitment, 11-13, 135; Christian Dis- Lovibond, Sabina, 147 n.19, 164 n.lO
courses, 122, 133; Concept of Anxiety, Lowrie. Walter, xv, 148 ns.28, 29, 30,
2; Concept of Irony with Constant 150 n.17
Reference to Socrates, 138; Conclud- Lyric, x, 2, 5, 15-16, 19,25,32,44,97,
ing Unscielltific Postscript, ix, 2, ~, 123; refrains, 21-22, 36; song, 32, 36,
8-9, 11-12, 15, 18,21,26,31,55,60, 40-41, Ill, 124, 129. See also Music;
83,97-98, \01, 122, 124, 138; "Diary Poet
of the Seducer," 132; Either/Or, ix,
2-8,99, 123-125, 132; (Fragmellts; MacIntyre, Alasdair. 7, 146 n.16
see Philosophical Fragments); Judge Mackey, Lewis. 2, 139, 143 n.l, 150 n.16
William, 4,8,99; Literary Prefaces, 6, Ma1antschuk, Gregor, 143 n.1, 171 n.17
154 n.4; and Regina Olsen, 16, 111, Marcus, Ruth Barcan. 159 n.9, 169 n.27
132-134,155 n.28, 166 n.3, 171 n.17; Marx, Karl, 11, 12, 148 n.6. See also
Philosophical Fragments, ix, 2, 117; Capitolism
Poillt of View of My Work as all Maternal, mother and child, 30-31, 53,
Aut/lOr, 11; (Postscript: see COllclud- 171 n.16; giving birth 40-41. See
ing Unscielltific Postscript); and also Weaning
pseudonyms, x, 2-7, 9-11, 26, 55, McKinnon, Alastair, 9, IS, 145. n.11, 147
123,133-134,145 n.ll, 146 n.14, 147 n.17, 157 n.49, 166 n.3, 169 ns.2X, 3
n.24,.156 n.47, 166 n.3; and relation McNaughton, David, 147 n.22
to mother and father, 134-135, 151 Meador, Nicolai, 162 n.24, 171 n.1
n.36, 171 ns. 16, 17; Repetition, 2; Meh1, PeterJ., 146 n.16, 166 n.14
Sickness Umo Deat/I, ix, 6, 49, 69, 98, Mill, John Stuart, 9
101; Stages on LIfe's Way, 2, 3; Traill- Monastic life, 92, Ill, 163 n.6, 167 n.27
illg ill Christianity, 110; Two Ages, 4; Moral: justification, 9-11, 15,44,66,69,
Works of Love, ix, 133; and writing,S, 73-78, 80-82, 85-86, 89, 94, 110,
34-36,123,132-135,150n.16 113-114. 131, 163 ns.4, 8; justiticato-
Kirmmse, Bruce, 145 n.4, 148 n.6 ry transparency, 117-118, 124-125;
Kuhnian paradigm, 131, 133. See also (Chapts. 4. 5); luck: see Contingency;
Life views, change in necessity, 118, 124-125; objectivity,
75, 92-93, 118, 160 n5.24, 25, 164
Leap of faith, 7, 147 n.17 n.10; perception or vision, 3, X, 4X, 51,
Lear (Shakespeare's), 88, 93,164 n.14 55,65, X2, 93, 97, 107-IOX, 11\. I1X,
Lee, Hermillone, 35 122, 130, 152 n.41, 156 n.33, 160
Life-views, spheres of existence, 3.4, 6, n.25, 169 n.25; repentance, 122, 168
69,102,145 ns.lO, II; change in, 7. n.1X; responsibility, 7, 10,22-24,26,
8, 13, 16, 44, 58, 69, XO, 101-\02, 41,68,75,99, \04, 116, 121-122;
108, 123-124, 128-129, 131, 133, scope of the, 160 ns.19, 20, 24, 25.
138-139,141,I64ns.16,19 See also Dilemma; Reasons, ratio-
Illdex IRS
nales; Teleological suspensions; Civic n.25, 170 n.1l

virtue; Ethics; Integrity; Self or char- Paradigms. See Life-views
acter; Life-views; Virtue Paradox. 19. 37, 53. HI. H6, 105, 124,
Mortality. See Immortality; Temporality 128, 130, 139. 168 n.16; absolute,
Murdoch, Iris, 118, 156 n.42, 162 n.25, 104,129
164 n 12, 167 n.26, 168 n.14 Particular, 69-72, 114-115, 140, 160
Music, 25-26, 29-30, 35, 88, 102, 105, n.25. See also Self; Blum; Elhics,
124. See also Lyric; Poet conceptions of
Perception. See Moral perception
Nagel, Thomas, x, 48, 76, 79, 114, 147 Percy, Walker, x
n.22, 150 n.15, 158 n.6, 159 ns.9, 14, Perkins, Robert, 139, 143 n.l, 145 n.4,
160 n.19, 161 n.29, 164 n.12, 168 150n.16, 166n.14, 171 n.9
ns.4,10 Personal perspective, 75-76, 79; and
Narrative: and fairy tale, 26, 29; philo- identity, 147 n.45. See also Subjec-
sophical, 8, 34, 64, 97, 129, 135; por- tive; Existentialist
Irayals, x, 8-9, 13, 25,28, 32, 44, 48, Phaedo. See Plalo
64,77,83,96-97,104,131,133-134, Plato, 2, 3, 16,32,45,74,95, 139, 141,
139, 150 n.19, 170 n.lO; rationales, 172 n.14; Phaedo, 139, 141, Repub-
71, 76-77; symbolic, storytelling lic, 16, Symposium. 32,45. See also
frames, 26, 29, 95-97, 108, 123, 129, Socrates
139; unity, 102; visions, 96, III, 130. Poet, 2-3,5, 14, 19,32,34-36,40,56,60,
See also Parable; Poet; Self 68,105,120,134,150n.16,153n.75
Nehamas, Alexander, 152 n.44 Poetic faith. See Faith
Nielsen, Harry A., 143 n.l Poetry, 129, 169 n.23; and philosophy,
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 3, II, 12, 33-34, 2-3,5,24-25,120, 123,139,150n.lll
106. See also Nihilism; Repetition Pojman, Louis 1.,143 n.l, 145 n.ll, 150
Nihilism, 14, 33, 35, 41, 120, 141, 161 n.16, 161 n.5
n.30 Poole, Roger, 161 n.26
Norris, Christopher, 144 n.3 Postscript. See Kierkegaard, COl/eludillg
Nussbaum, Martha, x, 2, 63, 85, 101, 140, Ullsciellfijic Postscript
147 n.19, 159 n.9, 167 n.3, 172 n.14 POleat, William H., 169 n.4
.
Obedience, ix, x, 4, 13, 15,28,30,64,73,
Principles, 9, 15, 29, 66, 68--67, 75, 87 .
See also Moral justification; Rules;
79,82,85,87,89,160 n.20, 161 n.5 Reasons; Dilemma
Objective, objectivity, xi, 7, 24, 72, 93; Prodigal Son. parable of, 129
kinds of, 73-78, 92, 116, 150 n.16, Pseudonyms. See Kierkegaard, and
160 n.25. See also Moral justification, pseudonyms
objectivity, perception Putnam, Hilary, 8,144 n.3, 147 n.20. 161
Olsen, Regina. See Kierkegaard. n.28
Ordeal, ix, 13-17, 30, 40-41, 45, 63,
69-70, 72, 81, 120-121, 124; and Quinn, Philip. 158 n.5
temptation, trial, 51, 148 n.32, 157
n.58. See also Dilemma Rawls,lohn,88,168n.12
Dutka, Gene, 158 n.5, 162 n.ll Reasons, rationales, 7-11, 56, 74, 80, 82.
114. See also Moral justification;
Parable, 19, 25, 44, 129, 153 n.60, 169 Dilemma
186 Index
Reception, receptivity, 26, 35, 48, 52, ation, 40, 88, 95, 153 n.75; definition,
54-55,91,93-97,100,103,106,109, 10,46-47,49, 58, 70; directed, 114;
111,123,131.141,165 n.22. See also discovery,l46n.14,159n.17; expres-
Faith; Gift; Welcome • sive, 77, 98, 103; identity, 9, 15, 26,
Reconciliation, 120, 123-124; (Chapts. 46, 49, 60, 68-71, 76, 86, 94-95,
6, 7). See also Faith; Affiliation 97-98, 102-103, 110, 115, 119, 121,
Refusal of God, 65, 85-89,96, 134 127, 134, 139; immediate or proto-,
Regina. See Kierkegaard, Regina Olsen 99, 103, 110; motivation, 6; realiza-
Reinhardt, Lloyd, 165 n.22 tion, ix, 4, 119, 159 n.17, 172 n.13;
Relativism, critique of, 7-11,146 n.16, received, 91, 96,105,119; revelatory,
150 n.16. See also Moral objectivity; 11; structure, 94, 102, 107; sufficien-
Objectivity, kinds of cy, 47, 88,103,105,110; understand-
Religiousness A , Religiousness B. See ing, 73, 77,130
Faith Selfless care or love. See Love
Repentance. See Moral repentance Shopkeeper knight of faith. See Faith
Repetition, eternal recurrence, 32-34, Silence, ineffability, 72-73, 85, 89,
48,152 n.45 113-115,127-132,16On.20
Republic. See Plato Sin, 104, 121-124, 134, 168 n.18, 169
Resignation, infinite, knight of. See n.27
Faith: double movement, shopkeeper Skeptics, 22-23, 67, 113, 134. See also
knight of; Socrates Doubt
Responsibility. See Moral responsibility Socrates, ix, x, 1,3-4,12-13,16-17,19,
Revelations, 129, 138 41, 74, 93, 102, 106, 113, 115,
Roberts, Robert C., 143 n.1, 166 n.1O 123-124, 137-141, 170 n.12, 172
Rogers, Carl, x ns.13,14
Rorty, Richard, 88, 152 n.52 Socratic religious humanism, ix, 4, 12,
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 163 n.3 16-17,93, 139-141; (Chapt. 10). See
Rubin, Jane, and Dreyfus, 144 n.3, 147f. also Faith, and Religiousness A;
n.25 Faith, Socratic
Rule, 8, 29, 65-Q6, 75, 81, 84, 87, 103. Soli, Ivan, 155 n.23
See also Moral justification; Reasons; Solomon, Robert C., 149 n.8, 155 n.23
Teleological suspensions Sophie's Choice (William Styron's),
Ryle, Gilbert, 169 n.4 66-Q7,85
Stack, George J., 143 n.l
Sacrifice,58-60,132, 171 n.17 Stages, spheres of existence. See Life-
Santurii, Edmund N., 158 n.5 views; Kierkegaard, pseudonyms
Sartre, Jean Paul, x, 15, 67-Q9, 74, 81, Stoic, 17, 49, 53, 55-56, 92; hardening of
89,106 self,I41
Schacht, Richard, 4, 147 n.25, 152 n.44 Strong evaluators, 47
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 32, 34 Strong, Tracy, 152 n.44
Second immediacy, 123 Subjective, subjectivity, 7, 9-10, 15, 24,
Second-order care, 99 48,69,71,73, 76,94,98-99, 106,
Secular faith. See Faith 149 n.l1, 160 n.23, 161 n.30; per-
Self, xi, 2, 16, 22,47, 69, 71, 75, 119; spective, 75-76, 79; and ethics, 160
articulation, 22-23, 47, 68, 71, 89, ns.19, 20, 24; (Chapts. 4, 5). See also
96-99, 110, 132; command, 140; cre- Particular; Self-identity; Existentialist
Index IX7
Symposium. See Plato n.24. SeC' also Integrity; Essential

System. See Hegelian System humanity; Civic virtue; Ethics
Virtue ethics, 99-101, I (i() n.24, 166 n.14
Taylor, Charles, x, 47, 70-71, 96, 147 Vision. See Moral perception or vision;
n.19,149n.8,150n.18,154n.13,159 Narrative visions
ns.IO, 11, 161 n.8, 164 n.lO, 167 n.26
Taylor, Mark C., 143 n.I, 148 n.6, 150 Walker, Jeremy, 143 n.l
n.17, 154n.4,163 n.5,170n.14 Weak evaluator, 47
Taylor, Mark Lloyd, 148 n.32, 154 n.6, Weaning, 30-31, 54,83
155 n.30, 157 n.58, 170 n.13 Wei!, Simone, 43, 105, 154 n.2
Teleological suspension, 5, 13-16, 37, Welcome, 44, 51, 54-56, 58, 108, 141.
77, 81, 85, 95, 102, 106-109, See also Receptivity; Gift
124-125, 129, 138, 158 n.5, 160 n.24, Westphal, Merold, 4, 124, 139, 145 n.lO,
162n.20, 164n.16, 169n.28 149 n.8, 161 n.3, 164 n.16, 169 n.28
Temporal, temporality, 39-41,48,50,53, Wiesel, Eli, 163 n.28
59, 106, 116, 140; loves 77. See also Wilcox, John T., 172 n.16
Immortality Will-to-power, 59, 106
Thoreau, Henry David, 34, 88, 165 n.22 Williams, Bernard, x, 48, 63, 79, 84, 113,
Thus Spoke Zaratllustra, (Nietzsche's), 159 ns.9, 14, 160 n.19, 161 n.30, 168
33 n.lO
Tillich, Paul, x Winnocott, D. W, 47
Toulmin, Stephen, and Janik, 144 n.3 Wisdo, David, 105, 149 n.8, 154 n.2, 166
Tragic hero, 69-70, 146 n.13, 150 n.16, n.9, 167 n.30
172 n.14. See also Dilemma Wittgenstein, Ludwig, x, xvii, 34, 113,
Trial, test, temptation. See Ordeal 137,144 n.3, 147 n.20, 151 n.40, 163
Trianosky, Gregory W., 159 n.18 n.2, 164 n.lO
Women, 45, 47, 154 n.8. See also Mater-
Universal, 16, 64, 69-72, 94, 115, nal.
119-120, 131. See also Civic virtue; Writing. SeC' Kierkegaard, and writing;
Silence; Hegelian System Narrative
Utilitarian, 46,67,76, 119, 159 n.9; or
con;equentialist, 163 n.8 Yack, Bernard, 33, 147 n.25, 152 n.45
Virtue, 6, 8, 16,20,99, 118, 141, 160 Zealot, fanatic, ix, 27,82-84, 162 n.11
KNIGHTS OF FAITH
and RESIGNAT Or-.;
Reading Kierkegaard's
FEAR AND
TREMBLING
Edward F Mooney
"Apart from the excellent style and clarity of exposition, what I like best about
this book is the remarkable success with which the author probes a classically
problematic text, and not only brings it into clear relation with Kierkegaard's other
principal texts, but also relates its themes to those of current work in moral
philosophy. The book evinces an impressive command of the relevant literature,
both specifically Kierkegaardian and that pertaining to deep moral issues currently
debated." - Alastair Hannay, University of Oslo
"This is a wonderful book: insightful, reflective, profound. I would not have

thought it possible for anyone to say anything truly original about Kierkegaard's
most widely-read and familiar work. Nonetheless, Mooney succeeds beyond
reasonable expectation." - George R. Lucas, Jr., Clemson University
Knights of Faith and Resignation brings out the richness of Kierkegaard' s creative
invention, the contemporary relevance of his contrasts between resignation and
faith, and his probing conceptual analysis of aesthetic, moral, and religious psy-
chology and life-perspectives. And in tracing Kierkegaard's analysis of objectivity,
subjectivity, virtue ethics, passion, dilemmas, commitment, and self-reflection,
Mooney brings out a striking convergence between Kierkegaard and analytic
philosophy- the tradition of Socrates, Kant, and Wittgenstein, and its more contem-
porary practitioners, writers like Charles Taylor, Thomas Nagel, Stanley Cavell,
Bernard Williams, and Harry Frankfurt.
Edward F. Mooney is Professor of Philosophy at Sonoma State University.
A volume in the SUNY series in

Philosophy
George R. Lucas, Jr., Editor
State University of New York Press
ISBN 0-7914-0573-7

(SUNY Series in Philosophy) Edward F. Mooney - Knights of Faith and Resignation - Reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling-State University of New York Press (1991)

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Knights of

Faith and Resignation

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

Once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough to

© 1991 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced

For information, address State University of New York

Production by Ruth East

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mooney, Edward E, 1941-

1 Masks and Commitment: An Introduction

2 Ordeals of Meaning: Art, Deed, and System 19

3 Ordeals of Love: Preamble from the Heart 43

4 Ordeals of Reason and Ethics: Dilemmas and Subjectivity 63

5 Ordeals of Reason and Ethics: Suspensions and Faiths 79

6 Ordeals and Reconciliations: Getting Isaac Back 91

7 Ordeals and Reconciliations: Faith and Moral Virtue 101

8 Ordeals of Silence: Ethics and Transformations 113

9 Ordeals of Silence: Faith and Concealments 127

10 From Socrates to Abraham: An Epilogue 137

Focusing on the Genesis story in which God commands Abraham to sacrifice

Surprisingly, at this writing there is still no book-length commentary in

This "dialectical lyric," as its author calls it, is a performance of stun-

In somewhat different form. several chapters have appeared. or are about to

In the interest of keying my commentary to an inexpensive, easily accessible

How many live in such a way as to have

People think the world needs a republic, and

a modem Dante, who narrates a complex, at

Should philosophy, amongst its other con-

ALTHOUGH IT WAS hardly more than a backward provincial capital among

Very few moral philosophers, especially in the Anglo-American tradi-

The Writer and His Masks

Our present focus, however, is the question of ma\ks or pseudonyrn~.

-that is, a sphere higher than ethics-merely demonstrate his ignorance,

Because individual choice, responsible freedom, plays so large a part

appropriately deployed, they are persuasive, and rightly SO.22

Rational reflection can be self-corrective leading to improved standpoints

When we place the pseudonymous authorship against the background

The Christian Assumption

Fear and rremblinf Knights o.fFaith and

1 Masks and Commitment

Preface 2 Ordeals of Meaning

Problema III 8,9 Ordeals of Silence

10 From Socrates to Abraham

The narrative, poetic side of Johannes de silentio's venture suffers in

Heart." (The usual translation, "Preliminary Expectoration," though pcrhap'

My accounts of knights of faith and resignation close in Chapter I () with

I am not a poet, I only practice dialectics.

The present author is no philosopher, he is ...

The same vision has often come to me ....

Preface: Commerce, Spirit, and Hegel's System

A clue to the world Kierkegaard addressed in Fear and Trembling is found in

close his book. It is as if commercial, capitalist activity now provides the

As Kierkegaard sees it, the proper role of intellect or thought in a

inevitable progress of Reason or Spirit. Second, individuals and their tasks

This brief three-page Preface to Fear and Tremhling identifies in

The Strenuousness oJ the Socratic, Skeptical Task

The fllusory Goal oj Objectiue System

Johannes takes the goal of the System to be fantastical. It sets Absolute

The fllusory Goal oj Social Assimilation

Johannes is skeptical not just about the prospect of an absolute knowledge,