Zeal For Truth

This is intended as a recap of the first three posts in “Faith Problems.” Why a recap in the middle of series? Well, primarily this is because the first three posts were discussions on Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. From here, the series is going to leap from that groundwork into what I would consider much more complex. Understanding the groundwork I have presented will be important in understanding the application of the philosophy of difference (the more complex future) to Kierkegaard’s concept of faith.

What faith is not
Kierkegaard’s opus has revolved around three different characters: the aesthetic, the tragic, and the knight of faith. These are characters in the sense of how a role is to be played, as if Kierkegaard is a stage director and everyone is an actor. This is similar to Nietzsche’s project in The Birth of Tragedy in that Nietzsche is telling Richard Wagner how roles should be played more so than how people are. For Kierkegaard, the role of the Knight of Faith is the most elusive to capture; very few people can perform in that role. The best example of this character is the story of Abraham going to sacrifice his son. Before we analyze what faith is, we should look at what it is not. For all cases below, the character is placed in a position between the universal ethical and the particular.

The Tragic Hero
The tragic hero is the most referred to figure in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling as a contrast for the Knight of Faith. The tragic hero can be seen in the figures of Brutus. The point with this character is that he never violates the rule of the ethical. The universal ethical law always wins in this case. Brutus must rebel against Julius Caesar because it is his duty towards the universal ethical. Even though he is close friends to Julius, maintaining the universal is more important than that friendship. Everything is subsumed under the concept of the universal. The status quo overpowers the different.

This is the same concept Kant has in mind when he formulates the Categorical Imperative (act as if each action were a universal law for all). What makes the tragic hero tragic is that he must make a sacrifice in order to maintain the universal ethic; Brutus must betray and kill his close friend to the point where it is even against his own desire.

The Aesthetic Hero
This character is more like a comical mishap. The aesthetic hero is put into his situation by chance or accident. It is the old fool mistaken as the secret agent. The aesthetic hero is able to question others about his position. The best example of this is Agamemnon, who swears to the gods that if his ship can safely make it back to Greece from Troy, he will sacrifice the first person he sees. When his ship arrives back in Greece safely, the first person to meet him is his daughter. He is caught between the universal ethical (sacrifice his daughter to fulfill his oath) and the particular (transgress his oath and let his daughter live). He is able to speak to others (his wife, his captains, the priests) before he finds that he must sacrifice his daughter in order to maintain the universal. The law must be upheld and there is nobody above it.

Kirk’s Illogical Premise
It is at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want the spoilers…too bad) where we can start to see the character of the Knight of Faith.

In the last dialogue between Kirk and Spock, Spock questions Kirk why Kirk came back to rescue Spock. For Spock, the logical (and universal ethical) thing to do was to let him die as a sacrifice because Spock willingly sacrificed himself in order to save everyone else. Kirk’s response to Spock’s question is where we discover the abandoning of the universal for something more important: “Because the needs of the one…outweigh the needs of the many.” There was something that Kirk found to be more important than the universal, more than the status quo. Sarek (Spock’s father) tells Kirk, at one point in the movie, the illogical nature of his actions: “This cost you your ship, your son…”. Kirk’s immediate response, though, is that of a higher calling: “If I hadn’t tried, it would’ve cost me my soul.”

For the Knight of Faith, his actions against the universal may be harmful to his livelihood, even his life, but to not do it would cost something even greater than those. The Knight of Faith is apprehended by this call from the unknown; the directive comes from an Absolute that is greater than the universal. This Absolute is infinitely particular and specific. The person possessed by this “higher calling” is absolutely differentiated from all others. He is unable to speak about his calling because it is unintelligible to the universal. It is illogical, incoherent, and crazy.

We see this in Abraham. He had at least three people he could have discussed God’s message with, but he did not. In fact, he could not because he could not have made his case understandable. All three people would have said that he misheard God, that he was crazy, and that he should not sacrifice his son (under any circumstances). Abraham could not “test the spirit” against any known authority because all authorities would have said it was impossible that God commanded Abraham to do something that is against God’s own laws.

The Paradox of Faith
Abraham’s story is a clear example of the paradox: “either Abraham was every minute a murderer, or we are confronted by a paradox that is higher than all mediation” (Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 56). In other words, either there is or there isn’t something greater than the universal ethical. If there isn’t, then Abraham was a murderer, plain and simple. If there is, then it is something irrational, illogical, and yet supersedes the universal. For Kierkegaard, this is faith, the duty towards the absolute (God).

The Knight of Faith, then, must stand absolutely different from mankind. He cannot resolve the paradox of faith with the universal ethical. Abraham remained in the paradoxical position: he must sacrifice his son while still loving him. For Abraham to no longer love his son would would make him a murderous person. For Abraham to reject his duty to God would make him unfaithful.

Brutus, our tragic hero, was in this position briefly, but he chose to sacrifice his friendship in order to maintain his duty to the universal. Abraham is torn between being unfaithful to God and unfaithful to his family. Were he to falter on either side would have meant everything to him, his very soul. It is through the absurdity of both accepting and rejecting the universal and duty towards the absolute that the Knight of Faith walks. This is why he is absolutely different from mankind.

In the last post (link), I introduced what Kierkegaard calls a “teleological suspension of the ethical.” This is something strictly from the point of view of mankind because ethics is for man. The primary thrust of this suspension was the notion of an absolute duty toward God in that this absolute duty has the authority to suspend ordinary ethics. This suspension, if it is possible, would have the superficial look of a tragedy but would more closely resemble a passion. A tragedy remains planted in the ethical; this duty supersedes it. Kierkegaard contends that the ethical comes from one’s relation to the absolute (i.e. God) and not vice versa. If this is the case, then there is such a thing as an absolute duty towards God that overrides the ethical. This is the paradox of faith. Kierkegaard also suggests that “[i]f such is not the case, then faith has no proper place in existence, then faith is a temptation, and Abraham is lost, since he gave into it” (Fear and Tembling, 60).
For Kierkegaard, faith must be something wholly other from the universal/ethical. Faith is the unintelligible paradox, infinitely personal and subjective. Confusing it with the immediate (as early phenomenology was doing at the time) is a travesty. One knight of faith cannot help another. Here we can see Kierkegaard taking a radical rejection of Aristotle’s Virtue-Happiness link, something that Kant began to reject in his categorical imperative. Because of this radical difference in faith, one’s duty is done out of duty towards the absolute, not because the duty is ethical or because the result may be happiness. Duty is done regardless of its consequences or ethical nature. Unlike the tragic hero who renounces himself for the universal, the knight of faith “renounces the universal in order to become the individual” (F&T, 65). The knight of faith embraces difference absolutely. The true knight of faith cannot be repeated in ceremony, ritual, or practice. The true knight of faith stands alone and absolutely different from mankind.