Søren’s philosophy of love and reconciliation which he
now spells out for the first time in this Preliminary Expectoration.
Søren first spits out his philosophy of double movement leaping by
comparing the Knights of Infinite Resignation and of Faith.
With all of his energy and passion Abraham renounced Isaac
and was willing to give him up as a Knight of Infinite Resignation.
But by faith which is God’s gift Abraham gets Isaac a second time.
As Silentio puts it in thinking of Regina:
By my own strength I can give up the princess
and I will not sulk about it
but find joy and peace and rest in my pain
but by my own strength I cannot get her back again
for I use all my strength in resigning.
On the other hand, by faith,
says that marvelous knight,
by faith you will get her by virtue of the absurd.
With Infinite Resignation Buddhists renounce all desire and
Platonists renounce the shadows and images of the cave and
Hegelians renounce each thesis with an antithesis. But Søren,
while renouncing the aesthetic basement and the ethical first
floor of his house with the logic of the neither/nor and
relating absolutely to the absolute, then in faith comes back
and is free to live on all floors of his house at once by
relatively loving the basement, first floor and the second floor.
II.2.6 The Absurdity of Ethically Suspending the Teleological
Silentio focuses on three major problems for Father Abraham.
He is called upon to murder, hate and lie in the worst way possible.
But, does not this make his faith absurd and totally unethical?
The ethical is the universal natural law and every individual,
as Hegel argues, should obey that law with a good conscience.
Socrates saw that we should care for our soul with good conscience.
While there is no mention of good conscience in the Hebrew Bible
it runs through Paul’s writings as an element of his Stoic heritage.
Kierkegaard in Works of Love highlights the practice of cultivating
a sensitive conscience as the single individual’s loving guide.
But here in Problemata I Silentio argues that faith is the paradox
that the single individual is higher than the universal and
that to respond to God’s call Abraham should suspend the ethical
for the sake of his absolute duty to the Horror Religiosus.
There is not only a teleological suspension of the ethical here
but also an absurd suspension of the teleological for Abraham
faces the loss of all meaning as God becomes self-contradictory.
In his duty to the Mysterium Tremendum of the Holy, Abraham
is willing to be tried and tested by God believing all the while that
God will suspend his own command or He will no longer be God.
Silentio further eulogizes Abraham by comparing him to Mary.
She needs worldly admiration as little as Abraham needs tears
for she is no heroine and he was no hero,
but both of them became greater than these,
not by being exempted in any way
from the distress and the agony and the paradox,
but became greater by means of these. (65)
When you read Silentio’s treatment of Abraham you see no
difference between Abraham and the God-man and that is why
Kierkegaard does not sign his name to this deceptive writing
which makes no distinction between the elder and younger brother.
II.2.7 Loving Abraham as More Important
In Works of Love after showing how love is a matter of conscience
Kierkegaard writes a chapter on “The Duty to Love the People We See.”
This takes us right to the heart of our duty to so love Love
that in praising Love we will be able to love each and every person.
To cultivate the conscience that sees why I should love every person
is the main point of Problemata II in which Silentio in order
to comprehend Abraham goes to Luke’s hard saying:
If anyone comes to me and does not hate
his father and mother and wife and children
and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26; see Problemata II, 72)
Abraham is pictured here as living out this highest command.
Kierkegaard through Silentio seems to love Abraham as even
more important than Jesus because Abraham seems to have been
the first to practice this strange love that hates in order to follow.
So what is this hard saying about hating each person we meet
in order to love them all about in its absurd paradoxical way?
Kierkegaard explains his usage of it in Works of Love by
showing why the Christian is called to love the enemy and to hate
the beloved and by explaining how the first depends on the second.
When
