PROBLEMA I

 Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?

 The ethical as such is the universal, and as the universal, it is in force for everyone, which can be expressed from another side by saying that it is in force at every moment. It rests immanently in itself, has nothing outside itself that is its τέλος, 1 but is itself τέλος for everything that it has outside itself, and when the ethical has taken this up and received it into itself, it goes no further. Immediately qualified as a sensate and psychical being, the single individual is the particular individual who has his τέλος in the universal, and this is his ethical task, to continually annul his particularity in order to become the universal.2 As soon as the individual intends to assert himself in his particularity over and against the universal, he sins, and only by acknowledging this can he again be reconciled with the universal. Every time the individual, after having entered the universal, feels an impulse to assert himself as the single individual, he is in a spiritual agon from which he can work himself out only by repentantly surrendering himself as the single individual to the universal.3 If this is the highest that may be said about a human being and his existence, then the ethical has the same nature as man’s eternal blessedness, which in all eternity and in each moment is his τέλος, as it would be a contradiction that this should be capable of being given up (that is, teleologically suspended), since it, as soon as it were to be suspended, would be forfeited, while that which is suspended is not forfeited, but precisely preserved in something higher, that which is its τέλος. If such is the case, then Hegel has it right when, in “The Good and Conscience,” he allows man to be qualified only as the particular individual and considers this qualification as a “moral form of evil” (cf. especially The Philosophy of Right),4 which is to be annulled5 in the teleology of ethical community6 in such a way that the particular individual who remains in that stage either sins or lies in spiritual agony. What Hegel does not get right, on the other hand, is in speaking about faith; he is wrong not to loudly and clearly protest against Abraham’s enjoying fame and honor as the Father of Faith, when he ought to be sent home and held up as a murderer.7 Faith is exactly this paradox, that the single individual is higher than the universal, yet, mark this well, in such a way that the movement repeats itself, that therefore someone, after having been in the universal, now as the single individual isolates himself as higher than the universal. If this is not faith, then Abraham is lost, then faith has never been found in the world, precisely because it has always been in it. For if the ethical—that is, ethical community—is the highest, and there is nothing incommensurable left over in man of a kind other than that incommensurability which constitutes evil, that singularity that should be expressed in the universal, then  one needs no categories other than those possessed by Greek philosophy, or those which can consistently be logically derived from those. This, Hegel should not have concealed; for he had, after all, studied the Greeks. Now, one not infrequently hears people who, not having devoted themselves to study instead immerse themselves in clichés, say that a light shines over the Christian world, while darkness shrouds the pagan world. This type of talk has always seemed strange to me, since every more profound thinker, every more earnest artist, still rejuvenates himself in the eternal youth of the Greek people. Such a comment can be explained by the fact that someone does not know what to say, but only that one must say something. It is surely in order to say that paganism did not have faith, but if one would say something thereby, then one must be a little clearer concerning what one understands by “faith,” as otherwise one falls back into such hackneyed phrases. To explain the whole of existence, faith included, without having a conception of what faith is, is easy; and someone who offers such explanations is not the worst accountant in life if he counts upon being admired—for it is as Boileau says: “One fool always finds an even greater fool to admire him.”8 Faith is precisely this paradox, that the particular individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified over and against it, not as subordinate but as superior, yet, mark this well, in such a way that it is the single individual who, after having been as the particular individual subordinate to the universal, now through the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the Absolute. This standpoint cannot be mediated, for all mediation occurs precisely in virtue of the universal; it is, and remains for all eternity, a paradox, inaccessible to thought. And yet faith is this paradox, or else (these are the consequences that I would bid the reader to have en mente [in mind] at all times, lest this become too verbose)—or else there has never been faith, precisely because it has always existed; or else Abraham is lost. That this paradox can, for the individual, easily be confused with a spiritual agon, is quite true, but one should not therefore hide it. That, for many, their whole character may be such that this repels them, is quite true; but one should not for that reason make faith out to be something else, so that one also can have it—one should rather confess to lacking it. On the other hand, those who do have faith should be concerned to set out some distinguishing features so that one can discriminate the paradox from a spiritual agon. The story of Abraham contains just such a teleological suspension of the ethical. It has not wanted for shrewd heads and painstaking scholars to search out analogies for it. Their wisdom amounts to the fine proposition that basically everything is the same. When one looks a little more closely, I doubt very much whether one will find, in the entire world, a single analogy, except a later one,9 which proves nothing if it is certain that Abraham represents faith and that it has been properly expressed in him,  whose life is not just the most paradoxical that can be thought, but so paradoxical it cannot be thought at all. He acts by virtue of the absurd; for it is precisely “the absurd” that he as the single individual is higher than the universal. This paradox cannot be mediated; for as soon as someone begins thereupon, he will conclude that he was in a spiritual agon—and then he will never come to sacrifice Isaac, or if he has sacrificed Isaac, he must repentantly return to the universal. In virtue of the absurd, he gets Isaac back again. Abraham is therefore at no moment a tragic hero, but something entirely different: either a murderer or a believer. The middle term that saves the tragic hero, Abraham lacks. For this reason, I can understand the tragic hero, but not Abraham, even if in a certain, mad sense I admire him more than all others. Abraham’s relation to Isaac is ethically expressed quite simply as this, that the father shall love the son more than himself. Yet the ethical has within its own realm distinguishable gradations; we shall see whether there is in this story any such high expression within the ethical to be found to explain his conduct ethically, ethically justify him in suspending the ethical obligation to the son, yet without for this reason moving outside the teleology of the ethical. When an undertaking of concern to a whole people is hindered, when such an enterprise is brought to a standstill by Heaven’s disfavor, when the angry deity sends a dead calm that mocks all efforts, when the soothsayer completes his heavy deed and proclaims that the god demands a young girl as a sacrifice—then the father shall heroically offer the sacrifice.10 He must nobly hide the pain, even though he could wish he were “the humble man, who dares to cry,” not the king, who must act regally.11 And however lonely the pain that penetrates into his breast—and he has just three confidants among the people—soon the whole nation will be privy to his pain, but also privy to his deed: that for the welfare of the whole he would sacrifice her, his daughter, the lovely young girl. “O bosom! O fair cheeks and flaxen hair!” (v. 687).12 And the daughter shall move him with her tears, and the father shall avert his face, but the hero shall lift the knife. Then, when the news of it reaches the fatherland, the beautiful maidens of Greece shall blush with enthusiasm, and if the daughter was to be a bride, the betrothed will not be angry, but be proud to share in the father’s deed, because the daughter belonged to him more tenderly than she belonged to her father. When the bold judge, who saved Israel in the hour of need, in one breath binds God and himself with the same promise, then he must heroically transform the young girl’s jubilation, the beloved daughter’s happiness, to sorrow, and all Israel shall sorrow with her over her maidenly youth. But every freeborn man will understand, every stout-hearted woman will admire Jephthah, and every maiden in Israel will wish to conduct herself as his daughter did; for what help would it be for Jephthah to prevail by means of his promise if he did not keep it? Would the victory not again be taken from the people? When a son forgets his duty, when the state entrusts the father with the sword of judgment, when the laws require punishment at the father’s hands, then the father must heroically forget that the guilty party is his son, he must nobly hide his pain; but there will not be a single person among the people, not even the son, who fails to admire the father. And every time the laws of Rome are expounded, it must be remembered that many have expounded them more learnedly, but none more gloriously, than Brutus.14 If, however, while a favorable wind led the fleet with full sails toward its goal, Agamemnon should have dispatched the command that fetched Iphigenia in order to sacrifice her; if Jephthah, without being bound by any promise that determined the fate of the people, had said to his daughter: Sorrow now for two months over your short youth, and then I will sacrifice you; if Brutus had had a righteous son, and yet should have called for the lictors15 in order to execute him—who should then have understood them? If these three men were posed the question of why they do it, and had answered: “It is a test in which we are being tried,” would one have understood them better? When Agamemnon, Jephthah, and Brutus, in the decisive moment, heroically overcome the pain, have heroically lost the beloved, and must just complete the outward deed, there shall never be a noble soul who lacks the tears of compassion for their pain, or admiration for their deed. If, however, these three men in the decisive moment had added to the heroic courage with which they bore the pain, the little word: “Yet it will not happen”—who then would have understood them? If they, as an explanation, added, “We believe it in virtue of the absurd,” who would have understood them better? For who could not easily understand that it was absurd, but who would understand that one could believe it? The difference between the tragic hero and Abraham is easily made out. The tragic hero is still within the ethical. He allows one expression of the ethical to have its τέλος in a higher expression of the ethical; he demotes the ethical relation between father and son or daughter and father to a sentiment, which has its dialectic in its relation to the idea of ethical community. There can, then, be here no discussion of a teleological suspension of the ethical itself. But Abraham’s case is otherwise. With his act, he passes over the whole of the ethical and had a higher τέλος outside it, in relation to which he suspended it. For I would surely like to know how one would bring Abraham’s act into relation with the universal and whether one can discover any other point of contact between what Abraham did and the universal except this: that Abraham overstepped it. It is not to save a people, not to maintain the idea of the state, that Abraham does it, not to make atonement to angry gods. If there were to be discussion whether the deity was angry, then surely he was angry only with Abraham, and Abraham’s whole act stands in no relation to the universal; it is a purely private undertaking. Therefore, while the tragic  hero is great by his civic virtue, Abraham is great by a purely personal virtue. There is no higher expression for the ethical in Abraham’s life than this, that the father shall love the son. The ethical in the sense of ethical community cannot there be spoken of at all. Insofar as the universal was present, it was surely concealed in Isaac, hidden so to speak in Isaac’s loins, and must then cry with Isaac’s mouth: “Don’t do it, you are ruining everything!” Why did Abraham do it, then? For God’s sake, and what is altogether identical with this, for his own sake. He did it for God’s sake because God demands this proof of his faith; he did it for his own sake so that he can make the proof. The unity here is quite rightly expressed in the word whereby one always denotes this relation: it is a trial, a temptation. A temptation; but what does that mean? That which tempts a person in other cases is surely what would hold him back from his duty; but here the temptation is the ethical itself, which would hold him back from doing God’s will. But then what is duty? “Duty” surely is precisely the expression for God’s will.16