PROBLEMA II

 

Is there an absolute duty to God?

 The ethical is the universal, and as such also the divine. One can therefore rightly say that every duty, in its ground, is duty to God; but if one cannot say more, then one says, in addition, that I really have no duty toward God.1 The duty becomes duty by being referred to God, but in the duty itself I do not enter into a relation with God. It is thus a duty to love one’s neighbor. It is duty by being referred to God, but in the duty I enter not into a relation with God, but with my neighbor, whom I love. If I then in this connection say that it is my duty to love God, then I really am saying only a tautology, insofar as “God” is here taken in a wholly abstract sense as the divine, viz., the universal, viz., duty. The whole existence of the human race then rounds itself off in a perfect, self-contained sphere, and the ethical is at one time that which limits and that which fills. God becomes an invisible vanishing point, an impotent thought, his power is only in the ethical which fills out existence. To the extent, then, that someone intends to love God in some manner other than the sense given here, he is a blowhard; he loves a phantom who, if it only had enough power to speak, would say to him: I do not require your love, just stay at home where you belong. Insofar as one might fall into attempting to love God otherwise, this love then becomes suspicious, like that love which Rousseau referred to, with which a person loves the Kaffirs instead of loving their neighbor.2 If, now, this development is rightly related, if there is nothing incommensurable in a human life, but the incommensurable which is only by chance, from which nothing follows insofar as existence is considered under the Idea, then Hegel is in the right; but where he is not in the right is in speaking about faith or allowing Abraham to be considered its father; for by the latter claim he has pronounced judgment both over Abraham and over faith. In the Hegelian philosophy, das Äußere (die Entäußerung) [the outer (the externalization)] is higher than das Innere [the inner].3 This is often illustrated by an example. The child is das Innere, the man is das Äußere; thereby it comes that the child is determined precisely by the outer; and, inversely, the man as das Äußereis determined precisely by das Innere. Faith, on the contrary, is this paradox that inwardness is higher than externality; or, to recollect again an expression from before—that the uneven number is higher than the even. For the ethical view of life, it is then the individual’s task to disclose himself from the qualification of inwardness and express this in something external. Every time the individual shrinks from it, every time he intends to hold himself back in or slip down again into the qualification of interiority, feeling, mood, etc., then he sins, then he lies in a spiritual agony. The paradox of faith is this: that there is an interiority that is  incommensurable with exteriority, an interiority which, it is well to mark, is not identical with that first one, but a new interiority.4 This must not be overlooked. Modern philosophy has allowed without further ado to substitute “faith” for the immediate.5 When one does this, then it is a ridiculous matter to deny that faith has existed for all time. Faith now will be placed in the rather commonplace company of feeling, mood, idiosyncrasy, vapeurs [vagaries], etc. In that case, philosophy could be right that one ought not to stop with it. But there is nothing that justifies philosophy in this usage. Prior to faith there is an infinite movement, and only then does faith enter, nec opinate [unexpectedly], in virtue of the absurd. This I can understand very well without, therefore, claiming that I have faith. If faith is no different from what philosophy presents it as, then Socrates has already gone further, much further, instead of the reverse—that he did not arrive at it. He has, in an intellectual respect, made infinity’s movement. His ignorance is the infinite resignation.6 This task is already suitable for human powers, even if those of our age reject it; but only when it is made, only when the individual has emptied himself in the infinite, only then has the point been reached when faith can break forth. The paradox of faith, then, is this: that the individual is higher than the universal, that the individual, to recall a now rather rare dogmatic distinction, determines their relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not their relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal. The paradox can also be expressed thus—that there is an absolute duty to God; for in this relation of duty the individual relates himself absolutely to the absolute. If, in this construal, it is said that it is a duty to love God, something different is said thereby than in the foregoing; for this duty is absolute, and so the ethical is demoted to the relative. It does not follow that this should be reduced to nothing, but it receives an entirely different expression, the paradoxical expression, in such a way that, for example, love for God can bring the knight of faith to give his love for his neighbor the opposite expression of what, ethically speaking, his duty is. If this is not the case, then faith does not have a place in existence, then faith is a spiritual agony, and Abraham is lost, then he lost himself for it. This paradox cannot be mediated; for it depends precisely on the fact that the individual is only the individual. As soon as this individual intends to express his absolute duty in the universal, becoming conscious of this, and so recognizing himself to be in a spiritual agon; and then, if he does not resist, he does not fulfill the so-called absolute duty and if he does not do it then he sins, even if his act was, as a matter of fact, his absolute duty. So, what should Abraham have done? If he would say to another person: I love Isaac more than everything in the world, and this is why it is so hard to sacrifice him, then wouldn’t the other, shaking his head, have said: Then why do you intend to sacrifice him? Or, if that other was a sharp fellow, then he may well have seen through Abraham—seen that he made a display of feelings that stood in heaven-rending contradiction to his act. In the story about Abraham we find such a paradox. His relation to Isaac, ethically expressed, is this: that the father shall love the son. This ethical relation is demoted to the relative in contrast to the absolute relation to God. To the question “Why,” Abraham has no other answer than that it is a trial, a temptation, which, as remarked above, is the union of its being for God’s sake and for his own sake. These two qualifications also correspond to each other in ordinary usage [as opposites]. Thus, if one sees a person do something that does not conform to universal, then one says that he scarcely did it for God’s sake, signifying thereby that he did it for his own sake. The paradox of faith has lost the intermediary, viz., the universal. It has, on the one side the expression for the highest egoism (to do the faithful deed for his own sake); on the other side the expression for the most absolute devotion, to do it for God’s sake. Faith itself cannot be mediated into the universal; for it is thereby canceled. Faith is this paradox: that the individual is completely unable to make himself intelligible to anyone. One perhaps imagines that the individual can make himself understandable to another individual who is in the same casus [falls under the same inflected grammatical form]. Such a point of view would be unthinkable if people in our age did not in so many ways seek to infiltrate greatness on the sly. One knight of faith cannot help another at all. Either the individual himself becomes a knight of faith by taking the paradox upon himself, or he will never become one. Partnership in these regions is completely unthinkable. Any more definite explanation of what is to be understood by Isaac can be given always only by the individual to himself. And even if one could determine ever so precisely, generally speaking, what should be understood by Isaac (which would, incidentally, be a laughable self-contradiction—to bring the single individual, who in fact stands outside the universal, under universal categories when he is supposed to act as the single individual who is outside the universal), then the individual would still never be able to reassure himself from the case of another rather than by his own case as the single individual. Even if someone were cowardly and wretched enough to attempt to become a knight of faith on the responsibility of another, he would not become that; for only the individual becomes that, as the individual; and this is greatness, which I can certainly understand without attaining it, since I lack courage; but there is also the frightful aspect, which I can still better comprehend. It is well known that written in Luke 14:26 is a remarkable lesson about the absolute duty to God: “If someone comes to me and does not hate his own father, and his mother, and his wife, and his children, and his brother and his sister, yes even his own soul, he cannot be my disciple.” This is a hard saying—who can bear to listen to it?7 It is for this reason heard very seldom. Yet this silence is only an evasion, which helps nothing. The student of theology, however—he gets to know that these words occur in the New Testament, and by means of one or another exegetical aid he finds the information that μισειν in this and a couple other places per μείωσιν means: 02-DSHPC167-Kierkegaard-Body.indd 71 02/21/24 3:46 PM 72 Fear and Trembling minus diligo [love less], post habeo [subordinate], non colo [not worship], nihili facio [make/treat as nothing].8 The connection in which these words occur, however, does not seem to corroborate this tasteful explanation. In the immediately following verse, in fact, is found a parable concerning how someone who intends to erect a tower first estimates whether he is able to do so, lest someone afterward should mock him. The parable’s close connection with the cited verse seems precisely to signify that the words should be construed as frightfully as possible, so that the individual might test himself whether he can erect the building. If that pious and accommodating exegete, who by such dickering means to smuggle Christianity into the world, had the good fortune to persuade one person that, grammatically, linguistically, and κατ’ ἀναλογίαν [by analogy], this was the meaning of that passage, then he would, it is to be hoped, also have the good fortune to, at the same moment, persuade the same person that Christendom is one of the most pitiful things in the world. For this teaching, which is one of its most lyrical expressions, where consciousness of its eternal validity swells most strongly therein, has nothing other to say but a noisy word that means nothing and signifies only that one should be less benevolent, less considerate, more indifferent; the teaching which, in the moment when it seems as if it wished to say something frightful, ends by driveling instead of terrifying—that teaching is certainly not worth the trouble of getting up for.9 The words are frightful, yet I believe well enough that one can understand them without it yet following thereby that one who has understood them therefore has the courage to do it. One should, however, be honest enough to admit to what it says, to confess that it is great, even if one does not have the courage oneself for it. The one who acts thus shall not preclude himself from participating in the beautiful story, for in manner it does indeed contain a kind of comfort for the one who had not the courage to begin the construction of the tower. But honest he must be, and not explain this lack of courage as humility, when, on the contrary, it is pride, while faith’s courage is the only humble courage. Now one easily sees that if the passage is to have any meaning, it must be understood literally. God is the one who requires absolute love. Someone who now requiring a person’s love, would think that this in addition should be proved by his becoming lukewarm about everything he otherwise cherished, is not merely an egoist, but is also stupid, and someone who intends to require such a love writes his own death sentence, insofar as he has his life in the desired love. Thus, a man requires his wife to leave her father and mother, but if he would consider it a demonstration of extraordinary love for him that she, for his sake, became a lukewarm daughter, etc., then he is more stupid than the most stupid person. If he had any conception of what love is, then he would wish to discover and see therein a security that his wife would love him as no other in the realm, if he discovered that she, as daughter and sister, was perfect in love. Thus, that which in a person would be considered a sign of egoism  and stupidity, shall, with an exegete’s help, be considered a worthy representation of divinity. But how, then, to hate them? I shall not here recall the human distinction, either love or hate, not because I have so much against it—for it is, after all, passionate—but because it is egotistical and does not fit here. However, if I consider the task a paradox, then I understand it, that is, I understand it in the same manner as one can understand a paradox. The absolute duty, then, can bring someone to do what the ethical would forbid, but it can in no way bring the knight of faith to cease from loving. Abraham demonstrates this. In the moment he intends to sacrifice Isaac, the ethical expression for what he does is this: he hates Isaac. But if he actually hates Isaac, then he can be rest assured that God does not demand it of him; for Cain and Abraham are not identical.10 Isaac he must love with his whole soul; inasmuch as God requires him, he must love him, if possible, even more deeply, and only then can he sacrifice him; for this love for Isaac is, you see, that which by its paradoxical opposition to his love for God makes the deed a sacrifice. But this is the distress and the anxiety in the paradox: that he, humanly speaking, is wholly unable to make himself understandable. Only in the moment when his deed is in absolute contradiction with his feeling, only then does he sacrifice Isaac, but his deed’s reality is that by which he belongs to the universal, and thus he is and remains a murderer. The passage in Luke must further be understood in such a way that one sees that the knight of faith does not receive any sort of higher expression of the universal (as the ethical) whatsoever in which he can save himself. Thus, if one allows the church to require this sacrifice of one of its members, then we have only a tragic hero. That is to say, the idea of the church is not qualitatively different from that of the state;11 in both cases, the individual, by a simple mediation, can come into it, whereas the individual who arrives at the paradox does not come to the idea of the church; he does not come out of the paradox, but must find either his eternal blessedness therein, or his perdition. Such a churchly hero expresses the universal in his deeds, and there shall be no one in the church, not even his father and mother, etc., who will not understand him. He is not a knight of faith, and he also has a different answer than Abraham’s; he does not say that it is a trial or a temptation wherein he is being tried. One ordinarily refrains from mentioning passages like the one in Luke. One fears setting people loose, one fears that the worst will happen once the single individual has deigned to govern himself as the single individual. People further think that it is the easiest thing of all to exist as the single individual, and therefore one should just compel people to become the universal. I cannot share either this fear or this opinion, and that for the same reason. The one who has learned that it is the most frightful thing of all to exist as the single individual shall not be afraid to say that it is greatest, but he shall also say it in such a way that his words would hardly be a snare for someone gone astray, but rather help him into the universal, even if his words provide  little room for the great. The one who does not dare to mention such passages does not dare either to mention Abraham, and to think that it is easy enough to exist as the single individual contains a very worrisome indirect concession with reference to oneself; for the one who actually has respect for himself and concern for his soul is certain that the one who lives under his own supervision, alone in the entire world, lives more austerely and in greater seclusion than a maiden in her bower. That there may be those who need compulsion, those who, if they were set at liberty, would like an uncontrollable animal stagger about in abandon to selfish desire; this is surely true, but one shall know that a person does not belong to them precisely by the fact that the person knows how to speak with anxiety and trembling, and speak he must out of respect for greatness the great, so that it is not forgotten out of fear of harm, which will certainly not materialize if it is spoken of in such a way that one knows it is great, knows its horror, and, without this, one does not know its greatness either. Let us then consider the distress and anxiety in the paradox of faith a little more closely. The tragic hero resigns himself in order to express the universal, the knight of faith resigns the universal in order to become the single individual. As mentioned above, everything depends on how one is situated. The one who believes that it is easy enough to be the single individual can always be sure that he is not the knight of faith; for lost birds and vagabond geniuses are not men of faith. Those knights, on the contrary, know that it is glorious to belong to the universal. He knows that it is beautiful and pleasant to be the particular individual who translates himself into the universal, the one who, so to speak, himself sees to producing a clean, neat, and, as far as possible, faultless edition of himself, readable by all; he knows that it is refreshing to become understandable to oneself in the universal in such a way that he understands this, and that every individual who understands him also, in him, understands the universal, and both rejoice in the security of the universal. He knows it is beneficial to be born as the particular individual who has his home in the universal, his friendly abode, which immediately receives him with open arms if he wishes to remain in it. But he further knows that, higher up, there winds a lonely way, narrow and steep; he knows that it is terrifying to be born alone outside of the universal, to walk without meeting a single traveler. He knows very well where he is and how he relates to other persons. Humanly speaking, he is mad, and cannot make himself intelligible to anyone. And yet “to be mad” is the mildest expression. If he is not considered this way, then he is a hypocrite, and the higher he mounts this way, the more appalling a hypocrite he becomes.