PROBLEMA III

Was it ethically defensible for Abraham to conceal his venture from Sarah, from Eliezer, from Isaac?

The ethical, as such, is the universal, and, as the universal, is the disclosed. The individual, qualified immediately as a sensate and psychical being, is the hidden. His ethical task is then this, to strip himself of his hiddenness and become disclosed in the universal. Every time, then, that he intends to remain hidden, he therefore sins and lies in spiritual trial from which he can escape by disclosing himself. Here we stand again at the same point. If there is not a hiddenness that has its ground in the fact that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, then Abraham’s conduct cannot be defended; for he disregarded the intermediate ethical forms. If, on the contrary, there is such a hiddenness, then we stand at the paradox that cannot be mediated, since it depends precisely on the fact that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, whereas the universal is precisely the mediation. The Hegelian philosophy assumes that there is no justified hiddenness, no justified incommensurability. It is consistent with itself when it requires disclosure, but it is not speaking clearly when it wishes to consider Abraham as the father of faith and to speak about faith. For faith is not the first immediacy, but a later one.1 The first immediacy is the aesthetic, and here the Hegelian philosophy may well be right. But faith is not the aesthetic or else faith has never existed, because it has always existed. It will be best to have to consider the whole case purely aesthetically and to that end to enter an aesthetic inquiry, to which I wish to invite the reader to momentarily wholly devote himself, while I, for my part, will modify my presentation in relation to the objects. The category I intend to consider a little more closely is: the interesting, 2 a category that is distinguished in our age and has acquired great significance, precisely because our age lives in discrimine rerum [at a turning point in history]; for it is really the category of the turning point. One should not therefore, as sometimes happens, after one loves it pro virili [with all one’s might] oneself, disregard it because one outgrew it, but neither should one be too greedy for it; for it is certain that to become interesting, or that one’s life is interesting, is not a handicraft task, but a fateful privilege, which, like every privilege in the world of spirit, is bought only in profound pain. Thus, Socrates was the most interesting person who has lived, his life the most interesting that has been led, but this existence was appointed to him by the god, and insofar as he himself had to acquire it, he was not unacquainted with pain and troubles. To wish to take such an existence in vain is not fit for anyone who thinks more earnestly about life, and yet it is not seldom in our age that one sees examples of such a  Fear and Trembling labor. The interesting, however, is a confinium [border category] between the aesthetic and the ethical.3 Accordingly, this inquiry must continually graze upon the territory of the ethical, while in order to have significance it must grasp the problem with aesthetic feeling and desire. In our age, ethics rather seldom embarks on such inquiries. The reason must be that there can be no place for them in the System. Admittedly, one might therefore do it in monographs, and furthermore, if one does not intend to make it overly detailed, then one can make it short and yet achieve the same result— if, that is, one has the predicate in one’s power; for one or two predicates can betray a whole world. Should there not be place in the system for such little words? Aristotle, in his immortal Poetics, says: δύο μὲν οὖν τοῦ μύθου μέρη ταῦτ᾽ ἐστί, περιπέτεια καὶ ἀναγνώρισις [two parts of plot, then, are these: reversal and recognition]4 (see Poetics, ch. ii). It is, of course, only the second element that occupies me here: ἀναγνώρισις, recognition. Everywhere that there can be talk of recognition there is, eo ipso, a preceding hiddenness. Just as recognition is the loosening, or relaxing, element, so too hiddenness is the earlier tightening element in the dramatic life. I cannot here take into consideration what Aristotle in the same chapter develops concerning the various merits of tragedy, all in relation to the collisions of περιπέτεια [peripeteia, reversal] and ἀναγνώρισις [anagnorisis, recognition], and also concerning the single and the double recognition, even if it tempts with its inwardness and its quiet absorption, a particular temptation for someone who has long tired of the superficial all-knowingness of summary-writers. A broader remark may here find its place. In Greek tragedy, the hiddenness (and as a result thereby, the recognition) is an epic remnant, which has its ground in a fate in which the dramatic action disappears, from which this has its dark, mysterious origin. Thus, the effect of a Greek tragedy has a likeness to the impression made by a marble statue, which lacks the power of the eye. Greek tragedy is blind. A kind of abstraction is therefore required to allow it to influence one properly. A son murders his father, but he does not discover that it is his father until afterward.5 A sister intends to sacrifice her brother, but in the crucial moment she makes the discovery.6 This kind of tragedy does not occupy our reflective age. The modern drama7 has given up fate, has emancipated itself dramatically, is sighted, looks into itself, absorbs fate into its dramatic consciousness. Hiddenness and disclosure are then the hero’s free act, for which he is responsible. Hiddenness and disclosure also belong in modern drama as an essential element. To adduce examples of this would be too long-winded, I am polite enough to assume that everyone in our own age, which is so aesthetically voluptuous, so potent and stimulated, that someone can conceive of such examples just as easily as the partridge, which, according to Aristotle’s assertion, needs only to hear the cock’s voice or its flight over her head;8 I assume that everyone who just hears the word “hiddenness” will be capable of easily shaking a dozen novels and comedies out of his sleeve. I can  for this reason be brief and thus promptly suggest a broader observation. If someone is playing hide-and-seek and thereby brings the dramatic ferment into the piece by hiding some nonsense, then we have a comedy; if, however, he stands in relation to the idea, then he can approach becoming a tragic hero. Here is just one example of the comic. A man puts on makeup and wears a wig. The same man would like to be successful with the fair sex; he is certain enough of triumph with the help of the makeup and the wig, which makes him absolutely irresistible. He captivates a girl and is on the pinnacle of happiness. Now comes the snag—can he confess it; will he not lose his power of enchantment if he reveals himself as a plain and simple and, yes, even a bald male, will he not thereby in turn lose the beloved?—True hiddenness is his free action for which Aesthetics also makes him responsible. This discipline is no friend of bald hypocrites, it abandons him to laughter. This must be enough to merely suggest what I mean; the comic cannot be the object of this investigation. The path that I have to follow is to pursue hiddenness dialectically through the aesthetic and the ethical; for the goal is that aesthetic hiddenness and the paradox should display themselves in their absolute dissimilarity. A couple of examples: A girl is secretly in love with someone, but without their having definitively confessed their love to each other. Her parents force her to wed another (she may, furthermore, be defined by familial devotion); she obeys her parents, she hides her love “so as not to make the other unhappy and so that no one shall ever know what she suffers.” A lad can, by a single word, come into possession of the object of his longing and his troubled dreams. This little word would, however, compromise, yes, perhaps (who knows?) destroy a whole family; he decides magnanimously to remain in silence. “The girl shall never discover it, so that she may perhaps become happy through the hand of another.” The trouble is that this pair of human beings, both of whom are individually hidden from their respective beloveds, are also hidden from each other; otherwise it would be possible to provide an extraordinary higher unity. —Their hiddenness is a free act for which they are also responsible before aesthetics. Aesthetics, however, is a courteous and sensitive science, which knows more ways out than any pawn shop manager. What then does it do? It does everything possible for the lovers. With the help of a coincidence, the respective partners in the prospective marriage get a hint of the other party’s magnanimous decision; an explanation is forthcoming, they get each other, and in addition they are ranked with actual heroes: for although they have not even had time to sleep on their heroic decision, aesthetics still considers the matter as if they had for many years courageously fought to see their intention through. Aesthetics, that is to say, doesn’t take note of the quantity of time. Whether it is joking or serious, time goes just as quickly for aesthetics. But ethics knows nothing of either this coincidence or this sensitivity, and neither does it have so rapid a conception of time. The case thereby gets another look. It is  not well to dispute with ethics, for it has pure categories. It does not rely on experience, which of all laughable things is about the most laughable, and far from making a man clever, it will sooner make him mad if he knows of nothing higher than it. Ethics does not have coincidence, consequently it does not arrive at an explanation, it does not fool about with dignities, it lays a monstrous burden on the hero’s frail shoulders, it condemns as presumptuous the intention to play Providence by his act; but it also condemns the intention to do this by his suffering. It bids one to believe in actuality and to have the courage to struggle with all the crowding difficulties of actuality instead of these bloodless sufferings that one has, on one’s own responsibility, taken upon oneself; it warns against trusting in the cunning calculations of the understanding, which are more faithless than the oracles of antiquity. When it is the time to show courage, it warns against any untimely magnanimity—let actuality handle it—but now ethics itself offers every possible assistance. If, however, there was something more profound stirring in this pair, if there was earnestness about seeing to the task, earnestness about getting started, then perhaps something will come of them, but ethics cannot help them; it is offended. For they have a secret from it, a secret that they took upon themselves on their own responsibility. Aesthetics, then, required secrecy and rewarded it, while ethics required disclosure and punished secrecy. Sometimes, however, aesthetics itself requires disclosure. When the hero, caught in the aesthetic illusion, thinks by his silence to save another person, then it requires this silence and rewards it. When, however, the hero by his act encroaches disruptively on another person’s life, it then requires disclosure. Here I stand close to the tragic hero. I will, for a moment, consider Euripedes’s Iphigenia at Aulis. Agamemnon must sacrifice Iphigenia. Aesthetics now requires silence of Agamemnon, insofar as it would be unworthy of the hero to seek comfort from some other person, just as he, out of solicitude toward the women, should hide it from them as long as possible. On the other side, the hero, precisely to be a hero, must also be tried in the frightful trial that Clytemnestra and Iphigenia’s tears will provide for him. What does aesthetics do? It has a way out, it has an old servant ready at hand who discloses everything to Clytemnestra.9 Now everything is in order. Ethics, however, has no coincidence and no old servant at hand. The aesthetic idea contradicts itself as soon as it is carried out in actuality. Ethics therefore requires disclosure. The tragic hero shows his ethical courage precisely by the fact that, not ensnared by some aesthetic illusion, he himself is the one who proclaims to Iphigenia her fate. If he does this, then the tragic hero is ethics’ beloved son with whom it is well-pleased. If he remains silent, then it may be because he believes that he thereby makes it easier for others, but it may also be because he thereby makes it easier for himself. But from this latter motive he knows himself to be free. If he remains silent, then he assumes responsibility as the single individual, insofar as he disregards any  argument that may come from outside. This, as the tragic hero, he cannot do; for precisely this reason ethics loves him, because he continually expresses the universal. His heroic act requires courage, but it is also due to his courage that he dodges no argumentation. Now it is certainly true that tears are a frightful argumentum ad hominem, 10 and someone who is moved by nothing may still perhaps be moved by tears. In the play, Iphigenia is permitted to weep; in actual life she should be permitted to weep, as did Jephthah’s daughter, for two months, not alone, but at her father’s feet, to use all her art, “which is tears alone,” and entwine herself instead of an olive branch around his knees.11 Aesthetics required disclosure, but helped itself to a coincidence; ethics required disclosure and in the tragic hero found its satisfaction. Despite the stringency with which ethics requires disclosure, it still cannot be denied that silence and secrecy really do make a human being great, precisely because they are qualifications of inwardness. When Eros takes leave of Psyche, he says to her: “You shall bear a child who will be a divine child if you remain silent, but a human being if you betray the secret.”12 The tragic hero, who is ethics’ favored one, is purely human; him I can understand and all his undertakings are out in the open. If I go further, then I continually come to a halt upon the paradox, the divine and the demonic, for silence characterizes both. Silence is the demon’s snare, and the more that is kept silent, the more terrible the demon becomes; but silence is also the divinity’s understanding with the single individual. Before proceeding to the story of Abraham, however, I shall summon some poetic individualities. With the power of dialectics I will hold them at the apex, and I will at the same time wave the discipline of despair over them, preventing them from standing still, so that in their anxiety they may be able to bring something to light.[*13 14 15] * The movements and positions13 could, presumably, still become objects for aesthetic treatment, although to what extent faith and the whole life of faith can become such I leave undecided. I will only, because it always is a joy to thank those whom I owe something, thank Lessing for the singular hints of a Christian drama which are found in his Hamburg Dramaturgy. 14 He has however fixed his eye on the purely divine side of this life (the consummate victory), and therefore he has doubted; perhaps he would have judged otherwise if he had been more attentive to the purely human side (theologia viatorum).15 What he says is undeniably very short and somewhat evasive, but since I am always very glad when I can obtain an opportunity to take up Lessing, I promptly take him up. Lessing was not just one of the most comprehensive minds Germany has had; he was not merely in possession of an entirely rare precision in his knowledge, because of which one can safely rely upon him and his autopsies without fear of being deceived by loose, undocumented quotations, half understood phrases fetched from unreliable compendia, or of being disoriented by a stupid trumpeting of “novelties” that the ancients had better stated—but he had beyond this a most unusual gift for explaining what he himself has understood. There he stopped, while in our age one goes further, and one explains more than one has oneself understood. 02-DSHPC167-Kierkegaard-Body.indd 87 02/21/24 3:46 PM 88 Fear and Trembling Aristotle, in his Politics, tells a story about a political disturbance in Delphi, which had its ground in the matter of a marriage. The bridegroom, to whom the augurs16 prophesied a disaster that would have its origin in his marriage, suddenly changed his plan in the divine moment. When he came to fetch his bride—he would not get married. More I do not need.† In Delphi this event scarcely went off without tears; if a poet were to adopt it, then I dare say he could count upon sympathy. Is it not terrible that love, which is so often an exile in life, is now also deprived of Heaven’s assistance? Is that old saying, that marriages are made in Heaven, not here put to shame? In other cases, it is the troubles and difficulties of finitude, which, like evil spirits, would separate the lovers; but love has Heaven on its side and therefore this holy alliance triumphs over all enemies. Here it is Heaven itself that separates that which Heaven itself, after all, had joined. Who would have suspected this? Least of all the young bride. Only a moment ago, she sat in her room in all her beauty, and the lovely maidens had painstakingly adorned her so that they could be justified before the whole world, so that they could have not only joy from it but also envy—yes, joy that it was impossible for them to become more envious because it is impossible for her to be more beautiful. She sat alone in her room and was transformed from beauty to beauty; for all that feminine art was capable of was used worthily to adorn the worthy one. But there was something still lacking, which the young maidens would not have dreamt of; a veil, finer, lighter, and yet more concealing than that in which the young maidens had shrouded her; a bridal garment that no young maiden knew any rumor of, or could be of any assistance to her with; yes, not even the bride knew to help herself to it. It was an invisible, friendly power, which has its joy in adorning the bride, which enveloped her in it without her knowing anything of it; for she saw only how the bridegroom went by and up to the temple. She saw the door close after him and she became even more tranquil and blissful; for she knew that he now belonged to her more than ever. The temple door opened, he stepped out, but she cast her maidenly eyes down and therefore she did not see that his countenance was troubled, but he saw that Heaven seemed to be envious of the bride’s loveliness and of his own happiness. The temple door opened, the young maidens saw the bridegroom step out; but they did not see that his countenance was disturbed; for they were in a hurry to fetch their bride. Then she stepped forward in all her maidenly humility, and † According to Aristotle, the historical catastrophe was as follows: In revenge, the [bride’s] family places a temple vessel among [the bridegroom’s] kitchen utensils, and he is condemned as a temple thief. However, this is immaterial, for the question is not whether the family is ingenious or stupid in taking revenge. The family gains ideal significance only to the extent that it is drawn into the dialectic of the hero. Moreover, it is fateful enough that he plunges into danger while trying to avoid it by not marrying, and also that he comes into contact with the divine in a double manner—first by the augurs’ pronouncement and next by being condemned as a temple thief.