Ok, that's a lie. I have an idea of what he's talking about: Abraham (ish?). Kierkegaard was a 19th century Danish Christian theologian and philosopher, and Fear and Trembling is an existential examination of Abraham's almost-sacrifice of Isaac. I picked it up because lately I've been all "Christian pop-culture is shallow and silly and thoughtless and I'm going to read All The Smart Jesus-Types," and for some insane reason THIS IS WHERE I STARTED *head desk.*
Anywoot, I'm not going to bother to summarize here because it's full of un-summarizable bits like this:
"Faith is just this paradox, that the single individual as the particular is higher than the universal, is justified before the latter, not as subordinate but superior, though in such a way, be it noted, that it is the single individual who, having been subordinate to the universal as the particular, now by means of the universal becomes that individual who, as the particular, stands in an absolute relation to the absolute." <--one sentence, very representative of the entire thing.
So basically the entire thing is about the individual in regards to the universal (which I assume he means as a synonym for God, but I don't really know because again, WTF?) as it relates to this small episode of Abraham's life. He also talks a bit about the concept of greatness and FROM WHAT I UNDERSTOOD his point there is that purposeful action leads to greatness as opposed to being a recipient of circumstances, etc.
I think his main purpose here was to show that having great "knight of faith" type faith is mega-hard (he makes a few references to lazy Christians who swallow Scripture without thinking about it). Which, ok, yes, there aren't huge amounts of people exalted for their faith in the Bible like Abraham. Kierkegaard seems to think that Abraham-sized-greatness is the goal (in fact, he left his fiance so he could devote himself to being more church-a-liscious, a move some people think he equated in his brain with Abraham's episode with Isaac). Maybe I'm alone here, but my goal isn't to be like Abraham. So. Don't know what Soren would think of me.
Anyway, I may be totally off base here because again, it's a bit difficult to cut through all the commas and get to his point. I'm not a lazy reader- I did a good bit of reading secondary reviews/thoughts/stuff about this book, and it didn't really help.
Oh, and he makes short work of some of Hegel's philosophy, so if you're anti-Hegel, this might be up your alley.
I don't know stars out of your mom because my eyes crossed enough to make me not understand a good bit of it. (Also, I just realized that I spelled his name incorrectly, and I have fixed it)
Nope, couldn't make it through that quote.
ReplyDeleteKIERKEGAAAAAAAAAARD! *shakes fist*
Dude, Lewis? Chesterton? GEORGE MACDONALD? These were ALL OPTIONS and you chose Kierkegaard. I am impressed/flummoxed.
Yes! I have read Lewis- MERE CHRISTIANITY, how I heart your face. Come into my bosom and I shall make you a pie.
DeleteWho is this George Macdonald person of whom you speak? OFF TO GOOGLE!
You'll probs get more information off Google than I have in my brain, but he was C.S. Lewis's faaavorite (and he appears in The Great Divorce as a dude already in heaven). He wrote the Princess and the Goblin series, which I vaguely remember feeling inspired by as a teenager.
DeleteMay I tell you how much I love that you quoted that lady from high school here like anyone else would get it? Well...I guess I just told you. So. I love you.
Delete(p.s. one should never look at photos of Chesterton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:G._K._Chesterton.jpg)
ReplyDeleteI see your Chesterton and I raise you a Dumas!
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dumas_by_Nadar,_1855.jpg
Ahahahaha Ewwwwwwww.
DeleteSomeone should start a Tumblr of sepia pictures of classic authors who were unexpectedly teddy-bear tastic.
DeleteNext up you should probably read some Kant and then you will never want to read words ever again! Things like that quote are why I never read a full philosophy text even though I did a joint degree in English and Philosophy- Too harrrrrd!
ReplyDeleteI have a hard time with philosophy. I tend to get a bit, "yeah, ok, whatever, this doesn't apply to laundry and bills and kids and the stuff of real life, so."
Deletehere's my half cent. he's saying that he is God and God is him. or he. but that's just my take.
ReplyDeleteick. i tried reading Proust one time. and least his crap is in French.
WHY DIDN'T HE JUST SAY THAT.
DeleteInstead of trying to be more like Abraham, I'm gonna try working "church-a-licious" and "teddy-bear-tastic" into my everyday vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteThe words dreams are made of, those.
DeleteI enjoyed hearing your thoughts on this book. I have given it a close reading (my background is in Scriptural studies) and I admit you really have to be clear-headed and free from all distractions to follow K. I understand your representative sentence all the way up to the last comma, then it loses me. Which is to say I'm as baffled as everyone else at the moment. I know that I understood it when I read the book, but I have experienced some memory loss since then and would have to read it in context to pick up the thread. And I do wonder about translation with K's work sometimes. May I ask which translation you read?
ReplyDeleteYour post was entertaining and I thank you for reminding me how much I loved K. and need to read him again.
I read the Alastair Hannay translation- do you know anything about it? Is there a more comprehensible one out there? I'd be willing to read it again, if only to not feel like a total dunce.
DeleteSeriously, congratulations for even finishing this one! I gave up at reading the author's name...but this proves again my extremely popular and often used formula:
ReplyDeleteDanish + super faithful Christian + mildly mad (though the "mildly" part is arguable = excruciating, unreadable book.
Finally I've found a chance to make a point of that.
If religion is the opiate of the masses, then christian theology is the electro-convulsive shock treatments....
ReplyDeleteI didn't read his work myself, but a friend of mine always enjoyed Matthew Fox's books
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fox_%28priest%29
Goodness, I couldn't even make it through that quote and you read 150 pages? I'm in awe. I don't think I'll be giving this book a go.
ReplyDeleteI am using my age as my excuse for not being able to comprehend that sentence.
ReplyDeleteYou read the whole book? All 150 pages of it? Every sentence? (Forgive the redundance, but I'm trying to wrap my mind around the idea) You, woman, are my new hero. Or my new favorite example of insanity. Whichever you prefer.
ReplyDeleteI am anti-Hegel, but I don't think I'm anti-Hegel enough to attempt this one. I'll freely admit it's way over my head.
We read little tiny bite-sized pieces of Kierkegaard for a class I took on the Bible as literature, and they were wonderful once we had the professor explain them to us. There is so much unpacking that can be done within the short little Abraham/Isaac narrative that it is mind blowing!
ReplyDeleteI have a dusty old copy of Gerard Von Rad's Old Testament Theology (vol 1) sitting on my bookshelf... but I only got through about 3 pages before I went back to my picture books.
Lewis is a lot more accessible to me, and it seems to me that he writes with a lot more passion.
I tried to help my daughter with her philosophy paper one term, and all I could say is what the F? I remembered the one philosophy class I took in college. OMG! Please. I am still trying to figure if I really exist or not.
ReplyDeleteI'll be honest, my eyes glazed a bit -- philosophy goes waaay over my head. My wife was in div school to be a minister so every now and then, I have her give me the distillation of some Christian philosopher if I'm in the mood -- very helpful. She's my walking cheat sheet. She's pretty partial to William James, but I don't know if he's just philosophy or Christian-y thinking + philosophy...
ReplyDeleteThis brings me back to my critical theory course where I mostly just drooled on my desk and drew pictures of butterflies and puppy dogs. Yes, I just remember something about Heidegger talking about "the thinging of the thing" and losing all consciousness. I mean, WTF?
ReplyDeleteHave you tried Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis? Did someone mention that yet?
Anywho, enjoyed the post.
This is of course rough and my point of view, but:
ReplyDeleteIndividual = an individual. One person. You.
Universal = humanity/the earth-world at large. As in: "protecting life at all costs is what is best for man-kind" is thinking in terms of the universal. "I'm a pretty good person compared to how most of the world acts" is also thinking in terms of the universal.
The Absolute = God. and then in that, also a perfect standard, an absolute "right" and "wrong" from a higher power.
So the way I remember the book, the point he's trying to make is:
Christianity and "the greater human good" are not the same thing.
Abraham sacrificing his son is in no way justifiable as "the right thing to do" in terms of "the greater human good." It's totally and utterly horrible on every single scale a human could perceive. But Abraham has the greatest faith (which I think the bible corroborates) because he had fully let go of his idea of "the greater good," and just obeyed what God (the absolute) said was right.
So his point is: an individual person (YOU) is smaller and weaker than a large group, than the world even. But by rejecting the large group entirely, the individual person (YOU) gets the chance to see what is truly right: he can stand face-to-face with God in this life.
(sub-clause: what God actually asks of a person will probably never sound good to your aunt's knitting club.)
A pretty revolutionary idea in the mid 1800s when "the christian way" and the quaint "greater good here on earth" was being turned into the same thing (see use of the word "Christian" in Charles Dickens and Jane Austen -- barf).
I love Fear and Trembling. I love his style. I think he actually speaks pretty directly once you get the hang of the Plato/Aristotle vocab he's using (like how Shakespeare gets much clearer the more of it you read/see).
Don't knock my Aunt's knitting club.
ReplyDeleteJames Harrison Monaco hits it pretty much on the head. Kierkegaard is pretty amazing, but he is a real bear to figure out. I'd add that his view is not only revolutionary for its time, but shocking and radical today. One way of really underlining the outrageous implications of his view is to put it bluntly: K makes Abraham analogous (only analogous) to a contemporary religious terrorist.
ReplyDeleteIn both cases an individual declares a God-dictated duty to act in a way that--apart from divine command--is obviously ethically wrong. And there is no way for the individual to prove to themselves it is divinely commanded, so they can't have certainty or comfort of justification. The terrorist is obviously diabolically wrong, but Abraham had no greater certainty, and could have been equally so. And there's no way humanity at large can prove either of them wrong, since if the act is justified, its justification comes from a direct, inaccessible relation between an individual and God himself. It's a catch 22. And K wants to say religious faith, if honest, is always such a catch 22. Faith is not "difficult" but absurd and nearly impossible, and quite possibly unethical (indeed "real" faith for K includes remaining always aware not only of the fact that faith gives no knowledge or certainty, but of the risk that it may be ethically wrong, as it would be if Abraham turned out to have been mistaken.)
To be fair to K about the difficulty of his work, he's not writing for a general audience, so he assumes a thorough knowledge of much of the history of philosophy, particularly Plato and Hegel, but knowing Kant's ethical philosophy helps too. It's like reading an advance Spanish textbook if you haven't taken Spanish. It's not entirely his fault.
You can make sense of him with background reading, but since K's influence is wide, the kind of background reading can make a huge difference. Find an introductory text written by a philosopher--not an English or Religion or Cultural Studies professor. Even then, you have to be careful which one. Some secondary texts in philosophy are poor at speaking to an introductory audience, so you have to read through reviews, peruse them using Amazon's look inside feature or Google Books viewer.
I enjoy your blog, but give K a chance. He's worth it with the right preparation, so don't give up! (Ditto the 20th century existentialists he inspired, who are not at all, as you've suggested, pessimistic! Read Sartre's Existentialism is a Humanism, where he explains why he's an optimist.)
Also, I'm told Kierkegaard wrote some more conventional theological writings aimed at a general religious audience, quite different in style from his philosophical texts. So you might look those up; they may require less background reading.