Kierkegaard Murderer Or Knight Of Faith

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Murderer or Knight of Faith: Genesis 22: 1-18 Fear and Trembling is a book written by Søren Kierkegaard under the pseudonym of Johannes De Silentio. The book extensively discusses and analyzes Genesis 22: 1-18, the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac. According to Christian tradition, this is the event that marks Abraham as the father of faith. Kierkegaard seeks to understand Abraham’s thoughts and feelings, and how they influenced him in his test. The first two parts of the book serve to elucidate the incomprehensibility of Abraham’s faith. After being told to kill his only son, Abraham makes no plea, no debate, no hesitation, no human calculation or question of God’s absurd command. For Kierkegaard, this willingness…show more content…
However, according to the ethical, Abraham attempts to murder his son. Thus, if we are to understand his sacrifice, it cannot be in terms of the universal. Hence, it must be possible to suspend ethical behavior in favor of faith. The second problemata establishes that Kierkegaard believes we have an absolute duty to God. This could be contrasted with Kantian idea of duty, wherein we only have a duty to each other. Abraham forgoes all ethics to obey God’s command. This explains in part the absurdity of the situation—Abraham must resist the temptation to act ethically, and instead carry out God’s command. In order to withstand the universal, Abraham kept his decision individual, between him and God. This leads to Kierkegaard’s final problemata, the question of why Abraham does not tell anyone of his mission to sacrifice his heir. He could have told Sarah or Isaac. But because Abraham was acting individually (as opposed to universally), his disclosure to anyone else could only be perceived as unethical. Without having heard God’s command, they could only understand that a father was killing his…show more content…
However, as a writer it appears Kierkegaard is highly stylized and extremely difficult. I am confident I could read this book ten more times and derive something new from it on each attempt. In addition, these philosophical ideas have given me insights into my own philosophy and matters of faith, which I feel are appropriate to include here. My philosophical condition is a relatively constant and lucid experience of the absurd, which I defined in my last paper as the relationship between an incessant and intense longing for meaning, yet finding no relief in the world around me. As for solutions, I ruled out suicide as a mere negation of the absurd, but I was left with two other options, faith or rebelling against the absurd. This book served to better illuminate the former to me. I have always spurned faith as philosophical suicide, that to subscribe to hope meant sacrificing logic—and I still believe this, but Kierkegaard makes a compelling case for it. After all, it is through his faith that Abraham is able to cope with the absurd; in fact, he worships it. When God gives the absurd command to kill Isaac, Abraham is able to completely trust God. Abraham knows that killing his only son will end his dynasty before it has begun; but Abraham also knows God has promised the dynasty, yet he wants Isaac as a
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    In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard discusses the relationship between faiths and ethics based on the biblical story of the sacrifice of Isaac at God’s behest, the son he has waited so long to have. Going against Kant’s universal-ethical position, Kierkegaard suggests that there are higher duties, which surpasses all forms of human morality. This raises a controversial question of whether there is teleological suspension of the ethical. In the story, God tests Abraham’s faith and command him to sacrifice

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