EXISTENTIALISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY

Mondays 4-6pm in L006

Oct 15th Fear and Trembling: The ‘knight of faith’ and movement.

(Lecture 3 accompanying notes for reading of the ‘Preamble from the heart’)

The ‘knight of faith’ and movement

This is a ‘thinking with’, a series of thoughts arising from and dealing with issues in Preliminary Expectoration, not a précis. Numbers in brackets refer to the following editions of Fear and Trembling – (Trans. Hong and Hong, Princeton 1983 / Trans. Alastair Hannay, Penuin 2006)

“faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off…” (53/61)

The leap

The crucial movement is that of the leap – a concept that Kierkegaard derives from Lessing (German Sprung Danish Spring).

The leap is a break, an action taken in itself rather than for a reason. This is not a randomness but rather a concentration. Key decision moments in which there is no way of deciding between options – no judgement or balance sheet – but every option possible involves a major change. No get out clause.

You meet someone, you have a fantastic time, you feel love blossoming and then in the heat of the moment they ask you to marry them – decide – to ask for time, possible but always going to reveal a kind of ‘hedging bets’ stance; you agree, another story opens up…but no matter what, you take a leap. But it doesn’t have to be rushed…(a decision in the heat of the moment)…it can take a lifetime if needed, it can be entirely internal (an act of commitment, something that forms the core of who you are).

Regine Olsen – Kierkegaard breaks off the engagement – and then attempts to act in such a way (a ‘cad’ ;-) that Regine changes her mind about him, revises her opinion and is freed from Kiekegaard.

“If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry you will also regret it; if you marry or if you do not marry, you will regret both…” (Quoted in Hannay biog p189)

The leap is a movement of passion not reason – life moments.The leap is constitutive – it makes what comes after into something different. Without the leap this ‘after’ would never have existed, hence the constitutive nature.

Why a ‘leap’? To counter the notion of reason that there can be progress from argument to act, from ideal to actuality. The leap is an actuality (the term

Virkelighedens – lived ‘expereince’ is what this ‘actuality’ translates) that then forms a reality (Realitet) - (a lived moment or act that constitutes a world of the imagination and the real) cf (43/46.

Lived experience – reality – ideality – the Leap is not an abstract moment but a lived experience, hence the notion of a ‘Leap’ (into the dark, of faith – possibility of falling / failing.)

“it is supposed to be the most difficult feat for a ballet dancer to leap into a specific posture in such a way that he never once strains for the posture but in the very leap assumes the posture” – (41/45)

the reference to a ‘trampoline leap’ (36/39)

Abraham as an example?

Let us take the story of Abraham:

We tell the story of Abraham, put him up as an example, a hero of faith. The point of this story is to show you faith, show you it in action. But the story of Abraham is paradoxical because “the ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac – but precisely in this contradiction is the anxiety that can make a person sleepless, and yet without this anxiety Abraham is not who he is”. (30/31)

So, I show you Abraham as the best example of faith.As the example of the ‘best’ the implication is that you should emulate.Yet this has made ‘the best’ and ‘Abraham’ into a universal, one thing, the same (identify - homologise) (28/28).

To emulate Abraham would be to miss the point of the story and not emulate ‘the best’ – because you were unwilling to do the work involved. (cf; the opening metaphor in the Preliminary Expectoration [PE]).

Knight of faith goes further than the knight of resignation

The KR – makes the impossibility of the finite into a possible through movement into the infiniteThe KF - makes the impossibility of the finite into a possible through movement into the infinite which will then convert the finite impossibility into a finite possibility.

Resignation – conversion of the impossible in the here and now into a possible in the spiritual eternalFaith - conversion of the impossible in the here and now into a possible in the here and now via the spiritual eternal (no reason but rather absurdness –it is absurd to believe that Isaac will be returned to Abraham through his willingness to sacrifice him.) (36-37/

Being able to walk as normal after the act of faith, after the experience of the infinite (Ballet dancer analogy) – at ease with the world (trust) (36 - can make leap into infinity but not ‘the next movement’)

Kierkegaard/Regine: the gesture of resignation – to give up the finite (here and now) hopes, resigned oneself to one’s fateAbraham/Isaac: the gesture of faith – looks like that of resignation but it is accompanied by trust and produces trust in the world not just in the beyond (transcendent)

Abraham – goes along, raises the knife – could still be thinking, God won’t make me do it, I will kill myself instead etc (Different accounts of the story in the Exordiums). This would be resignation – what is given up in the finite world is given up in order to convert it into the infinite (God’s command, Abraham’s obedience – an infinite relation of obedience)

The same gesture (looks outwardly identical, knife raised etc) but only by faith will Abraham be carrying out the command – obedience needed (resignation stage) but also needs trust that he will have returned to him what he is sacrificing – this the absurd moment.

SUGGESTION: The main philosophical implication is to do with trust as opposed to doubt.

Any sort of trust.

Two schemas:

(a) Example of FAITH ----- WORK OF PHILOSOPHY ----- Possessing TRUST

This would be the work…

But Kierkegaard thinks reason cannot give faith, faith has to be something beyond reason (the leap is what will give us faith, put us into faith, hence the leap of faith)So K’s schema is rather different

(b) Example of FAITH – WORK OF PHILOSOPHY –

Possessing REASON/RESIGNATION

Because FAITH is an example of passion and reason is opposed to passion

Reason converts passion into coldness, can open us to the infinite but not as anything other than that which is beyond (transcendent) – inexplicable, ungraspable etc

The work, for Kierkegaard, must be a work of passion and the leap is the moment of this work occurring.

This governed by a reason (cold) / passion (hot) opposition in K, a difference in kind (qualitative break – solid/liquid etc)

(c) Example of FAITH ----- WORK OF PASSION ----- Possessing FAITH

Kierkegaard/Johannes Silentio constantly goes on about his incapacity to make the movement of faith, only capable of making the movement of resignation – but the passion is there (in the characters, the Exordiums’ for example, and the Eulogy – the poet memorialising the hero through a work of passion)

What K can’t reach is happy faith – certainty – he is faced with contingency – “utter contingency” (the existentialist motto, as it were) – a sense of Loss.

The work of movement

What work is involved?

The work of the movement, that which enables us to move in the same way, not do the same things – the ballet dancer does not copy the movement of the teacher alone but practises these and turns them into their own and only then do they begin to become a dancer. The person learning guitar copies the finger positions, the rythmns of strumming and plucking and the sequences of chords that their teacher shows them. Eventually these things, if they learn, begin to come naturally at which point they can begin to play the guitar their own way. To make the movement of faith or knowledge we must do so in such a way that we make it come naturally and in our own way.

A student is someone who practises the teachers moves, whereas a teacher is someone who practises their own moves.

(Link this to the notion of Reduplication, making it our own, taking it to heart, making the truth a ‘subjectivity’)

Provisional suggestion – at least two ways to make movement in others, to teach movement:

1) the logical argument (deduction) and the believable argument (induction) – [believable because it needs agreement on the premises to work] – the movement consists in taking us from the premises to the conclusion and the more ‘interesting’ the conclusion the stronger the movement…

2) the dramatic argument – a narrative or story form that takes us from one state to another – from characters in a situation, through their dramatic development, to a conclusion or end state (catharsis one option only, could leave people in confusion, tension, anticipation, awe etc as well)

What if we don’t follow however? “I just don’t follow you very clearly…”Do we need to follow clearly? “I get it!” (But what have they got?) Is there something here ‘in me’ that needs to be replicated ‘in you’ (for you to ‘get it’)?

In 1) above this would be the form and structure of the premises and the implications.In 2), however, we are left with the breach in taste (mine, yours; subjective not objective)

In 1) we have an argument we can ‘know’ (possess) and perhaps ‘deployIn 2) we have a text that we can return to, characters we can imagine (like a novel)

Both are forms of ‘resource’ but each very different – 1) like a hammer whereas 2) more like an example or inspiration from which we can get a couple of hammers and occasionally a wholly new tool.

The paradox

Murder or sacrifice? No, this isn’t the paradox. The contradiction at the heart of the Abraham story lies in the fact that his actions are both morally admirable (having faith, obeying God’s command) and yet outside of all normative (social) codes – individualistic ‘ethic’.

The contradiction…

Disobey the moral law (don’t murder) in order to obey a higher law (obey God).

BUT: The point of an ethic as being to govern our relations to others, to render us responsible for our actions, accountable. Our actions are accountable in terms of the good. Shared, objective structure again and yet faith (that which makes the intended ‘murder’ into an intended ‘sacrifice’) is found in the act not in the intention (gesture). How can an act be intended to show faith? It either is founded on faith or not. We leap into faith – and then act from that new position, which supposedly transforms our further intentions and acts – or else we refuse the leap, desire the connection between an act and the reasons for the act – the act carried out on faith simply is the leap.

Having faith does not render the contradictory meanings of the act (intended sacrifice or intended murder) somehow nullified – both these alternatives remain and Abraham remains in-between these two things, unable to decide rationally which it is that he is doing. This in-between is what renders him anxious, what causes the fear and trembling – “I am doing something so terrible and yet I am doing it for the greatest of all reasons, faith in God” or even “I am doing something that I know must be right – even though it may look wrong – because I have faith in God”.

Does God commanding the act make it good or is God commanding the act because it is good?

In Abraham’s case it seems plainly that faith relies on the former option.

What is terrible in the act? It is inexplicable.

The real explanation (‘god told me to do it’) is no explanation. Abraham doesn’t want to kill Isaac, he acts in faith that God will not take Isaac from him – God’s command remains inherently unexplained and as such has a secrecy about it. Abraham too acts in secret, telling no-one what he is doing, much less why.

The individual acting from their faith acts in such a way as to make their acts inexplicable through objective reason – at best dramatisation and then subject to the relativism of taste (‘works for me’, ‘resonates’, feel; passion response). Faith is a

commitment to something – God, or the world, or an ideal, or myself – worth committing to.

We render the object of faith as something good and worth pursuing, worth holding to, binding ourselves to – in this sense faith is an ethical act (relational).

The paradox as an aporia – a blockage, where reason can go no further (on its own).

Painful for reason.

Absolute Interiority

The pain and anguish of being alone (Abraham on the way to Mount Moriah, ‘in that hour’ etc) – leads to ‘subjectivity’ at its most tragic / potent.

Finitude ----- Infinite solitude / individuation -----finitude transformed.