Virtue of Absurdity

Virtue of Absurdity

March 26, 2016

Outside Reading: Soren Kierkegaard/Fear and Trembling

In his work, Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard asks if there is “such a thing as a teleological suspension of the ethical?”(75) By this, he wants to know whether their is a higher law - a particular - that transcends the universal ethical. Kierkegaard finds his answer in the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22.

Kierkegaard emphasized the deep agony and distress that Abraham must have felt as he made the three day trip to Mount Moriah and woke up early on the fourth day to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. All of Abraham’s hope was set on God’s promise to provide for him an heir through whom all the nations in the world would be blessed. But now all was lost. God had asked him to sacrifice the seed of promise. Dread is the element so often missed by commentators of Abraham’s story. In obeying the absolute call of God, Abraham rose above the universal ethical standard, jumping into the transcendent realm of faith. “By virtue of the absurd…he believed that God would not require Isaac.”(75-76) Abraham’s faith persisted in the midst of absurd circumstances. Thus, paradox was the “substance of Abraham’s life.”(71)