Notes from the Underground or Letters from my Basement?
The following are notes on Fear and Trembling that I have been collecting for a while now in preparation for writing my MA Thesis. They're all far from final form, even though some are already in a second draft. There is going to be a lot of repetition here, understandably, and also a lot of dead-end thoughts. Some of these thoughts I don't even hold anymore, and some I hold in an amended form. I'm posting them now so that I'll be forced to go back through them and extract some Thought from out of a lot of rambling and meandering. I'm afraid that it might not make much sense to someone who is not already familiar with Fear and Trembling, as well as with Kierkegaard's broader philosophy, or even for someone who is. But hopefully the main threads of Faith, Justification, and Communication will come out in the end and I'll be able to weave them into a tolerable essay.
12.11.07
Abraham cannot speak in any language that I can understand. Johannes de Silentio says that he aspires to be Abraham's poet, his voice. But even Abraham's poet must remain silent, in so far as he cannot/ does not say anything that I can understand.
But then why [write] the book? Kierkegaard is putting these words down on paper and then immediately retracting them, emptying them of any meaning that I can understand. He wants to perform something like a Derridean defacement: "Abraham had faith." (and the word faith in that sentence is crossed out but still legible.) - So that only the trace, the hollow shell of the word, remains.
It would be a mistake to equate this with the Tractarian notion showing-not-saying.
Kierkegaard is always writing to his "one true reader". Maybe this is because his reader needs to remove herself from her context - her forms of life - in order for her to be able to understand what Kierkegaard is saying. Or what he is saying about certain word-concepts used in a transcendent sense: Belief, faith, silence, communication, authority, etc.
But even this "special"/ qualitatively different use requires/ assumes the ordinary everyday use!
12.12.07
By what right does Johannes de Silentio speak? ("To speak without justification is not to speak without right.") Because he does speak, contradicting his name. But then you get the meaninglessness of the text.
"Language as Means of Political Subversion in Fear and Trembling"
12.13.07
Part of Abraham's sacrifice (in submitting to God's will) is giving up his right to speak. To be understood.
What is ethics? [to behave in an ethical fashion, according to certain (Kantian) rules that everyone can understand]
"Is God bound by our language?"
On Certainty, #166: "The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing."
12.18.07
Belief as the foundation for knowledge...
In On Certainty, Wittgenstein is looking into this issue - In dem Anfang war die Tat -
For Kierkegaard, the knight of faith behave exactly like all the other petit-bourgeoises.
Except that he's a fool.
It still all boils down to the fact that Abraham has no justification for his action.
Faith as a task for a whole life-time.
On Certainty #446: "Doesn't the whole language-game rest on this kind of certainty?" For the knight of faith, faith is the foundation (or the basis) - the foundational layer that, first of all, pre-empts all action/ activity and, second (and correspondingly) gives reasons or meaning or justification for all following actions.
In this way then, Fear and Trembling mirrors L.W. in so far as it locates the limits of thought in faith. But of course it is not the Tractarian logical limits that are here being demarcated -
12.21.07
What is foundational for our language is also that which is foundational to our myriad forms of life. For Abraham, this foundation (this bedrock) is God, or is Abraham's faith (in God).
What Johannes de Silentio might be trying to describe, then, is a way of life (form of existence) which is completely alien ([w]hol[l]y Other)to our activity. (Ref. Quine's concerns regarding radical translation? No - too, tangential.) The main issue is that Abraham's act of submission to God necessarily exiles him from any conceivable (possible) community of speakers.
- This is a different topic than the one that discusses how the concept of faith gets polluted by its use in ordinary language.
12.27.07
The relationship between silence (choosing not to speak) and Silence (being unable to speak). Abraham is Silent because his justifications do not count as evidence within [our] community. He is not Silent because he does not speak, he is Silent because he speaks but we cannot understand him.
In what could this understanding consist? What happens when I understand what someone else is saying? And I don't mean how to do I understand English or French or Spanish (an interesting question in its own right) but rather how do I come to understand the reasons for another human being's actions? And what happens when someone "cannot" give reason or justification for what they do? Then their action is of the type that do not demand reasons, but rather they provide them.
Maybe Johannes de Silentio is saying that the reason that faith is so hard to understand is because it is not like other concepts. It is a fundamental concept - like language - that has this trait resembling 'sui generis' (sui genesis?) - in so far as it is not dependent on a prior concept that provides it with justification.
01.07.08
"Authority, Justification, and Intelligibility in Fear and Trembling"
These three concepts are very closely related - you need justification in order to have authority, and you need to make yourself intelligible in order to express your justifications. But to whom?
There is this terrifying moment when de Silentio comprehends the possibility that he is alone in not understanding faith. Abraham is radically and frightfully alone. The fear comes from the idea of being severed from the world so that no one will ever be able to understand you again. But the authentic knight of faith has no worry (Sorgen) for this - he speaks as if he can be understood by others, as if his justifications for his (absurd) actions are out in the open for all to see - He acts as if nothing is hidden, and this makes him incomprehensible. (no)
De Silentio speaks often of needing courage in order to have faith. but here he may be mistaken. The knight of faith makes the movement of faith naturally, without any hesitation or second thought.
Fear and Trembling makes some pretty tough demands on the reader. Its effect is essentially isolating. Its question is: Can you still maintain that you have faith after all of these "support mechanisms" (i.e., community, ethics, language - which all belong to the social realm, along with concepts such as evidence and justification) have been pulled out from beneath you?
JUST LIKE SOCRATES - Certain kinds of investigations, investigations that try to isolate the essence of this or that concept, can only end in meaninglessness.
Where does my right to speak come from?
01.08.08
For the knight of faith, the concept of faith takes on a different meaning than it does for either the knight of resignation or the petty bourgeois.
No, not takes on - it is different, it always has been different. Johannes de Silentio cannot understand Abraham because he takes Abraham to be speaking a totally alien language because of his faith.
The book wants you to have these problems.
Wittgenstein returns again and again to the image of bedrock, of solid ground giving shape to our more fluid concepts. This might be because of [their relative ineffability].
How and when does Kierkegaard "turn his back on the reader" in Fear and Trembling? For if I am right and if faith is fundamentally bedrock as it is described in On Certainty, then it is also something that cannot be doubted, cannot be called into question. The book wants you to have these problems. It turns its back on the reader because it leaves the question of authority unanswered. It laves me drowning because there is either an (inauthentic) justification or no justification at all. (Or an absurd one.)
Like a Chinese Puzzle-Box.
One must climb (not up) but into Fear and Trembling and then throw it away, to come out the other side transformed.
(There's the movement/moment when you give it and the movement/moment when you take it away.)
Perhaps faith eludes conceptual grasping because of its character of extreme subjectivity.
01.09.08
Driving a wedge between de Silentio and Kierkegaard, while still saving what is important from F&T. And this has something to with the relationship between F&T's form and its content. The entire text moves (unknown to de Silentio) on an assumption of what faith is. In other words, the reason why de Silentio concludes that faith is a paradox beyond the expressible/ ethical (and I'm not saying that he's wrong about that) is because... For the knight of faith, faith is the structure that gives form to the rest of thought. It is the scaffolding that is antecedent to (what Wittgenstein would describe as) empirical propositions about the world. Faith, therefore, is a kind of logic.
A parallel might be: It is a different matter to ask the bourgeois to doubt the existence (or will) of God than it is to ask the knight of faith to doubt so. You might as well ask him to doubt the existence of the hand before his face, etc. There are some things (defaced, followed by "propositions") that are beyond doubt (and testing). They exist in order to give shape to the process of doubting.
I would cite in support of this, de Silentio's constant scorn for different manifestations of 'calculation'.
F&T ought to leave the reader deeply disturbed. One (less obvious) reason for this is in the way that its content and its form push against one another.
01.11.08
In this paper, I will give a new reading of Fear and Trembling, namely (and this is important) my own.
My primary question and concern will be locating (deciding? pointing to?) Abraham's justification for the murder (or sacrifice) of Isaac, as told by Johannes de Silentio. (And this, too, is an important note. What the text tells us the most about is the psychology of de Silentio and his untenable relationship towards faith.)
Another way to state this paper's primary aim is to ask: What right does Abraham have to act the way that he does? [There is no answer to this question] But what it shows is these different possible attitudes (or relationships) towards faith.
[To Be Continued]
12.11.07
Abraham cannot speak in any language that I can understand. Johannes de Silentio says that he aspires to be Abraham's poet, his voice. But even Abraham's poet must remain silent, in so far as he cannot/ does not say anything that I can understand.
But then why [write] the book? Kierkegaard is putting these words down on paper and then immediately retracting them, emptying them of any meaning that I can understand. He wants to perform something like a Derridean defacement: "Abraham had faith." (and the word faith in that sentence is crossed out but still legible.) - So that only the trace, the hollow shell of the word, remains.
It would be a mistake to equate this with the Tractarian notion showing-not-saying.
Kierkegaard is always writing to his "one true reader". Maybe this is because his reader needs to remove herself from her context - her forms of life - in order for her to be able to understand what Kierkegaard is saying. Or what he is saying about certain word-concepts used in a transcendent sense: Belief, faith, silence, communication, authority, etc.
But even this "special"/ qualitatively different use requires/ assumes the ordinary everyday use!
12.12.07
By what right does Johannes de Silentio speak? ("To speak without justification is not to speak without right.") Because he does speak, contradicting his name. But then you get the meaninglessness of the text.
"Language as Means of Political Subversion in Fear and Trembling"
12.13.07
Part of Abraham's sacrifice (in submitting to God's will) is giving up his right to speak. To be understood.
What is ethics? [to behave in an ethical fashion, according to certain (Kantian) rules that everyone can understand]
"Is God bound by our language?"
On Certainty, #166: "The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing."
12.18.07
Belief as the foundation for knowledge...
In On Certainty, Wittgenstein is looking into this issue - In dem Anfang war die Tat -
For Kierkegaard, the knight of faith behave exactly like all the other petit-bourgeoises.
Except that he's a fool.
It still all boils down to the fact that Abraham has no justification for his action.
Faith as a task for a whole life-time.
On Certainty #446: "Doesn't the whole language-game rest on this kind of certainty?" For the knight of faith, faith is the foundation (or the basis) - the foundational layer that, first of all, pre-empts all action/ activity and, second (and correspondingly) gives reasons or meaning or justification for all following actions.
In this way then, Fear and Trembling mirrors L.W. in so far as it locates the limits of thought in faith. But of course it is not the Tractarian logical limits that are here being demarcated -
12.21.07
What is foundational for our language is also that which is foundational to our myriad forms of life. For Abraham, this foundation (this bedrock) is God, or is Abraham's faith (in God).
What Johannes de Silentio might be trying to describe, then, is a way of life (form of existence) which is completely alien ([w]hol[l]y Other)to our activity. (Ref. Quine's concerns regarding radical translation? No - too, tangential.) The main issue is that Abraham's act of submission to God necessarily exiles him from any conceivable (possible) community of speakers.
- This is a different topic than the one that discusses how the concept of faith gets polluted by its use in ordinary language.
12.27.07
The relationship between silence (choosing not to speak) and Silence (being unable to speak). Abraham is Silent because his justifications do not count as evidence within [our] community. He is not Silent because he does not speak, he is Silent because he speaks but we cannot understand him.
In what could this understanding consist? What happens when I understand what someone else is saying? And I don't mean how to do I understand English or French or Spanish (an interesting question in its own right) but rather how do I come to understand the reasons for another human being's actions? And what happens when someone "cannot" give reason or justification for what they do? Then their action is of the type that do not demand reasons, but rather they provide them.
Maybe Johannes de Silentio is saying that the reason that faith is so hard to understand is because it is not like other concepts. It is a fundamental concept - like language - that has this trait resembling 'sui generis' (sui genesis?) - in so far as it is not dependent on a prior concept that provides it with justification.
01.07.08
"Authority, Justification, and Intelligibility in Fear and Trembling"
These three concepts are very closely related - you need justification in order to have authority, and you need to make yourself intelligible in order to express your justifications. But to whom?
There is this terrifying moment when de Silentio comprehends the possibility that he is alone in not understanding faith. Abraham is radically and frightfully alone. The fear comes from the idea of being severed from the world so that no one will ever be able to understand you again. But the authentic knight of faith has no worry (Sorgen) for this - he speaks as if he can be understood by others, as if his justifications for his (absurd) actions are out in the open for all to see - He acts as if nothing is hidden, and this makes him incomprehensible. (no)
De Silentio speaks often of needing courage in order to have faith. but here he may be mistaken. The knight of faith makes the movement of faith naturally, without any hesitation or second thought.
Fear and Trembling makes some pretty tough demands on the reader. Its effect is essentially isolating. Its question is: Can you still maintain that you have faith after all of these "support mechanisms" (i.e., community, ethics, language - which all belong to the social realm, along with concepts such as evidence and justification) have been pulled out from beneath you?
JUST LIKE SOCRATES - Certain kinds of investigations, investigations that try to isolate the essence of this or that concept, can only end in meaninglessness.
Where does my right to speak come from?
01.08.08
For the knight of faith, the concept of faith takes on a different meaning than it does for either the knight of resignation or the petty bourgeois.
No, not takes on - it is different, it always has been different. Johannes de Silentio cannot understand Abraham because he takes Abraham to be speaking a totally alien language because of his faith.
The book wants you to have these problems.
Wittgenstein returns again and again to the image of bedrock, of solid ground giving shape to our more fluid concepts. This might be because of [their relative ineffability].
How and when does Kierkegaard "turn his back on the reader" in Fear and Trembling? For if I am right and if faith is fundamentally bedrock as it is described in On Certainty, then it is also something that cannot be doubted, cannot be called into question. The book wants you to have these problems. It turns its back on the reader because it leaves the question of authority unanswered. It laves me drowning because there is either an (inauthentic) justification or no justification at all. (Or an absurd one.)
Like a Chinese Puzzle-Box.
One must climb (not up) but into Fear and Trembling and then throw it away, to come out the other side transformed.
(There's the movement/moment when you give it and the movement/moment when you take it away.)
Perhaps faith eludes conceptual grasping because of its character of extreme subjectivity.
01.09.08
Driving a wedge between de Silentio and Kierkegaard, while still saving what is important from F&T. And this has something to with the relationship between F&T's form and its content. The entire text moves (unknown to de Silentio) on an assumption of what faith is. In other words, the reason why de Silentio concludes that faith is a paradox beyond the expressible/ ethical (and I'm not saying that he's wrong about that) is because... For the knight of faith, faith is the structure that gives form to the rest of thought. It is the scaffolding that is antecedent to (what Wittgenstein would describe as) empirical propositions about the world. Faith, therefore, is a kind of logic.
A parallel might be: It is a different matter to ask the bourgeois to doubt the existence (or will) of God than it is to ask the knight of faith to doubt so. You might as well ask him to doubt the existence of the hand before his face, etc. There are some things (defaced, followed by "propositions") that are beyond doubt (and testing). They exist in order to give shape to the process of doubting.
I would cite in support of this, de Silentio's constant scorn for different manifestations of 'calculation'.
F&T ought to leave the reader deeply disturbed. One (less obvious) reason for this is in the way that its content and its form push against one another.
01.11.08
In this paper, I will give a new reading of Fear and Trembling, namely (and this is important) my own.
My primary question and concern will be locating (deciding? pointing to?) Abraham's justification for the murder (or sacrifice) of Isaac, as told by Johannes de Silentio. (And this, too, is an important note. What the text tells us the most about is the psychology of de Silentio and his untenable relationship towards faith.)
Another way to state this paper's primary aim is to ask: What right does Abraham have to act the way that he does? [There is no answer to this question] But what it shows is these different possible attitudes (or relationships) towards faith.
[To Be Continued]
posted by Joel | 12:26 PM
1 Comments:
Well written article.
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