The Binding of Abraham: Levinass Moment in Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling
Most readings of Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling take its account of the Abraham and Isaac story to imply fairly obviously that duty towards God is absolutely distinct from, and therefore capable of superseding, duty towards neighbor or son. This paper will argue, however, that the Akedah, or bind...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer Netherlands
[2017]
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| In: |
Sophia
Year: 2017, Volume: 56, Issue: 1, Pages: 81-98 |
| IxTheo Classification: | CB Christian life; spirituality HB Old Testament KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history NCB Personal ethics TK Recent history VA Philosophy |
| Further subjects: | B
Abraham
B Time-consciousness B Ethics B Isaac B love of neighbor B Kierkegaard B Levinas B Fear and Trembling |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Most readings of Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling take its account of the Abraham and Isaac story to imply fairly obviously that duty towards God is absolutely distinct from, and therefore capable of superseding, duty towards neighbor or son. This paper will argue, however, that the Akedah, or binding of Isaac, as Kierkegaards pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio, depicts it, binds Abraham to Isaac in a revitalized neighbor relation that is not at all subordinate, in any simple way, to Abrahams God-relation. The two relations are defined by an intimate mutual tension, a dynamic of passionate inwardness that responds to the immediate demands of the neighbor as fully as the ethics that Levinas notoriously accuses Kierkegaard of having ignored. It is also the dynamic of time consciousness, which for Levinas is fundamentally ethical. I show that Kierkegaardian faith can be viewed as the dynamic of time-consciousness transformed by passionate inwardness into ones God-relationthat is, converted into a certain religious mode of life. The ethics corresponding to thisan ethics of neighbor love superseding the social morality that Silentio, following Hegel, calls the ethicalwould then be the same dynamic of time-consciousness transformed by passionate inwardness into ones neighbor-relation. The key to the argument is seeing the need to substitute for the spatial dichotomy interior/exterior, which results in so much trouble when comparing Levinas and Kierkegaard, the temporal contraries giving up and getting back. |
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| ISSN: | 1873-930X |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Sophia
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s11841-015-0496-7 |