What strikes me about Kierkegaard's reading of the Abraham story is not the absurd implications of faith (that Abe actually does go to the top of the mountain with the intention of killing his son but believe that his son will not die) but that he admits to it later. Hearing the voice of God and following his orders makes sense. Pure faith could drive a person who truly believed to commit sins if they were ordained by the big man himself. However, it seems so odd that after the event he would climb down the mountain and tell everybody all about it.
It is an example of a truth that cannot be communicated. A distinctly private relationship that has no place in the public realm of ethical. This clear rejection of Hegel's idea of truth being something that one must be able to communicate strikes me. However, I am unsure if that for something to be true one must be able to make it comprehensible for another. Is just saying it enough? There are so many incomprehensible things that still seem like they could be true (like the existence of god, for example).
Abe could have said anything when he came down from that mountain. God never told him that he had to communicate this event to anyone else. But it almost seems as if he felt an obligation to attempt to communicate this incommunicable truth. This leave me wondering if truth is something that is necessarily comprehensible or communicable. But, maybe, the will to communicate a truth, believable, comprehensible or otherwise, holds some truth in and of itself. Maybe a mere gesture or suggestion of a possible truth can contain a truth of the agent attempting to communicate: that they believe what they are saying to be true.
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You raise an interesting point, and your line of questioning reminds me of a part of the second problema where Kierkegaard claims that the true faith knight does not try to help others. Wouldn’t sharing his story, which is held as the paragon of faith, be a violation of this stipulation?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why Abraham would try and tell his story to the people he returns to. First of all, they could call him crazy, and second of all, he was unable to speak when he was riding to the top of the mountain, so I don't know how he would be able to communicate that experience. The relation he has with God only seems to be something he and God can speak of and only to each other.
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