I. Preliminary Thoughts on Kierkegaard

II. Introduction

III. Summary of the Situation as Silentio sees it.

IV. The Person of Faith is Compared with the Musician

1. "A single individual, who, after being subordinate to the single individual as the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single is superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in absolute relation to the absolute." (p. 56)

V. Possible Objections to the Analogy

1. Music has already been used to explain the esthetic sphere of existence
2. An imitation implies a universalization

1. "If occasionally there is any response at all these days with regard to the paradox, it is likely to be: One judges it by the result… Such behavior toward greatness betrays a strange mixture of arrogance and wretchedness because they feel that their lives are in no way allied with the lives of the great. Anyone with even a smattering erectioris ingenii [of nobility of nature] never becomes an utterly cold and clammy worm, and when he approaches greatness, he is never deviod of the thought that since the creation of the world it has been customary for the result to come last and that if one is truly going to learn something from greatness one must be particulalry aware of the beginning. If the one who is to act wants to judge himself by the result, he will never begin." (p. 62-63)

1. Silentio speaks against the use of analogies

1. "What their wisdom amounts to is the beautiful proposition that basically everything is thes ame. If one looks more closely, I doubt very much that anyone in the whole wide world will find one single analogy, except for a later on, which proves nothing if it is certain that Abraham represents faith and that it is manifested normatively to him, whose life not only is the most paradoxical that can be thought. He acts by virtue of the absurd, for it is precisely the absurd that he as the single individual is higher than the universal." (p.56)

VII. My responses

1. This is different from the esthetic because it is not immediate
2. We are not looking at the consequences of Abraham’s action, but rather the faith that he had at his present moment.

1. We try to understand how he came to his individual faith relationship with God.
2. Process of appropriation (example from Dr. Hare’s Senior Seminar class)

C. Analogies imply similarities and dissilimarities (example from Dr. Crump’s Biblical Theology class).

1. Silentio seems to be arguing against taking faith lightly, as if it were something that people did mindlessly and with contempt.
2. "What their wisdom amounts to is the beautiful proposition that basically everything is the same." (p. 56)
3. Each individual faith relationship with God should be unique.

VIII. Conclusion

1. Recognize that analogies will fail at some point
2. A person must go through a long hard process of development in her life and be inferior to the universal by imitating those before her, and then by virtue of the absurdity, she is able to act in such a way that her action becomes superior to the universal and stands in absolute relation to the absolute.

back to sacrod's philosophy page