Fear And Trembling

The third problem is “Was Abraham ethically defensible in keeping silent about his purpose before Sarah, before Eleazar, before Isaac?” (152). Here, the ethical is once again defined as the universal. Anything ethical is to be disclosed or shared. However, the individual remains hidden.

Several stories can illustrate the difference between the disclosed and the hidden. The first concerns a couple that is in love but must keep their love a secret because the woman is forced into marrying another man. The couple’s decision to hide their love is a free act, but ethics would demand that the couple take responsibility for the secret they have failed to reveal.

Another story comes from the play Iphigenia at Aulis by Euripides in which Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia. Aesthetics requires him to maintain his silence and not seek comfort from others by sharing his pain. But aesthetics also implies that he must tell Iphigenia of his actions in order to see his daughter cry and experience the spiritual struggle of watching her receive the news. Aesthetics also allows an escape for Agamemnon, as he can tell his servant to tell his daughter and his wife the news. Ethics would not allow this loophole. Since he is a tragic hero, Agamemnon exists in the universal and must reveal everything.

In the story of Amor and Psyche, Amor tells Psyche that their child will be divine if she keeps her pregnancy hidden but will be human if she reveals it. This creates a paradox but also implies that disclosure is the act of humans rather than gods. It also implies that the tragic hero is human. But there is another paradox. Silence is a form of temptation, but it is also the mutual understanding that exists between God and an individual.

Aristotle’s Poetics offers the story of a bridegroom who is told by an oracle that he will suffer a great disaster after marrying his bride due to the gods’ jealousy of her beauty. This would-be husband has three options. He can remain silent and marry the girl; he can remain silent and not marry the girl; or he can tell the girl what the oracle said. One cannot go beyond the tragic hero created by the third option since the prophecy is not merely a private matter between the bridegroom and the gods. The bride would understand him if he spoke, so remaining silent would only be the result of him desiring an absolute relationship with the universal. However, if the prophecy had been a private experience, he would not have the option of speaking, since no one would understand him. The knight of faith can find inner peace, but an aesthetic or tragic hero is constantly troubled by what the ethical requires of him.

Then there is the story of Agnes and the merman. Agnes falls in love with the merman. He is ready to bring her with him into the sea when he sees faith in her eyes. He brings her back to her home because he is unwilling to harm the innocence and humility he recognizes in her. The merman has a choice between hiddenness and revelation. While choosing to keep his actions private causes repentance, the act also leaves both him and Agnes unhappy. He will be unhappy because he loves her and will know he caused her pain; she will be unhappy because she loves him and will not have him in her life. The merman could instead give in to his temptation for repentance by saving her through a deception that would result in her losing her love for him. If he did this, he would transcend the universal. The merman could also be rescued from the “demoniac” elements of repentance by doing one of two things: remaining hidden and having faith that Agnes will be saved by God, or allowing himself to be saved by Agnes by marrying her (178). This paradox is similar to Abraham’s. The merman is forced to make the movement of repentance because of his guilt; this movement makes him higher than the universal. However, to return to the universal, he must make another movement that requires him to embrace the absurd. He cannot return to the universal by his own strength. The problem is that few understand the absurd or seek deeper spiritual understanding, so convinced are they that they already know the truth.

Then there is the Book of Tobit. Tobit wants to marry Sarah, but each of her seven previous husbands has been killed on their wedding nights by a demon who is in love with Sarah. Tobit is not the hero of the story. He simply follows through on his love and marries a woman who will (indirectly) cause his death. The hero is Sarah for allowing herself to take responsibility for Tobit’s fate. She demonstrates that she has faith she will not grow to hate Tobit if he survives their wedding night because she will not feel indebted to him for his courage. She requires sympathy, which is a kind of public humiliation. Sarah exists outside the universal because of the pain she causes her lovers. Her reality is a paradox through which her existence allows her to choose God or the devil at any time. The demoniac expresses itself through hatred of sympathy and of other humans, while the spiritual and divine express themselves through Sarah’s continued faith.

Finally, there is the story of Faust. Faust deserves sympathy even though he doubts the divine. The fact that he keeps his doubts hidden makes him sympathetic since the revelation of his doubts would cause the world great strife. Ethics technically requires him to speak, but the silence is justified because Faust is an individual standing “in absolute relation to the absolute” (200). However, it does place Faust in the paradox of faith. In the New Testament, Jesus suggests silence can be ethical. In the Sermon on the Mount, he tells religious fasters that they ought to wash their faces so no one will be able to see they are fasting. There are cases in which one should deceive the world around them.

But what about Abraham? To be an aesthetic hero, he would have to remain silent to save another person, which he does not do. Abraham does not remain silent to save his son but to cover up his plan to kill Isaac at God’s behest. He is also not a tragic hero, since ethics would also require him to explain his actions. Abraham is either beyond the ethical, or he is lost. Unlike a tragic hero, he cannot speak and cannot be understood. But, paradoxically, he could speak if he wanted to and stop the whole process of killing Isaac. Doing so would make his situation a spiritual trial and not something greater. But he does not speak, as his one temptation is to the ethical, to the action of revealing everything and saving his son. Still, he also cannot explain his faith. No one could understand that he plans to kill Isaac but also plans to get Isaac back due to his belief in the absurd.

The Hebrew Bible quotes Abraham saying only one thing to Isaac on their journey to Mount Moriah. In response to a question about why Abraham has no burnt offering to provide God, Abraham tells Isaac that God will provide the lamb necessary for the burnt offering. He does not need to say anything more. The tragic hero whose intellect determines his heroism would need last words, as the words are what make him immortal. For the action-based hero, the words are a distraction; but for the intellectual hero, last words are what his life has built up to and what represents his purpose.

Abraham is more like the intellectual tragic hero. He is the father of faith and needs to say something, but, paradoxically, he cannot speak. If Abraham were to respond to Isaac’s question with the truth (that Isaac himself is being offered to God), he would give up everything. Plus, the time for speech would have been well before leaving for Mount Moriah. Similarly, Abraham cannot ethically lie to Isaac by ignoring the question or feigning that he does not know why he has no burnt offering. Instead, he offers a true statement that does not reveal anything to Isaac. God technically will provide the lamb, but Isaac does not understand that he will be the lamb. God still could provide an actual lamb by virtue of the absurd, though Abraham himself has already made the movement of resignation and intends to provide Isaac as the offering. Abraham fulfills his ethical obligation to speak in response to Isaac’s question without revealing anything. He speaks but is not understood.

Ultimately, Abraham is either the father of faith, standing beyond the ethical and in absolute relation to the absolute in a way that cannot be spoken or understood; or, he is lost.