Just this morning I finished my first reading of "Fear and Trembling". It took me some time to get through. I read it in conjunction to some thoughts that a more modern author published about Kierkegaard. Earnest Becker makes quite a lot of Kierkegaard in his "The Denial of Death". I'm not sure what this says of Kierkegaard or of Becker or me for reading. I stumbled on Becker via Irvin Yalum's "Staring at the Sun". I see life much as Yalum portrays, at least what I can understand of reading his writings. I am not sorry I took the time to read this work.
Not sure what I think exactly of "Fear and Trembling".
I used to be a Christian. Revisiting my "old love" has it's own life. I still abhor child-sacrifice, something I never saw as prevalent in the Bible when I was a believer. It's in there though, more frequently than I would have ever admitted along with many other immoralities.
So Kierkegaard's use of the mythos of this legend is troubling to me. I think I could not use this story as a good example of existential angst. Of course I'm the one with no intentions of returning to the "fold" either. If this is even possible, I adhere to a non-faith position. In this, I suppose I could be criticized of some measure of "belief" even in my "faith" in non-belief.
I DO abhor certain parts of faith, especially parts that seem to demand of the adherent less than compassion toward his fellow man...we have too many examples, modern ones, to support this point. We all need to take a hard look at the dangers of any belief being an excuse for acts of violence against another.
No human, least of all a "Knight of Faith" should be morally or ethically justified in repeating the horrors of this legend. It's a nightmare gone really bad. Ishmael rejected, sent into the desert! Later, Isaac loved, but nearly sacrificed...don't forget the myth goes to the point of Isaac is bound and on the alter, the knife is raised, and then an angel intervenes and Abraham notices a ram caught in the thicket nearby...kinda corny if you ask me. What? all the other details of the sacrifice were attended too and suddenly at the critical moment, when the sacrifice is to be completed, suddenly we have a substitute in an almost unbelievable fulfillment of: "God will provide HIMSELF a lamb". Those who be evangelical Christians will understand that this legend/myth continues as a gory story of the Christ-man substitute atonement. Yahweh is a bloody god to say the least.
For all of Abram's "friend of God" relationship, women were low on the scale of importance. Oxen, sheep and other miscellaneous livestock were how riches were counted, even by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob...I fear even by some still today whom claim linage from Abraham. Obviously children and women were of less value. Just read the bible if you doubt my observation. Hagar seems to be reduced to absolutely nothing...this after doing merely what was expected of a slave! Her abandonment surrounds Sarah's intolerance of Ishmael being a normal adolescent giving Isaac a hard time.
Good thing I was not disowned for the same thing. I taunted my brother a plenty growing up...still do. Of course remember Bible words are magical, if you go by what the Bible-readers/believers say. (I hear similar thoughts deriving from the Koran-reading adherents, and the Torah-readers too.). Definitely in the Bible words are in some places equated with actions, even thought crimes are punishable in the New Testament--"if a man looks on a woman to lust after her in his heart". How is the NT better? Thought crimes. Christopher Hitchens did not raise enough cane while he lived on how diabolical faith can be when it comes to "thought crimes".
Indeed freedom of speech, of thought, still has some ways to go still today. Obviously cartoon artists are not safe. LGBT's aren't either. Doubtless words are more weighty than such actions as attempted man slaughter! "God told me" has a startling similarity to Abraham's "faith" story. Dear me. Here I go.
"A slow gradual revelation" was how it explained to me when I was a man of "faith". Yuck. We may be still dealing for many more hundreds of years with the fall-out of rejected and favored offspring of Abraham.
I cherish both Muhammadan and Jew. I grieve that seemingly these brethren are still so deeply divided. I can imagine the reasons, especially when the faith of the fathers cannot evolve. Abraham's offspring still struggles with acceptance and grandiosity. It's because they too are just human like me. I am too often jealous, bigoted, grandiose, and insecure. I can also be just as loving and caring as faith can make a man. Each faith has it's shining examples---Islam, Judaism, Christianity and all the other faiths that I don't know as much about.
People I feel are fundamentally free to choose their own beliefs and definitely have the right to explore their own thoughts and emotions. I have observed some religions and religious belief systems which short-circuit self-reflective thought and and prohibit exploring deeply one's own emotions. The safe guard might be in making sure my beliefs regardless of faith or non-faith don't dictate that I act in unkind or violent ways toward my fellow.
There a many modern examples of this kind of humanistic love inside of faith and out side of faith traditions. Unfortunately, hate is also prevalent inside of faith and outside the faith traditions.
Hopefully women are more important than cattle too, although I know of a despicable person that cannot shake this view of women in 2016.
I hope children deserve as much love and as little violence from their parents as is humanly possible.
I suppose incest to be a reality inside and outside the church, but I still cannot find an atheist so far who has not nearly come unglued on this first-hand account: a woman tells a story, and she has several witness to vouch for the story, that her evangelical pastor father sneered in contempt at her during a confrontation. It took many years and much courage for this woman to confront her abuser-pastor-father. Her pastor-father admitted to the incest with a sneer, "oh so your were not a virgin when you married?".
Recently I heard a second-hand account of a woman's father telling her that "because he loved her, he was introducing her to sex with him...so she could be a good wife...." I find this similar to the violent rapist jehadist's view of tormenting his victims by first kneeling in prayer to Allah then debasing himself with his victim! O for a Allah that was just, saw and heard the suffering of those who have no savior. The same can be said of the Christian faith of which I am much more familiar.
Even if these new ideas don't jive with the old faith. There is a morality that supersedes all contrived moral codes: humanism. I'm not sure it has a sacred book either, or a foundation, or a church to support it's ideals. Humanistic values dictate that child-sacrifice is still unacceptable as well as incest, as well as circumcision (both male and female). Altruistic humanistic values are a much feared possibility in people who cannot or are not allowed to explore what it means to be human and care for another human that is out side the family, clan, group, or state. Globalization is putting a huge dent in xenophobia...maybe or maybe not we or future generations will live long enough to evolve our short-comings.
I do abhor the thought-play of suspension of the ethical, in context of what I've written above. No critical-thinker would say it's ethical to propose, or carry out even the "attempted/stopped" murder on one's beloved child or hated child for that matter! Was Abraham psychotic? If not psychotic, was he replaying the common demands of the gods of his day and time to do the child-sacrifice thing?
Beelzebub I understand "required" human and specifically child sacrifice, if the historical, non-biblical accounts be true---the red-hot arms of metal Beelzebub received the live, flailing sacrificial infant. I know too much about this ancient tradition---it too is found in the Old Testament of what some still say today is the Good Book! How many more thousands of years will it take to evolve past this knowledge. Or should we ever forget, for the sake of those lost to such horrors?
This is "fear and trembling" to think that humans are capable of such horrible things, but not much has changed has it? Much later the Mayans, the Incas, all practiced human sacrifices. What was the Shoah, Trotskyism, and Fascism? Possibly we don't see it this way today, but the NFL might practice some form of human sacrifice that has it's roots in this horrid piece of human history. Obviously thoughtlessly throwing young men and women's lives away on repugnant war is another angle on this "man-killing-man" story of human existence. We have all sorts of reasons: "terrorist" really? by who's definition?
Back to Abraham...is it a story of one-upmanship--to be accepted by the some superior class in his day, this was possibly a "heroic deed"? Is the whole story made up....is this why we will never find a satisfactory understanding of this myth? The point perhaps is that Kierkegaard used the myth to tell us something or if he be king of irony, then the truth is found in what he did not say or in the irony of what he did say.
I for one would like to kick the author out of my mind, but do admire some aspects of what I imagine to be Soren's attempt at intellectual honesty. Intellectual honesty in his day was possibly some different than today.
Kierkegaard toward the end of the book makes something of human genius that I've read elsewhere. The idea, in my words is: at the edge of insanity is the lead-edge of human creativity and genius.
Does the artist fall over or not? Does Kierkegaard fall over this edge? This may depend wholly on how I and others perceive the individual on the edge. Maybe Kierkegaard was delusional in his own loss of Regine? Maybe he too thought of out-right murder of the competitor man that made Regine happy. Is "Fear and Trembling" just a repression of his own death-wish/instinct/denial?
I am not above the same elements of questioning, fearing, doubting, blindness (both explicit and implicit) and all that is part of the human struggle of knowing.
I am fascinated by the man Soren Kierkegaard, and others that have something to say in the 21st century regarding the proclivities to "beliefs" be it in gods, nation-states, political parties, or any aspect of human "belief" for that matter. Here Soren Kierkegaard might still be relevant. He made me think. This I like in philosophy.
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