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ynaa's review against another edition
4.0
Sunt sigură că am o pagina cu citate și idei despre asta dar inca nu am cugetat suficient la ea
Plus, cred că ar fi trebuit să vad despre ce-i vorba înainte să mă apuc, pt că urmăream sa găsesc ceva anume și nu am găsit neapărat acel lucru, tocmai de aia lăsăm analiza pentru mai târziu
Plus, cred că ar fi trebuit să vad despre ce-i vorba înainte să mă apuc, pt că urmăream sa găsesc ceva anume și nu am găsit neapărat acel lucru, tocmai de aia lăsăm analiza pentru mai târziu
sbenzell's review against another edition
4.0
I have always felt close to Abraham. My Torah portion at my Bar Mitzvah was "לֶךְ-לְךָ" or 'go forth' -- the portion in which Abraham is commanded by Providence to leave his house, country, and everything he has every known to build a new nation in the land of Canaan.
Kierkegaard repeatedly refers to Abraham as the 'Father of the Faith' and it is for reasons like this: Abram does weird, novel shit. He smashes the idols. He marches off into the desert with his family. He invents circumcision. He sort of tricks a Pharoah into seducing his wife. He launches night raids against powerful kings. He acts as though he will be the father of a great nation, despite being childless at an advanced age. He undertakes sacrifices of animals in specific combinations. He exiles his concubine and their son. He renames his wife from Sarai to Sarah. He lies to a different king about Sarah being his wife. He insists on paying for a burial cave that is offered to him for free. And, most famously, he undertakes to sacrifice his 'only' son (it is not his only son), who he loves.
Some of these actions are strange. Some are outright disturbing. We would not suggest to our friends that they act like Abram did! Kierkegaard sketches a story of a pastor sermonizing on Abraham. If the pastor heard that one of his flock was going to then kill his son, wouldn't he then rush to the congregant, and give a much more forceful sermon about how he shouldn't do so?
Kierkegaard says that we need to understand Abraham in order to understand 'faith' though. Why should we care about or want faith though? Part of the answer Kierkegaard would have anticipated that his readers would supply is that 'faith is the neccessary and sufficient condition for salvation' -- something that would have been drilled deeply into his pious Lutheran readers.
From the Wikipedia page on 'Sole Fide': "That is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law," said Luther. "Faith is that which brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ."[6] Thus faith, for Luther, is a gift from God, and "a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it."
So 'de Silentio' remarks that many people he knows think or claim to have faith, but certainly don't have what Abraham had. This book is devoted to explicating what that thing that Abraham had that made him great.
I could run through the vocabulary (and there's some fun chewy phrases: 'the teleological suspension of the ethical'; 'the absolute relation to the absolute'; 'the knight of faith and the knight of infinite resignation') but honestly I don't find it --that-- helpful.
The key, more secular insight that I hope to extract is that sometimes, if you want to be a GREAT person, you sometimes have to transcend the universal/ethical (i.e. the commonly understood practical and ethical wisdom/knowledge about how to live) and just do what you know to be right -- that which has been communicated to you by Providence ex nihilo. This phrasing doesn't appear in the text, but I would say an act of faith is the creation of a new value. The knight of infinite resignation makes hard choices between two bad options, and is tragic and sad. The knight of faith creates a new way of seeing the world which is incommensurable with previous value systems, and has faith that things will be better. This confidence is itself a paradox, because value systems are incommensurable. Likely, the way that Abraham's crazy actions always seem to work out for him and the proto-Jews he fathered is a metaphor for this: In the binding, Providence intervenes to make sure that Isaac isn't actually killed. Similarly, while the creation of a new value seems to be a destructive and irrational act, it's actually something else -- an incommensurably individualistic act. Only the actor knows for sure whether or not he's acting out of faith (or something lesser like delusion or tragic necessity).
Why would we want to be a GREAT person? de Silentio has his most biting critisism for those scum of the earth 'Associate Professors' who have the gaul to critique great men, but not to aim for it themselves. Is that accusation of cowardice galling enough?
Or do we need to look to the next round of authors, people who had read and been inspired by Kierkegaard to learn more. After Kierkegaard come Nietzche, Emerson, Kafka, Dostoyevsky. Maybe its fair to say that Kierkegaard lays out the paradox, but it is these people and the Existentialists that follow them, adapt the paradox for a more secular age. And maybe it is just the case that faith needs to lie geneologically on the path to true wisdom. Kierkegaard lays out two steps in this dance, a 'double movement' of the ironic dancer, but maybe the dance goes on afterwards.
What DO the children in his appendix who are done playing with their toys at midday do next? What do WE do once we have individuality? Is building that individuality alone enough to fill a life, or does that have to have a goal? Are we saved through faith alone, or does individuality itself have an end that we cannot see. I think now of 'Three Body Problem' and the idea of societies going through moral stages. Certainly individuals' individuality might teleologically build a better society, but is that the point of the individuality? Isn't the concept of 'points' and 'usefulness' bring us back to the 'universal' and then put us back in the place of the knight of infinite resignation?
There's definitely a paradox in here. One to keep an agnostic picking at for a long time.
Kierkegaard repeatedly refers to Abraham as the 'Father of the Faith' and it is for reasons like this: Abram does weird, novel shit. He smashes the idols. He marches off into the desert with his family. He invents circumcision. He sort of tricks a Pharoah into seducing his wife. He launches night raids against powerful kings. He acts as though he will be the father of a great nation, despite being childless at an advanced age. He undertakes sacrifices of animals in specific combinations. He exiles his concubine and their son. He renames his wife from Sarai to Sarah. He lies to a different king about Sarah being his wife. He insists on paying for a burial cave that is offered to him for free. And, most famously, he undertakes to sacrifice his 'only' son (it is not his only son), who he loves.
Some of these actions are strange. Some are outright disturbing. We would not suggest to our friends that they act like Abram did! Kierkegaard sketches a story of a pastor sermonizing on Abraham. If the pastor heard that one of his flock was going to then kill his son, wouldn't he then rush to the congregant, and give a much more forceful sermon about how he shouldn't do so?
Kierkegaard says that we need to understand Abraham in order to understand 'faith' though. Why should we care about or want faith though? Part of the answer Kierkegaard would have anticipated that his readers would supply is that 'faith is the neccessary and sufficient condition for salvation' -- something that would have been drilled deeply into his pious Lutheran readers.
From the Wikipedia page on 'Sole Fide': "That is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law," said Luther. "Faith is that which brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ."[6] Thus faith, for Luther, is a gift from God, and "a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it."
So 'de Silentio' remarks that many people he knows think or claim to have faith, but certainly don't have what Abraham had. This book is devoted to explicating what that thing that Abraham had that made him great.
I could run through the vocabulary (and there's some fun chewy phrases: 'the teleological suspension of the ethical'; 'the absolute relation to the absolute'; 'the knight of faith and the knight of infinite resignation') but honestly I don't find it --that-- helpful.
The key, more secular insight that I hope to extract is that sometimes, if you want to be a GREAT person, you sometimes have to transcend the universal/ethical (i.e. the commonly understood practical and ethical wisdom/knowledge about how to live) and just do what you know to be right -- that which has been communicated to you by Providence ex nihilo. This phrasing doesn't appear in the text, but I would say an act of faith is the creation of a new value. The knight of infinite resignation makes hard choices between two bad options, and is tragic and sad. The knight of faith creates a new way of seeing the world which is incommensurable with previous value systems, and has faith that things will be better. This confidence is itself a paradox, because value systems are incommensurable. Likely, the way that Abraham's crazy actions always seem to work out for him and the proto-Jews he fathered is a metaphor for this: In the binding, Providence intervenes to make sure that Isaac isn't actually killed. Similarly, while the creation of a new value seems to be a destructive and irrational act, it's actually something else -- an incommensurably individualistic act. Only the actor knows for sure whether or not he's acting out of faith (or something lesser like delusion or tragic necessity).
Why would we want to be a GREAT person? de Silentio has his most biting critisism for those scum of the earth 'Associate Professors' who have the gaul to critique great men, but not to aim for it themselves. Is that accusation of cowardice galling enough?
Or do we need to look to the next round of authors, people who had read and been inspired by Kierkegaard to learn more. After Kierkegaard come Nietzche, Emerson, Kafka, Dostoyevsky. Maybe its fair to say that Kierkegaard lays out the paradox, but it is these people and the Existentialists that follow them, adapt the paradox for a more secular age. And maybe it is just the case that faith needs to lie geneologically on the path to true wisdom. Kierkegaard lays out two steps in this dance, a 'double movement' of the ironic dancer, but maybe the dance goes on afterwards.
What DO the children in his appendix who are done playing with their toys at midday do next? What do WE do once we have individuality? Is building that individuality alone enough to fill a life, or does that have to have a goal? Are we saved through faith alone, or does individuality itself have an end that we cannot see. I think now of 'Three Body Problem' and the idea of societies going through moral stages. Certainly individuals' individuality might teleologically build a better society, but is that the point of the individuality? Isn't the concept of 'points' and 'usefulness' bring us back to the 'universal' and then put us back in the place of the knight of infinite resignation?
There's definitely a paradox in here. One to keep an agnostic picking at for a long time.
7anooch's review against another edition
3.0
I read a terrible translation, don’t take my word for it.
ebroadbent22's review against another edition
No rating, because leaving a rating would suggest that I understood this book and felt qualified to make a judgement on it’s quality.
I consider myself a smart person. I have a masters degree, I’m well-read, not even new to philosophy. This book made me feel incredibly stupid.
I consider myself a smart person. I have a masters degree, I’m well-read, not even new to philosophy. This book made me feel incredibly stupid.
mashashin's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
omelas33's review against another edition
5.0
Where have all of these books been all my life? why have I been so blind? Why was my sphere of perception so small. I mean why was I never exposed to these kind of conversations and counter arguments? why?
“Faith keeps fairly ordinary company. It belongs with feeling mood, idiosyncrasy, hysteria and the rest.“
passion but definitely not reason
Luke 14.26, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and yeah, his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”
I feel like this man represents a tiny spark a light thats still left in my conscience. The part of me that has not completely gone over to the dark side.
“No person, who has learnt that to exist as the individual is the most terrifying thing of all, will be afraid of saying, it is the greatest.” Let that sink in
Till the last line of the epilogue I was in raptured. At the end he has concluded that ‘Faith is one of the highest form of human passion and understanding it is the work and of lifestyle and starting point for everyone is ground zero. Anti Hegel till the end, lol!
“Faith keeps fairly ordinary company. It belongs with feeling mood, idiosyncrasy, hysteria and the rest.“
passion but definitely not reason
Luke 14.26, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and yeah, his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”
I feel like this man represents a tiny spark a light thats still left in my conscience. The part of me that has not completely gone over to the dark side.
“No person, who has learnt that to exist as the individual is the most terrifying thing of all, will be afraid of saying, it is the greatest.” Let that sink in
Till the last line of the epilogue I was in raptured. At the end he has concluded that ‘Faith is one of the highest form of human passion and understanding it is the work and of lifestyle and starting point for everyone is ground zero. Anti Hegel till the end, lol!
mdslattery's review against another edition
4.0
Take these four stars with a grain of salt; any kind of quantitative review is reductive here. I’ve been captivated and confused by the story of Abraham before, and Kierkegaard’s greatest strength in this text is his passionate and unflinching acknowledgement of the deep incomprehensibility of faith. The prose (in a readable translation) is striking, saying what it means but meaning so much that it becomes strange in and of itself, further capturing the intensity of Kierkegaard’s thought. I leave with concepts and sensibilities that are already becoming a part of my thinking.
dunigan's review against another edition
4.0
For anyone looking to get into Kierkegaard, start with this one. Relatively short (~160 pages) and relatively readable analysis of the story of Abraham from the bible. Compared to Sickness Unto Death, Fear and Trembling is far more approachable, and while Either/Or is also pretty readable, it is four times the length of Fear and Trembling, making it a bit of a chore to finish.
In the least dense portions of this book, you really get an appreciation for Kierkegaard's ability as a writer. There really is some beautiful prose here, in a purely aesthetic sense—especially in the Attunement section at the beginning. In the most dense portions, you get the impression Kierkegaard was in a frenzied ecstatic state while writing, and it's pretty easy to get lost, but it is still a very rich reading experience. I'd recommend watching some youtube analyses as you read, because this helped me a lot with some of the more impenetrable portions of the text.
In the least dense portions of this book, you really get an appreciation for Kierkegaard's ability as a writer. There really is some beautiful prose here, in a purely aesthetic sense—especially in the Attunement section at the beginning. In the most dense portions, you get the impression Kierkegaard was in a frenzied ecstatic state while writing, and it's pretty easy to get lost, but it is still a very rich reading experience. I'd recommend watching some youtube analyses as you read, because this helped me a lot with some of the more impenetrable portions of the text.
megahugestrike's review against another edition
4.0
Didn't completely this one but will summarize for my own understanding. The main point I go from this book is that Kierkegaard believes that ones individual relationship with god is both incomprehensible to others but also higher than the "universal", which is what he calls ethics. He explains this using the story of Abraham sacrificing Issac in the Bible.
He considers Abraham a "knight of faith", a person who has absolute faith that god will lead him to act in the right way. However, Kierkegaard also claims that to both himself and everyone else who judges him using conventional ethics (the universal), we can only judge him as a murderer. This is because the motives of the knight of faith are unexplainable to other people, and says that if we tried to find this knight of faith in society they would look and act no different than any other person, but individually would have a deep faith in god. Thus these knights of faith live a life of solitude due to their relationship with god, which causes their actions to be incomprehensible to those outside this personal relationship. Additionally, the knight of faith puts god above the universal, since Abraham knows that killing his son is wrong under conventional ethics, but makes a suspension of the ethical due to his faith and does it anyway.
He contrasts the knight of faith with the "tragic hero", who is similar to the knight of faith but whose actions are acceptable by the universal. To be come a tragic hero one must perform "infinite resignation", which is the act of sacrificing what is closest to you. An example of the tragic hero he gives is Agamemnon in The Illiad, who sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to appease the gods in order to lead the Greeks to victory in the Trojan War. With this sacrifice Agamemnon performs the act of infinite resignation, similar to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Issac in the Bible. The difference is that Agamemnon's actions are comprehensible by the other Greeks, and are thus part of the universal ethics if one believes that fighting in the Trojan War is ethical. In order to become a knight of faith, one must go one step further and make their sacrifice for no reason other than faith in god. While Agamemnon sacrifices to appease the gods, this sacrifice is not because of his faith in god, but because of the Greek's goal to sail to Troy. On the other hand, Abraham sacrifices without knowing god's motives, only doing so out of faith in god, and his actions are unexplainable to everyone. By doing this Abraham is more courageous than Agamemnon.
While this doesn't really make much sense logically, Kierkegaard himself admits this, as to him "faith beings where thinking leaves off". I liked that he admitted this rather than trying to explain his argument as rational, and thought the ideas in this book were definitely interesting. Kierkegaard is considered the father of existentialism, which can be seen in this work with its emphasis on individual knowledge over universally held ideas. The main issue I had with it was that though the work was already short, he still takes rambles too long to say what amounted to just a few important ideas, but I did find these ideas interesting.
He considers Abraham a "knight of faith", a person who has absolute faith that god will lead him to act in the right way. However, Kierkegaard also claims that to both himself and everyone else who judges him using conventional ethics (the universal), we can only judge him as a murderer. This is because the motives of the knight of faith are unexplainable to other people, and says that if we tried to find this knight of faith in society they would look and act no different than any other person, but individually would have a deep faith in god. Thus these knights of faith live a life of solitude due to their relationship with god, which causes their actions to be incomprehensible to those outside this personal relationship. Additionally, the knight of faith puts god above the universal, since Abraham knows that killing his son is wrong under conventional ethics, but makes a suspension of the ethical due to his faith and does it anyway.
He contrasts the knight of faith with the "tragic hero", who is similar to the knight of faith but whose actions are acceptable by the universal. To be come a tragic hero one must perform "infinite resignation", which is the act of sacrificing what is closest to you. An example of the tragic hero he gives is Agamemnon in The Illiad, who sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to appease the gods in order to lead the Greeks to victory in the Trojan War. With this sacrifice Agamemnon performs the act of infinite resignation, similar to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Issac in the Bible. The difference is that Agamemnon's actions are comprehensible by the other Greeks, and are thus part of the universal ethics if one believes that fighting in the Trojan War is ethical. In order to become a knight of faith, one must go one step further and make their sacrifice for no reason other than faith in god. While Agamemnon sacrifices to appease the gods, this sacrifice is not because of his faith in god, but because of the Greek's goal to sail to Troy. On the other hand, Abraham sacrifices without knowing god's motives, only doing so out of faith in god, and his actions are unexplainable to everyone. By doing this Abraham is more courageous than Agamemnon.
While this doesn't really make much sense logically, Kierkegaard himself admits this, as to him "faith beings where thinking leaves off". I liked that he admitted this rather than trying to explain his argument as rational, and thought the ideas in this book were definitely interesting. Kierkegaard is considered the father of existentialism, which can be seen in this work with its emphasis on individual knowledge over universally held ideas. The main issue I had with it was that though the work was already short, he still takes rambles too long to say what amounted to just a few important ideas, but I did find these ideas interesting.