INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY

KARDINAAL MERCIERPLEIN 2
BE-3000 LEUVEN

KATHOLIEKE
UNIVERSITEIT
LEUVEN

Philosophical Mindfulness of Fidelity in Fear and

Trembling

Supervisor: Prof. William Desmond

A thesis presented in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Master of Philosophy (MPhil)
By Takeshi Morisato
Leuven, May 2012

A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; as I have
loved you, that you also love one another.
John 13: 34

Thus no generation has learned from another to love, no generation begins

at any other point than at the beginning, no generation has a shorter task assigned
to it than had the preceding generation, and if here one is not willing like the
previous generations to stop with love but would go further, this is but idle and
foolish talk.
Johannes de Silentio, Epilogue to Fear and Trembling

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction.............................................................................................................. 2
1. The Universal Command of Practical Reason and the Rational Faith: Why is
Abraham Lost for Kant?............................................................................... 5
1.1. Problems and Concerns........................................................................ 15
2. The Dynamic Universal and the Absolute Spirit: Why is Abraham lost for
Hegel?.......................................................................................................... 20
2.1. Problems and Concerns........................................................................ 28
3. Praising Abraham: Reason's Fidelity to Absolute Love.............................. 38
Conclusion............................................................................................................... 54
Bibliography............................................................................................................ 55

Introduction
If Aristotle is right in saying that all men by nature desire to know1 and
Dostoyevsky in showing that man has a basic desire to worship, then there will
always be a question concerning the relationship between faith and reason. Just as we
need to know, we need to believe; and as we are called to worship, we cannot help
contemplating what we are to believe in. So, we face an undying dialogue between
two disciplines driven by the basic desires of human existencei.e., philosophy and
religion. The central theme of this dialogue would be to ask whether or not there is a
continuity between them. This recurring question in the history of philosophy
challenges those who have come to their faith in the Judeo-Christian tradition as well
as to those who find in themselves the need to give a philosophical account of such
religious belief.2
Sren Kierkegaard struggles with this question and examines the ways in
which his intellectual forefathersi.e., Kant and Hegelformulate their answers.
Although Kant and Hegel disagree on what they can mean by reason, they seem to
agree that religious teachings in Christianity are essentially in agreement with their
systematic configurations of rational ethics. Kierkegaard, however, seems to think that
their interpretations of religious doctrines, made in accordance with each of their own
systematic conceptions of ethics, would risk the reduction of the relationship between
God and humanity to the immanent universality of human/societal self-relation
grounded in the autonomy of reason.3 And this radical commitment to reason's
autonomy as the sole basis for our living a good life foreshadows two crucial
problems vis--vis Judeo-Christian fidelity: (1) God in the classical sense of divine
transcendence escapes the framework of practical and dialectical thinking and (2) the
singularity of each individual human being in its relation to the divine absolute is
extirpated in the universality of self-determining reason. What concerns Kierkegaard
1. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980a. See also Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Grand Inquisitor, The
Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Modern Library, 1996), 28183.
2. Cf. Sren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H.
Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), 2:199200 (1541), hereafter JP. Kierkegaard
refers to certain poets and philosophers as the thinkers in the royal procession of the password
which God whispered in Adam's ear, which one generation is supposed to deliver to the next and which
shall be demanded of them on judgment day. In light of this passage, Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard
will be treated as the decisive messengers of the truth in the history of philosophy.
3. Kierkegaard's criticism of rational ethics will be derived mainly from Fear and Trembling,
ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980),
hereafter FT.

here is that the systematic accounts of God in Kantian and Hegelian philosophy might
be unfaithful to the sense of the divine absolute worshiped in the Judeo-Christian
tradition and also dismissive of the possibility of each human's relation to God in his
irreducible singularity.
Kierkegaard does not directly articulate these criticisms, but his literary
invention, Johannes de Silentio, guides us to see them through contemplating
Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac in Fear and Trembling. In facing this religious image,
Johannes summarizes the relation of a single individual to the immanent universality
of the rationally articulated ethics as follows:
1) The ethical as such is the universal and rests immanent in itself, has nothing
outside itself that is its telos but is itself the telos for everything outside itself.4
2) The single individual has his ethical task continually to express himself in the
universal and annul his singularity in order to become the universal.5
3) As soon as the single individual asserts himself in his singularity before the
universal, he sins, and only by acknowledging this can he be reconciled again
with the universal.6
If this [universal] is the highest that can be said of man and his existence, Johannes
further articulates, then the ethical is of the same nature as a person's eternal
salvation, which is his telos forevermore and at all times.7 Put differently, if the
highest end to which human freedom must be determined is this universal, to be
religious ultimately is to be ethical and thereby a single individual cannot relate
himself to the divine absolute without determining himself to be the universal through
negating his singular particularity; for the absolute in this framework of rational ethics
is the ethical universal. If this general structure of rational ethics is inherent in the
Kantian or Hegelian configuration of the divinity-humanity relation, Kierkegaard's
concerns come to the fore: God is reduced to the immanent totality of the ethical
universal and human relation to this divine absolute requires the extirpation of one's
singularity in the process of determining oneself to be the universal.
Now Kierkegaard turns to the traditional image of faiththe Akedahand
calls for the necessity of examining if there is something more to be seen beyond the
framework of rational ethics. Abraham, who follows the divine command that is in
4. FT, 54. See also FT, 68, 82.
5. FT, 54 (my paraphrase).
6. FT, 54. See also, FT, 6162.
7. FT, 54.

conflict with his ethical obligations to others, looks like he is asserting himself as a
single individual before the universal; and in relating himself as the single individual
to the divine absolute without determining himself to be the universal, his action
points toward the possibility of divinity as being transcendent to the immanent telos
of the ethical universality. In this relation to the divine transcendence, singularity of
Abraham's existence is held as being irreducible to the rational totality of the ethical
universal. Thus, the Akedah instantiates the tension between divine command (based
on heteronomy of faith) and ethical interrelations of human beings (based on
autonomy of reason) and calls for the necessity of examining
whether this story contains any higher expression for the ethical that can
ethically explain his behavior, can ethically justify his suspending the ethical
obligation to the son, but without moving beyond the teleology of the ethical.8
If God is the highest expression of human destiny transcendent to the ethical universal
and man's relation to this absolute in his singularity ought to be prior to and
foundational for his ethical self/inter-relations, the autonomy of human reason would
have to be relativized in relation to God as the highest end. But if divine solicitation
from beyond the rational totality of the ethical is inconceivable and so the latter, in
turn, is the absolute, Kierkegaard's criticisms are ungrounded and Abraham's act both
unethical and sacrilegious.
So, if we understand the significance of Abraham's story, we will be able to reconfigure the relation of reason's autonomy to Judeo-Christian fidelity in the context
of modern philosophy. Apropos of this religious image, then, this thesis will try to
give an answer to the age-old question of faith and reason in threefold. The first
chapter will examine whether Kantian morality and moral religion will fall victim to
what Kierkegaard sees as the problems of the rational ethics in Fear and Trembling.
The second chapter will investigate whether Hegelian systematic thinking of the
ethical, which claims to surpass Kantian practical reason, can fully answer
Kierkegaard's concerns. Finally, the third chapter will show how de Silentio' analyses
of the paradoxical structure of faith can open up the possibility of reformulating the
continuity between faith and reason without reducing the divinity-humanity relation to
human/social self-relation, or losing the classical sense of divine transcendence, or
extirpating the singularity of each of our existence in our relation to the divine
absolute.
8. FT, 57.

1. The Universal Command of Practical Reason and the Rational Faith:

Why is Abraham Lost for Kant?
Johannes' presentation of the ethical is structurally closer to Kantian than
Hegelian ethical thinking. The universal in his dialectical lyric is placed in its
oppositional relation to the particularity of a singular individual and the dualistic
division between the universal and the particular is much more straightforwardly
present in Kantian Moralitt than in Hegelian Sittlichkeit. Ulrich Knappe echoes this
point by arguing that the command of the categorical imperative to treat oneself and
others always as ends in themselves and not as a mere means to an end is implicitly
expressed [in the immanent telos of Johannes' ethical]9 and further articulates,
any end which is not in agreement with an ethical end must be understood as
being on the other side of the complete universality of the ethical command
characteristic of the categorical imperative.10
This is to say, Johannes' universal/particular distinction is seen as the dualistic
opposition between rational ends determined by the a priori categorical imperative
and those conditioned by a posteriori incentives. Stephen N. Dunning concurs with
this interpretation by saying that the ethical is a matter of categorical imperatives,
duties that are obligatory without regard to particular circumstances.11 So, as C.
Stephen Evans suggests, the main target [of Johannes' criticisms of the ethical] . . . is
a view of the religious life that interprets faith as reducible to a life of moral
striving.12
9. Ulrich Knappe, Theory and Practice in Kant and Kierkegaard (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
2004), 80.
10. Knappe, 80.
11. Stephen N. Dunning, Kierkegaard's Dialectic of Inwardness: A Structural Analysis of the
Theory of Stages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 115.
12. C. Stephen Evans, Faith as the Telos of Morality: A Reading of Fear and Trembling, in
International Kierkegaard Commentary: Fear and Trembling and Repetition, ed. Robert L. Perkins
(Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1993), 15, hereafter IKC. Note here that most scholars
recognize a strong Kantian trend in Johannes' account of the ethical but many of them also discount this
position by recognizing three Hegelian elements: 1) the secondary status of religion to philosophy
where Hegel goes further than faith, 2) the tragic hero (e.g. Agamemnon, Jephthah and Brutus) qua
the beloved child of ethics is presented as renouncing his child (i.e. the particular) for the State (i.e.
the universal), and 3) Hegel is mentioned by name in every Problema including the direct reference
to The Good and Conscience in Philosophy of Right. Evans, Perkins, Mark C. Taylor, Robert Stern,
Merold Westphal, to name a few, put a stronger emphasis on these Hegelian factors while Knappe, Paul
Holmer et al focus on the Kantian trend. What is most outstanding, however, is that two renowned
investigations on Kierkegaard's relation to Kant and Hegel are inconclusive on this matter. Cf. Ronald
M. Green, Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1992), 89; Jon Stewart, Hegel's View of Moral Conscience and Kierkegaard's Interpretation of
Abraham, Kierkegaard's Relation to Hegel Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003), 311, 323. Green concludes that we cannot answer the question about the presence of a Kantian

In addition to this initial resemblance between Kantian morality and Johannes'

ethical, Kant explicitly argues that Abraham would have to be unethical and insane for
thinking that the order of sacrificing his son comes from the divine authority, let alone
determining his subjective principle of volition (i.e. maxim) in accordance with it. In
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant calls the divine command
personally communicated to Abraham a theistic miracle13 and articulates,
reason can at least have a negative criterion at its disposal, namely, if
something is represented as commanded by God in a direct manifestation of
him yet is directly in conflict with morality, it cannot be a divine miracle
despite every appearance of being one (e.g., if a father were ordered to kill his
son who, so far as he knows, is totally innocent).14
In the Conflict of the Faculties, Kant also examines the possibility of authenticating
any personal revelation qua vox dei and states:
in some cases the human being can be sure that the voice he hears is not God's;
for if the voice commands him to do something contrary to the moral law, then
no matter how majestic the apparition may be, and no matter how it may seem
ethics in Fear and Trembling with certainty because the ethical position presented there, without
attribution, seems to combine themes from the entire rationalist tradition begun by Kant. Stewart
indicates that the selected section of Philosophy of Right in Problema I appears in 'Morality' chapter,
and thus the figures treated there belong to the sphere of abstract thought, which (Hegel believes) is
prominent in Kant's ethical theory: hence, the reference to Hegel here and at the beginning of the two
other Problemata has a symbolic significance in the sense that Kierkegaard feels obliged to criticize
him in order to declare his independence from Hegel's Danish followers.
Given that Green sees more than Kant and Stewart sees nothing but Kant, one may expect that
Kierkegaard, for his well known dislike of scholarship, has constructed Johannes' account of the ethical
in such a way that we should rather bring into view the extent to which the framework and meaning of
one body of thought is in agreement with framework and meaning of other, Knappe, 6. For arguments
emphasizing Hegelian elements in Johannes' ethical, see Evans, Divine Commands and Moral
Obligations, in Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love (New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2006), 20, 69,
74, 77, 31213, 327, Faith as the Telos of Morality, in IKC, 1617, 1920, Is the Concept of an
Absolute Duty toward God Morally Unintelligible? in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical
Appraisals, ed. Robert Perkins (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1981), 144, hereafter Critical
Appraisals, Kierkegaard on Religious Authority: The Problem of the Criterion, Faith and Philosophy
17, no. 1 (January 2000): 51; Perkins, Abraham's Silence sthetically Considered, in IKC, 157160,
162167, For Sanity's Sake: Kant, Kierkegaard, Father Abraham, in Critical Appraisals, 49, 53;
Stern, Kierkegaard's Critique of Hegel, in Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel,
Kierkegaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 175, 181; Westphal, Abraham and
Hegel in Critical Appraisals, 7374, 77, Kierkegaard On Faith, Reason, and Passion, Faith and
Philosophy 28, no. 1 (January 2011): 87, 24n.
13. Kant, Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, in Religion and Rational
Theology, ed. Allen W. Wood, George di Giovanni, and trans. George di Giovanni (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 24 (6:86), hereafter Religion. The pagination of Kants gesammelte
Schriften, ed. the German Academy of Sciences (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1900) will be
indicated in parentheses.
14. Religion, 124 (6:87). Cf. Religion, 204 (6:187); Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of
Religion, Religion and Rational Theology, ed. Allen W. Wood, George di Giovanni, and trans. Allen
W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 409 (28:1075), hereafter LPDR.

to surpass the whole of nature, he must consider it an illusion.15

Thus, at the outset, the Kantian framework of ethical thinking seems to suffer from
what Johannes problematizes as the unmediated tension between the immanent telos
of the ethical and the higher telos of Judeo-Christian faith. To elucidate this parallel
between Johannes and Kant on their thought on the ethical, this chapter will examine
what it means to be ethical and religious for Kant and then show how Johannes'
criticisms of the ethical vis--vis Abraham's faith illuminates serious problems in the
Kantian formulation of faith and reason.
For Kantian morality, what is particular pertains to the empirical, contingent,
and sensible aspect of human existence while what is universal pertains to the
rational, self-determining, and supersensible aspect of humanity. What make each of
us particular as a single individual are the sensible characteristics of our being in this
world as well as the empirical conditions in which our actions are externally
determinedi.e., pathological inclinations. Yet each of us is also endowed with
reason; and because of that, we are capable of representing an objective principle of
morality to ourselves as a command of reason and freeing ourselves from the
mechanistic causality of the external world through bringing ourselves in conformity
with the moral law qua ens rationis.16 This moral law is universal because it is not
relative to our contingent and subjective conditions in which we exist and determine
the actions in this world but necessary and binding for all of us as rational beings.
Kant calls this necessity of determining our dispositions purely from respect for the
moral law duty and formulates this command of practical reason (i.e., the
categorical imperative) as the way for us to lift ourselves to the level of the rational
15. Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, in Religion and Rational Theology, ed. Allen W.
Wood, George di Giovanni, and trans. Mary J. Gregor and Robert Anchor (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 283 (7:63), hereafter Conflict. In footnote to this passage, Kant suggests an
alternative ending to the Akedah: Abraham should have replied to this supposedly divine voice: 'That I
ought not to kill my good son is quite certain. But that you, this apparition, are God of that I am not
certain, and never can be, not even if this voice rings down to me from (visible) heaven.' This is
similar to what Johannes thinks his pastor would say to the madman trying to sacrifice his son: You
despicable man, you scum of society, what devil has so possessed you that you want to murder your
son, FT, 28. This ironic similarity comes from the fact that the pastor thinks in the same way as Kant
seems to do regarding the relation of the ideality (of moral principle) to the actuality of this world, for
their response exemplify the thought that things do not go in the world as the preacher preaches, 29.
This is also what Johannes would tell the madman, 32. Cf. Green, 129. Green suggests that these
passages from the Conflict were a major stimulus for Kierkegaard to write the Fear and Trembling.
16. Cf. Conflict, 280 (7:5859), 291 (7:72); Critique of Practical Reason, in Practical
Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 166 (5:33),
174 (5:43), 267 (5:15), hereafter KpV; Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical
Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 94 (4:446),
99 (4:45253), hereafter GMS.

universal.17 In rising above the particularity of his sensible existence, a human being
can give the universal law to himself through bringing his maxim in conformity with
the law, and by doing so propter se, he manifests his infinite value of humanity as an
end in itself.18 As Knappe and Dunning rightly observe, this moral task to determine
ourselves to be the rational universal through obliterating the particularity of our
inclination is identical with what Johannes describes as the ethical task.19
The categorical imperative requires us to act in such a way that we always
treat humanity, whether in ourselves or others, as an end in itself but never as means.20
What is inherent in this command is the concept of autonomy of every rational
being21 where each man regards himself as giving universal law to himself and
determining himself as end in itself. This leads to the ideality of a kingdom of
endsnamely the systematic union of various rational beings made possible
through the commonality of their process of giving the moral laws to themselves.22
Morality which requires the self-determination of each single individual to bring
himself around to his union with the universality of moral principles enables him to
participate in this kingdom as a law giving sovereign,23 and thereby the respect for
the dignity of his human nature as a rational being is derived from the autonomy of
reason. Through giving ourselves the moral law, we can rise above the particularity of
our sensible existence, become autonomous law-giving members of the universal
ethical community, and obtain the dignity of humanity as rational beings. This process
17. Cf. GMS, 69 (4:416), 81 (4:431), 84 (4:434); KpV, 267. For more detailed accounts of the
criteria by which one can transcend the particularity of one's self-interest and enter into the universal
community with the other rational selves, see the first section of Jacqueline Maria, The Religious
Significance of Kant's Ethics, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 75, no. 2 (2001): 18192.
18. Cf. GMS, 557 (4:4001), 7880 (4:42829), KpV, 205 (5:81).
19. FT, 19. Johannes uses strong terms such as annulment, annihilation, and obliteration
for describing the ethical task of negating the particular for determining oneself to be the universal.
In Kantian terms, it is more appropriate to use subordination and I think there are several reasons for
Kierkegaard's choice of the words: 1) the central theme of the FT is the sacrifice of Isaac, 2) Johannes
is presented as a quasi-systematic thinker, and 3) Kierkegaard does not seem to care much about the
scholarly precision in which the philosophical questions are raised but rather seems to test if we can
answer these questions beyond technical dissonances for ourselves.
20. GMS, 80 (4:429). Cf. KpV, 210 (587)
21. Cf. GMS, 8183 (4:43133); KpV, 17475 (5:4344).
22. GMS, 83 (4:433). Cf. KpV, 243 (5:1289).
23. GMS, 83 (4:433). Kant remains equivocal concerning the sovereign status of rational
beings in the kingdom of ends because they need to postulate God as a moral legislator. For Kant's
demotion of the sovereign status of rational beings, see KpV, 2067 (5:8283).

of exercising autonomy of our will in accord with the moral command of pure
practical reason is the way for us to become ethical and unconditionally good as the
members of the universal kingdom of ends.
How problematic, then, does Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac sound for Kant's
ethical thinking? There are two mutually inclusive conditions in which a person can
be transgressing the moral law:24 (1) he fails to will that his maxim becomes a
universal law but makes an exception for himself to the advantage of his inclination
and (2) he intends to use the person of himself or the others as means. Now Abraham
is sacrificing his son because God has commanded him to do so. Is his maxim
determined in accordance with the divine command universalizable? Certainly not! If
it is, every father treats humanity in his child with infinite value such that he takes the
life of his child. This sounds self-contradictory and for sure insane! But notice how
the ground of determining Abraham's act is not only incompatible with the self-given
moral law, but also not self-given. For Kant, if reason will not subject itself to the
laws it gives itself, it has to bow under the laws given by another25 and this is a
lawless use of reason.26 Then besides his act as being unjust, Abraham looks like he
is violating the principle of autonomy in submitting himself to God's will. Also, since
the infinite value of each person in the kingdom of ends comes from the autonomy of
his will giving itself the moral law, no worth would be ascribed to Abraham's
heteronomous act.27 Then say that he is using Isaac as a means for a further end
beyond determining himself to be in union with the universal moral law. But if the
end of any human action ought to be immanent to the autonomy of reason as Kant has
it, this would only mean that his act falls short of moral self-determination. In this
case, Abraham would be using Isaac either to the advantage of his pathological likings
or to win a favor from God.28 In case of the former, Abraham appears as a monster
rather than a respectable father of faith; and in the latter, his God in turn would sound
24. Cf. GMS, 80 (4:430).
25. Kant, What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? in Religion and Rational
Theology, ed. Allen W. Wood, George di Giovanni, and trans. Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 16 (8:145), hereafter WDO.
26. WDO, 16 (8: 145). Cf. GMS, 83 (4:433), KpV, 174 (5:43).
27. Cf. GMS, 85 (4:436), 8889 (4:440).
28. Cf. GMS, 89. Johannes agrees with this position by saying that if the ethical is the highest
and if we see someone doing something that does not conform to the universal, we say that he is doing
it for his own sake, 71.

like a monstrous tyrant.29 In the realm of Kantian ethics, the story of Abraham
provokes intense philosophical malaise and so we must see how his theory of religion
frames the meaning of faith.
Kant thinks that morality is based solely on the conception of human
autonomymeaning the subjection of our will to the laws that we give ourselves
through our practical reasonand hence the idea of transcendent divinity is
unnecessary for any of us to recognize our moral obligations or find ourselves
responsible for attaining our moral worth.30 But the practical task of pure reason, he
argues, posits the idea of the highest good (i.e., summum bonum) as the necessary a
priori object of our will and the final end of our moral endeavors.31 This idea consists
of two elements: (1) the complete conformity of a will to the moral law, which
postulates immortality of soul for the endless progress to our moral perfection as
rational beings, and (2) happiness proportioned to this moral achievement. We cannot
verify the necessary connection of these two because of three reasons: first,
experience tells us otherwise;32 second, the moral law tells us to determine our
dispositions independently of sensible nature;33 and third, a human being as a finite
rational being is not the cause of the world or of nature itself.34 In short, there is
nothing in the process of self-determination in conformity with the universal moral
law that grounds the necessity of the connection between our morality and
proportioned happiness, nor can we bring our happiness in harmony with our practical
lawgiving by our own powers qua ens finita rationis. But Kant further explains that
the moral law requires us to strive to promote the highest good35 in this world and
29. Cf. FT, 10. Johannes' first picture of the Akedah illustrates this dilemma: Abraham
pretends to be the monstrous father sacrificing his son for his pathological likings so as to save Isaac
from losing his faith in God who, to Abraham, appears to be monstrous for demanding such a sacrifice.
30. See the opening line of the Religion, 57 (6:34).
31. KpV, 231 (5:11314). Cf. KpV, 22627 (5:108); LPRD, 34344 (28:996), 347 (28:10001);
Religion, 58 (6:5), 137 (6:104).
32. LPRD, 4067 (28:1072), 420 (28:1090). Johannes makes the same observation:
imperfection is the fundamental law of the external world, and here it happens again and again that he
who does not work does get bread, and he who sleeps gets it even more abundantly than he works, FT,
27. Here again the reality of the external world is contrasted with the ideality of the spiritual world and
Johannes continues to embrace the Kantian dualistic framework for discussing the ethical.
33. Cf. GMS, 55 (4:400), 77 (4:42526), 88 (4:439); KpV, 190 (5:62), 267 (5:159).
34. Cf. GMS, 7071 (4:418).
35. KpV, 24041 (5:125).

10

just because of that, we have to think it be possible. And to think this exact
correspondence of morality and happiness as possible, we have to postulate a
supreme cause of nature having a causality in keeping with the moral disposition36
viz., God who can unite these two elements of the highest good as omnipotent and
morally perfect being. Thus, it is morally necessary to assume the existence of
God.37
Kant indicates that this postulation of the idea of God calls for the pure
rational belief38 because we cannot know the objective reality of this idea but we
have to think it possible as the condition for the possibility of the highest good. This
belief in the possibility of summum bonum is also rational because the practical
postulate of God is derived solely from our reason. Here we have to face several
crucial questions concerning the relation of morality and rational faith. First, there is
an unmediated tension between the infinite value of humanity as an end in itself and
the final end of the morality postulated beyond the conduct of a morally good life.
This leads to two interrelated questions: (1) which is the ultimate telos of a moral life:
the highest good or the good will? and (2) does morality precede faith or the other
way around?39 Furthermore, we have to investigate the nature of the rational faith that
we must have in the Kantian God as a practical postulate. What kind of God is this?
And how is it related to human autonomy as the source of our dignity and moral
worth? These questions are crucial for understanding how the Kantian formulation of
the relation between moral ethics and religious faith exemplifies the problems that
Johannes sees in the general structure of rational ethics.
The practical postulation of the existence of God means that a human being is
essentially driven to believe in the cooperation or the management of a moral ruler of
36. KpV, 240 (5:125).
37. KpV, 241 (5:126). Cf. KpV, 231 (5:113), 255 (5:143); LPDR, 349 (28:1003), 357
(28:1012), 4067 (107172), 415 (28:1083); WDO, 12 (8:139),
38. KpV, 241 (5:126). Cf. Conflict, 274 (7:51); KpV, 255 (5:144), 257 (5:146); LPRD, 356
(28:1011); On the Common Saying: That Maybe Correct in Theory, Practical Philosophy, ed. and
trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1996), 282 (8:279); Religion, 18485
(6:16364); WDO, 1415 (8:14143).
39. Cf. Maria, 198. Maria highlights the consonance between the categorical imperative to
the commandment of loving one's neighbor as oneself with some references to Kierkegaard's Works of
Love. But her analysis faces the same question: While it is not doubt true that for Kant the moral law
and the will of God must be conceived of as conforming to one another, the deeper question is whether
the will of God must be thought of and defined in terms of the moral law, or whether the moral law
must be thought of in terms of the will of God. The problem is, therefore, which must be prior in the
order of knowledge, knowledge of the will of God, or knowledge of the moral law?

11

the world40 as the condition for the possibility of the highest good. But Kant also
thinks that this opens up before him the abyss of a mystery regarding what God may
do.41 If the highest good is the ultimate end to which all of our moral actions are to
be directed, we have to think about the divine attributes and the conditions by which
the divine will would grant us the fulfillment of our moral destiny as the summum
bonum. But these are the mysteries extending beyond the limits of our reason. And
what is most important, as Kant repeatedly emphasizes, is that the idea of God rises
out of our consciousness of moral laws and of reason's need to assume a power
capable of procuring the summum bonum for the final destination of our moral
endeavors; but this idea itself by no means serves as the foundation of morality but
strictly the other way around.42 Stated otherwise, morality based on the autonomy of
reason must precede faith (and hence the latter is always rational) because morality
alone gives us a determinate concept of God as a holy legislator of moral laws43 and
his holiness is the absolute or the unlimited moral perfection of the will.44 Without
morality, we cannot think of God nor practice religion through our determinate
concept of God.
If God's existence as the ruler of ethical community is the foundation of our
moral laws as his divine commands and the ethical laws are proceeding from his will,
Kant thinks that these laws would cease to be moral for the duty commensurate to
them would not be a free virtue but an externally enforceable legal duty.45 For he has
a great difficulty in penetrating into the question of how rational beings could be
created to use their powers freely,46 Kant cannot think of the constitutive relation of
40. Religion, 165 (6:139). Cf. LPDR, 3478 (28:10012), Religion, 5960 (6:6).
41. Religion, 165 (6:139).
42. Cf. GMS, 63 (4:4089); Religion, 58 (6:5), 137 (6:104).
43. LPDR, 4078 (28:10731074), my paraphrase. Cf. Conflict, 279 (7:5758); LPDR, 447
(28:1122); WDO, 12 (8:139).
44. LPDR, 409 (28:1075).
45. Religion, 13334 (6:99).
46. Religion, 168 (6:142). Cf. GMS, 9093 (4:44145). Note how Kant either presupposes
God as an idea of moral perfection or (immoral) dark beyond subjugating humanity into its mechanical
servility. See also John E. Hare, Kant on Recognizing Our Duties as God's Commands, Faith and
Philosophy, Vol. 17, No. 4 (October 2000): 466. Like Maria, Hare sees the question of either we
derive the notion of God's perfection from our moral concepts or we do not. Then Hare tries to solve
this dilemma by deriving the obligatoriness of the moral law from the human and divine jointauthorship where Kant's systematic union of rational selves is seen as a common wealth of ends ( la
J. L. Mackie). This solution seems to have two problems: 1) it does not take the nature of the Kantian

12

God to human autonomy without conceiving it as a great threat to the latter where
reason can give itself the universal moral law and each rational being freely complies
to the self-given moral principles. We can now see why Kant sounds almost ecstatic in
defending the supremacy of reason's morality over the mystery of the divine will.
[I]t is also necessary that God's will should not be made the principle of
rational morality; for in this way we could never be sure what God had in
mind for the world. How can I know by reason and speculation what God's
will is, and what it consists in? Without morality to help me here, I would be
on a slippery path, surrounded by mountains which afford me no prospect.
How much danger I would be in of having my foot slip, or, because no clear
horizon ever meets my eyes, of wandering lost in a labyrinth!47
But then here is the rub: we cannot get rid of God since practical reason needs to think
the summum bonum to be possible and commands that we ought to promote this idea
as far as possible. So, Kant wants to have God as the condition for the possibility of
the highest good but simultaneously keep the supremacy of moral autonomy
uncompromised. Because of this, he holds that the practical postulate of God serves
only as a regulative ideal in relation to our practice of morality and thereby shows it
neither as indispensable for the determination of our will in accordance with the moral
law nor constitutive of the infinite (moral) value of humanity as an end in itself.48
Thus for Kant, morality has to precede faith, the infinite value of humanity as an end
in itself is the true telos of our moral life, and the summum bonum is only a postulated
ideality that can be only believed within our reason during our continuous labors
toward moral autonomy.
How does this regulative idea of God play its role in relation to the
formulation of the relationship between faith and reason? Kant argues that religion is

God into account and 2) deviates from (and highlights the problem of calling) the idea of the universal
community of ens rationis as the kingdom.
47. LPDR, 442 (28:1116). Cf. Moral Philosophy: Collins's Lecture Notes (17845),
Lectures on Ethics, ed. Peter Heath, J.B. Schneewind, and trans. Peter Heath (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Pres, 1997), 76 (27:283). Kant says of the Lawgiver that nobody, not even the deity, is an
originator of moral laws, since they have not arisen from choice, but are practically necessary; . . . But
moral laws can still be subject to a lawgiver (unter einem Gesetzgeber stehen); there may be a being
who is omnipotent and has power to execute these laws, and to declare that this moral law is at the
same time a law of His will and obliges everyone to act accordingly. Such a being is then a lawgiver,
though not an originator. This position is held also in GMS, 91 (4:443): unless we think of divine will
in terms of morality, the concept of his will still left to us, made up of the attributes of desire for glory
and dominion combined with dreadful representations of power and vengefulness, would have to be the
foundation for a system of morals that would be directly opposed to morality.
48. KpV, 249 (5:135).

13

the recognition of all our duties as divine commands49 and maintains that God
can be thought of as the supreme lawgiver of an ethical community, with
respect to whom all true duties, hence also the ethical, must be represented as
at the same time his commands; consequently, he must also be one who knows
the heart, in order to penetrate to the most intimate parts of the dispositions of
each and everyone and, as must be in every community, give to each according
to the worth of his actions.50
God, in this sense, is presented as the moral judge who gives moral laws to rational
beings and distribute the reward proportioned to the labor of virtue (hopefully after
this life). But as we have seen above, Kant wants to have the autonomy of moral
reason as both necessary and sufficient for determining one's moral worth and the
divine ideal as that which is derived from morality; and accordingly, rational beings
are giving themselves the same laws as those of this divine lawgiver (otherwise they
would not be observed as the moral laws). Since God's relation to the moral principles
cannot be constitutive but only regulative, this supreme ruler can only give the
commands that are identical with those which the rational beings are giving
themselves as the universal commands of their practical reason. Then the divine
authority in the Kantian formulation of moral religion is the same as the authority of
practical reason: for the divine commands given in the ethical community are
identical with the moral laws given by our practical reason. As a result, there is the
essential identity between religious faith and moral reason in Kant's philosophy of
religion.51
If an ethical task is the task of true religion as Kant maintains, [our moral
actions] are constantly in the service of God; and it is absolutely impossible to serve
[God] more intimately in some other way52 than to fulfill our moral obligations. Then
to have one's reverence for the divine command before the Kantian moral universal as
Abraham seems to do is impossible and it rather means not to have God as the object

49. Religion, 177 (6:154). Cf. Conflict, 284 (7:64), KpV, 244 (5:129).
50. Religion, 134 (6:99). Cf. Conflict, 292 (7:7374).
51. Cf. Conflict, 262 (7:36): As far as its matter, i.e., the object is concerned, religion does
not differ in any point from morality, for it is concerned with duties as such. Its distinction from
morality is a merely formal one: that reason in its legislation uses the Idea of God, which is derived
from morality itself, to give morality influence on man's will to fulfill all his duties.
52. Cf. Religion, 137 (6:103): whenever [human beings] fulfill their duties toward human
beings (themselves and others), by that very fact they also conform to God's commandments; hence,
that in all their doings and non-doings, insofar as these have reference to morality, they are constantly
in the service of God. See also Religion, 196 (6:177).

14

of one's reverence but an idol.53 It is both unethical and blasphemous for Abraham to
assert his singularity before the universality of the moral laws or try to relate himself
to the divine absolute in any other way than determining his maxim in accordance
with the self-given moral laws since God, in the Kantian sense, is the legislator of the
ethical universal who grants the happiness proportion to one's labor of morality where
he is supposed to lift himself above the particularity of his sensible existence to the
level of the ethical universal. In this sense, Kant has to deem Abraham's act of piety,
allegedly determined exclusively for God, as servile and fetish-faith54 for it seems to
be not undertaken in any moral sense but as a means itself capable of propitiating [a
false] God through adoration and ingratiation.55 Thus the Kantian formulation of the
identity between rational faith and practical reason cannot save Abraham as an upright
religious figure.
1.1. Problems and Concerns
Kant provides the strong continuity between (rational) faith and (practical)
reason in his account of moral religion but close analyses of his concept of God as the
practical postulate in line with his uncompromising supremacy of moral autonomy
show that there is no essential difference in what rational faith holds as the highest
commands from those of practical reason in ethics. Kant claims that true religion
recognizes the moral laws as divine commands but the term divinity here has neither
conceptual nor practical bearing on the fact that these laws are merely moral
commands given in accordance with the autonomy of practical reason. This identity
between religion and morality leads us to two interrelated problems: (1) there is an
unresolved tension between the primacy of autonomy and the necessity of postulating
the idea of God as the moral legislator and (2) the conflation of Christianity with
moral religion overlooks the possibility of the constitutive relation of divine
transcendence to human autonomy in the original configuration of faith in the JudeoChristian tradition.
First, if God gives the moral laws and humans give themselves the same laws
53. Cf. Religion, 202 (6:185), my paraphrase.
54. Cf. Religion, 185 (6:16465), 196 (6:17778), 198 (6:17980), 20910 (6:19394).
55. Religion, 209 (6:193). See also Religion, 202 (6:185): If reverence for God comes first,
and the human being therefore subordinates virtue to it, then this object [of reverence] is an idol, i.e. it
is thought as a being whom we may hope to please not through morally upright conduct in this world
but through adoration and ingratiation; religion is then idolatry.

15

in accordance with their practical reason, why do we have to postulate God as a moral
legislator at all? This God does not have any constitutive influence on the significance
of our moral worth as an end in itself but we postulate it only as a regulative ideal for
enabling the possibility of the highest good. The basis of this postulation is again our
practical reason and the unconditional good is our moral goodness which we attain
through determining our will in consonance with practical reason. Then we are the
the sole author of all our actions56 determining our unconditional moral worth and
what constitutes ourselves as the members of the ethical community is our own
freedom to determine our will according to the form of our reason. Why can't we just
say that our autonomy is the condition for the possibility of our infinite value as an
end in itself and our reason is the highest authority? Insofar as the primacy of
autonomy is the source of our moral dignity, nothing can prevent us from dispensing
with God (and religion) and claiming ourselves as the highest rational beings that are
granting ourselves the infinite worth of morality.57 This is exactly what Johannes
anticipates. If the ethical entirely equals the divine absolute,
it is proper to say that every duty is essentially duty to God, but if no more can
be said than this, then it is also said that I actually have no duty to God. The
duty becomes duty by being traced back to God, but in the duty itself I do not
enter into relation to God. . . . The whole existence of the human race rounds
itself off as a perfect, self-contained sphere, and then the ethical is that which
limits and fills at one and the same time. God comes to be an invisible
vanishing point, an impotent thought; his power is only in the ethical, which
fills all of existence.58
But then Kant demonstrates that our reason must contemplate the importance of the
highest good, which seems to exceed the end and the capacity of our moral selfdetermination, and the necessity of postulating the ideal of God suggests that reason
and moral existence, just as much as defining themselves as the highest authority of
their own worth, cannot help but recognize the metaphysical ghost of the beyond
56. Conflict, 289 (7:70). Note here how Kant depicts humanity as a kind of divine being who
is the original maker of all his presentations and concepts besides his absolute authorship of his own
actions. See also Conflict, 28990 (7:71).
57. Kierkegaard sometimes sounds much more critical of Kant's absolutization of human
autonomy than Johannes de Silentio. He writes in one of his journal entries, Kant was of the opinion
that man is his own law (autonomy)that is, he binds himself under the law which he himself gives
himself. Actually, in a profounder sense, this is how lawlessness or experimentation are established.
This is not being rigorously earnest any more than Sancho Panza's self-administered blows to his own
bottom were vigorous, JP, 1:76 (188). In the same entry, Kierkegaard concludes that if a man does not
place the law-giver higher than himself, the man is allowed to live on in self-complacent illusion and
make-believe and experimentation, but this also means; utterly without grace.
58. FT, 68. See also FT, 60.

16

pointing toward the higher authority to which their freedom might be accountable.59
So by the fact that reason has to postulate God as the ruler of our ethical community
apropos of the concept of morality, we should wonder if there are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Kant's philosophy. Here we face the necessity
of rethinking the possibility of faith in its relation to divine authority without
conflating it with the human authority of reason. We have to search this relation of
divinity to humanitywhich Johannes sees in Abraham's faithbeyond the limit of
practical reason.
Second, if to be ethical is to be religious, as Knappe concludes, Kant's
religious thinking basically involves the reinterpretation of Christian belief in terms of
his ethics, that is, in terms of the existential ideal of practical reason.60 But if our
fulfillment of moral duties is the true and only service of God and our autonomy is the
sole basis of ethical value and (immanent) telos of our moral life, then Christianity
would not offer anything more important to our moral endeavors. The flip side is that
the Kantian formulation of moral religion can be dismissive of certain precepts of the
historical faith, which might be offering something more than what his moral
philosophy can account, as anything meaningful. Then Johannes is right in thinking
that Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and Christ's exposition of two commandments in
Luke 14:26 should be taken out of the religious teachings because these precepts
indicate that ethical self/inter-relations can be relativized in one's absolute relation to
God.61 Perhaps Kant might not have much problem with discarding the Akedah from
the Old Testament since he pictures Jewish faith as mechanical servility filled with the
trivial legality of ecclesiastical laws and understands it as externally dictated and
59. Cf. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion., ed. and trans. Peter C. Hodgson et al
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 173 (317), hereafter LPR: inasmuch as we know
something as a limit, we are already beyond it. The pagination of Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie
der Religion, ed. Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 19831985) will be indicated in
parentheses.
60. Knappe, 144. Cf. Evans, Kierkegaard on Religious Authority, 64 and Hare, Kant on
Recognizing Our Duties as God's Commands, 459. Evans draws the same conclusion as Knappe and
Hare also says, Kant's project is to see if he can translate the items in this outer circle (of historical
revelation) into the language of the inner circle (of moral religion), which is the revelation of reason,
and is the same to all people at all times. Cf. di Giovanni, Faith Without Religion, Religion Without
Faith: Kant and Hegel on Religion, Journal of the History of Philosophy 41, no. 3 (2003): 379. To this
project of rational theology, di Giovanni argues, Kant's moral conscience indeed requires faith. But the
faith in question has nothing to with faith as understood in orthodox Christian tradition (though it might
have something to do with the narrower tradition of the credo quia absurdum). . . . In this context, there
is little if any room left for religionat least if we identify it with such practices as 'giving thanks,'
'cultic rituals,' and 'worship.' For all such practices have to do with the individual as such.
61. Cf. FT, 745; Matthew 10:37.

17

remaining contrary to the autonomy of practical reason.62 But it would be problematic

to contradict Christ while claiming that Christianity is essentially consistent with his
doctrine of moral religion. Kant's inconsistency with the actual religious teachings of
Christianity suggests that faith in the traditional context might become meaningful
only when we dare to move beyond Kantian framework of systematic ethics.
These problems originate from the problems of the ethical: the immanent telos
of the moral universal is absolutized and man's relation to God requires the negation
of his particularity in the process of determining himself to be the rational universal.
To illuminate these problems, Kierkegaard leads us to think with de Silentio how the
traditional picture of Judeo-Christian fidelity challenges Kant's rational theology. If
we can see this religious story as illustrating one's relation to God beyond the Kantian
universal, we would be able to realize that Kant's reduction of religion to moral
philosophy is guilty of
creating the idea of God in the way we believe that we can most easily win
him over to our moral advantage, and ourselves be dispensed from the
uninterrupted effort of working out our salvation with fear and trembling.63
Kant might be right in saying that if we adventure beyond the boundaries of his
critical reason and presume to continue our flight beyond them, we only fall into
whirlpools and turbulent waters [of confusions], plunging ourselves into a bottomless
abyss where we are wholly swallowed up.64 But we have already jumped into the
depth of the metaphysical question concerning the mystery of faith through Abraham's
62. For Kant's somewhat harsh criticisms of Judaism, see Conflict, 27576 (7:5253);
Religion, 15455 (6:12526).
63. Cf. KpV, 249 (5:13535) and Religion, 189 (6:169): Anthropomorphism . . . is highly
dangerous with respect to our practical relation to [divine] will and to our very morality; for, since we
are making a God for ourselves, we create him in the way we believe that we can most easily win him
over to our advantage, and ourselves be dispensed from the arduous and uninterrupted effort of
affecting the innermost part of our moral disposition. In footnote to this passage, Kant writes, every
human being must make [a God] according to moral concepts . . . in order to honor in him the one who
made him. For in whatever manner a being has being made known to him by somebody else, and
described as God, indeed, even if such a being might appear to him in person . . . a human being must
yet confront this representation with his ideal first, in order to judge whether he is authorized to hold
and revere this being as Divinity. Hence, on the basis of revelation alone, without that concept being
previously laid down in its purity at its foundation as touchstone, there can be no religion, and
reverence for God would be idolatry. But when the divine command is made to be the command of
our reason, God is postulated to always favor our moral conducts and thereby, we are obedient to
nobody but ourselvesviz., there is a kind of metaphysical anthropomorphism in Kant's moralization
of the divine command. So my block quote is a Kierkegaardian paraphrase designed to move those of
us following Kantian ways of thinking to become critical ourselves. For Kierkegaard's creative process
of conceptual borrowing and unacknowledged rephrasing of Kant's Religion and Conflict, see Green,
1031, 105, 164.
64. LPDR, 377 (28:1036). See also LPDR, 385 (28:1045), 421 (28:1091).

18

story in Fear and Trembling. We have realized that the Kantian God is only a practical
postulate emptily echoing our self-given moral laws and our relation to this postulated
divinity is possible only through negating our sensible particularity to manifest our
rational universality. So to give some philosophical account of the Judeo-Christian
faith, we cannot stay within the boundary of practical reason. Unless we learn to swim
to a shore where we can ground the constitutive relation of God to humanity beyond
the universal command of practical reason, we will never make sense of the relation
in which each of us is given to be free by God. Unless we dare to do this, Abraham's
faith and his God would be lost to us.65

65. Cf. William Desmond, Preface to Being and Between (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1995), xvi; Kierkegaard, On the Occasion of a Confession in Three Discourses on
Imagined Occasions, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993), 20, hereafter TDIO. Desmond commends one's audacity to think
metaphysically since a philosopher is a seeker. Unless we dare to seek beyond the confine of Kantian
philosophy, we will not be able to find our answer to the question of faith and reason. Kierkegaard also
commends the cultivation of this audacity to think beyond the conventional framework of thinking.

19

2. The Dynamic Universal and the Absolute Spirit: Why is Abraham lost
for Hegel?66
In Early Theological Writings, Hegel discusses Abraham as the progenitor of
the Jews67 who, through his flight from the world, tries to bring himself closer to
God. The Jewish God, for Hegel, is the subjective unity that is withdrawn from the
natural and so from the sensible [realm], withdrawn from external sensibility and
from sensible representation.68 This transcendent divinity is the abstract universal
inwardly determining itself as the self-relating subjective unity. To be united with this
indeterminate divinity, Abraham gives away his material goods, communal
interrelations, and familial love.69 Since this divine subject has nothing to do with
what sustains his human existence in concreto, his continuous flight to the alienated
transcendence leaves him absolutely nothing. So, for Hegel, the fate of Abraham
is the fate of Macbeth who stepped out of nature itself, clung to alien Beings,
and so in their service had to trample and slay everything holy in human
nature, had at last be forsaken by his gods . . . and be dashed to pieces on his
faith itself.70
Hegel sees Abraham's God as Hecate alluring him to the darkness where he loses
everything in vain. His faith is again illustrated as being unethical and insane.71
Hegel's interpretation of Abraham can intensify one's feeling that he
essentially agrees with Kant on Abraham's faith in Fear and Trembling. But the Early
Theological Writings was not available to Kierkegaard and Hegel's concept [Begriff]
of the universal/particular distinction is attentive to the porosity of their interrelations;
66. Cf. On My Work as an Author, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 6, hereafter PV. Johannes' critique of the
ethical is made primarily in relation to the religious faith and Kierkegaard claims that [his] authorship,
regarded as a totality, is religious from first to last. Therefore, the reading of Hegel presented here will
focus on the religious side of his thinking. For the succinct genealogy of non-religious interpretations
of Hegel's oeuvre, see Robert E. Wood, Hegel: From Misunderstanding to the Beginning of
Understanding, Epoch 16, no. 2 (2012): 33839.
67. G. W. F. Hegel, Early Theological Writings, trans. T. M. Knox and Richard Kroner
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 182, hereafter ETW; Hegels theologische
Jugendschriften, ed. Herman Nohl (Tbingen: Mohr), 243. The pagination of Nohl's edition will be
inserted in parentheses.
68. LPR, 357 (561).
69. ETW, 240 (290).
70. ETW, 205 (260).
71. Cf. ETW, 6869 (153); LPR, 357 (561). Hegel's earlier view on Jewish religion is similar
to Kant's for he sees the mechanical servility of the ecclesiastical faith in conjunction with this faith as
a superstitious belief in the dark beyond. But the later Hegel, while maintaining that the divine subject
in Judaism is this alien solo, seems to respect it more as the religion of sublimity.

20

hence, it is much more dynamic than Kant's distinction.72 As we have seen above, the
Kantian universal in its oppositional relation to the particular straightforwardly
reflects Johannes' account of the ethical. Yet rational faith absolutizing the universal
cannot account for the significance of historical faith where the laws are proclaimed
as given beyond human reason. Hegel is very critical of these factors in Kantian
ethics.73 Even though Johannes claims himself to have studied Hegelian philosophy
and his quasi-systematic language refers to Hegel in every Problema for his
reflections titled Dialectical Lyric, he does not show much of his insight into the
dialectical development of the divine absolute or his understanding of the differences
between Kantian and Hegelian theories of ethics and religion.74
But we cannot blame Johannes on his navet for he claims that he is neither a
philosopher nor a systematic thinker of any sort.75 And what is important is that his
honest reflection can illuminate the fundamental problems in Hegel's systematic
thinking on faith and reason.76 For instance, the universal and the particular in Hegel's
philosophy is ultimately sublated as two necessary moments in the process of the
universal's self-determining self-mediation and so, the particular is dealt only as a
transitory negative moment in the process of the universal's self-affirmation in its
concrete form. Because of this final emphasis on the (concrete) universal as the
absolute/ethical, Hegel cannot dodge the criticisms Johannes somewhat artlessly
72. Cf. Perkins, Abraham's Silence sthetically Considered, IKC, 158. Although the ETW
was unknown to Kierkegaard, the early Hegel's interpretation of Abraham (Perkin thinks) is consistent
with his later understanding of the immediacy of natural being before the mediated universal as evil.
73. Cf. di Giovanni, Faith Without Religion, Religion Without Faith, 375. Di Giovanni
summarizes Hegel's criticism of Kant as an attack on the whole Kantian system, for it was supposed to
recover the totality of human experience conceptually but it fails in fact to provide the conceptual space
required by the subject of such experience precisely where it is needed mostnamely in historically
conditioned moral action, at the point where all the various aspects of experience come together. This
Hegel's critical insight into Kantian morality is consistent throughout Hegel's works.
74. Cf. FT, 3233. Johannes uses Hegelian terms (e.g., the universal, the particular, the
singular, the absolute, immediacy, mediation, etc.) and there is some social element to his discussion of
the ethical. But his crude usage of the Hegelian terms exhibits no scholarly attentiveness to the ways in
which Hegel develops them nor can he use them systematically to penetrate into the concept of religion
in Hegelian fashion. So, it is not unreasonable for Stewart to overlook the relevance of Johannes'
critique of the ethical to Hegelian Sittlichkeit.
75. FT, 78. Johannes, however, contradicts himself repeatedly by saying that the movement
of infinite resignationthe only movement he can make by himselfis philosophical. Perhaps this
could mean that Johannes is presented as a kind of poet (rather than a systematic thinker) who is not
concerned with making consistent statements about faith but evoking its relevant passion (i.e., wonder)
in his readers.
76. For this reason, Johannes' reference to Philosophy of Right cannot be a decisive factor for
textually verifying the identity of his ethical with Hegel's Sittlichkeit.

21

throws against (his general understanding of) rational ethics.77 Westphal has a point:
If [Johannes' ethical] is the ultimate framework for human existence, then the
Hegelian philosophy is correct on this or that central theme, but in such a way
that consistency would require Hegel to turn on Abraham as a murderer rather
than honoring him as the father of the faithful.78
So to see how Johannes' analyses of the ethical applies to Hegel's conception of faith
and reason, we will examine Hegel's response to Kant's moral religion and see if he
can dissolve Johannes' discontent by holding the source of the moral laws outside
reason without making faith in this beyond another despotic nightmare of Macbeth.
The young Hegel explicitly finds two problems in Kant's theory of religion.
First, he sees the irresolvable tension between autonomy of practical reason and
heteronomy of faith. He thinks that one's respect for the moral law in Kantian ethics is
aroused insofar as the law is self-given and its objectivity is derived solely from the
form of practical reason. But Christianity as a positive religion, Hegel continues,
proclaims that the moral law is something outside us and something given79 and
if it is given, then virtue becomes an art of a very complicated kind in contrast
with an uncorrupted moral sense which is in a position to decide any issue on
the spot because it dares to make its decisions for itself.80
Hegel takes issue with Kant who conflates the moral laws with the divine and then
holds the primacy of practical reason in conjunction with God as the moral legislator.
If we give the laws to ourselves, we don't need God beyond us. But if these laws are
given, then the status of our autonomy has to be reformulated in its relative position to
their originating source. Kant wants to have it both ways by making the divine
commandments empty repetitions of our self-given moral laws. But Hegel sees either
that morality based on the autonomy of our reason is the sole basis in which we can
give ourselves the moral laws or that we find God as the giver of the moral laws
outside our reason.
Second, Hegel criticizes Kant's reduction of the divine commandments to
77. Cf. Hegel, The Science of Logic, ed. and trans. George di Giovanni (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 119, hereafter SL; Wissenschaft Der Logik: Erster Teil Die
Objective Logik, ed. Friedrich Hogemann and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Meiner, 1985), 136: It is
not the finite which is the real, but rather the infinite (Das Endliche ist nicht das Reale, son|dern das
Unendliche). The pagination of the German text will be indicated in parentheses.
78. Westphal, Abraham and Hegel, 73.
79. ETW, 144 (212).
80. ETW, 144 (212). Cf. ETW, 164 (228). Here Hegel defines piety as the disposition which
acts from respect for God as lawgiver beyond us.

22

moral obligations. Duty, according to Hegel, accommodates the dualistic division

between reason and inclination where the universal does not only claim its necessity
as the objective form of reason, but also remains as something alien to the
particularity of subjective inclinations. And thanks to this object/subject split
[Entzweiung], reason is always excluding inclination and inclination is always
dominated by reason. In having our whole existence constantly divided within itself,
we can never be at home with ourselves and thereby moral laws as the commands of
practical reason carry the dictatorial sense of ought or duty. But what Jesus is
trying to get at through his exposition of the divine commandments (Hegel believes)
is that these laws should not be observed as moral obligations but practiced out of
love where we fulfill the laws by intermediating the internal conflict between
reason and inclination and go beyond the previous sense of moral obligations.81
Hegel's solutions to these problems can be found in his later workLectures
on the Philosophy of Religion. The concept of religion is the seed of the absolute spirit
whose development is constitutive of the doctrines of all religions in the world. This
initially abstract concept sprouts its particular stems in the course of human history as
various forms of determinate religion and reaches its final form in Christianity.82 This
fruit of human religious thinking is the consummate religion where the absolute spirit
reveals itself in its final concreteness and manifest its rich content as the determinate
rational knowledge of itself.83 In this systematic unfolding of the history of religion
as the manifestation of the absolute knowing of divine consciousness, Hegel discusses
the particular as what is finite, natural, contingent, and untrue; and the universal as
what is infinite, rational, self-subsisting, and true. The relation of these contradictory
terms are initially discussed in their dualistic opposition and then intermediated with
one another in their reference to the self-determining process of what is infinite,
rational, and absolutely universal. There are three layers of this dialectical
intermediation: (1) between the finitude of all contingent existence in/of nature and
the infinite divine being, (2) between the natural and spiritual being within human
existence, and (3) between the whole of human existence as a finite spirit and God as
infinite spirit.
First, Hegel explains that the finite objects have the characteristic of
81. ETW, 21314 (26768).
82. LPR, 8990 (7374).
83. LPR, 96 (79).

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perishing84 and this leads us to think of the division between the world and God.85
He thinks this distinction relies upon the most universal categories within our
mind86 and thereby the self-destructive contingency of the world is seen as the finite
particular and the self-subsisting necessity of the divine being as the infinite universal.
Then Hegel shows this dyadic opposition as nonsensical since the infinite is reduced
to one particular in addition to which finite is the other, while the finite, which is
placed over against the infinite, comes to have an equal dignity of subsistence and
independence to that of the infinite.87 Instead, we have to see each of these terms as
being what it is in virtue of not being the other and each is only insofar as the other
(i.e., what it is not) is.88 In order for the infinite to be truly positive, what is negative
(i.e., the finite) must be negated for its own affirmation. So in facing this division, one
must move from an initially immediate affirmation of the abstract infinite, through its
negative (i.e., the finite) to the true affirmation of the infinite as that which mediates
with itself in and through the finite.89 This gives the circle of the self-mediation of the
infinite in and through the finite, and show the inclusive self-determination of the
infinite where the opposition between the finite and the infinite is held together as
difference. This structure of dialectical thinking dissolves this first antithesis by
showing the finite world as the means for the infinite divinity to mediate with itself.
Second, the inherent truth of humanity for Hegel is its essential rationality and
this implicit characteristic as rational being must unfold itself through differentiating
its immediate status of natural being as an other to itself. On the basis of this selfsurpassing characteristic of human self-consciousness, there is the split [Entzweiung]
between the particularity of our natural being and the universality of our rationality.90
84. LPR, 170 (315).
85. LPR, 17072 (31517). Cf. SL, 102 (11718), 10910 (125).
86. LPR, 172 (31617). Cf. SL, 10810 (12425).
87. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic (with the Zustze): Part I of the Encyclopaedia of
Philosophical Sciences with the Zustze, trans. T.F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, H. S. Harris (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing company, Inc., 1991); Enzyklopdie Der Philosophischen Wissenschaften Im
Grundrisse (1830), Gesammelte Werke, ed. Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Hans-Christian Lucas (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner, 1992) 20:95, hereafter Enc. I.
88. Cf. LPR, 406 (190).
89. LPR, 172 (316).
90. Cf. Kierkegaard, Four Upbuilding Discourses (1843): To Gain One's Soul in Patience,
Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990), 166, hereafter UD. Kierkegaard also conceives of the human soul as

24

Hegel argues that this split does not remain as a stark ontological distinction but rather
is held as an internal difference through the infinite power of unifying selfconsciousness. The rational comes out of the natural as what is implicit therein, while
the natural is recognized as such insofar as there is rationality in us. This development
of the universal out of the particular follows the dialectical structure of selfdetermination.91 In the immediate state of humanity as the natural, human rationality
is still indeterminate and abstract, and this original state of human rationality as
abstract universal needs to bring itself forth through recognizing its natural being as
the self-particularized expression of itself. This means that human reason does not
only recognize itself as natural being but also embodies itself as natural being and
posits the rational/natural cleavage in itself.
This indicates the difference between the monolithic distinction of the
universal and the particular in Kantian duty and what young Hegel would call an
incarnation of the moral laws as the work of love. The ought of moral duty stems
from the dualistic universal/particular opposition and implies constant internal
conflict between reason and desire; whereas the love indicates the higher stage of life
in which the universal and the particular are harmonized with each other.92 This is a
specific modification of life93 where we can fulfill the moral laws by bringing our
inclination in union with our reason and concretizing them. We are the sensible
manifestation of the moral laws and our act, practiced out of the [w]holistic
interrelations between reason and desire, requires no opposition within ourselves.94 In
light of this particular determination of the universal as embodied reason, humanity as
a self-contradiction between the external and the internal, the temporal and the eternal and further
articulates this internal division in human existence as the source of its self-determining development
(or in Kierkegaardian terms becoming) and requires the external divine power to close the gap. For
the passages evincing Kierkegaard's adoption of Hegel's concept of soul, see UD, 163, 16667, 172.
91. LPR, 43840 (22023), 452 (233). See also Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans.
T.M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press, 2008); Grundlinen Der Philosophie Des Rechts,
Gesammelte Werke, ed. Klaus Grotsch and Elizabeth Weisser-Lohmann (Hamburg: Felix Meiner,
200910), 14.13:7, hereafter PR.
92. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995), 373, hereafter, WL. Kierkegaard discusses that a work of love would lose the
obligatory sense of the moral duty. Note, however, Hegel's conception of the ethical self-determination
differs from Kierkegaard's conception of the ethical self/inter-mediation presented in WL because
Kierkegaard follows the logic of self-sacrificial love (i.e., agape) whereas Hegel follows the logic of
self-determination (i.e., eros) for their concepts of the ethical community.
93. ETW, 212 (266).
94. This does not seem to be entirely true since the dialectical intermediation always needs the
conflict within itself.

25

spirit comes back to itself as the concrete universal and stands above the previously
indeterminate universal (of the moral laws). Thus, by moving from its initially
abstract form of the implicit rationality, through the determinate particularity of its
natural being, to the manifestation of its infinite power of unity as the concrete
rational being, humanity will come to recognize the infinite power of reason in itself
and place the internal antithesis only as the ideal moments of its self-determination.
The constant civil war between the rational and the sensible is now reconciled and
integrated into the unifying process of self-determining self-consciousness.95
Finally, there is the antithesis between our self-contradictory finite existence as
a whole and the infinitude of what is at home with itselfi.e., God.96 Our selfsurpassing desire to be harmonious with ourselves drives to elevate ourselves to the
infinite activity of divine consciousness.97 Yet we are burdened with the internal
antithesis and what we hope to attain through religious thinking cannot be attained
within the framework of our existence as finite subjective spirit[s]. This lack of
correspondence between the human and divine consciousness is the most extreme
antithesis where the particular as finite spirit and the universal as the infinite Spirit are
placed over against each other.98 Then the dialectical development of divine
consciousness intermediates this gap in three moments. First, God is seen as the
abstract universal consisting only of his pure self-relation and devoid of any particular
determination. Second, the divine Spirit creates the finite world (including nature and
humanity as finite spirit[s]) and this is the divine act of positing what is other to itself
as being apart from itself.99 Third, through recognizing what is separated from itself as
what it distinguished from itself in its act of self-particularization, the initially abstract
universal comes back to itself in concrete form; and here, the divine Spirit is seen to
restore what is other to itself as the transitional moment in the process of its self95. LPR, 452 (233). Since, for Hegel, ideality is always inseparable from its actuality,
rationality of human being must realize itself in and through its natural existence: see several
arguments supporting this point in Enc. I, 15354 (96), 21011 (13840).
96. Kierkegaard inherits Hegel's conception of divine eternity as that which is at home with
itself. See Three Upbuilding Discourse (1844): The Expectancy of Eternal Salvation, UD, 26667.
97 Cf. LPR, 437 (220). This elevation is required by the fact that human beings are essentially
rational and the activity of our thinking is the soil in which our religious consciousness can come to
flourish. God as infinite spirit is available for humanity as a thinking subject while humanity as finite
spirit faces the demand to overcome its statue of finitude/untruth and desires to know this divine truth.
98. LPR, 414 (1978). See also, 17273 (31617), 405 (189), 44749 (22830).
99. LPR, 411 (194).

26

determination.100 The completion of this circuit brings about the absolute Spirit
realizing itself through the finite particular and having the determinate knowledge of
itself as the absolute truth. The finite creation as a whole and humanity as a part of it
are grasped as the means for the universal self-realization of God as absolute Spirit.101
Since the second intermediation appropriates the internal antithesis, we are left
with the question concerning the relation of God to the ethical intermediation of a
human subject. Can the self-determination of the divine consciousness constitutively
ground the ethical intermediation of humanity? Can the dialectical interrelation of the
particular to the universal in terms of the universal's self-determination (as the
absolute) fully account for Abraham's relation to the absolute? The answers seem to
be in the affirmative. As the third antithesis indicates, our self-surpassing desire to
elevate ourselves to the infinitude of divine consciousness cannot be fulfilled through
our internal intermediation alone because the need for this mediation is itself the mark
of our finitude. This human finitude, separating us from the divine unity, calls for the
necessity of our religious reconciliation with God and this reconciliation seems to
come from the side of divine infinite; for the finitude of human existence is conceived
as the particularized expression of the divine consciousness in the process of its
dialectical self-determination. This means that initially indeterminate divine
consciousness (i.e., abstract universal) manifests itself as human self-consciousness
(i.e., the particular) and constitutively expresses itself in humanity while fully
mediating with itself as the absolute self-consciousness (i.e., the concrete
universal).102 In this case, Abraham's relation to the divine absolute can be rephrased
in more precise Hegelian terms. Since a single individual is the particularized
expression of the absolute in the process of divine self-determination, one can relate
oneself to the concrete universal (i.e., the absolute) as the particular only when this
absolute recognizes the otherness of one's particularity as its self-particularized other
beyond its initial indeterminacy. Thus, insofar as the absolute is termed as the
concrete universal and differentiated from the indeterminate universal, Hegel can
reconfigure Abraham's absolute relation to the absolute as the relation of the
100. For a succinct presentation of this dialectical scheme, see LPR, 41516 (19899).
101. Cf. LPR, 1045 (87), 41516(19899), 46970 (25051), 47475 (25556); PR, 7.
102. This constitutive presencing of the divine self-determination to human self-determination
is not a threat to our autonomy but rather the enabling condition for its possibility since our selfdetermining process mirrors the divine self-determination.

27

particular to the concrete universal beyond the abstract universal.

2.1. Problems and Concerns

There is a simple yet profound problem: it is unlikely that Johannes
understood the fine distinction between these two types of the universal since his
formulation of Abraham's relation to God contains a rigid separation between the
universal and the particular. This means that he is simply asking for the possibility of
conceiving God beyond the language of the universal altogether. Hegelian
differentiation of the concrete from the abstract universal can only move us further to
ask if we can understand Abraham as relating to the divine absolute beyond the
concrete universal. Could there be the divine absolute beyond Hegel's absolute? Could
there be God beyond Hegel's God? These questions will push us outside the boundary
of dialectical thinking and enable us to recognize two serious reasons why Hegel's
formulation of the constitutive relation of divine and human self-determination must
be reconsidered vis--vis Abraham's faith.
First, Hegel formulates the relation of the infinite creator to the finite creation
in such a way that human finite existence can be affirmed insofar as it serves for the
infinite divine to mediate with itself. As we have seen above, the universal as initially
indeterminate infinite must first alienate itself as finite particular and brings itself
forth by negating what is other to itself as the transitional moment of its selfparticularization. Put differently, God, in his initial indeterminacy, sees finite creation
only as the self-particularized expression of itself and needs this finite other for its
becoming the self-determining absolute.103 Because of this dialectical need to mediate
with itself in and through the particular and seeing the particular as its own selfalienation, Hegel's God cannot be the self-same God who, out of his inexhaustible
richness, gratuitously creates what is other to himself for the other, and affirms the

103. Hegel's dialectical configuration of the reconciliation, therefore, works without a free
communication between divinity and humanity; but the former determines itself in and through
humanity as the other. And this other is not existing as the other to the divine self but rather as the selfothering. If we think of this in terms of human's reconciliation with God, Hegel's usage of the term
reconciliation in the third intermediation becomes troubling. If the finite is the self-alienation of the
infinite, what is finite and evil is really a self-offense of the infinite good; and if the reconciliation is the
latter's true self-affirmation through the negation of the finite as its self-othering, this reconciliation is
really the self-forgiving of the concrete universal. For further discussions on the self-imposition and
self-absolution of evil in Hegel's God, see Desmond, Hegel's God (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing
Co., 2003), 62, 156, hereafter HG.

28

existence of the other for the other.104 The particularity of the finite other is
instrumentalized for the final emphasis on the concrete universal as the divine
absolute and its status of being particular for itself is extirpated as it is seen in relation
to the universal's self-determination. In this dialectical framework, Abraham's relation
to the absolute will cost him his particularity as a means for the self-concreting selfaffirmation of the universal and his existence as a single individual will ultimately be
swallowed up in the universal's self-affirmation as the absolute.105
Second, Hegel tends to blur any strong ontological break between the human
and divine self-determination. The basis on which the humanity/divinity divide is
posited is the conflict of reason and desire in humanity. But as the second
intermediation shows, humanity is explicated as capable of overcoming this finitude
through self-surpassing unity of self-consciousness and seeing its naturalness as the
finite expression of its infinite rationality; hence, God as infinite other to human
finitude does not come into the picture of the latter's overcoming its limitation. What
is problematic, then, is that self-infinitization of the finite human subject does not
need the self-particularization of the infinite divine subject as the other to itself. This
means, since finite humanity already possesses the infinite power of unity in itself,
God as infinite subject might be considered nothing but a projection of humanity as
infinite spirit. This conflation of human autonomy to divine self-determination can be
seen in two ways: (1) the sublation of the sensible object and the rational subject in
terms of the inter-subjective self-consciousness and (2) the elevation of the natural
will to the universal rational will in terms of the social self-determination.
In another earlier workPhenomenology of Spiritthe division between the
104. Hegel remains equivocal with regard to the question of whether there will be the same
God (or humanity) in the beginning and the end of its development since the logic of self-determination
uses the expression of returning to self in closing its dialectical circle and tries to maintain that what
we have in the end is what it essentially is from the beginning. But the language of implicit/explicit or
abstract/concrete implies a change in the characteristics of divinity. Cf. Ludwig Feuerbach, Zur Kritik
der Hegelschen Philosophie, Gesammelte Werke: Kleinere Schriften II (1839-1846), Hrsg. Werner
Schuffenhauer (Berlin: Akademie, 1982): the first [das Erste] to which I return is no longer the initial,
indeterminate, and unproved first, but it is now mediated and therefore no longer the the same or, if it is
the same, no longer in the same form, 2526. Thus, Hegel's God, influenced by Jacob Boehme's
Gnosticism, significantly differs from the way in which Kierkegaard conceives of God in reference to
James 1:1722: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father
of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation. For Kierkegaard's reflections on God's
unchangeable generosity, see Four Upbuilding Discourses (1843): Every Good Gift and Every Perfect
Gift is from Above, UD, 12555; Two Upbuilding Discourses (1843): Love Will Hide a Multitude of
Sins, UD, 567; Four Upbuilding Discourses (1844); One Who Prays Aright, UD, 393.
105. In this sense, the dialectical relation of the universal and the particular cannot be
conceived as the work of love. For the contrast between the transcendent God of Christianity and
Hegel's dialectical self-determining God in relation to the otherness of creation, see HG, 13237.

29

sensible object and the rational subject is held by the self-differentiating unity of the
self-consciousnessthe I. Hegel explains:
Consciousness . . . has a double object: one is the immediate object, that of
sense-certainty and perception, which however for self-consciousness has the
character of a negative, and the second, viz. itself, which is the true essence,
and is present in the first instance only as opposed to the first object. In this
sphere, self-consciousness exhibits itself as the movement in which this
antithesis is removed, and the identity of itself with itself becomes explicit for
it.106
The sensible object as that which self-consciousness distinguished from itself is
granted of its substantial existence as a living being (rather than a mere amalgamation
of sense data or appearance) and this creates another distinction between the pure
undifferentiated self-consciousness, which tautologically relates itself to itself, and the
sphere of life that can exist independently of self-consciousness.107 In this division, the
former can recognize itself as the maker of the very distinction between itself and the
other (or else it is not being conscious of itself) and as being this unity of the
difference, it realizes itself as a living self-consciousness.108
This concrete self-consciousness, always mediating with itself in and through
the other, can come to recognize itself as existing for the other self-consciousness in
the process of its self-determination. According to this insight, Hegel remarks,
we already have before us the Notion of Spirit. What still lies ahead for
consciousness is the experience of what Spirit isthis absolute substance
which is the unity of the difference independent self-consciousnesses which, in
their opposition, enjoy perfect freedom and independence: 'I' that is 'We' and
'We' that is 'I'.109
Stated otherwise, the reconciliation of our naturalness (i.e., life) and rationality (i.e.,
abstract self-consciousness) implies the necessary interrelation of one human subject
to another and this dialectical inter-subjective relation gives the idea of God where we
can be at home with ourselves. Hegel's detailed account of human self-consciousness,
therefore, illustrates the emergence of human rationality from the stand-point of selfconsciousness in each individual to that of the rationality of humanity as a whole. This
106. Hegel, Phnomenologie des Geistes, ed. Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Reinhard Heede
(Hamburg: Meiner, 1980), 104, hereafter PhG; Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1977), 105 (167), hereafter PhS.
107. PhG, 1045, 106; PhS, 106 (168), 107 (171). For the self-relating unity of selfconsciousness, see PhG, 106, 107; PhS, 108 (171), 109 (17374). For the dialectical scheme of the
development of a living self-consciousness, see PhG, 108; PhS, 110 (176).
108. PhG, 108; PhS, 110 (176).
109. PhG, 108; PhS, 110 (177).

30

indicates that the development of each self-consciousness and of its interrelation with
other self-consciousness[es] does not need the notion of Spirit as the ontologically
enabling condition for their possibility (prior to their self-realizations) but it is
consequently manifested through one's endowed capacity to become a living selfconsciousness and recognize the inherent necessity of its interrelations with the others
in society.
Also if the notion of Spirit is a social self (i.e., We) that is inclusive of many
self-determining human subjects (i.e., the I), the divine subject in the third
intermediation is no longer ontologically transcendent to the finitude of human
existence as such. The elevation of a finite human subject to the infinitude of the
divine subject is discussed as the way in which each single individual is
incorporated (and/or incorporates itself) into the social whole; hence, the finitude of
the human subject is seen only as the self-particularization of the universal totality of
such human subjects in the process of their social self-determination. This point is
elaborated in the context of the dialectical elevation of the natural will of single
individuals to the universal rational will of the State in Hegel's mature work
Philosophy of Right. This ethical determination of human autonomy as the dialectical
development of the absolute Idea comes in three moments: (1) family, (2) civil society
and (3) the State. Family is the natural immediacy of ethical spirit where a single
individual has its particular self-consciousness within the unity of family members
and recognizes its essential inseparability from the others for its self-determination. In
civil society, the particular interests of the single individuals are mediated through the
formal universality110 of rational measures (e.g., private contracts, official
agreements, etc.) and these individuals determine themselves as the links in this
chain of social connections.111
The formal determination of freedom in civil society is still subjective in the
sense that the protection of private property and the security of personal freedom are
its highest priorities; hence, this subjective form of ethical spirit needs to constitute
itself as objectified spiriti.e., the State.112 Hegel argues:
The state is the actuality of concrete freedom. But concrete freedom consists in
110. PR, 187.
111. PR, 187.
112. For an interpretation of chapter 6 of the PhG where a historical self enters into the
conflicting relationship with the others in the manner of civil society, see di Giovanni, 380.

31

this that, personal individuality and its particular interests not only achieve
their complete development and gain explicit recognition for their right (as
they do in the sphere of the family and civil society) but . . . they also pass
over of their own accord into the interest of the universal, and, . . . they know
and will the universal; they even recognize it as their own substantive spirit;
they take it as their end and aim and are active in its pursuit. The result is that .
. . individuals . . . do not live as private persons for their own ends alone, but in
the very act of willing these they will the universal in the light of the universal,
and their activity is consciously aimed at none but the universal end.113
The State is the universal will willing itself in self-differentiated togetherness of
family and the civil society and thereby the will of a single individual in its natural
immediacy comes to have ethical validity as it takes part in this social self's absolute
self-willing. In light of this State as rational determination of human freedom, Hegel
explains:
spirit, which, sundering itself into the two ideal spheres of its concept, family
and civil society, enters upon its finite phase, but it does so only in order to rise
above its ideality and become explicit as infinite actual spirit.114
Thus, the finitude of each human autonomy is taken up to the State in the process of
the latter's dialectical self-determination and this self-determining rationality of the
social self is the ultimate destiny of each single individual to live the universal life of
ethics [Sittlichkeit].
In the end of LPR, Hegel similarly explains this rational determination of
freedom as the result of the reconciliation between humanity and divinity. He argues
that a human subject who is reconciled with God comes to have infinite value in
virtue of his vocation115 to properly exercise his freedom in the world and this calling
to determine his freedom is made effective in the community.116 Where can we find
this religious community in which the determination of human autonomy is absolutely
in consonance with the self-determination of the divine subject?
It is in the organization of the state that the divine has broken through
[eingeschlagen] into the sphere of actuality; the latter is permeated by the
former, and the worldly realm is now justified in and for itself, for its
foundation is the divine will, the law of right and freedom. The true
reconciliation, whereby the divine realizes itself in the domain of actuality,
consists in the ethical and juridical life of the state. . . . The institutions of
113. PR, 260 and see also 257.
114. PR, 262.
115. LPR, 482 (262).
116. LPR, 482 (262).

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ethical life are divine institutions.117

If the ethical life is enabled by the self-determination of the State and the
reconciliation of the worldly and divineresulting from the humanity-divinity
reconciliationis essentially ethical life, then this rational totality of the social self
would have to be God whose self-determination brings forth our ethical life.118 What
is required of each finite human subject is his rational obedience to the State as the
universal and absolute Spirit.119
Once we comparatively examine the second and the third intermediation of the
particular and the universal and analyze how Hegel deals with them in various texts,
the legitimacy of the basis in which the antithesis between humanity and divinity is
posited becomes questionable. On the one hand, the human subject is presented as
capable of overcoming the basis in which there is the humanity/divinity opposition.
The split in human existence can be intermediated through the self-surpassing unity of
117. LPR, 484n (264).
118. Hegel presents the concept of religion as a foundation for the manifestation of the
political state while making it clear that the latter's worldly freedom is more consummate than the
spiritual freedom of the religious community. What he fails to clarify in the end is whether the Absolute
Spirit, discussed as if it were more than just a political organization of the State, is ultimately human or
a true God.
119. Cf. Spirit that is certain of itself: Morality in chapter 6, the manifest religion (die
offenbare Religion) in chapter 7, and the sublation (Aufhebung) of religion to philosophy in chapter 8 of
PhG. Di Giovanni interprets the last section of chapter 6 as showing that [the protagonists of the PhG]
should be able to understand that the secret of their Christian faith has been the structure of their social
life all long, or, more graphically, that the spirit that they sought in a world-beyond is actually to be
foundeven as transcendentwithin the realm of their community, 382. So [b]y the end of chapter
6, religious faith (Christian or otherwise) is at an end, 382. For the religious dimension of PhG in
chapter 7 and 8, see H. S. Harris, Hegel's Ladder II: The Odyssey of Spirit (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc., 1997), 649763. Harris shows three ways in which Hegel's account of
Christianity as the manifest religion compromises the integrity of orthodox representations of Christian
fidelity: 1) the conflation of resurrection into Pentecost, 694; 2) his concept of fall as a necessary
moment for the dialectical development of the absolute Spirit, 68384, 686; PhG, 776; and 3) strong
influences from Boehme on the heterodox view of the Trinity (67881, 684). Besides these deviations,
the transition from Vorstellung to Begriff (Harris believes) entails the elimination of all transcendence.
Nothing 'beyond,' nothing outside the circle can break in. . . . Christianity is the 'absolute religion,'
because it makes 'God' conceptually interpretable without residue, 732. So the move to absolute
knowledge overcomes the transcendence that is a sine qua non for orthodox Christian faith. Cf. Cyril
O'Regan, The Impossibility of a Christian Reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit: H. S. Harris on
Hegel's Liquidation of Christianity, the Owl of Minerva 33, no. 1 (20012), 46, 84; Harris, 21, 711.
O'Regan understands the liquidation of Christianity in Harris' commentary to mean that while
Christianity survives as a historical presupposition for what replaces it, its representational modality of
discourse (Vorstellung) is surpassed, and with it any residual commitments to a transcendence reality
that is beyond human historical existence. He thinks this dialectical movement from Vorstellung to
Begriff in chapter 8 leaves the interpreter in the following position: it is possible to be a Christian and
a Hegelian, but not a Hegelian precisely as a Christian and so, by a very different route from
Kierkegaard's, Harris gives credence to Kierkegaard's either-or: Christianity or Hegelian speculative
philosophy. Thus, we can arrive at the same conclusion concerning the impossibility of Christian faith
in end of PhG as we have seen in LPR and PR.

33

self-consciousness; accordingly, the antithesis between humanity and divinity

becomes an unnecessary problem and thereby the latter looks more like a simple
projection of the former. On the other hand, if we grant that there is a division
between the finite and the infinite subject and the elevation of the former requires the
self-determining process of the latter, then the distance between them is the distance
between individual human beings and the rational totality of the social whole
constituted by such individuals. Since, in this case, Hegel's God is not ontologically
transcendent to human existence as a whole, what he means by divine in posing the
human/God antithesis is bound up with the rational totality of the State.120 Then the
State as the social self becomes the new God that determines itself in and through
individual human subjects.121 In both cases, Hegel's God no longer carries the
religious stature of being transcendent to self-determining human self-consciousness,
but becomes a self-manifestation of humanity, either individually or collectively, as
infinite spirit.122
If Hegel's absolute is either the projection of our self-determining selfconsciousness or the interrelation of finite self-consciousness[es] in form of the State,
we are left with the same question of conflating ethics and religion. Granted that
Hegel goes beyond Kantian dualism and deals with the complicated issue of the
constitutive relationship between divine authority and human autonomy, one could
still ask if Hegel is guilty of projecting the self-differentiating unity of humanity's
self-determining self-consciousness as God. No matter how majestic and sophisticated
120. Cf. Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums, in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Werner
Schuffenhauer (Berlin: Akademie, 1974), 5:478: our task [as thinkers] is to show that the antithesis
of divine and human is altogether illusory, that it is nothing else than the antithesis between the human
nature in general, and the human individual: that, consequently, the object and contents of the Christian
religion are altogether human. . . . The divine being is nothing else than the human being, or, rather the
human nature purified, freed from the limits of the individual man, made objectivei.e., contemplated
and revered as another, a distinct being. All the attributes of the divine nature are, therefore, attributes
of the human nature. Whether Feuerbach understood all of Hegel's philosophy correctly is beyond the
scope of this thesis but here he shows the same insight into the result of the Hegelian conceptualization
of divine infinite. For the English translation of the text, see Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity,
trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 1314. Since this translation fails to italicize the
phrases according to the original, the emphases above are Feuerbach's.
121. This should remind us of Ivan Karamazov's controversial article or the end of Rousseau's
Social Contract: the State should become the Church and the Church the State. See also, PV, 42.
Kierkegaard saw the same logic of civil religion in works of his contemporary Hegelians and criticized
their conflation of the state and the church as an enormous illusion where becoming a Christian
means the same as complying to the social norms rather than cultivating one's awareness of one's
intimate relation to the divine absolute.
122. Regarding this equivocation of human way up to divine way down in two-fold
dialectical passage for their reconciliation, see HG, 60. For the blurring of the ontological distinction
between humanity and divinity, see HG, 177.

34

this projection is, the originating source of humanity's self-determination is nothing

but our own self-determining reason and divine freedom is created in the image of our
human autonomy. Then what's the meaning of the constitutive relations of divinity
and humanity at all? Doesn't this mean again that divinity is an empty echo of human
reason? Perhaps Nietzsche's madman was not completely insane.123 In the bright
sunlight of rational ethics, we all pretend that God is still present to our ways of living
a good life. But in our configurations of the source of ethical value as our autonomy,
He is nowhere to be seen.124 And here Johannes illuminates the madness of faith as an
incredible possibility: isn't Abraham's act of piety pointing toward God beyond the
universal? Isn't this argumentum ad hominem of true God beyond Hegel's systematic
divination of human autonomy?
But what would it be like for Hegel (and those of us who walk in his
philosophical path) to think of the absolute beyond the concrete universal? There are
two reasons why Hegel cannot think this possibility: (1) the secondary status of
religion as representation [Vorstellung] to that of his speculative thinking [Denken]
and (2) his absolute commitment to this dialectical framework of thinking where the
religious concept [Begriff] can come to its fruition. For Hegel, religion is
characterized as two modes of immediate knowledge of God's existence: religious
feeling [Gefhl] and representation.125 The feeling of this immediate certainty (i.e.,
faith) is subjectively particular and indeterminate, hence it cannot justify its content
on its own account.126 The religious representation objectively determines what this
123. Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch fr Alle und Keinen,
Nietzsche Werke, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino (Berlin: Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968), 45; Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, ed. Adrian Del Caro, Robert Pippin and trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 28: Es ist aber immer auch etwas Vernunft im Wahnsinn (But there is also
some reason in madness).
124. Nietzsche, Die Frliche Wissenschaft, Nietzsche Werke, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino
(Berlin: Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973), 15860; The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams and trans. Josefine
Nauckoff and Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 11920. See also
Charles Bambach, Nietzsche's Madman Parable: A Cynical Reading in American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 84, no. 2 (2010): 4489. Bambach compares Nietzsche's madman to Diogenes
of Sinope and argues that as young Diogenes devalued the established coinage (nomisma) of Sinope
by counterfeiting it, Nietzsche's madman is seen as publicly announcing the theological-metaphysical
currency of Western culture is counterfeit. The communal forgery of the economic value is also shown
in Johannes' parable of dutch merchants who sunk a few cargoes to jack up the price of spices, 121.
Perhaps, his following question on the intellectual forgery of spiritual value in western philosophy
should be read with some cynic tone: Do we need something similar in the world of spirit?
125. LPR, 134 (282).
126. LPR, 138 (286), 14244 (2901), 15052 (2978). Cf. Kant, Religion, 145 (6:114),
Conflict, 259 (7:33).

35

subjective feeling is about through imagistic thinking and/or non-sensible

reflection.127 So for instance, the story provided in the Scripture is symbolic of
something other than its literal meaning and/or interpreted to carry within it some
dualistic opposition through our non-sensible reflections. That is to say, the
determinate characteristics of the religious content in Vorstellung (e.g. finite, infinite,
universal, particular, etc.) are framed in the one-sided category of understanding
[Verstand] where each of these terms is abstractly conceived as standing apart from its
opposite.128 Abraham's story can register as either or both of these precepts of
religious representation; hence, Abraham seems like relating himself as the particular
to the abstract infinite standing over against the whole world. Alas Jewish faith! It is
so rigid and dualistic! Hegel would think that his speculative thinking is needed to
ultimately account for the dialectical interrelation of these opposites and acquire a
concept of the determinate, rational content of the religious representation.129 Thus, his
philosophy must always go further than faith.
Since Hegel's philosophy is the highest service of God [Gottesdienst] to
which every religious representation is subordinated and his speculative thinking is
the ultimate ground in which God realizes itself in and through the finite particular,
his commitment to the dialectical framework of thinking is unconditional and his
answer to any question concerning religion or philosophy is made in accordance with
its logic of self-determination.130 Consequently, to contemplate the possibility of the
127. Note how Johannes refers to faith in Hegelian philosophy as Gefhl but never mentions
his understanding of religion as Vorstellung.
128. Cf. LPR, 15354 (3001), 41920 (2023). St. Augustine also deals with this immediate
incomprehensibility of God's determinate characteristics in his Confessions 1.4.4. But notice the
difference between Hegelian and classical interpretations of the divine attributes: dialectical reduction
to the immanent universal and plurivocal unfolding that has an openness to the otherness of the divine
absolute as that which is beyond the universality of linguistic communications in human term.
129. Cf. Hegel, Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the Encyclopaedia of the
Philosophical Sciences (1830), Together with the Zustze, ed. Michael J. Inwood and trans. William
Wallace and A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Enzyklopdie Der Philosophischen
Wissenschaften Im Grundrisse (1830), Gesammelte Werke, 20:56974, hereafter Enc. II. For further
discussions concerning the secondary status of Vorstellung and its philosophical consequences, consult
HG, 6770, 12627.
130. It should be noted how Hegel's conceptualization of a religious representation
significantly differs from the classical/pros-hen-equivocal interpretations of the Scripture. Aquinas, for
instance, argues that there can be four levels of meaning (i.e., literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical)
in one's interpretations of the Bible and the last level, which builds on the preceding three, has an
openness to the divine transcendence. Dante Alighieri adopts this schema and makes it more explicit
that the anagogical meaning is incommensurable to the rational explications available in first three
levels. Unlike these classical thinkers, Hegel consistently tries to transfer the religious representation to
a conceptual form that is commensurable and explicable in terms of the immanent self-determining

36

divine absolute beyond the concrete universal is to acknowledge certain religious

representations to be capable of conveying something more than his dialectical
thinking can penetrate. This thinking beyond dialectical thinking must sound utterly
impossible for Hegel; and so, Abraham would have to look like a mad man casting
himself to the abyss of hyperbolic nothingi.e. Shakespeare's Macbeth. But those
who patiently reflect on Hegel's philosophy should recognize that his apotheosis of
our self-determining mind [Geist] cannot accommodate our faith in divine authority
beyond ourselves. And one could ask if there is something insane about this
unconditional fidelity to dialectical thinking too. It is a kind of madness performed as
a fundamental comportment of seizure towards the good of being131 and impairing
our capacity to see the source of the ethical laws outside our self-determining reason.
Johannes seems to detect this metaphysical hubris in the end of dialectical
logic and rightly suggests that Abraham as the prototype of Judeo-Christian fidelity
escapes Hegel's configuration of the (dynamic) ethical universal as the absolute. So,
he wants us to ask again in our renewed anxiety as children of modern thought: Can
Abraham relate to the divine absolute beyond Hegel's God? Is there God to whom
dialectical apotheosis of our self-determining mind is ultimately responsible? Can we
save faith in the divine absolute beyond our autonomy? We try to wash away the story
of Abraham for it sounds like a story of dark enthusiasm.132 We try to be in term
with it by thinking that the philosophical system has understood faith's mysterious
passion. But as Macbeth sees the incomprehensible stain on his hands, we see
something incommensurable in Abraham's faith to Kantian and Hegelian
absolutization of the ethical universal. Here left in our hands is something we cannot
wash awayour desire to find God beyond us. Johannes might not be nave after all
since we have progressed no further than his point: if reason's universal as the ethical
is the divine absolute, Judeo-Christian faith in God is lost.133
universal. Cf. Aquinas, (ST. Ia, 1, 10) and Dante, Il Convivio, Book II Chapter 1.
131. Desmond, Sticky Evil: Macbeth and the Karma of the Equivocal, God, Literature and
Process Thought, ed. Darren J.N. Middleton (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), 147.
132. Cf. Kant, LPDR, 436 (28:1109); Religion, 109 (6:68), 19394 (6:17475); WDO, 10
(8:134), 17 (8:145); The End of All Things, Religion and Rational Theology, ed. Allen W. Wood,
George di Giovanni, and trans. Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1996), 228
(8:335).
133. Kierkegaard highlights this point in his draft to the FT: All Problemata should end as
follows: this is the paradox of faith, a paradox that no reasoning is able to masterand yet it is so, or
we must obliterate the story of Abraham, JP, 3:402 (3079). This obliteration of Abraham's faith seems
to happen in the end of Kant's and Hegel's philosophy of religion since, as di Giovanni puts it, Kant's

37

3. Praising Abraham in Fear and Trembling: Reason's Fidelity to

Absolute Love
Johannes de Silentio is a strange author on the subject of faith.134 Like the
messenger in the epigraph, he knows that the message he carries is significant but he
does not understand what it signifiesfor it is intelligible only to those who are
intimate to its giving source like a son to his father. He claims his authorial position to
be poetice et eleganter a supplementary clerk who neither writes the system nor
gives promises of the system, who neither exhausts himself on the system nor bids
himself to the system.135 This quasi-systematic position is both a strength and
weakness for contemplating Abraham's story: a strength because his literary stance
allows him to explore the possibility of contemplating the divine authority beyond the
systematic confine of determinate rationality and break down the confidence of
reason's autonomy as the absolute; and a weakness because he shows neither
systematic rigor nor an existential achievement of faith in thinking through and
beyond the bounds of reason's self-determination and fails to dissolve the problems he
finds pertinent to the ethical vis--vis faith. So, we will examine what this pseudonym
system demand[s] a moral faith but leave[s] no rational space for religion apart from the practical itself
of morality . . . whereas for Hegel religion has autonomous as well as fundamental standing as a human
phenomenon but, precisely for that reason, at the end no longer requires faith, 369.
134. Mark Lloyd Taylor shows this strangeness of Johannes' authorship in Ordeal and
Repetition in Kierkegaard's Treatment of Abraham and Job, Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of
Community: Religion, Ethics, and Politics in Kierkegaard (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press
International, Inc., 1992), 3334, hereafter Community. Cf. Edward Mooney, Art, Deed, and System,
IKC, 86; Evans, Faith as the Telos of Morality, IKC, 11. Mooney argues that this distance of
Johannes as admirer of Abraham may ultimately undermine a more intimate appropriation of the
significance of Abraham's faithful deed and Evans also says, Johannes himself, as the messenger,
may not adequately grasp the significance of his own work.
135. FT, 7. Johannes illustrates the intimate relationship between a poet and a hero in FT, 15
and explicates the position of the former as being truthful to the image of the latter. Kierkegaard and
Anti-Climacus seem to think that when this poetic disposition is held in relation to religious faith as it
is the case in FT, its poetic admiration can never penetrate into the nature of faith or prevent one from
doing so. Cf. You Shall Love Your Neighbor in WL, 4547, 5054, The Work of Love in Praising
Love in WL, 35960; What Is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with True Blessing in the Mirror
of the Word? in For Self-Examination, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990), 18, hereafter FSE. In the WL, Kierkegaard argues that the poet sings
of (erotic/preferential) love [Elskov] while the religious person fulfills (self-renunciating/
unconditional) love [Krlighed] of his neighbor in actuality. In FSE, Kierkegaard further speaks (as
Luther) that the one who describes faith is a poet but not a believer. So as Augustine famously argued
the tragic plays could distance one from the praxis of compassion (cf. Confessions 3. 2. 24),
Kierkegaard argues that poetic admirations of love could prevent us from truly understanding the
nature of faithfor faith requires to love but not to admire. Cf. Practice in Christianity, ed. and trans.
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 5960, 6364, 237
9, 24246, 24952, 25657, hereafter PC; Two Ages, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 1415, hereafter TA; PV, 133. Johannes might know this
point since he says, no poet can find his way to Abraham, 118.

38

sees in Abraham's story, diagnose the problems in his vision, and articulate the true
significance of Judeo-Christian fidelity by intimating our reason to the giving source
of the religious message.
Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac (Johannes believes) is the shudder of the
idea.136 It breaks down the Kantian and Hegelian conception of God and invalidates
their transposition of the whole content of faith into conceptual form.137 Hence
Johannes' Exordium is a set of false starts138 exhibiting the four ways in which one
can realize what is missing in their philosophical interpretations of Abraham's story.
What is common to all of them is the lack of faith in the act of piety: Abraham cannot
reconcile the ethical problem of sacrificing Isaac and that of going against God.139 He
sees no possible mediation between the command of the ethical universal and that of
the divine absolute; consequently, he and/or Isaac end up doubting the ultimate
goodness of their God. This is precisely how Kant and Hegel problematize this
religious representation in accord with each of their philosophical theories of religion.
Johannes, however, demonstrates that none of these readings is truthful to what
actually happens in the original image; for we have no dirge of sorrow by
Abraham140 and he was cheerful and willing141 as he followed the divine command.
This is shocking to those of us remaining within the bounds of reason's universal as
the absolute. But since the traditional sense of faith escapes this framework of rational
ethics, we have to search the truth of this story beyond it through Fear and Trembling.
Johannes provides the basic schema in which we can contemplate the story of
136. FT, 9.
137. FT, 7.
138. Mooney, Art, Deed, and System in IKC, 77; Daniel Watts, Dilemmatic Deliberations
in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling in Faith and Philosophy 28, No. 2 (April 2011), 188. Watts
indicates, the lyrical dimensions [of the opening of Fear and Trembling] serve to attune us to thinking
in a concrete and specific way about Abrahamviz., it elicit[s] the kind of pathos that is
characteristic of the proper recognition of a real dilemma [of whether or not his faith is justified by
reason] as such. Mooney emphasizes this point by saying that Hannay's translation of Stemming as
Attunement is more apt than Hong's translation of it as Exordium.
139. Cf. Green, 186. Green also sees Stemming as exhibitions of the several forms of despair:
hesitancy and doubt in complying with the command, a loss of enthusiasm for life itself, or the
inability to sustain a sense of happiness in the presence of his child.
140. FT, 17.
141. FT, 21. See also Hongs' reference to Sren Kierkegaards Papirer, IV B 73 n.d., ed. Niels
Thulstrup (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1969): Abraham was great not because he sacrificed Isaac but
because he had faith, because he was cheerful and willing. That is what is accentuated in the four
Problemata, for in each case he does it, but not in faith.

39

Abraham. First, there is a sharp distinction between the universal and the particular,
the infinite and the finite, and the temporal and the eternal. These distinctions reflect
the Kantian universal/particular opposition yet simultaneously the infinitude of the
ethical universal is expressed as social morality [Sdelighed].142 Thus the difference
between Kantian and Hegelian ethical thinking is mixed up as Johannes preserves the
dualistic framework while conceiving the ethical universal as the self-determining
social whole; and because of this, his reflections on the ethical universal cannot be
read as straightforward criticisms against either Kant or Hegel; but they should be
read as the ways to become mindful of Judeo-Christian fidelity both beyond Kant and
Hegel. Second, Johannes provides a distinction between the knight of infinity and the
knight of faith. To the former, a tragic hero belongs properly and an aesthetic hero
improperly,143 and to the latter, belongs Abraham. The movement by which one can be
the tragic hero is philosophical144 and that by which one can be the knight of faith is
religious. The former is always presupposed by the latter and the latter is
comprehensive of the former. In keeping these basic distinctions for analyzing the
Akedah, let us examine the difference between the tragic hero and the knight of faith
and then see how Johannes characterizes Abraham as the knight of faith.
The tragic hero is the knight of infinite resignation145 who completes his
ethical task to express himself in the universal through obliterating the particularity
of all that is finite (including his own existence as a single individual) and sees this
universal as the divine absolute. This act of resignation for the ethical universal is
practiced solely in accord with reason's autonomy; hence, the tragic hero is an
exemplar of Kantian Moralitt.146 Johannes further illustrates the relation of his
finitude to the infinitude of the ethical universal is such that it cannot be translated
from ideality (of the infinite universal) into reality (of the finite particular) as seen in
142. FT, 55. This Danish term is equivalent to the German phrase, Sittlichkeit. Cf. PC, 8791.
Anti-Climacus gives a more Hegelianized version of this ethical in conjunction with The Good and
Conscience in Philosophy of Right. For the comprehensive analyses of the ethical in contrast with
Kant's morality, cf. Green, 12124, 14656.
143. FT, 11213. This is the domain of the ethical universal and so proper/improper
corresponds to the ethical/unethical respectively.
144. See FT, 4849, 52, 69. By philosophical, Johannes means autonomous and so, it is
not contradictory for him to claim his ability to make this movement while denying that he is a
philosopher.
145. FT, 37. See also FT, 38, 4244.
146. Cf. Green, 89.

40

the asymmetrical relation of the princess and the swain.147 This process of bringing
himself closer to the infinite universal assumes
a love of the eternal being, which true enough denied the fulfillment but
nevertheless did reconcile him once more in the eternal consciousness of its
validity in an eternal form that no actuality can take away from him.148
This is what Hegel finds problematic both in Abraham's faith and Kant's dualistic
configuration of morality since Abraham (or a morally upright subject) appears to set
an unachievable goal of attaining an indeterminate universal and remains a stranger to
the particularity of the empirical world in which he can exist as a concrete rational
being.149 This tragic hero is explicated as sacrificing his familial relations (i.e., the
particular) for the sake of the State (i.e. the concrete universal) and this
terminologically follows the dialectical structure of Hegelian Sittlichkeit. Although
this particular/universal distinction is not truthful to the dynamic interrelation of the
family and the State, it still holds that if one's relation to the State is the highest
expression of the ethical, this concrete universal is the divine absolute and eternal
salvation lies in one's rational obedience to the self-determining universal both for the
tragic hero and Hegel. Just as divine transcendence is unnecessary for the autonomy
of Kantian and Hegelian philosophy, the act of resignation does not require
faith150the faith in God beyond the autonomy of the ethical universal.
The knight of faith makes the movement of infinite resignation and then
teleologically suspends151 this movement by the movements of finitude.152 This is
the paradox of faith made by the virtue of the absurd.153 This means that the knight
of faith renounces everything for the universal through his own self-determining
reason like the tragic hero but simultaneously through his faith, receives everything
147. FT, 4142.
148. FT, 4344. See also FT, 48, 49.
149. Kant might be appalled to see how Hegel conflates Abraham's faith in indeterminate selfrelating divine unity with a morally upright subject since, for Kant, Abraham seems to be simply
violating the categorical imperative while the morally upright subject neither violates nor derives the
concept of morality from such indeterminate idea of divine being. It would not make sense for Kant to
say that Abraham's act is a hyperbolic retreat to the indeterminate universal. But for Hegel (in his early
age), both Kantian moral hero and Abraham seem failing to intermediate the distinction between the
particular and the universal; hence both of them are guilty of retreating to the abstract universal.
150. Cf. FT, 48.
151. FT, 55, 99.
152. Cf. FT, 38.
153. FT, 35, 36, 37, 46, 99.

41

that is temporal and finite in his personal relation to the divine absolute beyond the
ethical universal. Because of his private relation to the higher telos as being
irreducible to the ethical universal in his particularity, the knight of faith belongs
entirely to the [finite] world.154 This is contrary to the tragic heroalienating himself
from the world in extirpating his particularity for the infinitude of the ethical universal
or Hegel's Abrahamhurrying to give up Isaac, himself, everything without
anxiety, in order to hasten to the alienation-transcending ekstasis of the other
world.155 But as Johannes argues,
Abraham's faith was not of this sort, for actually it is not faith but the most
remote possibility of faith that faintly sees its object on the most distant
horizon but is separated from it by a chasmal abyss in which doubt plays
tricks. But Abraham had faith specifically for this life.156
This double-movement of faith in this world is paradoxical since it moves from the
particular to the universal and then by means of the universal comes back to the
particular as the single individual in its absolute relation to the absolute. To this
transcendent divinity, the ethical universal is placed in a relative positioni.e.,
teleologically suspendedwhere it receives a paradoxical expression157 for its
validity. In the Kantian format, the particular lifts itself to the level of the universal as
the absolute; whereas in Hegel, the universal determines itself to be the absolute in
and through the particular. Neither of them has access to the absolute without
negating the particular in relation to the final emphasis on the universal and this
universal is the immanent absolute determined solely in accordance with human
reason. But in the paradoxical form of faith, the absolute stands above the ethical
mediation of the particular to be the universal and thereby a single individual can
recognize both the particular and the universal as given;158 hence, he can both bring
154. FT, 39.
155. Simon D. Podmore, Kierkegaard and the Self Before God: Anatomy of the Abyss
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 96.
156. FT, 20. See also FT, 1718, 36, 47.
157. FT, 70.
158. Cf. On the Occasion of a Confession, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, ed.
and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 11,
hereafter TDIO: If you give everything away, that still does not necessarily mean that it is gained, but
if you gain it you can then gladly possess everything as one who has nothing. Johannes admits that he
would not be able to love Isaac (i.e. the particular) as Abraham did because he could not be happy in
Isaac when he receives him back after giving him up, 35. The difference between Johannes as the
(potential) tragic hero and Abraham as the knight of faith is that the latter can grant and receive the
particular as given while the latter cannot. So the paradoxical expression of the ethical indicates this

42

himself around in his union with the universal and receive the particular as a single
individual in his private relation to the absolute.
Abraham is not the tragic hero but the knight of faith, for he shows no sorrow
before, after, or in the midst of giving up the particular (i.e. Isaac). Further, after
giving up what is dear to him, he receives the particular back again in his personal
relation to the divine absolute.159 The knight of faith is the only happy man, the heir
to the finite, whereas the knight of resignation is a stranger and an alien160 and by
faith Abraham did not renounce Isaac, but by faith Abraham received Isaac.161 What
strikes Johannes as the most astonishing characteristic of faith, then, is not the
renunciation of the particular for the universal but the reception of the particular back
in joy and full welcome after shifting his devotion away from it.162 This paradoxical
movement is possible because the knight of faith can relate himself as a singular to
the absolute beyond the ethical universal and receives the particular back from this
absolute in whom all things are possible.163 Yet to the tragic hero who absolutizes
his reason's universal, this paradoxical movement of faith seems impossible. Mark L.
Taylor acutely highlights this faith's absurdity with Johannes' point:
the knight of faith is so far from being a stranger in the finite world that the
knight can be mistaken for a tax collector, fully immersed in finitude, with no
external sign of heterogeneity. The difference, and it is an absolute difference,
is that the knight of faith does not live in the finite immediately, but in the
second immediacy of the double movement of faith whereby the finite is
received from the hand of God.164
After giving up the finite particular, Abraham can show his hospitality toward the
same particular since he recognizes neither the particular nor the universal as
something that he has given to himself but both as given to him from God. Through
faith's double-movement, the same particular is now a new creation by virtue of the
acknowledgment of the givenness of the particular in its irreducible singularity.
159. Cf. FT, 3738.
160. FT, 50.
161. FT, 49.
162. FT, 4849: By faith I do not renounce anything; on the contrary, by faith I receive
everything exactly in the sense in which it is said that one who has faith like a mustard seed can move
mountains.
163. FT, 46, 119. See also Matthew 19:26; Mark 10:27, 14:36; Luke 8:27.
164. Mark L. Taylor, 42. Cf. FT, 389, 49. For the hospitality of the given world from the
view-point of the faithful, see Mooney, Self, Others, Goods, Final Faith: Kierkegaard Past the
Continental Divide, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 32, no. 2 (2011): 241.

43

absurd165 and received as given in its irreducible singularity. Since this reception of
the particular as a divine gift is impossible in human terms alone,166 the tragic hero
who can only determine himself to be the universal sees a mere impossibility in faith
as this paradoxical movement.
Here Johannes faces a crucial philosophical problem: if faith is the paradox
and reason is the ethical universal, there is a complete break between them. This
problem comes from the weakness of his authorial positioni.e., his literary
exploration of faith is made without moving beyond the teleology of the ethical.167
That is to say, Johannes ultimately fails to make the movement of faith and speaks
only from the standpoint of self-determining reason where [he] cannot understand or
learn anything from Abraham but to be amazed.168 So, the purpose of his writing is to
make the incomprehensibility of Abraham more salient169 but not to make any
philosophical justification for this faith. For this reason, Mark C. Taylor notes:
[Johannes'] book does not so much reveal a faithful perspective, as it describes
the way faith appears to nonfaith. Abraham constantly eludes Johannes' grasp.
With Sarah, Johannes is left to watch Abraham from afar. Johannes cannot
ascend Moriah.170
This strange messenger has proven that Abraham's faith is irreducible to the
formulation[s] of our autonomous reason as the immanent absolute. But as he clings
to the framework[s] of the rational universal, every ethical intermediation and every
sort of philosophical articulation can happen only within. Consequently, as we have
eliminated the possibility of comprehending Abraham's faith by Kantian or Hegelian
reason, Johannes thinks that Abraham can neither mediate his act of faith nor
articulate it in any intelligible manner; for to mediate or to speak, he has to reside

165. FT, 40.

166. FT, 35, 36, 4647, 48, 49, 99, 115.
167. FT, 57. Cf. The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle, Without Authority, ed.
and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 1078:
The lyrical quite rightly has no telos outside. . . . The lyrical author cares only about the production,
enjoys the joy of the production . . . but he has nothing to do with others. He does not write in order to,
in order to enlighten people, in order to help them onto the right road, in order to accomplish something
in short, he does not write: in order to.
168. FT, 37. For Johannes' inability to make the movement of faith or become mindful of the
nature of such a way of being, see FT, 3334, 37, 4748, 5051, 72, 99, 11213, 115, 11920.
169. FT, 112.
170. Mark C. Taylor, Sounds of Silence, Critical Appraisals, 166.

44

within the boundary of reason's universal.171 Then Abraham as the paradox of faith
cannot ever be made sense of in the domain of philosophy. Johannes argues, in this
sense, that Abraham's relation to the divine absolute beyond the immanent telos of the
ethical universal is made in complete solitude172 and that there is no possibility of
forming a religious community based on faith (i.e. the Church) differently from the
ethical community based on reason (i.e., the State)173 or of meaningfully talking about
faith as something intelligible to our reason.174 Then we are left with two problematic
options: either we save reason and its constitution of the ethical community by
eliminating the possibility of the paradoxical movement of faith or acknowledge this
paradox as something utterly incomprehensible.175 Either way, there will be a
complete discontinuity between faith and reason where our philosophical questioning
of faith becomes futile. Either way, we end up having a blind faith that is unjustifiable
or stupid reason that cannot articulate faith. This would result in the impotence of
philosophy and the demand for silent religiosity in great anxiety.176
171. FT, 60, 66, 70, 71, 113, 11415, 118.
172. FT, 76, 7880, 11415.
173. FT, 74. See also FT, 71, 93.
174. For the interpretation of Kierkegaard as a proponent of radical individualism, see Mark
C. Taylor, Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship: A Study of Time and the Self (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1975), 34372; Bruce H. Kirmmse, The Thunderstorm: Kierkegaard's Ecclesiology
in Faith and Philosophy 17, no. 1 (January 2000): 98. Contra Taylor, see Westphal, Kierkegaard's
Teleological Suspension of Religiousness B, Community, 11826 and Gregory R. Beabout and Brad
Frazier, A Challenge to the 'Solitary Self' Interpretation of Kierkegaard, History of Philosophy
Quarterly 17, no. 1 (January 2000): 75, 85. Westphal articulates Religiousness C as the notion of a
final stage of existence in Kierkegaard's account consisting in the complete self-realization as an
individual in his communal relations with the others and God. Pace Westphal, Beabout and Frazier
cites the passages commending solitariness as a transitive moment that is necessary in order to
become a fully realized self and regards Kierkegaard's mature works as calling for faith that
culminates in the works of love and self-sacrifice as a higher telos encompassing both proper sociality
and individuality. Contra Kirmmse, see Michael Plekon, Kierkegaard at the End: His 'Last' Sermon,
Eschatology and the Attack on the Church in Faith and Philosophy 17, no. 1 (January 2000): 79.
Plekon points out, the writings of Kierkegaard's last years are eschatologically embroidered with
threads of the kingdom's immanence, expressed most often in the image of God as inexhaustible,
forgiving and self-giving love and discounts Kirmmse's reading as one-sided. For Kierkegaard's
passages commending one's solitariness as secondary to the highest expression of a religious life in
community, see Judge for Yourself!, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990), 169, hereafter JFY; The Present Age in TA, 8182, 9293, 106.
175. This is what Johannes means when he says, Let us then either cancel out Abraham or
learn to be horrified by the prodigious paradox that is the meaning of his life, 5253.
176. Cf. Religion, 62 (6:10); Enc. II, 573. With respect to this philosophy/religion
discontinuity, both Kant and Hegel are right. Kant says, a religion that rashly declares war on reason
will not long endure against it and Hegel, Such opposition rests on deficiency of insight into the
nature of the difference indicated.

45

If we are to make sense of the relation of faith and reason, however, what is
required here is to place ourselves in the paradoxical movement of faith and to think
beyond the boundary of practical and dialectical reason. We must pay attention to the
ways in which the relation of the universal and the particular unfolds itself in relation
to God and resurrect the power of reason that can recognize this limit against faith's
paradox. This is the only way in which we can be philosophically mindful of JudeoChristian fidelity and grasp its meaningful relation to the renewed understanding of
reason. Johannes thinks that there is no dearth of keen minds and careful scholars
who have found analogies to [the paradox of faith]177 and seems to hold that no one
could articulate faith. It would certainly take an enormous effort to reconfigure the
whole function of reason such that it can be aware of the givenness of the particular,
the universal, and their interrelations in reference to the transcendent absolute of the
original divinity or to formulate how the singularity of each human being is not
extirpated in its private relation to the absolute. But to give a philosophical account of
faith, we should not stop with blind faith on one hand and impotent reason on the
other. We should dare to be faithful to reason's power to recognize the fullness of faith
and remain faithful to its richness beyond human self-determining reason. Here we
have to be critical of Kierkegaard's pseudonym, for he existentially lacks the humble
courage of faith178 to make himself intimate to Abraham's story or intellectual
aptitude to systematically account for such belief.179
The paradoxical structure of faith shows the ground of the particular and the
universal as something excessive to the process of reason's self-determination to be
the universal. The divine absolute in this paradoxical formulation is irreducible to the
universality of Kantian Moralitt or Hegelian Sittlichkeit. Since it is neither the
regulative ideal of practical reason which has no constitutive bearing on the selfdetermining process of morality nor the indeterminate universality which carries
within itself an inherent exigency to concretize itself in and through the particular, this
transcendent absolute needs neither the particular nor the universal to determine itself

177. FT, 56. Cf. FT, 101.

178. FT, 49, 73.
179. Note Kierkegaard's word on his indirect communication through his pseudonymous
writing (via Anti-Climacus): it is indirect communication to place jest and earnestness together in such
a way that the composite is a dialectical knotand then to be a nobody oneself. If anyone wants to
have anything to do with this kind of communication, he will have to untie the knot himself, PC, 133.

46

as the highest end. Instead, out of its inexhaustible fountain of goodness,180 this
divinity gives each particular to be what it is and enables its intermediations with
others through releasing them to be for themselves.181 Johannes vaguely recognizes
this divine generosity:
I am convinced that God is love; for me this thought has a primal lyrical
validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably happy; when it is absent, I
long for it more vehemently than the lover for the object of his love. But I do
not have faith; this courage I lack.182
To have faith then is to recognize what this love looks like and to find oneself in one's
personal relation to the source [Kilde] of this love. Kierkegaard illustrates this love as
sacrificial giving in the discourse Love Does Not Seek Its Own and argues that the
work of sacrificial giving of oneself183 should not look like proprietary exchange
expecting any kind of reciprocity but unmerited assistance of a person to stand
whereby this person thinks he is standing by himself.184 In this act of giving,
the loving one has understood that essentially every human being indeed
stands by himselfthrough God's helpand that the loving one's selfannihilation is really only in order not to hinder the other person's Godrelationship, so that all loving one's help infinitely vanishes in the Godrelationship.185
So, as Mulder says, one offering assistance and the one receiving it are in some way
made to know and remember that all such gifts are possible only in the context of
God's unmerited gift to us all186 and each individual should realize this unconditional
love as God who gives Himself for each finite individual to be for itself without

180. WL, 271.

181. See Nancy Jay Crumbine, On Faith, Critical Appraisals, 19396. She describes the
personal relation of God to humanity as the ontological richness of privacy that makes public action
possible and differentiates the intimate privacy of faith from the privation of accidental singularity in
context of aesthetic solitude.
182. FT, 34. See also FT, 35.
183. WL, 265.
184. WL, 27778.
185. WL, 278. See also Jack Mulder, Jr., Kierkegaard and the Communion of Saints in
Kierkegaard and the Catholic Tradition: Conflict and Dialogue (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press, 2010), 20022. Mulder quotes the same passage and argues that Kierkegaard's concept of love as
self-sacrificial giving calls for the agapeic community in which we help one another in the life of faith
but the reason for why this help is efficacious is not that we are self-subsistent sources of such
assistance, but that we give from out of what we have been given, and are still being given, 221.
186. Mulder, 220.

47

making any proprietary claim of this other for his self-affirmation.187 This is how the
ethical universal has to be placed in its relative position to the generosity of the divine
transcendence (hence the ethical cannot be the absolute yet receives the paradoxical
expression of love) and thereby, the highest telos of the divine absolute as this selfsacrificial love both accounts for the infinite value of humanity and makes possible
our ethical self/inter-mediation; for it gives each of us to be for ourselves in our
irreducible singularity.188 Thus, the infinite resignation is not only antecedent to, but
also always already enabled by one's relation to the divine absolute.
This transcendent ground of our freedom and its constitutive relation to our
ethical intermediations as the works of love are often left in our oblivion. For
instance, reason's self-determination (whether it is Kantian or Hegelian) takes for
granted that there is the particular on the one hand and the universal on the other and
then goes on to claim that we must bring ourselves in conformity with the latter
through negating the former. So the ethical universal is thought to be the highest selfgiven telos of our existence and thereby the ultimate ground of this self-determining
process is not fully recognized. But what is distinct in the knight of faith is that he
187. Cf. WL, 27072: only true love loves every man according to his own [individuality]
and [t]o have individuality is to believe in the individuality of everyone else, because individuality is
not mine but is God's gift by which he gives me being and gives being to all, gives being to everything
(translations modified according to Hong's 1962 edition). See also Becoming Sober, JFY, 1223: for
the person to whom the relationship with God should, in his view, mean receiving everything from
God, for him it is not inspiring that the relationship with God means renunciation of everythingbut
what is more blissful (that is, more inspiring): to be able to receive all things with the help of God or to
be obligated to be able, also with the help of God, to do without all things! To be in an intimate
relation with God as a single individual, then, is to be able to appreciate everything as given and to see
God as the generous giver of all thing. In Christ as the Prototype, JFY, 18586, Kierkegaard
illustrates this self-renunciative giving of the divine absolute apropos of human freedom in terms of a
parablea picture of a mother gently pushing her child's stroller where he is let to push it for himself.
For the direct inferences to the nature of divine compassion in its constitutive relation to each
individual's ethical self/inter-mediations, see The Halt, PC, 5860.
188. This relation of Abraham as a single individual to the divine transcendence is similar to
the classical conception of the relationship between creatures and God. Cf. Martin J. De Nys, Aquinas
and Kierkegaard on the Relation between God and Creatures in American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 25, no. 3 (2001): 389407. For Aquinas, De Nys argues, God is properly said to be
intimately present in everything (propter quad Deus sit in omnibus rebus et intime), 394 (ST. Ia, 8, 1)
and as He exists in everything as causing their existence (substantia sua adest omnibus ut causa
essendi), 395 (ST. Ia, 8, 5), God exercises an intimate presence to every creature of His own self. . . .
Within this situation there is no sense in which the self-subsistent being and undiminished excellence of
God requires that presence in order to be or to be understood, 395. Given that God is intimately
present to all that is (ens) as the transcendent cause of its existence (esse), De Nys reads Kierkegaard as
showing that the pursuit of any relative end, assuming the necessary moral considerations, can be
undertaken as an aspect of the task of committing oneself to the absolute telos, 404. And religious
praxis is not the pursuit of self-actualization, but of self-actualization through the pursuit of selftranscendence that has God as its object, 405. Abraham, then, should be seen as the prototype of this
self-realization that is relative to and encompassed by the intimate presence of the divine absolute. For
Kierkegaard's characterization of God as this transcendent good, see WL, 26465, 271, 33940.

48

recognizes the givenness of both the particular and the universal in his personal
relation to the giving source of all that is prior to and in the midst of his ethical
intermediations with others; accordingly, he comes to receive the particular back from
the absolute subsequent to his resignation of it in accord with the universality of his
ethical intermediations. Johannes elaborates,
The ethical receives a completely different expression, a paradoxical
expression, such as, for example, that love to God may bring the knight of
faith to give his love to the neighboran expression opposite to that which,
ethically speaking, is duty.189
Unlike the tragic hero who absolutizes his self-determination, the knight of faith is
aware that the relation of the particular and the universal is neither self-given through
the self-determining movement of infinite resignation nor ultimately fixed to this
movement as it is seen in the framework of practical/dialectical reason but it is left
open in relation to the transcendent love which gives them to be and be for
themselves.190 Here we find in Abraham a mindfulness of the agapeic divinity
grounding both his particular existence as a single individual and the universality of
his ethical self/inter-mediation.191
Abraham, in his mindfulness of the givenness of all that is, holds a private
relation to the absolute beyond the ethical intermediation of the particular and the
189. FT, 70.
190. This structure of self-renunciative giving of divine love is reflected on the relationship
between Kierkegaard and his pseudonymous works. As Plato lets his various interlocutors speak their
minds while claiming that no sensible man will venture to express his deepest thoughts in words,
Letter VII 343a, Kierkegaard creates each of his pseudonyms to be and speak for himself. Their works
are the plurivocal reflections of philosophical thinking, which are irreducible to a single authorial intent
or any univocal system that tries to rationally articulate all philosophical problems. But each of us has
to dialogue with the characters by letting them speak what they think is true and then think through the
questions presented therein (just as Plato and Kierkegaard would have to do with their own works). So
we have to treat the text of FT not as the presentation of Kierkegaard's definitive answer to the question
of faith and ethical reasoning but as an occasion for our thinking about the very question. For this issue
of pseudonymity, see Stewart, Sren Kierkegaard and the Problem of Pseudonymity, Graduate
Faculty Philosophy Journal 32, no. 2 (2011): 40734; Kierkegaard, On My Work as an Author, PV,
12: I regard myself rather as a reader of my books, not as the author.
191. Johannes notices (yet does not articulate) that the ethical universal determining itself to
be the absolute (i.e., the duty) is opposite to and incommensurable with that which is placed in a
relative position to the absolute love, 35. The ethical universal of the tragic hero follows the logic of
self-determination; hence, the universal recognizes the particular as the means for its self-affirmation as
the absolute; whereas the ethical self/inter-mediation with a paradoxical expression, because the
faithful knight is mindfulness of the absolute as other to his self/inter-mediation, allows him to
recognize the worth of the other in her irreducible singularity and serves the other in such a way that
the other will come to recognize the absolute as the ultimate ground of her self/inter-mediation. In the
former, the logic of self-determination shows the self recognizing the other as the means for its selfaffirmation; whereas in the latter, there is the network of love where the self and the other serve each
other to recognize the absolute as the ultimate self-sacrificing ground of their self/inter-mediations.

49

universal. If we let go of our reason's autonomy as the ultimate and see the structure
of paradoxical faith afresh, the relation of this faithful knight to God can show
something more than a mere incomprehensibility and his singularity a complete
solitude. First, the intimate privacy of Abraham's relation to God does not make his
singularity an indeterminate lack of intelligibility. Unlike the aesthetic particularity
placed in its oppositional relation to the rational universal or aesthetic showing of the
self-particularized universal, this singular is not an indeterminate hiddenness that
needs to be raised to the level of universal rationality nor can it be exhaustively made
explicit through the universal communicability of the language in either configuration
of Kantian or Hegelian thinking.192 Johannes recognizes this by saying that the
aesthetic hero as an exemplar of aesthetic singularity (or accidental particularity193)
does not correspond to the intimate relation of the singular to the absolute beyond the
ethical universal.194 The divine absolute as the giving source of both the particular and
the universal exceeds any intelligible articulations in language's public openness195 yet
what makes it recalcitrant to any determinate configurations of universal thinking is
its inexhaustible richnessthe overabundance196 of love always already giving us to
192. Cf. Religion, 164 (6:138). Kant thinks that morality based on cognition allows of open
communication and that one's maxim would have to be always explicable to oneself as much as to
others. In short, everyone should be able to answer the question of the moral status of his maxims in
accordance with the categorical imperative. For the communicability of the moral concept, see also
KpV, 187 (5:58). For Hegel's philosophy of language, see Enc. II, 462: It is in names that we think.
In its Zusatz, Hegel's speculative thinking accommodates the (Herderian) thesis that thought is
essentially dependent on and bounded by language and leaves no room for faith that is ineffable or
incommensurable in terms of the ethical universal. Johannes, however, thinks that even if Abraham
speaks to us, what he says about his maxim will not register as anything comprehensible to any of us
who stay within the universal communicability of rational ethics because the absolute is neither selfgiven as nor explicable only in terms of the universal. The difficulty of examining Abraham's act here
is the problem of finding a way to understand anything beyond the boundary of reason either in terms
of Kantian or Hegelian thinking. Cf. FT, 11819. For the historical development of Hegel's philosophy
of language, consult Michael N. Forster, German Philosophy of Language: From Schlegel to Hegel
and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 14377.
193. FT, 112.
194. For this reason, we cannot apply the categorical imperative to measure Abraham's act of
faith and he is not silent in the way Kant says about all inclination as dumb before the moral law. Cf.
KpV, 209 (5:86).
195. Johannes' awareness of this point is evident in another lyrical statement: God is love and
continues to be that for me, for in the world of time God and I cannot talk with each other, we have no
language in common, 35.
196. Four Upbuilding Discourses (1843): Every Good Gift Is From Above in UD, 139.
Kierkegaard describes this ontological overabundance of divine transcendence as the blessing on the
blessing's remantans and makes an allusion to the biblical passages on Christ's breaking of the seven
loaves of bread and fish (Matthew 15:3337; Mark 8:18). The divine act of giving in relation to
human self/inter-mediation is like this companioningbecause it gives more than human proprietary
exchange can calculate yet infinitely reserves more even after we take it for our self-fulfillment.

50

be and to be for ourselves even before our awakening to a determinate intellection and
ethical self/inter-mediation.197 Thus, the incomprehensibility of Abraham's relation to
the ultimate ground of all that is does not stem from a negative indeterminacy of the
particular that is less than determinate universal thinking, but from the inexhaustible
richness of this giving source which gives the particular to be for itself before and in
the midst of its process to be the universal.
Second, due to his inability to transcend his self-determining reason via faith,
Johannes cannot articulate that there is a communal relationship among the
particular[s] (i.e., Abraham and Isaac), the universal (i.e., their ethical intermediation)
and the absolute (i.e., God) as the net-works of love. If Abraham is aware that neither
the particular nor the universal is something he has given to himself, then he must be
aware that the particularity of his and Isaac's existence is given before ethically
intermediating themselves to be the universal and also this ethical universal is
released to be for itself by the unconditional giving of the transcendent absolute. Here
the ethico-political community of each particular existence is given in relation to the
unmerited giving of the divine beyond prior to and in the midst of its formation;
hence, one may recognize, one's communal relation to this incognito198 companion
of our ethical intermediations is present in our very being of the particular and also
the process of ethically determining ourselves to be the universal is enabled by this
divine solicitation. This is what it means to say, love to God may bring the knight of
faith to give his love to the neighbor, for one's intimate relation to God enables him
to love his neighbor properly whereby his love always already mirrors the selfsacrificing love of God.199 But from the view-point of self-determining reason as the
only way of thinking about religious faith, we cannot be aware of the communal
197. Cf. WL, 271-272. Kierkegaard describes this superabundance of divine act of giving as
the inexhaustible fountain of goodness in the goodness of God that he, the Omnipotent One, yet gives
in such a way that the receiver acquires individuality, that he who creates out of nothing yet creates
individuality, so that the creature in relation to God does not become nothing even though it is taken
from nothing and is nothing but becomes a distinctive individuality (translation modified according to
the 1962 edition). For the similar passages on the infinite generosity of divine blessing, see On the
Occasion of a Confession, TDIO, 18, 40 and On the Occasion of a Wedding, TDIO, 46.
198. Kierkegaard describes the unrecognizablity of divine companionshipwhich follow
the Socratic principleas this incognito solicitation of the good. Cf. The Categories of Offense: 2
The Form of a Servant is Unrecognizability (The Incognito), PC, 12733; PV, 34. For the Socratic
principle, see Republic, 360e361d.
199. See Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks, ed. Niels Jorgen et al (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2008), 2:261: the individual relates first to God and then to the community; but this
former relation is the highest, so long as he does not slight the latter.

51

relation of the particular to the absolute prior to and in the midst of determining itself
to be the universal; so we can [mis]take this relation of the particular to the
transcendent absolute to be a complete solitude which remains inexplicable in terms
of reason's universal.200 What Abraham has is this mindfulness of his relation to this
divinity as effective in his being particular and/or mediating himself to be the
universal. And this communicative relation in the net-works of love is expressed
lyrically yet not articulated clearly by de Silentio.
Finally, this agapeic network of the particular, the universal, and the absolute
enables us to see how the singularity of the religious subject in his intimate relation to
God opens up the possibility of forming a religious community (i.e., the Church)
beyond any ethico-political community (i.e. the State). Each of our relation as a single
individual to the divine absolute guides us to reconfigure the universality of our
ethical intermediations neither as extirpating the singularity of the particular in its
conformity to the moral law nor instrumentalizing it as self-particularized otherness of
the self-determining State. Instead, because the absolute beyond the ethical universal
relates itself to the particular by giving it to be for itself in its irreducible singularity,
the each individual is given its infinite worth of its existence, out of which it can
freely mediate with itself, and find itself in its communicative relations to the other as
the recipient of the same worth. In affirming this worth of the other as given by the
absolute for the very other in his irreducible singularity, each of these individuals can
come to intermediate with each other in each of their intimate relation to the ultimate
giving source of their being and being together for themselves. So the formation of
the ethico-political community, consisting of multiple layers of the givenness of
human self/inter-mediation, is always already in its relative position to the ground of
the divine transcendence. This means that the intimate relation of a single individual
to the absolute before the universal guides him to witness how the formation of the
ethico-political community has a religious origin.201 Then the Church can be the
200. Given that one's self/inter-mediation is grounded in one's intimate relation to the divine
transcendence of self-sacrificial love, the significant differences between Hegel's earlier descriptions of
the work of love from that of Kierkegaard comes to the scene: the former is dictated by the logic of
erotic self-transcendence while the latter is properly placed in its relative position to the agapeic
transcendence. To avoid conflating these two types of one's ethical mediation, I have referred to the
former as self-determination and the latter as self/inter-mediation. For a helpful distinction between the
erotic absolute of Hegel and the agapeic absolute (of Kierkegaard), see Desmond, The Absolute
Original as Whole and Infinite, Desire, Dialectic, and Otherness (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1987), 18896.
201. Besides the abovementioned passages from the FT, some of Kierkegaard's works express
the lines of arguments that could compromise the conception of the ethico-religious community as

52

religious community recognizing this foundation of our ethical intermediations as the

divine absolute and where we can give thanks to this generous ground individually
and/or communally. The communal participation in religious services can provide
each of us a place for individually meditating the givenness of our particular existence
beyond the ethical universal but also communally remind each other to be mindful of
how our ethical intermediations themselves are given to be for ourselves beyond our
self-organization of ethico-political community. In this sacred gathering, we can
commemorate the Akedah as the image of an individual's awareness that he has not
given his existence, freedom, or everything there is to and for himself. In this
religious community, we may stay vigilant to divine solicitation and give thanks to
God for our freedom as an amazing gift.

grounded in one's relation to the divine absolute beyond and in the midst of one's ethical self/intermediation. So for instance, Anti-Climacus draws the sharp distinction between Ecclesia Militans and
Ecclesia Triumphans in PC and then argues that the obliteration of the former is the only way for the
latter to be in eternity: cf. PC, 2012, 209, 223. This dualistic division between the representational
religious practices in time and the actual religious community in eternity makes it difficult for us to
conceive any interrelation between these two (unless the foundation of the latter is the divine love and
always already constitutive of our ethical self/inter-mediations in the former as the WL and the end of
PC seem to suggest). What is important in our reading of the FT then is for each of us to examine the
picture of Abraham's relation to God and reconfigure the relation of the religious community to the
ethico-political community through Kierkegaard's concept of the absolute love [Krlighed]. And this is
what Kierkegaard himself recommends us to do with his books. For the passages commending strong
solitude from his signed works, see On the Occasion of a Confession, TDIO, 910, The Single
Individual; For the Dedication to 'The Single Individual', POV, 1058; Four Upbuilding Discourses
(1844): The Thorn in the Flesh, UD, 32829.

53

Conclusion
Once we bring into view Kierkegaard's account of love as the divine absolute
in Abraham's story, faith's paradox ceases to be a threat to ethical determinations
based on our reason. It shows that Judeo-Christian fidelity is our engagement in the
loving relationship with the divine absolute beyond and in the midst of our self/interrelations to be the universal: hence, being religious is both comprehensive of, and
foundational for, our being ethical (regardless of our recognition of this truth). This
does not mean that faith is reducible to determinate explications of reason or that
reason can articulate everything about faith. But so long as our reason has the
humble courage202 to disclaim its absolute status, we can be aware of our reason and
freedom as something given to us from the divine absolute and stay mindful of
reason's continuity with faith; for faith in this paradoxical context means each
individual's personal relation to the divine love as the enabling ground of his ethical
self/inter-mediation. So Johannes is right in saying that Abraham does not have the
universal as the middle term for explaining his relation to God but wrong in not
finding himself in his communal relation to the divine absolute as the inexhaustible
source of his freedombecause only then the continuity of reason and faith can be
present to his mind. As Johannes himself says, [Abraham] is a witness, never a
teacher.203 Thus, unlike Kantian and Hegelian formulations of the ethical as the
religious, the paradoxical structure of faith in Fear and Trembling preserves the
humanity/divinity relationship as both foundational of, and excessive to, the
immanent universality of human self/inter-mediation and challenges each of us to
witness how the singularity of our particular existence is given to be for itself by the
agapeic transcendence before and in the midst of our self/inter-mediation to be ethical.

202. Cf. Two Upbuilding Discourses (1843): Every Good and Every Perfect Gift Is From
Above, UD, 44; C.S Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960), 178.
Kierkegaard describes this courage of faith as the courage to give thanks even when what happens is
strange in [our] eyes, the courage to understand that every good and every perfect gift is from above,
the courage to explain it in love, to faith to receive this courage, since it too, is a good and perfect gift.
So as C.S. Lewis says, the divine grace is like a love which does not dream of disinterestedness, a
bottomless indigence. Like a river making its own channel, like a magic wine which in being poured
out should simultaneously create the glass that was to hold it.
203. FT, 80.

54

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Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to answer the question of faith and reason through
Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. Johannes de Silentio seems to suggest that Kantian
and Hegelian interpretations of religious doctrines, made in accordance with each of their
systematic conceptions of ethics, would risk the reduction of the relationship between
God and humanity to the immanent universality of human/societal self-relation grounded
in the autonomy of reason. This radical commitment to reason's autonomy as the sole
basis of the ethical value anticipates two problems vis--vis Judeo-Christian fidelity: 1)
God in the classical sense of divine transcendence escapes the framework of practical and
dialectical thinking and 2) the singularity of each individual human being in his relation
to the divine absolute is extirpated in the universality of self-determining reason.
Kierkegaard communicates these points through illuminating the significance of the
traditional picture of faiththe Akedah. Apropos of this religious image, therefore, this
thesis will try to fulfill its purpose in threefold. The first chapter will examine whether
Kantian morality and moral religion will fall victim to what Kierkegaard sees as the
problems of the rational ethics. The second chapter will investigate whether Hegelian
systematic thinking of the ethical, which claims to surpass Kantian practical reason, can
fully answer Kierkegaard's concerns. Finally, the third chapter will show how Johannes'
analysis of the paradoxical structure of faith can open up the possibility of reformulating
the continuity between faith and reason without reducing the divinity-humanity relation
to human/social self-relation, or losing the classical sense of divine transcendence, or
extirpating the singularity of each human existence in his relation to the divine absolute.

Word Count: 15887.