The explicit topic of Fear and Trembling's third Problema (the longest single section, accounting for a third of the book's total length), the theme of Abraham's silence stands not far in the background in every other section, and its importance is flagged by the pseudonym—Johannes de silentio—under which Kierkegaard had the book published. Here I aim to defend an interpretation of the meaning of the third Problema's central claim—that Abraham cannot explain himself, 'cannot speak'—and to argue on its basis for (...) an interpretation of the work as a whole. (shrink)

How are we to explain the sort of evil exemplified by Shakespeare's Richard III? Some authors argue that we can only understand this sort of evil as undertaken for its own sake and, in this sense, as ‘diabolical’. Michelle Kosch has argued that Kierkegaard is such an author. In this article I have two aims. My first is to argue that Kierkegaard's analysis of what he calls ‘demonic evil’ offers a psychologically nuanced and compelling account of a distinctive quality of (...) evil without ever abandoning the idea that action is always performed under the guise of the good. My second aim is to connect Kierkegaard's psychological analysis with his broader ethico-religious concerns and, in this way, to do justice to the unity of his ethico-religious psychology as anatomical, diagnostic and therapeutic. To this end, in the second half of this article I aim to show how Kierkegaard's psychology of the demonic is the basis for his valuation of silence as an ethico-religious ideal. (shrink)

In an earlier paper I argued that J.G. Fichte (rather than Kant or Hegel or some amalgam) was the primary historical model for the ethical standpoint described in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or II . There I offered a list of reasons for thinking that Hegel was less important than some believed and that Kierkegaard addressed Kantianism largely in its Fichtean form. In the interim I have discovered another reason to add to that list: as it happens, there was a quite general consensus (...) among philosophers in the 1830s, ’40s and ’50s not just that Fichte’s ethics was Kantian ethics in its most perfect form, but even that it was the best example available of normative ethics on a philosophical (rather than a religious) foundation. So Kierkegaard’s use of Fichte as a foil was the perfectly obvious choice in the context. That is a curious fact, given the complete obscurity of Fichte’s ethics today, and one whose interest should not be confined to Kierkegaard scholars. (shrink)

I focus here on the teleological suspension of the ethical as it appears in Fear and Trembling. A common reading of Fear and Trembling is that it explores whether there are religious reasons for action that settle that one must do an action even when all the moral reasons for action tell against doing it. This interpretation has been contested. But I defend it by showing how the explicit teleological suspension of the ethical mirrors implicit teleological suspensions of the epistemological (...) and prudential, and by articulating how it might be necessary for God to suspend the ethical in order to forgive us for our wrongdoings to others. I also discuss whether God’s commands are implicitly conditional, whether religious reasons to act, believe, and forgive are in each case grounded in divine commands, and what role love plays in each type of teleological suspension. (shrink)