Examples Of The Paradox By Kierkegaard

In trying to understand faith as the highest passion mankind can reach, Kierkegaard reviewed and analyzed the biblical Abraham and trial of sacrificing of his only son, Isaac. Kierkegaard talked about Abraham as it provides a good example of the paradox between ethics and faith. The Paradox, as stated by Kierkegaard, is that ethics is the highest universal that everyone should follow except faith tries to show that the word of god supersedes ethics (108). The individual in faith may be higher than the universal in ethics; in other words, can ethics be teleologically suspended for the individual when ethics should be absolute? So this paradox can be looked into further, Kierkegaard first had to portray Abraham as an extreme maximum of the unethical. This Provides that groundwork to compare Abraham as the unethical murderer like ethics would dictate him as well as the father of religion as faith would dictate him as. Kierkegaard went into this further as he talked about how faith puts itself above ethics in several parts of
Kierkegaard described faith as “the highest of passions” (219). In Abraham’s faith, he goes against everything ethical for the command of God. Abraham even goes so far as to willingly sacrifice his most beloved son for the will of God. Abraham loves his Isaac however his love for Isaac is trumped by his love for god. Kierkegaard describes Abraham as a man with an intense love for his family and son but an even stronger love for God and faith. This View provided by Kierkegaard between Abraham’s faith and the world around him shows Abrahams total commitment of God as his trial basically turns everything ethical into a temptation. To prove to God that his faith is legitimate, Abraham does not only go against ethics, but everything ethical around him must be avoided to fulfill his task from God. Abraham the individual and his faith are then put above the