Relationship Between Fear And Trembling Kierkegaard

The Ultimate Principle of Morality
This paper’s arguments regarding the relationship between faith and ethics will be drawn from Kierkegaard’s stand on the same subject based on the arguments he presents in “Fear and Trembling”. Using Abraham’s story in the bible where he was willing to sacrifice Isaac, his son, at God’s behest Kierkegaard brings about the question of whether one’s duty to obey God supersedes his or her every other concern such as the highest held moral obligations. While she argues that one’s duty to God ought to supersede every other concern placed on human beings, I will show that Kierkegaard’s argument acknowledge that the ultimate moral requirements on human beings also serve as a duty to God. For example, Kierkegaard
In this argument, Kierkegaard opines that nothing outranks social norms, including the implication that human sacrifice is justified if it serves the community (case in point where Agamemnon sacrifices his own daughter when it was a requirement or the Greek expedition to Troy). In the same breath, Kierkegaard is open to the idea that one may have duties to a power higher than that person’s social norms. Hence, “Fear and Trembling” argues that Abraham’s decision to sacrifice his son is not out of “the universal” but comes from his recognition of his duty to something that is higher than his love and commitment to his son as well as his social duty not to harm his own innocent son. This is what Kierkegaard refers to as a teleological suspension of the
Moreover, Kierkegaard’s assertion that God’s definition on the distinction between good and evil outranks the society’s definition is quite problematic. Firstly, it is based on this argument that people kill in the name of God during wars and acts of terrorism. On the other hand, if God’s distinction between good and evil outranks a society’s definition then who is to say that the same God would not order one community to commit genocide since in His eyes such an act would be