Having complete faith in the impossible when it comes to murdering your own son does not sound too relatable to me. Kierkegaard discusses this idea of faith through the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac. What was most interesting to me was Kierkegaard’s contrast between an ethical society and a faithful, yet lonely individual.
Faith helps justify actions that are irrational. It’s a belief that things will eventually work out. Even though this is not murder related, if I decided to not study for my labor economics midterm, that would be me putting blind faith that I expect myself to do well. Therefore, only you can blame yourself if you do poorly. There is an individual responsibility in putting faith into your actions. Kierkegaard characterizes this individual responsibility as a lonely experience. I mean, who is Abraham going to gossip with about the thought of murdering his own son?
Kierkegaard also makes a distinction between society versus the individual when it comes to faith. Society is what pushes us to be ethical, while being irrational is more centered around individuality. For example, when you have an extremely intrusive thought about something you would never, I mean actually never do, you don’t actually tell people this. Same thing goes with Abraham; he’s lonely in his agenda because the action of killing your own son is insane. There is no way to justify this action unless you put it into this tragic hero holy “act”. The idea of killing your own son is unjustifiable, which brings to the surface the ethical dilemma of Abraham having faith in his actions. Having faith is then above this universal ethical stage. Is having faith in an outcome really an excusable way to do certain things and get away with it? Would this ethical dilemma even occur in today’s times?
Only in religious contexts we hear these tragic hero stories that are only justifiable since they involve God. Religion allows these holy acts to be above the ethical standard we all hold ourselves to.
