thought wave
Problem I: Is there such a thing as a teleological suspension of the ethical?
Kierkegaard presented the cause of pain and suffering in the chapter The Unhappiest One, in one of his major works Either/Or. He also classified different types of unhappiness in Either/Or. There are three conditions of unhappiness revealed in the Text of The Unhappiest One. All conditions of unhappiness occur when the individual in sorrow is absent from himself/herself, as he writes, “So the unhappy one is absent...either when living in the past or living in the future.”
The first condition is the one disposed to remembering the past; this happy individual weeps for the past and has lost all sight of hope. The text expounds this condition of happiness in the example of a girl weeping over an unfaithful love. “...she loved him with all her soul, with all her heart, and all her mind — she can remember then, and sorrow.” This individual of mourning is the one whose existence resides in the past.
The second condition is the hoping individual. In the text he writes that the hoping individual is unhappy when the “...hoping individual would have a future which can have no reality for him...” Also, he writes that “hoping individuals always have a more gratifying disappointment,” and that “[t]he unhappy hoping individual was not able to be present to himself in his hope, similarly with the unhappy thinker.”
The third condition is the unhappiest one, who has both the vices of hope and memory of the past working to produce his despair. This is also an illustration of Abrahams "leap of faith" in the text Fear and Trembling, where we see that the paradox of faith presents a "teleological suspension of the ethical".
How does this relate to Islamic extremist? How does it compare to ethical or tragic hero? Are the writings of the great proto-existentialist thinker Søren Kierkegaard relevant to the current times?
We present the first problem from the early writings of Fear and Trembling which examines the faith of Abraham and duty to God's will.
Main Entry: tel·e·o·log·i·cal
Variant(s): also tel·e·o·log·ic
Function: adjective
: exhibiting or relating to design or purpose especially in nature
- tel·e·o·log·i·cal·ly adverb
Feb 4, 2006, 21:44:00
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