ABSTRACT:

        Kierkegaard resists the claim of Hegel, and the claim of the German Romantics, that the act of the single individual is universalisable without residue.  It is not merely Abraham's faith that is tested, his test of faith makes possible a testing of the law of the ethical lawgiver.  Abraham's test shows that the ethical is founded in a faith called by transcendence.  The
ethical law and the lawgiver are thus irreducible to the ethical universal, contrary to Hegel.  For Kierkegaard, the movements of faith (the infinite and the leap) constitute the single individual as higher than and dwelling in the transgression of the universal, and this is the basis of the ethical. Kierkegaard's position is ironic, since it founds the universal in the
singular, and faith is a foundation so long as it alienates the individual from the universal. Even more ironic, this very faith founds the singular, since it tests the singular against another singular. Singularity is arrived at as the result of the twofold alienation of the individual.  I explore these ironies to show how the two ironic negations of faith complete the
alienation of the ethical universal from the ethical lawgiver. Paradoxically, faith thus brings the universal and the absolute face to face. I compare and contrast Kierkegaard's ironic setting of the paradox offaith to similar yet different settings in Camus and Levinas.











Site by: 180 Electronic Cigarette, E Cigarette, E Hookah