There Is Such A Thing as an Ethical Suspension of the Teleological

by Benny Mattis

Johannes de Silentio, a pseudonymous personality of Søren Kierkegaard, explores in Fear and Trembling the ethical problems raised by Abraham's binding of Isaac as described in Genesis chapter 22.  He does this "in order to see what a tremendous paradox faith is, a paradox which is capable of transforming a murder into a holy act well-pleasing to God...which no thought can master, because faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off" (55).  And while "this paradox cannot be mediated" or understood through reason (58), de Silentio nonetheless praises Abraham as an admirable servant of the Judeo-Christian god.

A Climactic Paradox

But how can a man be considered admirable for his attempt to slaughter his own son?  As de Silentio notes, 

The ethical as such is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which may be expressed from another point of view by saying that it applies every instant.  Whenever the individual after he has entered the universal feels an impulse to assert himself as the particular, he is in temptation, and he can labor himself out of this only by abandoning himself as the particular in the universal (56).

Surely, Abraham was in violation of the ethical-universal in his act of attempted filicide, and de Silentio agrees.  Why, then, does Abraham deserve any respect or admiration?  de Silentio suggests that Abraham's predicament was an instance of the "teleological suspension of the ethical."  In such a suspension of the "universal" ethical, Abraham's duty to God is set over and against the ethical injunction to love his son; the ethical actually becomes a temptation that Abraham must overcome in order to fulfill his duty to God.  "Faith is precisely this paradox," explains de Silentio,

That the individual as the particular is higher than the universal, is justified over against it, is not subordinate but superior...it is the particular individual who, after he has been subordinated as the particular to the universal, now through the universal becomes the individual who as the particular is superior to the universal. (57)

 De Silentio realizes that, observed rationally, a teleological suspension of the ethical is no different from an egotistical suspension of the ethical, i.e. sin.  After all, such a rational appraisal of one's actions can only be performed "by virtue of the universal," which is precisely what must be transcended in order for Abraham to fulfill his duty (57).  Yet it is the very courage to supersede the ethical, and to overcome his love for Isaac, that makes Abraham a "Knight of Faith" in de Silentio's eyes.  Abraham does not bind Isaac with reason, but in total unquestioning faith.

Will the Real Paragon Please Stand Up?

The knight of faith is to be viewed in contrast with other types of hero, one being the "tragic hero" who also supersedes an aspect of the universal, but only through a greater appeal to the universal.  One example of the tragic hero is the mythological figure of Agamemnon, the king who was told that he had to sacrifice his daughter for the greater good.  Unlike Abraham, Agamemnon is understood and sympathized with in his difficult decision to sacrifice his daughter; it is, after all, for the greater good of the country.

Abraham, on the other hand, is not justified even by an appeal to the "greater good;" in attempting to slaughter Isaac, he is in fact taking the entire promised nation of Israel in his hands ("Descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky"-Genesis 26:4 NIV).  Abraham's knowledge of these descendants make the sacrifice of Isaac tantamount to genocide; viewed through the lens of the ethical-universal, Abraham is committing an unjustifiable sin with which no rational person would sympathize.

Thus, the path of the knight of faith is an isolated one, overwhelmingly alienating in its absurdity:  

The tragic hero gives up the certain for the still more certain, and the eye of the beholder rests upon him confidently.  But he who gives up the universal in order to grasp something still higher which is not the universal--what is he doing?...The tragic hero has need of tears and claims them, and where is the envious eye so barren that it could not weep with Agamemnon; but where is the man with a soul so bewildered that he would have the presumption to weep for Abraham? (61)

Agamemnon's predicament suddenly seems trivial compared to that of Abraham, a true knight of faith and a hero of Judeo-Christian myth.  But how does this heroism relate to a Christian in the twenty-first century?

The Knight of Love

To ask of Abraham's relation to the Christian is to ask of Abraham's relation to Christ, which has generally been overshadowed by the similarities between Christ and Isaac--both were sons, both were to be sacrificed, both stories historically involve the concept of substitution, etc.  But what if there is an even more important relationship with Abraham, the so-called knight of faith?  Upon comparing the two, it seems like Jesus's life could be seen as a fulfillment of Abraham's knighthood--a fulfillment, as that of the Law, that is so extreme that it may appear in many ways to be an abolition.

This apparent abolition is evident in the movement of incarnation: Abraham "through the universal becomes the individual who as the particular is superior to the universal," whereas Jesus, through the incarnation, becomes the deity who as the particular is subject to the universal.  Abraham may "give up the universal in order to grasp something still higher which is not the universal," but Christ gives up that higher "something" for the mere universal!  Is this not even more absurd than Abraham's transgression?  Agamemnon may give up the universal for the more universal, and Abraham may give up the universal totally for a sacred Absolute, but Christ gives up the Absolute--divine bliss in direct union with God Himself--for love of the universal, the ethical, and the incarnate--even an incarnate that does not return his love, abandoning him to die on a cross.  In this way, Christ is even more of an absurd hero than Abraham--a fulfillment, even.

In fact, this fulfillment makes it clear just how much of a tragic hero (rather than a knight of faith) Abraham actually was.  Agamemnon had comfort in the reasonable universal when he went to kill his daughter; Abraham may not have had comfort in the universal, but he still had comfort in God.  The tragic hero sacrifices their child for the nation and God, and Abraham sacrifices child and nation for a relationship with God--Christ, the true knight, gives up his immediate relationship with God ("My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?") for the salvation of all nations and their children--even when they themselves condemn him to death on a cross.  He does this not out of "fear and trembling," but out of love (the core of the ethical-universal) for its own sake.

It appears that there are actually two types of knight of faith:  the Knight of Fear (Abraham) and the Knight of Love (Jesus).  The knight of love is the fulfillment of the knight of fear, virtuous by virtue of the absurd and alienated from the absolute through an absolute dedication to the ethical.

Indefinite Suspension

Christ's absolute dedication to the ethical is not limited to the movement of incarnation; it is, in fact, an over-arching theme of the Gospel.  Consider, for example, the teleological role of a messianic warrior-king, expected to bring perfect justice and liberation for oppressed Jews: 

He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four corners of the earth...They will swoop down the slopes of Philistia to the west; together they will plunder the people to the east.  They will lay hands on Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites will be subject to them. (Isaiah 11:12-14 NIV)

With verses like these, the expectations of a warrior-king messiah--popular in the time of Christ--are hardly surprising.  Surely, if anyone's teleological role conflicted and superseded their ethical obligations, it would be a messiah chosen to carry out divine justice:

The Lord is angry with all nations; his wrath is upon all their armies.  He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter.  Their slain will be thrown out, their dead bodies will send up a stench; the mountains will be soaked with their blood...For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of retribution, to uphold Zion's cause. (Isaiah 34:2-8 NIV)

Yet Jesus does not carry out this murderous retribution!  Such a year of judgment would, in fact, also end up destroying the corrupt Pharisaic priesthood of Zion itself, finally completing Abraham's initial sacrifice of Isaac.  No, Christ does not sacrifice the nations through a teleological suspension of the ethical, but rather saves the nations himself through an ethical suspension of the teleological.  

This is, I think, what the true calling of the story of Abraham is for the Christian: that one ought not to stop at Abraham's tragic heroism in a teleological suspension of the ethical, but to go even further than Abraham in faith, choosing ethics even over a duty to God, in an ethical suspension of the teleological.  But are there any knights of love who follow this imperative today?  They may be found in the most unexpected of places...

Profanity - A Perfectly Ethical Adjustment to Living With a Criminal Sacred

"If I was told to do what all monotheists are told to do, and admire the man who said, 'Yes, I'll gut my kid to show my love of God,' I'd say, 'No, fuck you.'"

In these words, immortalized in one of many anti-theistic YouTube videos, Christopher Hitchens expresses his opinion on Abraham's attempted sacrifice of Isaac.  Hitchens likely meant for this statement to demonstrate his moral superiority over "all monotheists," but in light of the ethical suspension of the teleological, it would seem that his response is actually profoundly Christian.  Is this not similar to the response of Jesus to the teleological option of global retribution?  Christ's message of forgiveness and and love is, in effect, a big middle finger to the fetishization of divinely commanded murder.

Which brings us to a second aspect of the Knight of Love made apparent in the lives of many an antagonistic atheist:  like Jesus, they do good out of love for the good itself, rather than fear of divine retribution.  In the film "Collision," wherein Hitchens and pastor Douglas Wilson debate on whether Christianity is good for the world, Wilson informs Hitchens that "You have a very fine house, with no foundation...It's just sand under there.  I want to know not what you denounce, but why you denounce it."  Douglas here misses a key message of Christianity: the good is good regardless of whether it appeals to one's natural biological drives.  The good is justification for itself; there is no need for a "why" that appeals to more base desires.  In fact, the pursuit of virtue usually entails a good deal of suffering--as Christian philosopher Brian Glenney remarks in an interview with Gordon College's Tartan, Christianity "Does violence to the self, more violence than suicide."

The thoughtful atheist, however, is not surprised in the least at this message, and yet many of them strive to do good anyway.  Consider Penn Jillette's address to the freethinkers at Reason Rally 2012: "We are doing good because it's good, and we are doing right because it's right, and not for reward or punishment...If you are doing something for reward or punishment, you do not have morality."  Once again, it seems that many an atheist are more Christian than Johannes de Silentio.

The Godly Godless:  Chickens or Eggs?

In an article entitled "Atheists for Jesus," outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins suggests that Jesus "Was a theist because, in his time, everybody was."  This may seem like supreme blasphemy, but we have seen that atheists can, in many ways, be even more Christian than their theistic counterparts.  Or is it the other way around--are Christians actually more atheistic than the atheists, since the New Testament is so forward in acknowledging the suffering of a good life?  In any case, there are curious connections between these philosophies, many of which have been explored by Christian Atheists such as Thomas J.J. Altizer, Paul van Buren, and Slavoj Žižek.

Returning to the topic of Kierkegaard's work, it seems to be incomplete in its narrow focus on Abraham's particularity.  Kierkegaard was fascinated with the life of religious enthusiasm; his preoccupation with the religious, however, may have obscured the more irreligious aspects of Christianity.  Nonetheless, these facets remain at least as crucial to the attainment of spiritual well-being and the full affirmation of an ethical life.  

Sources

The Holy Bible, New International Version.  Ed. Barker, Kenneth L.  Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002.  Print.

Kierkegaard, Søren.  "Fear and Trembling."  Existentialism: Basic Writings.  Guignon, Charles, and Derk Pereboom, eds.  Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001.  Print.

Christopher Hitchens on the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac

Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson - Collision of Lives

The Chalk Smoker: Dr. Brian Glenney

Penn Jillette Reason Rally Address 2012

Atheists for Jesus

Superstitious Selfishness

by Benny Mattis

Religious apologists often think themselves clever paraphrasing Dostoevsky:  "If God does not exist, then everything is permitted."  They claim that, without God, there must not be any ethical standards higher than one's own held preferences.  In this view, the only theories of morality available to the atheist can collectively be referred to here as "egoism," because in practice they all look the same:  "I do what I want, when I want to."  The altruistic New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett, and friends) are often presented as philosophically naïve, because they never got the memo that "Altruistic morality depends on God's existence, gosh darn it!"  They are often contrasted to the "Real Atheist" (TM), who becomes their own god, unconstrained by petty morality.

The aforementioned religious apologists often subscribe to something called Divine Command Theory, which says that an action is moral just because it is commanded by God or immoral just because God forbids it.  This theory is self-defeating, as Russ Shafer-Landau explains in The Fundamentals of Ethics with the "Euthyphro Argument":

1. Either God has reasons for his commands, or God lacks reasons for His commands.
2. If God lacks reasons for His commands, then God's commands are arbitrary--and that renders God imperfect, undermining His moral authority.
3. If God has reasons that support His commands, then these reasons, rather than the divine commands, are what make actions right or wrong--thereby refuting Divine Command Theory.
4. Therefore, either God is imperfect, or the Divine Command Theory is false.
5. God is not imperfect.
6. Therefore, Divine Command Theory is false. (63-64)

The arbitrariness of divine laws under Divine Command Theory reveals that it is, in fact, just as amoral as Real Atheism.  As Shafer-Landau notes, "If there is nothing intrinsically wrong [i.e., wrong independent of divine condemnation] with rape or theft, then God could just as well have required that we do such things.  He could have forbidden that we be generous or thoughtful.  But this makes a mockery of morality, and of our view of God as morally perfect" (64).  Of course, there are stories of God actually commanding such things, and the New Atheists don't hesitate to mock, but that's a different issue.  The point is that Divine Command Theory is at its heart as nihilistic as the egoism of Max Stirner.

In fact, I think it's also appropriate to say that the Real Atheist's egoism is as religious as the faith of a Divine Command Theorist.  The Real Atheist, in fact, is not an atheist at all, but a polytheist: each ego in their view is a moral law-maker, as opposed to a law-taker, and so each individual is their own god.  Moreover, the Real Atheist's extolled "self" is an undefinable and undetectable point of subjectivity, much like the god worshipped by Divine Command theorists.  The Real Atheist is not godless; he is his own god.  It is, in fact, the New Atheists who go all the way, claiming that nothing--not even their own egos--is above the laws of nature and morality.

Source

Shafer-Landau, Russ.  The Fundamentals of Ethics.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.  Print.

W.W.B.J.S.H.D.

by Benny Mattis

The modern heretic, given an initial rejection of nihilism, is presented with the various religious traditions as the first place to look for answers that cannot be provided by indifferent scientific observation (namely, how one ought to live).  As Hume wrote, you can't derive an "ought" from an "is," and science is only concerned with what is.  But there is a strain in atheism that is less preoccupied by the thrills of deicide and more concerned with helping people come to terms with life without God; Sam Harris is a member of this group, and has been working on adapting Buddhist spirituality towards a more fulfilling secular life.

Harris recently tweeted a link to his speech at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention, entitled "Death and the Present Moment."  Never content to let the audience merely wallow in their shared disrespect for belief in the supernatural, he brings up what tends to be the elephant in the room among antagonistic atheists: the simple fact that a belief in the afterlife does bring people a great amount of comfort, and that a destruction of that belief can lead to a rather violent rude awakening to the injustice and overall absurdity of life on Earth.  Nobody's beliefs should be influenced by a desire to escape uncomfortable truths, and any serious religious folk would agree, but I'm glad Harris brought up this topic because, as he mentions, atheism is nothing more than a way of "clearing the space for better conversations" about the art of living.  The funny part is that it seems like these "better conversations" consist largely of reclaiming leftover pieces from the religious beliefs that had to be "cleared" out of the way in the first place.

So, how does Harris propose the modern infidel deal with suffering and finitude?  He notices that "If we're right, and nothing happens after death, death, therefore, is not a problem.  Life is the problem.  The problem is that, without God...life appears to be an emergency."  The constant demands of living in reality, Harris claims, are constantly tearing us away from well-being and towards stress and neuroticism.  A solution to this natural flight from the present into the future, linked to the decline from mindful appreciation to irritable discontentment, is the Buddhist practice of mindfulness meditation.  Harris takes it upon himself to lead his audience in a complimentary trial of this spiritual technique, advising them to avoid being swayed too much by their various 'objects of thought.'

I think here would be a good place to mention Slavoj Zizek.  Zizek, a self-professed Christian materialist, notes in his book The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity that Harris' brand of spiritualism can function rather well as a tool of harmful political ideology, currently leading people to become ultimately indifferent to some of the less-than-appealing aspects of global state capitalism; I wonder if it's just a coincidence that Harris, in his litany of uncomfortable truths and absurdities the modern man is presented with, mentions the dismal conditions of the workers who make Apple products in China and elsewhere.  Zizek would likely say that the way to find true well-being in the face of such suffering would not be to discount 'thought objects' of future justice in order to accept the present as it is, but rather to make that future a reality by working ceaselessly for it in the present, losing not one's attachment to justice, but rather one's attachments to inner peace and even survival.  In other words, you can only really live by finding something you'd be willing to die for; a world of emergency is, therefore, full of opportunities for truly meaningful existence.

This concern regarding indifference to injustice finds its object in Harris's talk about the conscience.  "If you're constantly ruminating on what you just did, or what you should've done, or would've done if only you'd had the chance, you will miss your life," warns Harris.  "The conversation we have with ourselves every every minute of the day comes at a cost.  I'm not saying that discursive thought is not necessary or useful, but it is the mechanism by which most of our suffering is inflicted."  Harris paid his respects to the late Christopher Hitchens in the beginning, but hearing this part of the speech reminded me of Hitchens's praise for the "inner witness" as the primary source of morality, and I don't think Harris's own view on 'ethical intuitions subject to rational justification' is much different.  So, it would seem that Sam Harris, champion of secular ethics, in this speech advocates for a moral moderation of sorts.  But is this much better than the so-called religious moderation that he so (rightfully) detests?  If one's ethical intuitions must be domesticated and controlled to avoid stress, then how does one know when to actually pay attention to them?

The problem when life stops appearing emergent is is one of boredom and anxiety.  What is there to do once you've escaped the vicious incarnate cycle of attachment to virtue?  No action can be justified or condemned, not even by one's own 'objects of thought.'  Real anxiety comes not with moral sensitivity, but at a distance from the self-evident validity of those stress-inducing ethical intuitions.

Yet, this is not a problem for Harris or the Buddha.  They do not discount all the value of human well-being, but take it upon themselves to spread their teachings into the rest of the world.  Like Christ, who "Being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant" (Philippians 2:6-7), Sidhartha Gautama, being in very nature Enlightened, gave up the isolated bliss of nirvana by investing himself in the spread of wisdom throughout the world.  As Harris tries to bring back morality without anxiety and guilt, so too Jesus "Redeemed us from the curse of the Law" (Galatians 3:13), forgiving past sins without destroying the role of morality as an imperative to progress.  Once detachment has been achieved, re-attachment or Christian love can be chosen by a free choice, in spite of the suffering that comes with it.

What if Buddhism, like Atheism, is just a way of "clearing the space for better conversations?"  What if those conversations lead back from detachment and nirvana to a conscious embrace of attachment and its resultant suffering?  Zizek wants to set Christianity and Marxism in opposition to a bourgeois spiritual detachment from significance, but it seems like the love and sacrifice of Christ may only be fully understood through the Buddhist lens of attachment and nirvana.  Next time you're faced with a moral dilemma, be sure to ask yourself: "What Would the Buddha, Jesus, and Sam Harris Do?"

Legos and the Meaning of Life

by Benny Mattis

This is another blog from my time at Gordon College.

***

There are some kids who go to a preschool. "Good Bricks" are the new cool thing, and so these kids get some Good Bricks from their parents. The kids have difficulty deciphering and following the instructions for assembling these bricks, but they figure them out eventually. The kids who decipher the instructions make cool creations, and the kids who can't follow the directions correctly make crappy ones.

One of the kids wonders, "Hey, who made these instructions anyway?"

The rest of them reply, "The Good Bricks 'Master Builders' made these instructions, and they are obviously the source of all that is cool." The kids continue to follow the instructions, and get better and better sets to feed their imaginations.

Then, Good Bricks comes out with a new product line, called "Trionicle." Some of the kids say, "Wow, what will the Master Builders think of next? These toys are totally different!" But some kids say "No, the Good Bricks company has totally fleeced you with their advertising and feature films. These Trionicle toys are just shitty humanoid robot-looking things; they're not good bricks at all!" There is no longer a uniform view of what is "cool," and the kids split into two camps-- the Good Brickers and the Old Schoolers. The Old Schoolers no longer look to the instructions to determine what is cool; they differentiate between cool Good Bricks and uncool Good Bricks with their own sense of coolness. The Good Brickers say that all Good Bricks are cool, because Good Bricks epitomizes coolness.

Soon, the Old Schoolers become bored of the limited selection of cool Good Bricks. They say, hey, lets take our creations apart and try to make something ourselves. Some of their new creations are cool, and some of them are uncool.

The Good Brickers are astonished at this; if the Master Builders are the source of all coolness, how can these Old Schoolers make these cool new designs? The leader of the Good Brickers says that this is because the Old Schoolers are just copying what the Master Builders have already made. The Good Brickers breathe a sigh of relief, and continue to dissociate themselves from the Old Schoolers.

However, the Good Bricks company is going down the tubes. Its designs are becoming progressively more worthless, but the Old Schoolers are making creations more original and cool than anything the Masters ever built. Moreover, all the other students are getting GameStations, because the GameStation is advertised way more than Good Bricks. So, many of the Good Brickers join the Old Schoolers, admitting that the Master Builders are not the only source of coolness. Some Good Brickers hold their ground, but they can never find spots at the lunch tables.

Now, there is a solid group of Old Schoolers, and they realize that if there is not a major spike in demand for bricks, Good Bricks will go bankrupt, and they will never be able to buy more bricks. The rest of the school is convinced that GameStation is the sole source of coolness, and some kids are even saying things like "Nothing is cool, because it's all going to be in a landfill in 50 years anyway." The Old Schoolers, affected by this ignorance in their community and wishing to show how cool brick-assembly is, spread the coolness of Good Bricks until summer vacation.

----

Meanwhile, the Good Bricks Master Builders and advertisers are asking the million dollar question, "What is coolness?"

They realize that in different countries and different eras, what is "cool" changes depending on a product's place in time and space. In the 1990s, dinosaur sets were very cool. In the 80s, the advent of personal computing made futuristic brick sets cool. Different circumstances produced different standards for what is cool.

However, there are certain criteria for coolness that remained constant through all of their records. It is cool, for example, to include a protagonist and an antagonist in the backstories of their brick sets. It is cool to make a set that can really stimulate a kid's imagination. It is cool to include some sort of romantic interest for the hero, as well.

Good Bricks went out of business. The designers broke into GameStation game-design companies. The companies that made games in accordance with the general norms of coolness thrived, but the designers who ignored these guides went bankrupt. The Master Designers were bound by the nature of coolness; they could not succeed unless their designs were in accordance with it. And as their designs conformed more and more to "natural coolness," more and more people thought that the Designers were in fact the epitome of all that is cool. Even though coolness can come from places other than the minds of the Master Designers, the ideas of "cool" and "Master Designer" became increasingly intertwined.

Eventually, it became nearly impossible to differentiate between the two. Only by looking back at the history of diverse attempts at coolness were people able to see that coolness comes not from the Master Designers, but out of the nature of a relationship between gamer, game and environment; the Master Designers simply study this relationship and use it to their advantage (and, ultimately, to the advantage of someone who buys their game).