3/7/2014 The Ethics of Contemporary Art

by Kyle VanderWerf

One of the most divisive topics in art today is so-called “contemporary art.” There is much debate over whether a signed urinal or a piece of canvas with a single haphazard paint stroke or a styrofoam cup stapled to a plank of wood with a ladybug in it can be considered “art.” I posit that there is another, equally-if-not-more important question to consider when discussing contemporary art, namely: is contemporary art unethical? Is it unethical to produce or display in a gallery or spend thousands/millions of taxpayer dollars on pieces that may be considered overly simplistic, dumb, or just plain ugly? This Friday, I will lead Philosophy and Open Thought through several anecdotes related to contemporary art so that we may try to determine its ethical status.

1/31/2014 The Shape of a Life

by Brandon Sides

Recall the life of O.J. Simpson: a talented young boy grows up to dominate the American professional football scene. But allegations of murder soon ruin his reputation, and he’s sentenced to decades in prison for an unrelated charge. We’ll stipulate that Simpson rots behind bars and dies an unhappy person.

Now reverse such a life and meet J.O. Nospmis, a troublemaker who at first leads a life full of mischief. He shoplifts, lies, and commits various morally blameworthy acts. Soon he’s sentenced to a few decades in juvenile detention and, later, prison. But Nospmis finds God, works out every day, and plays football with his fellow inmates. Upon release he tries out for the National Football League (à la Mark Walhberg in “Invincible”) and is selected to play. Nospmis wins superbowls for his team, earns MVP awards, and later commentates for ESPN until he passes away as a happy person.

Who has lived the better life? Here we’ll stipulate that both lives contain equal amounts of pleasure; their trajectories are simply exact opposites. The former begins well, turns for the worse, and concludes on a low note. The latter begins poorly, changes for the better, and ends with a bang. Does the fact that one life contains an upward trajectory render it better than its opposite?

Some philosophers propose that the trajectory of a life does matter. A few claim that an upward trajectory is intrinsically valuable. Others appeal to the value of a life’s narrative. They might prefer Nospmis’ life because the events of his life culminate in a desirable narrative arc.

I’ll address these views this Friday in the Campus Center. I hope you’ll walk away from the lecture believing that, all else being equal, different trajectories fail to change the value of lives. 

10/11/2013 So-Called Objective Reality

by Kyle VanderWerf

     In last week's meeting, Nathan Turowsky presented a controversial idea, which was mostly rejected by the other members of the club. Namely, he proposed that non-scientific epistemologies have some validity. He described the belief system of the Shingō village in Japan, which states of the story in which Jesus travels to Japan after the events of the New Testament and lives there until his death at 106 years old: “The more [the story] was repeated, the truer it became, until the people of the village, frankly, believed it.” Nathan argued that this wasn't any less true or valid than a system of knowledge derived from science.

     This week, I'm going to follow up on that discussion by presenting a more formal defense of this idea. First, I will briefly review last week's discussion and the philosophy of Wittgenstein, the latter of which I led a discussion on just over a year ago, to set the groundwork. Then I'll use this groundwork to show that religion and science can happily coexist, while simultaneously proposing a theory of a role that stories and authorities play in societies. I'll show that a lot of the perceived tension between science and religion arises when people misconstrue the former as being tied to an often ridiculous and over-applied concept called “objective reality.” I also aim to show that the Shingō epistemology does not actually necessarily conflict with our own, and in fact all of us make use of that epistemology on a daily basis.

9/27/2013 The Ethics of Substance Abuse

by Nicholas Palladino

        Mental illness provides interesting challenges to conventional ethical systems. Ethical judgments often rely on competent agents using their capacity for reason to determine good moral behavior. In cases of mental illness these capacities may be hindered and it is hard to determine culpability in such cases. This discussion will examine these issues through the specific lens of addiction and substance abuse.

I will focus on introducing the biological and psychological components of addiction. Using this scientific framework we can discuss the ethical implications and questions that arise. Ideally this will be an open discussion with the conversation developing around the group's interest, but I will maintain a list of specific questions to stimulate discussion.

This discussion will be mainly be based around the book Addiction Neuroethics by Adrian Carter; Wayne Hall; Judy Illes. I've taken the only physical copy from the library, but I think it might be availible in e-book format as well.

http://umass.worldcat.org/title/addiction-neuroethics-the-ethics-of-addiction-neuroscience-research-and-treatment/oclc/731925427/editions?referer=di&editionsView=true

Russian Shot in Quarrel Over Kant's Philosophy

These people did not practice open thought.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/russian-shot-quarrel-over-kants-philosophy

9/13/2013 Upon the Moral Use of Aesthetic Manners

by Melanie Muller

In “Upon the Moral Use of Aesthetic Manners,” Friedrich Schiller discusses his theory of the intersection between Aesthetics and Morality. Schiller postulates that morality is the course of action that proceeds purely from human reason.  He assumes humans don’t have “an evil will, which must be changed, but only a good one, which is weak.” He examines what he believes to be the intersections between the “sensuous impulse,” the “will,” morality and “taste.”

We will discuss the manner in which Schiller uses these terms, and how they relate to Enlightenment ideas. We will then examine the philosophical system underlying Schiller’s essay and discuss his claims. 

A free copy of the essay can be found here:

http://www.colchestercollection.com/titles/chunk/A/aesthetical-and-philosophical-essays/manners.html

4/12/2013 Game Theory

by Brandon Taylor

          What do engagement rings, the Princess Bride, steam engines, and spider battles have in common? They can all be explained through game theory. In the second half of the twentieth century, game theory helped make breakthroughs in various disciplines, including economics, biology, computer science, and philosophy. It sheds light on such fundamental notions as morality, coordination, cooperation, signaling, and credibility.

• Intuitive strategies (coming forthwith)
• Definition of game
• Large numbers assumption
• Definition of utility (for our purposes)
• Utility models
• Self regarding vs. altruisitic
• Perfect information
• Components of a game
• Normal form games
• Dominating strategies/dominated strategies
• Strong
• Weak
• Nash equilibrium (yes, as in A Beautiful Mind)
• Examples
• Prisoner's Dilemma (Cooperation game)
• Tragedy of the fishers
• Karma
• Afterlife
• Societal punishments
• Caveman (Coordination game)
• Focal points
• New York example
• Steam engine example
• Mixed Nash equilibrium
• Soccer game
• Caveman example
• Extensive form game
• Nature's move
• Unknown move
• Backwards Induction
• Burning bridges
• Subgames
• Subgame reduction
• Subgame perfect equilibrium'
• Signaling games
• Engagement ring
• Credibility
• Changing the game: strategies for establishing credibility
• Coming forthwith
• Repeated games
• Finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma
• Infinitely repeated games
• Certain probability of ending at each round
• Decaying returns
• Tit for tat
• Public Choice Theory
• Voting
• Giving the wrong directions
• Sortition

List of Interesting Applications:
Business School

Keyboards

Steam engines vs. combustion engines

Tragedy of the fishers

Burning bridges

Alarm clock

Lemons (warranty)

Auctions

Business collusion

Biological Examples (genetic altruism)

New York example

Weight loss example

Giving/taking money (cultural relativity)*

Engagement rings

More coming forthwith

Discussion Questions:

What the disadvantages of this kind of utility model?

How can society achieve cooperation and coordination?

What are the advantages of this kind of very quantitative model of human behavior?

What are the disadvantages?

Do societies differ in their utility models? Their game strategies?

Bonus: Wikipedia to the rescue

Game theory has been put to several uses in philosophy. Responding to two papers by W.V.O. Quine (1960, 1967), Lewis (1969) used game theory to develop a philosophical account of convention. In so doing, he provided the first analysis of common knowledge and employed it in analyzing play in coordination games. In addition, he first suggested that one can understand meaning in terms of signaling games. This later suggestion has been pursued by several philosophers since Lewis (Skyrms (1996), Grim, Kokalis, and Alai-Tafti et al. (2004)). Following Lewis (1969) game-theoretic account of conventions, Edna Ullmann-Margalit (1977) and Bicchieri (2006) have developed theories of social norms that define them as Nash equilibria that result from transforming a mixed-motive game into a coordination game.[24][25]

Game theory has also challenged philosophers to think in terms of interactive epistemology: what it means for a collective to have common beliefs or knowledge, and what are the consequences of this knowledge for the social outcomes resulting from agents' interactions. Philosophers who have worked in this area include Bicchieri (1989, 1993),[26] Skyrms (1990),[27] and Stalnaker (1999).[28]

In ethics, some[who?] authors have attempted to pursue the project, begun by Thomas Hobbes, of deriving morality from self-interest. Since games like the prisoner's dilemma present an apparent conflict between morality and self-interest, explaining why cooperation is required by self-interest is an important component of this project. This general strategy is a component of the general social contract view in political philosophy (for examples, see Gauthier (1986) and Kavka (1986).[29]

Other authors have attempted to use evolutionary game theory in order to explain the emergence of human attitudes about morality and corresponding animal behaviors. These authors look at several games including the prisoner's dilemma, stag hunt, and the Nash bargaining game as providing an explanation for the emergence of attitudes about morality (see, e.g., Skyrms (1996, 2004) and Sober and Wilson (1999)).

Some assumptions used in some parts of game theory have been challenged in philosophy; for example, psychological egoism states that rationality reduces to self-interest—a claim debated among philosophers. (see Psychological egoism#Criticisms)

A Thought Experiment

We found this in a reddit thread recently and felt it would be remiss of us not to share it. Here is a thought experiment:

"On Twin Earth, a brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway trolley. There are only two options that the brain can take: the right side of the fork in the track or the left side of the fork. There is no way in sight of derailing or stopping the trolley and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows trolleys. The brain is causally hooked up to the trolley such that the brain can determine the course which the trolley will take.

"On the right side of the track there is a single railroad worker, Jones, who will definitely be killed if the brain steers the trolley to the right. If the railman on the right lives, he will go on to kill five men for the sake of killing them, but in doing so will inadvertently save the lives of thirty orphans (one of the five men he will kill is planning to destroy a bridge that the orphans’ bus will be crossing later that night). One of the orphans that will be killed would have grown up to become a tyrant who would make good utilitarian men do bad things. Another of the orphans would grow up to become G.E.M. Anscombe, while a third would invent the pop-top can.

"If the brain in the vat chooses the left side of the track, the trolley will definitely hit and kill a railman on the left side of the track, ‘Leftie,’ and will hit and destroy ten beating hearts on the track that could (and would) have been transplanted into ten patients in the local hospital that will die without donor hearts. These are the only hearts available, and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows hearts. If the railman on the left side of the track lives, he too will kill five men, in fact the same five that the railman on the right would kill. However, ‘Leftie’ will kill the five as an unintended consequence of saving ten men: he will inadvertently kill the five men rushing the ten hearts to the local hospital for transplantation. A further result of ‘Leftie’s’ act would be that the busload of orphans will be spared. Among the five men killed by ‘Leftie’ are both the man responsible for putting the brain at the controls of the trolley, and the author of this example. If the ten hearts and ‘Leftie’ are killed by the trolley, the ten prospective heart-transplant patients will die and their kidneys will be used to save the lives of twenty kidney-transplant patients, one of whom will grow up to cure cancer, and one of whom will grow up to be Hitler. There are other kidneys and dialysis machines available; however, the brain does not know kidneys, and this is not a factor.

"Assume that the brain’s choice, whatever it turns out to be, will serve as an example to other brains-in-vats and so the effects of his decision will be amplified. Also assume that if the brain chooses the right side of the fork, an unjust war free of war crimes will ensue, while if the brain chooses the left fork, a just war fraught with war crimes will result. Furthermore, there is an intermittently active Cartesian demon deceiving the brain in such a manner that the brain is never sure if it is being deceived.

"What should the brain do?"

Let us know in the comments what you think. (Protractors may not be used.)

2/15/2013 Modern Hedonism

by Kyle VanderWerf

What does modern American society value? I believe the answer is “pleasure.” This Friday, I will present my theory that the majority of modern Americans are hedonists, and therefore value pleasure above all else. I will back this up with evidence given by social status, marketing techniques, and governments' attempts to measure so-called “quality of life.” Then you all can argue with the validity of my theory, discuss the logical conclusion of such a society, and decide whether or not structuring a society hedonistically is a good thing.

This discussion will be held on Friday, February 15, at 4:30 PM in Campus Center room 903.

10/26/2012 The Preservation of Culture

by Sissy Nunez

Should languages and civilizations be preserved after most of the people of said culture are imprisoned or dead?

So, we first look at the most extreme example for a benefit.

Rome.  The most concreted faction that gave the undoubtedly the most advancements from almost all cultures,spanning from western civilization, across the ocean again, and back to Islam as far as advancements in invention, medicine, language, and public works go.

Before the sacking of Rome in 410 A.D., Romans had access to running hot and cold water, sanitation that had kept disease more minimalized,and medicine that allowed people to keep living productive lives after serious infection,possible brain trauma,amputation,etc.  The people also had public works like roads and aqueducts, as well as a public system of welfare.

Latin could be easily translated to Greek at the time to help with the language barrier, as implied through the great Library of Alexandria.  The loss of this civilization set us back over a thousand years in terms of the things I mentioned--invention, science & medicine.  The rudimentary observations made by Galen, the surgeon to Marcus Aurelius in the second century and a father to medicine through his works, although largely lost (which is why we should preserve), were still implemented until a reignition of interest in the 16 century, which led us to research his implications and thus led to the expansion of modern medicine.  The loss of sanitation and public works aided the spread of plagues and the deterioration of cultures in general in large expanses.  

The collapse of rome also aids in loss; the unification of language throughout many countries at the same time, with the perpetuation of empires like Rome to flourish at the cost of other civilizations, destroys other cultures and languages--the Gauls, Picts and Celts, to name a few.  Only recently, 2000 years later, is Ireland trying harder than ever to revive Gaelic.  Many of the rituals, practices,and cultures of these people are seen as pagan or new age, and for the most part not taken as seriously as, say, Christianity, as a direct result as the flourish of the Roman Empire and its conquering different countries and dissolving their countries and cultures for the good of Rome.

10/12/2012 Ethics and Historiography: A Semilocal Application

by Nathan Turowsky

Today we will investigate the difference between utilitarian hedonism and deontological systems of morals, in the context of the question ‘Are there some things that can be done to a small group that are so awful that it is better to let a larger group live in very poor conditions, and if so, why?’

Around the turn of the twentieth century there were concerns that the city of Boston and its environs were soon to run out of potable water, a problem both for still-obvious reasons and for, at that time, cholera-related ones. Obviously this was a problem that needed to be fixed, and to this end the options were to conduct an extensive overhaul of the area’s water mains and sewer systems (which were filled with leaks, redundancies, and dead ends) and cut back on consumption—which would have caused Boston’s and by extension New England’s and the North Atlantic’s economy to suffer—or to build a reservoir somewhere where fewer people lived. Eventually in the 1920s it was decided that the Swift River Valley, an area in Western Massachusetts that was home to four incorporated towns and about twenty-five hundred fulltime residents as well as travelers on the at that time marginally important train line between Athol and Springfield, ought to be dammed at its outlets to create a reservoir which would essentially replace the eastern end of Hampshire County on the Massachusetts map.

The project did not go smoothly, and involved, as any such project would have to, dispossessing those twenty-five hundred people, destroying four communities (the psychological trauma that this inflicted on the former inhabitants of Enfield, Greenwich, Prescott, and Dana has not been the subject of much formal study but looms large in Western Massachusetts culture), moving about eight thousand graves, and indirectly wrecking the rural economies of much of the surrounding area. The Quabbin Reservoir took about seven years to fill, after which it began to provide most of Boston’s water, assuaging the crisis for the foreseeable future, especially as the city’s population began to contract starting in the 1950s.

Opinions on the creation of the Quabbin tend to divide sharply along two lines: Whether or not one is aware of the circumstances behind it, and whether one is from Eastern or Western Massachusetts. The justification for the project was and is at its core utilitarian: It is more good for half a million people to have access to safe drinking water, without the economic costs of spending time doing an overhaul of the distribution system, than it is bad for a few thousands of people to be relocated to different parts of rural Western Massachusetts. The opposition to the project, insofar as it was not entirely emotive and based on the preferences of those who lived in the Swift River Valley to continue to do so, was and is at its core deontological: It is wrong to forcibly relocate inconvenient populations, indeed it has since 1949 been against the Geneva Conventions, and if the Quabbin were being constructed nowadays with the state government behaving the same as it did then the Massachusetts General Court would in fact be guilty of a crime against humanity. There is no easy answer here. Orders of magnitude more people were helped by the project than were harmed by it, and whether one would rather be forced to move away from one’s home against one’s will or be unable to find clean drinking water is obviously subjective since these are both horrible things to wish on anyone.

What to do? What do we value, and what do we believe? If you were a Massachusetts resident in the 1920s or 1930s, what would you have done? Can the importance of the Swift River Valley in Western Massachusetts culture and the exercise of remembrance (there was a conscious decision on the part of the people at the Swfit River Valley Historical Society to continually recreate an eternal 1938 rather than evoke a kinetic timespan) even, possibly, redeem the destruction, making it the source of a deontological good relating to memory as well as a utilitarian good relating to bodily health? Might the very fact of the valley’s destruction have in some sense made it eternal? Let’s use the fate of Enfield, Greenwich, Prescott, and Dana to explore how we feel about larger issues of the needs of the many, the fundamental rights of the no-matter-how-many, civic responsibility, and civic and cultural memory.

***

At the meeting we discussed the topic as intended. Nathan gave us the historical background and basic questions; Nathan's visiting mother Lisa explained what eminent domain is and the controversy over what constitutes 'just compensation'. There was an extensive large group discussion and a somewhat shorter than usual small group discussion, and the club was split about evenly on the subject of whether or not the Commonwealth was theoretically justified (most agreed that it was not justified in behaving as it actually did). After the meeting, we had dinner at Worcester and then went to Orchard Hill to straightway partially disperse and/or do nothing in particular in the Grayson lounge.

9/14/2012 The Non-Bullshit Life

by Tyler Blevins

Hey guys, just going to outline what happened in class to prompt this question and I will give the complete response I gave to submit to the teacher. Hopefully we can expand on that.

The concept of a bullshit life came from a TV show clip where a man is going to a date, but he gets attacked by a homeless man. The homeless man run at him, misses him, keeps running into the street due to momentum, and a car hits him and he dies. The man goes to his date and goes on a monologue about how our lives can be erased at any second, and therefore, all human action is “bullshit.” Our teacher challenged us to come up with answers to “What isn’t a bullshit life?” The answer I gave is below:

I have thought about this question during a few intellectual discussions with some of my colleagues, and I believe I have come up with a satisfactory answer, at least in my own life. I will attempt to explain my position in this essay.

The Romans had the deity Hilaritas, who was the goddess of good nature and humor. This was also an extension of the Greek concept of Hilarita, which simply acknowledged the inevitability of death for all human beings, and that the passage of time would lead to the collapse of all things that humans have ever built, dreamed, and thought. While this immediately may seem pessimistic and nihilistic on the surface, if analyzed, this can lead to the realization that all worrying is ineffective and without merit. In effect, this philosophy can eliminate all worry because all causes of human worry will eventually be nonexistent in the grand scheme of things. This allows for an upsurge in humor in the largest case of dramatic irony possible so that the person experiencing this realization finds humor in everything in existence and is able to communicate that quality to others that want it. This, I think, is one of the greatest ways for a person to find legitimate meaning in life: finding humor in this great game of life and transferring that good nature to others.

My own personal philosophy of what gives my life meaning is to be as happy and compassionate as possible to everyone I come into contact with. I always try to help anyone whenever I can and going the extra mile all the time, and I get great joy out of doing that. I suppose I could measure the success of this principle by considering how many people will show up at my funeral and what they will have to say about me after I am gone. Yet despite all of this, I try to remain as humble as possible, yet I realize that even that statement pumps up my sense of self-worth. In essence, I suppose one could say I try to be as happy and helpful as possible.

To close, I wish to use Horace Mann’s statement: “We should be ashamed to die until we have made our mark upon humanity.” I think that statement adds tremendously to clarity in what we should be striving for in our day-to-day lives. This, in essence, wraps up my philosophy on this subject based on what I currently know. I plan to read Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” at some point very soon, so I may have more to say on it later. But for now, this encompasses my position, as flawed or as solid it may be.

In essence, I think a non-bullshit life consists of leaving a mark on humanity that transcends your own death. I will expand on this more in the club, and I hope we can get a good discussion going from this. Cheers!

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.