Teleological suspension of ethics

In his lectures on the Book of Genesis in the 16th century, Martin Luther praised Abraham for his uncritical obedience to God – for the "blind faith" exhibited by his refusal to question whether it was right to kill Isaac. In the late 18th century, Immanuel Kant took the opposite view, arguing that Abraham should have reasoned that such an evidently immoral command could not have come from God. For Luther, divine authority trumps any claim on behalf of reason or morality, whereas for Kant there can be nothing higher than the moral law.

In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard follows Kant in emphasising that Abraham's decision is morally repugnant and rationally unintelligible. However, he also shows that one consequence of Kant's view is that, if nothing is higher than human reason, then belief in God becomes dispensable. Unlike both Kant and Luther, Kierkegaard does not promote a particular judgment about Abraham, but rather presents his readers with a dilemma: either Abraham is no better than a murderer, and there are no grounds for admiring him; or moral duties do not constitute the highest claim on the human being. Fear and Trembling does not resolve this dilemma, and perhaps for a religious person there is no entirely satisfactory way of resolving it.

In the rest of Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard examines his four retellings of the story of Abraham, focusing on the religious and the ethical. Kierkegaard claims that the killing of Isaac is ethically wrong but religiously right. Kierkegaard also uses his retelling of the Abraham story to distinguish between faith and resignation. Abraham could have been resigned to kill Isaac just because God told him to do so and because he knew that God was always right. However, Kierkegaard claims that Abraham did not act out of a resignation that God must always be obeyed but rather out of faith that God would not do something that was ethically wrong. Abraham knew that killing Isaac was ethically wrong, but he had faith that God would spare his son. Abraham decided to do something ethically wrong because having faith in God’s good will was religiously right. Kierkegaard claims that the tension between ethics and religion causes Abraham anxiety.

Kierkegaard argues that his retellings of the story of Abraham demonstrate the importance of a “teleological suspension of the ethical.” Teleological means “in regard to the end.” If you are hungry and you eat something with the goal of no longer being hungry, then you made a teleological decision: you acted, by eating, so as to achieve the end of no longer being hungry. Abraham performs a teleological suspension of the ethical when he decides to kill Isaac. Abraham knows that killing Isaac is unethical. However, Abraham decides to suspend the ethical—in other words, to put ethical concerns on the back burner—because he has faith in the righteousness of the end (or telos) that God will bring about. Abraham’s faith that God will not allow an unethical telos allows him to make what seems to be an unethical decision. Abraham puts religious concerns over ethical concerns, thus proving his faith in God.