2 posts tagged “paradox”

In my earlier study, I argued that I did not see any conflict (much less a “paradox”) between Nietzsche’s fatalistic and self-making themes but rather an excellent example of his “perspectivism.” Fatalism and self-making represent two complementary perspectives on ourselves and on human life. On the one hand, there is our familiar view of ourselves as (more or less) autonomous beings, deliberating, making choices, acting on our desires, sometimes reflecting on and weighing our desires, sometimes conscientiously denying our desires (or refusing to be motivated by them). It is from this perspective that we normally hold people (and ourselves) responsible for their (our) actions and declare them (and ourselves) to be the “authors” of their (our) actions. On the other hand, we cannot but recognize that we are all “thrown into” our circumstances, born with (or without) certain talents and abilities to varying degrees and with or without dispositions to certain physical liabilities and limitations. We are all products (“victims” some would say) of our upbringing, our families, our culture. Even without bringing in such spooky words as “fatalism,” we recognize in  ourselves and in others the heavy baggage of our backgrounds and the fact that our choices and our socalled autonomy are both quite limited. We take up one or the other of these perspectives, often sequentially, even simultaneously, but I do not see this as a problem or a “paradox.” It is rather just “the human condition.” We see ourselves as both free and constrained, which is not quite (yet) to say “fated.”

-Robert Solomon

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. It reposes immanently in itself, it has nothing without itself which is its telos, but is itself telos for everything outside it, and when this has been incorporated by the ethical it can go no further.

I haven't had much time to read lately. But when I find some time, I usually pick up a book and just skim through it. Well, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling was on my computer desk this morning, so I started skimming through it. I eventually get to the part of the book where he asks the question "Is there such a thing as a teleological suspension of the ethical?" Here I started actually reading.

I must admit Kierkegaard's language is quite abstruse and I can't exactly follow is logic most of the time. So, I'm asking for clarification about his faith paradox. He describes this paradox twice.

For faith is this paradox, that the particular is higher than the universal--yet in such a way, be it observed, that the movement repeats itself, and that consequently the individual, after having been in the universal, now as the particular isolates himself as higher than the universal.

First of all, what is the "particular"? Secondly, how does isolation of the individual result in the individual being higher than the universal?

The next description of the paradox is more elaborate.

Faith is precisely this paradox, that the individual as the particular is higher than the universal, is justified over again it, is not subordinate but superior--yet in such a way, be it observed, that 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, for the fact that the individual as the particular stand in an absolute relation to the absolute. This position cannot be mediated, for all mediation comes about precisely by virtue of the universal; it is and remains to all eternity a paradox, inaccessible to thought. And yet faith is this paradox--or else (these are the logical deductions which I would beg the reader to have in mente at every point, though it would be too prolix for me to reiterate them on every occasion)--or else there never has been faith....precisely because it always has been. In other words, Abraham is lost.

So the paradox is inaccessible to thought. That helps a lot.