Another Kierkegaard Post – but cooler

The thing about Kierkegaard that stood out the most for me was his fascinating take on the story of Abraham and Isaac. Kierk starts out trying to find a rational explanation for the story of Abraham being willing to sacrifice his only son because God asked him to, and he thinks to himself, “Maybe Abraham was trying to be a sort of hero,” but he quickly realizes that this requires a definition of a hero. He comes up with two different heroic concepts:

1. The Knight of Infinite Resignation – this knight is the standard hero who performs a sacrificial duty for the benefit of man
2. The Knight of Faith – this man is willing to do the sacrificial duty, but he has faith that God will not actually make him do it; God will provide a way out

Now, Kierkegaard was a big fan of Hegel, and Hegel had this Definition of Universal Ethics (“they benefit the greater good”) that Kierk originally had applied to the Abraham story. Unfortunately, he ran into a few problems with this definition of ethics. First of all, if the definition of ethics is that they benefit the greater good, then Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac was unethical because it benefited no one. This is a problem because if God was the one who asked Abraham to do it, but it was unethical, then we have to conclude that God wills us to do unethical things. The second problem, therefore, is that because Universal Ethics says you have to benefit the greater good, you are forced to choose between God and people. Abraham was asked to sacrifice his only son. This was unethical because it benefited no one, but he did it because God asked him to. So, either Abraham sacrifices Isaac and is unethical but he obeys God, OR he spares Isaac (in effect “benefiting” him) and benefits the greater good and is ethical, but he disobeys God.

I think this is one of the most fascinating arguments I’ve ever read, but the way that I would apply it to psychology would be in the area of motivation.I think it is a very interesting way of looking at why people do the things they do when they make some sort of sacrifice. The man running late to work gives a young lady his taxi. Why did he do that if he was already running late? Either he was just being a hero and making a show of how sacrificial he is, or he did it in faith that another mode of transportation will be brought to him. I’m not saying that the first reason is necessarily wrong, but it’s just interesting to look at even the smallest acts of sacrifice and analyze which kind of Knight that person is, and what kind of motivation they have for certain things.