We have just encountered the thought that History might be characterized for Hegel as the place of Spirit. History is the place in which Spirit inscribes itself as process of reconciliation through the moments and singular events that make up the historical development of man. But what is here heard in the word place? The place of Spirit? One hears, firstly, the place where Spirit recognizes itself as its own deployment. Which means that Spirit is always in and with itself present as place. Its place is always its own and always recognized as its own. In other words, there is no difference between place and Spirit. Secondly, one hears the modality by which this recognition, and thus this co-belonging of place and Spirit, reveals itself. This modality is, as we have marked it, sacrificial. It is through sacrifice that Spirit recognizes all places as its place. In other words, Hegel is here conceptually rewriting the originary character of all possible human action in history. He is inscribing in a place and instituting as a place the very deployment of Spirit as that movement essentially signified by and as the perpetual sacrifice of finitude. In this sense, this conceptual rewriting always presupposes the negation of Abraham’s non-relation to place. It calls for the sacrifice of the differentiation inscribed by Abraham within place. That is, it commands the sacrifice of Abraham’s alienation—an alienation that defines the “spirit” of Judaism—in order to mark the place where Spirit and Man recognize themselves mutually and absolutely. We ought here to remark that Hegel could never understand the non-belonging and, consequently, the extraction or the withdrawal from place as a possibility for freedom. The absence of a determined place could have been understood by Hegel as the opening of a space for humanism. But far from this possibility, Hegel will define freedom as the reflection of the presence of Spirit in the affirmation of its concrete and determined place. And the absence of place, which also means the absence of Spirit, or the very stance of Judaism, is always a synonym for violence and terror.
The word “violence” ought here to put us on the way toward another thinker in the history of philosophy, one who has made of Abraham a central and unsubstitutable figure: Kierkegaard.12 For Kierkegaard, unlike Hegel, the figure of Abraham marks a positive and sublime stance. This positivity and sublimity of the figure of Abraham is not simply that he announces Christianity but, more profoundly, that he is radically exposed to the truth of Christianity. In this sense, for Kierkegaard, the figure of Abraham announces the absolute Law of sacrifice. And, furthermore, Kierkegaard grasps that this Law is the defining element of Christianity. Which means that the event of the interruption of sacrifice is, for Kierkegaard, but an empirical accident. What remains important is the absolute paradoxicality that is both lived and existentially marked in the figure of Abraham. This paradoxicality is the paradox between ethics and faith.
Ethics, for Kierkegaard, is assimilated to the subject capable of marking the universality of its autonomy, that is, capable of translating the subjective moral duty into the objective generality of the community. In this sense, ethics remains that which is attached to the communicable, to the common, to the universality, to the translatable. It marks the ground and the place of symmetry and commonality. Ethics is thus the proper, the authentic mark, of all men. Its dictate is clear and transparent: Thou shalt not kill. Which means that the figure of Abraham confronted with the divine commandment of transgressing the ethical order is thus exposed to the radical paradox of his subjectivity. To obey the commandment of faith is to betray all other ethical obligations. In this sense, to remain faithful to the divine call is to perjure immediately the ethical order and that which defines the very commonality and community of men. This is the reason for Abraham’s solitude. His solitude is radical, and also monstrous, since he is alone in subjecting the ethical order to faith and thus betrays all others in their uniqueness, singularity, particularity, his fellow men and his most beloved son, Isaac. And it is important to note that the suspension of the ethical for the sake of a commandment of faith must here remain radically mysterious. It is kept in a most obscure and incomprehensible secrecy, a secrecy that mirrors the transcendence of God and the profound, unbridgeable difference between God and the common sphere, space, place of man.
And the violence of sacrifice is here a central element in Kierkegaard’s analysis of the figure of Abraham. For the violence of sacrifice marks precisely and is, in fact, a synonym for the violence of the subjection of the ethical order to faith. In this sense, the ethical order is sacrificed to faith. And this sacrificial subjection is intrinsically violent as it is tremendously violent. It marks the necessity of breaking off with the ethical, not only to leave room for faith but to overpower, override, overmaster the ethical by faith. The consequence for Kierkegaard here is radical. It stipulates that the figure of Abraham, his responsibility, is entirely riveted to an ethical irresponsibility. Abraham, subjecting himself to the calling of the divine, is entirely imprisoned in the necessity of betraying, of sacrificing, of entirely breaking from the sociality of the ethical order. The paradoxicality of the figure of Abraham is here clearly signified: To attain the highest stance of man, the religious, man must endure the betrayal of man. And thus he must be entirely exposed to ethical irresponsibility in his absolute and authentic responsibility toward God. To be responsible toward God is to be ethically irresponsible, and to be ethically responsible is to be irresponsible toward God. The paradoxical “dialectic” is here perfectly tuned and in tune with the existential situation of Abraham, an existential situation that marks the complete reversal of Hegel’s dialectical concept of sacrifice. Since, for Kierkegaard, the figure of Abraham, far from reducing sacrifice to a simple economy of self-preservation, in fact embodies the very sublimity of sacrifice. This sublimity is not grasped as the speculative accomplishment of elevating the finitude of Man to the infinity of God in the presence and manifestation as Spirit, but rather is already and always riveted to the paradoxicality of subjecting, of crushing, of subordinating, the ethical order of man to a dissimulated and hidden divine call that is always infinitely absent and secret. The relation here between God and Man is not one of mutual recognition in the reconciliatory movement of presence, but rather engages the non-symmetric movement between the translatable and universal order of the ethical sphere and the untranslatable, transcendent, and enigmatic sphere of God. Which means that the untranslatable, the transcendent, and the enigmatic sphere radically calls for the sacrifice of the domain proper to man.
This non-symmetric relation or rapport signifies nothing less than Abraham’s engagement in the secret calling of a divine order or command. Abraham is here entirely determined by the secrecy of this call, sacrificing thus the entire ethical order. We could then say that, and again in opposition to Hegel’s depiction, the figure of Abraham is kept in and is the keeper of an absolute secret as he maintains a singular rapport to the divine calling. Abraham is kept in the secret and is always keeping the secrecy of the divine calling, which renders him the absolute servant of God capable of sacrificing everything to remain faithful to the singularity of the secret. The “knight of faith” is not even comparable to the tragic hero, who cries, laments, speaks, and shares his or her downfall. The figure of Abraham, however, dons entirely the absolute secret of the divine calling in absolute silence, removed from any possible comprehension, which makes him, in return, radically singular and singularized—solitary.
We have already alluded to Abraham’s solitude. This solitude is marked and marking Abraham’s very language. This language, for Kierkegaard, is entirely ironic. That is, Abraham’s language always keeps for itself and in itself the secret of the divine calling. For irony is the possibility of saying something even while at the same time not revealing what is said. It is thus the possibility of keeping oneself outside the sphere of the communicable, the general, the shared intentionality of the community. And it is precisely this irony that best translates the untranslatable responsibility of Abraham: to keep the secret secret. Abraham does not speak in fables or through figures,
enigmas, or ellipses. His irony is, in fact, meta-rhetorical. For Abraham is entirely—Kierkegaard underlines it—unaware of the resolution. He is entirely riveted to not knowing what God will require of him. But this non-knowledge, far from instilling in him a doubt or a hesitation, marks his resolute decision in favor of an absolute beyond all knowledge or non-knowledge. The decision to which Abraham here responds is and remains entirely secret: This is precisely what makes his decision absolute. And absolutely responsible. For Abraham is here responding to, and conforming his responsibility to, the call of the Absolute Other. Abraham responds of himself before the commandment emanating from the Absolute Other. Paradoxically, Abraham responds for himself, of himself, and by himself, by being responsible in regard to the Absolute Other. Furthermore, and as to aggravate the paradox, this decision and responsibility is also radically irresponsible since it is guided neither by ethics nor justice. As if one could never be at once and at the same time responsible toward the Other and toward the others.
Abraham thus sacrifices the place of generality, of the ethical, of the common, and of community, the place of the others, in order to remain faithful to the sacrificial call of the Absolute Other. This call from the Absolute Other presupposes and implies, at the same time, the sacrifice of the space or place of the others to the point where the call from the Absolute Other is not only a call to sacrifice but, more profoundly, a call to sacrifice the others. Through the sacrifice of his beloved son, Isaac, Abraham is, in truth, sacrificing all the others. He is sacrificing place itself in order to remain faithful to that which is beyond place. The sacrifice of Isaac is, in truth, the sacrifice of the place of the ethical and the universal for the absolute beyond, the absolute transcendent secret of singularity. For the place beyond all places cannot be reduced to the generality of place. A place beyond economy and beyond the economy of sacrifice. To think the call of sacrifice as that which projects the entirety of the ethical into its own sacrifice and thus liberates the place of that which always and already exceeds the generality of man. The horizon beyond all horizons that Kierkegaard here identifies with Christianity is entirely centered on Abraham. The Judaic figure is here called to serve the actualization of the event of Christianity. Why? Since it is through Abraham’s non-knowledge and thus through his sacrifice of the ethical order in the name of the Absolute Other that is liberated the event of salvation. As if God, the Absolute Other, did not yet know what the non-knowing Abraham would do with and by this non-knowledge: Will he sacrifice the generality of the ethical, and thus be responsible to the beyond, the transcendent, the Absolute Other, or will he sacrifice the Absolute Other, and thus be responsible to the generality, the commonality, the community of the ethical order? At the moment when God is assured and reassured of Abraham’s absolute fidelity over and beyond the ethical order of man, the event of salvation, of mercy, and clemency arrives. That is, the event by which anxiety and sacrifice are interrupted. In other words, it is by and through the absolute faith of Abraham, absolute in the sense that it repudiates even the ethical and the general, that the event of salvation comes and descends, reveals itself out of its secrecy and reestablishes the place, the lieu of the generality and commonality, the community of man.
In this sense, Kierkegaard opens what we could call a “messianism of the event”: of the pure event capable of restoring the negation that permitted it. In other words, Kierkegaard fixes the event by marking the paradoxicality of the decision to negate the common generality of the ethical in being responsible for the divine call. This messianism of the event, in the very difference it marks with Hegel’s absoluteness of presence, nonetheless, and through the sacrifice of the economical, restores that very economy. It is thus a messianism of the event that marks a very determined and defined role for the event it is engaging. In this sense, the event here is precisely and can only be the restoration of that which is sacrificed. As Derrida observes in The Gift of Death, Kierkegaard reveals this idea when, in the conclusion of Fear and Trembling, he quotes Matthew (but without naming him): “but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”13 The messianism of the event is here entirely structured by the restoration, the reestablishment, the reinstitution as restitution, of that which was sacrificed in order to liberate its possibility. In this sense, Kierkegaard inscribes the event in the deployment of Christianity. The event is precisely that which accomplishes the meaning of sacrifice within Abraham’s exposition to the paradoxicality between ethics and faith.
We are, therefore, confronted with the following question: What fundamentally distinguishes Hegel and Kierkegaard? That is, what differentiates the messianism of presence and the messianism of the event? Certainly, everything separates and differentiates these two messianisms.
1. The question of sacrifice. For Hegel, sacrifice is the modality by which Spirit reveals itself as presence of reconciliation. And, furthermore, Abraham here is already excluded from this revelation—since his exposition to sacrifice revealed itself to be but a simple act of self-preservation and of egoism. For Kierkegaard, sacrifice is the paradoxicality that imbalances and projects the entire relation between ethics and faith in a movement of perpetual and mutual exclusion—the necessity thus to sacrifice the Ethical sphere if one is faithful to the call of the Absolute Other, and conversely—creating thus a situation of perpetual imbalance, ambiguity, and anxiety tearing man himself in the impossibility to maintain both orders at once. And, furthermore, Abraham here is precisely the figure who, in anxiety and solitude, grasps the paradoxicality of this relation.
2. The orientation of each messianism. For Hegel, messianism is entirely to be grasped in the revelation of presence, of Spirit as History and History as Spirit, the already and always effective reconciliation between all opposites and differences (between man and God, man and nature, man and the other man) in and within the infinity of the movement that incarnates their mutual recognition and signification. For Kierkegaard, messianism is entirely riveted and exposed to the event abandoning man in the impossibility of reconciling in presence the ethical and faith, the commonality of the ethical community and the faith toward the Absolute Other—leaving man entirely exposed to the paradoxicality of this messianism: being responsible to the Absolute Other is being irresponsible to the ethical order.
3. The question of place. For Hegel, place is the place of the effective reconciliation of difference. In this sense, place is the identified identity of Spirit. As we said, place is never to be distinguished from the actual and effective manifestation of Spirit as reconciliation in presence. Place is thus the place of sacrifice accomplishing itself as reconciliation. For Kierkegaard, place is entirely and absolutely riveted to the paradoxicality of a situation in which the ethical order and the order of Faith cannot be reconciled but are constantly mutually excluding each other. It is thus that the place of existence as existentiality is defined as that which perpetually comes out of itself, expropriates itself out of itself and into the paradoxicality that is translated into a radical reception toward the event.
But here again is the same question, rephrased: According to which law can the difference between sacrifice as reconciliation, the messianism of presence, the place as Spirit and sacrifice as paradoxicality, the messianism of the event, the place as existential reception, be maintained, sustained, and affirmed?
The law that differentiates Hegel and Kierkegaard is Christianity. Both these Christian thinkers are differentiated by Christianity. But it also forms that which unites them, that which brings them together, that which incessantly forms the indestructible passage between them. Christianity marks both Hegel and Kierkegaard, at once and simultaneously, as different and as complementary.
Christianity is marked for Hegel as reconciliation. Christianity is symbolized by Kierkegaard as paradoxicality. This difference is radical and constantly reaffirmed between Hegel and Kierkegaard. As we saw, for Hegel, reconciliation is the very deployment of meaning, that is
, the essential modality in which, beyond and before Judaism, Spirit appropriates itself in and through the separation, the distinction, the division installed and inscribed by the Judaic heteronomic Law. Conversely, as we saw, for Kierkegaard, paradoxicality marks the existentiality of our divided and irreconcilable situation between ethics and faith. But in and through both these different concepts is elaborated, for Hegel and Kierkegaard, the very possibility of Christianity. That is, the very modality by which Christianity acquires its ultimate meaning, its grounding essence, and fundamental intentionality. For Hegel, reconciliation is the modality by which Christianity is always and already effective in history. For Kierkegaard, paradoxicality is the modality by which Christianity is maintained in its historical effectivity. Which means that Hegel and Kierkegaard persistently maintain, the first for reconciliation and the second for paradoxicality, a Christian resolution. The teleological horizon here remains complementary. Which means that Christianity conjoins both concepts, reconciliation and paradoxicality, to a midpoint where they incessantly call on to each other. Moreover, reconciliation and paradoxicality are indissociably linked and allied, unthinkable one without the other, and constantly holding in one the trace of the other.
The Trace of God Page 21