Understanding Kierkegaard

[Dimmesdale]

In the following, I wish to flesh out my understanding of philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's idea of the "teleological suspension of the ethical."

I'm sure everyone here is at least somewhat familiar with the Biblical story of Abraham going to mount Moriah to sacrifice his son Isaac because God ordered him to do so. Whether you think that story is simply crazy or bears theological and existential weight, I leave up to you to decide. The following however assumes that there is some substance to be gathered from it. Notwithstanding, I think context is in order and plenty necessary.

First of all, how to parse this expression: "teleological suspension of the ethical." How can the ethical ever justifiably be suspended? And by what is meant the term "teleological?" Based off of my reading of Kierkegaard (which may very well be faulty) here is my basic assessment, and correct me at any point if need be, faithful reader.

"Telos" is a Greek word that means "end" or, the final "goal" or "end-point" of something. So, one might say that the "end" or "telos" of a seed, is to sprout in the ground and become a plant. Or, that the "telos" of a wheel is to provide motion for a vehicle. That is its Purpose.

Well, the "telos" or end of a human being, according to Kierkegaard, is to follow his or her nature in conformity with God. And that manifests most essentially in the form of moral agency. If God created you to be good, then that is your "telos." That is the end in mind, due to your nature and identity as a human being with moral agency.

So, how can this "telos" of the human being and his concomitant morality, ever be "suspended", even by God, as it were? How could God suspend a person's duty to abide by the universal moral law? Wouldn't this be self-defeating, even, especially, for God? The answer could only be, not that morality altogether is abrogated, but that a higher morality takes center stage. Namely, the will of God which finds a higher ethics and "telos" in a different field of action that "cancels" or "annuls" the lesser morality which does not so fully conform to the will of God. For, it may be said, the essence of sin itself, is infidelity to the will of God, and not so much lack of conformance to a given, set rule-book.

In case this all sounds too abstract, I have prepared a concrete example that will hopefully illustrate the general extent of this idea.

In the movie "The Green Mile" there is the story of John Coffey, a man who is wrongfully convicted of murders and sentenced to execution. In reality, he is a supernatural saint who is a sort of living miracle man and who inspires the love and affection of the guards who oversee his cell.

In brief however, a subplot in the movie involves one of the guards, Percy, who is actually highly corrupt and, overall, wicked. He even intentionally botches an electrocution which causes the extended, torturous death of one of the inmates. No one likes Percy.

What happens is, after John Coffey cures a woman of a malady by absorbing it into himself, he manages to grab Percy at one point and "inject" or "release" this affliction into Percy. Percy goes nuts, becoming catatonic, but not before he shoots dead the inmate next door who is actually the perpetrator of the murders. One might say, then, that Coffey did humanity a service by taking out two birds with one stone. Percy ends in an asylum.

Now, consider two different moralities. There is human morality, with its courts, and laws, and rights, and along with that all the convoluted webwork of red tape that goes with it. This form of morality we uphold, because it is the general, universal rule. And conscience typically runs in step with it. On the other hand, there is the law of God, which is rooted in the Will of God, and which is, well, different. We might say it "cuts to the chase." If God wanted Percy or anyone dead, he would not have to go through the rigmarole of litigation to have his way. He would decisively cut a person down, immediately as it were. End of story. At least, this is what God could do as His prerogative....

Now, what happens when God uses a human agent to do that very thing? The human agent, then, is no longer acting within the bounds of the universal, but of the particular. The person is still acting on the basis of a certain end or telos, the will of God, but under special auspices as it were which lift him out of the general mass. The question is, when is this justified, and how can a person tell that this is justified? How to guage the fact? Since the individual can only rely on the universal in his general approach, since nobody is in the same particular predicament as said person, this leads to a certain type of uncanny isolation which is almost blind. And hence the story of Abraham. It is not so much, on my reading, that Abraham does what is inscrutable or "irrational", only that it is hidden from his sight. There is a reason alright, but that reason seems opaque due to Abraham's isolation from the common lot of humanity. Abraham has only God's dictum to go by. Nothing else. And hence is the predicament.