(Email, University of Virginia)
Can Johannes de Silentio’s Abraham Speak?
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous character, Johannes de Silentio, examines the Biblical character and father of faith, Abraham. In particular, de Silentio attempts to articulate the absurd faith of Abraham in relation to ethics. In the third of three investigations devoted to this topic, he addresses the relation between the faith of Abraham and Abraham’s ability to communicate with others. De Silentio concludes: “Abraham is silent—but he cannot speak, therein lies the distress and anguish. For if when I speak I cannot make myself understood, I do not speak even if I keep talking without stop day and night” (FT, 137). De Silentio’s argument for Abraham’s silence rests contingent on two conceptions. First, he reasons from a particular notion of ethics taken from German idealism, which of course a reader does not have to accept. Second, he develops a relation between this notion of ethics and the possibility of one making oneself understood. According to de Silentio, if one exists outside the realm of ethics, one is either rightly guilty or one cannot justify oneself in an understandable way even if one is justified.
In the secondary literature, de Silentio is widely and correctly held to be an unreliable guide to Abraham and Abraham’s faith. In this paper, I will follow this approach by examining the way that Kierkegaard provides the reader with the tools to undermine de Silentio’s argument that Abraham cannot speak. Ultimately, neither Kierkegaard nor de Silentio provides a definite answer to the question of whether Abraham can speak; however, the possibility of Abraham’s ability to communicate does emerge. Abraham’s form of communication is necessarily indirect and corresponds to a unique notion of understanding that has implications for community and ethics.
