Throughout the course of conducting a close reading on a section of Kierkegaard’s book ‘Fear and Trembling’, titled: ‘Is There Such a Thing as Teleological Suspension of the Ethical?’; one may be led to understand Kierkegaard’s views on such themes as: the paradox that is faith, the story of Abraham, and the possibility of one transcending what Kierkegaard terms, ‘The Ethical’. This reading is aimed at distinguishing Kierkegaard’s concept of the ethical behavior and expectations of man, with the higher demands of honorable callings. Kierkegaard writes of the example of Abraham’s potential sacrifice of his son Isaac to show that there can be a conflict between universal rules of the ethical sphere and abstract religious expectations. The title …show more content…
He writes that ‘it applies to everyone’ and ‘it applies every instant’, and a sense can be interpreted that he thinks it should be a constant fixture to the entirety of humanity; that the goal of individuals is to always live life guided by the greater power. Kierkegaard then states that ‘the particular individual is the individual who has his telos in the universal, and his ethical task is to express himself constantly in it’. This can be understood, as the role of one who lives their life in ‘The Ethical’ sphere shall always have the responsibility to purely serve and obey the greater power, being consistently focused on avoiding sins. It seems that Kierkegaard believes that this is ‘the highest thing that can be said of a man and of his existence’. If this individual feels tempted to sin, then his morals have been discarded, which is where Kierkegaard makes use of being ‘teleologically suspended’ and then it is said that: ‘he can labor himself out of this only by penitently abandoning himself as the particular in the universal.’ This was interpreted as meaning that he can show sorrow and regret for something he has done and then proceed to relinquish his role as being the ‘particular in the universal’, as seen as a sort of