Like the terms
"aesthetic" and "religious", the term "ethics" in Kierkegaard's work has
more
than one meaning. It is used to denote both: (i) a limited existential sphere, or stage, which is
superseded by the higher stage of the religious life; and (ii) an aspect of life which is retained
even within the religious life. In the first sense "ethics" is synonymous with the Hegelian
notion of
Sittlichkeit, or customary mores. In this sense "ethics" represents "the universal",
or more
accurately the prevailing social norms. The social norms are seen to be the highest court of
appeal for judging human affairs -- nothing outranks them for this sort of ethicist. Even human
sacrifice is justified in terms of how it serves the community, so that when Agamemnon
sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia he is regarded as a tragic hero since the sacrifice is required for
the success of the Greek expedition to Troy (Fear and Trembling).
Kierkegaard, however,
does recognize duties to a power higher than social norms. Much of
Fear and Trembling turns on the notion that Abraham's would-be sacrifice of his son Isaac is
not for the sake of social norms, but is the result of a "teleological suspension of the ethical".
That is, Abraham recognizes a duty to something higher than both his social duty not to kill an
innocent person and his personal commitment to his beloved son, viz. his duty to obey God's
commands.
But in order to
arrive at a position of religious faith, which might entail a "teleological suspension
of the ethical", the individual must first embrace the ethical (in the first sense). In order to
raise
oneself beyond the merely aesthetic life, which is a life of drifting in imagination, possibility and
sensation, one needs to make a commitment. That is, the aesthete needs to choose the ethical,
which entails a commitment to communication and decision procedures.
The ethical position
advocated by Judge Wilhelm in "Equilibrium Between the Aesthetic and the
Ethical in the Composition of Personality" (Either-Or II) is a peculiar mix of cognitivism
and
noncognitivism. The metaethics or normative ethics are cognitivist, laying down various
necessary conditions for ethically correct action. These conditions include: the necessity of
choosing seriously and inwardly; commitment to the belief that predications of good and evil of
our actions have a truth-value; the necessity of choosing what one is actually doing, rather than
just responding to a situation; actions are to be in accordance with rules; and these rules are
universally applicable to moral agents.
The choice of metaethics,
however, is noncognitive. There is no adequate proof of the truth of
metaethics. The choice of normative ethics is motivated, but in a noncognitive way. The Judge
seeks to motivate the choice of his normative ethics through the avoidance of despair. Here
despair (Fortvivlelse) is to let one's life depend on conditions outside one's control (and later,
more radically, despair is the very possibility of despair in this first sense). For Judge Wilhelm,
the choice of normative ethics is a noncognitive choice of cognitivism, and thereby an
acceptance of the applicability of the conceptual distinction between good and evil.
From Kierkegaard's
religious perspective, however, the conceptual distinction between good
and evil is ultimately dependent not on social norms but on God. Therefore it is possible, as
Johannes de Silentio argues was the case for Abraham (the father of faith), that God demand a
suspension of the ethical (in the sense of the socially prescribed norms). This is still ethical in
the
second sense, since ultimately God's definition of the distinction between good and evil
outranks any human society's definition. The requirement of communicability and clear decision
procedures can also be suspended by God's fiat. This renders cases such as Abraham's
extremely problematic, since we have no recourse to public reason to decide whether he is
legitimately obeying God's command or whether he is a deluded would-be murderer. Since
public reason cannot decide the issue for us, we must decide for ourselves as a matter of
religious faith.
1. Background
