Soren Kierkegaard

Tarquinius Superbus said in his garden b ymeans of the poppies was under-
stood b yhis son but not b ythe messenger.” This sounds cr yptic and needs
explaining: Tarquinius Superbus had a son, Sextus Tarquinius, then in the
cit yof Gabii, which he was supposed to add to his father’s dominions. The
son sent a message to his father in Rome, inquiring what he ought to do
next. His father did not trust the messenger, however, and said nothing.
Instead, he went out to his garden and, using his stick, he lopped the heads
off all the tallest poppies. Puzzled, the messenger reported this scene to
Sextus Tarquinius, who shrewdl yunderstood how to draw the meaning
out of this silent gesture and soon thereafter killed the most powerful men
in the city. The father and son had thus communicated via a third party
who had merel ystood there gaping, understanding nothing himself.
In his retelling of the primeval tale from Genesis 22 about Abraham who
went to Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son Isaac, Johannes de silentio is
almost as zealous in his hermeneutical activit yas Tarquinius Superbus had
been in his garden. Johannes de silentio wanted to la ybare the dialectic
contained within the narrative in order to show “what an enormous para-
dox faith is, a paradox that is capable of making a murder into a hol yact,
pleasing to God.” This demonstration takes place in three separate sec-
tions—labeled Problema I, II, and III, respectively—in which questions
are posed concerning the possibilit yof the purposive setting aside (or the
teleological suspension) of the ethical. These questions are never directl yan-
swered but are cast in the form of hypotheses:Ifthere is no such teleological
suspension,iffaith is not a paradox that makes it possible for the individual
to break from the universal and enter a relation with God,thenAbraham is
a wretched criminal, a perverse thrill killer who ought to be locked up.
Conversely, but no less hypothetically, it naturally follows thatifthere is a
justifiable exception,ifinwardness is incommensurable with the exterior
and therefore cannot be directl yobserved,ifthe individual is higher than
the universal,thenAbraham is the father of faith and an exemplar for all
subsequent generations.
“One cannot weep over Abraham. One approaches him with ahorror
religiosus[Latin: “religious terror”] as Israel approached Mount Sinai,” Jo-
hannes de silentio writes. He is full yaware, however, that this is precisel y
what we donotdo, we do not approach Abraham in religious terror. For
over time the stor yhas been worn down into a tale of yet another narrow
escape, in which things certainlycould havegone terribl ywrong, but which
had a happ yending, thank God: “We all know—it was onl ya trial.” As an
antidote to the present age’s eas yand indolent triumph over the unbearable
portions of the story, Johannes de silentio wishes toreendowthe stor ywith