Page 127 - Eclipse of God

7

ON THE SUSPENSION

OF THE ETHICAL

The first book of Kierkegaard’s that I read as a young man was
Fear and Trembling, which is built entirely upon the Biblical
narrative of the sacrifice of Isaac. I still think of that hour to-
day because it was then that I received the impulse to reflect
upon the categories of the ethical and the religious in their
relation to each other.
Through the example of the temptation of Abraham this
book sets forth the idea that there is a “teleological suspen-
sion of the ethical,” that the validity of a moral duty can be at
times suspended in accordance with the purpose of something
higher, of the highest. When God commands one to murder
his son, the immorality of the immoral is suspended for the
duration of this situation. What is more, that which is other-
wise purely evil is for the duration of this situation purely good
because it has become pleasing to God. In the place of the
universal and the universally valid steps something which is
founded exclusively in the personal relation between God and
“the Single One.” But just through this the ethical, the univer-
sal and the universally valid, is relativized. Its values and laws

100