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8 What Kierkegaardian Faith Adds to Alterity Ethics: How Levinas and Derrida Miss the Eschatological Dimension John J. Davenport Introduction: Three Higher-Ethics Approaches to Fear and Trembling In recent decades, a number of scholars have argued that a close relationship exists between the alterity ethics of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida on the one hand, and Kierkegaard’s agapic ethics and portrayal of faith as a subjective process of individualization on the other. While I agree with M. Jamie Ferreira, Merold Westphal, John Caputo, and others that there are fruitful connections to be developed between Levinas’s version of agapic duty and Kierkegaard’s neighbor love ethic, I will argue (1) that Derrida’s version of infinite responsibility offers little for the Kierkegaardian project of developing a sound agapic ethic and (2) that the distinguishing element of Kierkegaardian faith is eschatological hope, the significance of which is appreciated neither in Levinas’s critique nor in Derrida’s defense of Fear and Trembling. This argument is part of a larger critique of what I call “higher-ethics” interpretations of the “teleological suspension of the ethical” discussed by Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes de Silentio in the first Problema of Fear and Trembling (FT, 56). In general, higher-ethics readings hold that when Silentio says Abraham’s faith goes beyond the ethical, he means that Abraham obeys a higher duty, calling , or type of obligation that is contrasted with Hegelian social morality or (more broadly) with moral laws or universal precepts derived from any rational ground of understanding (Aristotelian, Kantian, utilitarian, moral sense, etc.). Thus the movement from Kierkegaard’s ethical stage to the religious life-view consists primarily in a transition from ethics as the herd or the philosopher understands it to a singularizing ethical attitude that transcends all common moral codes sanctioned by tradition, government, culture, or even natural reason in general.1 In particular, most higher-ethics readings of Fear and Trembling hold that the telos toward which ordinary moral laws are suspended is the 170 John J. Davenport duty to obey a revealed commandment to love others for their own sake, that is, an agapic ideal. In a recent essay, I distinguish three main genuses of this approach.2 The strong divine command interpretation (SDC) holds that Abraham’s faith consists in absolute obedience to God’s commands, which are arbitrary in the sense that they are not themselves governed by any independent standard. This view identifies Kierkegaardian faith—at least in Fear and Trembling—with the strongest form of theological voluntarism according to which all genuine moral obligation derives from general or singular divine imperatives, the right-making authority of which does not depend on them being constrained by any prior motives or principles: since God’s authority rests purely on His power (or ownership of all He creates), He could command any X and thereby make X a duty for us. The passage that best supports this reading is: “He knew . . . that no sacrifice is too severe when God demands it—and he drew the knife” (FT, 22). Even though the singular imperative to Abraham seems to contradict all known duties, Abraham has a higher duty to obey it, no matter what. Patrick Gardiner suggests this reading, for example, when he says that for Kierkegaard, someone might be given an “‘exceptional’ mission, to be fulfilled at whatever the cost.”3 By contrast, agapic command ethics (ACE) readings say that in Kierkegaardian faith, our highest duties—if not all moral obligations—derive from the commands of a loving God.4 While this view is more plausibly attributed to Kierkegaard, especially in his late signed writings such as Works of Love, it does not so obviously apply to Abraham in Fear and Trembling: while sacrificing Isaac can easily be seen as obedience to an arbitrary singular divine command, how can it be seen as obedience to the commands of a God whose authority lies in His being Love? Perhaps God has a right to demand back any gift that He gave us if it is misused, or if its receiver loves it too possessively; or perhaps God has a secret good purpose that Abraham does not know; but Silentio does not consider any such explanations in Fear and Trembling. Thus plausible ACE readings must hold both that the ethical which is suspended in faith is only Hegelian Sittlichkeit or Kantian Moralität rather than the agapic command ethics of Kierkegaard’s religious works, and that belief in the...

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