QuestionsWhat makes something right?Abraham: faith above morality?
What makes something right?God's will

Abraham: faith above morality?

Søren Kierkegaard 1813 · 1855Truth is subjectivity: one must take the leap of faith.
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What it claims

Either Abraham is a murderer, or ethics is not the highest thing (faith "suspends" it).

Why

Abraham cannot justify himself to anyone, and being ready to kill his son counts as killing him: ethics cannot explain him.

In short

"Abraham: faith above morality?" is an argument by Søren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling, Problema I (Johannes de silentio)) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: god's will). Its claim: Either Abraham is a murderer, or ethics is not the highest thing (faith "suspends" it). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 4 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Fear and Trembling, Problema I (Johannes de silentio)
Valid

Johannes de silentio, Kierkegaard's pseudonym, signs Fear and Trembling (1843); Kierkegaard asked that these words be attributed to Johannes, not to himself. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and Abraham prepares to do it. Johannes does not prove that God exists and does not say we should imitate Abraham: he admits he does not understand him. He sets a dilemma for those who honour him as the "father of faith": if morality is the highest thing, Abraham is a murderer. To save Abraham, one must admit a "teleological suspension of the ethical": a faith above morality.

P1Ethics is the universal: what applies to everyone. An act is morally justified only if it can be justified before everyone.
P2Abraham cannot justify himself before anyone: he saves no people and serves no State (unlike Agamemnon, the "tragic hero"). He cannot even speak.
P3Being ready to kill one's son counts as killing him: that the angel stops him at the last moment changes nothing in the judgement.
P4If ethics is the highest thing, whoever wills to kill his son without moral justification is a murderer.
Therefore: either Abraham is a murderer, or ethics is not the highest thing (faith "suspends" it).

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Valid, with no hidden premise. The conclusion is not "Abraham is right": it is a dilemma. Johannes does not choose for the reader. He only says one cannot both hold morality to be the highest thing and honour Abraham. Those who reject Abraham (like Kant) accept the first branch; believers who honour him must accept the second.
Analogy. Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter so the Greek fleet can sail: it is terrible, but everyone understands why, he can explain it. Abraham has no reason to give anyone. If asked "why?", he can only answer "God asked me". Either that answer opens something above morality, or it is worth nothing.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties 1798 · attacks the conclusion

I can be certain that I must not kill my innocent son. I can never be certain that the voice commanding it comes from God. So Abraham should have refused: faced with a command contrary to the moral law, one must conclude it is not God speaking. Kant chooses the first branch of the dilemma.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
We have not yet found a direct reply by Kierkegaard in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Johannes does not name Kant and does not refute him. He raises the question himself: if the one who leaves the universal "had misunderstood the deity, what can save him?" (Problema I); that is why Abraham appals him as much as he admires him. For Kant this risk settles the matter: when error cannot be ruled out and killing an innocent is certainly wrong, one must refuse. Johannes accepts the risk as the price of faith. The disagreement is about what to do with an uncertainty both of them acknowledge.
E
Emmanuel Levinas (texts of 1963 and 1966, collected in Proper Names, 1976) 1963 · attacks premise 1

Ethics is not the "universal", an anonymous rule that erases the individual. It begins in the encounter with the face of another, unique person. And the high point of the story is not the raised knife: it is the moment when Abraham listens to the voice that brings him back to ethics and forbids human sacrifice.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1963, after the author's death (1855).
R
Religious fanaticism (debate after 11 September 2001) 2001 · attacks the conclusion

If faith can "suspend" morality, any killer who claims to obey God can invoke Abraham. The reasoning gives no way to tell a believer from a fanatic.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 2001, after the author's death (1855).
The debate goes on (our summary) Kierkegaard's defenders reply that the knight of faith can neither justify himself, nor speak, nor recruit: he acts alone, in fear, and loves Isaac. But they acknowledge that the book gives no outward criterion to tell faith from delusion: Johannes says so himself.