I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Thursday Thinker, I share a smart idea or theory.
Today I want to share an idea from Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, a work in which he reinterpreted Genesis 22, the story of Abraham’s being commanded by God to sacrifice his only son Isaac. At the very last moment God gives Abraham a reprieve, and he is able to return to his wife Sarah, Isaac’s mother, with Isaac still very much alive. Rejoicing and a happy life follows.
In her Kierkegaard biography Philosopher of the Heart, Clare Carlisle writes of two kinds of religious life: expressing spiritual life through worldly things where ‘the divine inhabits the finite, and finds its way in it’ (in Kierkegaard’s words) versus a withdrawal from the world, and pure focus on the religious and the spiritual, on meaning outside the human experience of ordinary life.
She describes Kierkegaard’s characterization and resolution of this choice in his exegesis of the story of Abraham and Isaac:
[The] story of Abraham shows him, more clearly than ever, the contrast between two kinds of religious life, distinguished by very different attitudes to the world. The sacrificial part of Abraham’s movement… is perceived by some people to be the summit of the God-relationship. Kierkegaard admires the ‘monastic movement’ of withdrawal from the world, rarely attempted in this modern age where religious passion is no longer valued as it used to be. He calls those who live like this ‘knights of resignation’, in contrast to the successful figures in Danish public life who are appointed Knights of the Order of the Dannebrog by the king. While these wordly knights enjoy secular prestige, the knights of resignation stand apart from the world, spiritually elevated and remote.
Yet something higher still lies beyond them, a paradoxical peak that can be reached only by descending. Having renounced everything for the sake of God, Abraham made a further movement, returning to the world, embracing finitude, and living contentedly with his earthly gifts. Walking down the mountain with his son Isaac beside him, he was not just a knight of resignation but a ‘knight of faith’. For Kierkegaard, Abraham exemplifies a way of being human in the world that neither withdraws like a hermit or a monk, nor conforms to conventional bourgeois values. The ‘guiding star’ of Abraham belongs to a paradoxical constellation: a faith that is lived in the world, yet defines worldy expectations.
Kierkegaard thereby distinguishes between the Knight of Resignation and the Knight of Faith as two very different ways of responding to life’s deepest longings. The Knight of Resignation makes noble and inward sacrifice, giving up their most cherished desire, accepting that it cannot be fulfilled in this world, finding serenity in the beauty of renuncation. The Knight of Faith performs the same inward surrender while simultaneously believing – against all reason, probability, and social consensus – that the very thing they relinquished will be restored to them by virtue of the absurd. Where resignation ends in dignity and clarity, true faith, to Kierkegaard, begins in paradox. You are asked to leap into a life that looks ordinary on the outside yet is sustained by a radical, inward trust that the impossible might become possible.
From The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Kierkegaard, more explanation of the Knight of (Infinite) Resignation and the Knight of Faith (carriage returns added for comprehensibility):
The “knight of infinite resignation” has an openness and comprehensibility… that the enigmatic “knight of faith” lacks. In a strategy not uncommon in Kierkegaard’s authorship, faith is illustrated by drawing a parallel with love. Specifically, silentio [Kierkegaard’s pen name for the author of Fear and Trembling] illustrates the distinction between faith and infinite resignation through a story of two different versions of a young lad who falls in love with an unattainable princess…
Infinite resignation—the first move in the “double movement” of faith—involves the renunciation of important goods or commitments in favor of those considered to be “higher”. This sacrifice, while painful, contains a certain “peace and rest and consolation”…
Yet the knight of faith manages fully to value finite goods (Isaac or the princess) in a way that his infinite resignation counterpart does not….
But a key notion seems to be that whereas infinite resignation is something that I can achieve through my own will, the knight of faith both recognizes his dependence upon a divine power beyond himself and trusts in God’s promises—even in the most extraordinary “trial” of the akedah—in a way that appears to an outsider like Johannes as “absurd”.
Remarkably, the knight of faith is able to take a genuine joy in the finite world, receiving it back (in the form of Isaac or the princess) despite having given it up in “resignation”. Crucial here is the idea that God’s promises are for this life, not just an after-life. The true measure of Abraham’s faith is less his willingness to sacrifice Isaac than his trust and hope that he will “receive him back”—in this life, not just in eternity.
So the primary move in Fear and Trembling is to bring a person’s attention back to the blessings of this life, to find religious faith and spiritual sustenance in experiencing finitude – the finiteness and limitations of this life, to move beyond the experience of sacrifice and loss which otherwise might leave us in a place of reaching only for the good outside ourselves (in some spiritual sphere versus this material one).
Kierkegaard seemed to write Fear and Trembling (as many of his books) partly as a way to work out why he broke off his engagement with Regine Olsen in favor of focusing on his scholarship and his religiosity, without ever becoming a Knight of Faith who took pleasure and joy in worldly things (such as a marriage). He died at only age 42, not ever reaching a place where he could move beyond resignation to faith.
These ideas can be made useful secularly, to those who don’t seek a religious interpretation of Kierkegaard’s advice on how to be a human being in the world. This idea in particular, the idea of moving beyond resignation to faith that you can still experience and enjoy the blessings of life even after you’ve sacrificed them, resonates with me at midlife.
At midlife, people sometimes get stuck and think that the solution is to become resigned to their fate: “I will never find love again,” “I can never become the creative (author, painter, musician) I had hoped one day to be,” “I will never have a good relationship with my [parent, child, friend],” “I will never recover from the poor financial decisions I’ve made.”
But Kierkegaard’s idea instead says “have faith that even though the universe took away what you wanted and hoped for you might still have it.”
Having faith is a precursor to enjoying the blessings of this life. If you don’t have faith you might find love again, you won’t endure the rejections of online and offline dating. If you don’t have faith you might create in the way you want to, you won’t show up for your guitar lessons, you won’t submit your artwork to juried shows, you won’t write a book and seek a publisher or self publish it and promote it. If you don’t have faith that you can rebuild relationships that have foundered, you won’t reach out and apologize. If you don’t have faith in your ability to recover from poor financial decisions, you won’t take the difficult steps to improve yourself financially starting from where you are.
Today I’m a Pilgrim of Faith not a Pilgrim of Resignation. I choose Pilgrim instead of Knight because Knight is inherently gendered. Knights are masculine, outward-facing, energetic, and in pursuit of what they want. A Pilgrim can be either gender but is also on a quest to find true joy, true connection, true purpose in the world.