Michelle Kosch

The explicit topic of Fear and Trembling's third Problema (the longest single section, accounting for a third of the book's total length), the theme of Abraham's silence stands not far in the background in every other section, and its importance is flagged by the pseudonym—Johannes de silentio—under which Kierkegaard had the book published. Here I aim to defend an interpretation of the meaning of the third Problema's central claim—that Abraham cannot explain himself, 'cannot speak'—and to argue on its basis for an interpretation of the work as a whole.

In an earlier paper I argued that J.G. Fichte (rather than Kant or Hegel or some amalgam) was the primary historical model for the ethical standpoint described in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or II . There I offered a list of reasons for thinking that Hegel was less important than some believed and that Kierkegaard addressed Kantianism largely in its Fichtean form. In the interim I have discovered another reason to add to that list: as it happens, there was a quite general consensus among philosophers in the 1830s, ’40s and ’50s not just that Fichte’s ethics was Kantian ethics in its most perfect form, but even that it was the best example available of normative ethics on a philosophical (rather than a religious) foundation. So Kierkegaard’s use of Fichte as a foil was the perfectly obvious choice in the context. That is a curious fact, given the complete obscurity of Fichte’s ethics today, and one whose interest should not be confined to Kierkegaard scholars.

The 1809 essay Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Matters marked a turning point in Schelling’s thinking about freedom. In various early works he had endorsed a compatibilist account of free will, arguing that acts could be free in the sense required for morally responsible agency, while still being necessary from a causal and even a metaphysical point of view. In later work he would endorse an incompatiblist conception of freedom as involving radical choice between good and evil and entailing contingency in nature. The Freiheitsschrift is a point of transition, in which Schelling has introduced the idea that freedom must involve a radical choice between good and evil, but has not yet concluded that such a requirement is inconsistent with the compatibilism of his early system

I argue that Fichte (rather than Kant or Hegel or some amalgam of the two) was the primary historical model for the ethical standpoint described in Kierkegaard's Either/Or II. I then explain how looking at Kierkegaard's texts with Fichte in mind helps in interpreting the criticism of the ethical standpoint in works like The Sickness unto Death and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, as well as the significance of the discussion of secular ethics in Fear and Trembling. I conclude with a brief look at the relevance for contemporary Kantian ethics of Kierkegaard's characterization and his criticism.