Investigating Forms of Exception in 'Fear and Trembling' with Reference to Carl Schmitt

Petra Brown (Deakin University )

In this paper I investigate to what extent the concept of political ‘exception’ is found in Fear and Trembling. I do so in two parts.

In the first part, I investigate the concept of ‘exception’ in terms of Abraham and the parable of Agnes and the merman. I argue that the ‘demonic exception’ of the merman is a critique of Abraham as a justified or ‘divine exception’ in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to God’s command.I suggest that the presence of the second exception functions as a warning to the every present possibility of enacting or justifying the wrong kind of ‘exception’, framed as the (human) desire to will the exception for oneself. In this way the second form of ‘exception’ in Fear and Trembling provides a warning to the dangers inherent in the first form of ‘exception. In contrasting the two forms of ‘exception’ I intend to show two different forms of ‘exception’ in Fear and Trembling: the ‘divine exception’ and ‘demonic exception’, and its attendant danger as the ‘exceptional individual’.

In the second part of the paper, I frame the question of ‘exception’ in a political context. I do so through a dialectic investigation between Carl Schmitt’s account of ‘exception’ in Political Romanticism and Political Theology and Kierkegaard’s two accounts of ‘exception’ in Fear and Trembling. I draw attention to the similarities and differences between Schmitt’s concept of ‘exception’ as he understands it in terms of sovereignty, decision and event, and the Fear and Trembling account that frames exception in terms of the ‘divine’ exception of Abraham and the ‘demonic’ exception of the merman. I conclude that Carl Schmitt’s political concept of exception affirms the danger of ‘exception’ that remains implicit in the two forms of ‘exception’ in Fear and Trembling.

Dr Petra Brown completed her PhD in philosophy at Deakin in 2012, with a thesis titled: Bonhoeffer as Kierkegaard’s ‘Single Individual’ in a ‘State of Exception’. The thesis questions the idea that violence can be justified as a ‘last resort’ through investigating the concept of ‘exception’ in the writing and action of the German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer in conjunction with the writings of Soren Kierkegaard and Carl Schmitt. Petra is a contributor to the Springer publication, Secularisations and Their Debates (2014), and her current research interest is in the various ways theological and religious ideas shape and influence contemporary ‘secular’ society, in particular political discourse.