Hate Is the New Love: Scripture, Duty, and the Absolute in 'Fear and Trembling'

Dr Jeff Hanson (Australian Catholic University)

At a crucial turning point in the argument of Problema II in Fear and Trembling, Johannes de Silentio declares, 'As we all know, Luke 14:26 offers a remarkable teaching on the absolute duty to God: "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." This is a hard saying. Who can bear to listen to it? This is the reason, too, that we seldom hear it. But this silence is only an evasion that is of no avail.' In order to treat this shocking proclamation with the requisite seriousness, Silentio says it is imperative that the passage be understood literally. This paper examines the sense that a 'literal' reading has for Silentio, particularly when we realize that his own reading of the hard saying from Luke 14:26 seems anything but literal.

My argument is ultimately that Silentio is not interested in either the literal as such or a more metaphorical or figurative reading but is committed to opening up a dimension of meaning that precedes the difference between the literal and the figurative, a source of meaning that can yield paradoxical but edifying results.

Jeffrey Hanson is Research Fellow in Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University. Prior to moving to Australia he taught philosophy at Boston College for five years. He is the editor of Kierkegaard as Phenomenologist: An Experiment, and co-editor of Michel Henry: The Affects of Thought.