April 6, 2008: Kierkegaard on the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical - 0 Comments

"The difference between the tragic hero and Abraham is very obvious. The tragic hero is still within the ethical. He allows an expression of the ethical to have its telos [end, goal] in a higher expression of the ethical; he scales down the ethical relation between father and son or daughter and father to a feeling that has its dialectic in its relation to the idea of moral conduct. Here there can be no teleological suspension of the ethical itself."

--Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1843.