Abraham's Ordeal

Jean-Luc Nancy and Søren Kierkegaard on the Poetics of Faith

Bibliographic Data

ID4862703
AuthorsNikolaas Deketelaere
Year2021
Volume26
Issue3-4
Pages69-89
Publication date2021-07-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAngelaki (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0969-725X • E-ISSN: 1469-2899
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0969725x.2021.1936813
OpenAlexW3180853266
LanguageEN
References cited19

This paper seeks to elucidate Jean-Luc Nancy’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s shared understanding of faith by providing a phenomenology of faith. This is accomplished by applying Nancy’s conception of experience (which resonates with that of a number of contemporary phenomenologists, notably Claude Romano) to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, of which this paper thus offers a phenomenological reading in order to analyse the experience of faith its pseudonymous author relates (i.e., the ordeal of Abraham’s life as depicted by the book). In doing so, however, we will discover that faith belongs to a realm of experience that is more fundamental than, and thus takes priority over, the lived-experience of classical phenomenology: it is an experience of life as a whole that as such forms the basis on which things are subsequently lived in experience. Faith is therefore held up as the prime example of the phenomenologically primary sense of “experience”: namely, the experience in which a life lived consists, the experience of undergoing life itself; the experience that, as Nancy puts it enigmatically, is existence. Since classical phenomenology fails to think this experience that makes its lived-experiences possible, the paper suggests that phenomenology should turn itself into poetics: namely, a discourse on the creative forms of life that constitute all lived-experiences. To that end, the paper proceeds in four steps: the first step consists in an exposition of the phenomenological framework used (drawing especially on Nancy, Gadamer and Romano); the second and third steps consist in applications of said framework to Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith; the fourth and final step draws on Nancy to spell out the consequences of the preceding analysis

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Exposition (narrative · Faith · Literature · Lived experience · Phenomenology (philosophy · Poetics · Poetry · Psychoanalysis · Realm · Sociology · Theology · Trial by ordeal · Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Psychology · Law · Philosophy

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