Dis/Belief in Agamben and de Silentio

According to Johannes de Silentio, Kierkegaad’s Fear and Trembling, Abraham forms a direct relationship with the absolute “by means” of the universal, and so suspends the universal. That both tasks are accomplished by means of the universal is typically unaccounted for. The standard reading is that Abraham chooses a direct relationship with the absolute over against the universal, not by means of the universal, and, likewise, it is through a teleological suspension of the universal that Abraham circumvents rather than travels through the universal in order to access the absolute, which cannot be mediated, de Silentio asserts, by means of the universal. Agamben’s reading of the Abrahamic faith in The Time That Remains explains how Abraham forms a relationship with God by means of the universal, and suspends the universal as the means through which Abraham forms a relationship with the absolute. Agamben’s insights explain what Kierkegaardian scholarship cannot, opening a path into Fear and Trembling that transforms how we understand de Silentio’s treatment of the Abrahamic faith.