In 2008 I purchased a copy of A Dictionary of Continental Philosophy from HamiltonBook.com. I am an intellectual grazer ,at times, and this offered an opportunity to indulge my appetite as a dilettante. In my time of grazing, page 575 exactly, an entry caught my eye : Teleological Suspension of The Ethical an entry authored by G. Pattison. Abraham, Isaac and God were the main protagonists of this little melodrama of patriarchal power and unconditional surrender to the will of God i.e. authoritarianism. Kierkegaard was the author of this rather grandiose sounding, but rather unpalatable rationalization for mindless conformity to authority even, perhaps, to psychosis.  The Abrahamic Tradition is rich in conformity and subjugation and devoid of any idea of human freedom from the will of God or one’s fellows. All this led, eventually, to reading Alastair Hannay’s biography of Kierkegaard (Cambridge: 2003) Reading this biography was demonstrative of Mr. K’s experience of so many losses of family members, all tragic: mother, sister, brother. Add to this the cold self hating father, whose secret sin was cursing God and his egotistical older brother; all deeply involved in Christianity. If it had been a movie, Bergman should have directed it. To call this man’s life utterly bleak is to understate the case. He found his métier in Christian eristics and the sacrifice of  his happiness: the conscious, willful destruction of his relations with Regine Olsen; a reification of his existential poverty and intellectual output, not to speak of his own self-concept of being exceptional.

The Teleological Suspension of the Ethical as an idea reeks of an Hegelian intellectual hubris or at least an imitation of that affliction, and loathsome Christian apologetics. It also functions as a defense of unmitigated male power: to inflict its will upon others, as prima facie, beyond question. I read Mr. George  Pattison’s review, today, in The Times Literary Supplement (December 10, 2010) titled ‘All he wrote’ on the collected works of Mr. K. which has led me write this piece.