By Virtue of the Absurd

We now come to Kierkegaard’s basic question: on whose side is the truth; on the side of “everybody” and “everybody’s cowardice,” or on the side of those who have dared to look madness and death in the eye? It was for this and this alone that Kierkegaard forsook Hegel and turned to Job, and at that moment determined the characteristics that distinguish existential philosophy from speculative philosophy. To abandon Hegel meant to renounce Reason and rush toward the Absurd without a backward glance. However, as we shall presently see, the path to the Absurd proved to be barricaded by “ethics”; it was necessary to suspend not only reason, but’ also the ethical. In his journals Kierkegaard says that he who wishes to understand existential philosophy must understand the meaning concealed in the words “suspension of the ethical.” As long as the “ethical” stands in the way, it is impossible to break through to the Absurd. The truth is (and this must be said now) that if we do not turn from the path of the “ethical,” we cannot penetrate to the Absurd; but this still does not mean that the “ethical” is the only obstacle existential philosophy must overcome. The greatest difficulty lies ahead. We already know that the ethical originated at the same time and had the same parents as the rational, and that necessity is obligation’s own sister. When Zeus, compelled by necessity to limit man’s rights over his world and his body, decided to give him something “better, from the gods themselves,” by way of compensation for what he had lost, the “ethical” was that something better. The gods were able to save themselves and human beings from necessity by one stratagem alone: obligation. Having suspended the ethical and having refused the gift of the pagan gods, man finds himself faced with necessity. And here there is no longer a choice; one must enter into a final desperate battle with necessity, a battle from which even the gods would shrink, and the outcome of which no one can predict. Or to be more accurate: as much as we would like to predict it, it must be said that we cannot be of two minds about this. Even the gods do not contend with necessity; the greatest sages have retreated before necessity. Not just Plato and Aristotle, but Socrates himself admitted that no one can fight against it and, inasmuch as a struggle for the unattainable is unthinkable, it follows that there ought not to be any struggle. If at this point there is anyone who does not see where the meeting ground between the rational and the ethical lies, then perhaps he will see it flow: as soon as reason looks at necessity and announces “Impossible,” the ethical is right alongside to say “You must.” The words that the friends of Job addressed to that tormented old man, lying in filth, show them to be no less educated than the Greek philosophers. Their lengthy speeches, put more concisely, all come down to what Socrates was in the habit of saying, or, if we may believe Epictetus, what Zeus said to Chryssip: if it is impossible to prevail, then men and gods alike must accept their fate. And on the other hand, if a brief version of Job’s answer to his friends is wanted, it could be stated this way: nowhere in the world is there a force strong enough to make him “accept” what happened to him as proper and unquestionable. In other words, not just necessity’s “right” but also its “power” is being questioned. To be exact, does necessity really have the power to arrange the fates of men and of the world? Is this a “self-evident truth” or a dreadful nightmare? How did it happen, how could it happen, that human beings accepted this power and humbled themselves before it? Furthermore, how could the “ethical,” which men associate with all that is most important, most essential, most valuable in life, come forward with its “you must” to champion that meaningless, disgusting, dull, stupid, blind thing, Necessity? Can a man live in peace as long as he is dominated by necessity? Is it possible for him not to give in to despair if he has convinced himself that necessity, not satisfied with the methods of outward coercion at its disposal, has managed to win over to its side his own “conscience,” and forced it to sing the praises of its evil deeds?

—Lev Shestov- Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy