Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Homing in on Fear and Trembling
- Chapter 2 Fear and Trembling’s “Attunement” as midrash
- Chapter 3 Johannes de silentio’s dilemma
- Chapter 4 Can an admirer of silentio’s Abraham consistently believe that child sacrifice is forbidden?
- Chapter 5 Eschatological faith and repetition: Kierkegaard’s Abraham and Job
- Chapter 6 The existential dimension of faith
- Chapter 7 Learning to hope: the role of hope in Fear and Trembling
- Chapter 8 On being moved and hearing voices: passion and religious experience in Fear and Trembling
- Chapter 9 Birth, love, and hybridity: Fear and Trembling and the Symposium
- Chapter 10 Narrative unity and the moment of crisis in Fear and Trembling
- Chapter 11 Particularity and ethical attunement: situating Problema III
- Chapter 12 ‘He speaks in tongues’: hearing the truth of Abraham’s words of faith
- Chapter 13 Why Moriah?: weaning and the trauma of transcendence in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Chapter 8 - On being moved and hearing voices: passion and religious experience in Fear and Trembling
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Homing in on Fear and Trembling
- Chapter 2 Fear and Trembling’s “Attunement” as midrash
- Chapter 3 Johannes de silentio’s dilemma
- Chapter 4 Can an admirer of silentio’s Abraham consistently believe that child sacrifice is forbidden?
- Chapter 5 Eschatological faith and repetition: Kierkegaard’s Abraham and Job
- Chapter 6 The existential dimension of faith
- Chapter 7 Learning to hope: the role of hope in Fear and Trembling
- Chapter 8 On being moved and hearing voices: passion and religious experience in Fear and Trembling
- Chapter 9 Birth, love, and hybridity: Fear and Trembling and the Symposium
- Chapter 10 Narrative unity and the moment of crisis in Fear and Trembling
- Chapter 11 Particularity and ethical attunement: situating Problema III
- Chapter 12 ‘He speaks in tongues’: hearing the truth of Abraham’s words of faith
- Chapter 13 Why Moriah?: weaning and the trauma of transcendence in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Prophecy, Philosophy, and Truth
The book of Ezekiel begins by recounting a colorful vision of divinity, such as the prophet claims to have seen. According to Maimonides, however, this does not refer “to the eye’s seeing” but to “intellectual apprehension,” of the same kind that any of us might use in solving a mathematical problem. Assuming that a genuine prophetic insight could only be an insight into abstract rational truth, Maimonides asserts that this is what Ezekiel must have “beheld,” so to speak. Clearly, the great medieval thinker would agree with William James that “some states of mind are inwardly superior to others, and reveal to us more truth.” However, on his view, it is only through our rational faculty that we comprehend any truths that are worthy of the name. This way of thinking leads Maimonides to conclude that the biblical narrative of Abraham and Isaac is meant to convey “rational ideas” such as those found in the writings of the Greek philosophers. So he argues that Abraham ought to be understood as a vessel of philosophical wisdom, whose “prophetic” insights are epistemically on par with whatever else is “apprehended through … the intellect.” On his view, what it means to be an inspired prophet is to be blessed with abstract knowledge. And Maimonides is adamant that the rational faculty which gives us access to truth is pure of any emotion or passion. At the moment of hearing God’s word, he explains, Abraham was not “in a state of passion” by any means, but employing his capacity for cold, unemotional thought.
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- Information
- Kierkegaard's Fear and TremblingA Critical Guide, pp. 142 - 165Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015