Why Abraham cannot speak?: Kierkegaard, Derrida and forthcoming Justice

Abstract

Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling praises Abraham as a symbol of the «suspension of the ethical». For this reason, Buber and Levinas condemnd this work and it has been recently linked to fundamentalism and terrorism. The aim of this article is to show that «the suspension of the ethical» implied in Abraham’s silence is not related to religious fanaticism but, on the contrary, it is related to a new ethics, to an «ethics belong ethics», or a «hiper-ethics» that Kierkegaard and Derrida try to think about. To this end, firstly, I will analyse the concept of the «ethical» as it is criticized by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling; secondly, I will explain the role of silence in the new ethics; and finally, I will try to show the analogy between Kierkegaard’s concept of believing and Derrida’s concept of justice in Force of Law