When reading the problema, Kierkegaard’s influence on existentialism is clear. You can also see why his name Silentio for this text, as his dicussion on speech and silence becomes an essential focal point for his work. I was especially taken by the third problema and the return to the discussion of Abraham. Kierkegaard has made the point that the ethical requires disclosure. However, Abraham cannot disclose. If he speaks then he lowers himself to the ethical, creating a gulf between him and God. God’s command has been unique to Abraham. Just as if someone came up to me claiming God had spoken to him, telling him to kill his son, I would think him a murderer and would not understand. Abraham’s paradoxical situation cannot be universalized. His decisions and unique interactions with God make him unique, his decisions make his character. As he has demonstrated in his other stories, the individual sometimes has to act against the universal.
Johannes’ subsequent reference to Heraclitus surprised me but fit perfectly. As Heraclitus says that one cannot step in the same river twice, so too is Johannes saying that the individual encounters unique problems along her own path. Every situation cannot fit into a categorical imperative. But Zeno does not understand Heraclitus’s point and tries to take it further, rendering it absurd. In this way Johannes may be saying that people have distorted Hegel, rendering it too universal and absurd.
Another fascinating point is Silentio’s refusal to intellectualize faith. Unlike science, faith cannot be built upon or passed down like Hegelian conscious. Faith has to be experienced and by definition cannot be shared appropriately. Some things, like faith, cannot be communicated aptly. Communication in fact ruins and changes the very thing you would try to communicate. This idea comes way before it’s time, and you can see the influence on later existentialism to Sartre and even Derrida. The idea that some experiences may not be able to be quantified runs counter to the burgeoning industrialization that Kierkegaard was surrounded with. We too live in a world where we now map brain waves and attempt to identify scientific explanations for every conceivable thing. Kierkegaard here tries to say what almost cannot be said, in a way only Silentio, or silence can really say it. Some things cannot be communicated or studied without changing the experience and each experience is unique. While Kierkegaard may not have started this movement, he certainly brings up the issue in an extremely sophisticated manner, placing himself at the forefront of the new century of philosophy
I have also been thinking about the issue of quantifiable "brain waves" you bring up in your last paragraph. In class, we briefly entertained the possibility that in the future, thanks to some kind of crazy technology, humans will be able to perfectly communicate with one another by some kind of data upload. While this would certainly resolve a lot of misunderstandings, I (and I would say that Kierkegaard might as well) find the prospect horrifying. I tend to consider it a positive (if often frustrating) thing that certain things can't be accurately communicated. Now, if I try to explain why, I'm afraid I would sound irrational and hopelessly sentimental. And yet I still can't help but think that something more important than whatever is lost in communication would be lost if we could perfect communication, if we could upload data to each other's brains or something. I think Kierkegaard's literary playfulness in this text ties into this somehow.
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