(The impossible Abraham : the notion of sacrifice in Kierkegaard's thought)

The centrality of the notion of sacrifice in Kierkegaard’s thought is beyond doubt, as Kierkegaard himself considers sacrifice as a given: “And now I find myself in that stage, where even the exterior situation shows the truth of the principle that there are men destined to be sacrificed for the sake of others”. There are, for Kierkegaard, two conceptions of sacrifice, and each is represented by a “figure”. The figure that Kierkegaard uses to represent the first kind of sacrifice is Agamemnon, the tragic here who is required to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. Now, this is for Kierkegaard the prototype of sacrifice which, according to the movement of Hegelian dialectic, suppress the particular for the sake of the universal. And the reasonableness of the tragic action, whose telos falls within the laws of the ethics, is demonstrated by the fact that the hero can talk (and the language is the supreme expression of the universal) about his decision, he can announce it; and the one who gives up what he loves “to save the people, to affirm the idea of the state, to placate the Gods’ anger”, will always find a place in the community of men