Exceptions (to exceptions) and decisions (about decisions) in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Schmitt’s Political Theology

This piece investigates a contested intersection between the decisionisms of Carl Schmitt and Søren Kierkegaard. In his Political Theology (1922), Schmitt quotes from Kierkegaard’s Repetition (1843) to support his claims about sovereignty, decision, and exception. However, as I argue, it is more likely an implicit (mis)interpretation of Fear and Trembling’s (1843) articulation of faith – particularly the book’s infamous idea of a “teleological suspension of the ethical” – that Schmitt wields to advance his account of sovereignty. As Fear and Trembling’s Abraham stands outside the ethical (det Ethiske), so the sovereign grounds legality from the outside, each in the position to make a pure decision about how to act— or so Schmitt’s interpretation seems to go. Yet here Fear and Trembling’s portrayal of faith issues a preemptive challenge to Schmitt, capturing Schmitt’s political theology with its accounts of tragic heroes, whom Kierkegaard juxtaposes with the knight of faith in order to critique the former and praise the latter. Accordingly, Kierkegaardian faith does not stand outside morality or legality altogether; faith refuses the conclusion that such an exception is necessary. I conclude by arguing that Fear and Trembling’s depiction of faith nonetheless implies a form of decisionism, but one very different than Schmitt’s: the single individual decides whether social living requires a Schmittian decision or not.