Article Writing Homework Help

You will prepare and submit a term paper on Characters Compairing. Your paper should be a minimum of 1500 words in length. The point he makes is that the tragic hero’s thought and action are not as fraught with angst as those that are required of the knight of faith.

Wikipedia notes that the title probably refers to Philippians 2: 12, ” . . .continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Kierkegaard examines the last two of his well-known three stages of quest-the aesthetic hero, the tragic hero, and the religious hero-and he contends that it is not humanly possible to go beyond the leap of faith required of the religious hero, the knight of faith. The ‘ethical’ is a concept relevant to all three categories, but in different ways. The aesthetic hero is rather narcissistic and not closely bound by ethical views. The tragic hero marks a progression of character in that he accepts the confines of the ethical-but does not and, perhaps, cannot go beyond the ethical. The question whether it is possible, let alone desirable, for a hero or a knight to ‘go beyond the ethical’ is answered in an interesting way by de Silentio.

The ‘ethical’ is a social concept-but no theistic society can easily contradict the premise that the limits of the concept have been laid down by God rather than by Man. The rules that God has made can, presumably, be codified or modified by God with greater authority than by any man, magistrate or monarch though he may be. Silentio confines his argument to the breaking of the Sixth Commandment (codified, of course, in an age later than Abraham’s, but still relevant, after Cain)-“Thou shalt not kill”(Deut. 5:17). Numerous exceptions to this Commandment have been suggested and accepted by wisdom both divine and human. Moses himself has given detailed instructions relating to situations in which the breaking of this Commandment would be a religious as well as a social duty. It was also emphasized that in certain circumstances, the closest of kin should, dutifully, initiate, participate in, and accomplish the killing of anyone who has broken the first and most important of the Commandments (Deut. 5:7): “Thou shalt have none other Gods before me.”

Society has accepted this duty to kill a guilty member of the tribe, and the hero who accepts the ethical has to accept this principle, even if it were to relate to him or to those closest to him. A man who has to sanction or command the execution of a close relation for a crime against man or God does not, per se, acquire the stature of a hero. Johannes de Silentio mentions a few individuals who can, with reason, be called tragic heroes, because of their ethical response to such situations in their lives. Brutus, the Roman Consul who gave orders that his sons be killed for crimes against the country was seen by his society as one who heroically exceeded the call of social duty, although there probably was no doubt that the accused were guilty as charged.

Agamemnon is portrayed as the classic tragic hero who had, albeit reluctantly, accepted the advice of Calchas the seer to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, so as to ensure safe winds to guide his ship and crew into Troy.