Kierkegaard argues that the
aesthetic concealment is opposed to the Paradox of faith. The point is to try and show how faith in above the ethical while the aesthetic is
underneath it (see also: Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic, Ethical and Religious) .
The aesthetic treats concealment is something that eventually, by serendipity, reveals itself with the having to pay a price
for it. The ethical according to Kierkegaard does not believe in serendipity
and places all responsibility on the individual's shoulders, forcing him to act
in order to forge his own fate. This is why ethics cannot stand silence and
lack of manifested personal expression. Here Kierkegaard asserts that "aesthetics required concealment and
rewarded it, ethics required revelation and punished concealment" (Fear
and Trembling, P.134).
Kierkegaard gives another example
from Aristotle's Poetics about a bridegroom who, informed by a prophecy of
misfortune, abandons his bride. The aesthetic would have required the
bridegroom to keep a noble silence while the aesthetic would require him to
speak. But in the case of the paradox of faith, Kierkegaard argues that the
prophecy belongs to the sphere of the ethical, being commonly believed to be
valid and its foreseen fate sealed. But if the knowledge was not delivered by
the ethical priest but by some other completely personal manner, he would have
had no other choice but to keep silent. His silence would be painful, but the
pain comes from the same source of his assurance in his path. For Kierkegaard
"the reason for his
silence is not that he as the individual would place himself in an absolute
relation to the universal, but that he as the individual was placed
in an absolute relation to the absolute". This is not like
that demand posed by the aesthetic who is constantly harassed by the ethical. Kierkegaard goes further to argue that this is
why "religion is the only power which can deliver the aesthetical out of
its conflict with the ethical" (Fear and Trembling, P.141).
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