העקדה—בעיית הציות או בעיית השמיעה: בין קירקגור לבובר

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the nature of Abraham's dilemma in the sacrifice of Isaac according to Kierkegaard and Buber. According to a common interpretation, Kierkegaard believed that Abraham's problem was to decide whether he had indeed heard the voice of God. In contrast, Buber argues that according to Kierkegaard Abraham was certain that he had heard God's voice and his problem consisted in deciding whether or not he should obey the terrible command. I seek to show that Buber's interpretation is the more acceptable. I also deal with an important issue which Buber seems to have overlooked, namely that Abraham's problem of obedience is characteristic of only one type of religious experience. According to Kierkegaard there are other kinds of religious experience where the prime problem faced by the believer is to decide whether it was truly God's voice he had heard. Buber claims that the problem of the believer in cases of conflict between Divine commands and morality is to decide whether he, indeed, heard the voice of God. This position is inconsistent with the premises of Buber's early conception of dialogue, because it presupposes that one's relation to God is not immediate. I try to show how Buber's attitude towards the sacrifice of Isaac reflects a general withdrawal from his early views of the dialogue as expressed in I-Thou. I describe and explain this change in Buber's thought and show how it is manifested in his interpretation of Kierkegaard.