{un}intellegibility in kierkegaard

I am still listening to the Dreyfus lectures. I am in the middle of his discussion on “The Grand Inquistor”. I have been thinking hard about what Dreyfus has to say about this story which Ivan creates in the larger story of The Brother’s Karamazov.

Although I think his lectures are helpful in illuminating certain parts of Dostoevsky, it seems that he maybe missing a most important part of what is going on within the story.This might be best explained with this simple example, Dreyfus has a hard time spelling out what the mystery of/within Christianity, which is talked about within this story of Ivan’s.

There is one illuminating statement which Dreyfus makes in regards to Kierkegaard within this lecture. Dreyfus understands Kierkegaard as being a most extreme version of Protestantism. Which he understands to be very close to the Inquisitor’s interpretation/story of Christ.

In the midst of his relating these two he makes an interesting comment, at least for me. Apparelently Kierkegaard’s Abraham, when in the middle of the suspension of the ethical, is unintelligible to even himself. Dreyfus states that intellegibility resides only within the ethical/universal; by leaving the universal, one is also leaving intelligibility. {I guess I missed this idea when he was discussing Kierkegaard directly.}

I’m not sure what to make of this idea yet. I’m not even sure if I want to agree. Even if I agree to Kierkegaard’s idea of the suspension of the ethical and how no one but God can know what they are really doing, I  think that on some level, one does understand what is going on, even if they can’t speak of it. I would—even though I always think this is an intellectual copt out—say that it would have to involve some work of the Holy Spirit.