Today marks the Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice. When God commanded (or requested) that Abraham take Isaac on a trip over to the mountain, whereupon the head of the latter would be removed by the former as a sign of devotion to God -- well, Abraham snapped his heels together and dressed his only son in his Sunday best. He told his wife Sarah that he would return post-haste, but omitted that Isaac would not require round-trip busfare.
Soren Kierkegaard examines this parable in Fear And Trembling, and asks the reader to question the nature of ethics, and of good and evil: are these intrinsic to the cosmos, or determined by the orders of God? are ethics teleological, and this subject to order?
I have the Penguin Classics edition of this short work, and -- rare amongst my books -- I marked the inside cover with my name, and with the place and date of each time I have read it: Chicago, 1991; Pittsburgh, 1995; Park City, 2002; Fès, 2002 (wow: I bet I ate some great lamb on that trip!).
A similar parable occurs in Greek legend: Euripides makes use of it in his retelling of Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia, Iphigenia at Aulis; Plato examines the directives of ethics in Euthyphro, amongst other dialogues.
Now when I am stumbling over to Beshoffs on O'Connell Street, I know how to plan my footsteps before and after: the Proper Pint web site shows maps of Dublin, with nifty annotations about each pub. And I suppose that if I am out late, then I can lift my feet over to the Beshoffs take-away on Westmoreland Street.
The famous Beshoffs fish and chip restaurant was founded by Ivan Iylanovich Beshoff a seaman in the navy of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II.He fled Russia after he took part in an ill-fated mutiny on the battleship Potemkin at Odessa in 1905 and arrived in Ireland in 1912 with the intention of travelling on to Canada. He missed his boat connection and decided to stay.
Three hurrahs for curry chips! and for pints! and for cask ales!