Los 4 abrahams, un ensayo sobre heavy metal y filosofía

The Four Abrahams
Essay published in Spanish by Revista Opción (ITAM), año XXVIII, no. 150, México, May 2008.
Journal indexed by Citas Latinoamericanas en Ciencias Socials (CLASE).
Integrated to sistemas de información Bibliográfica sobre las publicaciones científicas seriadas y
periódicas producidas en America Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal (LATINDEX)
ISSN: 1665.4161
Text, coverdesign and photos ® Lutz Alexander Keferstein

Parental Advisory

The present text has imposed itself the task of relating Horkheimer and
Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment to the bastard child of Music: Heavy Metal.
This essay does not pretend to be objective or to present The Truth to the
reader. It is a hermeneutic effort whose goal is to share a passion I have had
since I was 5 or 6years old. This is not an exaggeration. We who love Metal
know it comes with the genes. How could somebody enjoy –love– such speed,
screams, growls and strident disharmonies if it didn’t come in the genes? I love
that stream for many reasons and one of them is that it refuses to die despite all
the attacks that moral, judicial, social, artistic and even musical conservative and
liberal segmentsof society have exercised against it. Furthermore, Heavy Metal
has survived the stupidity of some Metal-heads and Bands, it has survived itself.
Although the frame of the discussion of this text, as I said, are the Avant-Garde
ideas of Horkheimer and Adorno, the methodology used along the text occurred
to me after reading the Kierkegaardian multi-possibilities method of Fear and
Trembling. Insomething I differ from the Danish philosophy, though: While he is
a friend of hypothetical fantastic possibilities, I claim that within Heavy Metal, for
it is a form of art and culture, all its paths, although parallel, are vivid and
material.
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Preface: Your Kingdom Will Come
Tortured souls have been set free
taunting he who sits on high
pray thy kingdom come…
Morbid Angel
“ThyKingdom Come”

I.
In his opera magna Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard illustrates the three
stages of the individual he proposes by means of analogy. His tool: the biblical
story of Abraham. The method used in his text is more than a plain and faithful
incursion in the story. Kierkegaard reconstructs the events that took place from
the sands of Haran to the top of Mount Moriah describing eachhypothetical
scenario that came to his mind. Due to this, I as a reader cannot escape from a
certain dosage of skepticism involving his conclusion of the leap of faith. I can’t
help but thinking that, in one way or another, Kierkegaard always knew the pious
and graceful ending of the biblical narration. At the same time, I have no doubt
that Abraham surely had all the possibilities of actiondescribed by Kierkegaard in
front of his eyes and inside his mind. But the laws of temporality that govern the
human existence limited him to the election of only one of them. He was limited
to and by the conditions of his own humanity. The bible says it so. In other words,
the number of different paths that he might have taken does not mind at all
beyond an exercise of literary esthetic. Inthe exact moment in which Abraham
held the blade the decision was made and it will remain unchanged for all
eternity. Abraham’s faith is now a part of a past long time gone which will never
come back, but whose effects we keep on seeing. On the other side, the effects
of the other hypothetical courses of action described by the Danish Philosopher,

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for their cause never occurred, canonly be and will always remain hypothetical
as well.

II.
A certain analogy can be found between Abraham, the God worshiper,
and the Esthete, the Art worshiper. Abraham yearned for becoming a holy man
loved by the creator. Esthetes yearn for becoming artists and makers of culture,
beloved by the one who creates (and who/what is he that creates?). However,
the world of culture and its forms...