In one of Leonard Cohen?s final compositions, ?You Want It Darker? (2016)?a song that, like Bowie?s ?Blackstar,? eerily positioned the semi-autobiographical lyrical subject before God, or before death, just months before the artist?s own death?we hear the biblical words, Hineni, hineni, here I am. The word hineni, as readers of the Hebrew Bible know, signifies a kind of ethical readiness before God, and is most famously uttered by Abraham as he disturbingly prepares to sacrifice his own son. Nearly fifty years earlier, Cohen pens the song, ?Story of Isaac? (1969), another reference to
the biblical story of binding and (non-) sacrifice. Told from the perspective of the son, Cohen draws out an aspect of the traditional tale that is often overlooked: the undecidable nature of Abraham?s decision, and of Abraham?s status as ethical subject (?Thought I saw an eagle/ but it might have been a vulture,/ I never could decide,? the son relates). I want to think about Cohen?s version of the Akedah?in close dialogue with Kierkegaard?s, Levinas?s and Derrida?s readings?as a strange work of ethical philosophy in which decision guards a terrifying kernel of undecidability, in which ethics is represented as violent at its very core.
