| Fear and Trembling | |
| Title Orig: | Frygt og Bæven |
| Author: | Søren Kierkegaard |
| Country: | Denmark |
| Language: | Danish |
| Series: | First authorship (Pseudonymous) |
| Genre: | Christianity, philosophy, theology |
| Release Date: | October 16, 1843 |
| English Release Date: | 1919 – first translation |
| Pages: | ~200 |
| Isbn: | 978-0140444490 |
| Preceded By: | Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843 |
| Followed By: | Three Upbuilding Discourses |
Fear and Trembling (original Danish title: Frygt og Bæven) is a philosophical work by Søren Kierkegaard, published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio (Latin for John of the Silence). The title is a reference to a line from Philippians 2:12, which says to “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” The Philippians verse is sometimes thought to reference Psalm 55:5, which says, “Fear and trembling came upon me.”[1]
The work is an extended meditation[2] on Genesis 22, also known as the binding of Isaac. Silentio attempts to understand Abraham’s internal psychological state during his three-and-a-half-day journey to Moriah. The text attempts to demonstrate how it is not easy to understand Abraham’s actions through ethical categories like Sittlichkeit or the universal. Instead, Silentio posits that Abraham can only be understood through a new category called faith.
Fear and Trembling speaks of many of Kierkegaard’s most well-known concepts, such as the absurd, knight of faith, single individual, teleological suspension of the ethical, three stages, tragic hero, and so on.
One of the work’s core themes is that attempting to understand Abraham through worldly ideological and ethical thinking (Silentio mentions Greek philosophy and Hegel) leads to the reductio ad absurdum conclusion that (a) there must be something that transcends this type of thinking or (b) there is no such thing as “faith,” which would mean Abraham’s characterization as the “father of the faith” is mistaken.[3] Silentio also emphasizes that Abraham believes that Isaac will survive the ordeal and is not simply giving up the latter for dead; this distinction comes out in what Silentio respectively refers to as faith and infinite resignation.
Silentio first presents four alternate Abrahams—different ways Abraham might have approached and carried out the command to sacrifice Isaac—in the “Exordium” of the text, who, although they are prepared to follow God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, are nevertheless considered to be without faith.[4] Silentio then engages in extended praise of Abraham’s qualities and recounts much of the latter’s life up to and including the binding in the “Eulogy on Abraham.”[5] Finally, the “Preliminary Expectoration” introduces the concepts of faith and infinite resignation.[6]
The three problems Silentio engages are three thought experiments or setups that attempt to demonstrate how Abraham’s actions and internal state correspond to the religious category of faith and thereby transcend ethics. They are
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Silentio identifies the ethical with the universal, which he defines as that which is incumbent upon all people at all times. Sin is then when an individual asserts himself as an individual over and against the universal. Silentio asserts that faith is a paradox whereby an individual transcends the universal without sinning. Silentio explains that Abraham must occupy the category of faith because without doing so, he would not be the father of the faith.
Silentio explains that Abraham’s relationship to God during the binding cannot be logically understood or mediated away. He contrasts Abraham with three other figures—Agamemnon, Jephthah, and Brutus—who similarly had to sacrifice or impose capital punishment on their offspring but are nevertheless called “tragic heroes,” not knights of faith.
Silentio explains that tragic heroes have a middle term that acts as their telos, or purpose, when transgressing the ethical; that is, in transgressing against the ethical, they do so for a higher, yet understandable ethical purpose. Silentio asserts that Abraham inhabits the paradox of faith because he does not act for any purpose other than his own, and Silentio further identifies Abraham’s purpose with God’s purpose.
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Problem 2 continues in the same vein as problem 1. Silentio asserts that in faith, the individual determines their relationship with the universal (i.e., the ethical) through their relationship with God instead of the other way around (i.e., determining their relationship with God through the ethical).
Silentio asserts that knights of faith exist in pure isolation and cannot explains themselves or their actions to others. If a knight of faith were to express themselves in terms of the universal, this would constitute “temptation” (Anfechtung), and the individual would sin since their actions now breach or offend against universal injunctions. Faith is then an incommunicable paradox known only to the individual in question and to God.
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Silentio identifies the ethical with the universal and the universal with the disclosed (i.e., that which is spoken about, revealed, or confessed). He explains that Abraham cannot be acting in accordance with the universal because he obeys God’s command silently without explaining the purpose of his journey to his wife, his servants, or Isaac.
Problem 3 is the longest of the text and introduces the categories of the aesthetic and the demonic. Silentio claims that aesthetics rewards hiddenness while the ethical demands disclosure. Silentio then postulates that faith mimics aesthetics in its hiddenness but that it is ultimately a distinct category.
A series of folkloric myths and tales are analyzed to explain how the dynamics of concealment and disclosure of information in these stories interact with the categories of the aesthetic, ethical, and religious, and how these tensions are resolved through serendipity, self-sacrifice, or the absurd.
Ultimately, Silentio persists in portraying Abraham’s isolation and incommunicability. He explains that the tragic hero’s sacrifice is usually mediated by some kind of cultural background or disclosure that contextualizes his actions but that Abraham possesses no such security.
It is sometimes thought that Fear and Trembling was Kierkegaard’s way of explaining or working through his breaking off of his engagement with Regine since the text is said to contain a hidden message.
Just as Genesis 22 has inspired much commentary over the years, so, too, has Fear and Trembling inspired much analysis. One commentator argues that the text is an analogy for how Christian justification by faith shortcuts rational meditation or universal reasoning.[10] Another commentator argues that the content of Abraham’s faith is eschatological in the sense that Abraham consigns both the optimal aesthetic and ethical outcomes of the ordeal away from his own ability (infinite resignation) while nevertheless hoping in their absurd fulfillment through the help of God (faith).[11] [12]
Kierkegaard foresaw the immense posthumous popularity of Fear and Trembling and predicted that it would be translated into many different languages.[13]