Fear and Trembling Soren Kierkegaard

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.” 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

• Problema I: Is there a Teleological Suspension of the Ethical?[7]
• Problema II: Is there an Absolute Duty to God?[8]
• Problema III: Was It Ethically Defensible for Abraham to Conceal His Undertaking from Sarah, from Eliezer, and from Isaac?[9]

Is there a Teleological Suspension of the Ethical?

Source:[7]

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 act 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.

Is there an Absolute Duty to God?

Source:[8]

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.

Was It Ethically Defensible for Abraham to Conceal His Undertaking from Sarah, from Eliezer, and from Isaac?

Source:[9]

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]

1. ^ "Psalm 55:5 Fear and trembling to grip me, and horror has overwhelmed me".
2. ^ “Fear and Trembling comprises a sustained meditation on the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, whom Johannes recommends to his readers for urgent reconsideration. His avowed aim in doing so is to mobilize Abraham in the service of his campaign to address the spiritual crisis that afflicts European (or at least Danish) modernity.” Daniel Conway, “Introduction,” in Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling”: A Critical Guide, ed. Daniel Conway, Cambridge Critical Guides (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 2.
3. ^ “If this is not faith, then Abraham is lost, then faith has never existed in the world precisely because it has always existed. For if the ethical—that is, social morality—is the highest and if there is in a person no residual incommensurability in some way such that this incommensurability is not evil (i.e., the single individual, who is to be expressed in the universal), then no categories are needed other than what Greek philosophy had or what can be deduced from them by consistent thought.” Johannes de Silentio [Søren Kierkegaard], Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric, in Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 6 (Princeton University Press, 1983), 55; “Now if this train of thought is sound, if there is nothing incommensurable in a human life, and if the incommensurable that is present is there only by an accident from which nothing results insofar as existence is viewed from the idea, then Hegel was right. But he was not right in speaking about faith or in permitting Abraham to be regarded as its father, for in the latter case he has pronounced judgment both on Abraham and on faith.” Ibid., 68–69.
4. ^ Silentio, “Exordium,” in Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric.
5. ^ Silentio, “Eulogy on Abraham,” in Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric.
6. ^ Silentio, “Preliminary Expectoration,” in Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric.
7. ^ a b Silentio, “Problema I: Is There a Teleological Suspension of the Ethical?,” in Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric.
8. ^ a b Silentio, “Problema II: Is There an Absolute Duty to God?,” in Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric.
9. ^ a b Silentio, “Problema III: Was It Ethically Defensible for Abraham to Conceal His Undertaking from Sarah, from Eliezer, and from Isaac?,” in Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric.
10. ^ John H. Whittaker, “The Suspension of The Ethical in Fear and Trembling,” Kierkegaardiana 14 (June 1988): 101–113, https://tidsskrift.dk/kierkegaardiana/article/view/31321/28794.
11. ^ John J. Davenport, “Faith as Eschatological Trust in Fear and Trembling,” in Ethics, Love, and Faith in Kierkegaard: Philosophical Engagements, ed. Edward F. Mooney, Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Merold Westphal (Indiana University Press, 2008).
12. ^ John J. Davenport, “Kierkegaard’s Postscript in Light of Fear and Trembling: Eschatological Faith,” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 64, no. 2–4 (2008): 879–908, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40419592.
13. ^ “Oh, once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough for an imperishable name as an author. Then it will read, translated into foreign languages as well. The reader will almost shrink from the frightful pathos in the book.” Søren Kierkegaard, “Selected Entries from Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers Pertaining to Fear and Trembling,” in Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 257.

• Conway, Daniel. “Introduction.” In Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling”: A Critical Guide. Edited by Daniel Conway. Cambridge Critical Guides. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• David, John J. “Faith as Eschatological Trust in Fear and Trembling.” In Ethics, Love, and Faith in Kierkegaard: Philosophical Engagements. Edited by Edward F. Mooney. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion, edited by Merold Westphal. Indiana University Press, 2008.
• ———. “Kierkegaard’s Postscript in Light of Fear and Trembling: Eschatological Faith.” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 64, no. 2–4 (2008): 879–908. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40419592.
• Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling/Repetition. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Kierkegaard’s Writings 6. Princeton University Press, 1983.
• Whittaker, John H. “The Suspension of The Ethical in Fear and Trembling.” Kierkegaardiana 14 (June 1988): 101–113. https://tidsskrift.dk/kierkegaardiana/article/view/31321/28794.

• Quotations related to Fear and Trembling at Wikiquote