Fear and TremblingSøren Kierkegaard
About Fear and Trembling
Kierkegaard published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio. The book is a sustained meditation on a single biblical episode: Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac at God's command.
The pseudonym matters. Johannes cannot understand Abraham. He can admire him, circle him, describe what he sees, but he cannot enter the faith that makes the act intelligible. Abraham is not a tragic hero sacrificing his son for a higher ethical purpose. He acts against the ethical entirely, suspending the universal moral law on the strength of a private, incommunicable relation to God. Kierkegaard calls this the "teleological suspension of the ethical," and it is the crux of the book.
Three "problemata" structure the argument. Can there be a teleological suspension of the ethical? Is there an absolute duty toward God? Was Abraham justified in concealing his purpose from Sarah, Eliezer, and Isaac? Each question forces the reader to confront the same dilemma: either faith names something that exceeds ethical universality, or Abraham is a murderer.
The book is short, repetitive by design, and deliberately unresolvable. Kierkegaard does not argue that faith is rational. He argues that it is real, that it cannot be translated into the categories of Hegelian philosophy, and that the individual who stands before God stands alone.