Fear and Trembling (Penguin Classics)
by Soren Kierkegaard
Book Summary Information
Author: Soren KierkegaardTranslator: Alastair Hannay
Introduction: Alastair Hannay
Contributor: Johannes de Silentio
Edition: Paperback
Audio: Danish (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1986-01-07
ISBN: 0140444491
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780140444490
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Fear and Trembling (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: Be careful of which edition you buy!
Summary: 4 Stars
Fear and Trembling A Philosophical Masterpiece by S?ren Kierkegaard is so short, you wonder why you would need notes and commmentary. You do! Get an edition with as much commentary as possible. Avoid the Wilder Publications edition, as it has NO notes and is full of misprints.
This is an important work as much for its brevity as for its depth.
The story of God's ordering Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is, to my knowledge the ONLY episode in the Bible which is the entire subject of a major philosophical work. Less important, but no less impressive is the fact that it is probably the only episode from the Bible which is quoted, albeit loosely, in a song in Rolling Stone's top 500 (Nr. 364) songs of all time. It is the subject of numerous artistic interpretations and the keynote episode in almost all philosophical and theological discussions of theodicy, the question of God and evil.
Among other things Kierkegaard points out, this episode is far more difficult than either the story of Job or the story of Jephthah, a judge of the tribe of Gilead. The heart of Jephthah's story is at
Judges 11:30--34 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD and said, "If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, 31 then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord's, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering." 32 So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them: and the LORD gave them into his hand. 33 He inflicted a massive defeat on them.... 34 Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child; he had no son or daughter except her. When he saw here, he tore his clothes and said, "Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; ...For I have opened my mouth to the LORD and I cannot take back my vow."
Jephthah's situation is tragic, doubly so in that if he had simply said `whatever' rather than `whoever', a chicken or goat would have easily been the sacrificial offering. Human sacrifice was `known' but not condoned in Israel, but keeping a promise was binding in the most important sense. Thus, Jephthah stumbled and his daughter was killed through stupidity, similar to Hamlet's indecision and Macbeth's ambition.
But Abraham is intending to break the law, and endure considerable pain in the process. Kierkegaard, the psychologist, makes a point of the fact that the journey of Abraham and Isaac must have taken several days, more than the three specified, what with the collection of wood, the climb up the mountain, and the building of the altar. This journey must have been painful in the extreme, for both the personal loss and the literal immorality of the act he intends.
Thus is Kierkegaard's primary objective, the study of the difficulty of faith. In addition, the classic is a work on both moral philosophy and the philosophy of religion, as it clearly fits one criterion of that subject, in showing what are the questions which religion is supposed to answer. Kierkegaard's thought is difficult, but we have two things which should help us understand him. Kierkegaard is a Lutheran philosopher/theologian, maybe the greatest Protestant theoretician. He is the first `modern' thinker, one of the two founders, along with Friedrich Nietzsche, of Existentialism, which began to understand the problems of 17th--19th century rationalism. Both understood the paradoxes which lead to the absurdities of our daily life, and Kierkegaard applied this thinking to revitalize Protestant theology.
The book addresses three specific questions in addition to the analysis of Abraham's faith.
1. Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical. In simpler terms, this is a variation of the question `Does the end justify the means?'
Kierkegaard argued that this was a paradox which was only resolved by faith. The heroic faith is not measured by the result, but by what the hero of faith had to endure to get to that end. No one is a hero for having won the lottery! Abraham is a hero of faith because of what he endured in spite of the immorality of his intentions.
2. Is there an absolute duty to God, beyond the ethical?
For someone who is schooled in Kant's basis of ethical theory, Kierkegaard's sense of the foundation of morals seems odd, until you realize it is both a universal and Christian through and through, because the ethical universal for Kierkegaard is love of neighbor, just as Abraham's ethical duty was defined by his love for Isaac, and ethical duty is NOT defined by love of God. Therefore, the knight of faith may through love of God do something which is the opposite of one's ethical duty toward their neighbor, and that impulse of faith is something he cannot make intelligible to others. Men fall away from faith, because they cannot bear the martyrdom of being misunderstood, and choose the worldly route to proficiency. If no absolute duty to God exists, then faith does not exist.
3. Was it ethically defensible for Abraham to conceal his intentions from Sarah, Isaac, and Eleazar?
Kierkegaard says it was unethical for Abraham to not speak, because speech expresses the universal, and the ethical is the universal. I have far too little space remaining to unpack that statement, so we move on. Since Abraham is driven by faith, he is driven by something of which he cannot speak; but, ironically, not speaking in this circumstance was kinder to Sarah and Isaac than speaking.
In his epilogue, Kierkegaard says that unlike science, faith must be discovered anew by each generation, so everyone begins even with Abraham. Yet the highest passion in a man is faith. `There are perhaps many in every generation who do not even reach it, but no one gets further....But for the man also who does not so much as reach faith life has tasks enough, and if one loves them sincerely, life will by no means be wasted, even though it never is comparable to the life of those who sensed and grasped the highest.'
Summary of Fear and Trembling (Penguin Classics)
Writing under the pseudonym of Johannes de silentio, Kierkegaard uses the form of a dialectical lyric to present his conception of faith. Abraham is portrayed as a great man, who chose to sacrifice his son, Isaac, in the face of conflicting expectations and in defiance of any conceivable ethical standard. The infamous and controversial 'teleological suspension of the ethical' challenged the contemporary views of Hegel's universal moral system, and the suffering individual must alone make a choice 'on the strength of the absurd'. Kierkegaard's writings have inspired both modern Protestant theology and existentialism.Classics Books
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