Work · Kierkegaard

Fear and Trembling

1843 · Under a pseudonym

Abraham raising the knife over Isaac: faith as a leap that reason can neither reach nor justify.

1843

Published

Johannes de silentio

The pseudonym

Genesis 22

The story it circles

Read itIts ideas and famous passages, in plain English.→

Two responses to losing everything

Knight of infinite resignation

Knight of faith

Gives up the finite thing for good

Gives it up and expects to receive it back

Finds a kind of peace in renunciation

Believes the impossible, on the strength of the absurd

A movement reason can follow and admire

A movement reason cannot reach at all

The tragic hero, like Agamemnon

Abraham, who from outside looks like a murderer

Kierkegaard (writing as Johannes de silentio, "John of the Silence") separates two figures often confused. The first nobly lets go. The second lets go and still believes he will get it back in this life. Only the second has faith, and it is a movement Johannes confesses he cannot make or even understand.

The shape of the argument

Exordium & Eulogy on Abraham

Four retellings of the journey to Mount Moriah, then praise of Abraham as the father of faith whom no one can quite comprehend.

Preliminary Expectoration

Infinite resignation versus faith "by virtue of the absurd"; the knight of faith who looks like a contented tax collector.

Problema I

Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical? Can the single individual stand higher than the universal moral law?

Problema II

Is there an absolute duty to God that can override what ethics commands?

Problema III

Was Abraham justified in keeping silent, in saying nothing to Sarah or Isaac about what he had been asked to do?

The cast

Johannes de silentio — the pseudonym, an author who admires faith but admits he cannot achieve it

Abraham — the knight of faith, commanded to sacrifice Isaac, suspended between murder and obedience

The tragic hero — Agamemnon and his kind, who sacrifice for the universal and stay inside ethics

Hegel’s System — the target: a philosophy in which the individual is always lower than the universal

The famous bits

The teleological suspension of the ethicalProblema I

If Abraham is justified, the single individual can be higher than the universal, and ethics is not the last word.

Faith by virtue of the absurdPreliminary Expectoration

Abraham believes he will not lose Isaac, not despite the impossibility but on the strength of it.

The knight of faithPreliminary Expectoration

He looks exactly like a tax collector or a shopkeeper; nothing outward betrays the infinite movement he has made.

Abraham’s silenceProblema III

He cannot explain himself, because what he is doing cannot be said in the language of the universal.

Back to Kierkegaard →