Review/Summary of ‘Fear and Trembling’ by Soren Kierkegaard

This book^[1] by Kierkegaard analyses the ethical, individual, and spiritual situation of Abraham – to bring to fore a better and more detailed perspective of the story of Abraham. This story relates to one of the most significant figures in the Bible, wherein God called upon Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on the Mount of Moriah, which was a three day journey. Isaac was the promise of God to Abraham, he was to be the carrier of generations before him. Abraham, in obedience and faith however, travelled to the mountain and was willing to do it, but was, fascinatingly, stopped at the moment when Abraham was on the verge of killing Isaac.

The lack of detail in this story seems to only fuel Kierkegaard's admiration and enthusiasm unravelling the situation, that must have been the case but was not explicitly revealed. And thus, with this story, Kierkegaard really brings to us a new insight into what it means, in all its significance, to have faith, and distinguishes this with other forms which we may have thought was faith but is really nothing but “infinite resignation”.

Key Points/Summary

Faith, although it well and good to marvel at it, cannot after all be achieved just by talking about it. Faith is indeed a marvel precisely because it is possible for anyone – one has simply got to do it
To achieve faith, one must know what it is they desire, dream and love the most on this Earth(whether it be a person, money, status, etc), and concentrate all one’s existence on that one thing – then give up it to God, in the double movement of not expecting it to happen the way one wishes, and the same time believing on the strength of the absurd that it will happen
When one is in faith, he does not give up his earthly wishes; he does not only live in the infinite. No, the knight of faith lives between the earthly and heavenly. This means that for example, if one wanted to be rich, and had faith in this idea, he does not give up the idea to God and simply ‘hope’ for it to happen; he believes that it will happen. But importantly, even if his wish would never be granted, amazingly he is just the same

Problemata 1: Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?

Did Abraham forsake the ethical in being willing to sacrifice Isaac? And if he did, can we find a justifiable reason for him doing it?

The main crux of what Kierkegaard is doing by raising this question, is by really questioning if there is something higher than the ethical. Logically, if there is something higher than the ethical(doing a deed for the greater good), then he is justified, then there is a valid reason to go against the universal(the equivalent of the ethical).

Now if there if there is not, then Abraham is in great trouble, for then he would be simply acting on his “aesthetic” will, his desire to simply disregard the ethical for his own self-fulfilment.

However, this being said, it is important to realise that Abraham cannot have acted in a self-centred manner, for again, Isaac meant the entire world to him, for he was the promise of God to uphold generations before him. Indeed, by sacrificing Isaac, he would have gained absolutely nothing from it. Thus, either Abraham is simply an illogical being, or his act is completely selfless. Kierkegaard ruled out the former, for if we were to accept it, then our story of faith ends here; Abraham in that case would not have been faithful; he would have simply been satisfying his own “aesthetic” will.

So realising that it must have been the latter situation, we are now led to consider some other reason that is apart from both the “aesthetic” will of the individual and the will to remain within the ethical. And this other reason must have been higher than it: Abraham must have believed in something that overlooks the ethical, in order to willingly transcend the ethical. This is the moment when, as Kierkegaard says, the “individual is higher than the ethical”. This transcendence can only explained by means of the existence of God.

Thus, the first problem raises the question of how God fits within the ethical since it is higher than it. In other words, what does it mean for us that God is higher than the ethical?

Problemata 2: Is there an absolute duty to God?

Now we have established the conflict between God and the ethical, we are now led inevitably to ask ourselves: are we obliged to commit the most horrible of deeds simply because God can command us to, and because He is greater than all?

The answer is yes. And specifically no.

Imperatively, Kierkegaard tells us that faith is the state of being higher than the universal and where the communication is only between God and the individual. Faith is a private experience where “the single individual is quite unable to make himself intelligible to anyone”(p.98). That is, in one’s having faith that there is communication with God, it is impossible for him to show or prove this to anyone – for the universal would simply say to him that he is bluffing, that is an egoist. There is no possibility that when one has transcended the ethical, he can at the same time be reconciled with the ethical.

When God commanded Abraham to kill Isaac, the ethical expression for Abrahams’s obedience is that he hates Isaac; yet if Abraham hated Isaac, then God would not ask him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice: it is precisely because he loved Isaac that God asked him to give him up as a sacrifice, for this then would be meaningful. Never, in any moment along the journey, did Abraham cease to love Isaac, for then it would cease to be an offering – if he gave up Isaac in his heart, if he stopped loving Isaac, then his is nothing but a “knight of resignation”. To be a knight of resignation is give up all hope of retaining the finite, and simply exists within the infinite. But Abraham believed, “even in that moment when the knife gleamed he believed – that God would not demand Isaac” – and at all moments he was absolutely willing to sacrifice Isaac.

But then, what does it mean to have an absolute duty to God?

The answer to this is not indeed found in this problemata, but instead is found in the ‘Preamble of the Heart’. For it is not a satisfactory answer to say that there is an absolutely duty to God because He is higher than the universal - there is something much more meaningful to say about this.

The reason why Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son was because he loved God, and he loved God because God loved him. God is, in the view of Orthodox Christianity^[2], nothing but pure Love and never anything else. Thus, the reason why Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac was because he had faith that God was love and would never truly demand Isaac from him. This means that God is not contrary to the ethical, but exactly the opposite. God, by commanding us to “love our neighbor” enforces the ethical upon those who believe in God. In other words, the ethical attains it validity through God; that is, God permeates through the ethical.

By realising that we have an absolute duty to God means not that we are to become murderers by God’s saying so, but rather by having faith that God would never enforce this on any of us. God’s command on Abraham was a test on his faith – and he passed. The test was not to see whether he was willing to murder Isaac, but rather if he had faith that he would not have to murder Isaac.

Problemata 3: Was it ethically defensible of Abraham to conceal his purpose from Sarah, from Eleazar, from Isaac?

Knowing that faith is a private experience between the individual and God, and that in that moment the individual is higher than the universal; it can be safely said that in this state of faith, this state of having an “absolute relation to the absolute”, means that he can never be reconciled with the universal, meaning that he will never be understood by Sarah, Eleazar or Isaac. If Abraham were to reveal his thoughts to any of them, that his sacrificing Isaac was to be a trial, he would be lured into “temptation” since, by their thinking that he is mistaken, will be led to think that he is wrong and that his sacrificing for the sake of God was purely a wrongful thought and merely his “aesthetic will”.

It was certainly not ethically defensible on the grounds of the universal, nor of Abraham’s desire; but of God’s command. And this command can only become a ground for justification only if one believed it to be a justification, and this was precisely the test.

Epilogue

This I will not summarise but simply quote this part from it that encapsulates everything about faith:

“But the highest passion in a human being is faith, and here no generation begins other than where its predecessor did, every generation begins from the beginning, the succeeding generation comes no further than the previous one, provided the latter was true to its task and didn’t betray it. That this sounds wearying is not of course for the generation to say, for it is indeed the generation that has the task and it has nothing to do with the fact that the previous generation had the same task, unless that particular generation or the individuals in it presumed to occupy the position to which only the spirit that governs the world, and which has the endurance not to grow weary, is entitled. If that is the kind of thing the generation begins to do, it is perverted, and what wonder then if the whole of existence should look perverted to it? For surely no one has found life more perverted than the tailor in the fairy-tale who got to heaven in his lifetime and from there looked down on the world. So long as the generation only worries about its task, which is the highest it can attain to, it cannot grow weary. That task is always enough for a human lifetime.”(p.145-146)

Main Message

It may seem to the reader that faith may well belong exclusively to those that believe in God’s love. But indeed Kierkegaard says it is a task for all generations, each generation individual in its struggle, each alone in this problem of attaining faith.

For indeed, all human beings are striving for faith – for in faith there is a power “whose strength is powerlessness, great in that wisdom whose secret is folly”. Undeniably, all of us are in search of discovering this unwavering trust in ourselves that is unconditional, a trust that would enable one to leave themselves in the greatest possible loss and harm, while being certain that that harm the one is counting on not to happen, will happen.^[3]

Footnotes

Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling, Translated by Alastair Hannay. Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
Kierkegaard was raised an Orthodox Christian
Cross, A. A. (1999). “Fear and Trembling’s” Unorthodox Ideal. Philosophical Topics, 27(2), 227–253. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43154322