Sacrifice in Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Trembling'

Author: Sylvia Fleming Crocker; Reviewer: Michael Guirgies

The questions which this article^[1] seeks to address is first, that of the criteria which a work of faith can be classified under; and second, that of the significance of why we need faith to live a life authentic to ourselves.

What does it mean to have faith?

Kierkegaard contrasts what he calls the “knight of faith” with the “knight of resignation” – and the key difference that he points out between them is that the knight of resignation has given up the idea that what he seeks, what he most longs for(the absurd) will ever come. However, the knight of faith believes by means of a double movement, that is, as Crocker describes:

“The knight of faith believes simultaneously and absolutely that he will have to sacrifice the earthly, the finite, for God’s sake, and that this will not be necessary.”

This is indeed the paradox of faith, it is the step beyond “infinite resignation”; as Kierkegaard writes:

“In infinite resignation there is peace and consolation in the pain, that is if the movement is done properly.”

In taking the next step, the knight of faith believes on the strength of the absurd that he will get what he desires; in other words, he does not simply reject the earthly and embrace the infinite through infinite resignation; rather, he is neither in the finite or the infinite, he is in a “constant state of tension”.

Know this, that when Abraham sacrificed Isaac, it is logical to think that he gave uphis love for Isaac in the act of the sacrifice. The reality of it is this:

“The moment he is ready to sacrifice Isaac, the ethical expression for what he does is this: he hates Isaac. But if he actually hates Isaac he can be certain that God does not require this of him; for Cain and Abraham are not the same. Isaac he must love with all his soul. When God asks for Isaac, Abraham must if possible love him even more, and only then can he sacrifice him; for it is indeed this love of Isaac that in its paradoxical opposition to his love of God makes his act a sacrifice. But the distress and anguish in the paradox is that, humanly speaking, he is quite incapable of making himself understood. Only in the moment when his act is in absolute contradiction with his feeling, only then does he sacrifice Isaac, but the reality of his act is that in virtue of which he belongs to the universal, and there he is and remains a murderer.”^[2]

Therefore in the knight of faith, of which Abraham is an exemplar, there is not just infinite resignation; that is, he does not detach himself from the earthly, but neither from the infinite, God’s command – it is something that cannot be described simply because it is a paradox. It is merely the experience of faith.

The knight of faith does not lose his connection with God, as does the knight of resignation, for the latter, once God has demanded something of value to him, will indeed sacrifice it, but immediately will distance himself from God and compose himself so that he will find “peace and consolation in the pain.” But the former, the knight of faith does this, as Crocker describes:

“…he suspends the working of his will and his natural human tendency to "run forward in thought," to use Heidegger's phrase. And even when these are no longer suspended, he remains open to the possibility that God will speak uniquely to him again, as one Person to another.”

But then, what is the significance of faith?

The idea lies in the fact that despair arises from one’s living in weakness while at the same time knowing exactly who it is they want/know to be, i.e., living in a state that is not one’s authentic self: they are “unable to make the earthly sacrifices which self-realisation would require”(Crocker). According to Kierkegaard, this failure of attaining self-hood can be overcome by embracing existential Truth; as Crocker explains thus:

“Ordinary (Philistine and aesthetic) human sight, hearing, and will must be recreated so that they can be enabled to see, hear, and react to realities which are by their very nature incapable of being apprehended and dealt with in the ways in which we understand and manipulate either scientific or everyday objects.”

The ways in which we can “recreate” our perceptions, reinvigorate our sense of self, can be reduced to the following points:

• Through “divine assistance…despair is a sickness from which no human being deliver himself.”(Crocker)
• To strengthen our “power of risk [in being] open towards and intimate with other persons…[And this is possible] through a life of faith.”(Crocker)
• “…by means of a relationship to God”(Kierkegaard, Footnote : Sickness unto death, 162)

The significance of faith is made clear through recognising that the fulfillment of self is only possible through restoring a consciousness of our peculiar subjectivity – “…it is the peculiarly personal eyes, ear, lips and hands – which need to be recreated, to have their primordial state restored"(Crocker).

By sacrificing our Self to God, through an act of faith, we can receive it back “illuminated and transformed”(Crocker).

The truth which Kierkegaard proclaims, is that despite our present and past failures in which we lived in despair, the question of whether we can retrieve what we have lost, the answer is yes! – but only in recognising that “God’s lessons are not cerebral but behavioural”(Crocker), i.e. in recognising that we must move.

The ultimate cost of this is a life of “Fear and Trembling” as the title of Kierkegaard’s work emphasises, but it is indeed the secret meaning to “the life of faith”, the journey to self-actualisation.

1. Link to Article is here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1509089
2. Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling (Classics) (pp. 101-102). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.