Book: Fear and Trembling

Overview

Søren Kierkegaard’s 1843 book Fear and Trembling probes the nature of faith through the biblical story of Abraham commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac. It presents faith as a passionate, paradoxical relation to God that cannot be reduced to ethics, reason, or social norms. The text challenges complacent “Christendom” by insisting that true faith entails risk, silence, and inward struggle, fear and trembling, before the absurd.

Pseudonymous voice

The book is written under the name Johannes de Silentio, a reflective narrator who admires Abraham but confesses he cannot himself achieve such faith. He does not teach or prove; he circles the paradox, intensifying it, to prevent faith from being trivialized into easy obedience or moral heroism.

Abraham’s ordeal

Silentio retells the Genesis narrative in several imaginative variations, each dramatizing Abraham’s anxiety, love for Isaac, and inability to explain himself to Sarah, Isaac, or the world. These scenes underline that Abraham stands utterly alone before God. If understood ethically, he appears either a murderer or a fanatic; yet in the religious sphere he is praised as the father of faith.

Teleological suspension of the ethical

The central question is whether the ethical, the universal requirement to disclose oneself and love one’s neighbor, is the highest end for a human being. Silentio argues that in faith there can be a “teleological suspension of the ethical, ” where the single individual stands in absolute relation to the Absolute and is therefore justified in suspending the universal for a higher divine purpose. Abraham is contrasted with tragic heroes like Agamemnon or Brutus, who sacrifice a beloved for a public good and can be understood and praised; Abraham’s act has no shareable rationale and remains opaque. This opacity is the offense of faith.

Knights of resignation and of faith

To clarify, Silentio distinguishes the knight of infinite resignation from the knight of faith. The knight of resignation gives up the finite, his dearest earthly good, and finds eternal consolation; his movement is comprehensible and even admirable. The knight of faith performs that resignation and then believes by virtue of the absurd that he will receive the finite back in time. Silentio illustrates this with the lover who renounces the princess and yet believes he will still have her, or with the inconspicuous tax collector who, while appearing ordinary, lives in constant inward relation to God. The second movement, the leap of faith, cannot be mediated by reason or universal ethics.

Silence, offense, and inwardness

Faith requires silence because the ethical demand for disclosure collides with the singular relation to God. Abraham cannot justify himself to Isaac or to the community; speech would either betray his duty to God or reduce it to ethical terms. The paradox of faith is offensive to reason: that the individual can stand higher than the universal, and that the finite can be regained by virtue of the absurd. Faith is not speculation but an existential passion lived moment by moment.

Implications

Silentio’s analysis rebukes systems, especially Hegelian philosophy, that dissolve the individual into the universal and render faith a stage on the way to knowledge. It also critiques cultural Christianity for treating faith as easy, safe, or purely ethical. The book does not offer a method to achieve faith; it preserves the scandal and greatness of Abraham’s deed so that faith is neither confused with ethics nor dismissed as madness. Between these, fear and trembling mark the path of the single individual before God.