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Texts in the —

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Philosophy

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Fear and Trembling

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 CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY
OF PHILOSOPHY

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KARL AMERIKS
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame
DESMOND M. CLARKE
Professor of Philosophy at University College Cork

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 SOREN KIERKEGAARD

Fear and Trembling

EDITED BY

CST EPHEN-CEVANS
Baylor University

AND

SYLVIA WALSH
Stetson University

TRANSLATED BY

SL vyiAWALSH

§ CAMBRIDGE
©) UNIVERSITY PRESS
 CAMBRIDGE
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 Contents

Introduction page Vi
Chronology XXX
Further reading XXXII
Note on the translation XXXVI

FEAR AND TREMBLING

Preface
Tuning Up
A Tribute to Abraham
Problems
A Preliminary Outpouring from the Heart
Problem 1: Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?
Problem : Is there an absolute duty to God?
Problem mm: Was it ethically defensible of Abraham
to conceal his undertaking from Sarah, from Eliezer,
from Isaac? 7h
Epilogue 107

Index 110
 Introduction

Fear and Trembling, written when the author was only thirty years old, is
in all likelihood Soren Kierkegaard’s most-read book. This would not
have surprised Kierkegaard, who wrote prophetically in his journal that
“once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough for an
imperishable name as an author. Then it will [be] read, translated into
foreign languages as well.”’ In one sense the book is not difficult to read.
It is often assigned in introductory university classes, for it is the kind of
book that a novice in philosophy can pick up and read with interest and
profit — stimulating questions about ethics and God, faith and reason,
experience and imagination. However, in another sense the book is
profoundly difficult, the kind of book that can be baffling to the scholar
who has read it many times and studied it for years — giving rise to a
bewildering variety of conflicting interpretations.
Many of these interpretations have focused on the book’s relation to
Kierkegaard’s own life, and in particular on the widely known story of
Kierkegaard’s broken engagement to Regine Olsen. There is little doubt
that part of Kierkegaard’s own motivation for writing Fear and Trembling
was to present a disguised explanation to Regine of his true reasons for
breaking off the engagement. However, it is just as certain that the
philosophical importance of the book does not depend on these personal
and biographical points; the book can be read and has been read with
profit by those with no knowledge of Kierkegaard’s own life.

' Soren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 1—-v 11, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H.
Hong (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1967-78). Entry no. 6491 (vol. v1).

v1
 Introduction

Fear and Trembling is described on the title page as a “dialectical lyric,”

and this description accurately captures its paradoxical character. On the
one hand the book is indeed lyrical, with intensely poetical and moving
passages that engage the imagination as well as the emotions of the
reader. Poetic figures such as the “knight of faith,” the “knight of infinite
resignation,” and the “tragic hero” move before the reader’s eyes and
take shape in story and myth. However, the book is also “dialectical” in
the sense that it poses sharply defined philosophical and theological
questions about such issues as the relation between a life of religious
faith and the ethical life, and the relation between personal virtue and
integrity and social and political duties.
Fear and Trembling takes as its point of departure the biblical story of
the “binding of Isaac” from Genesis 22, in which God tests Abraham by
asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. Kierkegaard’s
book as a whole can best be described as a poetical and philosophical
response to this biblical story. In the Genesis account Abraham shows his
willingness to obey God, but at the last moment God sends an angel to
stay his hand, and Abraham discovers a ram that he sacrifices in place of
his son.
This story from the Hebrew Bible is reprised in the New Testament in
Hebrews 11, where the “heroes of faith” are listed and described.
Abraham has a prominent place in this list of exemplars; his action in
being willing to sacrifice Isaac is singled out by the author of Hebrews in
verses 17-19 as a key part of Abraham’s story and a major reason why
Abraham is a paradigm of faith. The book of Hebrews thus provides
a clear illustration of the status Abraham enjoys for both Jews and
Christians (as well as Muslims) as the “father of faith.” There is a long
tradition of commentary on this Genesis story, from both Jewish and
Christian thinkers, and the questions the story raises seem no less
relevant today than in previous centuries.
Among these questions some of the most pressing concern the relative
value and danger of religious devotion as a source of action. Fear and
Trembling shows a clear awareness that the story about Abraham’s will-
ingness to sacrifice Isaac is in many ways a dangerous narrative. We live
in a world where religious fundamentalists try to justify violence against
innocent people by appealing to what they perceive as God’s commands.
Deranged parents sometimes kill their children in the belief that they
have been commanded by God to do so. Fear and Trembling rightly

Vil
 Introduction

worries about people who may respond to the story in these kinds of
ways, asking whether one should dare think about the Abraham story:
“Can one then speak candidly about Abraham without running the risk
that an individual in mental confusion might go and do likewise?”
(p. 23) Religious faith seems to some people to be too dangerous to
tolerate, something that leads to war, terrorism, and fanaticism. We can
see this in John Lennon’s famous line in his song “Imagine,” where he
dreams of a world where “there’s no heaven, and no religion too.”
Though Fear and Trembling shows a deep understanding of this kind of
worry about religious faith, it also tries to show that to lose the possibility
of genuine faith is to lose something of incalculable value. To eliminate
faith in order to eliminate fanaticism is to deify “the established social-
political order.” Such a secularized society might eliminate fanatics, but
it would also eliminate such figures as a Martin Luther King, Jr., who
mounted a religious critique of the established order. Most importantly
from Kierkegaard’s perspective, such a secularized society would remove
any transcendent meaning that gives the lives of individual humans
depth and value.

Who is the “author” of Fear and Trembling?

Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling was published in Copenhagen in 1843

as part of an outpouring of pseudonymous books which he wrote at a
furious pace, and most of which appeared in just three years between
1843 and 1846. Other books in this group include Either/Or, Repetition, The
Concept of Anxiety, Prefaces, Philosophical Fragments, Stages on Life’s Way,
and Concluding Unscientific Postscript. At the same time as Kierkegaard
was producing these pseudonymous books, he also published a series of
devotional Upbuilding Discourses under his own name. The pseudo-
nymous books are attributed to a variety of characters with names
such as Victor Eremita (Victor the Hermit), Vigilius Haufniensis (The
Watchman of Copenhagen), and Johannes Climacus (John the Climber).
Thus, the name that appears on the title page of Fear and Trembling is not
Kierkegaard’s own, but “Johannes de silentio.” This fact is of great
importance.
Why did Kierkegaard employ these pseudonyms? Clearly it was not to
preserve anonymity. Within a short time of the appearance of the first of
these volumes the identity of the true author was widely known. In fact

Vili
 Introduction

Kierkegaard went so far as to put his own name on the title page as
“editor” of two of the volumes, a move which clearly shows that he was
not trying to hide his connection to the writings. The reasons for the
pseudonyms lie in Kierkegaard’s understanding of himself as a “Danish
Socrates,” who attempted to help his contemporaries discover truth for
themselves, much as did the actual Socrates, who compared himself to a
midwife who helped others give birth to ideas. Kierkegaard’s pseudo-
nyms can usefully be compared to characters in a novel, who have their
own viewpoints and voices that may or may not overlap with those of the
author of the novel. In creating the pseudonyms Kierkegaard attempts
what he calls “indirect communication,” which he sees as vital when one
is dealing with moral and religious insights that bear directly on the self,
and that can only be properly understood when personally appropriated.
Kierkegaard does not didactically tell us what is what, but creates
characters who embody various views of life and the self. The reader
who encounters these characters is thus forced to think for himself or
herself about the issues.
Virtually all Kierkegaard scholars today agree then that distinctions
between the various pseudonyms, as well as the distinction between
Kierkegaard and the pseudonyms, must be respected. It is a mistake to
blend together passages from Johannes the seducer in Fither/Or 1, from
Vigilius Haufniensis in The Concept of Anxiety, and from Johannes de
silentio in Fear and Trembling as if they all reflect Kierkegaard’s own
views. Most scholars today therefore respect Kierkegaard’s request to
distinguish the words of the pseudonyms from those works he wrote
under his own name: “Therefore if it should occur to anyone to want to
quote a particular passage from the [pseudonymous] books, it is my wish,
my prayer, that he will do me the kindness of citing the respective
pseudonymous author’s name, not mine .. .? However, many textbook
characterizations of Kierkegaard still ignore this literary dimension of his
writings, and thus misinterpretations are common. A proper interpreta-
tion of Fear and Trembling must therefore try to understand the figure of
Johannes de silentio. Unfortunately, all we can know about this Johannes
must be derived from his book, and thus an understanding of his

gaa rd, Con clu din g Unsc ient ific Post scri pt, ed. and tran s. How ard V. Hon g and Edna H.
2 Soren Kierke
Uni ver sit y Pres s, 1992 ), p. 627. This pass age occu rs as part of
Hong (Princeton: Princeton
Last Exp lan ati on” that Kie rke gaa rd app end ed to this pse udo nym ous book under
“A First and
his own name.

ix
 Introduction

standpoint as an author must go hand in hand with an understanding of

the work itself.
One important clue in understanding the pseudonymous author may
be the name itself: John of silence, silent John. Though Johannes is in one
sense talkative, we shall see that at key points it is what he does not say
that may be most important. Another clue may be found in the “Motto”
from Johann Georg Hamann that appears at the beginning of the book:
“What Tarquin the Proud communicated in his garden with the
beheaded poppies was understood by the son but not by the messenger.”
‘The reference is to an ancient story of Rome in which the son of Tarquin,
the king of Rome, had gained power in the rival city of Gabi. The son
sent a messenger to his father to ask for advice about what he should do,
but the father did not trust the messenger. Saying nothing, he simply
walked around in the garden and struck the flowers off the tallest
poppies. When the messenger related this behavior to the son, the son
correctly inferred that he should try to bring about the death of the
leading citizens of the city.
Mottos are by their nature enigmatic and suggestive, and one cannot
be sure what is meant by this reference to the story. However, it certainly
seems plausible that Johannes as the author of the book is himself the
“messenger” in this case, and thus in some ways is communicating through
his work something he himself does not fully understand. It is perhaps less
clear who is the “father” from whom the message comes, and who is the
“son” who is supposed to receive the message with understanding.

Imagining Abraham and Isaac

Fear and Trembling begins with an amusing preface that cleverly satirizes
both modern philosophy and modern European culture in general,
focusing on the concepts of doubt and faith. According to Johannes,
everyone in the modern world has apparently doubted everything, just as
everyone is supposed to possess genuine religious faith. Johannes
is clearly not so enamored with these alleged achievements of modern-
ity, which he, through irony, compares unfavorably with the practices
of the ancient Greeks and early Christians. For the ancient Greeks,
“proficiency in doubting is not achieved in a matter of days or weeks”
(p. 4). Supposedly everyone in our age begins with the stance that
those Greek philosophers worked a lifetime to achieve. In a similar
 Introduction

manner, “in those olden days” faith was “a lifelong task,” but modern
people must “go further” since they all begin “where those venerable
figures arrived” (p. 5). What do doubt and faith have in common? For
Johannes they are both human activities, and he clearly thinks that
neither is as easy as modernity assumes. Perhaps once the difficulties of
these human tasks are appreciated, people will be less eager to “go
further” to the intellectual challenges of the “System,” the grand spec-
ulative attempt by the philosopher G. W. F’. Hegel and his followers to
understand the whole of nature and human history in terms of “Absolute
Spirit.”
After this satirical preface, Johannes offers us a section called “Tuning
Up,” a kind of lyrical prelude that consists of a series of imaginative
variations on the biblical story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac
at God’s command. It is clear that Johannes pays attention to this story
about Abraham and Isaac because he wants to understand faith and looks
to a universally recognized exemplar of faith for help. This fact provides
a baseline insight that must be constantly kept in mind; Fear and
Trembling is primarily a book about faith, not a book about ethics.
However, even the discussion of faith is indirect in character. Johannes
does not really tell us what faith is but what it is not, even though he says a
lot about faith. He primarily helps us understand faith more clearly by
distinguishing genuine faith from counterfeits and easily confused rela-
tives and substitutes. The imaginative versions of the story that Johannes
produces in “Tuning Up” all in some way picture an “Abraham” who
differs from the biblical Abraham by lacking faith.
In the first variation, Johannes imagines an Abraham who tries to
explain to Isaac that God requires him as a sacrifice, but who is unable
to make Isaac understand. In response to Isaac’s horror, Abraham pre-
tends to Isaac to be a moral monster, an idolater who is going to sacrifice
Isaac “because it is my desire” rather than because of God’s command,
telling himself that it would be better for Isaac to lose faith in Abraham
than to lose his faith in the goodness of God (p. 9). In the second variation,
everything is as it is in the biblical story, except that Abraham as a result
of the experience “saw joy no more” (p. 9). As we shall see later, a
crucial dimension of the actual Abraham is Abraham’s joy, his ability
to be happy with Isaac, trusting in God’s promise. In the third version
Abraham decides that he is wrong to have been willing to sacrifice Isaac
finds himself vacillating in his repentance, unsure that it
and repents, but

XI
 Introduction

was asin “to have been willing to sacrifice to God the best he owned,” but
worried that if it was a sin, “how could it be forgiven, for what sin was
more grievous?” (p. 10) In the fourth and final version, Abraham draws
the knife, but his “left hand was clenched in despair” and “a shudder
went through his body,” and as a result Isaac, who has observed this,
loses his faith (p. 10).
All these imagined stories are related by a man (perhaps Johannes
himself) who is transfixed by the story of Abraham and Isaac, a man who
seems obsessed with understanding Abraham, but whose energetic intel-
lectual strivings only show him more clearly how difficult, perhaps
impossible, the task is. Every time the man returns home from one
of his imaginative pilgrimages to Mount Moriah, he collapses “from
fatigue,” and says: “Surely no one was as great as Abraham. Who is
able to understand him?” (p. 11) The point of the variations clearly lies in
their differences from the Abraham story. The alternative “Abrahams”
are in some way, unlike the actual Abraham, understandable; in looking
at them we understand Abraham better in the sense that we know better
what faith is not.
“Tuning Up” is followed by “A Tribute to Abraham,” which tells the
story of the actual biblical Abraham as a person of faith, again intersper-
sing the tale with imaginative variations on the story. Johannes sets the
story in context, beginning with Abraham’s willingness to emigrate from
the land of his fathers to a foreign country and continuing with God’s
promise to make of Abraham’s descendants a mighty nation. This pro-
mise is one that Abraham believes despite having no child of Sarah his
wife until he is a hundred years old. This context makes the test to which
God puts Abraham by asking for the sacrifice of Isaac seem all the more
pointless and absurd. How can God’s pledge that Isaac will be the child
through which God fulfills his promise to Abraham be fulfilled if
Abraham is himself going to end Isaac’s life?
Several themes dominate Johannes’ version of the story. One is that
Abraham’s faith requires him to believe what is preposterous or absurd.
This is not only true for Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, but is
present from the very beginning of Abraham’s story. When he left the
land of his fathers, “he left one thing behind and took one thing with him.
He left his worldly understanding behind and took faith with him;
otherwise he undoubtedly would not have emigrated but surely would
have thought it preposterous” (p. 14). Note that there is a perspectival

Xi
 Introduction

dimension to this claim. Faith is said to be absurd from the perspective of

“worldly understanding,” and this leaves open the possibility that things
look different from the perspective of faith. Since Johannes himself
repeatedly says that he does not possess faith, this may explain why
Johannes has so much difficulty in understanding Abraham.
A second dimension of the story that Johannes emphasizes is that
Abraham’s faith is a “this-worldly” faith. Christian theologians tradi-
tionally have held that faith involves not only a belief that God exists, but
a belief that God is good, and hence can be trusted, following Hebrews
11:6: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever
would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those
who seek him.”? So Johannes emphasizes that Abraham believes in God’s
promises and has an expectation of happiness and joy, and for Johannes
God’s goodness must be understood in relation to our earthly, temporal
lives. Because he is a person of faith, Abraham gives us no “song of
sorrow” (p. 15). “Abraham believed and believed for this life” (p. 17).
He did not merely believe that after death he would experience God’s
goodness and be rewarded for his faithfulness, but that “he would grow
old in the land, honored by the people, blessed by posterity, forever
remembered in Isaac, his dearest one in life” (p. 17).
A faith that only pertains to some other world is not really faith at all,
says Johannes, “but only the remotest possibility of faith, which faintly
spies its object at the edge of the horizon yet is separated from it by a
yawning abyss within which despair plays its tricks” (p. 17). In some
ways this characterization of faith as something dimly and distantly
recognized fits Johannes himself. He explicitly says that his own “faith”
resembles this kind of “other-worldly faith,” and thus we may here have
an account of how Johannes can say some true things about faith, insofar
as he “faintly spies its object at the edge of the horizon” and yet in many
ways does not understand faith at all. As we shall see, what is distinctive
about Abraham as a person of faith is not his willingness to sacrifice Isaac
at God’s command. He shares that trait with several other characters who
lack faith. What is distinctive about Abraham’s faith shows itself in his
joyful ability to “receive Isaac back” and resume ordinary life with him,
trusting in God’s promises.

Bibl e, 3rd edn. (Oxf ord: Oxf ord Uni ver sit y Pres s, 2001 ), new revi sed
3 The New Oxford Annotated
standard version.

Xili
 Introduction

Faith and infinite resignation

The bulk of Fear and Trembling is devoted to three philosophical

“Problems” that Johannes poses, but before settling down to philosophi-
cal business, he provides a kind of extended preface to this section of the
book, which he entitles “A Preliminary Outpouring from the Heart” (in
Walsh’s free but insightful translation). This “outpouring” is dominated
by two ideal figures, whom Johannes designates as “the knight of infinite
resignation” and the “knight of faith.” Both of these knights, according
to Johannes, have made what he calls the “movement of infinite resigna-
tion.” Resignation is a willingness to sacrifice the whole of the finite
world, all that a person values in this life, for the sake of what Johannes
variously calls “the infinite,” “the eternal,” or “God.”
Johannes illustrates infinite resignation by picturing a young man
whose identity is completely concentrated in his love for a princess;
this youth has the strength “to concentrate the whole content of life
and the meaning of actuality into one single wish” (pp. 35—36). The love
turns out to be one that cannot be consummated in time, and this young
man shows himself to be a knight of infinite resignation by renouncing
his temporal hopes for happiness with the princess: instead,

the love for that princess became for him the expression of an
eternal love, assumed a religious character, was transfigured into a
love of the eternal being, which to be sure denied the fulfillment of
the love but still reconciled him once again in the eternal conscious-
ness of its validity in an eternal form that no actuality can take from
him. (pp. 36-37)
Infinite resignation then embodies a kind of other-worldly religious-
ness, a life-stance that Johannes himself claims to understand and even
to be able to realize. Johannes is “convinced that God is love,” but
God’s love for him is “incommensurable with the whole of actuality”
(p. 28). Asa result he does not relate to God in the details of his life: “I do
not trouble God with my petty cares” (p. 28). If Johannes himself had
been asked to sacrifice Isaac, he affirms that he would have been willing
to obey and make the sacrifice, but at the expense of any happiness
in time: “Now all is lost; God demands Isaac, I sacrifice him and with
him all my joy — yet God is love and continues to be that for me, for
in temporality God and I cannot converse, we have no language in

XIV
 Introduction

common” (p. 29). Johannes knows that some people might confuse his
“immense resignation” with faith, but he knows that such resignation 1s
just a substitute for faith. The difference between the two shows itself in
their respective post-trial attitudes towards Isaac:
What came easiest for Abraham would have been difficult for me —
once again to be joyful with Isaac! — for whoever has made the
infinite movement with all the infinity of his soul, of his own accord
and on his own responsibility, and cannot do more only keeps Isaac
with pain. (p. 29)

Infinite resignation by itself is a substitute for faith, and yet Johannes

also describes it as an ingredient in faith: “Infinite resignation is the last
stage before faith, so that whoever has not made this movement does not
have faith” (p. 39). Abraham has then made the movement of infinite
resignation, but resignation is not what is distinctive about his faith.
Rather that distinctiveness is found in the “second movement” by which
the person of faith, having resigned the whole of the finite, receives it all
back again. Abraham, “by a double movement ... had regained his
original condition and therefore received Isaac more joyfully than the
first time” (p. 29). Johannes describes this second movement as made
possible by a faith or belief* “by virtue of the absurd” (p. 30).
This joy in the finite makes it difficult to recognize the genuine
“knight of faith,” for in his external appearance he bears a suspicious
resemblance to a “bourgeois-philistine” who simply lives for the finite.
Johannes imagines such a knight of faith, and finds himself taken aback:
“Dear me! Is this the person, is it actually him? He looks just like a tax
collector” (p. 32). The knight of faith’s footing “is sturdy, belonging
entirely to finitude” (p. 32). Johannes pictures the knight of faith as
imagining a wonderful roast lamb dinner he believes his wife has made
for him; if she really has the dinner, “to see him eat would be an enviable
sight for distingui shed people and an inspiring one for the common man,
for his appetite is heartier than Esau’s” (p. 33). Yet if the wife does not
have the dinner, he is not disappoin ted. Somehow the knight of faith has
made “the movemen t of infinity” by “renounc ing everythin g,” and “yet
the finite tastes every bit as good to him as to someone who never knew
anything higher” (p. 34). In the same way, Abraham has given up Isaac

+ Danish has but one word, tro, for both English terms.

XV
 Introduction

to God and yet is able to recetve him back with joy; in fact he expected all
along to receive him back with joy.
What exactly does Abraham believe? What does he think as he rides to
Mount Moriah with Isaac and the knife? Commentators have found this a
difficult question. On the one hand, Abraham knows, says Johannes, that
Isaac is to die by his own hand: “at the decisive moment he must know
what he himself will do” (p. 105). Yet Johannes insists that Abraham
continues to believe “by virtue of the absurd” that God will not in fact
require Isaac of him: “He climbed the mountain, and even at the moment
when the knife gleamed he believed — that God would not demand
Isaac” (p. 29).
One could of course simply take this as implying that Abraham has a
contradictory belief, that he believes both that Isaac will die and that he
will not die. However, it is unclear what such a contradictory belief
would amount to or whether it would have any clear meaning at all.
Psychologically, the only way such a contradictory belief would be
possible would be if Abraham were self-deceived in some way, so that
he could have a belief without realizing that he had it and therefore also
could have a contradictory one. It is certain.that Johannes does not think
of Abraham in this way, for there would be nothing admirable about such
a confused, or self-deceptive, contradictory belief.
Does Abraham then believe that God will not in fact require him to
sacrifice Isaac? Has he guessed that this is “only a trial,” cleverly dis-
cerning that he must play his part and appear to be willing to do some-
thing that he knows he in fact will not have to do? We have just quoted
a passage in which Johannes does attribute to Abraham the belief that
God will not in fact demand Isaac of him. However, it cannot be right
to picture Abraham as someone who has cleverly figured out how to
play along with God’s game, so to speak. For one thing Johannes Says
explicitly that the rightness of Abraham’s act and its greatness cannot be a
function of the outcome (p. 55). Abraham, says Johannes, does not
know what the outcome will be, and thus we cannot emulate him if we
interpret the story in light of the result. When Abraham begins to act he
does not know the result, and if we wish to be people of faith we must put
ourselves in his shoes, so to speak, and also be willing to act without
knowing what the results of our actions will be. If we imagine Abraham
acting because he has craftily figured out what the outcome will be,
Johannes’ comments here make no sense.

XVI
 Introduction

Johannes actually goes to some pains to distinguish Abraham’s faith

from “worldly wisdom,” the calculations of human probability, which
even infinite resignation has already transcended (p. 31). Faith is not
merely a vague hope that this or that could possibly happen if something
else happens. For example, Johannes distinguishes faith from one of its
“caricatures,” which he describes as a “paltry hope” that says “One can’t
know what will happen, it still might be possible” (pp. 30-31).
Yet we should remember that caricatures do contain a likeness to what
they are caricaturing, and there is something in such vague hope that
bears a resemblance to faith. Johannes does picture Abraham as uncertain
about what is going to happen. Though Abraham definitely knows what
he is going to do, says Johannes, he also believes that “surely it will not
happen, or if it does, the Lord will give me a new Isaac, namely by virtue
of the absurd” (p. 101). What is the difference between this attitude on
the part of Abraham and what we might call a clever Abraham, a worldly
wise Abraham?
I think there are two differences and one similarity between the genuine
Abraham and a clever Abraham. The similarity has just been pointed
out: it lies in the fact that Abraham does indeed have some uncertainty
about what is going to happen. One might say that some of what he knows
and believes consists of conditionals. He knows, for example, that he will
sacrifice Isaac ifGod does not revoke the command. Obviously, this kind
of conditional belief or knowledge suggests that there is some possibility
that God could revoke the command and that Abraham is aware of this
possibility. To that extent such an attitude looks like the “paltry hope”
mentioned above. Yet there are two important differences.
The first difference lies in the ground of the hope. The “paltry hope”
that Johannes describes as a caricature of faith is grounded in human
experience, which gives us our sense of what is probable and what is
possible. Faith, however, has an entirely different ground. Johannes is
enigmatic in describing faith’s ground; perhaps since he lacks faith
himself he does not fully understand what this ground is. However,
one thing is clear. He consistently says that faith holds to various
possibilities “by virtue of the absurd,” and he is clear that someone
who looks at things from this viewpoint of the absurd has completely
rejected human calculative reasoning. On the contrary, faith requires a
clear-headed understanding that from the perspective of human experi-
ence the situation appears impossible. The knight of faith

XVII
 Introduction

therefore acknowledges the impossibility and at the same moment

believes the absurd, for if he imagines himself to have faith without
acknowledging the impossibility with all the passion of his soul and
with his whole heart, then he deceives himself... (p. 40)
Abraham’s mental state seems complex. Johannes says that throughout
the time of his testing, “he [Abraham] believed; he believed that God
would not demand Isaac of him, while he still was willing to sacrifice him
if it was demanded. Hé believed by virtue of the absurd, for human
calculation was out of the question. ...” (p. 29).
The second clear difference between faith and this “paltry hope” that
is its caricature is that faith has a kind of confidence and sureness that
worldly shrewdness lacks. At bottom calculative shrewdness in this case
would be irrational, for it amounts to believing something mi// happen
that one knows to be highly improbable merely on the grounds that it is
possible. Such a hope can never be free of doubts: However, Abraham,
according to Johannes, “believed and did not doubt” (p. 17). Is
Abraham’s belief also irrational? It certainly is from the viewpoint of
worldly wisdom, and Johannes often describes faith from that viewpoint
as believing what is “preposterous” (p. 17). Yet it also seems clear that
things do not appear that way to Abraham himself. I have already quoted
the passage in which Johannes says that when Abraham emigrated from
his native land, he “left his worldly understanding behind and took faith
with him; otherwise he undoubtedly would not have emigrated but
surely would have thought it preposterous” (p. 14). The Danish term
for preposterous here is urimeligt, which could also be translated as
“unreasonable.” If Abraham had not had faith, then he would have
seen his actions as unreasonable; with faith it is clearly a different matter.
But what exactly is Abraham confident of? I think the answer can
only be that Abraham is confident that God will keep his promises.
For Abraham, as for Johannes, God is love, God is good. However, for
Abraham, unlike Johannes, God’s goodness must translate into the con-
cerns of daily, temporal life. Abraham, says Johannes, had “received the
promise that in his seed all the generations of the world would be
blessed,” and Abraham believes that God will fulfill this promise in
Isaac, even if Abraham does not understand how God will do this or
even how it is possible (p. 14). This does not mean that Abraham knew for
sure that God would do what he in fact did, i.e. revoke the command to
sacrifice Isaac. Johannes pictures Abraham as a man who simply rests in

XVI
 Introduction

his confidence that God will fulfill the promise without knowing exactly
how this will come about.
Johannes does picture Abraham as thinking that it is possible that God
may not require him to make the sacrifice. However, he does not know
this will happen, and he does not count on it happening, but is willing to
go through with the sacrifice if that is required. Even if he does sacrifice
Isaac, he believes God will fulfill his promises. Humanly speaking, this 1s
indeed irrational, but Johannes makes it clear that Abraham does not
evaluate his actions from this perspective. In a clear allusion to the writer
of Hebrews’ reading of the story, who makes this point central in
Hebrews 11:17—19, Johannes says that Abraham could actually have
carried out the sacrifice, because Abraham believed that God could
raise Isaac from the dead, if that were necessary to fulfill God’s promise
that Isaac would be the father of many nations:
Let us go further. We let Isaac actually be sacrificed. Abraham
believed. He did not believe that he would be blessed one day in
the hereafter but that he would become blissfully happy here in the
world. God could give him a new Isaac, call the sacrificed one back
to life. He believed by virtue of the absurd, for all human calculation
had long since ceased. (pp. 29-30)

I conclude that Abraham does not, at the crucial time, hold the contra-
dictory belief that he will and will not sacrifice Isaac. Nor is his mental
state that of the shrewd person who has used experience to figure out the
out com e and adju st his beha vior acco rdin gly. Rath er, Abr aha m simp ly
rests unw aye rin gly in his trust in God’ s good ness ; he beli eves that God
will keep his prom ise to him in this life, even thou gh he does not kno w
exactly how God will do this, and realizes that from the perspective of
human experience it looks impossible.

The knight of faith vs. the tragic hero

After the “Pr eli min ary Out pou rin g” Joh ann es lau nch es int o the phi lo-
sophical meat of Fea r and Tre mbl ing , whi ch con sis ts of det ail ed dis cus -
sions of three philos oph ica l pro ble ms. The firs t pro ble m pos ed (Is the re a
teleological suspensio n of the eth ica l?) is clo sel y rel ate d to the sec ond
(Is there an abs olu te dut y to God ?). ‘To ask whe the r the re is suc h a thi ng
as a “teleologica l sus pen sio n of the eth ica l” is to ask whe the r “th e eth ica l”

XIX
 Introduction

represents the highest task for humans, or whether there might be

something, such as a relation to God that might involve “an absolute
duty to God,” that is “higher” than the ethical and for which the ethical
could rightly be suspended. Johannes argues that if Abraham’s willing-
ness to sacrifice Isaac is justifiable or admirable, then one must affirm
that there is indeed such a thing as a “teleological suspension of the
ethical” and that Abraham does indeed have an absolute duty to God that
trumps his ethical duty.
To understand Johannes’ discussion of these questions (as well as
his third problem) it is crucial to understand clearly what he means by
“the ethical,” since for some philosophers ethical duties are simply
defined as a person’s highest obligations, and the question of whether
there could be a higher obligation than the highest makes no sense. For
example, if someone accepts a “divine command” account of moral
obligations, which claims (in one version) that all moral obligations are
divine commands, and that whatever God commands thereby becomes a
moral obligation, then Abraham, if commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac,
has a moral or ethical obligation to do so.° The idea that his obligation to
obey God might be a higher obligation that would trump his ethical
obligation would on this view be nonsensical.
So what does Johannes mean by “the ethical?” Johannes often des-
cribes the ethical as identical with “the universal,” and this term suggests
to many a Kantian conception of the ethical, since Kant identifies moral
obligations with those imperatives that can be universalized: “The ethical
as such is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which
may be expressed from another angle by saying that it is in force at every
moment” (p. 46). However, this use of Kantian language is not decisive,
since Hegel also appropriates this language for his own purposes.
The differences between Kant and Hegel are crucial for understanding
what Johannes has in mind by “the ethical” when he denies that faith can
be understood in ethical terms. For Kant the fundamental precepts of
morality apply directly to individuals as rational beings; ultimately our

* I believe that Kierkegaard himself does accept this view of moral obligations and thus has a
different view of the ethical than does Johannes de silentio. See my Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love:
Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). For an extended
explanation and defense ofa divine command theory of moral obligation, see Robert Adams, Finite
and Infinite Goods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). I do not, by the way, make a
distinction between morality and ethics as some philosophers such as Hegel do, and I do not
believe that Kierkegaard accepts such a distinction either.

XX
 Introduction

knowledge of morality must be a priori and not derived from experience.

Each of us can grasp the “categorical imperative” by the use of reason and
apply it for himself or herself as a touchstone to evaluate concrete moral
duties. For Hegel, however, Kant’s categorical imperative is overly
formal and cannot guide human beings to act in particular situations.
Rather, for Hegel the demands of reason must become embodied in the
laws and customs of a people. The individual satisfies the demands of
reason not by legislating for himself or herself, but by recognizing and
affirming the rational character of the customs and laws of society. This
higher social ethic is called by Hegel Sittlichkeit, and it is Sittlichkeit that
Johannes has in mind when he affirms that if Abraham is not to be
condemned then there must be something higher than the ethical, some-
thing higher than the customs and laws of a society.
That Johannes has something like Hegelian Sittlichkeit in mind when
he speaks of the ethical is clear when one examines the actual character-
istics of the ethical. Those characteristics are best seen in the character
Johannes calls the “tragic hero,” who is described by him as the “beloved
son of ethics” (p. 99). Johannes gives three examples of the tragic hero
from antiquity, all of which bear a superficial resemblance to Abraham.
Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia so as to make it possible for the Greeks
to sail to Troy. Jephthah, in the Old Testament, in order to secure a
victory for ancient Israel, vows to sacrifice the first creature he sees when
he returns from the battle, and that creature turns out to be his daughter.
Brutus, an early consul of Rome, had his sons executed for treason when
they participated in a conspiracy to restore the former king.
Each one of these tragic heroes, says Johannes, “remains within the
ethical.” Each “lets an expression of the ethical have its telos in a higher
expression of the ethical” (p. 51). This is quite right from the point of
view of Hegelian ethics, which sees duties as linked to the social institu-
tions people participate in and views the state and the duties associated
with it as higher than the duties linked to participation in family life.
These tragic heroes, like Abraham, are called to sacrifice children, but the
sacrifices in their case are for the sake of a higher ethical end or telos,
which relativizes their familial duties. The sacrifices are justifiable and
understandable to others in society (a point Johannes discusses at length
in Problem 111).
One can see that for Johannes there is an historical and cultural
component to what is “ethical.” Ethical duties are not derived from

XX1
 Introduction

some timeless rational principle, as would be the case for Kant, but from
the concrete customs of a people. When Johannes says that “everyone”
can understand and approve of the actions of his tragic heroes, he clearly
means everyone in their respective societies. Jephthah’s actions were
consistent with the views of his society, understandable and justifiable
to his contemporaries, but one would have a difficult time finding an
ethicist today who would approve of someone executing a child because
that person had rashly promised to sacrifice the first creature he saw on
returning from a battle.
Some people (Kantians, for example) might think this is a very inade-
quate conception of the ethical life, and if it is an inadequate conception of
the ethical life, one might conclude that Fear and Trembling itself suffers
from a deep flaw. Perhaps if the primary purpose of the book were to
develop an account of ethics, this would be a flaw. However, as I have
already argued, Fear and Trembling is not a book about ethics; it is a book
about faith. The ethical life is discussed because Johannes thinks that his
contemporaries are likely to confuse what they thought of as ethics with
faith, and he thinks it is important that faith be distinguished from the
ethical life in this sense. If that is his major purpose, then it is logical that
Johannes should employ the conception of the ethical life that he believes
is pervasive in his own society, whether that view of the ethical life is
correct or not. This is so even if Kierkegaard himself holds a different view
of the true ethical life.
There is little doubt that Kierkegaard himself saw Hegel’s philosophy
as the dominant view among his intellectual peers, and that fact alone,
along with the many jabs at Hegel in Fear and Trembling, gives one reason
to think that Hegelianism might be the main target of the book. One
might object that this is an overestimation of the importance and per-
vasiveness of Hegelianism. However, Kierkegaard himself did not view
Hegelianism as merely an esoteric intellectual view; he saw it as an
intellectual expression of the kind of society he saw around him in
Europe, the society that he called “Christendom.” Kierkegaard tells us
that he saw his own mission as the “introduction of Christianity into
Christendom.”°

° See, for example, “The Single Individual”: Two Notes Concerning My Work as An Author, published
in The Point of View for My Work as an Author, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 102~26, especially 123—4, and also p. 42 in
The Point of View for My Work as an Author.

XXil
 Introduction

What does Kierkegaard mean by “Christendom” and why is it a

problem? Christendom, according to Kierkegaard, embodies the “enor-
mous illusion” that “we are all Christians” as a matter of course.’ In such
a situation being a Christian is simply identified with being a nice person,
a good Dane, or a good European, the kind of person who lives respec-
tably and fulfills his or her social roles and responsibilities. In short,
being a Christian is identified with someone who has actualized “the
ethical” in the sense of Sittlichkeit. Hegel and the Hegelians did in fact
see the cultures of western Europe as the culmination of the development
of “Absolute Spirit.” One could actually say that Hegel saw modern
Western culture as the coming of the kingdom of God on earth, and thus
the citizen who participated in its Sittlichkeit was also a member of that
kingdom.
The practical and exoteric complacency about Christian faith that
Kierkegaard sees in the society around him, where it is assumed that
every Dane is a Christian (unless that Dane happens to be Jewish), 1s thus
the perfect counterpart to the esoteric philosophy of Hegel. On this
Hegelian view, God is no longer a metaphysical abstraction but a con-
crete reality, actualized in human community. On such a view everyone
has faith, and this helps to explain Johannes’ barbs against the people of
his own day who have already achieved the highest tasks and thus need to
“oo further” than faith to something difficult and significant.
Hegel claims that his own philosophy is Christian, and his Danish
followers, such as the theologian H. L. Martensen, certainly claimed to
be Christians. As Christian thinkers they are of course conversant with
the biblical narrative about Abraham and see themselves as defenders of
biblical faith. Johannes’ argument leads to conclusions that put such
thinkers in a tight spot. Faith, he says, involves the paradox that “the
single individual is higher than the universal,” a view that is incompatible
with Sittlichkeit, which must judge an individual who violates social
norms as sinning (p. 47). What does Johannes mean in saying faith
involves such a “paradox?” He does not mean, I think, that faith requires
a belief in what is logically contradictory. Rather, faith requires a belief
that makes no sense from the point of view of “worldly wisdom,” a belief
that contradicts what appears to be the case. Normally, a person who
norms is just a bad person. Abraham may appear to
deviates from social

7 See The Point of View for My Work as an Author, pp. 42-3.

XXlll
 Introduction

be such a person, but, paradoxically, according to Johannes, actually

represents something higher than the ethical.
This creates a problem for the Hegelian who claims that “the uni-
versal” is the highest, but who also wants to continue to honor Abraham
as “the father of faith.” Johannes says that “if this [recognizing the single
individual as higher than the universal] is not faith, then Abraham is lost
and faith has never existed in the world precisely because it has always
existed” (p. 47). In other words, faith as a rare and admirable quality for
which Abraham serves as a notable exemplar does not exist because faith
has been identified with the commonplace quality of conforming to the
norms of one’s own society.
What is at stake here, theologically speaking, is the transcendence of
God. Is God a real person, capable of communicating to and having a
relation with God’s human creatures? Or is the term “God” simply a
symbol for what is regarded as “divine,” the highest and truest values
that lie at the heart of a particular social order? In Problem 11 Johannes
says that in the latter case, “if I say... that it is my duty to love God, lam
really only stating a tautology insofar as ‘God’ here is understood in an
entirely abstract sense as the divine, i.e. the universal, i.e. the duty”
(p. 59). This means that “God becomes an invisible vanishing point, an
impotent thought” (p. 59). If Abraham’s faith is to make any sense, God
must be a transcendent personal reality. A relationship with God must be
“the highest good” for the sake of which the socially assigned roles that
make up “the ethical” are relativized (teleologically suspended). There
can be duties to such a God that are not reducible to the duties given by
one’s human social relations.
That Johannes’ target is Christendom and its Hegelian rationalization
is confirmed by his discussions of Problems 1 and 11. Immediately after
raising the philosophical questions (Is there a teleological suspension of
the ethical? Is there an absolute duty to God?) he makes it clear that the
issues do not merely concern Abraham but have direct relevance to
Christian faith. In Problem 1 Johannes cites Mary the mother of Jesus
as an analogue to Abraham. Mary also receives and believes a message
from God, one that makes no sense to her contemporaries, and which
requires her to be “the single individual,” since “the angel appeared only
to Mary, and no one could understand her” (p. 57). In reality, Johannes
suggests that all of the followers of Jesus are essentially in Abraham’s
situation:

XXIV
 Introduction

One is moved, one returns to those beautiful times when sweet,

tender longings lead one to the goal of one’s desire, to see Christ
walking about in the promised land. One forgets the anxiety, the
distress, the paradox. Was it so easy a matter not to make a mistake?
Was it not appalling that this person who walked among others was
God? Was it not terrifying to sit down to eat with him? (p. 58)

Nor are things any different for Christians in Johannes’ day. To be a

Christian is to believe God communicates through a particular historical
individual, a message that always transcends Sittlichkeit and can come
into conflict with it, forcing the person of faith to be “the single indivi-
dual” who breaks with established ways of thinking. It is only “the
outcome, the eighteen centuries” that fraudulently gives the illusion
that faith is easier today than it was for Abraham.
That Johannes is using the figure of Abraham to send a message to
Christendom is even clearer in Problem 11, where he quickly moves from
Abraham to a discussion of Luke 14:26, which represents Jesus as saying:
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother
and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.” No sharper challenge to the reduction of
Christian faith to social and familial roles can be imagined, and we can
clearly see Abraham’s absolute devotion to God as an analogue to the
Christian’s devotion to God in Christ, a devotion that relativizes all
finite, earthly values.
Johannes is well aware of the dangers of a faith that is not subject to
society’s rules. He knows that some are “apprehensive of letting people
loose for fear that the worst will happen once the single individual deigns
to behave as the single individual” (p. 65). He acknowledges the dangers
of subjectivity, but he thinks there is a worse danger, namely that the
established social order will deify itself, eliminating the possibility that a
Socrates or a Jesus, a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, Jr., could, as the
single individual, challenge that social order in response to an authentic
message from God.
Johannes does acknowledge the need to establish criteria to help
us distinguish the genuine knight of faith from the fanatic (p. 65).
Commentators will disagree about the adequacy of the criteria he provides,
but I believe at least one of them is valuable. The fanatic, according to
Johannes, will be a “sectarian” who tries to form a party or faction to
buttress his views. (Today we might go beyond “sectarian” and think of

XXV
 Introduction

this fanatic as someone who might want to form a terrorist cell.) The
genuine person of faith is, according to Johannes, “a witness, never a
teacher” (p. 70). I think he means by this that a genuine person of faith
will rely on the power of his or her moral example, and would never try to
impose any views on others in a doctrinaire or manipulative way, much less
employ violence to force others to conform to his or her way of thinking.®

Why Abraham cannot explain his action

Problem 111 poses the question: “Was it ethically defensible of Abraham

to conceal his undertaking from Sarah, from Eliezer, from Isaac?”
Johannes’ answer to the question seems complex. Abraham, as Johannes
tells the story, does not really explain what he is doing to anyone, including
those such as Sarah and Isaac, who surely have a legitimate interest in the
case. Is this silence justifiable or does it imply that there is something
morally dubious about Abraham’s actions?
Johannes argues that Abraham’s actions are not ethically justifiable for
reasons that are now clear. For Johannes language and reasoning are
social activities. A person’s ability to explain and justify an action
requires socially accepted standards of what counts as right and what
counts as rational. Insofar as Abraham’s actions are rooted in a word from
God that is not mediated through society, Abraham cannot possibly
explain or justify his actions. He does not speak, not because he wishes
to hide his actions; he would like nothing better than to explain himself,
to gain relief by appealing to “the universal.” He does not speak because
regardless of what he says he cannot make himself understood, for if he
could his actions would be an expression of Sittlichkeit after all. Abraham
may be justified if there is indeed such a thing as faith, but he is not
justified as an ethical figure (in Johannes’ sense) and he cannot justify
himself by appealing to existing social standards.
In Problem 111 Johannes gives numerous examples of mythical and
literary figures who in some way shed light on Abraham, discussing such
legends as Agnes and the merman, Faust, other literary examples such as

* For a powerful example of someone who uses the Abraham and Isaac story in the cause of
peace,
see Wilfred Owen’s poem, “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young.” Owen was a British
poet
who wrote during World War 1, and the poem can be found in The Poems of Wilfred
Owen, ed. Jon
Stallworthy (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1985), p. 151. I thank Sylvia Walsh for
calling
my attention to this poem.

XXV1
 Introduction

Shakespeare’s Gloucester (Richard III), and many others besides. Partly

Johannes uses these figures once again to clarify what faith is by distin-
guishing it from look-alikes. However, he also uses them to open up a
different issue altogether: why is the figure of Abraham important any-
way? Why is it so vital to safeguard the possibility of faith as something
distinct from the ethical? Earlier in the book he had already hinted at this
theme. If Abraham had been an ethical figure, a tragic hero who killed
himself rather than sacrifice Isaac, then “he would have been admired in
the world, and his name would not be forgotten; but it is one thing to be
admired, another to become a guiding star that rescues the anguished”
(pp. 17-18). Who are the anguished ones, and how is it that Abraham’s
example can save them?
In his discussion of Problem 111 Johannes pictures several anguished
souls. One is the merman taken from the legend of Agnes and the
merman. Johannes varies the story by giving “the merman a human
consciousness” and he asks us to “let his being a merman denote a
human pre-existence in whose consequences his life was ensnared”
(p. 84). The merman suffers because of his sin, which has consequences
that cannot simply be undone and ignored, and which block the merman
from simply “following the universal” and getting married. If the mer-
man is to have Agnes, he must, like Abraham, “have recourse to the
paradox. For when the single individual by his guilt has come outside the
universal, he can only return to it by virtue of having come as the single
individual into an absolute relation to the absolute” (p. 86).
Johannes underscores this observation by going on to “make an obser-
vation by which I say more than is said at any point previously” (p. 86).
The sentences that follow have been regarded by more than one com-
mentator as the key to understanding the whole book:

Sin is not the first immediacy; sin is a later immediacy. In sin the
single individual is already higher, in the direction of the demonic
paradox, than the universal, because it is a contradiction for the
universal to want to require itself of one who lacks the necessary
condition ... An ethics that ignores sin is an altogether futile
discipline, but if it asserts sin, then it is for that very reason beyond
itself. (p. 86)

Johannes further emphasizes the point by attaching a footnote, in which

he affirms that in his discussion of Abraham he has

XXVli
 Introduction

deliberately avoided any reference to the question of sin and its

reality ... As soon as sin is introduced, ethics runs aground precisely
upon repentance, for repentance is the highest ethical expression but
precisely as such the deepest ethical self-contradiction. (p. 86)
Johannes seems to suggest that for some people the path to authentic
selfhood lies in achieving the universal, taking up the social roles, and
fulfilling the social duties allotted to them. However, there are others,
such as the merman, who are “demonic” figures for whom “normal life”
is not an option. Shakespeare’s Gloucester is interpreted by Johannes as
one of these people who simply are unable to tread the well-worn paths of
“the ethical.” Gloucester is a demonic figure who burns with resentment
at the pity extended to him for his physical deformity, and according to
Johannes, “Natures like Gloucester’s cannot be saved by mediating them
into an idea of society. Ethics really only makes a fool of them” (p. 93).
Anguished people like this are doomed if there is no other path to
authentic selfhood than to take up “my station and its duties,” to use
PF. H. Bradley’s apt summation of Sittlchkeit.
Who are these anguished people? Are they rare exceptions? People like
Gloucester are undoubtedly exceptional. Johannes says explicitly that
such people have been “placed outside the universal by nature or histor-
ical circumstance,” and that this factor, which is “the beginning of the
demonic,” is one for which the individual “is not personally to blame”
(p. 93). However, there is one important respect in which such people
resemble us all, at least from the perspective of Christianity. From the
perspective of orthodox Christian theology, sin is the universal human
condition, not a status occupied by a few people who are excluded from
society. Sin, according to Johannes, is also a condition that places us
“outside the universal,” though it is not a condition in which there is no
personal blame. Kierkegaard’s next book after Fear and Trembling is,
significantly, The Concept of Anxiety, an exploration of the meaning of
original sin and its psychological preconditions.
If original sin accurately describes the human condition, then no human
being becomes an authentic self merely by conforming to Szttlichkeit. All
of us may not be demonic figures, but all of us are in some ways among
“the anguished ones” for whom Abraham may provide a guiding star.
The highest good for every individual is a relation to God, a relation
made possible by faith and which in turn makes possible a healing
transformation of the person of faith. Johannes, we must remember, is

XXVIII
 Introduction

not himself a person of faith and does not write from an explicitly Christian
perspective, and so we get no more from him than these tantalizing obser-
vations. But it seems highly plausible that for Kierkegaard himself, all of us
should see ourselves as like the merman and Gloucester in one important
respect. All of us are in need of a healing of self that can only be made
possible by faith, in which, like Abraham, an individual has “an absolute
relation to the absolute” (p. 48). We are not all predisposed by natural or
historical circumstances to become demonic, but we are, according to the
doctrine of original sin, in some way predisposed to lose our way as
human beings.
The general thrust of Protestant liberal thought from Kant to Hegel
had been to understand genuine religious faith in ethical terms. Kant
himself had closely linked true religious faith to the ethical life: “Apart
from a good life-conduct, anything which the human being supposes that he
can do to become well-pleasing to God is mere religious delusion and counter-
feit service of God.”? When Kantian ethics is converted by Hegel to
Sittlichkeit then the equation of faith with the ethical sets the stage for
the triumph of Christendom and the identification of religious faith with
social conformism.
Kierkegaard was convinced that the reduction of the life of faith to the
ethical life was disastrous, because it eliminated any solution to the funda-
mental problem posed by the ethical life: the problem of guilt. Kant had
himself posed the issue as sharply as anyone else in Religion within the
Boundaries of Mere Reason, but it is by no means clear that he had solved
it.'° Kierkegaard thinks that genuine faith requires an individual relation
with God that is personally transformative. Each person can become “the
single individual” who can become an authentic self by responding in
faith to God’s call on that individual. Such a faith is not reducible to
fulfilling one’s social roles but can be the basis of a renewal of the self and
those social institutions. The person who has experienced this kind of
transformative faith will feel no need to “go further” than faith.
A faith in a transcendent God of course raises many important philo-
sophical questions. Faith that such a God has become incarnate as a

gion with in the Boun dart es of Mere Reas on, ed. and trans . Alle n Wood and
° Immanuel Kant , Reli
rge Di Giov anni , with an intr oduc tion by Robe rt Mer rih ew Ada ms (Ca mbr idg e: Cambridge
Geo
University Press, 1998), p. 166 (emphasis Kant’s).
l Gap (Oxf ord: Oxfo rd Univ ersi ty Pres s, 1996 ), for a stro ng arg ume nt
'© See John Hare, The Mora
cs itsel f dem and s a solu tion to the pro ble m of guilt beyo nd that offe red by Kant.
that Kantian ethi

XX1X
 Introduction

particular human being raises even more questions. Most of these ques-
tions are not resolved in Fear and Trembling. But then Johannes does
not want to make faith easy for us. However, if we do not accurately
understand the nature of faith, those questions cannot even be posed.
Difficulties that are not recognized cannot be dealt with.
Johannes de silentio is trying to clarify the nature of faith. In so doing,
he doubtless contributes to what Kierkegaard himself tried to achieve in
his pseudonymous literature, a goal that I think is reflected in this famous
comment about the pseudonymous authors:
[Their importance ... unconditionally does not consist in making
any new proposal, some unheard-of discovery, or in founding a new
party and wanting to go further, but precisely in the opposite, in
wanting to have no importance, ... in wanting, ... once again to
read through solo, if possible in a more inward way, the original text
of individual human existence-relationships, the old familiar text
handed down from the fathers."'

C. Stephen Evans

'" Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 629-30.

XXX
 Chronology

1813 Seren Kierkegaard is born in Copenhagen

1830 Enters the University of Copenhagen as a theology student
1838 Publishes his first book, From the Papers of One Still Living, a
critique of Hans Christian Andersen as a novelist
1840 Becomes engaged to Regine Olsen but breaks the engagement
the next year
1841 Successfully defends his doctoral thesis, The Concept of Irony with
Constant Reference to Socrates, and goes to Berlin to hear Schelling
lecture, returning the following year
1843 Publishes the pseudonymous Either/Or in two volumes, the first
book in what he will later call his “authorship,” and also begins to
publish a series of Upbuilding Discourses under his own name.
Either/ Or is followed by Repetition and Fear and Trembling
1844 Publishes Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, and
Prefaces
1845 Publishes Stages on Life’s Way pseudonymously and Three
Discourses on Imagined Occasions under his own name
1846 Publishes Concluding Unscientific Postscript, with the thought
that he would complete his authorship and take a pastorate, and
also Two Ages: A Literary Review. He also becomes embroiled in
a controversy with a satirical magazine, The Corsair, and decides
that he must remain at his literary “post” rather than become a
pastor. He also works on The Book on Adler, a work that reflects
on the case ofa Danish pastor deposed for claiming to have
received a revelation from God, but Kierkegaard never

XXXI
 Chronology

publishes his work, though sections are later incorporated into

Two Ethical-Religious Essays
1847 Publishes Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits and Works of
Love
1848 Publishes Christian Discourses and The Crisis and a Crisis in the
Life of an Actress. He completes The Point of View for My Work as
an Author, but the work is only published posthumously
1849 Publishes The Sickness unto Death, Two Ethical-Religious Essays,
and two books of religious discourses: The Lily in the Field and the
Bird of the Air and Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays
1850 Publishes Practice in Christianity and An Upbuilding Discourse
1851 Publishes Tivo Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, On My
Work as an Author, and For Self-Examination. Judge for Yourself!
is written but not published until after his death
1854 Begins a public, polemical attack on the Danish Lutheran Church
as a state church, first waged in The Fatherland, and later, in a
periodical Kierkegaard himself published, The Moment
1855 Publishes What Christ Judges of Official Christianity and The
Changelessness of God. In the midst of his controversial attack on
the church, collapses on the street and dies in a hospital a few
weeks later on November 11

XXXII
 Further reading

Three editions of Kierkegaard’s collected works (Samlede Verker) have

been produced in Denmark. The first edition (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1g01~7) 1s the basis for this translation. This Danish edition is very
valuable, since its pagination is included in the margins of the English
language collected edition, Kierkegaard’s Writings, edited by Howard V.
Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978-2000). The second
edition of the Samlede Verker (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1920-36) is
highly regarded as accurate, but is printed in a gothic font that many
find difficult to read. The third edition (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
1962-4) is the least accurate of the three, but is the basis of an electronic
edition compiled by Alastair McKinnon that is available in the Past
Masters series from InteLex.
Kierkegaard’s surviving papers and journals were published in a
multi-volume Danish edition in Soren Kierkegaards Papirer
(Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968-78). Both the published writings and
the journals and papers are currently being made available in a massive
new edition, Soren Kierkegaards Skrifter (55 vols., including commentary
volumes) that is expected to be completed in 2009 by Gad Publishers in
Copenhagen. An electronic version of this edition will also be produced.
Several selections from the journals are available in English. The most
complete is Soren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. and trans.
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana
University Press, 1967-78). An electronic version of this edition is also
available in the InteLex Past Masters series.
Prior to this volume, Fear and Trembling has been translated into
English four times. The earliest, by Robert Payne (Oxford: Oxford

XXX
 Further reading

University Press, 1939), is a‘very free translation with no index. Walter

Lowrie’s translation, published with The Sickness unto Death (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1941) contains some inaccuracies and archa-
isms, but was the version that introduced Kierkegaard to many English
language readers. Other current versions include the Kierkegaard’s
Writings edition, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) and Alastair Hannay’s
translation (London, UK: Penguin, 1985).
Perhaps the best single volume introduction to Kierkegaard’s life and
thought is Julia Watkin’s Kierkegaard (London: Geoffrey Chapman,
1997). A spirited attempt to engage the contemporary relevance of
Kierkegaard’s thought can be found in John Douglas Mullen,
Kierkegaard’s Philosophy: Self-Deception and Cowardice in the Present
Age (New York: New American Library, 1988).
The secondary literature on Fear and Trembling in English is large,
diverse, and uneven in quality. Recently, John Lippitt has published a
Guidebook to Kierkegaard and “Fear and Trembling” (London: Routledge,
2003), which contains an extended discussion of many controversial
issues in the text and a helpful (though by no means complete) biblio-
graphy. Edward Mooney has published Knights of Faith and Resignation:
Reading Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1991), a thoughtful study that highlights
connections between the work and contemporary ethical discussions,
including secular analogies to the dilemma faced by Abraham in the
biblical story.
Robert Perkins has edited two excellent volumes of critical essays
about Fear and Trembling: Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling”: Critical
Appraisals (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1981);
and International Kierkegaard Commentary: “Fear and Trembling” and
“Repetition” (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1993). The latter is
vol. vi in the International Kierkegaard Commentary series edited by
Perkins.
From the large number of scholarly articles and book chapters devoted
to Fear and Trembling, 1 will recommend just a few (in addition to the
articles contained in the Perkins volumes noted above). C. Stephen Evans,
“ “The Ethical’ in Fear and Trembling”, pp. 61-84 in Kierkegaard’s Ethic
of
Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), expands and defends several of the claims made
in the

XXXIV
 Further reading

introduction to this volume. Gene Outka, “Religious and Moral Duty:

Notes on Fear and Trembling”, in Gene Outka and John P. Reeder, Jr.
(eds.), Religion and Morality (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1973), 1s a
clear-headed attempt to look at the relation between ethics and religion.
Ronald Green’s “Enough is Enough! Fear and Trembling Is Not about
Ethics” (Journal of Religious Ethics, 21(1993), 191-209) has a ttle that
accurately captures the article’s thesis. Louis Mackey’s “The View from
Pisgah: A Reading of Fear and Trembling,” in Josiah Thompson (ed.),
Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1972), focuses on the literary dimension of the work. Finally, two articles by
Philip Quinn, who would have been the editor of this volume were it not
for his untimely death, should be noted: “Agamemnon and Abraham: the
Tragic Dilemma of Kierkegaard’s ‘Knight of Faith’” (Journal of Literature
and Theology, 4, 2(1990), 181-93); and “Moral Obligation, Religious
Demand, and Practical Conflict,” pp. 195-212 in Robert Audi and
William Wainwright (eds.), Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral
Commitment (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986). Philip Quinn
did a great deal to connect the study of Kierkegaard to contemporary analytic
philosophy and his voice is greatly missed.

C. Stephen Evans

XXXV
 Note on the translation

This translation is based on the text of Frygt og Beven in the first Danish
collected edition of Kierkegaard’s works, Soren Kierkegaards Samlede
Verker, 1-xiv, ed. A.H. Drachmann, J.L. Heiberg and H.O. Lange
(Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, 1901-6), 11,
pp. 53-168. In preparing the translation and notes I have consulted
previous English translations and notes by Robert Payne (London:
Oxford University Press, 1939), Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, [1941] 1954), Howard V. Hong and EdH. na Hong
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), and Alastair Hannay
(London: Penguin, 1985), as well as the text and commentary volumes
in Soren Kierkegaards Skrifter, ed. Niels Jorgen Cappelorn, Joakim Garff,
Johnny Kondrup, Alastair McKinnon, and Finn Hauberg Mortensen
(Copenhagen: Soren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret and Gads Forlag,
1997—), vol. 4, pp. 97-210, and commentary vol. K4, pp. 101-67. I am
grateful to Julia Watkin (now deceased), C. Stephen Evans, Marilyn G.
Piety, and Robert L. Perkins for reading the manuscript and offering
helpful suggestions; to Bruce H. Kirmmse for his advice on several items
of translation; to Celine Léon for checking the translations of Latin
phrases in the text; and to Robert L. Perkins for assistance with the
translation of German terms and passages in the text. Responsibility for
the final text, however, rests solely with the translator. Thanks are due
also to Susan Connell Derryberry, Supervisor of the Stetson University
Library Interlibrary Loan Services, for assistance in obtaining books
relating to the project, and to Cynthia Wales Lund, Special Collections
Librarian at the Howard V. and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library of
St. Olaf College, for providing office space and access to the special

XXXVI
 Note on the translation

collections of the library to check works cited by Kierkegaard in the

text. Greek terms and passages in the text appear as they are in the first
Danish collected edition, that is, generally without breathing and accent
marks. Readers should note that all numbered footnotes are the trans-
lators’, while the lettered footnotes are by Kierkegaard.

Sylvia Walsh

XXXVI
FEAR AND TREMBLING

A Dialectical Lyric
by
Johannes de silentio
 What Tarquin the Proud communicated in his garden
with the beheaded poppies was understood
by the son but not by the messenger.
Hamann’

" Quoted in German from Johann Georg Hamann (1730-88), Hamann’s Schriften, 1-vi11, ed.
Friedrich Roth (Berlin: Bey G. Reimer, 1821-43), 111, 190. See Katalog over Soren Kierkegaards
Bibliotek (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1957), nos. 536-44 (hereafter cited by the sighum KSKB
followed by entry number). The son of Tarquin the Proud (?-495? BCE), seventh and last king of
Rome, sent a message to his father asking how to treat the rulers of Gabii, a city with which the king
was at war and where his son had contrived to become a military leader. Distrusting the messenger,
the king replied by taking him to the royal garden and cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies
with his cane, indicating that the son should put the leading men of Gabii to death.
 Preface

Not only in the commercial world but in the realm of ideas as well, our
age is holding a veritable clearance sale.’ Everything is had so dirt cheap
that it is doubtful whether in the end anyone will bid. Every speculative
score-keeper who conscientiously keeps account of the momentous
march of modern philosophy, every lecturer, tutor, student, every out-
sider and insider in philosophy does not stop at doubting everything but
goes further.” Perhaps it would be inappropriate and untimely to ask
them where they are actually going, but it is surely polite and modest to
take it for granted that they have doubted everything, since otherwise it
would certainly be peculiar to say that they went further. All of them then
have made this preliminary movement, and presumably so easily that
they do not find it necessary to drop a hint about how, for not even the
one who anxiously and worriedly sought a little enlightenment found so
much as an instructive tip or a little dietary prescription on how to
conduct oneself under this enormous task. “But Descartes has done
it, hasn’t he?” Descartes,* a venerable, humble, honest thinker whose
writings surely no one can read without the deepest emotion, has done
what he has said and said what he has done. Alas! Alas! Alas! That is a

ein wirklicher Ausverkauf.

* Probably an allusion to the Danish Hegelian philosophers, most notably Hans Lassen Martensen
(1808-1884), who sought to go beyond not only previous philosophers in transcending faith as well
as doubt in philosophy but also beyond their mentor, the German philosopher Georg Wilhem
Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), in speculative system building. On Kierkegaard’s relation to the
Danish Hegelians, see Jon Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 50-69, 307-10.
3. The French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) is widely recognized as the father of modern
European philosophy.
 Fear and Trembling

great rarity in our age! As he himself reiterates often enough, Descartes

did not doubt with respect to faith. (“At the same time we should
remember, as noted earlier, that the natural light is to be trusted only
to the extent that it is compatible with divine revelation . .. But above all
else we must impress on our memory the overriding rule that whatever
God has revealed to us must be accepted as more certain than anything
else. And although the light of reason may, with the utmost clarity
and evidence, appear to suggest something different, we must still put
our entire faith in divine authority rather than in our own judgment.”
Principles of Philosophy, 1, § 28 and § 76).* Descartes has not yelled “Fire!”
and made it a duty for everyone to doubt, for he was a quiet, solitary
thinker, not a bellowing street watchman. He has modestly confessed that
his method had importance only for himself and was based partly on his
earlier distorted knowledge. (“My present aim, then, is not to teach the
method which everyone must follow in order to direct his reason cor-
rectly, but only to reveal how I have tried to direct my own ... But as
soon as I had completed the course of study at the end of which one is
normally admitted to the ranks of the learned, I completely changed
my opinion. For I found myself beset by so many doubts and errors that
I came to think I had gained nothing from my attempts to become
educated but increasing recognition of my ignorance.” Discourse on
Method, pp. 2 and 3).° — What those ancient Greeks, who also surely
understood a little about philosophy, assumed to be a task for a whole
lifetime because proficiency in doubting is not achieved in a matter of
days and weeks; what was achieved by the old veteran polemicist,° who
had preserved the equilibrium of doubt through all specious arguments,
bravely denied certainty of the senses and of thought, and incorruptibly
defied the anxiety of self-love and the innuendos of sympathy — with that
everyone in our age begins.
In our age nobody stops at faith but goes further. To ask where they
are going would perhaps be foolhardy; however, it is surely a sign of
courtesy and good breeding for me to assume that everyone has faith,

* Quoted in Latin from Renati Des-Cartes Opera philosophica. Editio ultima (Am
sterdam: Blaviana,
1685), Vi11, 23. See KSKB 473. Translation from The Philosophical Writings
of Descartes, 1-11,
trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Ca
mbridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985), 1, pp. 202~3 and 22r.
> Tbid., 11, pp. 112, 113.
° An ambiguous reference, probably to an early Greek skeptic such as Car
neades (215-129 BCE),
who distrusted the intellect as well as the senses.
 Preface

since otherwise it would be peculiar to talk of going further. In those

olden days it was different; then faith was a lifelong task because it was
assumed that proficiency in believing is not achieved in either days or
weeks. When the tried and tested oldster drew near to his end, having
fought the good fight and kept the faith,’ his heart was still young enough
not to have forgotten that fear and trembling which disciplined the youth
and was well-controlled by the man but is not entirely outgrown by any
person — except insofar as one succeeds in going further as soon as
possible. Where those venerable figures arrived, there everyone in our
age begins in order to go further.
The present writer is not at all a philosopher; he has not understood
the System,® whether it exists or whether it is finished. He already has
enough for his weak head in the thought of what huge heads everyone in
our age must have since everyone has such huge thoughts. Even if one
were able to convert the whole content of faith into conceptual form, it
does not follow that one has comprehended faith, comprehended how one
entered into it or how it entered into one. The present writer is not at all a
philosopher; he is, poetically and tastefully expressed,’ a free-lancer’®
who neither writes the System nor makes promises'' about the System,
who neither swears by the System nor pledges himself to the System. He
writes because for him it is a luxury that becomes all the more enjoyable
and conspicuous the fewer who buy and read what he writes. He easily
foresees his fate in an age when passion has been abandoned in order
to serve scholarship, in an age when an author who wants readers must
take care to write in such a way that his work can be conveniently
skimmed through during the after-dinner nap, and take care to fashion
his outer appearance in likeness to that polite garden apprentice in The
Advertiser,"” who with hat in hand and good references from the place

7 2 Timothy 4:7.
’ The Hegelian philosophical system, the object of much irony, criticism, and ridicule in
Kierkegaard’s writings.
9 poetice et eleganter. '° Extra-Skriver.
'' Probably an allusion to the Danish Hegelian philosophers Rasmus Nielsen (1809-1884) and Johan
Ludvig Heiberg (1791-1860), whose unfulfilled promises of a logical system of philosophy were
satirized by Kierkegaard in his journals. See Soren Kierkegaards Papirer, 2nd enlarged edn.,
1-xv1, ed. Niels Thulstrup (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968-78), v B 47.7; 49.5 (hereafter cited by
the siglum SKP followed by volume, group, and entry number). See also Stewart, Kierkegaard’s
Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, pp. 384-5.
'2 An abbreviated reference to the local newspaper, Berlingske politiske og Avertissements-Tidende,
which ran such an advertisement in 1843. See SKP 1v A 88, editors’ note.
 Fear and Trembling

where he was last employed recommends himself to an esteemed public.

He foresees his fate of being totally ignored; he has a frightful presenti-
ment that zealous criticism will put him through the mill many times.
He dreads what is even more frightful, that one or another enterprising
summarizer, a paragraph-gobbler (who in order to save scholarship is
always willing to do to the writings of others what Trop’? magnani-
mously did with The Destruction of the Human Race in order “to save good
taste”), will cut him up into paragraphs and do it with the same inflex-
ibility as the man who, in service to the system of punctuation, divided
his discourse by counting the words so that there were exactly 50 words
to a period and 35 to a semicolon. — I prostrate myself in deepest
deference before every systematic snooper: “This is not the System, it
does not have the least thing to do with the System. I invoke all the best
upon the System and upon the Danish investors in this omnibus, for it is
not likely to become a tower.'* I wish them one and all good luck and
prosperity.”

Respectfully,
Johannes de silentio’®

'S A character in J. L. Heiberg’s vaudeville play, The Reviewer and the Beast, who writes a tragedy
and then tears it in two, saying: “If it costs no more to save good taste, why shouldn’t we
do it then?” See KSKB 1553-9: J. L. Heibergs Samlede Skrifier. Skuespil, 1-v 11 (Copenhagen:
J.S. Schubothes, 1833-41), 111, Recensenten og dyret, Act 1, sc. Tapazoin
‘+ Cf, Luke 14:28-30. Also probably another “dig” at the unfinished Hegelian philosophical system.
'S John of silence, the pseudonymous author of the text, is an imaginary figure who claims to be
neither a poet nor a philosopher but nevertheless writes in a lyrical and dialectical fashion, as
indicated in the subtitle of the work.
 Tuning Up

There was once a man who as a child had heard that beautiful story about
how God tested’ Abraham and how he withstood the test,” kept the faith,
and received a son a second time contrary to expectation. When the man
became older, he read the same story with even greater admiration, for
life had separated what had been united in the child’s pious simplicity.
Indeed, the older he became, the more often his thoughts turned to that
story; his enthusiasm became stronger and stronger, and yet he could
understand the story less and less. Finally he forgot everything else
because of it; his soul had only one wish, to see Abraham, one longing,
to have been a witness to that event. His desire was not to see the beautiful
regions of the Far East, not the earthly splendor of the Promised Land,°
not that god-fearing married couple whose old age God had blessed,* not
the venerable figure of the aged patriarch, not the vigorous youth of Isaac
bestowed by God — it would not have mattered to him if the same thing
had taken place on a barren heath. His longing was to accompany them on
the three day journey when Abraham rode with sorrow before him and
Isaac by his side. His wish was to be present at the hour when Abraham
lifted up his eyes and saw Mount Moriah in the distance, the hour he left
the asses behind and went up the mountain alone with Isaac, for what

' fristede.
2 Fristelsen. See Genesis 22:1-19. The Danish word Fristelse literally means “temptation” and is
used in two senses in this text. The first corresponds to the common biblical rendering of it as a test
or trial to which one is subjected by God, as in the present instance; the second connotes the
ordinary meaning associated with the term, as in being attracted or lured to do something base,
wrong, or unethical.
3 See Genesis 12:1-2; 17:8. + Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-3.
 Fear and Trembling

engrossed him was not the‘artistic weave of the imagination but the
shudder of the thought.
That man was not a thinker, he felt no need to go beyond faith; it
seemed to him that it must be the greatest glory to be remembered as its
father and an enviable lot to possess faith, even if no one knew it.
That man was not a learned exegete, he did not know Hebrew; had he
known Hebrew, then perhaps he would easily have understood the story
and Abraham.

“And God tested Abraham and said to him, take Isaac, your only son,
whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a
burnt offering upon a mountain that I will show you.”*
5

It was an early morning; Abraham rose early, had the asses saddled, and
left his tent, taking Isaac with him, but Sarah looked out the window after
them as they went down through the valley® until she could see them no
more. They rode silently for three days. On the morning of the fourth
day Abraham still did not say a word but lifted up his eyes and saw
Mount Moriah in the distance. He left the servant boys behind and went
up to the mountain alone, leading Isaac by the hand. But Abraham said
to himself: “I will not conceal from Isaac where this path is taking him.”
He stood still and laid his hand upon Isaac’s head for a blessing, and Isaac
bowed to receive it. And Abraham’s countenance was paternal, his
gaze was gentle, his speech exhortatory. But Isaac could not understand
him, his soul could not be uplifted; he embraced Abraham’s knees, he
pleaded at his feet, he begged for his young life, for his fair hopes, he
recalled the joy in Abraham’s house, he recalled the sorrow and the
solitude. Then Abraham raised the boy up and walked along holding
his hand, and his words were full of comfort and exhortation. But Isaac
could not understand him. He climbed Mount Moriah, but Isaac under-
stood him not. Then he turned away from Isaac a moment, but when
Isaac saw Abraham’s countenance again it was changed, his eyes were

> A conflated rendering of Genesis 22:1-2.

° Cf. Judith 10:10 in The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha/Deuteronomical Books, 3rd
edn. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) or The New English Bible with the Apocrypha
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). See also SKP 3:3822.

8
 Tuning Up

wild, his appearance a fright to behold. He seized Isaac by the chest,

threw him to the ground, and said: “Foolish boy, do you believe that
I am your father? I am an idolater. Do you believe this is God’s com-
mand? No, it is my desire.” Then Isaac trembled and cried out in his
anguish: “God in heaven have mercy on me, God of Abraham have
mercy on me; if I have no father on earth, then you be my father!”
But Abraham murmured under his breath to himself: “Lord in heaven,
I thank you; it is surely better for him to believe | am a monster than to
lose faith in you.”

When the child is to be weaned, the mother blackens her breast, for it
would indeed be a shame for the breast to look delightful when the child
must not have it. So the child believes that the breast has changed, but the
mother is the same, her gaze is loving and tender as always. Fortunate the
one who did not need more frightful measures to wean the child!

Il

It was an early morning; Abraham rose early, he embraced Sarah, the

bride of his old age, and Sarah kissed Isaac, who took away her
disgrace,’ who was her pride, her hope for all generations. Then
they rode silently along the way, and Abraham’s eyes were fastened
upon the ground until the fourth day when he lifted up his eyes and
saw Mount Moriah far away, but his eyes turned again towards the
ground. Silently he arranged the firewood and bound Isaac, silently
he drew the knife; then he saw the ram that God had chosen. He
sacr ific ed it and went home . — — — From that day on Abra ham
became old; he coul d not forge t that God had dema nded this of
him. Isaac flou rish ed as befor e, but Abra ham’ s eyes were dark ened ,
he saw joy no more.

Wh en the chi ld has gro wn lar ger and is to be wea ned , the mot her
covers her bre ast in a mai den ly man ner so the chi ld no lon ger has
a mother. For tun ate the chi ld who did not lose its mot her in som e
other way!

7 Childlessness.
 Fear and Trembling

II

It was an early morning; Abraham rose early, he kissed Sarah, the young
mother, and Sarah kissed Isaac, her delight, her joy at all times. And
Abraham rode pensively along the way; he thought of Hagar and the son
whom he turned out into the desert.* He climbed Mount Moriah, he
drew the knife.
It was a quiet evening when Abraham rode out alone, and he rode to
Mount Moriah. He threw himself upon his face, he begged God to
forgive his sin, that he had been willing to sacrifice Isaac, that the father
had forgotten his duty toward the son. More than once he rode his lonely
trail but found no peace of mind. He could not comprehend that it was a
sin to have been willing to sacrifice to God the best he owned, that for
which he himself would gladly have laid down his life many times. And if
it were a sin, if he had not loved Isaac in this way, then he could not
understand how it could be forgiven, for what sin was more grievous?

When the child is to be weaned, the mother too is not without sorrow
that she and the child are more and more to be parted, that the child who
first lay beneath her heart yet later reposed upon her breast will not be so
close any more. Thus together they mourn this brief sorrow. Fortunate
the one who kept the child so close and did not need to sorrow more!

IV

It was an early morning; everything was ready for the journey in

Abraham’s house. He took leave of Sarah, and the faithful servant
Eliezer? saw him out along the road until he turned back again. They
rode together in harmony, Abraham and Isaac, until they came to Mount
Moriah. Yet Abraham calmly and gently prepared everything for the
sacrifice, but as he turned away and drew the knife, Isaac saw that
Abraham’s left hand was clenched in despair, that a shudder went
through his body — but Abraham drew the knife.

Berton =~ f +
See Genesis 16 and 21:9~21. Hagar, an Egyp > . ,
tian slave-girl belonging to Sarah, bore a son to
Abraham named Ishmael; both mother and son were driven into the desert
at Sarah’s request after
the birth of Isaac.
” Abraham’s heir prior to the birth of Isaac. See Genesis 1511-4.

10
 Tuning Up

Then they returned home again and Sarah hurried to meet them, but
Isaac had lost the faith. Never a word is spoken about this in the world;
Isaac never spoke to any person about what he had seen, and Abraham
did not suspect that anyone had seen it.

When the child is to be weaned, the mother has more solid food on
hand so the child will not perish. Fortunate the one who has this stronger
nourishment handy!

In these and many similar ways that man of whom we speak pondered
over this event. Every time he returned home from a pilgrimage to
Mount Moriah he collapsed from fatigue, clasped his hands, and said:
“Surely no one was as great as Abraham. Who is able to understand
him?”

II
 A Tribute to Abraham

If there were no eternal consciousness in a human being, if underlying

everything there were only a wild, fermenting force writhing in dark
passions that produced everything great and insignificant, if a bottom-
less, insatiable emptiness lurked beneath everything, what would life be
then but despair? If such were the case, if there were no sacred bond that
tied humankind together, if one generation after another rose like leaves
in the forest,’ if one generation succeeded another like the singing of
birds in the forest, if the human race passed through the world as a ship
through the sea, as the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and futile
activity, if an eternal oblivion always hungrily lay in wait for its prey and
there were no power strong enough to snatch it away — then how empty
and hopeless life would be! But that is why it is not so, and as God created
man and woman, so he fashioned the hero and the poet or orator. The
latter can do nothing that the former does, he can only admire, love, and
rejoice in the hero. Yet he too is happy, no less than the former, for the
hero is so to speak his better nature with which he is infatuated yet
delighted that it is after all not himself, that his love can be admiration.
He is the guardian spirit of recollection, he can do nothing without
remembering what has been done, do nothing without admiring what
has been done; he takes nothing for himself but is protective of what is
entrusted to him. He follows his heart’s desire, but when he has found
what was sought, he wanders about to every man’s door with his song and

' Allusion to the Jliad by the Greek epic poct Homer of the early eighth century pcr. See Homer,
Iliad, trans. Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1997), 6,
PP- 149-52.

I2
 A Tribute to Abraham

speech so that everyone may admire the hero as he does, be proud of the
hero as he is. This.is his achievement, his humble task, his faithful service

sloiies. lke a. meme Therefore no one who was great will be for-
gotten, and even if it takes a long time, even ifa cloud of misunderstand-
ing whisks the hero away,” his lover still comes, and the more time goes
by, the more steadfastly he clings to him.
No! No one who was great in the world will be forgotten, but each was
great in his own way, and each in proportion to the greatness of what he
loved. For the one who loved himself became great by himself, and the
one who loved other persons became great by his devotion, but the one
who loved God became greater than everybody. Each will be remem-
bered, but each became great in proportion to his expectation. One
b ible, ing the eternal,
btett -ted thei delenbneeanttre ; verybOtly.
Each will be remembered, but each was great wholly in proportion to the
magnitude of that with which he struggled. For the one who struggled
with the world became great by conquering the world, and the one who
struggled with himself became greater by conquering himself, but the
one who struggled with God? became greater than everybody. Thus
there was conflict in the world, man against man, one against a thousand,
but the one who struggled with God was greater than everybody. Thus
there was conflict on the earth: there was the one who conquered all by
his power and the one who conquered God by his powerlessness. a

believed in God was greater than everybody. There was the one who was
great by his power, and the one who was great by his wisdom, and the one
who was great by his hope, and the one who was great by his love, but

2 See ibid., 3, pp. 406-9, where the hero Paris is rescued from death and carried away in a cloud by
the goddess Aphrodite.
3 See Genesis 32:22-8, where Jacob wrestles with an agent of God and prevails, whereupon his name
is changed to Israel, which means “he who strives with God” or “God strives.” Cf. also Hosea
1233-4.

13
 Fear and Trembling

Abraham was greater than‘ everybody — great by that power whose

strength is powerlessness,* great by that wisdom whose secret is folly,°
great by that hope whose form is madness, great by that love which is
hatred of oneself.°
By faith Abraham emigrated from the land of his fathers and became a
foreigner in the promised land.’ He left one thing behind and took one
thing with him. He left his worldly understanding behind and took faith
with him; otherwise he undoubtedly would not have emigrated but
surely would have thought it preposterous. By faith he was a stranger
in the promised land, and there was nothing that reminded him of what
was dear to him, but his soul was tempted to wistful nostalgia by the
novelty of everything. And yet he was God’s chosen one, in whom the
Lord was well pleased!* In fact, had he been a castaway banished from
God’s grace, he could have understood it better, but now it certainly
seemed like a mockery of him and his faith. There was also in the world
one who lived in exile from the ancestral land which he loved.? He is not
forgotten, nor are his songs of lamentation when in sadness he sought and
found what was lost. From Abraham there is no song of lament. It is
human to lament, human to weep with the one who weeps, but it is
greater to believe, more blessed to behold the believer.
By faith Abraham received the promise that in his seed all the genera-
tions of the world would be blessed.'® Time passed, the possibility was
there, Abraham believed; time passed, it became preposterous, Abraham
believed. There was one in the world who also had an expectation."
Time passed, evening drew near, he was not wretched enough to have
forgotten his expectation; therefore neither will he be forgotten. Then he
sorrowed, and the sorrow did not cheat him as life had done, it did
everything it could for him; in the sweetness of sorrow he possessed his
disappointed expectation. It is human to sorrow, it is human to sorrow

* 2 Corinthians 12:9-10. > 1 Corinthians 3:18~19. ® John 12:25.

’ Hebrews 11:8-9; cf. Genesis 12:17; 17:8. * Matthew 12:18; 17:5; Isaiah 42:1.
” Possibly the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah (c. 640-587 BCE), who was taken
to Egypt
sometime after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE and who according to tradition was
the author
of the book of Lamentations in the Old Testament: or possibly the Roman poct
Ovid (Publius
Ovidius Naso, 43 BCE-CE 17/18), who was banished in cE 8 by Caesar Augu
stus to Tomis
(modern Constanza) in the Roman colony of Dacia (modern Romania)
on the Black Sea, where he
wrote the elegies Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto.
'° Genesis 12:1-2 and 17:4.
' Perhaps Ovid, who continually hoped to be recalled to Rome from his bani
shment,

14
 A Tribute to Abraham

with the sorrowing one, but it is greater to believe, more blessed to behold
the believer. From Abraham we have no song of sorrow. He did not
mournfully count the days while time passed, he did not look at Sarah
with suspicious eyes as to whether she had not become old, he did not
halt the movement of the sun’® so that Sarah would not grow old and
with her his expectation, he did not soothingly sing for Sarah his
mournful melody. Abraham became old, Sarah became the object of
ridicule in the land, and yet he was God’s chosen one and heir to the
promise that in his seed all the generations of the earth would be blessed.
So would it not have been better, after all, if he were not God’s chosen
one? What does it mean to be God’s chosen one? Is it to be denied one’s
youthful wish in youth so that it may be fulfilled with great pains in old
age? But Abraham believed and held on to the promise. If Abraham had
wavered, then he would have given it up. He would have said to God:
“Well, perhaps it is not your will after all that it should happen, so I will
give up the wish; it was my only wish, my blessedness. My soul is sincere,
I harbor no hidden resentment because you denied it.” He would not
have been forgotten; he would have saved many by his example but still
would not have become the father of faith. For it is great to give up one’s
wish, but it is greater to keep a firm grip on it after having given it up; it is
great to lay hold of the eternal, but it is greater to stick doggedly to the
temporal after having given it up. — Then came the fullness of time.*? If
Abraham had not believed, Sarah might well have died from sorrow, and
Abraham, dulled by grief, would not have understood the fulfillment but
only smiled at it as at a youthful dream. But Abraham believed; therefore
he -was young, for the one who always hopes for the best grows old,
cheated by life, and the one who is always prepared for the worst grows
old prematurely, but the one who believes preserves an eternal youth. So
let-us pay tribute to that story! For Sarah, though aged, was young
enough to crave the pleasure of motherhood, and Abraham, though
grey-haired, was young enough to wish to be a father. Outwardly, the
wonder is that it happened in accordance with their expectation; ina
deeper sense, the wonder of faith consists in Abraham and Sarah being
young enough to wish and in faith’s having preserved their wish and with
it their youth. He accepted the fulfillment of the promise, he accepted it

"2 Joshua 10:12-13. ‘* Galatians 4:4.

5
 Fear and Trembling

in faith, and it happened according to the promise and according to faith,

for Moses struck the rock with his staff but he did not believe."*
So there was rejoicing in Abraham’s house when Sarah stood as a bride
on their golden wedding anniversary.
But it was not to remain that way; Abraham was to be tried once more.
He had fought with that ingenious power which invents everything, with
that vigilant enemy which never dozes, with that old man who outlives
everything — he had fought with time and kept the faith. Now all the
frightfulness of the struggle became concentrated in one moment. “And
God tested Abraham and said to him, take Isaac your only son, whom you
love, go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering
upon a mountain that I will show you.”’>
Thus everything was lost, which is even more frightful than if it had
never happened! So the Lord was only mocking Abraham! Miraculously,
he made the preposterous come true; now he would see it brought to
nothing again. It was indeed folly, but Abraham did not laugh at it as
Sarah had done when the promise was first proclaimed.'° Everything was
lost! Seventy years of faithful expectation, the brief joy over faith’s
fulfillment. Who is it, then, that snatches the staff from the old man?
Who is it that demands he himself must break it? Who is it that makes a
man’s grey hairs disconsolate? Who is it that demands he himself must do
it? Is there no compassion for this venerable old man, none for the
innocent child? And yet Abraham was God’s chosen one, and it was
the Lord who put him to the test. Now everything would be lost! The
glorious remembrance of posterity, the promise in Abraham’s seed, was
only a whim, a passing thought of the Lord’s which Abraham now must
obliterate. That glorious treasure’? which was just as old as the faith in
Abraham’s heart and many, many years older than Isaac, the fruit of
Abraham’s life, dedicated by prayer, ripened in combat — the blessing
on Abraham’s lips, this fruit would now be plucked prematurely and
be without meaning, for what meaning would it have if Isaac must be
sacrificed! That sad but still blessed hour when Abraham would take
leave of everything that was dear to him, when he would once again lift up
his venerable head, when his countenance would become radiant like the

Numbers 20:11-12. ‘> Cf. Genesis 22:1-2 and n. 5 in “Tuning Up.”

" Genesis 18:10-15. Cf. Genesis L747;
‘’ Presumably the promise given to Abraham in Genesis 12:2.

16
 A Tribute to Abraham

Lord’s, when he would concentrate his whole soul in a blessing that was
mighty enough to make Isaac blessed all his days — that hour would not
come! For Abraham would indeed take leave of Isaac, but in such a way
that he himself would remain behind; death would separate them, but in
such a way that Isaac would become its prey. The old man would not
joyfully at death lay his hand upon Isaac in blessing, but weary of life
would lay a violent hand upon Isaac. And it was God who tested him.
Yes, woe! Woe to the messenger who brought such news to Abraham!
Who would have dared to be the emissary of such sorrow? But it was God
who tested Abraham.
But Abraham believed and believed for this life. To be sure, had his
faith been only for a future life, he could indeed more easily have cast
everything away in order to hurry out of the world to which he did not
belong. But Abraham’s faith was not like that, if there be such a faith, for
that is not really faith but only the remotest possibility of faith, which
faintly spies its object at the edge of the horizon yet is separated from it by
a yawning abyss within which despair plays its tricks. But Abraham
believed precisely for this life, that he would grow old in the land,
honored by the people, blessed by posterity, forever remembered in
Isaac, his dearest one in life, whom he embraced with a love for which
it would be only a poor expression to say that he faithfully fulfilled a
father’s duty to love the son, as indeed it goes in the summons: “the son
whom you love.”"® Jacob had twelve sons, one of whom he loved;"?
Abraham had only one son, whom he loved.
But Abraham. believed and did not doubt; he believed the preposte-
rous. If Abraham had doubted — then he would have done something
different, something great and glorious, for how could Abraham. do
anything else but what is great and glorious! He would have set out for
Mount Moriah, he would have chopped the firewood, lit the fire, drawn
the knife — he would have cried out to God: “Do not disdain this sacrifice,
it is not the best I have, that I know very well, for what 1s an old man
compared with the child of promise, but it is the best I can give you. Let
Isaac never come to know it, that he may take comfort in his youth.”
He would have thrust the knife into his own breast. He would have been

'S Genesis 22:2.

'9 See Genesis 35:23-26 and 37:3, where it is said that Jacob (Israel) loved his youngest son Joseph
more than any of his other sons because Joseph was a child of his old age (like Isaac).

17
 Fear and Trembling

admired in the world, and his name would not be forgotten; but it is one
thing to be admired, another to become a guiding star that rescues. the
anguished.
But Abraham believed. He asked nothing for himself in an attempt to
move the Lord; it was only when the just penalty against Sodom and
Gomorrah was issued that Abraham came forward with his appeals.*°
We read in those sacred scriptures: “And God tested Abraham and
said: ‘Abraham, Abraham, where are you?”*" But Abraham answered:
‘Here am I.’” You to whom my speech is addressed, was that the case
with you? When far away you saw hard times approaching, did you not
say to the mountains, “cover me,” and to the hills, “fall on me?”** Or if
you were stronger, did not your feet still drag along the way, longing as it
were to be back on the old paths? When a call came to you, did you
answer or not — perhaps softly and in a whisper? Not so Abraham.
Cheerfully, confidently, trustingly he answered in a loud voice: “Here
am I.” We read further: “And Abraham rose early in the morning.”?3
He hurried as if going to a celebration, and early in the morning he was at
the appointed place on Mount Moriah. He said nothing to Sarah, nothing
to Eliezer; indeed, who could have understood him? Did not the test by
its very nature require a pledge of silence from him? “He chopped the
firewood, he bound Isaac, he lit the fire, he drew the knife.” My listener!
Many a father has thought himself deprived of every hope for the future
in losing his child, which to him was the most beloved in the world, yet
surely none was a child of promise in the sense that Isaac was for
Abraham. Many a father has lost his child, but then it was God, the
unchanging and inscrutable will of the Almighty, whose hand took it.
Not so with Abraham. A harder test was in store for him, and Isaac’s fate,
along with the knife, lay in Abraham’s hand. And he stood there, the old
man with his only hope! But he did not doubt, he did not look anxiously
to the right or to the left, he did not challenge heaven with his appeals.
He knew it was God the Almighty who tested him, he knew it was the
hardest sacrifice that could be demanded of him, but he also knew that no
sacrifice was too hard when God demanded it — and he drew the knife.

*° Genesis 18:23-33.
*' A conflated rendering of Genesis 22:1 with Genesis 3:9, where the
Lord asks this question
of Adam.
** Hosea 10:8. Cf. Luke 23:30, which reverses the phrases. *4 Genesis 22:3.

18
 A Tribute to Abraham

Who strengthened Abraham’s arm? Who held up his right arm so that
it did not limply collapse?*+ Anyone who looks upon this scene becomes
paralyzed. Who strengthened Abraham’s soul, lest everything went black
before his eyes so he could see neither Isaac nor the ram? Anyone who
looks upon this scene goes blind. — And yet, while it is perhaps rare
enough that anyone becomes paralyzed and blind, still more rarely
does anyone worthily tell what happened there. We all know it — it was
only a test.
If Abraham had doubted when he stood on Mount Moriah, if he had
looked about in indecision, if by chance he had spotted the ram before
drawing the knife, if God had permitted him to sacrifice it instead of
Isaac — then he would have gone home, everything would have been the
same, he would have had Sarah, he would have kept Isaac, and yet how
changed! For his descent would have been an escape, his deliverance an
accident, his reward disgrace, his future perhaps perdition. Then he
would have testified neither to his faith nor to God’s grace but to how
frightful it is to go up to Mount Moriah. Then Abraham would not be
forgotten, nor Mount Moriah. Yet it would not be mentioned like Ararat,
where the ark landed,”* but spoken of as a place of dismay, because it was
here that Abraham doubted.
Venerable Father Abraham! When you went home from Mount
Moriah, you needed no tribute to console you for what was lost, for
you indeed gained everything and kept Isaac. Was it not so? The Lord
never again took him from you, but you sat happily at dinner with him in
your tent, as you do in the next world forever. Venerable Father
Abraham! Thousands of years have elapsed since those days, but you
need no latter-day lover who can snatch your memory from the power of
oblivion, for every language commemorates you — and yet you reward
your lover more gloriously than anyone. In the world to come you make
him blissfully happy in your bosom;*° here you captivate his eyes and
heart by the wonder of your deed. Venerable Father Abraham! Second
father of the human race! You who first felt and testified to that prodi-
gious passion which disdains the frightful battle with the raging elements
and the forces of creation in order to struggle with God; you who first
knew that supreme passion, the holy, pure, and humble expression for

24 Exodus 17:8-13. ~° Genesis 8:4. © Luke 16:22-23.

1Q
 Fear and Trembling

the divine madness admired by the pagans”/ — forgive the one who would
speak in praise of you if he did not do it properly. He spoke humbly, as
was his heart’s desire; he spoke briefly, as is becoming, but he will never
forget that you needed a hundred years to get a son of your old age”
contrary to expectation, that you had to draw the knife before you kept
Isaac; he will never forget that in a hundred and thirty years you gotno
further than faith.

*7 See Plato’s Phaedrus, 244~245d, 265a-b in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper
(Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1997).
28 > .
Genesis 21:5.

20
 Problems

A Preliminary Outpouring from the Heart'

An old adage drawn from the external and visible world says: “Only the
one who works gets the bread.”* Oddly enough, the adage does not apply
in the world where it is most at home, for the external world is subject to
the law of imperfection, and here it happens again and again that the one
who does not work also gets the bread, and the one who sleeps gets it more
abundantly than the one who works. In the external world everything
belongs to the possessor; it toils slavishly under the law of indifference,
and the genie of the ring obeys whoever has the ring, whether he is a
Noureddin or an Aladdin,’ and whoever has the world’s treasures has them
no matter how he got them. In the world of spirit it is otherwise. Here an
eternal divine order prevails, here it does not rain on both the just and the
unjust, here the sun does not shine on both good and evil,* here it holds
true that only the one who works gets the bread, only the one who was in
anxiety finds rest, only the one who descends into the underworld rescues
the beloved,’ only the one who draws the knife gets Isaac. The one who
will not work does not get the bread but is deceived, just as the gods

' Literally “expectoration,” a coughing up, spitting out, or pouring out from (Latin: ew) the heart or
breast ( pectus).
Cf. 2 Thessalonians 3:10.
»

3 Representatives of darkness and light respectively in the play Aladdin (based on the fairy tale
“A Thousand and One Nights”) by the Danish romantic poet, Adam Oehlenschlager (1779-1850).
See KSKB 1597-8: Adam Oehlenschligers Poetiske Skrifter, 111 (Copenhagen: J. H. Schubothe,
1805), 11, pP- 75-436.
* Cf. Matthew 5:45.
5 Cf. the Greek myth of Orpheus, in which Orpheus goes to the underworld in search of his wife
Eurydice.

21
 Fear and Trembling

deceived Orpheus with an airy apparition instead of the beloved, deceived

him because he was sentimental, not courageous, deceived him because he
was a lute player, not a man.° Here it does not help to have Abraham for
a father,’ nor seventeen noble ancestors. What was written about the
maidens of Israel® applies to the one who will not work: he brings forth
wind, but the one who is willing to work gives birth to his own father.
There is a form of knowledge that presumptuously wants to introduce
into the world of spirit the same law of indifference under which the
external world sighs. It thinks it is enough to know the great; other work
is not needed. But that is why it gets no bread; it perishes from hunger
while everything is transmuted into gold.? And what does it really know?
There were many thousands of Greek contemporaries and countless
numbers in later generations who knew all the triumphs of Miltiades,"°
but there was only one who became sleepless over them.'' There were
countless generations who knew the story of Abraham word for word by
heart, but how many did it make sleepless?
Now the story of Abraham has the extrarordinary quality of always
being glorious no matter how poorly it is understood, but here again it is a
matter of whether one is willing to labor and be heavy laden.'* Butone
does not want to work and yet wants to understand the story. One speaks
in-Abraham’s honor, but how? By presenting the -whole story in quite
ordinary terms: “The great thing was that he loved God so much that he ~
was willing to sacrifice the best to him.”'> That is very true, but “the
best” is a vague term. In the course of thinking and jabbering away, one
quite confidently identifies Isaac and the best, and the meditator can very.

Cf. Plato’s version of the myth of Orpheus in the Symposium, 179d, where Orpheus is described as
being “soft” or effeminate because he was a cithara or lute player who charmed his way into Hade
s
by playing music rather than dying for the sake of love.
Matthew 3:9. ° Isaiah 26:18.
x

Cf. the Greek legend of King Midas, to whom the god Dionysius (Bacchus) granted the
power of
turning everything he touched into gold, even his food. See Ovid’s account in Tales Strom
Ovid,
trans. Ted Hughes (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), pp. 188-97.
10
An Athenian general and statesman who defeated the Persians in the battle of
Marathon in
490 BCE.
Themistocles, according to Plutarch, because he sensed that the victory at
Marathon was a
prelude to further conflict, not the end of the war; thus he ambitiously
prepared to lead the
Greeks in future battles. See KSKB 1197-1200: Plutark’s Levnetsbeskr
ivelser, 1-1V, trans.
Stephan Tetens (Copenhagen: Brummer, 1800—1 1), 1, p. 7. In English
see Plutarch, The Rise
and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert (Harmondsworth,
UK: Penguin,
1960), 3.3, p. 8o.
* Cf. Matthew 11:28. "3 Cf. John 3:16.

22
 Preliminary Outpouring

well smoke his pipe while cogitating, and the listener can very well
stretch out his legs comfortably. If that rich young man whom Christ
met on his way’* had sold all his possessions and given the money to the
poor, we would then praise him as we do everything that is great and
would not even understand him without working, but he still would not
have become an Abraham even though he sacrificed “the best.” What is
left out of Abraham’s story is the anxiety, for to money I have no ethical
obligation, but to the son the father has the highest and most sacred duty.
Yet anxiety is a dangerous subject for the delicate natured; therefore one
forgets it, in spite of the fact that one wants to talk about Abraham. One
speaks, then, and in the course of orating interchanges the two terms,
“Tsaac” and “the best,” and everything goes splendidly. However, if it so
happened that among the listeners there was a man who suffered from
insomnia, then the most frightful, the most profound tragic and comic
misunderstanding lies very close. He went home, he would do just like
Abraham, for the son is after all “the best.” If that speaker heard of it, he
perhaps went to the man, gathered all his clerical dignity, and shouted:
“You detestable person, you pariah of society, what devil has so pos-
sessed you that you want to murder your son?” And the parson, who had
not felt any warmth or perspiration while preaching on Abraham, would
be surprised at himself, at the earnest wrath with which he fulminated
against that poor man. He would be pleased with himself, for never had
he spoken with such force and fervor. He would say to himself and his
wife: “I am an orator; what was lacking has been the occasion. When
I spoke about Abraham last Sunday, I did not feel moved at all.” If this
same speaker had a modest excess of understanding to spare, then I think
he would have lost it if the sinner calmly and in a dignified manner had
replied: “After all, that was what you yourself preached on last Sunday.”
How could the parson even get such an idea into his head? And yet it was
certainly so, and the mistake was simply that he had not known what he
was saying. Yet there is no poet who could bring himself to prefer
situations like this to the stuff and nonsense that fills comedies and
novels! The comic and the tragic touch each other here in absolute
infinity. In itself the parson’s discourse was perhaps ludicrous enough
but became infinitely ludicrous by its effect, and yet this was quite
natural. Or suppose the sinner, without making any objection, actually

"4 Matthew 19:16-22.

23
 Fear and Trembling

became converted by the ‘parson’s castigation; suppose this zealous

clergyman went cheerfully home, elated in the consciousness that he
was effective not only from the pulpit but above all with his irresistible
power as a spiritual advisor, inasmuch as he inspired the congregation on
Sundays while on Mondays he stood like a cherub with flaming sword'>
before the one who by his action would put to shame the old saying that
things do not happen in the world as the parson preaches."
However, if the sinner was not convinced, then his situation is indeed
tragic. He would probably be executed or sent to the madhouse; in short,
he would become unhappy in relation to so-called actuality, although in
another sense I certainly think that Abraham made him happy, for the
one who works does not perish.
How does one explain such a contradiction as that speaker’s? Is it
because Abraham has a prescriptive right to be a great man, so that
whatever he does is great and when another person does the same thing
it is a sin, a flagrant sin? In that case I do not wish to be party to such
thoughtless tribute. If faith cannot make it a holy act to be willing to
murder one’s son, then let the same judgment be passed upon Abraham
as upon everybody else. If one perhaps lacks courage to think one’s
thought through to say that Abraham was a murderer, then it would
certainly be better to acquire that courage than to waste time on unde-
served tributes. The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he
intended to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he intended to
sacrifice Isaac. But in this contradiction lies precisely the anxiety that
indeed can make a person sleepless, and yet Abraham is not who he is
without this anxiety. Or perhaps Abraham did not do what is narrated
there at all, perhaps due to circumstances of the time it was something
entirely different; then let us forget him, for what is worthwhile in
remembering the past that cannot become a present? Or perhaps that
speaker had forgotten something corresponding to the ethical oversight
that Isaac was the son. For if faith is taken away by becoming null and
void, all that remains is the brutal fact that Abraham intended to murder

“In olden days people said: “It is sad that things do not happen in
the world as the parson
preaches.” Perhaps the time will come, especially with the help of philos
ophy, when people can
say: “Fortunately things do not happen as the parson preaches, for
life still has a little meaning,
but in his sermon there is none.”
'> Cf. Genesis 3:24.

24
 Preliminary Outpouring

Isaac, which is easy enough for anyone to imitate who does not have faith,
that is, the faith that makes it difficult for him.
Personally, I do not lack the courage to think a thought whole. So far
I have feared none, and should I encounter one like that, then I hope at
least to have the honesty to say I am afraid of this thought, it stirs up
something strange in me and therefore I will not think it. If 1 do wrong by
that, then punishment certainly will not fail to come. If I had acknowl-
edged as true the judgment that Abraham was a murderer, I do not know
whether I could have silenced my reverence for him. However, if I had
thought that, then I would probably have kept silent about it, for one
should not initiate others into such thoughts. But Abraham is no illusion,
he has not slept his way to renown, he did not owe it to a caprice of
fortune.
Can one then speak candidly about Abraham without running the risk
that an individual in mental confusion might go and do likewise? IfI dare
not, then I will keep absolutely silent about Abraham, and above all I will
not scale him down in such a way that precisely by that he becomes a
snare for the weak. For-if-one-makes faith everything, that is, makes. it
what it is, then [certainly think one may dare speak about it without risk
in-our-age, which is scarcely extravagant in faith, and it is only by faith
that one acquires a resemblance to Abraham, not by murder. If one makes
love into a fleeting sentiment, a sensual feeling in a person, then one only
sets traps for the weak in wanting to talk about the exploits of love.
Certainly everyone has passing emotions, but if as a result everyone
wanted to perform the frightful act that love has sanctified as an immortal
feat, then everything is lost, both the exploit and the one gone astray.
It is no doubt permissible, then, to speak about Abraham, for the great
can never do harm when construed in its greatness; it is like a double-
edged sword that kills and saves.° If the lot fell on me to speak about
him, I would begin by showing what a devout and god-fearing man
Abraham was, worthy to be called God’s chosen one. Only someone
like that is put to such a test, but who is such a person? Next I would
describe how Abraham loved Isaac. To that end I would bid all good
spirits to stand by me so that my speech would be as glowing as paternal
love. I hope to describe it in such a way that not many a father in the
would dare to claim that he loved in this way. But
king’s realms and lands

© Cf. Hebrews 4:12.

25
 Fear and Trembling

if he did not love as Abraham loved, then any thought of sacrificing Isaac
would surely be a temptation.'? One could already talk about this for
several Sundays; certainly there is no need to hurry. If it were told
properly, the result would be that some fathers would by no means insist
on hearing more but for the time being would be pleased if they actually
succeeded in loving as Abraham loved. If there were then one who, after
having heard about the greatness but also about the frightfulness of
Abraham’s deed, ventured to proceed upon that trail, I would saddle
my horse and ride with him. At every stop before coming to Mount
Moriah I would explain to him that he could still turn back, could repent
the misunderstanding that he was called to be tried in such a conflict,
could acknowledge that he lacked courage, so that God himself must take
Isaac if he wanted to have him. It is my conviction that such a person is
not repudiated, that he can become blessed along with everyone else, but
not in time. Would not such a person be judged in this way even in the
times of greatest faith? I knew a person who on one occasion could have
saved my life if he had been magnanimous. He said plainly: “I see well
enough what I could do, but I dare not do it, I am afraid that later I will
lack strength and regret it.” He was not magnanimous, but who for that
reason would not continue to love him?
Having spoken thus and stirred the audience so they were really
sensible of the dialectical struggles of faith and its gigantic passion,
then I would not be guilty of an error on the part of the audience should
they think: “Well now, he has faith to such a high degree, it is already
enough for us just to hold on to his coattails.”'® For I would add: “By no
means do I have faith. I am by nature a clever fellow and such persons
always have great difficulties in making the movement of faith, except
that I certainly do not attribute in itself any worth to the difficulty which
brought the clever fellow [no] further by overcoming it than to the point where
the simplest and most innocent person arrives more easily.”

7 Anfeegtelse, which may connote either an unethical temptation (Fristelse), as in

the present instance
and throughout this text (with one exception), or a spiritual trial in the form of
a scruple,
hesitancy, or misgiving in relation to a command from the divine that brings
the ethical into
conflict with it in such a way that the ethical itself constitutes a temptation. See
n. 2 of “Tuning
Up” above and Kierkegaard’s discussion of the distinction between temptation
(Fristelse) and
spiritual trial (Anfcegtelse) in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Frag
ments,” 1-11,
ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1992),
1, pp. 458-9.
'* Cf. Matthew 9:20~22.

26
 Preliminary Outpouring

Love surely has its priests in the poets, and occasionally one hears a
voice that knows how to honor it, but on faith not a word is heard. Who
speaks in honor of this passion? Philosophy goes further. Theology sits
by the window all made up and courts its favor, offering to sell its delights
to philosophy. It is said to be difficult to understand Hegel but to
understand Abraham is a small matter. To go beyond Hegel is a miracle
but to manage Abraham is the easiest thing of all. I for one have devoted
considerable time to understanding the Hegelian philosophy; I believe
also that I have understood it fairly well, and Iam foolhardy enough to
think that when I cannot understand him in certain passages in spite of
the effort applied, then probably he himself has not been entirely clear.
All this I do easily, naturally, without getting a headache from it.
However, when I must think about Abraham, I am virtually annihilated.
At every moment I am aware of that prodigious paradox which is the
content of Abraham’s life; at every moment I am repelled, and in spite of
all its passion, my thought cannot penetrate it, cannot make a hairs-
breadth of headway. I strain every muscle to get a perspective, and at the
same instant I become paralyzed.
I am not unacquainted with what has been admired as great and
magnanimous in the world; my soul feels an affinity with it and in all
humility is convinced that it was my cause too for which the hero
struggled, and in a moment of meditation I cry out to myself: “Now
your interest is at stake.”’? I think myself into the hero; I cannot think
myself into Abraham. When I reach that height I fall down since what 1s
offered to me is a paradox. Yet by no means do I therefore think that faith
is something lowly but on the contrary that it is the highest, plus that it is
dishonest of philosophy to proffer something else instead and to make
light of faith. Philosophy cannot and must not bestow faith but must
understand itself and know what it has to offer and take nothing away and
least of all trick people out of something by making them think it is
nothing. I am not unacquainted with life’s hardships and dangers; I fear
them not and go to meet them dauntlessly. J am not unfamiliar with the
frightful; my memory is a faithful spouse and my imagination is what
I myself am not, a busy little maid who sits quietly all day at her work and

'9 jam tua res agitur. Cf. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, a Latin poet of 65 BCE-Cx8), Epistles, 1,
18, p. 84: nam tua res agitur, paries quum proximus ardet. See KSKB 1248: Q. Horati Flacci Opera
(Leipzig: Tauchnitii, 1828), p. 254; Epistles: Book 1, ed. Roland Mayer (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), p. 82.

27
 Fear and Trembling

in the evening knows how to‘chatter so prettily to me that I have to look at

it even though it is not always just landscapes or flowers or idyllic pastoral
scenes she paints. I have looked the frightful in the eye; I do not timidly
flee from it but know very well that even ifI approach it bravely my
courage still is not the courage of faith and is nothing to be compared with
that. I cannot make the movement of faith, I cannot shut my eyes and
plunge confidently into the absurd; that is for me an impossibility, but
I do not praise myself for it. I am convinced that God is love;*° this
thought has for me a primordial lyrical validity. When it is present to me
I am unspeakably happy; when it is absent I long for it more intensely
than the lover for the object of his love. But I do not believe; this courage
I lack. To me God’s love, both in a direct and inverse sense, is incom-
mensurable with the whole of actuality. | am not cowardly enough
therefore to whine and wail, but neither am I perfidious enough to
deny that faith is something much higher. I can well endure living in
my own fashion, I am happy and content, but my joy is not that of faith
and in comparison with that is really unhappy. I do not trouble God with
my petty cares; the particular does not concern me, I gaze only at my love
and keep its virginal flame pure-and clear. Faith 1s convinced that God is. -
concerned about the least thing. [am content in this life to be wedded to
the left hand. Faith is humble enough to ask for the right, for that it is
humility I. do not and shall never deny.
I wonder, is anyone in my age actually capable of making the move-
ments of faith? Unless Iam very much mistaken, it is rather inclined to be
proud of doing what it presumably does not even believe me capable of,
that is, the imperfect. It goes against the grain for me to do what so often
happens, to speak inhumanly about the great as ifa few millennia were an
immense distance. I prefer to speak humanly about it, as if it happened
yesterday, and let only the greatness itself be the distance that either
exalts or condemns. If I then (i the capacity of tragic hero, for | cannot
come higher) were summoned to such an extraordinary royal progression
as the one to Mount Moriah, J know very well what I would have done.
I would not have been cowardly enough to stay home, nor lagged-and
loafed along the road, nor forgotten the knife in order that there might be
a little delay. I am fairly certain that I would have arrived there on the dot
and had everything in order — more than likely I would probably have

° 7 John 4:8-9.

28
 Preliminary Outpouring

arrived too early in order to get it over with sooner. But I also know what
else I would have done. The moment I mounted the horse I would have
said to myself: “Now all is lost; God demands Isaac, I sacrifice him and
with him all my joy — yet God is love and continues to be that for me, for
in temporality God and I cannot converse, we have no language in
common.” Perhaps someone or other in our age would be foolish enough
and envious enough of the great to want to make himself and me believe
that ifI had actually done this I would then have done something even
greater than what Abraham did, for my immense resignation would be far
more ideal and poetic than Abraham’s pettiness. And yet this is the
greatest falsehood, for my immense resignation would be a substitute
for faith. I could not make more than the infinite movement in order to
find myself and once again be in equilibrium. Nor could I have loved
Isaac as Abraham loved him. That I was determined to make the move-
ment could prove my courage, humanly speaking; that I loved him with
my whole heart is a precondition without which the whole thing becomes
a misdeed. But I still did not love as Abraham did, for I would have held
back at the last minute, without therefore arriving too late at Mount
Moriah. Furthermore, I would have spoiled the whole story by my
conduct, for if I had received Isaac again, I would then have been in an
awkward position. What came easiest for Abraham would have been
difficult for me — once again to be joyful with Isaac! —-for whoever has
made-the infinite movement with all the infinity of his soul, of his own
accord and on his own responsibility,~’ and cannot do more only keeps
Isaac with pain.
But what did Abraham do? He arrived neither too ear/y nor too late.
He mounted the ass and rode slowly along the way. During all this time
he believed; he believed that God would not demand Isaac of him, while
he still was willing to sacrifice him if it was demanded. He believed by
virtue of the absurd, for human calculation was out of the question, and it
was indeed absurd that God, who demanded it of him, in the next instant
would revoke the demand. He climbed the mountain, and even at the
moment when the knife gleamed he believed — that God would not
demand Isaac. He was no doubt surprised then at the outcome, but by
a double movement he had regained his original condition and therefore
received Isaac more joyfully than the first time. Let us go further. We let

>" proprio motu et proprus auspicus.

29
 Fear and Trembling

Isaac actually be sacrificed. Abraham believed. He did not believe that he

would be blessed one day in the hereafter but that he would become
blissfully happy here in the world. God could give him a new Isaac, call
the sacrificed one back to life. He believed by virtue of the absurd, for all
human calculation had long since ceased. That sorrow can make a person
mentally deranged is apparent and hard enough; that there is a willpower
which can pull so drastically to windward that it rescues the under-
standing even though the person becomes a little peculiar is also appa-
rent. | do not mean to disparage that, but to be able to lose one’s
understanding and along with it the whole of finitude, whose stockbroker
it is, and then by virtue of the absurd to recover precisely this same
finitude — that appalls my soul. But I do not for that reason say that it is
something insignificant when on the contrary it is the only miracle. One
generally thinks that what faith produces is not a work of art but a coarse
and crude piece of workmanship only for the more uncultured natures,
but it is far different. The dialectic of faith is the finest and most
remarkable of all; it has an elevation of which I can certainly form a
conception, but nothing more. I can make the great trampoline leap
whereby I pass over into infinity; my spine is like a tightrope walker’s,
twisted from my childhood. Thus it is easy for me to go one, two, three,
and turn a somersault in existence, but the next movement I cannot
make, for the miraculous I cannot perform but only be amazed by it.
Indeed, if ac the moment Abraham swung his leg over the ass’s back he
had said to himself, “now Isaac is lost, I could just as well sacrifice him
here at home as travel the long way to Moriah,” then I do not need
Abraham, whereas I now bow before his name seven times and before his
deed seventy times.** This he has not in fact done, which I can prove by
his being delighted to receive Isaac back, truly inwardly delighted, and by
his needing no preparation, no time to collect himself in finitude and its
joy. If that was not the case with Abraham, then he perhaps loyed God.
but did not believe, for whoever loves God without faith considers
himself, but whoever loves God with faith considers God.
Abraham stands at this point. The last stage he loses sight of is infinite
resignation. He actually goes further and arrives at faith, for all those
caricatures of faith — the sorry, half-hearted apathy that thinks: “Never
mind, it’s not worth worrying about ahead of time;” the paltry hope that

*? Matthew 18:21-22.

30
 Preliminary Outpouring

says: “One can’t know what will happen, it still might be possible” —
those caricatures are native to the wretchedness of life and have already
been infinitely disdained by infinite resignation.
Abraham I cannot understand; in a certain sense I can learn nothing
from him except to be amazed. If one imagines that one may be moved to
believe by pondering the outcome of that story, then one cheats oneself
and wants to cheat God out of the first movement of faith; one wants to
suck worldly wisdom out of the paradox. Perhaps someone or other will
succeed, for our age does not stop at faith nor with its miracle of turning
water into wine;*> it goes further and turns wine into water.
Would it not be best, however, to stop at faith? And is it not shocking
that everybody wants to go further? If people in our age will not abide with
love, as indeed is proclaimed in various ways, what is it all coming to? To
worldly shrewdness, petty calculation, to paltriness and wretchedness, to
everything that can make humanity’s divine origin doubtful.** Would it
not be best to remain standing at faith, and for the one who stands to see to
it that he does not fall?*> For the movement of faith must constantly be
made by virtue of the absurd, yet in such a way, mind you, that one does
not lose the finite but gains it entire. For my part, I can very well describe
the movements of faith, but I cannot make them. If one wants to learn how
to swim, one can let oneself be suspended in a sling from the ceiling and
very well go through the motions, but one is not swimming. Likewise,
I can describe the movements of faith, but if I am thrown into the
water, I may well swim (for I do not belong among waders), but I make
different movements. I make the movements of infinity, whereas faith does
the opposite; after having made the movements of infinity, it makes those
of finitude. Anyone who can make these movements is fortunate; he
performs the miraculous, and I shall never become tired of admiring
him. It makes absolutely no difference to me whether it is Abraham or a
slave in Abraham’s house, a professor of philosophy or a poor servant girl,
I look only at the movements. But I do pay attention to them and do not
permit myself to be fooled, either by myself or by some other person. The
knights of infinite resignation are easy to recognize, their gait is airy, bold.
However, those who carry the treasure of faith*® easily deceive because

73 John 2:1-10. ~* Cf. Genesis 1:27. ~*° Cf. 1 Corinthians 10:12. .

© Tyroens Klenodie, an allusion to Bishop Hans Adolf Brorson’s hymnbook, 7roens rare Klenodie
(Viborg: s. n., 1834), which Kierkegaard owned. See KSKB 199.

31
 Fear and Trembling

their external appearance has a striking resemblance to that which both

infinite resignation and faith deeply disdain — to bourgeois philistinism.
I candidly admit that in my experience I have not found any authentic
exemplar, although I do not for that reason deny that possibly every other
person is such an exemplar. Nevertheless, I have sought in vain for several
years to track one down. People generally travel around the world to see
rivers and mountains, new stars, flamboyant birds, freakish fish, ludicrous
breeds of humanity. They abandon themselves to the brutish stupor that
gawks at existence and think they have seen something. This does not
occupy me. However, ifI knew where such a knight of faith lived, I would
travel on foot to him, for this miracle concerns me absolutely. [ would not
leave him an instant but every minute pay attention to how he went about
making the movements. I would consider myself settled for life and divide
my time between watching him and practicing the maneuvers myself
and thus spend all my time admiring him. As I said, I have not found
such a person; nevertheless, I can very well imagine him. Here he is. The
acquaintance is made, I am introduced to him. The moment I first set eyes
on him, that very instant I thrust him away from me, jump back, clap my
hands together, and say half aloud: “Dear. me! Is this the person, 1s it
actually him? He looks just like a tax collector.” Nevertheless it really 1s
him. I draw a little closer to him and pay attention to the slightest move-
ment to see whether a little heterogeneous fraction of a signal from the
infinite manifests itself —a glance, an air, a gesture, a sadness, a smile that
betrayed the infinite in its heterogeneity with the finite. No! I examine his
figure from head to foot to see if there might not be a crack through which
the infinite peeped out. No! He is solid through and through. His footing?
It is sturdy, belonging entirely to finitude. No dressed up citizen going out
ona Sunday afternoon to Frederiksberg’ treads the ground more solidly.
He belongs entirely to the world; no bourgeois philistine could belong to it
more. Nothing is detectable of that foreign and noble nature by which the
knight of infinite resignation is recognized. He enjoys and takes part in
everything, and whenever one sees him participating in something parti-
cular, it is carried out with a persistence that characterizes the worldly
person whose heart is attached to such things. He goes about his work. To
see him one would think he was a pen-pusher who had lost his soul in

ss ons a 3 ;
‘ A suburb of Copenhagen containing a palace with a public park.

32
 Preliminary Outpouring

Italian bookkeeping,** so exact is he. He takes a holiday on Sundays. He

goes to church. No heavenly look or any sign of the incommensurable
betrays him. If one did not know him, it would be impossible to distinguish
him from the rest of the crowd, for at most his hearty, vigorous hymn
singing proves that he has a good pair of lungs. In the afternoon he takes a
walk in the woods. He enjoys everything he sees, the throngs of people, the
new omnibuses,”’ the Sound — to meet him on the beach road one would
think he was a mercenary soul taking a break just to enjoy himself in this
way, for he is not a poet and I have sought in vain to pick up any poetic
incommensurability in him. Towards evening he goes home, his gait as
undaunted as a postman’s. On the way he thinks about an appetizing little
dish of warm food his wife surely has for him when he comes home, for
example a roast head of lamb with vegetables. If he were to meet a kindred
spirit, he would continue conversing with him all the way to Osterport*®
about this dish with a passion befitting a restaurateur. As it happens, he
does not have four beans," and yet he firmly believes that his wife has that
delectable dish for him. If she has it, to see him eat would be an enviable
sight for distinguished people and an inspiring one for the common man,
for his appetite is heartier than Esau’s.** If his wife doesn’t have it — oddly
enough — it is all the same to him. On the way he goes past a building site
and meets another man. They talk a moment together; in no time he erects
a building, having at his disposal all the resources required for that
purpose. The stranger leaves him thinking he was surely a capitalist,
while my admired knight thinks: “Well, if it came to that, I could easily
get it.” He lounges by an open window and surveys the square where he
lives. Everything that happens — a rat scurrying under a gutter plank,
children playing — everything engages him with a composure in existence
as if he were a girl of sixteen. And yet he is no genius, for I have sought in
vain to spy out the incommensurability of genius in him. He smokes his
pipe in the evening; to see him one would swear it was the local tradesman
across the way vegetating in the twilight. He lets things take their course

book keep ing (dou ble post ing as a debi t and a credi t) was intr oduc ed in 1504 by the
8 Double entry
Italian monk, Boccaccio da Borgo.
omni buse s or coac hes capa ble of carr ying many pass enge rs were intr oduc ed in
29 Torse-drawn
Copenhagen in 1840.
3° A gate to the city.
expr essi on refe rrin g to the skill ing, an obse lete coin wort h abou t a Briti sh
3! \ Danish colloquial
farthing or halfa cent in US currency.
3? Genesis 25:29-34.

33
 Fear and Trembling

with a freedom from care as #f he were a reckless good-for-nothing and yet

buys every moment he lives at the opportune time for the dearest price, for he
does not do even the slightest thing except by virtue of the absurd. And yet,
yet—yes, I could fly into a rage over it, if for no other reason than out of envy —
yet this person has made and at every moment is making the movement of
infinity. He empties the deep sadness of existence in infinite resignation, he
knows the blessedness of infinity, he has felt the pain of renouncing every-
thing, the dearest thing he has in the world, and yet the finite tastes every bit
as good to him as to someone who never knew anything higher, for his
remaining in finitude has no trace ofa dispirited, anxious training, and yet
he has this confidence to delight in it as if it were the most certain thing
of all. And yet, yet the whole earthly figure he presents is a new creation*3
by virtue of the absurd. He resigned everything infinitely and then
grasped everything again by virtue of the absurd. He constantly makes
the movement of infinity, but he does it with such precision and profi-
ciency that he constantly gets finitude out of it and at no second does one
suspect anything else. It is supposed to be the most difficult task for a
dancer to leap into a particular posture in such a way that there is no second
when he grasps at the position but assumes it in the leap itself. Perhaps no
dancer can do it — but that knight does. The majority of people live
absorbed in worldly sorrow and joy; they are wallflowers who do not join
in the dance. The knights of infinity are dancers and have elevation. ‘They
make the upward movement and drop down again, and this too is not an”
unhappy pastime nor unloyely to behold. But every time they drop down...
they cannot assume the posture at once; they hesitate an instant, and this
hesitation shows that they are really strangers in the world. This is more or
less conspicuous in proportion to their artistry, but even the most skillful of
these knights still cannot hide this hesitation. One does not need to see
them in the air but only at the instant they touch and have made contact
with the ground to recognize them. But to be able to land in sucha way that
it looks as if one were simultaneously standing and walking, to transform the
leap of life into a gait, absolutely to express the sublime in the pedestrian —
that only the knight of faith can do and that is the only miracle.
However, this miracle can so easily deceive that I shall therefore
describe the movements in a particular instance which may illuminate
their relation to actuality, for everything revolves around that. A youth

$32 Corinthians 5:17.

34
 Preliminary Outpouring

falls in love with a princess and the whole content of his life consists in
this love, and yet the relation is such that it cannot possibly be realized,
cannot possibly be translated from ideality into reality.” The slaves of
misery, the frogs in the swamp of life, naturally screech: “Such a love is
foolishness; the rich brewer’s widow is just as good and sound a match.”
Let them croak in the swamp undisturbed. The knight of infinite
resignation does not act like that, he does not give up the love, not for
all the world’s glory. He is no fool. He first makes sure that it really is the
content of his life, and his soul is too healthy and too proud to waste the
least thing on an intoxication. He is not cowardly, he is not afraid to let it
steal into his most secret, his most remote thoughts, to let it wind in
countless coils around every ligament in his consciousness — if the love
becomes unhappy, he will never be able to wrench himself out of it. He
feels a blissful sensual pleasure in letting love palpitate through every
nerve, and yet his soul is as solemn as that of one who has drained the cup
of poison*+ and feels how the juice penetrates every drop of blood — for
this moment is one of life and death. Having thus imbibed all the love and
immersed himself in it, he then does not lack the courage to attempt and
risk everything. He surveys the circumstances of life and gathers the
rapid thoughts which like well-trained doves obey his every signal; he
waves a wand over them and they scurry in all directions. But when they
now all return as messengers of sorrow and explain to him that it is an
impossibility, he becomes quiet, dismisses them, remains alone, and then
undertakes the movement. If what I say here is to have any significance, it
is essential that the movement be carried out properly.“ In the first place,

the
> Tt goes without saying that whatever other interest in which an individual has concentrated
ty of actua lity can, if it prov es unre aliz able , give rise to the move ment of resig natio n.
whole reali
t
However, I have chosen a love affair to illustrate the movements because this interest no doub
more readi ly unde rsto od and thus relie ves me of all prel imin ary cons ider atio ns that in a
will be
deeper sense could only be of concern to very few individuals.
that passi on ts requi red. Ever y move ment of infin ity occur s throu gh passi on, and no reflection can
For
ment . This 1s the perp etua l leap in exist ence that expla ins the move ment , wher eas
bring about a move
n is a chim era which acco rdin g to Hege l is supp osed to expla in ever ythi ng and which ts also the
medi atio
has never tried to expla in.>> Even to make the well -kno wn Socra tic disti nctio n betw een
only thing he
one unde rsta nds and what one does not unde rsta nd requ ires passi on, and naturally still more
what
the genu inel y Socr atic move ment of igno ranc e.*° What our age lacks is not reflection but
to make
, there fore, the age is reall y too tena ciou s of life to die, for dyin g is one of
passion. Ina certain sense
rema rkab le leaps . A little verse by a poet has alwa ys appe aled to me a great deal because,
the most
simp ly havi ng wish ed good thing s in life for hims elf in five or six prev ious
after beautifully and
lines, he ends like this: “a blessed leap into eternity.”*”
to the Ath eni an phi los oph er Soc rat es (c. 469 -39 9 BCE ), who se death by
34 Probably an allusion
drinking hemlock is recounted in Plato’s Phaedo.

35
 Fear and Trembling

the knight will then have strength to concentrate the whole content of life
and the meaning of actuality into one single wish. Ifa person lacks this
concentration, this focus, if his soul is dispersed in the manifold from the
beginning, then he never comes to make the movement. He will act
shrewdly in life like those financiers who invest their capital in all sorts
of securities in order to gain on the one when they lose on the other — in
short, then, he is not a knight. Next, the knight will have strength to
concentrate the result of all his reflection into one act of consciousness. If
he lacks this focus, if his soul is dispersed in the manifold from the
beginning, then he will never have time to make the movement; he will
constantly be running errands in life, never entering eternity, for even at
the moment when he is closest to it he will suddenly discover that he has
forgotten something and consequently must go back. At the next
moment he will think it is possible, and that is also quite true, but
through such considerations one never comes to’ make the movement
but by their aid sinks deeper and deeper into the mire.
The knight makes the movement, then, but which one? Will he forget
the whole thing? For in that too there is certainly a kind of concentration.
No! For the knight does not contradict himself, and it is a contradiction
to forget the whole content of his life and yet remain the same. He feels
no inclination to become another person and by no means regards that as
something great. Only the lower natures forget themselves and become
something new. For instance, the butterfly has entirely forgotten that it
was a caterpillar; perhaps in turn it can forget that it was a butterfly so
completely that it can become a fish. The deeper natures never forget
themselves and never become anything other than what they were. The
knight, then, will remember everything; but this recollection is precisely
the pain, and yet in the infinite resignation he is reconciled with exis-
tence. The love for that princess became for him the expression of an
eternal love, assumed a religious character, was transfigured into a love of
the eternal being, which to be sure denied the fulfillment of the love but

§5 Mediation (Vermittlung), the reconciliation of opposing concepts in a higher

unity, was a central
concept in Hegel’s speculative system of philosophy. See, for example,
G.W.F. Hegel, The
Encyclopaedia Logic (with the Zusiitze), trans. T.F. Geraets, W. A. Suc
htung, and H.S. Harris
a (Indianapolis/ Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1991), 30-31 (§§6-7);
306-7 ({§240-2).
* On Socratic ignorance, see Plato’s Apology, 21a—d, 23a—b.
57 ein seliger Sprung in die E migkeit. Source unidentified.

36
 Preliminary Outpouring

still reconciled him once again in the eternal consciousness of its validity
in an eternal form that no actuality can take from him. Fools and young
people chatter about everything being possible for a human being.
However, that is a great misapprehension. Spiritually speaking, every-
thing is possible, but in the finite world there is much that is not possible.
The knight nevertheless makes this impossibility possible by expressing
it.spiritually, but he expresses it spiritually by renouncing it. The wish
that would carry him out into actuality but came to grief over the
impossibility is now turned inward but is not therefore lost or forgotten.
Sometimes it is the obscure currents of desire in him that awaken the
recollection; sometimes he awakens it himself, for he is too proud to be
willing for the whole content of his life to have been a fleeting affair of the
moment. He keeps this love young, and it increases along with him in age
and beauty. However, he needs no finite occasion for its growth. From
the moment he has made the movement the princess is lost. He does not
need those erotic palpitations of the nerves from seeing the beloved etc.,
nor in a finite sense does he constantly need to take leave of her, because
he recollects her in an eternal sense, and he knows very well that the
lovers who are so eager to see each other once more before parting for the
last time are right in being eager, right in thinking that it is the last time,
for they forget each other as soon as possible. He has grasped the deep
secret that even in loving another person one must be self-sufficient. He
pays no further finite attention to what the princess does, and precisely
this proves that he has made the movement infinitely. Here one has
occasion to see whether the movement in the individual is real or
simulated. There was one who also believed that he had made the
movement, but lo, time passed, the princess did something else, she
married.a prince for example; then his soul lost the resilience of resigna-
tion. He showed thereby that he had not made the movement correctly,
for whoever has resigned infinitely is self-sufficient. The knight does not
cancel his resignation, he keeps his love just as young as it was in the first
moment; he never lets it get away from him, precisely because he has
made the movement infinitely. What the princess does cannot disturb
him; it is only the lower natures that have the law governing their actions
in another person, the premises for their actions outside of themselves.
However, if the princess is like-minded, then something beautiful will
result. She will then introduce herself to the order of knighthood into
which one is not admitted by ballot but of which everyone is a member

cy)
 Fear and Trembling

who has courage to enroll, the order of knighthood which thereby proves
its immortality by making no distinction between man and woman. She
too will keep her love young and sound, she too will have overcome her
agony, even pune she does not, as it says in the ballad, “lie by her lord’s
side every night.” ’ These two will then be suited to each other for all
eternity, with such a rhythmical, pre-established harmony? that if ever
the moment came — a moment that nevertheless does not concern them
finitely, for then they would grow old — if ever the moment came that
allowed the love to be given expression in time, then they would be able
to begin precisely where they would have begun if they had been united
originally. Whoever understands this, whether a man or a woman, can
never be deceived, for it is only the lower natures that imagine they are
deceived. No girl who lacks such pride really understands what it is to
love, but if she is so proud, then all the world’s cunning and ingenuity
cannot deceive her.
In infinite resignation there is peace and rest; every person who wills it,
who has not debased himself by belittling himself, which is even more
terrible than being too proud, can discipline himself to make this move-
ment, which in its pain reconciles one with existence. Infinite resignation
is that shirt mentioned in an old legend.*° The thread is spun with tears,
bleached by tears; the shirt is sewn in tears, but then it also protects better
than iron and steel. The defect in the legend is that a third party can make
this linen. ‘The secret in life is that each must sew it himself, and the
remarkable thing is that a man can sew it quite as well as a woman. In
infinite resignation there is peace and rest and consolation in the pain,
that is, when the movement is made properly. Nevertheless, it would not
be difficult for me to write a whole book ifI were to go through all the
various misunderstandings, the awkward postures, the slipshod move-
ments I have encountered just in my modest practice. People believe very
little in spirit, and yet spirit is precisely what is needed in order to make
this movement. It is essential that it not be a one-sided result of a cruel

8 4 paraphrase of a line from a Danish medieval folksong. See KSKB 1477-81: Udvalgte danske
Viser fra Middelalderen, 1\-v, ed. W.H.F. Abrahamson et al. (Copenhagen: J.F. Schultz,
1812-14), 1, p. 301.
* harmonia prestabilita, The notion ofa pre-established harmony was a fundamental concept in the
> Philosophy of the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716).
“Erzsi die Spinnerin” in Johann Grafen Mailath, Magyarische Sagen, Madhrchen und Er zahlungen,
1-11 (Stuttgart and Tubingen: J. G. Cotta, 1837), 11, p. 18. See KSKB 1411.

38
 Preliminary Outpouring

necessity,’ and certainly the more this is granted, the more dubious it
always becomes whether the movement is proper. Thus, if one thinks
that a cold, barren necessity necessarily must be granted, one implies
thereby that no one can experience death before actually dying, which
strikes me as a crass materialism. Yet in our age people are less concerned
about making pure movements. If someone who wanted to learn to dance
were to say, “for centuries now one generation after another has learned
the positions; it is high time for me to profit by it and without further ado
begin with quadrilles,” then people would no doubt laugh at him a little,
but in the world of spirit it is highly plausible. What then is education?
I thought it was the curriculum the individual runs through in order to
catch up with himself, and whoever will not go through this curriculum ts
helped very little by being born in the most enlightened age.
‘Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so that whoever has
not made this movement does not have faith. For only in infinite
resignation do I become transparent to myself in my eternal validity,
and only then can there be talk of laying hold of existence by virtue
of faith.
We shall now let the knight of faith appear in the incident previously
mentioned. He does exactly the same as the other knight, he infinitely
renounces the love that is the content of his life and is reconciled in pain.
But then the miracle occurs. He makes yet another movement more
wonderful than anything, for he says: “I nevertheless believe that I shall
get her, namely by virtue of the absurd, by virtue of the fact that for God
everything is possible.”+” The absurd does not belong to the distinctions
that lie within the proper compass of the understanding. It is not
identical with the improbable, the unforeseen, the unexpected. The
moment the knight resigned he assured himself of the impossibility,
humanly speaking, that was the conclusion of the understanding, and
he had energy enough to think it. In an infinite sense, however, it was
possible by resigning it, but this possessing [of possibility], you see, is
also a relinquishing [of it]; yet this possessing 1s no absurdity to the
understanding, for the understanding continued to be right in maintain-
ing that in the world of finitude where it rules it was and remained an

Nece ssit as. See Hor ace , Odes , 111, 24, 6. Q. Hora tti Flac ct oper a, p. 94. In English see The
4° Jira
Epod es, tran s. W.G . She phe rd (Ha rmo nds wor th, UK: Pen gui n, 1983 ), p- 155.
Complete Odes and
4? Matthew 19:26. Cf. also Genesis 18:14.

oY
 Fear and Trembling

impossibility. The knight of faith is clearly conscious of this as well;

consequently, the only thing that can save him is the absurd, and this he
lays hold of by faith. He therefore acknowledges the impossibility and
at the same moment believes the absurd, for if he imagines himself to
have faith without acknowledging the impossibility with all the passion of
his soul and with his whole heart, then he deceives himself and his
testimony is neither here nor there since he has not even attained infinite
resignation.
Faith is therefore no esthetic emotion but something much higher,
precisely because it presupposes resignation; it is not a spontaneous
inclination of the heart but the paradox of existence. For instance, if a
young girl in spite of all difficulties is still convinced that her wish will be
fulfilled, this conviction is not at all that of faith, even though she 1s
brought up by Christian parents and perhaps has gone to [confirmation
classes with] the parson for a whole year. She is: convinced in all her
childlike naiveté and innocence, and this conviction ennobles her being
and bestows upon her a supernatural magnitude, so that like a wonder
worker she can conjure up the finite powers of existence and even cause
stones to weep,** while on the other hand in her agitation she can just as
well run to Herod as to Pilate** and move the whole world with her pleas.
Her conviction is very lovely, and one can learn much from her, but one
thing that cannot be learned from her is how to make movements, for her
conviction dares not look the impossibility in the eye in the pain of
resignation.
I can perceive, then, that it takes strength and energy and spiritual
freedom to make the infinite movement of resignation. I can also perceive
that it can be done. The next movement amazes me; my brain whirls in
my head, for after having made the movement of resignation, now by
virtue of the absurd to get everything, to get the wish, whole, unabridged —
that is beyond human powers, that is a miracle. But this.I can perceive,
that the young girl’s conviction is mere folly in comparison with the
firmness of faith even though it has perceived the impossibility. Every
time I want to make this movement everything goes black before my eyes

8 See Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which the mythical musician Orpheus causes stones, trees, flowers,
etc. to weep by his singing and playing. In English see Ovid’s Metamorphoses, trans. John Dryden
et al. (New York: The Heritage Press, 1961), pp. 315-19. Sce also KSKB 1265: P. Ovidii Nasonis.
Opera quae supersunt. Opera omnia, ed. A. Richter (Leipzig: Vogel, 1828).
+ Cf Luke 23:1-25.

40
 Preliminary Outpouring

at the very moment I am admiring it absolutely, and at the same moment

a monstrous anxiety grips my soul, for what does it mean to tempt God?
And yet this is the movement of faith and remains that, even though
philosophy, in order to confuse the issue, wants to make us believe that it
has faith, and even though theology wants to sell it off at a cheap price.
The act of resigning does not require faith, for what I gain in resigna-
tion is my eternal consciousness, and that is a purely philosophical
movement which I take comfort in making when required and which
I can discipline myself to do. For whenever something finite gets beyond
my control, I starve myself until I make the movement, for my eternal
consciousness is my love for God, and for me that is higher than any-
thing. The act of resigning does not require faith, but to get the least bit
more than my eternal consciousness does require faith, for this is the
paradox. The movements are often confused. It is said that faith is
needed in order to renounce everything; indeed, one hears what is even
more peculiar, that a person complains that he has lost faith and when
one consults the scale to see where he is, oddly enough he has only come
to the point where he should make the infinite movement of resignation.
By resignation I renounce everything; this movement I make by myself,
and ifI do not make it, then it is because I am cowardly and soft and
without enthusiasm and do not feel the importance of the higher dignity
every human being is accorded to be his own censor, which is much more
distinguished than being Censor General for the whole Roman republic.
This movement I make by myself, and what I gain as a result is myself in
my eternal consciousness in blessed harmony with my love for the eternal
being. By faith I do not renounce anything; on the contrary, by faith
L receive everything, exactly in the sense in which it is said that one who
has faith like a mustard seed can move mountains.*° A purely human
courage is required to renounce the whole of temporality in order to gain
the eternal, but this I gain and never in all eternity can renounce without
self-contradiction. But it takes a paradoxical and humble courage next
to grasp the whole of temporality by virtue of the absurd, and this is
the courage of faith. By faith Abraham did not renounce Isaac, but by
faith Abraham received Isaac. By virtue of resignation that rich young

stra tes app oin ted to take the cens us and to supe rvis e publ ic mora lity .
45 Roman censors were magi
4° Matthew 17:20.

41
 Fear and Trembling

man*’ should have given away everything, but when he had done that,
the knight of faith would then have said to him: “By virtue of the absurd
you will get every cent back again, if you can believe that.” And the
formerly rich young man should by no means be indifferent to these
words, for in the event he gave away his goods because he was bored with
them, his resignation would be good for nothing.
Temporality, finitude is what it is all about. I can resign everything by
my own strength and then find peace and rest in the pain. I can tolerate
everything; even if that awful demon more frightful than Death the King
of Terrors that scares people,** even if madness held up a fool’s costume
before my eyes and I understood by its look that it was I who should put it
on, I can still save my soul if 1am otherwise more anxious that my love for
God rather than my worldly happiness triumphs in me. Even at the last
moment a person can concentrate his whole soul into one single glance
toward that heaven from which all good gifts come;*? and this glance will
be understood by him and by the one whom it seeks to mean that he still
remained true to his love. Then he will calmly put on the costume.
Anyone whose soul lacks this romanticism has sold his soul, whether
he got a kingdom or a paltry piece of silver®° for it. But by my own
strength I cannot get the least bit of what belongs to finitude, for I
continually use my strength to resign everything. By my own strength
I can give up the princess, and I shall not become a sulker but find joy and
peace and rest in my pain. But by my own strength I cannot get her back
again, for I use all my strength just for the act of resigning. But by faith,
says that miraculous knight, by faith you will get her by virtue of the
absurd.
Alas, this movement I cannot make. As soon as I want to begin on it,
everything turns around and I fly back to the pain of resignation. I can
swim in life, but for this mystical floating I am too heavy. To exist in such
a way that my opposition to existence expresses itself at every moment as
the most beautiful and most secure harmony with it — that I cannot do.
And yet it must be glorious to get the princess. I say this every moment,
and the knight of resignation who does not say it is a deceiver, he has not

is
Luke 18:18-27; Mark 10:17-22; Matthew 19:16—22.
48
The figure of death personified as a dancing skeleton is depicted in T. L. Bor
up, Det menneskelige
Livs Flugt, eller Dode-Dands |The Flight of Human life or The Dance of
Death], 3rd edn.
(Copenhagen: J. H. Schubothe, 1814). See KSKB 1466.
49 James 1:17. °° Cf. Matthew 26:15.

42
 Preliminary Outpouring

had a single wish, and he has not kept the wish young in his pain. Perhaps
there was someone who found it sufficiently convenient that the wish was
no longer alive, that the arrow of pain was blunted, but such a person was
no knight. A freeborn soul who caught himself in that would despise
himself and begin afresh and above all would not allow his soul to be self-
deceived. And yet it must be glorious to get the princess; and yet the
knight of faith is the only happy person and heir to the finite, while the
knight of resignation is a stranger and foreigner. To get the princess in
this way, to live joyfully and happily day in and day out with her (for it is
also conceivable that the knight of resignation could get the princess but
his soul had clearly perceived the impossibility of their future happiness),
so as to live joyfully and happily every moment by virtue of the absurd,
every moment to see the sword hanging over the beloved’s head*’ and yet
to find, not rest in the pain of resignation, but joy by virtue of the absurd —
that is miraculous. The one who does that is great, the only great person.
The thought of it touches my soul, which was never sparing in admiring
greatness.
Now if everyone in my generation unwilling to stop at faith is actually a
man who has grasped the horror of life, who has understood what Daub
meant when he said that a soldier standing alone at his post with a loaded
rifle by a powder magazine on a stormy night gets strange thoughts;>* if
everyone unwilling to stop at faith is actually a man who has strength of
soul to grasp the thought that the wish was an impossibility and there-
upon gave himself time to become solitary with it; if everyone unwilling
to stop at faith is a man who is reconciled in pain and reconciled by pain;
if everyone unwilling to stop at faith is a man who subsequently (and if he
has not done all the foregoing, then he should not trouble himself when
there is talk of faith) performed the miraculous and grasped the whole of
existence by virtue of the absurd — then what I write is the highest tribute
to the present generation by its lowliest member, who can make only the

5' An allusion to the legendary figure Damocles, an envious courtier over whose head a sword was
suspended by a hair at a banquet hosted by Dionysius, ruler of Syracuse, to illustrate the danger
associated with greatness.
5? Karl Daub (1765-1836) was a right-wing Hegelian whose remark paraphrased by Kierkegaard
here is recorded in Karl Rosenkranz, Erinnerungen an Karl Daub (Berlin: Verlag von Duncker und
Humblot, 1837), p. 24. See KSKB 743 and Soren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 1—V11, ed.
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press,
1967-78), 1, entry no. 899 (SKP 1v A 92), hereafter referred to by the sighum JP followed by
volume and entry number.

43
 Fear and Trembling

movement of resignation. But why are they unwilling to stop at faith?

Why does one sometimes hear that people are ashamed to acknowledge
that they have faith? I cannot understand it. If | ever manage to be able to
make this movement, I shall drive with four horses in the future.
Is it really so? Is all the bourgeois philistinism I see in life and which
I do not permit my words but rather my works to judge, is it really not
what it seems? Is it the miracle? It is indeed conceivable, for that hero of
faith did indeed have a’striking resemblance to it and was not even an
ironist and humorist but something still higher. Much is said in our time
about irony and humor, especially by people who have never known how
to practice them but nevertheless know how to explain everything. I am
not entirely unfamiliar with these two passions; I know a little more about
them than what is said in German and German-Danish compendia.
I know therefore that these two passions are essentially different from
the passion of faith. Irony and humor also consider themselves and
therefore belong to the sphere of infinite resignation; their flexibility is
due to the fact that the individual is incommensurable with actuality.
The last movement, the paradoxical movement of faith, [cannot make,
be it a duty or whatever, although there is nothing I would rather do.
Whether a person has a right to say this must be left up to him; whether
he can come to an amicable agreement in this respect is a matter between
him and the eternal being that is the object of faith. What every person
can do is to make the movement of infinite resignation, and I for my part
would not hesitate to call anyone a coward who imagines that he cannot
do it. With faith it is another matter. But what every person does not have
aright to dois to make others believe that faith is something lowly or that
it is an easy matter, whereas it is the greatest and the hardest.
People construe the story of Abraham in another way. They praise
God’s grace for giving Isaac to him again; the whole affair was only a trial.
A trial — this word can mean much and little, and yet the whole affair is
over as soon as it is said. One mounts a winged horse;>3 at that very
moment one is on Mount Moriah, at that very moment one sees the ram.
One forgets that Abraham only rode upon an ass, which goes slowly along

*$ In Greek mythology Pegasus was a winged horse that sprang from the body of Med
usa upon her
death and was associated with poetic inspiration inasmuch as the stamp of
his hoof caused
Hippocrene, the sacred fountain of the Muses (the nine goddesses who presided over
literature
and the arts and sciences), to be opened up on Mount Helicon.

44
 Preliminary Outpouring

the way, that he had a three-day journey, that he needed some time to
chop the firewood, bind Isaac, and draw the knife.
And yet one pays tribute to Abraham. The speaker can just as well
sleep until the last fifteen minutes before he has to speak; the listener can
just as well fall asleep during the speech, for everything goes easy enough
without trouble from either side. If a man who suffered from insomnia
were present, he would perhaps have gone home, sat down in a corner,
and thought: “The whole affair is a momentary matter; just wait a
minute, then you will see the ram and the trial is over.” If the speaker
were to meet him in this situation, then I imagine he would step up to
him in all his dignity and say: “You wretch, to let your soul sink into such
folly! No miracle takes place, and the whole of life is a trial.” As the
speaker progressed in his effusiveness, the more excited he became and
the more he was pleased with himself, and while he had noticed no
congestion of blood when he talked about Abraham, he now could feel
the vein swelling in his forehead. Perhaps he would be dumbfounded if
the sinner calmly and with dignity replied: “Well, that was what you
preached about last Sunday.”
Let us then either forget Abraham or else learn to be horrified by the
prodigious paradox that is the meaning of his life, so that we may
understand that our age, like every age, can be joyful if it has faith. If
Abraham is not a cipher, a phantom, some showpiece one uses to amuse
oneself, then the fault can never lie in the sinner wanting to do likewise.
But the point is to see how great what Abraham did was, so that the man
can judge for himself whether he has the vocation and courage to be tried
in something like this. The comic contradiction in the speaker’s behavior
was that he made Abraham into a nobody and yet wanted to forbid the
other to conduct himself in the same way.
Should one then not dare to speak about Abraham? I think one probably
should after all. If 1 were to speak about him, I would first depict the pain of
the trial. To that end I would, like a leech, suck all the anxiety and distress
and torment out of a father’s suffering in order to be able to describe what
Abraham suffered while still believing through it all. I would recall that the
journey lasted three days and a good part of the fourth; indeed, these three
and a half days must be infinitely longer than the couple of thousand years
that separate me from Abraham. Then I would recall that, in my view,
every person may still venture to turn back before beginning something
like this and every moment can turn back repentantly. If one does this,

45
 Fear and Trembling

then I fear no danger, nor am I afraid of arousing a desire in people to be

tried in likeness to Abraham. But to peddle a cheap edition of Abraham and
yet forbid everyone to do likewise is ludicrous.
It is now my intention to draw out in the form of problems the
dialectical factors implicit in the story of Abraham in order to see what
a prodigious paradox faith is — a paradox that is capable of making a
murder into a holy act well pleasing to God, a paradox that gives Isaac
back again to Abraham, which no thought can lay hold of because faith
begins precisely where thinking leaves off.

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

The ethical as such is the universal,** and as the universal it applies to
everyone, which may be expressed from another angle by saying that it is
in force at every moment. It rests immanently in itself, has nothing
outside itself that is its telos,°> but is itself the telos for everything outside
itself, and when the ethical has assimilated this into itself it goes no
further. Defined immediately as a sensuous and psychical being, the
single individual®® is the particular’” that has its telos in the universal,
and it is his ethical task constantly to express himself in this, to annul his
particularity in order to become the universal: As soon as the single
individual wants to assert himself in his particularity over against the
universal, he sins and only by acknowledging this can be reconciled again
with the universal. Whenever the single individual feels an urge to assert
himself as the particular after having entered into the universal, he is in a
state of temptation, from which he can extricate himself only by

+ See G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood and trans. H.B,
Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 195-6, §152. Kierkegaard used the
second German edition of this work in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke. Vollstindige Ausgabe
durch einen Verein, 1-xvii1, ed. Philipp Marheineke et al. (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot,
1832-45), VIII, p. 218. See KSKB 549-65. Kierkegaard may also have in mind the ethics
of
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) as set forth, for example, in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of
Morals,
trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See Ronald
M. Green,
Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt ( Albany, N.Y.: State University of New
York, 1992)
teAOG, meaning end, goal, or purpose. °° den Enkelte.
den Enkelte. This term can mean “the single individual,” as in the previous
un
a

reference, or “the
particular,” the latter referring to anything that is distinct or separate
in contrast to the
universal, which includes all particulars or the whole. Generally the first
meaning of the term
predominates in this text, but in a few instances, as in the present case, the
second meaning is
appropriate for indicating the contrast between the particular and the uni
versal being presented
in the text.

46
 Problem 1

repentantly surrendering himself as the particular to the universal. If this

is the highest thing that can be said about a human being and his
existence, then the ethical has the same character as a person’s eternal
salvation, which eternally and at every moment is his telos, since it would
be a contradiction to say that could be surrendered (i.e. teleologically
suspended), for as soon as that is suspended it is forfeited, whereas
whatever is suspended is not forfeited but on the contrary is preserved
in the higher, which is its telos.
If that is the case, then Hegel is right when in “The Good and the
Conscience”>* he lets the human being be qualified only as the particular,
and he is right in regarding this qualification as a “moral form of evil”
(see especially The Philosophy of Right) which must be annulled*? in the
teleology of the moral®° in such a way that the single individual who
remains in that stage either sins or stands in temptation. However, Hegel
is wrong in speaking about faith,°’ wrong in not protesting loudly and
clearly against Abraham enjoying honor and glory as a father of faith,
whereas he ought to have been remanded and exposed as a murderer.
Faith is exactly this paradox, that the single individual is higher than
the universal, but in such a way, mind you, that the movement is
repeated, so that after having been in the universal he now as the
particular keeps to himself as higher than the universal. If this is not
faith, then Abraham is lost and faith has never existed in the world
oy because it has always existed. For if the ethical, i.e. the ethical
life,°? is the highest and nothing incommensurable remains in a human
being in any way other than that incommensurability constituting evil,
i.e. the particular that must be expressed in the universal, then one needs
no other categories than what the Greek philosophers had or what can be

58 Philosophy of Right, 157-86, §§129-41.

59 gphaeves. Unlike the Danish word opheve, which means simply to abolish or to annul, the German
term to which it refers here, aufheben (to sublate or suspend), is ambiguous in that it means both
“to cancel” and “to preserve” in a higher unity. See Hegel, The Encyclopedia Logic, pp. XxV-Xxv1,
xxxv_-xxxvi, 154, §96. See also Kierkegaard’s discussion of this term in Concluding Unscientific
Postscript, 1, pp. 222-3.
det Sedeliges Teleologi.
See, for example, Philosophy of Right, 290-304, §270; Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller
61

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp- 321—8, §§527-37-

det Sedelige. This term can mean the canal as in the previous paragraph, or the ethical, as in the
present context, where it is equivalent to the German term die Sittlichkeit, Hegel’s expression for
the ethical life in society in contrast to a purely private or subjective morality (Moralitat). For
Hegel the ethical life is expressed in three arenas: family, civil society, and the state. Sec
Philosophy of Right, pp. 187-380, §§142-360.

47
 Fear and Trembling

logically deduced from them. Hegel should not have concealed this, for
after all he had studied the Greeks.
One not infrequently hears people who become engrossed in clichés
for lack of losing themselves in studies say that a light shines over the
Christian world, whereas paganism is shrouded in darkness. This sort of
talk has always seemed strange to me, since every more profound thinker,
every more serious artist still rejuvenates himself in the eternal youth of
the Greek people. Such'a statement may be explained by one not know-
ing what one should say but only that one should say something. It is all
right to say that paganism did not have faith, but if something is
supposed to have been said by that, then one must be a little clearer
about what one understands by faith, since otherwise one relapses into
such cliches. It is easy to explain the whole of existence, including faith,
without having a conception of what faith is, and one is not the worst
calculator in life who counts on being admired when one has such an
explanation, for as Boileau says: “A fool always finds a greater fool who
admires him.””3
Faith is precisely this paradox, that the single individual as the parti-
cular is higher than the universal and is justified over against the latter
not as subordinate but superior to it, yet in such a way, mind you, that it
is the single individual who, after haying been subordinate to the uni-
versal as the particular, now through the universal becomes the single
individual who as the particular is superior to it; [faith is this paradox]
that the single individual as the particular stands in an absolute relation to
the absolute. This standpoint cannot be mediated, for all mediation
occurs precisely by virtue of the universal; it is and forever remains a
paradox, inaccessible to thought. And yet faith is this paradox or else
(these are the consequences I would ask the reader to bear in mind®* at
every point, even though it would be too prolix for me to write them
down everywhere), or else faith has never existed just because it has
always existed, or else Abraham is lost.

63
un sot trouve toujours un plus sot, qui Vadmire. From L’Art poétique, 1, 232, by
Nicolas Boileau-
Despréaux (1636-1711), French poet, satirist, and critic. See Euvres de Boileau, \—-1v
, ed. Berriat
Saint-Prix (Paris: C. H. Langlois: Delaunay, 1830), 11, Pp. 190, or more recently
, Boileau Luvres,
ed. Georges Mongrédien (Paris: Editions Garnier Fréres, 1961), p. 165. In Engl
ish see Boileau:
Selected Criticism, trans. Ernest Dilworth (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965),
6 * p. 17.
+ in mente.

48
 Problem 1

That for the single individual this paradox can easily be confused with
a temptation is certainly true, but one ought not for that reason to conceal
it. That many people may be wholly constituted in such a way that it
repulses them is certainly true, but one ought not for that reason to make
faith into something different in order to be able to have it as well, but
ought rather to admit that one does not have it, while those who have
faith ought to be prepared to post some criteria by which to distinguish
the paradox from a temptation.
Now the story of Abraham contains such a teleological suspension of
the ethical. There has been no lack of keen heads and thorough scholars
who have found analogies to it. Their wisdom amounts to the pretty
proposition that basically everything is the same. If one will look a little
closer, I doubt very much whether one will find a single analogy in the
whole world except a later one®S that proves nothing if it is certain that
Abraham represents faith and that it is properly expressed in him, whose
life is not only the most paradoxical that can be thought but so paradox-
ical that it cannot be thought at all. Abraham acts by virtue of the absurd,
for the absurd is precisely that he as the single individual is higher than
the universal. This paradox cannot be mediated, for as soon as Abraham
sets out to do that he must admit that he was ina state of temptation, and
if that is so, he never gets to the point of sacrificing Isaac, or if he has
sacrificed Isaac he must then repentantly return to the universal. He gets
Isaac back again by virtue of the absurd. Abraham is therefore at no
moment a tragic hero but something entirely different, either a murderer
or a believer. Abraham lacks the middle term that saves the tragic hero.
That is why I can understand a tragic hero but cannot understand
Abraham, even though in a certain demented sense I admire him more
than all others.
Abraham’s relation to Isaac, ethically speaking, is quite simply this,
that the father must love the son more than himself. Yet the ethical has
within its own scope several gradations. We shall see whether this story
contains any sort of higher expression for the ethical that can ethically
explain his behavior, ethically justify him in suspending the ethical duty
to the son, yet without therefore moving beyond the teleology of the
ethical.

5 Perhaps an allusion to Jesus Christ.

49
 Fear and Trembling

When an undertaking of concern to a whole people is impeded, when

such an enterprise is brought to a standstill by heaven’s disfavor, when
the angry deity sends a dead calm that mocks all efforts, when the
soothsayer carries out his sad task and proclaims that the deity demands
a young girl as sacrifice — then the father heroically must bring this
sacrifice.°° He must conceal his pain magnanimously even though he
could wish he was “the lowly man who dares to weep,”®” not the king
who must act regally. And however solitarily the pain penetrates his
breast, he has only three confidants®” among the people, and soon the
whole population will be privy to his pain but also to his deed, that for the
welfare of all he would sacrifice her, his daughter, the lovely young
maiden. “O bosom! O fair cheeks, flaxen hair” (v. 687).°? And the
daughter will move him with her tears, and the father will avert his
face, but the hero will raise the knife. — Then when the news about that
reaches the ancestral home, the beautiful maidens of Greece will blush
with enthusiasm, and if the daughter was to be a bride, the betrothed
would not be angry but proud of participating in the father’s deed,
because the maiden belonged to him more tenderly than to the father.
When that brave judge’® who saved Israel in the hour of need binds
God and himself in one breath by the same vow, heroically he will
transform the young girl’s jubilation, the beloved daughter’s joy to
sorrow, and all Israel will grieve with her over her maidenly youth. But
every freeborn man will understand, every stouthearted woman will
admire Jephthah, and every maiden in Israel will wish to act as his
daughter did, for what is the use of Jephthah having conquered by
means of his vow if he did not keep it? Would not the victory be taken
away again from the people?

°° A reference to Iphigenia in Aulis by the Greek dramatist Euripides (480-406 BCE). When the
Greck fleet could not sail from Aulis to conquer Troy because of a dead calm, the soothsayer
Calchas urged Agamemnon, king of the Greeks and commander of the Greek forces, to sacrifice
his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis in hopes of persuading her to grant them a fair
wind.
7 Ibid. See The Complete Greek Tragedies, 1\-1v , ed. David Grene and Richard Lattimor
e (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992), 1V, p. 316, 1. 445.
68
Calchas, Odysseus, and Menelaus (sbid., p. 301, lL. 105).
69
Line reference to the Danish translation of Iphigenia I Aulis in Euripides, trans. Chri
stian Wilster
(Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, 1840). See KSKB 11 15. In English, see The
Complete Greek
Tragedies, 1V, 330, |. 681, p. 125: “O breast and cheeks! O golden hair!”
Jephthah. See Judges 11:30-40, where Jephthah vows to sacrifice the first crea
ture that comes out
of his house (which happens to be his daughter) upon his return from defe
ating the Ammonites
with divine help.

50
 Problem 1

When a son forgets his duty,’’ when the state entrusts the father with
the sword of judgment, when the laws demand punishment from the
father’s hand, the father heroically must forget that the guilty one is his
son. He magnanimously must conceal his pain, but there will not be a
single person among the people, not even the son, who will fail to admire
the father. And whenever the laws of Rome are interpreted, it must be
remembered that many interpreted them more learnedly but none more
gloriously than Brutus.
However, if Agamemnon, while a favorable wind was carrying the fleet
at full sail to its destination, had dispatched that messenger who fetched
Iphigenia to be sacrificed; if Jephthah, without being bound by any vow
that determined the fate of the people, had said to his daughter, “grieve
now for two months over your brief youth, and then J will sacrifice you”;
if Brutus had had a righteous son and yet had summoned the lictors’* to
execute him — who then would have understood them? If upon being
asked why they did it these three men had answered, “it is a trial in which
we are being tested,” would anyone then have understood them better?
When at the decisive moment Agamemnon, Jephthah, and Brutus
heroically have overcome the pain, heroically have lost the beloved and
merely must complete the deed externally, there never will be a noble soul
in the world without tears of sympathy for their pain and tears of admira-
tion for their deed. However, if at the decisive moment these three men
were to add to the heroic courage with which they bore their pain the little
phrase, “but it will not happen,” who then would understand them? If as an
explanation they added, “we believe it by virtue of the absurd,” who then
would understand them better? For who would not easily understand that
it was absurd, but who would understand that one could then believe it?
The difference between the tragic hero and Abraham is obvious. The
tragic hero still remains within the ethical. He lets an expression of the
ethical have its telos in a higher expression of the ethical; he reduces
the ethical relation between father and son or daughter and father to a

sons of Luci us Juni us Brut us, cons ul of Rom e c. 500 BCE, took part in a cons piracy to
7* When the
form er king , Brut us had them put to deat h. See Livy , The Earl y Hist ory of
restore Tarquin the
, bks. 1-v of The Hist ory of Rom e from tts Foun dati on, trans . Aubrey de Sélincourt
Rome
UK: Peng uin, 1960 ), bk. 1, &§1- 6, pp. 108- 13. See also KSK B 1256: Titi
(Harmondsworth,
ed. C.F. Inge rsle v (Co pen hag en: Gyld enda l, 1831 ), 1, bk. 11, §§1- 6,
Livii Historiarum libri, 1-x,,
pp. 119-29.
went befo re the chie f magi stra te in publ ic carr ying the fasc es or
72 Minor Roman officials who
bundle of rods wrapped around an axe as a symbol of his authority.

51
 Fear and Trembling

sentiment that has its dialectic in its relation to the idea of the ethical life.
Here, then, there can be no question of a teleological suspension of the
ethical itself.
The case is different with Abraham. By his act he transcended the
whole of the ethical and had a higher telos outside, in relation to which he
suspended it. For I would certainly like to know how Abraham’s act can
be brought into relation to the universal, whether any connection can be
discovered between what Abraham did and the universal other than that
Abraham overstepped it. It is not to save a people, not to uphold the idea
of the state, not to appease angry gods that Abraham does it. If there
could be any question of the deity being angry, then he still was angry
only at Abraham, and Abraham’s whole deed stands in no relation to the
universal, it is a purely private undertaking. While the tragic hero is
therefore great by his ethical virtue, Abraham is great by a purely
personal virtue. There is no higher expression for the ethical in
Abraham’s life than this, that the father must love the son. There can
be no question at all of the ethical in the sense of the ethical life. Insofar as
the universal was present, it was still latent in Isaac, hidden so to speak in
[saac’s loins, and must then cry out with Isaac’s mouth: “Do not do it,
you are destroying everything.”
Why does Abraham do it then? For God’s sake, and what is altogether
identical with this, for his own sake. He does it for God’s sake because
God demands this proof of his faith; he does it for his own sake so that he
can prove it. Hence the unity is quite rightly expressed in the word
always used to denote this relation: it is a trial, a temptation. A tempta-
tion; but what does that mean? That which ordinarily tempts a person, to
be sure, is whatever would keep him from doing his duty, but here the
temptation is the ethical itself, which would keep him from doing God’s
will. But what then is the duty? Well, the duty is precisely the expression
for God’s will.
Here the necessity of a new category for understanding Abraham
becomes apparent. Such a relationship to the divine is unknown in
paganism. The tragic hero does not enter into any private relation to
the deity, but the ethical is the divine and therefore the paradox in it can
be mediated in the universal.
Abraham cannot be mediated, which can also be expressed by saying
he cannot speak. As soon as I speak, I express the universal, and ifI do not
do that, then no one can understand me. As soon as Abraham wants
to

52
 Problem 1

express himself in the universal, he must say that his situation is a

temptation, for he has no higher expression for the universal that ranks
above the universal he oversteps.
While Abraham therefore arouses my admiration, he appalls me as
well. Whoever denies himself and sacrifices himself for duty gives up the
finite in order to grasp the infinite and is secure enough; the tragic hero
gives up the certain for the even more certain, and the eye of the beholder
rests confidently upon him. But the one who gives up the universal in
order to grasp something still higher that is not the universal, what does
he do? Is it possible that this can be anything other than a temptation?
And if it is possible but the single individual then made a mistake, what
salvation is there for him? He suffers all the pain of the tragic hero, he
destroys his joy in the world, he renounces everything and perhaps at the
same moment blocks himself from the sublime joy which was so precious
to him that he would buy it at any price. The observer cannot understand
him at all, nor confidently rest his eyes upon him. Perhaps what the
believer intends cannot be done at all since it is indeed inconceivable. Or
if it could be done but the individual has misunderstood the deity, what
salvation would there be for him? The tragic hero needs and demands
tears, and where was the envious eye so arid that it could not weep with
Agamemnon? But where was the one whose soul was so confused that he
had the audacity to weep over Abraham? The tragic hero accomplishes
his deed at a definite moment of time, but in the course of time he does
something no less significant; he visits someone whose soul is enveloped
by sorrow, whose breast cannot get air because of its anguished sighs,
whose thoughts, pregnant with tears, weigh heavy upon him. The tragic
hero appears before him, breaks the spell of sorrow, loosens the corset,
and elicits the tears as the sufferer forgets his sufferings in the tragic
hero’s. One cannot weep over Abraham. One approaches him with a
religious awe,’ as Israel approached Mount Sinai.’ — What if, then, the
lonely man who climbs Mount Moriah, which at its peak towers sky-high
over the plains of Aulis, what if he is not a sleepwalker who goes safely
across the precipice while the one standing at the foot of the mountain
looking on trembles with anxiety and out of respect and fright does not
once dare call to him — what if he becomes flustered, what if he has made a
mistake! — Thanks! Again thanks be to a man who offers the one who has

73 horror religiosus. 7* Exodus 19:12—13.

53
 Fear and Trembling

been overcome by life’s sorrows and left behind naked, offers him the
expression, the leaf of the word, with which he can hide his wretched-
ness.’° Thanks be to you, great Shakespeare, you who can say everything,
everything, everything exactly as it is — and yet why did you never give
expression to this torment? Did you perhaps reserve it for yourself, like
the beloved whose name one cannot bear the world even to mention?”°
For a poet buys this power of the word to tell everybody else’s dark
secrets at the cost of a little secret he cannot divulge, and a poet is not an
apostle, he casts out devils only by the power of the devil.”
But if the ethical is indeed teleologically suspended in this manner,
how then does the single individual in whom it is suspended exist? He
exists as the particular in contrast to the universal. Does he then sin? For
this is the form of sin, viewed ideally, so that even though the child does
not sin because it is not conscious of its existence as such, its existence,
viewed ideally, is nevertheless still sin, and the ethical exacts its claim
upon the child at every moment. If one denies that this form can be
repeated in such a way that it is not sin, then judgment has fallen upon
Abraham. How then did Abraham exist?-He believed. That is the para-
dox by which he remains at the apex and which he cannot make.clear to
anyone else, for the paradox is that he as the single individual places
himself in an absolute relation to the absolute. Is he justified? His
justification is again the paradox, for if he is justified, it is not by virtue
of being something universal but by virtue of being the particular.
How does the single individual assure himself that he is justified? It is
easy enough to level all existence to the idea of the state or the idea ofa
society. If one does that, then it is also easy enough to mediate, for then
one does not come at all to the paradox that the single individual as the
particular is higher than the universal, which I can also express appro-
priately in a proposition of Pythagoras to the effect that the odd number
is more perfect than the even number.”° Insofar as one occasionally

75
Cf. Genesis 3:7.
76
See the dedication by T.T. (presumably the editor, Thomas Thorpe) that pref
aced the first
edition of the sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint by the English poet and dramatis
t William
Shakespeare (1564~1616).
Cf. Mark 3:22.
A
mS

Kierkegaard’s source for this information was Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann

nm
~

, Geschichte der
Philosophie, 1x1 (Leipzig: Bei Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1798-1819), 1,
pp. 105-6. See JP
5:5616 and KSKB 815-26. On the pre-Socratic philosopher Pythagoras (c.
570-497 BCE) and
the later Pythagorean school of thought, see W. G. K. Guthrie, 4 History of Gree
k Philosophy, 1—v1
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 1, pp. 146-340.

54
 Problem 1

hears a reply tending toward the paradox in our age, it generally goes
like this: “One judges it according to the outcome.” A hero who has
become an offense or stumbling block’? to his age in the awareness that
he is a paradox that cannot make itself intelligible cries out confidently
to his contemporaries: “The outcome will indeed show that I was
justified.” This cry is rarely heard in our age, for just as it does not
produce heroes, which is its defect, so also it has the advantage of
producing few caricatures. When someone in our age hears these
words, “it will be judged according to the outcome,” then it is clear
right away with whom one has the honor of speaking. Those who talk
this way are a numerous lot whom I shall designate by the common
name of “associate professors.” Secured in life, they live in their
thoughts; they have a permanent position and secure prospects in a
well-organized state; they have centuries or indeed even millennia
between themselves and the earthquakes of existence; they do not fear
that such things can be repeated, for what indeed would the police and
newspapers say? Their task in life is to judge the great men and to judge
them according to the outcome. Such conduct toward the great betrays
a curious mixture of arrogance and wretchedness — arrogance because
they feel called to pass judgment, wretchedness because they do not feel
their lives are even remotely related to those of the great. Surely anyone
with only a smattering of nobility of nature®°? has not become a com-
pletely cold and clammy worm, and when he approaches the great it can
never escape his mind that since the creation of the world it has been
customary for the result to come last and that if one is in truth to learn
anything from the great, it is precisely the beginning to which one must
be attentive. If the one who is to act wants to judge himself by the
outcome, then he will never begin. Even though the outcome may
delight the whole world, it cannot help the hero, for he only came to
know. the outcome when the whole thing was over, and he did not
become a hero by that but by the fact that he began.
Moreover, the outcome (insofar as it is finitude’s answer to the infinite
question) is in its dialectic altogether heterogeneous to the hero’s exis-
tence. Or would it be possible to prove that Abraham was justified in
relating himself as the single individual to the universal by the fact that he

79 oxavoanrov. Cf. 1 Corinthians 1:23. °° erectioris ingent.

55
 Fear and Trembling

got Isaac by a miracle? If Abraham actually had sacrificed Isaac, would he

therefore have been less justified?
But people are curious about the outcome, just as they are about the
outcome ofa book. They do not want to know anything about the anxiety,
the distress, the paradox. They flirt esthetically with the outcome; it
comes just as unexpectedly but also just as easily as a prize in the lottery,
and when they have heard the outcome they are edified. And yet no
robber of churches who toils in irons is so base a criminal as the one who
plunders the holy in this way, and not even Judas,*" who sold his Lord for
thirty pieces of silver, is more contemptible than the one who peddles
greatness in this way.
It goes against the grain for me to speak inhumanly about the great, to
let it darken into an indefinite form at a great distance, to let it be great
without bringing out the human element in it, without which it ceases to
be great. For it is not what happens to me that makes me great but what
I do, and there is surely no one who thinks that a man became great
because he won the grand prize in the lottery. Even if a person were born
in humble circumstances, I would still insist that he not be so inhuman
towards himself as to be unable to imagine the king’s castle except at a
distance, vaguely dreaming about its greatness and wanting thereby to
elevate and destroy it at the same time because he elevated it in a base
manner. I insist that he be human enough to step forward there with
confidence and dignity as well. He must not be so inhuman as rudely to
offend everyone by storming into the king’s hall from off the street,
thereby losing more than the king. On the contrary, he should find
pleasure in observing every dictate of propriety with glad and confident
enthusiasm, which is precisely what will make him frank and open. This
is only a simile, for that difference is only a very imperfect expression for
the distance of spirit. I insist of every person that he must not think so
inhumanly of himself that he dare not enter those palaces where not only
the memory of the chosen lives but where they themselves reside. He
must not rudely push himself forward and impute his kinship with them.
He must be happy every time he bows before them, but he must be frank
and confident and always be something more than a nurses’ aide, for if he
does not want to be more than that, he will never be admitted there. And
what will help him is precisely the anxiety and distress in which the great

*" Matthew 26:15.

 Problem 1

are tried, for otherwise, if he has a scrap of backbone they will merely
arouse his righteous envy. And what can be great only at a distance, what
people want to make into something great by the help of empty and
hollow phrases — that they themselves destroy.
Who was ever so great in the world as that favored woman, the mother
of God, the Virgin Mary?*? And yet how does one speak of her? That she
was favored among women does not make her great, and if it did not so
oddly happen that those who hear can think just as inhumanly as those
who speak, then every young girl must indeed ask: “Why was I not also
favored?” And ifI had nothing else to say, I would not at all dismiss such
a question as stupid, for with respect to a favor, abstractly viewed, every
person is equally entitled. One leaves out the distress, the anxiety, the
paradox. My thought is as pure as anyone’s, and the thought of one who
can think this way will surely become pure, and if that is not so, he has
something frightful to expect as well. For anyone who has once evoked
these images cannot get rid of them again, and if he sins against them,
then they take terrible revenge through a quiet wrath more frightful than
the clamor of ten ferocious critics. Certainly Mary bore the child mir-
aculously, but it still went with her after the manner of women,”? and this
time is one of anxiety, distress, and paradox. The angel was surely a
ministering spirit, but he was not an obliging spirit who went to the other
young maidens in Israel and said: “Do not despise Mary, something
extraordinary is happening to her.” The angel appeared only to Mary,
and no one could understand her. After all, what woman was more
offended against than Mary? And is it not also true here that the one
whom God blesses he curses in the same breath? This is the spirit’s
understanding of Mary, and she is by no means — which shocks me to say
but is even more shocking that people have thoughtlessly and frivolously
understood her in this way — she is by no means a lady who parades in her
finery and plays with a divine child. When she then nevertheless says,
“behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord,”* she is therefore great, and I
think it should not be difficult to explain why she became the mother of
God. She needs no worldly admiration, just as little as Abraham needs
tears, for she was no heroine and he was no hero, but they both by no
means became greater than these by being exempt from distress and
torment and the paradox but became that through them.

82 Luke 1:28-38. *3 Menses. Cf. Genesis 18:11; 31:35. 54 Luke 1:38.

ae
 Fear and Trembling

It is great when the poet in presenting his tragic hero for public
admiration dares to say: “Weep for him, for he deserves it.” For it is
grea t to dese rve the tear s of thos e who dese rve to shed tear s; it is grea t
that the poet dares to keep the crowd under control, dares to chastise
people so that each examines himselfas to whether he is worthy to weep
for the hero, for the wastewater of blubberers is a debasement of the
holy. — Yet greater than all this is that the knight of faith dares to say even
to the noble person who wants to weep for him: “Do not weep for me, but
weep for yourself.”°>
One is moved, one returns to those beautiful times when sweet, tender
longings lead one to the goal of one’s desire, to see Christ walking about
in the promised land. One forgets the anxiety, the distress, the paradox.
Was it so easy a matter not to make a mistake? Was it not appalling that
this person who walked among others was God? Was it not terrifying to
sit down to eat with him? Was it so easy a matter to become an apostle?
But the outcome, the eighteen centuries, it helps; it lends a hand to that
paltry deception whereby one deceives oneself and others. I do not feel
brave enough to wish to be contemporary with such events, but for that
reason I do not judge harshly of those who made a mistake nor slightly of
those who saw the right thing.
But I return to Abraham. During the time before the outcome,
Abraham was either at every moment a murderer or we are at the paradox
that is higher than all mediations. -
‘The story of Abraham contains, then, a teleological suspension of the
ethical. As the single individual he became higher than the universal.
This is the paradox that cannot be mediated. How he entered into it is
just as inexplicable as how he remains in it. If that is not the case with
Abraham, then he is not even a tragic hero but a murderer. To want to
continue calling him the father of faith, to speak about it to people who
do not concern themselves with anything but words, is thoughtless. A
human being can become a tragic hero by his own strength, but not the
knight of faith. When a person sets out on what in a certain sense is the
hard way of the tragic hero, many will be able to advise him; the one who
goes faith’s narrow way, him no one can advise, no one-can,understand.

85 Luke 23:28.
 Problem 11

Faith is a miracle, and yet no human being is excluded from it, for that
which unites all human life is passion,* and faith is a passion.

Problem 1: Is there an absolute duty to God?”°

The ethical is the universal and as such in turn the divine. It is therefore
right to say that every duty, after all, is duty to God, but if no more can be
said, then one is saying as well that I really have no duty to God. Duty
becomes duty by being referred to God, but in the duty itself I do not
enter into relation to God. For instance, it is a duty to love one’s
neighbor. It is a duty by its being referred to God, but in the duty I do
not enter into a relation to God but to the neighbor I love. If I say then in
this connection that it is my duty to love God, I am really only stating a
tautology insofar as “God” here is understood in an entirely abstract
sense as the divine, i.e. the universal, i.e. the duty. The whole existence of
the human race rounds itself off in itself as a perfect sphere and the
ethical is at once its limit and its completion. God becomes an invisible
vanishing point, an impotent thought, his power being only in the ethical,
which completes existence. Insofar as it might occur to a person to want
to love God in some sense other than the one indicated here, he is being

. Lessing®® has somewhere expressed something similar from a purely esthetic point of view. He really
wants to show in the passage that sorrow also can yield a witty expression. To this end he quotes a reply
ona particular occasion by the unhappy king of England, Edward I1.*7 In contrast to that he quotes
from Diderot®® a story about a peasant woman anda reply of hers. Then he continues: “That too was
wit and moreover the wit of a peasant woman; but the circumstances made it unavoidable.
Consequently, one must not seek the justification of witty expressions of pain and sorrow in the fact
that the person who said them is refined, well-bred, reasonable, and at the same time a witty person;
for the passio ns make every one equal again, but only in the sense that every one, witho ut excep tion, would
say the same thing in the same circumstances. The peasant woman’s thought is one a queen could and
been able to expre ss, just as whate ver the king said on that occas ion could no doubt have
must have
been said by a peasant too.” See Collected Works, Vol. 30, Letters, p. 22 3.29
whose
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), German dramatist, drama critic, and philosopher
writings had a formative influence upon Kierkegaard.
Edward II (1284-1327) was king of England from 1307 to 1327.
Denis Diderot (1713-84) was a French author and encyclopedist.
s Anth eil an den Litt erat urbr iefe n, lette r 81, in Gott hold Ephr aim Less ing’ s
Ausztige aus Lessing’
See KSKB
sdmmtliche Schriften, 1-XXx11 (Berlin: Nicolaischen, 1825-28), XXX, p. 223.
1747-62.
Reli gion with in the Boun dari es of Mere Reas on, ed. and trans . Alle n Woo d and
9° Cf. Immanuel Kant,
anni (Cam brid ge: Cam bri dge Univ ersi ty Pres s, 1998 ), pp. 100, 179- 80, and The
George di Giov
ltie s in Reli gion and Rati onal Theo logy , ed. and trans . Alle n Woo d and Geor ge
Conflict of the Facu
bri dge Univ ersi ty Press , 1996 ), pp. 124, 204, 282- 3, wher e Kant
di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cam
law.
also briefly addresses this issue with respect to Abraham and the moral

59
 Fear and Trembling

quixotic, he loves a phantom, which if it only had enough strength to

speak would say to him: “I do not ask for your love, just stay where you
belong.” Insofar as it might occur to a person to want to love God
differently, this love would be just as suspicious as the love which
Rousseau mentions whereby a person loves the Kaffirs instead of loving
his neighbor.”'
Now if what has been advanced here is true, if there is nothing
incommensurable in a human life except the incommensurability that
is there only by accident, from which nothing follows insofar as existence
is considered ideally, then Hegel is right. But he is not right in speaking
about faith or in allowing Abraham to be regarded as its father, for by the
latter he has passed sentence both on Abraham and on faith. In Hegelian
philosophy the outer®* (the externalization)®* is higher than the inner.°*
This is often illustrated by an example. The child is the inner, the man
the outer; hence the child is determined precisely by the outer, and
conversely the man as the outer by the inner. Faith, on the contrary, is
this paradox, that inwardness is higher than outwardness, or to-recall-a
previous expression, that the odd number is higher than the even.°5
In the ethical view of life, then, the single individual’s task is to divest
himself of the qualification of inwardness and to express this in an
outward form. Whenever the single individual shrinks from doing so,
whenever he wants to stay within or slip down again into the inward
qualification of feeling, mood, etc., he commits an offense and stands in
temptation. The paradox of faith is this, that there is an inwardness that
is incommensurable with the outer, an inwardness that, mind you, is not
identical with that first one but is a new inwardness.°° This must not be
overlooked. Recent philosophy has presumed without further ado to
substitute the immediate for “faith.” If one does that, then it is ludicrous
to deny that faith has existed at all times. In that way faith is put into

or
Probably a reference to Emile ou de |’ Education, 1-1v (Paris: Duchesne, 1762~92) by the French
writer and philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). See KSKB 939-40. However, in
this work Rousseau contrasts neighbor love to love of the medieval Mongolian and Turkish
tribes called Tartars or Tatars, not the Kaffirs, a South African Bantu tribe. In English see Emile
or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p. 39.
92
das Aussere. °3 die Entdusserung.
O4
das Innere. See The Encyclopedia Logic, 204-13, §§135~41. °S See Problem 1, n. 78.
96
On faith as a new or second form of inwardness or immediacy, see JP, 1:9, 49, 84,
85, 214, 235,
972, 1032; 2:I 101, 1123, 1215, 1335, 1942, 1943; 3:3560, 3561; 5:6135.

60
 Problem 11

rather vulgar company with feeling, mood, idiosyncrasy, hysteria,”’ etc.

To this extent philosophy may be right in saying that one ought not to
stop at that. But there is nothing that justifies philosophy in this usage.
Faith is preceded by a movement. of infinity; only then does faith
commence, unexpectedly,”” by virtue of the absurd» This I can well
understand without therefore professing to have faith. If faith is nothing
beyond what philosophy passes it off to be, then Socrates has already
gone further, much further, instead of the converse, that he did not arrive
at it. Intellectually, he has made the movement of infinity. His ignorance
is the infinite resignation. This task is already adequate for human
strength, even though it is disdained in our age; but only when it is
done;-only when the single individual has exhausted himself in the
infinite; only then is the point reached where faith can break forth.
The paradox of faith then is this, that the single individual is higher
than the universal, that the single individual, to recall a now rather rare
theological distinction, determines his relation to the universal by his
relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute by his relation to
the universal. The paradox can also be expressed by saying that there is
an absolute duty to God, for in this relationship of duty the single
individual relates himself as the single individual absolutely to the
absolute. When in this connection it is said that it is a duty to love
God, something different from the foregoing is meant by that, for if
this duty is absolute, then the ethical is reduced to the relative. It does not
follow from this that the ethical should be abolished, but it receives an
entirely different expression, a paradoxical expression, in such a way, for
example, that love for God can cause the knight of faith to give his love
for the neighbor the opposite expression of what duty is ethically
speaking.
If this is not so, then faith has no place in existence; faith is thus a
temptation, and Abraham is lost since he yielded to it.
This paradox cannot be mediated, for it is due precisely to the fact that
the single individual is only the single individual. As soon as this single
individual wants to express his absolute duty in the universal, becomes
conscious of this in the latter, he perceives himself to be in a temptation
and then, if he otherwise resists it, does not come to fulfill the so-called
if he does not resist it, then he sins, even if his act in
absolute duty; and

8. .
9” nec opinate.
ve
%7 vapeurs.

61
 Fear and Trembling

reality”’ is equivalent to that which was his absolute duty. So what should
Abraham have done? If he were to say to another person, “I love Isaac
more than anything in the world and that is why it is so hard for me to
sacrifice him,” the other person might very well have shaken his head and
said, “why sacrifice him then?” Or if the other had been an astute fellow,
he would probably even have seen through Abraham and perceived that
he wore his heart on his sleeve in glaring contradiction to his act.
In the story of Abraham we find such a paradox. His relation to Isaac,
ethically expressed, is this, that the father must love the son. This ethical
relation is reduced to the relative in contradistinction to the absolute
relation to God. To the question why, Abraham has no other answer than
that it is a trial, a test, which, as noted above, is the unity of its being for
God’s sake and for his own sake. These two qualifications also cor-
respond to one another [as opposites] in ordinary usage. Thus if one
sees a person do something that does not conform’to the universal, one
says he hardly did it for God’s sake, meaning thereby that he did it for his
own sake. The paradox of faith has lost the intermediate factor, i.e. the
universal. On the one hand, it is the expression for the highest egoism
(doing the frightful deed for one’s own sake); on the other hand, it is the
expression for the most absolute devotion (doing it for God’s sake). Faith
itself cannot be mediated into the universal, for it is thereby annulled.
Faith is this paradox, and the single individual is utterly unable to make
himself intelligible to anyone. One may well imagine that the single
individual can make himself intelligible to another single individual in
the same situation. Such a view would be unthinkable if people in our age
did not try in so many ways to sneak slyly into greatness. The one knight
of faith cannot help the other at all. Either the single individual himself.
becomes the knight of faith by assuming the paradox or he never becomes
one. Partnership in these areas is utterly unthinkable. Any more detailed
explanation of what is to be understood by Isaac can be given by the
single individual always only to himself. And even if one could determine
ever so precisely, generally speaking, what is to be understood by Isaac
(which then, incidentally, would be the most ludicrous self-contradiction —
to bring the single individual, who stands precisely outside the universal,
under general categories when he should act precisely as the single
individual who is outside the universal), the single individual would

99 ‘yealiter.

62
 Problem 11

never be able to convince himself of this through others, only by himself

as the single individual. Therefore, even if a person were cowardly and
base enough to want to become a knight of faith on someone else’s
responsibility, he certainly would not become one. [or only the single
individual becomes that as the single individual, and this is the greatness
of it, which I can certainly understand without entering therein, since
I lack courage; but this is also the frightfulness of it, which I can under-
stand even better.
As is well known, in Luke. 14:26 a remarkable teaching on the absolute
duty to God is recited: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own
father.and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes,
even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” This is a hard saying; who
can bearto listen to it?'®° For that reason it is also very seldom heard. Yet
this silence is only an evasion that avails nothing. The theological stu-
dent, however, learns that these words occur in the New Testament, and
in one or another exegetical aid’®' he finds the explanation that “to
hate”'®? in this and a couple of other passages, by weakening it,’
means: “love less, esteem less, honor not, value as nothing.”'°* The
context in which these words occur, however, does not seem to corrobo-
rate this tasteful explanation. For a story is found in the following verse
about how someone who wants to erect a tower first makes a rough
estimate of whether he is equal to it, lest he be laughed at afterward.
The close connection between this story and the cited verse seems
precisely to indicate that the words should be taken as frightfully as
possible in order that each person may examine himself as to whether he
can erect the building.
If that pious and accommodating exegete, who by haggling in this way
thinks to smuggle Christianity into the world, had succeeded in convin-
cing a person that grammatically, linguistically, and by analogy’®> this
was the meaning of that passage, then he will hopefully also succeed at
the same time in convincing the same person that Christianity is one of
the most pitiable things in the world. For the teaching which in one of its
most lyrical outpourings, where the consciousness of its eternal validity

|
09 Cf. John 6:60.
Bretschneider, Lexicon manuale graeco-latinum in libros Novi Testaments, 2nd
'°¥ Carolo Gottlieb
a
edn., 1-11 (Leipzig: Barth, 1829), 11, p. 87. See KSKB 73-4.
1 uioew. ' perpewmorv. "4 minus diligo, posthabeo, non colo, nihilt facto.
5 KOT’ AVOAAOYLAV.

63
 Fear and Trembling

swells most strongly in it, has nothing to say but a noisy word that means
nothing but merely indicates that one should be less kind, less atten-
tive, more indifferent. The teaching which at the moment when it seems
to want to say something frightful ends by driveling instead of striking
with terror — that teaching certainly is not worth the trouble of standing
eS 106
up for.
The words are frightful, yet I certainly believe one can understand
them without implying that the person who has understood them there-
fore has the courage to do that. Thus one ought to be honest enough to
admit what they say and to acknowledge their greatness even though one
lacks the courage to do that oneself. Whoever behaves like that should not
exclude himself from participation in the beautiful story, for in a way it
does indeed contain comfort for the one who does not have courage to
begin building the tower. But he must be honest and not explain this lack
of courage as humility when on the contrary it is pride, whereas the
courage of faith is the only humble courage.
Now it is easy to see that if the passage is to have any meaning it must
be understood literally. God is the one who demands absolute love. Now
whoever, on demanding a person’s love, thinks in addition that this must
be proved by his becoming lukewarm to everything that was otherwise
dear to him is not only an egoist but foolish as well, and whoever would
demand such a love simultaneously signs his own death warrant insofar
as he has his life in this coveted love. For instance, a man requires his wife
to leave father and mother,"®’ but if he were to regard it as a proof of her
extraordinary love for him that for his sake she became a lukewarm,
indifferent daughter, etc., then he is more foolish than the greatest fool.
If he had any idea what love is, he would then wish to discover that asa
daughter and sister she was perfect in love and see in that an assurance
that his wife would love him as she does nobody else in the kingdom.
Thus what would be regarded as a sign of egoism and foolishness in a
person may be regarded by the help of an exegete as a worthy representa-
tion of divinity.
But how then hate them? I shall not recall here the human distinction
between loving and hating, not because I have so much against it, for it is
after all passionate, but because it is egoistic and inappropriate here.

iO . : .
‘*’ A common practice in some churches when the gospel lesson is read.
'°7 Cf. Matthew 19:4—6, where it is the man who leaves father and mother to be married.

64
 Problem 11

However, ifI regard the task as a paradox, then I understand At cise:

I understand it in the way one can understand a paradox. The absolute
duty may then bring one to do what ethics would forbid, but it can nevér
make the knight of faith stop loving. Abraham demonstrates this. The
moment he is willing to sacrifice Isaac, the ethical expression for what he
does is this: he hates Isaac. But if he really hates Isaac, he can be sure that
God-does not ask it of him, for Cain'®> and Abraham are not identical. He
must.loye Isaac with all his heart; inasmuch as God demands Isaac,
Abraham must love him, if possible, even more dearly, and only then
can he sacrifice him, for it is indeed this love for Isaac which by its
paradoxical opposition to his love for God makes his act a sacrifice. But
the distress and anxiety in the paradox is that, humanly speaking, he is
utterly unable to make himself intelligible. Only at the moment when his
act is in.absolute contradiction to his feeling, only then does he sacrifice
Isaac, but the reality of his act is that by which he belongs to the
universal, and there he is and remains a murderer.
Furthermore, the passage in Luke must be understood in such a way that
one perceives that the knight of faith has no higher expression of the
universal (as the ethical) at all in which he can save himself. If we thus let
the church require this sacrifice from one of its members, then we have only
a tragic hero. For the idea of the church is not qualitatively different from
that of the state, inasmuch as the single individual can enter into it by a
simple mediation. Upon entering into the paradox, the single individual
does not arrive at the idea of the church; he does not leave the paradox but
must find either his eternal blessedness or his perdition within it..An
ecclesiastical hero expresses the universal in his deed, and no one in the
church, not even his father and mother, etc. will fail to understand him. But
he is not the knight of faith and also has a different response from
Abraham’s; he does not say that it is a trial or a test in which he is being tried.
People generally refrain from citing such passages as that one in Luke.
They are apprehensive of letting people loose for fear that the worst will
happen once the single individual deigns to behave as the single indivi-
dual. Moreover, they think that existing as the single individual is the
easiest thing of all and therefore one must just coerce people into
becoming the universal. I can share neither that fear nor that opinion,
and for the same reason. Whoever has learned that existing as the single

'°8 See Genesis 4:3-16, where Cain murders his brother Abel.

65
 Fear and Trembling

individual is the most terrifying thing of all will not be afraid of saying
that it is the greatest, but he must also say it in such a way that his words
scarcely become a trap for someone gone astray but rather help that
person into the universal, even if his words make a little room for great-
ness. Whoever dares not mention such passages dares not mention
Abraham either, and the notion that existing as the single individual is
easy enough contains a very dubious indirect admission with respect to
oneself. For anyone who actually has self-esteem and concern for his soul
is convinced that whoever lives solely under his own supervision in the
world at large lives more strictly and secluded than a maiden in her
boudoir. It is no doubt true that there may be those who need coercion,
those who, if set at liberty, would like a wild animal give free rein to
selfish desire, but one must demonstrate that one does not belong to them
precisely by the fact that one knows how to speak with fear and trem-
bling. And one must speak out of respect for the great, lest it be forgotten
for fear of the harm that surely will not come if spoken in such a way that
one knows it is the great and knows its terrors, without which one does
not know its greatness either.
Let us then consider in a little more detail the distress and anxiety in the
paradox of faith. The tragic hero resigns himself in order to express the
universal; the knight of faith resigns the universal in order to become
the single individual. As I said, everything depends on how one is situated.
Anyone who believes that it is easy enough to be the single individual can
always rest assured that he is not the knight of faith, for vagabonds and
vagrant geniuses are not men of faith. On the contrary, this knight knows
that it is glorious to belong to the universal. He knows that it is beautiful
and beneficial to be the particular individual who translates himself into
the universal, one who, so to speak, personally produces a clean-cut,
elegant, and insofar as possible flawless edition of himself, readable by
all. He knows it is refreshing to become intelligible to oneself in the
universal in such a way that he understands the latter, and every individual
who understands him in turn understands the universal through him, and
both rejoice in the security of the universal. He knows it is beautiful to be
born as the particular individual who has his home in the universal, his
friendly abode, which immediately receives him with open arms when he
wants to remain in it. But he knows as well that higher than this there
winds a lonely trail, narrow and steep; he knows that it is frightful to be
born solitary, outside the universal, to walk without meeting a single

66
 Problem 11

traveler. He knows very well where he is and how he relates to people.

Humanly speaking, he is mad and cannot make himself intelligible to
anyone. And yet it is the mildest expression to say that he is mad. If he
is not viewed in this way, then he is a hypocrite, and indeed the higher he
climbs on the trail, the more appalling a hypocrite he is.
The knight of faith knows that it is inspiring to surrender oneselfto the
universal, that it takes courage for this, but that there is also a security in
it, precisely because it is for the universal. He knows that it is glorious to
be understood by every noble-minded person and in such a way that the
observer himself is ennobled thereby. This he knows, and he feels as
though bound; he could wish that it was this task that was assigned to
him. In like manner, Abraham might now and then have wished that the
task was to love Isaac as a father would and should, intelligible to all,
unforgettable for all time. He could wish that the task was to sacrifice
Isaac for the universal, so that he could inspire fathers to illustrious deeds —
and he is almost horrified by the thought that for him such wishes only
constitute temptations and must be treated as such.*For he knows it isa
lonely trail he treads and that he accomplishes nothing for the universal
but is himself only being tried and tested. Or what did Abraham accom-
plish for the universal? Let me speak humanly about it, purely humanly!
He takes seventy years to get a son of his old age. What others get quickly
enough and enjoy for a long time takes him seventy years to get. And
why? Because he is being tried and tested. Is that not madness! But
Abraham believed; only Sarah yacillated and got him to take Hagar as.a
concubine, but that is why he also had to drive her away. He receives
Isaac — then he must be tried once more. He knew that it is glorious to
‘express the universal, glorious to live with Isaac. But that is not the task.
He knew it is kingly to sacrifice such a son for the universal; he personally
would have found rest in it, and everyone would have rested approvingly
in his deed, just as the vowel rests in its silent consonant;'°? but that is not
the task — he is being tried: That-Roman_ general-renowned_by.his
nickname Cunctator''® stopped the enemy. by. his procrastination, yet

uns oun ded con son ant s in Heb rew whi ch, inve rsel y to wha t is ind ica ted
'©9 Ay allusion to certain
sile nt in the pro nun cia tio n of the vow els asso ciat ed with the m.
here, are said to “rest” or remain
J.C. Lindberg, Hovedreglerne af den hebraiske Grammatik, 2nd edn.
See KSKB 989:
(Copenhagen: Wahl, 1835).
(“Delayer”) for the successful
"1 Fabius Maximus (?-203 BCE), who was dubbed Cunctator
delaying tactics he employed against Hannibal in 217 BCE.

67
 Fear and Trembling

what a procrastinator Abraham is in comparison with him! But he does

not save the state. This is the content ofa hundred and thirty years. Who
can endure it? Would not his contemporaries, if there could be talk of
such, say: “There is an eternal procrastination with Abraham; finally he
got a son, that took long enough, then he wants to sacrifice him — is he not
mad? And he could at least explain why he wants to do it, but it is always a
trial.” Nor could Abraham explain further, for his life is like a book that is
placed under divine injunction and is not in the public domain.
'"'
This is the frightful aspect. Whoever does not see this can always be
sure that he is no knight of faith, but whoever does see it will not deny
that even the most tried tragic hero as it were dances along in comparison
with the slow and creeping progress of the knight of faith. Having
perceived this and assured himself that he does not have the courage to
understand it, he then may well sense the wondrous glory that knight
attains in becoming God’s confidant, the Lord’s friend,''* and, to speak
very humanly, in saying “You”''S to God in heaven, whereas even the
tragic hero only addresses him in the third person.
The tragic hero is soon finished and at peace; he makes the infinite
movement and is now secure in the universal. The knight of faith, on the
contrary, is kept sleepless, for he is constantly being tried; at every
moment there is a possibility of being able to return repentantly to the
universal, and this possibility can just as well be a temptation as truth.
Enlightenment on that score cannot be gotten from any human being, for
then he is outside the paradox.
First and foremost, then, the knight of faith has the passion to concen-
trate in a single moment the whole of the ethical he violates in order to give
himself the assurance that he actually loves Isaac with his whole heart.’

* I shall once again elucidate the difference between the collisions as they are encountered by the
tragic hero and the knight of faith. The tragic hero assures himself that the ethical obligation
is
totally present in him by transforming it into a wish. Thus Agamemnon can say: “This
is my
proof that I am not violating my parental duty, that my duty is my only wish.” Here we thus have
wish and duty corresponding to one another. The happy lot in life is one that coin
cides, where
my wish is my duty and vice versa. The task of most people in life is precisely to remain
in their
duty and to transform it into their wish by their enthusiasm. The tragic hero gives
up his wish in
order to fulfill his duty. For the knight of faith wish and duty are also identical,
but he is required
to give up both. If he then wants to give up his wish in resignation, he finds no
rest, for it is after
all his duty. If he wants to remain in his duty and in his wish, then he does not beco
me a knight of
faith, for the absolute duty demanded precisely that he must give itup. The tragi
c hero acquired
a higher expression of duty, but not an absolute duty.
"" publici juris. ‘'* James 2:23; sce also Isaiah 41:8; 2 Chronicles 20:7.
"'S Du, second person familiar address in Danish.

68
 Problem 11

If he cannot do that, then he stands in temptation. Next, he has the passion

to produce the whole of this assurance in the twinkling of an eye and in
such a way that it is just as valid as in the first instance. If he cannot do that,
then he does not get going, for he must constantly begin afresh. ‘The tragic
hero also concentrates in one moment the ethical he has transcended
teleologically, but in this respect he has a place of resort in the universal.
The knight of faith has simply and solely himself, and therein lies the
frightfulness. Most people live in an ethical obligation in such a way that
they let each day have its cares,''* but then they never obtain this passion-
ate concentration, this intensive consciousness. In a certain sense the
universal can assist the tragic hero in attaining this, but the knight of
faith is alone in everything. The tragic hero acts and finds rest in the
universal. The knight of faith is kept in constant tension. Agamemnon
gives up Iphigenia and having thereby found rest in the universal now
proceeds to sacrifice her. If Agamemnon has not made the movement, if at
the decisive moment his soul, instead of being passionately concentrated,
has been absorbed in common blather about his having several daughters
and that perhaps the extraordinary’’® still could happen — then naturally he
is not a hero but a charity case.'*° Abraham also has the concentration of
the hero, even though in him it is far more difficult since he has no place of
resort at all in the universal, but he makes one more movement by which he
concentrates his soul back upon the miracle. If Abraham has not done that,
then he is only an Agamemnon, provided it can otherwise be explained
how being willing to sacrifice Isaac can be justified when one does not
benefit the universal by it.
Whether the single individual is now actually situated in a state of
temptation or is a knight of faith, only the mdividual himself can deter-
mine. Nevertheless it is surely possible to construct out of the paradox
some distinguishing characteristic that one not in it can also understand.
The true knight of faith is always absolute isolation, the counterfeit knight
is sectarian. The latter is an attempt to jump off the narrow way of the
paradox and become a tragic hero on the cheap. The tragic hero expresses
the universal and sacrifices himself for it. Instead of that, the sectarian
Master Jackel''? has a private theater, some good friends and comrades

"4 Cf. Matthew 6:34. ''> vielleicht das Ausserordentliche.

itution.
"6 1 iterally, a Hospitalslem, an inmate in a poorhouse or charitable inst
cha rac ter who se nam e was use d to des ign ate a pop ula r Dan ish pup pet show.
"7A comic

69
 Fear and Trembling

who represent the universal-almost as well as the public witnesses in The

Golden Snuffbox''® represent justice. The knight of faith, however, is the
paradox, he is the single individual, absolutely only the single individual
without any connections and complications. This is the frightfulness that
the sectarian weakling cannot endure. For instead of learning from it that
he is incapable of doing the great and then simply admitting it — something
I naturally cannot but approve since that is what I do myself — the poor
devil thinks that by joining with some other poor devils he will be able to
do it. But that will not do at all; no cheating is tolerated in the world of
spirit. A dozen sectarians link arms, they know nothing at all about the
lonely spiritual trials’*? that await the knight of faith and which he dares
not avoid, precisely because it would be still more frightful if he presump-
tuously forced his way forward. The sectarians deafen each other with
noise and clamor, they keep anxiety away by their screaming, and a hooting
menagerie'~° such as this thinks it is storming heaven and treads the same
path as the knight of faith, who in the loneliness of the universe never hears
any human voice but walks alone with his frightful responsibility.
The knight of faith is assigned solely to himself; he feels the pain of not
being able to make himself intelligible to others, but he feels no vain desire
to instruct others. The pain is to him the assurance; vain desire he does not
know, his soul is too earnest for that. The counterfeit knight easily betrays
himself by his instantly acquired proficiency. He does not grasp the point
of the speech at all, that insofar as another individual is to go the same way
he must become the single individual in exactly the same way and does not
need anyone’s guidance, least of all someone who wants to be obtrusive.
Here again people unable to endure the martyrdom of unintelligibility
jump off the path and instead of that choose, conveniently enough, worldly
admiration of their proficiency. The true knight of faith is a witness, never
a teacher, and therein lies the deep humanity that is worth more than this
frivolous concern for the welfare of other people that is extolled under the
name of sympathy but is really nothing more than vanity. The one who
wants to be only a witness admits thereby that no person, not even the
lowhest, needs another person’s concern or is to be debased by it so that
the other may be exalted. But as he himself did not gain what he gained on

18
Gulddaasen, a comedy by Christian Olufsen (1764-1827) published in Copenhagen in 1793.
'"° Anfcegtelser. See “A Preliminary Outpouring from the Heart,” n. 17.
"°° Dyrehaugsselskab, literally a group at a deer park (dyrehave) or preserve for wild animals.

7O
 Problem 111

the cheap, neither does he sell it on the cheap. He is not base enough to
accept the admiration of people and in return give them his silent con-
tempt; he knows that true greatness is equally accessible to all.
Either there is then an absolute duty to God, and if there be such a thing,
it is the paradox described, that the single individual as the particular is
higher than the universal and as the single individual stands in an absolute
relation to the absolute — or else faith has never existed because it has
always existed, or else Abraham is lost; or else one must explain the passage
in ouke 14 in such a way as that tasteful exegete did, and explain the
corresponding'*" and similar'** passages in the same manner.

Problem 111: Was it ethically defensible of Abraham

to conceal his undertaking from Sarah, from Eliezer,
from Isaac?
The ethical as such is the universal; as the universal it is in turn the disclosed.
Defined immediately as a sensuous and psychical being, the single indivi-
dual is the concealed. His ethical task, then, is to extricate himself from his
concealment and to become disclosed in the universal. Whenever he wants
to remain in concealment he commits an offense and is in a state of temp-
tation, from which he can emerge only by disclosing himself.
Here we are again at the same point. If there is no concealment that has
its rationale in the single individual as the particular being higher than
the universal, then Abraham’s conduct is indefensible, for he disregarded
the ethical intermediary forums. If there is such a-concealment, however,
then we are at the paradox, which cannot be mediated because it is due
precisely to the single individual as theparticular being higher than the
universal, but the universal is precisely the mediation [of the particular].
The Hegelian philosophy assumes no justified concealment, no justified
incommensurability. It is therefore consistent in demanding disclosure,
but it is befuddled in wanting to regard Abraham as the father of faith and
in speaking about faith. For faith is not the first immediacy but a later
immedi
one.'*> The first the esthetic, and here the Hegelian
is acy

"1 See Deuteronomy 13:6—10, 33:9; Matthew 10:37, 19:29.

'22 Tn the fair copy of the manuscript (see SKP 1v B 96, 6) Kierkegaard adds in parentheses: “e.g.
1 Cor. 7:11.” The editors of the Danish first collected edition point out, however, that 1
Corinthians 7:9 more aptly qualifies as a “similar” passage.
"3 See Problem 11, n. 96.

ye
 Fear and Trembling

philosophy may well be right. But faith is not the esthetic or else faith has
never existed because it has always existed.
The best procedure here is to consider the whole matter purely
esthetically and for that purpose to embark upon an esthetic deliberation
to which [I shall invite the reader to devote himself completely for a
moment, while I for my part shall adapt my presentation to the subject
matter. The category I shall consider in a little more detail is the znter-
esting,'”* a category that especially in our time, precisely because we live
at a turning point,'~> has acquired great importance, for it is properly the
category of the turning point. Therefore one should not, as sometimes
happens after personally having been infatuated with it with all one’s
strength,'*° disregard the category because one has outgrown it. But
neither should one be too greedy for it, for it is true that to become
interesting or to have an interesting life is not a task for handicrafts but a
momentous privilege, which like every privilege in the world of spirit is
bought only in deep pain. Thus Socrates was the most interesting person
who has lived, his life the most interesting that has been led, but this
existence was allotted to him by the god, and inasmuch as he himself had
to achieve it, he also was not unacquainted with trouble and pain. To take
such an existence in vain is unbecoming to anyone who reflects more
seriously on life, and yet examples of such endeavors are not infrequently
seen in our age. Moreover, the in eresting is a border category, a common
boundary'*’ between esthetics and ethics. To a certain extent
the delib-
eration must constantly stray over into the domain of ethics, while in
order to have significance it must seize the proble m
with esthetic fervor
and appetite. In our age ethics rarely concerns itself with such things.
The reason must be that there is no room for them in the system. Thus it
could be done in monographs, and furthermore, if one does not want to
be long-winded, it could be done briefly and still obtain the same result,
that is, provided one has the predicate in one’s power, for one or two

'** The category of the interesting, associated with the eccentric and bizarre, was int
roduced by the
German romantic writer, Friedrich Schlegel (1772~1829), in Uber das Stu
dium der griechischen
Poeste, written in 1795 and published in 1797. See KSKB 1816-25: Friedrich Schlegel’s sémmt-
liche Werke, 1-x (Vienna: Jakob Mayer, 1822-5), V, pp. 5-332. In English
see On the Study of
Greek Poetry, trans. Stuart Barnet (Albany: State University of New
York, 2001). The interest-
ing came to the fore as an esthetic category in Denmark in J. L.
Heiberg’s review of Adam
Ochlenschlager’s play, Dina, in Intelligensblade, nos. 16 and 17, November
15, 1842.
"*S in discrimine rerum. '*° pro virili. "27 confinium. :

7]2
 Problem 111

predicates can reveal a whole world. Should there not be room in the
system for such small words?
Aristotle says in his immortal Poetics: “Two parts of the plot, then,
reversal and discovery, are on matters of this sort” (cf. Ch. rie
Naturally only the second feature concerns me here: discovery,'*? recog-
nition. Wherever it is possible to speak of recognition, for that very
reason'*° a prior concealment is implied. Just as recognition is the
resolving, relaxing element in the dramatic life, so concealment is the
element of tension. What Aristotle develops earlier in the same chapter
concerning the various merits of tragedy, all in proportion to how
reversal'>" and discovery'*” coincide, plus what he has to say about single
and double recognition, cannot be taken into account here, even though
in its fervor and quiet absorption it is especially tempting to one who has
long been weary of the superficial omniscience of summary writers. A
more general observation may be appropriate here. In Greek tragedy con-
cealment (and consequently recognition) is an epic remnant based upon a
fate in which the dramatic action disappears and from which it has its dark,
mysterious source. That is why the effect produced by a Greek tragedy is
similar to the impression of a marble statue that lacks the power of the eye.
Greek tragedy is blind. Therefore a certain abstraction is necessary in order
to be properly affected by it. A son'#* murders his father, but only after-
wards learns that it is his father. A sister’** is about to sacrifice her brother
but comes to know that at the decisive moment. This sort of tragedy can be
of little interest to our reflective age. Modern drama has given up the idea of
em
fate ancipated itself dramatically, is sighted, introspective, assim-
, has
ilates fate into its dramatic consciousness. Conc ealm ent and disc losu re are
then the hero’s free act for which he is responsible. —
tho

Recognition and concealment are also an essential element in modern

drama. To give examples of this would be too prolix. Iam courteous
. . re Lae
.

enough to assume that everyone in our age, which is so esthetically

pev Ovv TOV HYOO D LEP , MEPL TUVT ? ETL, MEPI METE LA KAL AVA YVO PLO LG. See The
"5 Sv0
s of Aris totl e, 1-11 , ed. Jona than Barn es (Pri ncet on: Prin ceto n Univ ersi ty Press,
Complete Work
), 11, p. 2324 (11, 1452 b). See also KSK B 1069 -73: Aris tote lis Oper a Omni a: Greece, I-v, ed.
1984
e (Bip onti : Ex Typ ogr aph ia Soci etat is, 1791 -180 0) v: De arte poet ica, p. 224.
Theophilus Buhl
'29 yvo ayv api otc . "8° eo ipso. "3" Mepu tete ra. "3S? AVO YVO PLO L.
Oedi pus Rex by Soph ocle s (c. 496 -40 6 BCE) . See The Comp lete Gree k Trag edie s, 11,
'33 Oedipus in
Tragedies, 111,
.

Greek
.

Complete
7
The
ly)
See
.

Euripides.
- . -

Tauris by
.

'34 Iphigenia
PP 9-76.
in Iphigenia in
PP. 343-413.

1
 Fear and Trembling

sens ual, so pote nt and fire d up that it con cei ves just as easi ly as. the
part ridg e whic h, acc ord ing to Aris totl e,"? * has onl y ‘to h e a
the coc
r k’s
voice or its flight overhead — I assume that everyone who merely hears the
word “concealment” easily will be able to shake about a dozen novels and
comedies out of his sleeve. For that reason I can be brief and thus
immediately suggest only a more general observation. If someone playing
hide-and-seek, thereby bringing about the dramatic ferment in the piece,
conceals some nonsense, we get a comedy; if he is related to the idea,
however, then he may come close to being a tragic hero. Here is just one
example of the comic. A man puts on makeup and wears a wig. ‘The same
man is eager to make a hit with the fair sex; he is confident enough of
success with the help of the makeup and the wig, which make him
absolutely irresistible. He catches a girl and is at his zenith. Now comes
the point. If he can admit his deception, will he not lose all his power to
charm? When he appears as a plain, even a bald-headed man, does he not
thereby lose the beloved in turn? — Concealment is his free act, for which
esthetics also makes him responsible. This branch of scholarship is no
friend of bald-headed hypocrites; it abandons him to ridicule. This may
be enough merely to suggest what I mean; the comic cannot be a subject
of interest for this investigation.
he path I have to take is to carry concealment dialectically through
esthetics and ethics, for the point is to let esthetic concealment and the
paradox appear in their absolute dissimilarity.
A couple of examples. A girl is secretly in love with someone without the
pair having as yet definitely confessed their love for each other. Her
parents force her to marry someone else (in addition it could be filial
piety that motivates her); she obeys her parents and conceals her love “so as
not to make the other unhappy and no one will ever have to know what she
suffers.” — A young lad may get possession of the object of his longings and
restless dreams by a single word. But this little word will compromise,
indeed perhaps (who knows?) even ruin a whole family. He nobly decides
to remain concealed: “The girl must never be told so that she perhaps may
become happy by another’s hand.” What a pity that this couple, both of
whom are concealed individually from their respective loved ones, are also

ie History of Animals,V, 5, 5414, pp. 27-303 V1, 2, 560b, pp. 13-16. See The Complete Works of
Aristotle, 1: pp. 854—5, 882; and KSKB 1079: Aristatelis De anima, with commentary by Friedrich
Adolph Trendelenburg (Ienae: Walzii, 1833).

74
 Problem r11

concealed from each other; otherwise a remarkable higher unity could be

brought about here. — Their concealment is a free act for which they are
also responsible esthetically. But esthetics is a civil and sentimental dis-
cipline that knows more ways out than any pawnshop manager. What does
it do then? It does everything possible for the lovers. By means of a
coincidence the respective partners in the prospective marriage get a hint
of the other party’s magnanimous decision. An explanation is forthcoming.
They get each other and also a place among real heroes, for although they
have not even had time to sleep on their heroic resolution, esthetics still
views it as if for many years they had courageously fought to the end for
their resolve. For estheticsdoes not take much heed of time; whether it be
or
jestearnestness, time goes equally fast for it.
But ethics knows nothing either of that coincidence or that sentimen-
tality, nor does it have so fleeting a concept of time. The matter hereby
acquires a different complexion. There is no use arguing with ethics, for
it has pure categories. It does not appeal to experience, which of all
ridiculous things is about the most ridiculous, and far from making a man
wise, if anything it makes him mad if he knows nothing higher than that.
Ethics has no contingency; consequently, it does not arrive at an explana-
tion, it does not trifle with dignities, it places a huge responsibility on the
frail hero’s shoulders. It denounces as presumptuous his wanting to play
providence by his deed, but italso denounces wanting to do that oy his
suffering. It enjoins believingin actuality and having courage to contend
with all the hardships of actuality rather than with those anemic suffer-
ings assumed on one’s own responsibility. It warns against trusting the
clever calculations of the understanding, which are more perfidious than
the oracles of ancient times. It warns against any ill-timed magnanimity;
let actuality deal with it, that is the time to show courage. But then ethics
itself offers all possible assistance. However, if something deeper stirred
in these two, if there was earnestness to see the task, earnestness to set to
work, then something will surely come of them. But ethics cannot help
them; it is offended because they are keeping a secret from it, a secret they
have assumed on their own responsibility.
Soesthetics demanded concealment and rewarded it; ethics demanded
disclosure and punished concealment.
however, even esthetics demands disclosure. When the
Sometimes,
illusion, thinks to save another person by his
hero, a prey to esthetic
demands silence and rewards it. However, when
silence, then esthetics

75
 Fear and Trembling

the hero has a disturbing effect on another person’s life through his action,
then it demands disclosure. Here I approach the tragic hero and shall
consider for a moment Euripides’ [phigenia in Aulis. Agamemnon must
sacrifice Iphigenia. Esthetics now requires silence of Agamemnon, inas-
much as it would be unworthy of the hero to seek consolation from any
other person, just as out of solicitude for the women he ought to conceal it
from them as long as possible. At the same time, the hero, precisely in
order to be a hero, one also be tried in the frightful temptation which the
tears of Clytemnestra‘° and Iphigenia will cause him. What does esthetics
do has a way out; it has an old servant in readiness who discloses
It ?
everything to Clytemnestra. Now everything 1s in order.
However, ethics has no coincidence and no old servant standing by.
The esthetic idea contradicts itself as soon as it must be carried out in
actuality. Ethics therefore demands disclosure. Not being prey to any
esthetic illusion, the tragic hero demonstrates his ethical courage pre-
cisely by announcing Iphigenia’s fate to her himself. If he does that, then
the tragic hero is ethics’ beloved son in whom it is well pleased.'*” Ifhe
keeps silent, it may be because he thinks by doing so to make it easier for
others, but it may also be because he thereby makesi it easier for himself.
But he knows himself to be free of the latter motive. If he keeps silent, he
assumes a responsibility as the single individual inasmuch as he dis-
regards any argument that may come from outside. As the tragic hero he
cannot do this, for ethics loves him precisely because he constantly
expresses the universal. His heroic act requires courage, but part of this
courage is that he dodges no areUMBeDAgON: Now it is true that tears are
a frightful argument to the person,'3° and one is no doubt touched by
nothing so much as by tears. In the play Iphigenia receives permission to
weep; in actuality she ought to have been allowed, like Jephthah’s
daughter,"°° two months to weep, not in solitude but at her father’s
feet, and to use all her art, “which only is tears,” and to entwine herself,
instead of an olive branch,'*° around his knees (cf. v. 1224).
Esthetics demanded disclosure but made do with a coincidence; ethics
demanded disclosure and found its satisfaction in the tragic hero.

‘5° Agamemnon’s wife. "37 Cf. Mark t:11. '3* argumentum ad hominem. "39 Judges 11:38.
‘© Cf. The Complete Greek Tragedies, tv, 1. 1215, p. 359. The figure of the olive branch, a sign of
supplication in ancient Greece, appears in the Danish translation Kierkegaard used (I. 1225,
p. 145). The English translation cited here reads instead: “My body is a suppliant’s, tight
clinging/To your knees.”

76
 Problem 111

Despite the rigor with which ethics demands disclosure, it cannot be

denied that secrecy and silence actually make for greatness in a person
precisely because they are qualifications of inwardness. When Amor
leaves Psyche, he says to her: “You will bear a child who will be a divine
infant if you keep silent but a human being if you betray the secret.”’*'
The tragic hero, who is the favorite of ethics, is the purely human; him
I can also understand, and all his undertakings are in the open as well. If
I go further, I always stumble upon the paradox, the divine and the
demonic, for silence is both of these. Silence is the demon’s snare, and
indeed the more it is silenced, the more frightful the demon becomes; but
silence is also the deity’s communion with the single individual.
Before proceeding to the story of Abraham, however, I shall call
forward a few poetic personages. By the power of dialectic I shall hold
them on end, and as I brandish the discipline of despair over them I shall
surely prevent them from standing still, so that through their anxiety
they might be able to bring something or other to light.*
_In his Politics'** Aristotle tells a story about a political disturbance in
Delphi that originated in a marriage affair. The bridegroom, to whom the

@ These movements and positions presumably could still become a subject for esthetic treatment;
however, whether faith and the whole life of faith can become so I leave undecided here. Because
it is always a joy for me to thank anyone to whom I am indebted, I shall just thank Lessing for the
few hints about a Christian drama that are found in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie.'*” However,
_ he has fastened his eyes on the purely divine side of this life (the consummate victory) and
therefore has had misgivings; perhaps he would have judged otherwise if he had been more aware
of the purely human side (theology of wayfarers). '43 What he says is undeniably very brief and
partly evasive, but since I am always very pleased when I can find an occasion to include Lessing,
I shall bring him in at once. Lessing was not only one of Germany’s most erudite minds, he not
only possessed a quite rare precision in his knowledge, which enables one safely to rely on him
and his personal inspections without fear of being duped by loose, undocumented quotations and
half-under stood phrase s drawn from unreli able compe ndia, or of becom ing disori ented by a
stupid trumpeting of novelties which the ancients have propounded far better — but he also had
excee dingl y unco mmon gift for explai ning what he himsel f has under stood . With that he
an
stood.
stopped; in our age people go further and explain more than they themselves have under
and Psy che is told in The Gold en Ass or Met amo rph ose s by the Rom an
'4" The story of Amor
Luc ius Apu lei us (c. CE 125~ ?). See KSK B 1215 : L. Apul eti Oper a omni a, 1-11, ed.
writer,
(Lei pzig : Cno blo chi i, 1842 ), 1, p. 337. In Engl ish see Apul eius , The Gold en
G.F. Hildebrand
Ass, trans. P. G. Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), Pp. 86.
m Less ing’ s sém mtl ich e Schr ifte n, XX1 V, pp. 11-2 5. In Engl ish see Ham bur g
'4 Gotthold Ephrai
Dramaturgy, trans. Helen Zimmern (New York: Dover, 1962), pp- 5-9-
orum , the theo logy of the “ch urc h mili tant ” or the fait hful on the way to salvation, as
'43 Theologia viat
of the “ch urc h tri ump han t,” theo logi a beat orum or theo logy of the bles sed.
opposed to the theology
130 3b- 130 4a. See The Com ple te Wor ks of Aris totl e, 11: p. 2070 and KSKB 1088:
144 Politics, V, 4,
(Breslau: Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, 1799),
Die Politik des Aristoteles, 1-11, tr. Christian Garve
1, pp. 407-8.

vig
 Fear and Trembling

augurs'* predicted a misfortune that would have its genesis in his

marriage, suddenly changes his plan at the decisive moment when he
comes to fetch the bride — he will not get married. I do not need more
than this.” In Delphi this incident hardly came off without tears; ifa poet
were to adopt it, I dare say he could safely count on sympathy. Is it not
frightful that the love so often exiled in life is now deprived of heaven’s
aid as well? Is not the old saying that marriage is made in heaven put to
shame here? Ordinarily it is all the tribulations and difficulties of finitude
that, like evil spirits, want to separate the lovers, but love has heaven on
its side and therefore this holy alliance conquers all enemies. Here it is
heaven itself that separates what heaven itself after all has united.'#° Who
in fact would have suspected this? Least of all the young bride. For only a
moment ago she sat in her room in all her beauty, and the lovely maidens
had painstakingly adorned her so they could champion their handiwork
before all the world and not only have joy from it but also envy; yes, joy in
that it was impossible for them to become more envious because it was
impossible for her to be more beautiful. She sat alone in her room and was
transfigured from beauty to beauty, for all that feminine art was capable
of was used worthily to adorn the worthy, one. But something was still
lacking which the young maidens had not dreamed of: a veil finer, lighter,
and yet more concealing than the one in which the young maidens had
shrouded her, a bridal gown that no young maiden knew anything about
or could assist her with; indeed, not even the bride had sense enough to
help herself. It was an invisible, friendly power that, having its pleasure
in adorning a bride, enveloped her in it without her knowledge, for she
only saw how the bridegroom passed by and went up to the temple. She
saw the door close after him, and she became even more serene and
blissful, for she knew that he now belonged to her more than ever. The
door of the temple opened, he stepped out, but she cast her maidenly eyes

, According to Aristotle, the historical catastrophe was as follows: in revenge, the

[bride’s| family
plants a temple vessel in among his [the bridegroom’s] kitchen utensils, and he
is condemned asa
temple thief. However, this is immaterial, for the question is not whether the family
is clever or
stupid in taking revenge. The family gains ideal significance only insofar as it
is drawn into the
dialectic of the hero. Moreover, it is fateful enough that as he wants to escape
from danger by not
getting married he plunges into it, plus his life comes into contact with the
divine in a double
manner, first by the augur’s pronouncement, next by being condemned
as a temple thief.
‘#8 Priests in ancient Rome who foretold future events by interpreting ome
ns, though Kierkegaard
here applies the term to Greece.
:
‘4° Cf. Matthew 19:6.

78
 Problem r11

down and therefore did not see that his face was perplexed. But he saw
that heaven was seemingly envious of the bride’s loveliness and of his
happiness. The door of the temple opened, the young maidens saw the
bridegroom step out, but they did not see that his face was perplexed,
for they were busy fetching the bride. Then she stepped forth in all her
maidenly meekness and yet like a mistress surrounded by her entourage
of young maidens, who curtsied to her as a young maid always curtsies to
a bride. Thus she stood at the head of the beautiful band and waited — it
was only a moment, for the temple was directly near by — and the
bridegroom came — but he passed by her door.
But here I break off; I am not a poet and go about things only
dialectically. The first thing is to point out that the hero receives that
information at the decisive moment. He is thus pure and unremorseful
and has not irresponsibly bound himself to the beloved. Next, he has a
divine pronouncement to himself, or rather against himself; he is not
ruled, then, by self-conceit like those puny lovers and paramours.
Furthermore, it goes without saying that the pronouncement makes
him just as unhappy as the bride, even a bit more so, since he is after
all the occasion [of her unhappiness]. For it is no doubt true that the
augurs only predicted a misfortune for Aim, but the question is whether
this misfortune is not of such a nature that by befalling him it will at the
same time affect their marital happiness. What should he do now? 1)
Should he keep silent, get married, and think: “Perhaps the misfortune
will not come right away, and in any case I have maintained the love and
not been afraid to make myself unhappy; but I must keep silent, for
otherwise even this brief moment is forfeited.” This sounds plausible but
is not at all, for in that case he has offended the girl. By his silence he has
in a sense made the girl guilty, for if she had known about the prophecy,
she certainly would never have given her consent to such an alliance. In
the hour of need, then, he will have to bear not only the misfortune but
also the responsibility for having kept silent and her righteous indigna-
tion at his having kept nent Should he keep silent and not get
married? In that case he must enter into a hoax by means of which he
destroys himself in his relation to her. Estwou hldeperthap
isc app
s rove
of this. The catastrophe could then be fashioned in conformity with the
actual event, except that at the last minute an explanation. would be
forthcoming, which would still be after the fact since, esthetically con-
sidered, it is necessary to let him die unless this discipline could see its

79
 Fear and Trembling

way to canceling that fatal prophecy. Still, however magnanimous this

behavior is, it contains an offense against the girl and the reality of her
love. hould he speak? Naturally we must not forget that our hero is a
little too poetic for renunciation of his love to have no more significance
for him than an unsuccessful business venture. If he speaks, then the
whole affair becomes an unhappy love story in the same vein as Axel and
Valborg.°'*’ They become a couple whom heaven itself separates. But in
the present case this separation is to be conceived somewhat differently
since it also results from the free act of the individuals. The great
difficulty with the dialectic in this affair is namely that the misfortune
must befall only him. Unlike Axel and Valborg, then, they do not have a
common expression for their suffering, whereas heaven indifferently
separates Axel and Valborg because they are near of kin to one another.
If that were the case here, then a way out would be conceivable. For since
heaven does not use any visible force to separate them but leaves it up to
them, it is conceivable that they would decide jointly to defy heaven
together with its misfortune.
Ethics, h
essentially, then, in giving up the hig
estheh-m
tic indedness
which
.

* Incidentally, at this point one could go in another direction of dialectical movements. Heaven
predicts a misfortune for him from his marriage; thus he could certainly dispense with getting
married but not for that reason give up the girl, only live in a romantic alliance with her, which
would be more than adequate for the lovers. This surely implies an offense against the girl
because he does not express the universal in his love for her. However, that would be a theme for
both a poet and an ethicist who wants to champion marriage. In general, if poetry were to become
aware of the religious and the inwardness of individuality, it would develop far more significant
themes than those with which it presently occupies itself. Indeed, time and again one hears this
story in poetry: A man is bound to a girl whom he once has loved, or perhaps never truly loved,
for now he has seen another girl who is the ideal. A man makes a mistake in life; it was the right
street but the wrong house, for directly across the street on the second floor lives the ideal
— this
is supposed to be a theme for poetry. A lover has made a mistake, he has seen the beloved
by
candlelight and thought she had dark hair, but lo, on closer inspection she was a blond
e — but the
sister, she is the ideal. This is supposed to be a theme for poetry. In my opinion, any man like
that
is a scamp who can be intolerable enough in life but should be instantly hissed off the stage
when
he wants to give himself airs in poetry. Only passion against passion produces a poetic
collision,
not this miscellany of minute details within the same passion. When a girl, for examp
le in the
Middle Ages, assures herself after having fallen in love that earthly love is a sin
and prefers a
heavenly love, here is a poetic collision, and the girl is poetic, for her life is in the
idea.
See the drama Axel og Valborg by the Danish playwright Adam Oehlensch
liger, in KSKB
1601-1605: Oehlenschligers Tragedier, 1x (Copenhagen: A. F. Hest, 1841-49),
V1, pp. 5-108. In
English see Axel and Valborg: An Historical Tragedy in five acts, trans. Freder
ick Strange Kolle
(New York: Grafton Press, 1906).

80
 Problem 117

certainly in this case'* 5 could not easily be thought to have any admixture
of the vanity implicit in being concealed, since it certainly must be clear
to him that he still makes the girl unhappy. The reality of this heroism,
however, depends on its having had its chance and annulled it, for
otherwise there would be plenty of heroes, especially in our age, which
has been propelled to an unparalleled proficiency in the forgery that
performs the highest by skipping what lies in between.
But why this sketch, since I still get no further than the tragic hero?
Because it was after all possible that it could cast light on the paradox.
Everything depends on how the hero stands in relation to the augurs’
pronouncement, which in one way or another will be decisive for his life. Is
this pronouncement in the public domain’? or is it a private matter?"
The scene is in Greece; an augur’s pronouncement is intelligible to every-
body. I mean not only that the single individual can understand the content
lexically but can understand that an augur proclaims heaven’s decision
to the single individual. The augur’s pronouncement, then, is not only
intelligible to the hero but to everybody, and no private relation to the
divine results from it. He can do what he will, what is predicted there will
happen, and neither by doing something nor by leaving it undone does he
come into closer relation to the divine or become an object either of its
grace or of its wrath. Every individual will be able to understand the
outcome just as well as the hero, and there is no secret script that is legible
only to the hero. If he wants to spat, shea he can very well do so, for he
can make himself intelligible. If he wan »p sile se
by
yiHeN"GF DRIES TES elewtnettvictenshessvants..tosbe.higher than the
universal, wants to delude himself with all sorts of fantastic notions
abo ut how she wil l soo n for get thi s sor row , etc. How eve r, if hea ven ’s
iemeaememnceacer TT by an auguif r,it had been brought
to icem an ne nt “if
™ it had pla ced its elf i in an alt oge the r
e rela en we are e paradox,if, that is, it exists
(for copudelibePationeeakes tHe 10h cf a aA then he could not speak
See a a e He wo ul dno t en jo y himnse lf in the
e yut would suffer the p eo
the assurance athe was fabtitie . Hissilence, tthen, would not be due to

em? ig arges
incasu. ‘*? publict juris. ° privatissimum.

81
 Fear and Trembling

absolute relation to the absolute. From what I can figure, he would then also
be able to find rest in this, whereas his magnan im
silence ou
woul d alws ays
holite
On the
be disturbed by the requirements of the ethical. w ,
woul d be
desira bl
if esth e s one day would attempt to begin where for so many
etic
years it has ended, with the illusion of magnan im
Onc this it
did y.
e itit
Ww oulddthen work hand in hand with the religious, for this power is the only
one that can rescue the esthetic from its combat with the ethical. Queen
E eee sacrificed her love for Essex to the state by signhis in gh
deat
warrant.'5' This was a heroic deed, even though a little personal pique
played a hand in it because he had not sent her the ring. As is well known,
he had sent it, but it was held back through the malice ofa lady-in-waiting.
Elizabeth received news of this, so it is said, if I am not mistaken,'*” then
sat for ten days with a finger in her mouth, biting it without saying a word,
and after that she died. This would be a theme for a poet who knew how to
pry the mouth open; otherwise it would be useful at most to a ballet master,
with whom the poet in our age too often confuses himself.
Now I shall let a sketch follow along the lines of the demonic. For that
I can use the legend of Agnes and the Merman."** The merman is a
seducer who shoots up from his hiding place in the abyss and in wild
lust grabs and breaks the innocent flower that stood by the seashore in all
its gracefulness pensively inclining its head to the sighing of the sea. This
has been the drift of the poets till now. Let us make a change. The
merman was a seducer. He has called to Agnes and by his smooth talk has
elicited what was concealed within her. She has found in the merman
what she was seeking, what she was looking for down at the bottom of the
sea. Agnes is willing to follow him. The merman has put her in his arms.
Agnes flings her arms around his neck. trustinglyabandons
She herself
Hdl Stentor er sneestaO Elaine is already standing on the
beach, bending out over the water to dive down with his prey. — Then
Agnes looks at him once more, not timidly, not doubtingly, not proud of
her good fortune, not intoxicated with snare ue believing,
absolutely humble like the lowly flowershe took 5 ely

'S" On Queen Elizabeth’s relation to the Earl of Essex see Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, in
Lessing’s simmtliche Schriften, XX1V, pp. 163-5; or Hamburg Dramaturgy, pp. 57-8.
152
nt fallor.
‘S$ A popular legend in Danish folk songs and literature. For example, Hans Christian Andersen
used it for a dramatic piece by that title. See Agnete og havmanden: dramatisk digt (Copenhagen:
B. Luno and Schneider, 1834).

82
 Problem 111

confident, she entrusts her entire destiny to him with this look. — And
behold! The sea no longer roars, its wild voice becomes silent; nature’s
passion, which is the merman’s strength, leaves him in the lurch; a dead
calm comes on —and Ag isne
still looki
s ng at him in this way. Then the
merman coll heap
cannse
ot with
s, stand the power of innocence, his
native element becomes unfaithful to him, he cannot seduce Agnes. He
takes her home again, he explains to her that he only wanted to show her
how beautiful the sea was when it is calm, and Agnes believes him. —
Then he returns alone and the sea rages, but the despair in the merman
rages more wildly. He can seduce Agnes, he can seduce a hundred
Agneses, he can charm any girl — but Agnes has triumphed and the
merman has lost her. Only as prey can she become his; he cannot
faithfully belong to any girl, for he is after all only a merman. I have
taken the liberty of making a little change® in the merman. By the way,
I have also changed Agnes a little, for in the legend Agnes is not entirely
without guilt, as it is altogether nonsense and flattery as well as an insult
to the female sex to imagine a seduction in which the girl has absolutely
no, no, no guilt. In the legend Agnes is, to modernize my expression a bit,
a woman who craves the interesting, and anyone like that can always be
sure a merman is in close proximity, for mermen discover this sort with
half an eye and bear down on them like a shark after its prey. It is
therefore very stupid to say, or perhaps it is a rumor a merman has let

“ This legend could also be treated in another way. The merman does not want to seduce Agnes,
even though he has seduced many girls previously. He is no longer a merman, or if you will, he is
~a wretched merman who already has long been sitting at the bottom of the sea sorrowing. Yet he
knows, as indeed is learned in the legend, that he can be saved by an innocent girl’s love. But he
has a bad conscience with respect to young girls and dares not go near them. Then he sees Agnes.
Hidden in the rushes, he has already seen her many times wandering along the beach. Her
beauty, her quiet self-preoccupation attracts him to her; but his soul 1s filled with sadness, no
wild desire stirs within it. And when the merman’s sighs blend with the whispering of the
rushes, she turns her ear in that direction, stands still, and becomes lost in dreaming, more
delightful than any woman and surely as beautiful as an angel of deliverance, who inspires the
merman with confidence. The merman takes courage, approaches Agnes, wins her love, and
hopes for his deliverance. But Agnes was no quiet girl, she was very fond of the roar of the sea,
and the sad sighing of the waves pleased her only because the roaring within her was then
stronger. She wants to be off and away, dashing wildly out into the infinite with the merman
whom she loves — so she incites the merman. She disdained his humility and now his pride
awakens. And the sea roars, the waves foam, and the merman embraces Agnes and plunges into
the deep with her. Never had he been so wild, never so lustful, for through this girl he had hoped
for his deliverance. Before long he became tired of Agnes, but her body was never found, for she
became a mermaid who tempted men with her songs.

83
 Fear and Trembling

be circulated, that so-called culture protects a girl against seduction. No,

existence is more impartial and equitable; there is only one means of
protection and that is innocence.
We shall now give the merman a human consciousness and let his
being a merman denote a human pre-existence in whose consequences
his life was ensnared. There is nothing to prevent him from becoming
a hero, for the step he now takes is conciliatory. He is saved by Agnes, the
seducer is crushed, he has submitted to the power of innocence, he can
never seduce again. But at the same instant two forces contend for him:
repentance, and Agnes and repentance. If repentance alone captures him,
then he is concealed; if Agnes and repentance take him, then he is
disclosed.
Now if repentance seizes the merman and he remains concealed, then
he has indeed made Agnes unhappy, for Agnes loved him in all her
innocence. She believed it was true that at that moment when he seemed
_ even to her to be changed, however well he hid it, he only want toedshow
_ her the sea’s beautiful stillness. With respect to passion, however, the
merman himself becomes even more unhappy, for he loved Agnes with |
a multiplicity of passions and had a new guilt to bear besides. The
demonic element in repentance will now no doubt explain to him that
this is precisely his punishment, and indeed the more it torments him the
better.
If he abandons himself to this demonic element, he may then make
another attempt to save Agnes, just as in a certain sense one can save a
person by means of evil. He knows that Agnes loves him. If he could
wrest this love from Agnes, then in a way she would be saved. But how?
The merman is too sensible to reckon that a candid confession would
arouse her disgust. He will then perhaps try to excite all the dark passions
in her, scoff at her, mock her, hold her love up to ridicule, and if possible
provoke her pride. He will spare himself no anguish, for this is the deep
contradiction in the demonic, and in a certain sense there is infinitely
more goodness in a demoniac than in shallow people. The more selfish
Agnes is, the more easily she will be deceived (for it is only very
inexperienced people who think it is easy to deceive the innocent;
existence is exceedingly profound, and the easiest thing is for the clever
to fool the clever), but all the more terrible the merman’s sufferings will
become. Indeed, the more ingeniously his deception is planned, the less
Agnes modestly will hide her suffering from him; she will use every

84
 Problem 111

means, which will not be without effect, that is, not to move him but to
torment him.
By means of the demonic the merman thus would be the single
individual who as the particular was higher than the universal. The
demonic has the same character as the divine in that the single individual
can enter into an absolute relation the counter-
to it. This is the analogy,
part to that paradox of which we speak. It therefore has a certain
Cimilaritp thet tant Be taistesaing’ For instance, the merman apparently
has the proof that his silence is justified in that he suffers all his pain in it.
However, there is no doubt that he can speak. He can then become a
tragic hero, in my opinion a grand tragic hero, if he speaks. Perhaps few
will be able to grasp what constitutes the grandeur.© He will then have
courage to wrest from himself every self-deception about being able to
make Agnes happy by his art; he will have courage, humanly speaking, to
crush Agnes. Incidentally, I shall just make a psychological observation
here. The more selfishly Agnes has been developed, the more glaring the
self-deception will be. Indeed, it is not inconceivable that it could actually
happen that a merman, humanly speaking, not only could have saved an
Agnes by his demonic ingenuity but could have elicited something
extraordinary out of her, for a demoniac knows how to torture powers
out of even the weakest person, and in his own way he can mean well
towards a person.
The merman stands at a dialectical apex. If he is rescued out of the
demonic in repentance, two paths are possible. He can holdhimsel fk
bac
en
and remain in concealment but not rely on his ingenuity. Thhe does
not com e as the sin gle ind ivi dua l into an abs olu te r e l to
a t i
the dem
o oni
n c
but fin re
ds po in
se the cou nte r-p ara dox tha t the div ine will sav e Agn es.
(This is how the Mid dle Age s wou ld pro bab ly mak e the mov eme nt, for

and then esth etic s trea ts som eth ing of the sort with its usua l flatt ery. The mer man is saved
© Now
the whol e affai r ends with a happ y marr iage . A happ y marr iage ! That is easy
by Agnes, and
gh. How eve r, if ethi cs were to prop ose a toas t at the wed din g cer emo ny, then I imagine it
enou
her matt er. Esth etic s thro ws the cloa k of lov e over the mer man so that ever ythi ng
would be anot
time it is care less eno ugh to thin k that thin gs happ en at a marr iage as at
is forgotten. At the same
an auction, where everything is sold in the condition in which it is found at the fall of the
s care s abou t is that the love rs get each othe r; it pays no atte ntio n to the rest.
hammer. All esthetic
pen s afte rwar ds; but it has no time for that and prom ptly goes to
If only it could see what hap
time clap ping a new pair of love rs toge ther . Esth etic s is the most fait hless of all
work full
Eve ryo ne who has trul y love d it bec ome s in a cert ain sens e unh appy,
branches of scholarship.
but anyone who has never loved it is and remains a dumb animal.'**
‘54 pecus.

85
 Fear and Trembling

according to its conception «the merman obviously has reverted to the

monastery.) Or he can be saved by Agnes. Now this must not be under-
stood in such a way as to suggest that by Agnes’s love he would be saved
from becoming a seducer in the future (this is an esthetic rescue attempt
that always evades the chief concern, namely the element of continuity in
the merman’s life), for in this respect he is saved; he is saved insofar as he
becomes disclosed. He then marries Agnes. Nevertheless, he m e
recourse to the paradox. For when the single individual by his guilt has
come outside the universal, he can only return to it by virtue of having
come as the single individual into an absolute relation to the absolute.
Now here I shall make an observation by which I say more than is said at
any point previously.’ Sin is not the first immediacy; sin is a later
immediacy. In sin the single individual is already higher, in the direction
of the demonic paradox, than the universal, because it is a contradiction
for the universal to want to require itself of one who lacks the necessary
condition.'*° If philosophy were also to imagine, among other things,
that it might just cross a person’s mind to want to act according to its
teaching, a curious comedy could be made out of that. An ethics that
ignores sin is an altogether futile discipline, but if it asserts sin, then it is
for that very reason'®° beyond itself. Philosophy teaches that the immedi-
ate should be annulled.'°’ That is true enough, but what is not true is that
sin, any more than faith, is the immediate as a matter of course.
As long as I move in these spheres everything goes smoothly, but what
is said here in no way explains Abraham, for Abraham did not become the
single individual through sin; on the contrary, he was the righteous man
who is God’s chosen one. The analogy to Abraham will only become
apparent after the single individual is brought to a position of being able
to perform the universal, and now the paradox is repeated.
‘The merman’s movements I can therefore understand, whereas I cannot
understand Abraham, for it is precisely through the paradox that the
merman comes to want to realize the universal. For if he re :
and is initia int
te o all
d the agonies of repentance, then he becomesa
fee

" In the preceding remarks I have deliberately avoided any reference to the question
of sin and its
reality. The whole work is aimed at Abraham and him I can still reach through
immediate
categories, that is, insofar as I can understand him. As soon as sin is intr
oduced, ethics runs
aground precisely upon repentance, for repentance is the highest ethical expr
ession but precisely
as such the deepest ethical self-contradiction,
156
conditio sine qua non. eo ipso. '*7 opheeves. See Problem 1, n. 59.

86
 Problem 111

demoniac and as such is destroyed. If he remains concealed but does not

shrewdly think that by his being tormented in the bondage of repentance
he can work Agnes loose, then he no doubt finds peace but is lost to this
world. If he becomes disclosed and lets himself be saved by Agnes, then he
is the greatest personI can imagine, for it is only esthetics that rashly thinks
to praise the power of love by letting the lost one be loved by an innocent
girl and thereby saved; it is only esthetics that mistakenly perceives and
believes that the girl rather than the merman is the heroic figure. The
merman cannot then belong to Agnes without, after having made the
infinite movement of repentance, making one more movement, the move-
ment by virtue of the absurd. He can make the movement of repentance by
his own strength, but he also uses absolutely all his strength for that and
therefore cannot possibly come back and grasp actuality again by his own
strength. If one lacks passion g neither the one nor the other
movement, if one goes through life in a careless, slipshod manner, repents
a little, and thus thinks the rest will be all right, then one has once and for
all renounced living in the idea and therefore can very easily attain the
highest and help others attain it, i.e., beguile oneself and others with the
notion that things happen in the world of spirit as in a card game where
everyth ing happens by chance. One can then amuse oneself by considering
how curious itis that, precisely in an age in which everyone can achieve the
highest, doubt about the immortality of the soul can be so widespread, ">>
for anyone who actually has made merely the movement of infinity scarcely
doubts. The conclusions of passion are the only trustworthy ones, 1.e., the
only convincing ones. Fortunately, existence here is more charitable and
loyal than what wiseacres allege, for itexcludes no human being, not even
the lowest; it fools no one, for in the world of spirit only the person is fooled
who fools himself. It is everybody’s opinion, and insofar as I dare permit
myself to pass judgment on the matter, it is also my opinion, that to enter a
monastery is not the highest. But by no means do I therefore think that in
our age, when no one enters the monastery, everybody is greater than the

mpl e, Lud wig Feu erb ach , Ged ank en tibe r Tod und Unst erbl ichk eit (Nurnberg:
88 See, for exa
In Eng lis h see Tho ugh ts on Dea th and Imm ort ali ty fro m the Pape rs of a
J.A. Stern, 1830).
s. Jam es A Mas sey (Be rke ley : Uni ver sit y of Cal ifo rni a Pres s, 1980 ). See also
Thinker, tran
Mar tin Mol ler , “Ta nke r over Mue lig hed en af Bev ise r for Men nes kets
KSKB 1574-6: Poul
Udodelighed, med Hensyn til den nyeste derhen horende Literatur | Thoughts on the Possibility
of Proving Human Immortality, with reference to the most recent relevant Literature],”
Efierladte Skrifter, 1-11. (Copenhagen: Bianco Luno, 1839-43), 11, pp. 158-272. See also
Filosofiske Essays og Strotauker, ed. Borge Madsen (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1965), pp. 161-217.

87
 Fear and Trembling

deep and earnest souls who found rest in a monastery. How many in our
age have passion enough to think this and then to judge themselves
honestly? The very idea of taking time upon one’s conscience in this
way, of giving it time in its sleepless perseverance to explore every single
secret thought, so that if the movement is not made every moment by
virtue of what is noblest and holiest in a human being, one may with
anxiety and horror discover® and call forth, if in no other way then
through anxiety itself, the dark emotions that still lie concealed in every
human life, whereas when living in community with others one so easily
forgets, so easily gives it the slip, in so many ways is kept afloat, gets an
opportunity to start afresh. This idea alone, understood with proper
respect, I believe could chasten many an individual in our age who thinks
he has already attained the highest. Yet this is of little concern in our age,
which [presumably] has attained the highest, whereas in fact no age has
reverted to the comic so much as it has. And it is incomprehensible that the
age itself has not already by a spontaneous generation’ given birth to its
hero, the demon who ruthlessly would produce the frightful play that
makes the whole age laugh and forget that it is laughing at itself. For what
more is existence worth than to be laughed at when one has already
attained the highest by the age of twenty? And yet what higher movement
has the age discovered since the day it gave up entering the monastery? Is it
not a wretched worldly wisdom, prudence, cowardice that sits in the place
of honor, cravenly dupes people into thinking they have attained the
highest, and slyly prevents them from even attempting lesser things?
Whoever has made the monastic movement has only one movement left,
the movement of the absurd. How many in our age understand what the
absurd is? How many in our age live in such a way that they have
renounced everything or have received everything? How many are simply
so honest that they know what they can and cannot do? And is it nottrue
that insofar as one finds such people, they are Sane ee
among the uneducated and in part among women? Just as a de lac
always discloses himself without understanding himself, the age discloses

* People do not believe this in our carnest age, and yet, remarkably enough, even in the inherently
more irresponsible and less thoroughly reflective age of paganism, the two authentic represen-
tatives of the Greek view of existence, “know yourself,”'*? have hinted, each in his own way, that
by concentrating upon oneself one first and foremost discovers the disposition to evil. That lam
thinking of Pythagoras and Socrates hardly needs to be said.
159 6 . ’
yVo@Oicavtov. '° generatio equivoca.

88
 Problem 111

its detect ina kind of clairvoyance, for over and over again it demands the
comic. If this were actually what the age needed, the theatre would perhaps
need a new play in which someone dying of love is made to look ludicrous.
Or perhaps it would be more profitable for the age if that happened among
us, if the age were to witness such an event, so that for once it could find
courage to believe in the power of the spirit, courage to desist from
cravenly stifling its better impulses and enviously stifling them in others —
through laughter. Does the age really need a ludicrous appearance’”" of a
quick wit in order to have something to laugh at? Or does it not rather need
such an enthusiastic figure in order to be reminded of what was forgotten?
If one wants a plot in a similar style yet more touching because the
passion of repentance was not set in motion, then for that a story from the
book of Tobit could be used."°* The young Tobias wants to marry Sarah,
the daughter of Raguel and Edna. A tragic context is associated with this
girl. She has been given to seven men, all of whom perished in the bridal
chamber. With respect to my plot, this is a defect in the story, for a comic
effect is almost unavoidable at the thought of a girl’s seven futile attempts
to get married, although she was quite close to it, just as close as a student
who failed his theological examination seven times. In the book of Tobit
the accent lies elsewhere; therefore the high number is important and in a
certain sense even contributes to the tragic effect, for the magnanimity of
the young Tobias is all the greater, partly because he is the only son of his
parents (6:15),°°3 partly because the deterrent factor is more obtrusive.
Consequently this feature must go. Sarah, then, is a girl who has never
been in love, who still treasures a young girl’s bliss, her enormous
secured mortgage in life, her “authorization for happiness”"°# — to love
a man with her whole heart. And yet she is more unhappy than anyone,
for she knows that the evil demon who loves her will kill the bridegroom
on the wedding night. I have read about much sorrow, but I doubt
whether so deep a sorrow as the one residing in this girl’s life is anywhere
be found. But when the unhappiness comes from outside, consolation
is still to be found. If existence did not bring a person what could have

161 Evs che inu ng. ‘°* Tob it 6-8 in the Old Tes tam ent Apo cry pha .
'63 Tob it 6:14 in the New Eng lis h Bibl e with the Apo cry pha .
Glii cke, fro m the poe m “Re sig nat ion ” by Fri edr ich von Sch ill er ( 1759-1805).
ef
164 Vollmachthrizum
sdm mtl ich e Wer ke, 1X1 1 (St utt gar t and Tub ing en: J.G . Cot ta,
See KSKB 1804-15: Schillers
Fri edr ich Schi ller Sdm tli che Wer ke, 1-V (Mu nic h: Carl Han ser Verlag,
1838), 1, p. 95. See also
1965), 1, p. 130.

89
 Fear and Trembling

made him happy, it is still a consolation that he could have received it.
But the unfathomable sorrow which no time can chase away, no time can
heal, is to know that nothing would help even if existence did everything!
A Greek writer conceals so infinitely much in his simple naiveté when he
says: “For, depend upon it, no one has escaped love or ever will escape, so
long as beauty exists and eyes can see” (cf. Longus, Pastoralia).'°> There
has been many a girl who became unhappy in love, but after all she became
so; Sarah was so before she became so. It is hard not to find the person to
whom one can give oneself, but it is unspeakably hard not to be able to
give oneself. A young girl gives herself and then is said to be no longer
free, but Sarah was never free and yet she had never given herself. It is
hard ifa girl gave herself and was defrauded, but Sarah was defrauded
before she gave herself. What a world of sorrow lies in store when at last
Tobias is willing to marry her! What wedding ceremonials, what pre-
parations! No girl has been defrauded as Sarah was, for she was
defrauded of the highest bliss, the absolute wealth which even the poorest
girl possesses, defrauded of the secure, unbounded, free, unbridled self-
loss of devotion. For the heart and liver of the fish must indeed first be
smoked [as a fumigation against attacks by a demon or evil spirit] by
being laid upon glowing embers.'°° And how must the mother take leave
of the daughter who, just as she herself is defrauded of everything, must
in turn defraud the mother of her most beautiful possession. Just read the
story. Edna prepared the bridal chamber, led Sarah into it, and wept, and
she received her daughter’s tears. And she said to her: “My child, be
cheerful! The Lord of heaven and earth give you joy for this your sorrow!
Daughter, be cheerful.”’°” And now at the moment of the wedding one
reads, that is, if one can do it for tears: “But when they both were shut up
together, Tobias rose from the bed and said: ‘Get up, sister, and we shall
pray that the Lord may have mercy on us?” (8:4).
Ifa poet read this story and were to use it, I wager a hundred to one that
he would center everything on the young Tobias. The story reminds us

165
NAVIMS YUP OvdEIC "Epwta Epvyev F Pevéetat, HEXPL dv KGAAOS TN
KAL GPOHALOL
BAénmow. Longus or Longinus was a Greek fiction writer of the second century
CE who
wrote the pastoral romance, Daphnis and Chloe, from which the line quoted above
was taken. See
KSKB 1128: Longi Pastoralia grece & latine, ed. Ernest Edward Seiler (Leipzig:
T. O. Weigel,
1843), p. 4. The English translation is from Daphnis and Chloe, trans. Ronald McC
ail (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 4.
1° "Tobit 6:1-8; 81-3. °°? Cf Tobit 717-18.

go
 Problem 111

once again of the heroic courage of being willing to risk his life in such an
obvious danger, for the morning after the wedding Raguel says to Edna:
“Send one of the maids out to see whether he is alive, so that, if not, I can
bury him and no one will know it” (cf. 8:13).'°* This heroic courage would
have been the poet’s theme. I venture to propose another. Tobias acted
bravely, resolutely, and chivalrously, but any man who does not have
courage for that is a milksop who knows neither what love is nor what it
is to be a man nor what is worth living for. He has not even grasped the
little mystery that it is better to give than to receive’ and has no idea of
the great mystery that it is far more difficult to receive than to give, that is,
if one has had courage to do without and did not prove a coward in the hour
of need. No, Sarah is a heroine. Her I shall approach as I have never
approached any girl or felt tempted in thought to approach anyone about
whom I have read. For what love of God it surely takes to be willing to let
oneself be healed when one is impaired in this way from the beginning
without guilt, from the beginning is a shipwrecked specimen of a human
being! What ethical maturity to take upon oneself the responsibility of
permitting the beloved such a daring venture! What humility before
another human being! What faith in God that the next moment she
would not hate the man to whom she owed everything!
Let Sarah be a man and the demonic is immediately at hand. The
proud, noble nature can tolerate everything, but one thing it cannot
tolerate is pity. Implied in that is a humiliation that can only be inflicted
on him by a higher power, for by himself he can never become an object
of pity. If he has sinned, he can bear the punishment without despairing,
but without guilt to be singled out from birth as a sacrifice to pity, a sweet
scent in its nostrils, that he cannot endure. Pity has a curious dialectic, at
one moment requiring guilt, at the next refusing it, and therefore being
predestined to pity becomes increasingly frightful the more the indivi-
dual’s misfortune tends towards the spiritual. But Sarah has no guilt, she
is thrown out as a prey to all sufferings and in addition to this must be
tormented by human pity, for even I, who surely admire her more than
Tobias loved her, even | cannot mention her name without saying: “The
poor girl.” Let a man take Sarah’s place, let him know that if he wants to

68 CFE Tobit 8:12 in The New English Bible mith the Apocrypha and in The Nem Oxford Annotated
Bible with the Apocrypha/ Deuteronomical Books.
9 Acts 20:35.

QI
 Fear and Trembling

love a girl an infernal spirit: will come and murder the beloved on the
wedding night. Then it would be quite possible that he would choose the
demonic, shut himself up in himself, and speak in the way a demonic
nature speaks in secret: “Thanks, but I am no friend of ceremonies and
escapades, I do not at all insist on the pleasure of love, I can indeed
become a Bluebeard,'’° having my delight in seeing girls die on their
wedding night.” Ordinarily one gets to know very little about the demo-
nic, even though this domain has a valid claim to be explored, especially
in our age, and even though the observer, if he knows at all how to
establish a little rapport with the demonic, can use almost every person at
least momentarily. In this respect Shakespeare is and constantly remains
a hero. That vile demoniac, the most demonic figure Shakespeare has
portrayed but also portrayed matchlessly — Gloucester (later Richard the
Third)'’" — what made him a demoniac? Apparently his inability to bear
the pity he was at the mercy of from childhood on. His monologue in the
first act of Richard the Third is worth more than all moral systems which
have no inkling of the terrors of existence or of their explanation.

I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty

‘To strut before a wanton ambling nymph:
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,
Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up —
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them.'7?

170
A fairy tale ogre created by the French writer, Charles Perrault (1628-1703), in Les contes
de ma
mere l’Oye (1697). Kierkegaard’s source was perhaps the German romantic writer, Ludv
ig Tieck
(1773-1853). See KSKB 1848-49: Ludmig Tieck’s sammtlige Werke, 1-11 (Paris: Tétot Frér
es,
1837), 1: “Der Blaubart,” pp. 436-66. In English see Perrault’s Complete Fairy Tales, trans
.
A.E. Johnson et al. (New York: Dodd and Mead, 1961), pp. 78-87. The wife
in the story of
Bluebeard, however, did not die on her wedding night but was threatened later when
she
disobeyed her husband’s command not to enter a room in the castle where the
remains of his
previous wives were kept.
Before being crowned king of England in 1483, Richard III (1452~1485)
was the duke of
Gloucester.
King Richard the Third, 1, 1, quoted from the Arden edition by Antony
Hammond (London:
Methuen, 1981). Kierkegaard quotes a German translation from Shakespeare's dramatische
Werke, 1-X11, trans. August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck (Berlin: G. Reimer,
1839-41), 111, pp. 235-6. See KSKB 1883-8.

Q2
 Problem 111

Natures like Gloucester’s cannot be saved by mediating them into an

idea of society. Ethics really only makes a fool of them, just as it would be a
mockery of Sarah if it were to say to her: “Why do you not express the
universal and get married?” Such natures are thoroughly in the paradox,
and they are by no means less perfect than other human beings, only either
lost in the demonic paradox or saved in the divine paradox. Now time in
and time out people have been pleased to think that witches, goblins, trolls,
etc. are freaks of nature, and it is undeniable that every person has a
tendency when he sees a deformed person immediately to associate that
impression with moral depravity. What an enormous injustice, inasmuch
perverted
as the relation ought rather to be reversed; existence itself has
them, just as a stepmother makes the children perverse. The fact of
originally being placed outside the universal by nature or historical cir-
cumstance is the beginning of the demonic, for which the individual,
however,is not personally to blame. Thus Cumberland’s Jew’” is also a
demoniac, even though he does the good. Thus too the demonic can
express itself as contempt for human beings, yet a contempt, mind you,
that does not make the demoniac himself act contemptuously; on the
contrary, his forte is in knowing that he is better than all who judge him.
— Concerning all such matters the poets should be first, if anything, to
sound the alarm. God knows what books the younger would-be poets now
living read! Their study probably consists in learning rhymes by heart.
God knows what their significance is in existence! At this moment I do not
know if they have any use other than to furnish an edifying proof of the
immortality of the soul, inasmuch as one can cheerfully say to oneself about
them what Baggesen says about the town’s poet Kildevalle: “if thesis
immortal, then so are we all.”’74 — What is said here with reference to
Sarah, almost like poetry and thus with an imaginary basis, acquires its full
significance if with a psychological interest one were to probe the meaning
of the old saying: “No great genius has ever existed without a touch of

play by the Eng lis h dra mat ist Ric har d Cum ber lan d (17 32- 181 1) titled
‘73 "The central character ina
ch was pub lis hed in Dan ish tra nsl ati on in 179 6 and fre que ntl y per formed at the
The Jew, whi
age n bet wee n 179 5 and 1835 . She va the Jew was reg ard ed as a muser
Royal Theatre in Copenh
r to others.
and usurer, whereas in secret he was a great benefacto
64- 182 6), “Ki rke gaa rde n i Sob rad ise ,” in Jen s Bag ges ens dan ske Ver ker,
'74 See Jens Baggesen (17 P- Da nc e
J. Boy e (Co pen hag en: And rea s Sei del in, 182 7-3 2), 1,
1-x11, ed. byhis sons and C.
KSKB 1509-20.

93
 Fear and Trembling

madness.”'’> For this dementia is the genius’s suffering in existence; it is

the expression for, ifI dare say so, the divine envy, while genius is the
expression for the divine partiality. Thus from the
beginning the geulus
disoriented inrelation to the universal and brought into relation to the
paradox, whether in despair over his limitations, which in his eyes trans-
form his omnipotence into impotence, he seeks a demonic reassurance and
therefore will not admit it either before God or mortals,or whether he
reassures himself religiously in love for the divine. Here lie psychological
topics to which it seems to me one could gladly devote a whole life, and yet
we so seldom hear a word about them. In what relation does madness stand
to genius? Can the one be constructed out of the other? In what sense and
to what extent is the genius master of his madness? For it goes without
saying that he is master of it to a certain degree, since otherwise he would
indeed really be mad. However, such observations require a high degree of
ingenuity and love, for to observe the brilliant is exceedingly difficult. If
one were to peruse a few authors of the greatest genius with attentiveness
to this, it would perhaps be possible just once, though only with much
difficulty, to discover a little.
Another incident comes to mind of an individual wanting to save the
universal by his concealment and silence. For this I can use the legend of
Faust.'7° Faust is a doubter," an apostate of the spirit who goes the way of
the flesh. This is the purport of the poets, and while it is repeated again

" Tf one does not want to use a doubter, one could choose a similar figure, for example an ironist,
whose sharp eye radically has seen through the ludicrousness of existence, whose secret under-
standing with the forces of life ascertains what the patient wishes. He knows that he has the
power of laughter; if he wants to use it, he is confident of his success, and what is more, of his
happiness. He knows a single voice will raise itself to restrain him, but he knows he is stronger,
He knows that men can still be made to seem serious for a moment, but he knows also that
secretly they long to laugh with him. He knows that a woman can still be made to hold a fan
before her eyes for a moment when he speaks, but he knows that she is laughing behind the
fan. He knows that the fan is not completely opaque; he knows an invisible script can be written
on
it. He knows that when a woman strikes at him with the fan it is because she has understood
him.
He is infallibly informed about how laughter sneaks in and lives secretly in a person and
once it
> nullum unquam exstitit magnum ingenium sine aliqua dementia. Cf. Seneca, On Tranquility of
Mind, 17,
10. See KSKB 1275-9: L. Annei Senecae Opera omnia, 1-V (Leipzig: C. Tauchnitii, 1832)
, 1v,
p. 102. Cf. also Seneca: Moral Essays, 1-111, trans. John W. Basore ( Cambridge: Harvard Univ
ersity
Press, 1928-1935), 11, pp. 284—5: nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae
fuit (“no great
genius has ever existed without some touch of madness”). See also JP 1:1029 (SKP
176 iv A 148).
The figure of Faust, a magician and astrologer who sold his soul to the devil in
return for youth,
knowledge, and pleasure, was a popular German legend deriving from the
life of Dr. Johann
Faust, who died c. 1541. Kierkegaard’s library contained several books rela
ting to the history of
this figure. See KSKB 1405, 1443, 1460-1, 1463, 1636, 1800.

94
 Problem 111

and again that every age has its Faust, one poet after the other never-
theless goes undaunted down the beaten path. Let us make a small
change. Faust is the doubter par excellence,'’? but he has a sympathetic
nature. Even in Goethe’s interpretation of Faust'*® I miss a deeper
psychological insight into doubt’s secret conversations with itself. In
our age, when indeed everyone has experienced doubt, no poet as yet
has made any step in that direction. I even think, then, that I could
readily offer them royal bonds to write on in order to jot down all the
large quantity they have experienced in this regard — they would scarcely
write more than what could be accommodated on the front margin.
Only when one inflects Faust into himself in this way, only then can
doubt make a poetic appearance, only then does he himself also really
discover in actuality all its sufferings. He knows then that it is spirit
which sustains existence, but he also knows. that the security and joy in
which people live are not grounded in the power of spirit but are easily
<paall sa TD emsee Ss ARRIRSSS. As doubter, as the doubter, Faust
is higher than al this, and if someone wants to deceive him by making
him believe one has experienced doubt, then he easily sees through it, for
whoever has made a movement in the world of spirit, consequently an
nd Fe AM BH ietiadicineiaiaa

infinite movement, can immediately learn through the response whether

has taken up residence sits on the watch and waits. Let us imagine such an Aristophanes,'”” such
a Voltaire'”® slightly altered. For he also has a sympathetic disposition, he loves life, he loves
people, and he knows that even if the condemnation of laughter perhaps will educate a redeemed
young generation, a multitude of people in the present age will be ruined too. He keeps silent,
then, and as far as possible even forgets to laugh. But dare he keep silent? Perhaps there are some
who do not at all understand the difficulty of which I speak. They probably think that it was an
admirable high-mindedness to keep silent. That is not at all what I think, for I believe that any
such chara cter, if he has not had high -min dedn ess in keepi ng silent , is a traito r agains t exist ence.
?
Consequently, I require this high-mindedness of him. But if he has it, dare he then keep silent
dan ger ous disc ipli ne, and it was cert ainl y poss ible that Aris toph anes , pure ly for
ae Ethics is a
deci ded to let laug hter pass jud gme nt on the deli nque nt age. Esth etic high -
ethical reasons,
keep
mindedness cannot help, for one does not venture such things on that account. If he is to
he must ente r into the para dox. — To give a hint of yet anot her plot, supp ose, for
silent, then
poss essi on of an expl anat ion ofa hero ’s life that expl ains it in a depl orab le
example, a person is in
and yet a whol e gene rati on rests abso lute ly conf iden t in this hero with out suspecting
fashion,
anything of the sort.
'77 Aristophanes (445-388 BCE) was an Athenian writer of satirical comedies.
was a Fre nch lite rary writ er note d for his pole mica l, sati rica l, and ironic
78 Voltaire (1694-1778)
works, especially the novel Candide (1759).
79 Kat’ EGoxny.
Wol fga ng von Goet he, ed. and tran s. Stua rt Atki ns (Ca mbr idg e, Mass.:
80 See Faust 1 & 11 / Johann
Pub lis her s Bost on, 1984 ). See also KSK B 1669 : Joh ann Wol fga ng von Goethe,
Suhrkamp/Insel
(Stu ttga rt and Tii bin gen : J. G. Cott a 1834 ). Goe the (17 49- 183 2) wasa
Faust. Eine Tragédie, 111
celebrated German dramatist and literary critic.

95
 Fear and Trembling

it isa tried and tested man who is speaking or a Miinchhausen. xB What a_

Tamerlane’? is able to do with his Huns,'®? Faust knows how to do with
his doubt — to frighten people into being terror-stricken, to make the
ground seem to give way under their feet, to scatter people, to cause
a cry |
of alarm to sound everywhere. And if he does that, then he is after all no
Tamerlane, he is in a certain sense warranted and has the authorization of
thought. But Faust has a sympathetic nature, he loves life, his soul knows
no envy, he perceives that he cannot stop the fury he no doubt can
provoke, he desires no Herostratic honor.'*+ — He keeps silent, he con-
ceals the doubt more carefully in his soul than the girl who conceals the
fruit ofa sinful love beneath her heart, he tries as much as possible to walk
in step with other people, but what goes on inside him is consumed
internally, and in this way he makes himselfa sacrifice to the universal.
When an eccentric pate churns up a whirlwind of doubt, one can some-
times hear people complain: “If only he had kept silent.” Faust realizes this
idea. Whoever has a conception of what it means to say that a person lives by
spirit also knows what the hunger of doubt means and that the doubter-
hungers just as much for the daily bread of life as for the nourishment of the
spirit. Although all the pain Faust suffers may be a very good argument for
it not being pride that has possessed him, I shall still use a small measure of
precaution, which is easy for me to devise, for just as Gregory of Rimini'®5
was called “torturer of infants”'*° because he accepted the damnation of
infants, so I could be tempted to call myself “torturer of heroes,”'*” for Lam
very inventive when it comes to torturing heroes. Faust sees Margaret,'*®
not after having chosen lust, for my Faust does not choose lust at all. He o
sees Margaret, not in the concave mirror of Mephistopheles,"® but in all
her lovable innocence, and since his soul has preserved love for humankind
he can very well fall in love with her. But he is a doubter; his doubt has

'S' A term associated with Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymous von Miinchhausen (1720-17
97), a
German adventurer and soldier known for his exaggerated and fanciful accounts of his expl
182 oits.
Tamerlane or Timur (1336-1405) was an Asiatic conqueror renowned for his crue
183 lty.
The Huns were a savage, nomadic group of warriors led by Attila who invaded
eastern and
central Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries CE.
The honor of destroying, after Herostratus, who burned the temple of Artemis
at Ephesus in
356 BCE in. order to make his name immortal.
185
An Augustinian monk and professor at the University of Paris (d. 1358) who held that
unbaptized infants went to Hell instead of Limbo as was commonly
believed by Catholics at
that time.
186
tortor infantium. ‘*7 tortor heroum. ‘*® The innocent young maid whom Faust seduces.
189
The malevolent devil of medieval legend to whom Faust sells his soul.

96
 Problem 111

destroyed actuality for him, for my Faust is so ideal that he does not belong
with those scholarly doubters who doubt one hour every semester at the
lectern but otherwise can do everything else, which in fact they do without
the assistance of spirit or by virtue of spirit. He is a doubter, and the doubter
hungers just as much for the daily bread of joy as for spiritual food.
Nevertheless, he remains true to his resolve, keeps silent, and does not
speak to any person of his doubt, nor to Margaret of his love.
It stands to reason that Faust is too ideal a figure to be content with the
nonsense that if he spoke he would then bring about a general discussion, or
that the whole affair would come off without consequence, or perhaps this,
or perhaps that. (Here, as any poet will readily see, the comic element in the
plot lies dormant by bringing Faust into an ironic relation to those low-
comedy fools in our age who run after doubt, produce an external argu-
ment, for example a doctoral certificate, to prove they really have doubted,
or swear that they have doubted everything, or prove it by the fact that on
their journey they met a doubter — those couriers and sprinters in the world
of spirit who in great haste get wind of doubt from one person and faith
from another and now do business’’° in the best manner, according to
whether the community wants to have fine sand or gravel.'°') Faust is too
ideal a figure to go about in slippers. Whoever lacks an infinite passion is
not ideal, and whoever has an infinite passion has long since saved his soul
from such nonsense. He keeps silent in order to sacrifice himself — or he
speaks with awareness that he will put everything into disorder.
nt , th en et hi cs co nd em ns hi m, for it say s: “Y ou mu st_
If he keeps sile
ge the you acknowledge it precisely by speaking,
, and
” This aconsideration should not be
ae

org en one sometimes j _doubter severely because he

Ma speaks.I am not inc lin ed ‘t o judge suc h con duc t leni entl y, but here as
everywhere it holds true that the movements must be carried out properly.
If wor st com es to wors t, then sure ly a dou bte r, eve n tho ugh by spe aki ng he
brought all pos sib le mis for tun e upo n the wor ld, wou ld be far pre fer abl e to
those wretch ed swe et- too ths who tast e eve ryt hin g and wan t to cure dou bt
without being acq uai nte d with it and who then as a rule are the ref ore the

19° mirthschafte.
smu s Mon tan us by Lud vig Hol ber g (16 48- 175 4) in whi ch
1 A reference to the comedy Era
peo ple con cer nin g the cos t of bur yin g the dea d: “Do you wan t fine
the question is put to the
See KSKB 1566-67: Den Danske Skue-Plads, 1-V11 (Copenhagen,
sand or common earth?”
1788), V, Act I, Sc. 3.

97
 Fear and Trembling

proximate cause of wild and: ungovernable outbreaks of doubt. — If the

doubter speaks, then he puts everything into disorder, for even if that does
not happen, he only hears of it afterwards, and the outcome cannot help
one either in the moment of action or with respect to responsibility.
If he keeps silent on his own responsibility, then he may well act
magnanimously, but he will add a little temptation to his other pain,
for the universal will constantly torment him and say: “You should have
spoken. How will you find out for certain that it was not after all a hidden
pride that prompted your resolve?”
However, if the doubter can become the single individual who as the
particular stands in an absolute relation to the absolute, then he can
receive an authorization for his silence. If so, he must turn his doubt into
guilt. If so, he is in the paradox, but if so, his doubt is cured, even though
he may acquire another doubt.
Even the New Testament would acknowledge such a silence. 192
Passages may even be found in the New Testament that commend irony,
provided it is used to conceal something better.'°? However, this movement
is just as much one of irony as any other movement that has its rationale in
subjectivity being higher than actuality. People in our age do not want to
know anything about this; on the whole, they do not want to know any more
about irony than what has been said by Hegel, '°* who oddly enough did not
understand much about it and bore a grudge against it, which our age has
good reason not to give up, for it should always be on its guard against irony.
The Sermon on the Mount says: “When you fast, anoint your head and
wash your face, that people will not see you fasting.”'®> This passage
testifies directly to the fact that subjectivity is incommensurable with
actuality, even that it has a right to deceive. If only the people in our age
who gad about with loose talk about the idea of community’ would read
the New Testament, they might change their minds.

192
See, for example, Matthew 8:4, 9:30; Mark 1:34, 44.
193
See, for example, Matthew 21:28—32, which in the fair copy of the manuscript Kierkega
ard
identifies as containing “a form of irony” (JP 2:1740; SKP tv B 96:13).
+ See Hegel’s Aesthetics, 1-11, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975),
1, pp. 64-8;
Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 111, trans. E. S. Haldane (New
York: Humanities
Press, 1955), 1, pp- 398-402; and Philosophy of Right, pp. 180-4, §r40.
"95 Cf. Matthew 6:17-18.
‘°° Probably an allusion to the Danish priest N. F. S. Grundtvig (t783—1872) and
his followers, who
emphasized the cultic community of the church, not the New Testament,
as the foundation of
Christianity.

98
 Problem 111

But now Abraham, how did he act? For I have not forgotten, and the
reader will now perhaps be kind enough to remember, that it was to come
up against that obstacle that I embarked upon the whole preceding
investigation, not so Abraham might become more intelligible by it,
but so that the unintelligibility might become more conspicuous, for as
was said before, I cannot understand Abraham, I can only admire him. It
was also observed that none of the stages described contained an analogy
to Abraham; they were only developed in order that, while being shown
within their own spheres, they could indicate, so to speak, the boundary
of the unknown region at the point of variation. Insofar as there could be
any question of an analogy, it must be the paradox of sin, but this again
lies in another sphere and cannot explain Abraham and 1s itself far easier
to explain than Abraham.
So Abraham did not speak; he did not speak to Sarah, to Eliezer, or to
Isaac. He bypassed these three ethical agents,'?’ for the ethical had no
higher expression than family life for Abraham.
Esthetics allowed, even demanded, silence of the single individual
when he knew that by keeping silent he could save another. ‘This already
sufficiently shows that Abraham does not lie within the scope of
esthetics. His silence is not at all to save Isaac, as on the whole his entire
task of sacrificing Isaac for his own sake and for God’s sake is an offense
to esthetics, for it can well understand that I sacrifice myself, but not that
I sacrifice another for my own sake. The esthetic hero was silent. Ethics
convicted him, however, because he was silent by virtue of his accidental
particularity. His human prescience was what determined him to be
silent. This ethics cannot forgive; any human knowledge like that is
_- only an illusion. Ethics demands an infinite movement, it demands
disclosure. The esthetic hero, then, can speak but will not.
The genuine tragic hero sacrifices himself and all that is his for the
universal; his deed and every emotion within him belong to the universal,
he is open and in this revelation the beloved son of ethics. This does not
apply to Abraham; he does nothing for the universal and is concealed.
Now we are at the paradox. Either the single individual as the particular
can be in an absolute relation to the absolute, and then ethics is not the
highest, or Abraham is lost; he is neither a tragic hero nor an esthetic hero.

‘97 Tnstantser, a term associated with legal suthote and proceedings.

99
 Fear and Trembling

In a way it may seem hefe again that the paradox is the easiest and
simplest thing of all. However, may I repeat that whoever remains
convinced of this is not a knight of faith, for distress and anxiety are
the only conceivable justification, even if it is not conceivable in general,
for then the paradox is annulled.
Abraham keeps silent — but he cannot speak. Therein lies the distress
and anxiety. For if I cannot make myself intelligible when I speak, I do
not speak even though I go on talking incessantly day and night. This is
Abraham’s situation. He can say everything, but one thing he cannot say,
and yet if he cannot say it, that is, say it in such a way that another person
understands it, he does not speak. The relief in speaking is that it
translates me into the universal. Now Abraham can say the most beauti-
ful words any language can procure about how he loves Isaac. But this is
not what at heart he has in mind to say, it is something deeper, that he is
willing to sacrifice Isaac because it is a trial. No one can understand the
latter, and thus everyone can only misunderstand the former. The tragic
hero is unacquainted with this distress. First of all, he has the consolation
that every counter-argument has had its deserts, that he has been able to
give Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Achilles,’®® the chorus,’®? every living
being, every voice from the heart of humankind, every clever, every
alarming, every accusing, every sympathetic thought an opportunity to
stand up against him. He can be sure that everything which possibly can
be said against him has been said ruthlessly, mercilessly — and to struggle
against the whole world is a comfort, to struggle with oneself is frightful.
He ought not to be afraid of having overlooked anything, so that one day
afterwards he perhaps must cry out as King Edward IV did at the news of
the murder of Clarence:*°°

Who sued to me for him? Who, in my wrath,

Kneel’d at my feet and bade me be advis’d?
Who spoke of brotherhood? Who spoke of love?’

' Cf. Act 2, Scene r.

8 : ; ; 4
'" The young Greek hero to whom Agamemnon falsely betrothed his daughter in order to bring her
to Aulis to be sacrificed to the goddess.
199
A company of performers in Greek drama who provide an explanation and elaboration of the
main action through song, dance, and narration.
See Shakespeare, King Richard the Third, 11, 1. Kierkegaard again quotes from the German
200

translation of the text, 111, p. 278, slightly sah The king’s brother George, duke of Clarence,
was rashly put to death by order of the king countermand arrived too late to spare him.

LOO
 Problem 111

The tragic hero is unacquainted with the frightful responsibility of

solitude. Moreover, he has the consolation that he can weep and wail with
Clytemnestra and Iphigenia — and tears and cries are soothing, but
unutterable sighs*°’ are torturing. Agamemnon can quickly collect his
soul in the certainty that he will act, and then he still has time to console
and encourage. This Abraham cannot do. When his heart is stirred, when
his words would contain a blessed consolation for the whole world, he
dares not console, for would not Sarah, would not Eliezer, would not
Isaac say to him: “Why do you want to do this then? After all, you can let
it be.” And if then in his distress he wanted to unburden himself and
embrace all who were dear to him before proceeding to the finish, he
would perhaps bring about the frightful consequence that Sarah, Ehezer,
and Isaac would be offended at him and think he was a hypocrite. Speak
he
he cannot; speaks no human language. Even if he understood all the
languages of the world, even if those loved ones also understood them,
he still’ cannot speak — he speaks in a divine language, he speaks in
tongues.-°*
This distress I can well understand. I can admire Abraham. I have no
fear that anyone would be tempted by this story frivolously to want to be
the single individual. But I also confess that I do not have courage for it
and that I would gladly renounce any prospect of going further, if only it
were possible for me to ever come that far, be it ever so late. At At any
moment Abraham can stop, he can repent the whole thing as a‘tempta-
tion; then he can speak, then everybody can understand him — but then
he is no longer Abraham.
Lone sa speak, for he cannot say that which would explain
everything (i.e. so it is intelligible), that it is a trial, of a sort, mind you, in
which the ethical is the temptation. Anyone so situated is an emigrant
from the sphere of the universal. But even less can he say the next thing.
For, as was sufficiently elaborated earlier, Abraham makes two move-
ments. He makes the infinite movement of resignation and gives up Isaac,
this no one can understand because it is a private undertaking. But next,
at every moment he makes the movement of faith. This 1
is his consolation.
He says, to wit: “Surely it will not happen, or if it does the Lord will give
me a new Isaac, namely by virtue of the absurd.” The tragic hero,
however, gets to the end of the sto ry. Ip hi ge ni a yi el ds to her fat her ’s

201 C£ Romans 8:26. *° Cf. 1 Corinthians a

IOI
 Fear and Trembling

resolve, she herself makes the infinite movement of resignation, and they
now have a mutual understanding. She can understand Agamemnon
because his undertaking expresses the universal. On the contrary, if
Agamemnon were to say to her, “although the god demands you as a
sacrifice, it is still possible that he did not demand it, that is, by virtue of
the absurd,” then he would at the same moment become unintelligible to
Iphigenia. If he could say this by virtue of human reckoning, then
Iphigenia no doubt would understand him, but then it would follow
that Agamemnon had not made the infinite movement of resignation and
thus would be no hero. Then the soothsayer’s pronouncement is a sea
captain’s yarn and the whole incident is a vaudeville.
Abraham, then, did not speak. Only one word from him has been
preserved, the single reply to Isaac, which also sufficiently shows that he
had not spoken previously. Isaac asks Abraham where the lamb is for the
burnt offering. “And Abraham said: God himself will provide the lamb
for the burnt offering, my son!”?°3
This last word of Abraham I shall consider here in a little more detail.
Without this word the whole incident would lack something; if it had
been different, then everything would perhaps dissolve into confusion.
I have often considered to what extent a tragic hero, whether culminat-
ing in a suffering or an action, should have a final remark. In my opinion, it
depends on what sphere of life he belongs to, whether his life has intellec-
tual significance, whether his suffering or action is related to spirit.
It goes without saying that the tragic hero, like every other person who
is not bereft of speech, can say a few words, perhaps a few appropriate
words, at his moment of culmination, but the question is whether it is
appropriate for him to say them. If the significance of his life consists in
an external deed, then he has nothing to say, then everyt hehi ngis
says
essentially chit-chat by which he only weakens the impression he makes,
whereas the etiquette of tragedy enjoins him to accomplish his task
silently, whether it consists in an action or in a suffering. In order not
to go too far afield, I shall just take what lies closest at hand. If
Agamemnon himself, not Calchas, were to have drawn the knife against
Iphigenia, then he would only have demeaned himself by wanting to say a
few words at the last moment, for the significance of his deed was
certainly obvious to everybody. The process of piety, sympathy, feeling,

7°3 Genesis 22:8. ee

¥

102
 Problem 111

and tears was complete, and his life had no relation to spirit otherwise,
that is, he was not a teacher or a witness of the spirit. On the contrary, if
the significance ofa hero’s life is oriented toward spirit, then the lack ofa
remark would weaken the impression he makes. What he then has to say
is not.a few appropriate words, a little piece of oratory, but the import of
his remark is that he consummates himself at the decisive moment. An
intellectual tragic hero like that should have*** and retain the last word.
He is required to have the same transfigured bearing that becomes every
tragic hero, but one word is still required. If an intellectual tragic hero
like that culminates in a suffering (in death), then he becomes immortal
through this last word before he dies, whereas the ordinary tragic hero on
the contrary only becomes immortal after his death.
Socrates**> can be used as an example. He was an intellectual tragic
hero. His death sentence is announced to him. At that moment he dies,
for anyone who does not understand that the whole strength of spirit is
required for dying and that the hero always dies before he dies will not get
very far in his observation of life. As a hero Socrates is now required to be
in a tranquil state of equilibrium, but as an intellectual tragic hero he 1s
required to have enough spiritual strength at the final moment to fulfill
himself. He cannot concentrate, then, on standing his ground over
against death like the ordinary tragic hero but must make this movement
so quickly that at the same moment he is consciously past this struggle
and holds his own. Thus if Socrates had been silent in the crisis of death,
he would then have weakened the effect of his life and aroused a suspicion
that ee of irony in him was not a world power but a game, the
flexibility of which must be used according to an inverted scale to sustain
him pathetically at the decisive moment!)
What is briefly suggested here is certainly not applicable to Abraham if
one thinks by some analogy to be able to find an appropriate final word for

) Opinions vary about which remark of Socrates may be regarded as the decisive one, since
Socrates in so many ways is poetically volatilized by Plato. J propose the following: The verdict
of death is announced to him and at the same moment he dies, simultaneously overcoming death
and fulfilling himself in. the celebrated response that he was surprised to have been convicted by a
majority of three votes.” °° No loose and idle talk in the marketplace, no foolish remark of an idiot
could he have jested with more ironically than with the sentence that condemns him to death.
204 The fair copy manuscript contains the following additional phrase at this point: “what is
otherwise too often sought after in ridiculous ways.” ;
205 The trial of Socrates is recounted in Plato’s Apology. See Plato: Complete Works, 17-36.
206 See Plato’s Apology, 36a. The best extant texts list the number as thirty.

103
 Fear and Trembling

Abraham. But it certainly does'apply provided one perceives the necessity

of Abraham having to fulfill himselfat the final moment, not by silently
drawing the knife but by having a word to say, since as the father of faith he
has absolute significance with respect to spirit. As to what he is to say, I can
form no conception in advance; after he has said it, I presumably can
understand it, presumably in a certain sense can understand Abraham in
what was said, yet without thereby coming any closer to him than I have
previously. If no final remark by Socrates had existed,*°” then I could have
imagined myself in his place and fashioned one, and had I not been able to
do it, a poet would have known how, but no poet is equal to Abraham.
Before going on to consider Abraham’s final word more closely, I must
first point out the difficulty of Abraham coming to say anything at all.
As elaborated above, the distress and anxiety in the paradox are due
precisely to the silence: Abraham cannot speak. In a way, then, it is a
self-contradiction to demand that he should speak unless one would have
him outside the paradox again, so that at the decisive moment he
suspends it, whereby he then ceases to be Abraham and annuls all that
preceded. Thus, if Abraham now at the decisive moment were to say to
Isaac, “it is you to whom it applies,” this would only be a weakness. For if
he could speak at all, then he ought to have spoken long before, and the
weakness would then consist in the fact that he had not had the spiritual
maturity and concentration to imagine all of the pain beforehand but had
shoved some aside in such a way that the actual pain was more than the
imagined one. Moreover, he would fall out of the paradox by such talk,
and if he really wanted to speak to Isaac, he must transform his situation
into a temptation, for otherwise he could surely say nothing, and if he
does that, then he is not even a tragic hero.
However, a final word by Abraham has in fact been preserved, and
insofar as I can understand the paradox I can also understand Abraham’s
total presence in that word. First and foremost, he does not say anything,
and in this form he says what he has to say. His reply to Isaac has the form
k
Insofar as there can be talk of any analogy, the death scene of Pythagoras provides
.
one such, for at
his last moment he had to carry through the silence he had always maintained, and therefor
e he
said: “It is better to be killed than to speak.” Cf. Diogenes, Book 8, §39.7%
207
For the last words of Socrates, see Plato’s Phaedo, which recounts the scene of his
208 death.
Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, a Greek biographer of the 3rd cent
ury CE. See
KSKB t110—11: Diogen Laértes Filosofiske historie, 111, trans. Borge Riisbrigh
(Copenhagen:
Andreas Seidelin, 1812), 1, p. 379. In English see Lives of the Philosophers, tran
s. A. Robert
Caponigri (Lanham, Md.: Regnery Publishing, 1969), p. 41.

104
 Problem 111

of irony, for it is always irony when I say something and yet do not say
anything. Isaac asks Abraham in the supposition that Abraham knows.
Now if Abraham had replied, “I know nothing,” he would have uttered
an untruth. He cannot say anything, for what he knows he cannot say. He
replies then: “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering,
my son!” From this one sees the double movement in Abraham’s soul as
previously described. If Abraham had merely resigned Isaac and done no
more, then he would have uttered an untruth, for he indeed knows that
God demands Isaac for a sacrifice, and he knows that he himself precisely
at this moment is ready to sacrifice him. After having made this move-
ment, he has at every moment made the. next one, has made the move-
ment of faith by virtue of the absurd. In principle, he utters no untruth,
for by virtue of the absurd it is indeed possible that God could do
something entirely different. He utters no untruth, then, but neither
does he say anything, for he speaks in a foreign tongue. This becomes
even more evident when we consider that it was Abraham himself who
ee .

must sacrifice Isaac. Had the task been different, had the Lord com-
manded Abraham to bring Isaac up on Mount Moriah so he himself
could let his lightning strike Isaac and take him as a sacrifice in that way,
then in a literal sense Abraham would have been right in speaking as
enigmatically as he does, for then he himself would not have known what
would happen. But given the way the task is placed on Abraham, he
himself indeed must act; so at the decisive moment he must know what
he himself will do, and consequently he must know that Isaac is to be
sacrificed. If he has not known this for certain, then he has not made the
infinite movement of resignation. Then his words are certainly not
untrue, but he is still very far from being Abrah am, he is more insign if-
icant than a tragic hero; indee d, he is an irreso lute man who canno t make
up his mind one way or the other and for that reaso n alway s speaks in
riddles. But a vacillator like that is just a parody of the knight of faith.
Here again, then, it appears that one may well understand Abraham,
but only in the way one under stand s the parad ox. For my part, I can
perhaps under stand Abra ham but realiz e as well that I do not have
courage to speak in this way, no more than I have coura ge to act like
Abraham; but by no means do I there fore say that it is somet hing
insignificant when on the contr ary it is the only miracl e.
And now, what did the conte mpora ry age think of the tragic hero?
it admir ed him. And that honor able assem bly of
That he was great and

105
 Fear and Trembling

nobles, the jury, which every generation establishes to judge the previous
generation, it judged likewise. But there was no one who could under-
stand Abraham. And yet what did he achieve? He remained true to his
love. But whoever loves God needs no tears, no admiration; he forgets the
suffering in the love. Indeed, so completely has he forgotten it that there
would not be the slightest trace of his pain afterwards if God himself did
not remember it; for he sees in secret*°? and knows the distress and
counts the tears and forgets nothing.
Either there is then a paradox, that the single individual as the par-
ticular stands in an absolute relation to the absolute, or Abraham is lost.

*°9 Matthew 6:4; 6:18.

106
 Epilogue

On one occasion when the price of spices in Holland became somewhat

slack, the merchants let a few loads be dumped at sea in order to drive up
the price. This was a pardonable, perhaps a necessary stratagem. Do we
need something similar in the world of spirit? Are we so sure of having
attained the highest that there is nothing left to do except piously to delude
ourselves that we have not come so far in order still to have something with
which to fill the time? Does the present generation need such a self-
deception? Should a virtuosity in this be cultivated in it, or is it not rather
sufficiently perfected in the art of self-deception? Or is what it needs not
rather an honest earnestness that fearlessly and incorruptibly calls atten-
tion to the tasks, an honest earnestness that lovingly preserves the tasks,
that does not make people anxiously want to rush precipitously to the
highest but keeps the tasks young, beautiful, delightful to look upon, and
inviting to all, yet also difficult and inspiring for the noble-minded (for the
noble nature is inspired only by the difficult)? Whatever one generation
learns from another, no generation learns the genuinely human from a
previous one. In this respect, every generation begins primitively, has no
other task than each previous generation, and advances no further, pro-
vided the previous generation has not betrayed the task and deceived itself.
This genuinely human quality is passion, in which the one generation
perfectly understands the other and understands itself as well. Thus no
generation has learned how to love from another, no generation gets to
begin at any other point than at the beginning, no later generation has a
shorter task than the previous one, and if someone here is unwilling to
abide with love like those previous generations but wants to go further,
then that is only foolish and idle talk.

107
 Fear and Trembling

But the highest passion in a human being is faith, and here no genera-
tion begins at any other point than the previous one, every generation
begins from the beginning, and the following generation goes no further
than the previous one, provided the latter remained true to its task and
did not leave it in the lurch. That this must be tiring is naturally some-
thing the generation cannot say, for the generation after all has the task
and has nothing to do with the fact that the previous generation had the
same task, unless the particular generation, or the individuals in it,
presumptuously wants to occupy the place that belongs only to the spirit
who governs the world and has the patience not to become tired. If the
generation begins that sort of thing, it is perverse, and what wonder then
that the whole of existence seems perverse to it, for there is surely no one
who has found existence to be more perverse than the tailor who,
according to the fairy tale, went up to heaven during his lifetime and
viewed the world from that standpoint." As long as the generation 1s
concerned only with its task, which is the highest, then it cannot become
tired, for the task is always sufficient for a lifetime. When the children on
a holiday have already finished playing all the games before noon and
now impatiently say, “is there no one who can think of a new game?,”
does this show then that these children are more developed and pre-
cocious than the children in the same or a previous generation who could
make the familiar games last for the whole day? Or does it not rather show
that these first children lack what I would call the endearing earnestness
that belongs to play?
Faith is the highest passion in a human being. There are perhaps many
in every generation who do not even come to it, but nobody goes further.
Whether there are also many 1n our age who do not discover it, I do not
decide; I dare only refer to myself, who does not conceal that it may not
happen for a long time to come for him, yet without his therefore wishing
to deceive himself or the great by making it into a trifling matter, into a
childhood malady one must wish to get over as soon as possible. But life
has tasks enough also for the one who does not one day come to faith, and
if he honestly loves them, then his life will not be wasted, even if it never
becomes like those who were sensible of and grasped the highest. But the

" “The Tailor in Heaven” from Grimms’ Fairy Tales. See KSKB 1425-7: Kinder- und Haus-
Marchen gesammelt durch die Briider Grimm, 2nd edn., 1-111, (Berlin: Bei G. Reimer, 1819-22),
1, pp. 177-9. In English see The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, trans. Jack Zipes (New
York: Bantam Books, 1987), pp. 132-4.

108
 Epilogue

one who has come to faith (whether he is extraordinarily gifted or simple-

minded does not matter) does not come to a standstill in faith. Indeed, he
would be shocked if someone said this to him, just as the lover would feel
indignant if one said he had come to a standstill in love, for he would
answer, “I am not standing still at all since I have my life in it.” Yet he
gets no further, nor to something else, for if he discovers the latter, then
he has another explanation.
“One must go further; one must go further.” This urge to go further is
ancient in the world. Heraclitus the obscure,” who deposited his thoughts
in writings and his writings in the temple of Diana’ (for his thoughts had
been his armor in life and therefore he hung it in the temple of the
goddess), Heraclitus the obscure has said: “One cannot pass through the
same river twice.”” Heraclitus the obscure had a disciple who did not
stop there; he went further and added: “One cannot do it even once.”?
Poor Heraclitus, to have such a disciple! By this improvement the
Heraclitean thesis was amended to an Eleatic® thesis that denies motion,
and yet that disciple only wanted to be a disciple of Heraclitus who went
further, not back, to what Heraclitus had abandoned.

“{L]ikening the things that are to the flowing ofa river, he says that ‘you cannot step into the same
river twice.’” Cf. Plato’s Cratylus, §402. Ast., 111, p. 158.4
Cf. Tennemann, Gesch. d. Philos.,1, p. 220.°
Heraclitus (c. 540-480 BCx) was a Greek philosopher who was nicknamed “the obscure” for his
cryptic method of presenting his thoughts in writing.
3 The Roman goddess corresponding to the Greek goddess Artemis.
supose.
+ Kat MOTALOD PON aTElyaC@V TA OVTA AEYEL WG SIG EG TOV AUTOV TOTAHOV OVY, [av]
Craty lus, 402za. See KSK B 1144- 54: Plato nts quae exsta nt opera , \-X1, ed. Fride ricus Astiu s
Plato,
Weid mann ia, 1819- 32), 111, p. 158. In Engli sh see Plato : Compl ete Works , p. 120.
(Leipzig: Libraria
See KSK B 815-2 6: W. G. Tenn eman n, Gesch ichte der Philo sophi e, 1, p. 220.
k schoo l of phil osop hy at Elea on the west coast of Italy was foun ded by Parm enid es
The Gree
(c. 515-450 BCE).

109
 Index

Abraham (character) internal (unnamed) commentator xii, 7—8, TT

(act of) faith 14-20, 30-31, 41, 101, 105 referenced by other writers xxvi
(act of) resignation 30-31, 1OT, 105 variations on xi—xiil, 811, 19, 104
authorial commentary xv, 19-20, 53-54 absolute, the, relation of individual to 48, 54, 61,
basis of confidence xviti—xix 81-82, 86, 98, 99, 106
belief system xvi—xvii, 29-30 absurd, the, relationship with belief xvi,
as “chosen one” 15, 16, 25 XVli-XVill, 17-18, 29-30, 31, 33-34, 39-40,
“clever” (opposed to authentic) xvil—xviti 43-44, 49, 61, 88-89, 105
compared with “demonic” figure 86 Agamemnon. sce Euripides, phigenia in Aulis
compared with “tragic hero” 51-52, 53, Agnes and the merman, legend of xxvi-xxvu,
58-59, 69, 99-104, 105 82-87
ethical justification xxvi-xxvii, 47, 48, 49, 54, variations on 83-85
55-56, 58-59, 61-62, 71-72, 99-106 Andersen, Hans Christian 82
as “father of faith” xxiv, 8, 15-16, 19-20, 60 “anguished ones” xxvii, 18
fitness for study 45-46 anxiety 23, 24-25, 45-46, 56-57, 65, 66, 88, 100
God’s promise to xii, xiii, XVilI—xix, 14-16 Apuleius, Lucius 77
greatness Il, 13, 24, 25, 43, 45 Aristophanes 95
hopes for son’s safety xvi, xvii, TOT Aristotle 73, 74
(impossibility of) analogy xxiv—xxv, 49, 86, De anima 74
gg—100 Poetics 73
impossibility of communication 101-102, 104 Politics 77-82
(impossibility of) understanding 11, 27, 31,
52-53, 86, 99, 105-106 Baggesen, Jens 93
loss/ wavering of faith xi, 9, 19 Bible
love for Isaac 25-26, 29, 62, 65 I Corinthians 71
as “monster” xi, 8—9 Hebrems vii
moral obligations xx Luke xxv, 63-65, 71
motivations 52 Matthew 98
as (potential) murderer 24-25 New Testament 98
silence regarding plans xxvi, 18, 99-102 Old Testament Apocrypha 89, 91
“sin” against Isaac xi—xii, 10 see also Christianity; names of biblical figures,
single speech to Isaac 102, 103-106 e.g. Abraham, Jesus, Mary
testing/sufferings 16-20, 45-46, 67-68, 101 Boileau(-Despréaux), Nicolas 48
uncertainty of outcome xvi—xvii, 29 The Book on Adler xxxi-xxxii
Abraham, story of (Bible) vii—viii Borgo, Boccaccio da 33
common (mis)interpretations 44-45, 49 Borup, T.L. 42
dangers of misunderstanding 22-24, 25, 45-46 Bradley, F.H. xxviii

IIo
 Index

Bretschneider, Carolo Gottlieb 63 “demonic” figures xxviii, 82-87, 88-89, 91-94

Brorson, Hans Adolf, Bishop 31 exclusion (a prior1) from universal 93
Brutus, Lucius Junius 51 links with divine 85
repentance $5
Cain (biblical character) 65 Descartes, René 3-4
Carneades 4 Diderot, Denis 59
The Changelessness of God xxxii Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 104
“Christendom” xxii—xxiil, XX1V—XXV disclosure, ethical/esthetic requirement of
Christian Discourses Xxxii 75-76
Christianity xiii distress see anxiety
biblical exegesis 63-64 doubt x—xi, 3-4, 95-98
divisions 77 drama, modern 73—74.
theological outlook xxviii duty see fatherhood; God; neighbors; “tragic
see also “Christendom”; God; Jesus; hero”: ethical obligations
Protestantism
church, idea of 65 earnestness 75, 107, 108
comedy / the comic 23, 74, 88-89, 97 Edward II of England 59
common people, distinguished from “knights” / Either/ Or viii, 1X, XXXx1
superior beings 36, 37-38, 43, 87 Eliezer see Abraham (character): silence
concealment regarding plans
ethical/esthetic implications 71, 74-82 Elizabeth | of England 82
role in drama 73-74 esthetics 72, 74-82, 85, 87
The Concept of Anxiety viti, ix, xxvii, Xxxi esthetic hero 99
The Concept of Irony mith Constant Reference to ethics
Socrates Xxxi and concealment/disclosure 74, 75-82,
Concluding Unscientific Postscript viii, 97-98
1 od cultural component xxi—xxil
consciousness, eternal defined xx
as attribute of humankind 12 ethical life xxii, xxix, 47-48, 51-52 (see also
individual attainment of 41 Sittlichkeit)
contemporary society, critiqued by K/“Johannes” limitations 93
dramatic/literary trends 73-74, 93, 95 and love stories 80, 85, 99
“hero” befitting 88 and sin/repentance 86
intellectual trends/limitations 3-6, 22, “teleological suspension” xxiv, x1x—xx, 46,
39, 72-73, 88, 98
35-36, 47, 49, 54, 58
lack of faith 4-5, 25, 28, 31-32, 43-44, universality 46, 59-60, 71
87-88, 108 Euripides
mediocrity/superficiality 55-56, 88-89 Iphigenia in Aulis 50-51, 68, 69, 76, 100-103
spiritual needs 107-108 Iphigenia in Tauris 73
see also philosophy Evans, C. Stephen xxxiv-xxxv, Xxxvi
The Corsair Xxxi evil, forms of 47
courage expectation 13, 14-15
of faith 27—28, 41-42, 64, 105
heroic 75, 76, 85, 90-91 Fabius Maximus, Q. “Cunctator” 67-68
of philosophical enquirer 24-25, 27-28 faith viii, x, xiil, xxi, xxviii-xxx, 108-109
The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress act of 42, 44
XXXil attainment 108—109
Cumberland, Richard, The Jem 93 caricatures of xvil, 30-31
Christian thinking on xxix
Damocles (mythical character) 43 comparison with resignation 41-42
Danish (language), vocabulary 7, 26, 33, 46, 47, dangers xxv—xxv1
68, 70 defined xi, Xxvi-Xxvil, XXX
Daub, Karl 43 demands of xii—xint
deception, role in (contemporary) society 107 dialectic of 30

III
 Index

faith (cont.) é as “love” xiv—xv, 28

essential nature 40-41 love of 13-14, 30, 59-60, 64, 106
frightfulness of 63, 69 man’s relationship with xxvili-xxx
going further than 4-5, 31, 108-109 transcendence xxiv
joy of xv, 28, 43 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Faust 95
lack of literary/ philosophical commentary 27 greatness (human)
other commentators’ treatments of 4 basis of 56-58
paradox of xxili-xxiv, 41-42, 46, 47, 60-63, common views of 55
66, 69-71, 85, 86, 104, 105, 106 enduring quality 13-14
power of 14-20 engagement of “Johannes” with 27, 28
relationship with ethics xxix nature of 24, 43
resemblance to bourgeois philistinism xv—xvi, see also Abraham
32-34 Greece, Ancient x—xi, 4, 22, 47-48
“this-worldly” xiii, 17 drama 73
transformation of human behavior 25, 30 Green, Ronald xxxv, 46
universality xxiii Gregory of Rimini 96
as work of art 30 Grimm brothers 108
see also Abraham; absurd, the; contemporary Grundtvig, N. F.S. 98
society; courage; finitude; “knight of
faith”; movements; resignation Hagar (biblical character) to
fanaticism viii, xxv—Xxxvi Hamann, Johan Georg x, 2
fate, role in Greek tragedy 73 Hannay, Alastair xxxiv, xxxvi
fatherhood Hare, John xxix
emotions of 25—26 hate, relationship with duty to God 63-65
obligations of 17, 23, 49-51, 62 Hebrew (language) 67
Faust, figure of xxvi, 94-97 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich xi, xx—xxi,
Fear and Trembling XXill, XXIX, 3, 5, 36, 46, 47, 98
authorship vili—x accessibility 27
biographical background vi critiqued by K/“Johannes” xxii—xxiii,
critical commentary xxvii—xxviil, Xxiv—xxv, 5-6, 47-48, 60, 71-72, 98
XXX1V—XXXV problems of theory xxiv
critical/ popular response vi Heiberg, Johan Ludvig 5, 72
dialectical elements vii, 77-82 The Reviewer and the Beast 6
lyrical qualities vii Heraclitus 10g
philosophical arguments vi, xiv-xxx hero, figure of 12-13
Preface x—xi see also contemporary society; “tragic hero”
publication viii, xxxi heroine, figure of gr
translation problems 7, 21, 26, 46, 47 Herostratus 96
translations xxxili, xxxvi high-mindedness 80-81, 95
use of biblical narrative vii—viii Holberg, Ludvig, Erasmus Montanus 97
Feuerbach, Ludwig 87 Homer, [had 12-13
finitude, relationship with faith 31, 34, 42 Hong, Howard V. / Edna H. xxxiii-xxxiv, xxxvi
For Self-Examination xxxii hope xvii—xviii
From the Papers of One Still Living xxxi compared with faith xvii—xvili, 30-31
Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus) 27, 39
genius, nature of 33, 93-94 humankind see common people; consciousness,
“Gloucester” (character) see Shakespeare, eternal; contemporary society
William: Henry VI / Richard IIT humor 44
God Huns 96
communication with mortals xxiv-xxv
demands of 29-30, 52, 64~65 immediacy, faith/sin as 60, 71-72, 86
duty to xix—xx, 59-60, 61-62, inconsistency, as characteristic of lower natures
63-65, 71
36, 37
goodness of xiii, xviii—xix “indirect communication” ix

Ii2
 Index

individual language
ethical justification 54-56 divine (speaking in tongues) rot
ethical obligations 60-63 as social activity xxv1
in the particular 46-48, 54-55, 71-72, 85, 86, Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 38
98, 106 Lennon, John viii
relationship with universal 46-49, 54-55, Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 59, 77, 82
61-62, 65-67, 71, 85 The Lily in the Field and the Bird of
interesting, category of 72 the Air xxxii
inwardness 60, 77 Lippitt, John xxxiv
irony 44, 94-95, 98, 104—105 Long(in)us, Pastoralia 90
Isaac, response to Abraham’s actions xii, 10-11 love
see also Abraham role in human greatness 13-14
stories of (as illustrative examples) 34-40,
Jackel (puppet character) 69-70 42-43, 77-82
Jacob (biblical character) 13, 17 see also fatherhood; God
Jephthah (biblical character) 50-51, 76 Lowrie, Walter xxxiv, xxxvi
Jeremiah (biblical character) 14 Lutheran Church, K’s attacks on xxxii
Jesus xxv, 58
encounter with rich man 23, 41-42 Mackey, Louis xxxv
“Johannes de Silentio” vii, ix—x, 6 madness see genius
comparison with Abraham 28-29, 101, 105 Mailath, Johann Grafen 38
ethical outlook xx, 25 Martensen, H. L. xxiii, 3
lack of faith xiii, xxvili-xxix, 26-28, 42, Mary (mother of Jesus) xxiv-xxv, 57
44, 108 McKinnon, Alastair xxxili
(lack of) literary aspirations 79 mediation (Vermittlung), in Hegelian system
philosophical understanding 5—6, 27 35, 36
understanding of human problems xiv—xv, inapplicability to Abraham story 52—53, 58,
27, 86-87 61-62
Judas (biblical character) 56 Midas (mythical character) 22
Judge for Yourself! xxxu Middle Ages 85-86, 87
Miltiades 22
Kant, Immanuel xx—xxi, xxii, xxix, 46, 59 miracle (of faith) 30, 34, 39-40, 58-59, 105
Kierkegaard, Soren Moller, Poul Martin 87
biography vi, xxxi-xxxii monastic life 87-88
comments on F&T vi Mooney, Edward xxxiv
critical/biographical commentary xxxiv moral obligation xx
editions of works xxxiil see also ethics
ethical outlook xx, xxii Moses (biblical character) 16
religious outlook xxii—xxili, XXIX—Xxx movements
see also “Johannes de silentio”; pseudonyms, of faith xv, 26, 28, 29, 31-32, 40-41, 44, 69,
titles of works 87, 101-102
King, Martin Luther viii of infinity xv, 29, 34, 35-36, 37-39, 49, 61, 68,
“knight of faith,” figure of xiv, xv—xvi, 87, 95, 101-102
XVii-XVili, XxV—XXVi, 32-34, 61, Mullen, John Douglas xxxiv
62-63, 100 Miinchhausen, Karl Friedrich Hieronymus
compared with tragic hero 51~52, 58-59, 65, von, Baron 96
66, 68-69
counterfeit 63, 69—70, 105 naiveté, distinguished from faith 40
relationship with individual/universal neighbors, duty to 59-60
66-71 Nielsen, Rasmus 5
response to “princess” scenario Noah, story of (Bible) 19
39-49, 43 obligations see fatherhood, God; moral
“knight of infinite resignation,” figure of
obligation; neighbors; “tragic hero”
XiV-XV, 31-32, 35-39) 42-43

113
 Index

Oehlenschlager, Adam resignation xiv—xv, 42

Aladdin 21 act of 35, 41-42
Axel and Valborg 80 essential characteristics 38
Dina 72 relationship with faith xv, 29, 39, 40
Olsen, Regina vi, xxxi see also Abraham; “knight of infinite
Olufsen, Christian, The Golden Snuffbox resignation”
(Gulddaasen) 70 reward, relationship with desert
On My Work as an Author xxxii material 21
Orpheus (mythical character) 21-22 spiritual 21-22
outcome, actions judged by 55-56, 58 “Richard IIL” (character) see Shakespeare,
Outka, Gene xxxv William: Henry VI / Richard LIT
outwardness see inwardness Rosenkranz, Karl 43
Ovid (P. Ovidius Naso) 14, 22, 40 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 60
Owen, Wilfred, “The Parable of the Old Man
and the Young” xxvi sacrifice
distinguished from murder 24-25
paganism 48, 52, 88 relationship with ethics/tragedy xxi-xxil, 50
paradox see anxiety; faith Sarah (bride of Tobias) see Tobias
Parmenides 109 Sarah (wife of Abraham), barrenness of 15-16
passion, role in human behavior 35, 87, 97, see also Abraham
107-108 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von xxxi
Payne, Robert xxxiii-xxxiv, xxxvi Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von 89
Pegasus (mythical character) 44 Schlegel, Friedrich 72
Perkins, Robert xxxiv, xxxvi sectarianism 69~70
Perrault, Charles g2 self-contradiction see inconsistency
Philosophical Fragments viii, xxxi self-deception see deception
philosophy 27, 60-61, 86 selfhood, discovery of xxviti-xxx
pity 91-92 Seneca, L. Annaeus 94
Plato 103 Sermon on the Mount 98
Apology 103 Shakespeare, William 54
Cratylus 109 Henry VI'/ Richard [IT xxvi-xxvii, xxviii,
Phaedo 35, 104 92-93, T0O
Phaedrus 20 The Sickness Unto Death xxxii
Symposium 22 silence, esthetic/moral requirement of 75~76,
Plutarch 22 77, 81-82, 94, 98
poets, role in society 12-13, 58, 80 see also Abraham
The Potnt of View for My Work as an Author sin XXvii-xxix, 86
XX, XXX1i Sittlichkeit (Hegelian concept) xxiii, xxv, xxvi,
Practice in Christianity xxxii XXIX, 47
Prefaces Vill, Xxxi defined xxi, xxviii
Protestantism xxix limitations xxviii
pseudonyms (used by K) viii—x Socrates ix, 35, 61, 72, 88, 103, 104
as distinct personalities viii—x as tragic hero 103
K’s comments on xxx Sodom and Gomorrah, story of 18
see also “Johannes de silentio” Sophocles, Ocdipus Rex 73
Pythagoras 54, 88, 104 Soren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers
(ed./trans. Hong and Hong) xxxiii, 60
Quinn, Philip xxxv sorrow, role in human experience 14-15, 30, 59
spirit
recognition 73-74 heroic 102-103
religious fundamentalism vii—viii power of 95-96 (see also faith)
renunciation, role in faith/resignation 41-42 world of 21-22, 38-39, 87, 95
repentance see “demonic”; figures; ethics Stages on Life’s Way viii, xxxi
Repetition viii, xxxi State, idea of xxi, 54-55, 65

114
 Index

Stewart, Jon 3 and concealment/disclosure 76, 80-82, 85

struggle, role in human achievement 13 contemporary reputation 105~106
System (Hegelian) see Hegel ethical obligations 68
last words 102—104
Tamerlane (Amir Timur) 96 see also “knight of faith”
Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud) ii truthfulness see earnestness
temptation, relationship with faith 49, 52-53, Two Ages: a Literary Review xxxi-xxxii
61-62, 68, 69, 98, tor Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays xxxit
Tennemann, Wilhelm Gottlieb 54, 109 Two Ethical-Religious Essays xxxii
Themistocles 22
theology, relationship with philosophy 27 universal, the see under individual
see also Christianity; church; Protestantism Upbuilding Discourses viii, XXxx1—Xxxil
Thorpe, Thomas 54
Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays Voltaire (Frangois-Marie Arouet) 95
XXXII
Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions Xxxi Walsh, Sylvia xiv
Tieck, Ludwig 92 Watkin, Julia xxxiv
Tobias (biblical character), story of 89-92, What Christ Judges of Official
93-94 Christianity xxxit
(proposed) literary interpretations 90-91 wisdom, worldly, contrasted with faith xvii,
tragedy / the tragic 23-24, 73 XVill, XXili—xxiv, 31, 88
“tragic hero,” figure of xxi, xxvii, 28-29, 51, 58, wish, relationship with duty 68
68-70, 90-91, 99-101 Works of Love xxxit

115
Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy

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Augustine On the Trinity (edited by Gareth Matthews)
Bacon The New Organon (edited by Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne)
Boyle A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature (edited by Edward
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Cicero On Moral Ends (edited by Julia Annas, translated by Raphael Woolf)
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Condillac Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge (edited by Hans Aarsleff)
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Pree eee

Series editors The main objective of Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy
Ta.0 Se OE ae is to expand the range, variety, and quality of texts in the history of
Professor of Philosophy at the philosophy which are available in English. The series includes texts
University of Notre Dame
by familiar names (such as Descartes and Kant) and also by less well-
DESMOND M. CLARKE known authors. Wherever possible, texts are published in complete and ’
Professor of Philosophy at unabridged form, and translations are specially commissioned for the »
University College Cork
series. Each volume contains a critical introduction together with a
guide to further reading and any necessary glossaries and textual
apparatus. The volumes are designed for student use at undergraduate
and postgraduate level, and will be of interest not only to students of
philosophy but also to a wider audience of readers in the history a
science, the history of theology, and the history of ideas.

In this rich and resonant work, Seren Kierkegaard reflects poetically

and philosophically on the biblical story of God’s command to —
Peri mariaay ae ean Her Or neem chm CLM erin
proposed action morally and religiously justified or a murder? Is there
an absolute duty to God? Was Abraham justified in remaining silent?
‘ In pondering these questions, Kierkegaard presents faith as a paradox
_ that cannot be understood by reason and conventional morality, and he
challenges the universalist ethics and immanental philosophy’ of
modern German idealism, especially as represented by Kant and Hegel.
SCR Me oer ata English translation for twenty years,
by Sylvia Walsh, together with an introduction by C. Stephen Evans
which examines the ethical and religious issues raised by the text.

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