DEEP READ · 109
Frygt og Bæven · Søren Kierkegaard, writing as "Johannes de silentio" · 1843
Genesis 22: God tells Abraham to take his son, his only son Isaac, whom he loves, up Mount Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering. Abraham asks nothing. He saddles his donkey early the next morning, travels three days, binds the boy and raises the knife — and only then does an angel call out, and a ram takes Isaac's place. For millennia the pulpit has held this up as a model of faith. Kierkegaard makes you stop at the moment the knife is raised and ask the question nobody wants to ask: if ethics says that killing your son is murder, and Abraham is nonetheless honored as the father of faith, then either faith is something higher than ethics, or Abraham is simply a man who tried to kill his child — there is no third option. The whole book presses on that either/or: what must faith be, if it deserves to be approached in fear and trembling?
Kierkegaard (1813–1855), a Dane from Copenhagen, is widely regarded as the forerunner of existentialism — the strand of philosophy that puts "how does a particular person live?" ahead of "what is the world made of?" Fear and Trembling appeared in October 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio ("John of silence"); it is his most widely read book, and his most widely misread. It was written two years after he broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen, and many scholars see his own shadow in an Abraham who gives up what he loves for a higher calling — but that is conjecture; he never said so.
The book opens not with an argument but with a story. Johannes describes a man who loved the tale of Abraham as a boy, understood it less the older he got, and finally became obsessed by it. He replays the journey four times, each time imagining an Abraham whose faith fails (the section is called "Attunement" — Danish Stemning, also translated "Exordium" — tuning the reader's mood to the right pitch before anything else):
Each variation is paired with an image of weaning: a mother blackens her breast so the child will stop nursing; the child loses the milk, but the mother is still the same tender mother. The point of the four variations: the same outward acts — the three-day journey, the raised knife, the ram — can contain wholly different inner lives, and faith lives not in the act but in the heart. The four almost-Abrahams are understandable, human. The real one is incomprehensible.
Then Johannes skewers the Sunday sermon. The pastor glides through "Abraham was willing to offer God the best he had," and the congregation goes home comforted. Suppose one sleepless listener actually took it in and went home to do the same — the pastor would rush over and denounce him as a monster. So tell us, pastor: the same act is called faith in Abraham and murder in this man — where exactly is the difference? If you can't say, you are comforting people with a story you don't understand.
How it changes your view: we read stories knowing the ending. Abraham's tale gets told warmly because everyone knows the angel will intervene. Kierkegaard insists you strip the ending away and walk those three days — when no one knew there would be a ram, not even Abraham. Every real decision is like that: at the moment you choose, you don't hold the ending.
This is the book's most elegant pair of ideas and its most overlooked. Johannes tells a parable: a poor young man falls in love with a princess. The love is the whole content of his life, and the marriage is, in reality, utterly impossible.
The knight of infinite resignation does not do what the philistine does ("oh well, plenty more fish"), nor does he fool himself that there's still hope. He gathers the whole love into himself, gives up the princess completely as a worldly prospect, and turns the love itself into something eternal and spiritual — "I love her in eternity." The pain remains, but he has made peace with it and found a kind of serenity. It's a great movement that takes enormous strength, and Johannes says he himself can make it. Stoicism (the ancient philosophy of letting go of what you can't control and guarding only your inner self), religious renunciation, monastic withdrawal — all live at this level.
The knight of faith makes exactly the same renunciation — complete, nothing held back — and then a second movement: "by virtue of the absurd," he believes he will have the princess in this life, in this world. Not in heaven, not in his heart: he will actually marry her. That is the "double movement": first give everything up, then receive everything back.
Back to Abraham. A mere knight of resignation would raise the knife, sacrifice Isaac, and cherish his son forever in memory, with a tragic calm — that's the second variation. The real Abraham, even as he raises the knife, believes God will give Isaac back to him — in this life, not the next. That is why he can come home and be a joyful father again. Johannes's crucial confession (paraphrased): resignation I understand and can do; but the second movement — after giving up everything, to take back the finite world with joy — I cannot do. I can only marvel.
"The absurd" here doesn't mean logical contradiction or nonsense. It means: by every human calculation, this cannot happen — and he believes it will, while fully knowing it cannot. The resigned man sees the impossibility and lets go; the man of faith sees it too, and keeps believing anyway. As the book's eulogy to Abraham puts it (paraphrased): one became great by expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal, but the one who expected the impossible became the greatest of all.
The most surprising touch is what a knight of faith looks like. If you met one, Johannes says, you'd be disappointed: he looks just like a tax collector. He takes walks, watches workmen, strolls home wondering whether his wife has made a roast lamb's head with vegetables for supper, and enjoys it thoroughly; he takes an interest in everything, indistinguishable from any solid citizen. The difference is entirely inward: at every moment he is making the double movement — surrendering the finite world and receiving it back by virtue of the absurd — which is exactly why he can enjoy the ordinary so freely. The knight of resignation, by contrast, is easy to spot: a proud gait, an eternal melancholy, the air of a stranger in the world.
| The philistine | Knight of resignation | Knight of faith | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Losing what he loves | Moves on, or consoles himself | Gives it up wholly, keeps the love in eternity | Gives it up wholly, yet believes he'll have it back in this life |
| Relation to the finite world | Sunk in it | Estranged from it, melancholy | Owns it again fully, with joy |
| Appearance | Ordinary | Recognizably sublime | Ordinary as a tax collector |
| Powered by | Habit and calculation | Human willpower (learnable) | "Virtue of the absurd" (can't be forced by will) |
Table: three ways of meeting the loss of what you love most. Faith doesn't skip resignation; it takes one more step after it.
How it changes your view: many people treat "letting go" as the summit of the spiritual life. Kierkegaard says it's only the penultimate step — "infinite resignation is the last stage before faith" (paraphrased): whoever hasn't let go can't have faith, but whoever stops at letting go has lost the world itself. The harder thing is, after letting go, to dare to love again, to want again, to enjoy supper — rather than live on in a been-there, seen-through-it detachment.
The body of the book is three "Problemata." The first asks: is there a teleological suspension of the ethical? Unpack the intimidating phrase: "teleological" (from the Greek telos, end or purpose) means "for the sake of some higher end"; "suspension" means not abolition but a temporary halt to its authority. Together: can ethics be set aside, for the moment, for the sake of a purpose higher than ethics?
"Ethics" here has a specific, Hegelian meaning: the ethical is "the universal" — norms that apply to everyone at every time, that can be spoken aloud, publicly debated and understood by others. Hegel called the concrete version Sittlichkeit, "ethical life": the norms embodied in family, civil society and state. On this picture, the individual's highest task is to dissolve his particularity into the universal; to insist on your own particularity, to refuse to be explained by the universal, is evil.
Johannes accepts the framework, then points out: if the ethical is the highest, Abraham is lost. To show how strange Abraham's position is, he sets beside him the "tragic hero," with three examples:
All three killed their children and are called tragic heroes, not murderers. Why? Because their acts stay inside the ethical: a higher ethical duty (to the state, the people, a sacred vow) overrides a lower one (to family). Agamemnon can explain himself to all Greece; the whole army understands and weeps with him. His anguish can be spoken, so the universal catches him. The tragic hero gives up something certain for something even more certain — the understanding of the universal.
Abraham has none of this. He isn't saving a nation, calming the gods, or keeping a vow — no higher ethical purpose can justify him. He does it purely "for God's sake and — what is exactly the same — for his own sake": for God, because God demands this proof; for himself, so that he can give it. In the language of ethics those reasons simply don't register. Hence: either there is a relation higher than ethics, or Abraham is an old man who meant to kill his son.
| Tragic hero (Agamemnon) | Knight of faith (Abraham) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reason for the sacrifice | A higher ethical end: the state, the people | No ethical reason — only his relation to God |
| Relation to the universal | Stays within it | As a single individual, stands above it |
| Can he explain himself? | Yes — the army understands and weeps | No — any explanation sounds like murder |
| Others' response | Sympathy, admiration | Horror — or wonder |
| Can it be imitated? | Yes, in principle anyone can understand it | No — no one can prove he is a second Abraham |
Table: outwardly the tragic hero and the knight of faith do the same thing; inwardly their structures are opposite.
Why it matters: this section challenges a default assumption of modern ethics — that whatever is right must be publicly justifiable to any rational person. Kant's universalizability test (a maxim is moral only if you could will it to be a law for everyone) and Hegel's ethical life both run on that idea. Kierkegaard's challenge: if that's the whole story, then nothing in a human life goes deeper than "socially intelligible," and faith is a mere ornament on ethics.
The second Problema: is there an absolute duty to God? In Hegelian ethics "duty to God" is a manner of speaking: love your neighbor, do your job, and you've done your duty to God. God gets thinned out into "the sum of duties," and the individual only ever deals with the universal, never with God alone.
Kierkegaard flips this. The paradox of faith is that "the single individual" (den Enkelte), as a single individual, is higher than the universal and stands in an absolute relation to the absolute. "The single individual" is one of the central ideas of his whole life: not me as citizen, son, employee or church member, but the "I" left over when every social role is stripped off — the one who must answer for his own existence, alone. He later said that if he were to have an inscription on his gravestone, it should be simply "That Single Individual."
He sharpens the point with Luke 14:26: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." The usual commentary softens "hate" into "love less." Johannes refuses to soften it: the verse really is that terrible. But then comes the key turn — Abraham doesn't hate Isaac; he must love Isaac with his whole heart, or offering him would be no sacrifice at all. If he hated the boy, there'd be no trial. So faith doesn't replace love for people with love for God; it surrenders that love precisely at its fullest.
The chilling consequence: no one can tell you whether you really stand in that absolute relation. The tragic hero can consult others, be talked out of it, be consoled. The knight of faith carries it alone. He can never know whether he's being tested or deceived; he is utterly solitary, and he cannot make himself understood by anyone. That uncertainty and solitude are where the title comes from — Philippians 2:12: "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."
How it changes your view: modern people habitually outsource big decisions to the universal — experts, norms, the majority — and usually that's sensible. But Kierkegaard reminds you that on the most fundamental questions (who am I, what do I live for), no group can decide for you, and no after-the-fact justification relieves you of answering for it alone. "The crowd is untruth," he wrote elsewhere: hiding in the crowd is a way of hiding from becoming a self.
The third Problema: was Abraham ethically defensible in concealing his purpose from Sarah his wife, Eliezer his steward, and Isaac?
Ethics demands disclosure. The ethical is the universal, and the universal is what can be said; concealment withdraws you from the universal and is therefore, ethically, guilt. Here again the tragic hero and Abraham part ways: Agamemnon can speak, must speak, and his greatness lies in speaking.
Abraham cannot — not because he won't, but because it's impossible. Whatever he says gets translated into the language of the universal, and in that language what he is about to do has only one name: killing his son. Any explanation would make him a madman or a murderer. So he is silent — and the silence isn't a secret; it's the nature of his relation to God. Faith cannot be communicated or "mediated" (Hegel's term for reconciling two opposites through a higher third); it can only be lived.
The book's subtlest moment is here. On the way up, Isaac asks: "Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham answers: "My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering." Johannes reads the line closely. It isn't a lie — God might provide a lamb, and Abraham truly believes He will. Yet it says nothing — Isaac can't grasp what it means. It's speech in the mode of irony: he speaks, and says nothing. It is the only way a knight of faith can talk.
For contrast, Johannes offers several cases of "aesthetic concealment." The most haunting is "Agnes and the Merman": in the Danish legend a merman rises from the sea to lure the girl Agnes away; in Johannes's retelling her complete trust undoes him — he can't go through with it, yet he can't confess to her what he is. Such silences come from guilt (not daring to speak) or the demonic (refusing to) — silences ethics or aesthetics can still make sense of. Abraham's alone is silent because the relation he stands in exceeds language itself.
How it changes your view: we tend to assume that whatever can't be put into words doesn't count, and a choice you can't explain to others is mere willfulness. Kierkegaard proposes another possibility: the deepest inner experiences may be incommunicable in principle — not because they're vague, but because they're so particular they belong to one person at one moment. It also explains why he wrote all his life under pseudonyms, practicing "indirect communication": what really matters can't be handed to you directly; it can only push you to touch it yourself.
The whole book in one line:
① Starting point: the age believes it has gone beyond faith (the preface: in the world of ideas everything is on clearance sale), and everyone praises Abraham without seriously thinking about what he did.
② Feel it before you think it: four failed Abrahams and an ironic sermon force the reader to admit the story is terrifying — and that removing the terror removes the faith.
③ Define faith: distinguish resignation from faith. Faith is the double movement — give up the finite completely, then receive it back by virtue of the absurd. No philosophy can make that movement for you.
④ Three tests: if the ethical (the universal) is highest, then it can't be suspended (Problema I), there is no absolute duty to God (II), and concealment is guilt (III) — and on all three counts Abraham stands condemned.
⑤ Conclusion, as an either/or: either accept the paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal — that is, faith — or admit that Abraham is lost. Hegelian philosophy will admit neither, so it ends up praising Abraham while turning him into someone it cannot explain.
⑥ Close: faith is the highest passion in a human being; every generation must begin it afresh, and no one goes further.
What does it actually establish? Strictly, it doesn't prove that faith is true or that Abraham was right. It establishes a dilemma: either faith is something above ethics that reason cannot mediate, or Abraham does not deserve our praise. It works not by proving God exists but by putting the reader on that three-day road, to feel where the authority of universal ethics, as life's final court, runs out. Johannes himself stays outside the door, admitting he has no faith and can only marvel — and that is the book's method: a man without faith describing, as rigorously as he can, how hard faith is, so that neither easy faith nor easy "going beyond" faith has anywhere to hide.
Read Fear and Trembling alone and you might take Kierkegaard for a religious thinker whose message is "faith over morality." In fact, across a whole cast of pseudonyms, he spent his life drawing one map from many angles: how a person actually becomes a self. This book is one corner of that map.
① In the marketplace of ideas everything is on sale, and everyone wants to "go further." But faith is the highest passion in a human being; each generation starts it from scratch, and no one goes further.
② Take away Abraham's dread and all that's left is a story. If you can sleep soundly after reading it, you haven't understood it.
③ The same raised knife can hold faith or despair. Faith lives not in the shape of the act but in the heart.
④ Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith (paraphrased). Letting go is only the next-to-last step; daring to take the whole world back afterwards — that is faith.
⑤ By virtue of the absurd, he believed he would have Isaac back in this life. Faith isn't failing to see the impossible; it's seeing it clearly and believing anyway.
⑥ The one who expected the impossible became the greatest of all (paraphrased). Yet the knight of faith looks like a tax collector — living joyfully in the ordinary.
⑦ The tragic hero stays within the ethical, and the whole world weeps for him. Abraham has no higher ethic to lean on: either faith exists, or he is a murderer.
⑧ The single individual, as a single individual, is higher than the universal. It's a paradox — it can't be mediated, and no one can confirm it for you.
⑨ "My son, God will provide himself a lamb." He spoke and said nothing: faith can be lived, not communicated.
⑩ I can understand Abraham's greatness, but I cannot do what he did (paraphrased). Taking faith seriously starts with admitting how hard it is.