Fear and Trembling

Fear and Trembling
	First edition title page
Author	Søren Kierkegaard
Original title	Frygt og Bæven
Language	Danish
Series	First authorship (Pseudonymous)
Genre	Christianity, philosophy, theology
Publication date	October 16, 1843
Publication place	Denmark
Published in English	1919 – first translation [citation needed]
Pages	~200
ISBN	978-0140444490
Preceded by	Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
Followed by	Three Upbuilding Discourses

Fear and Trembling (original Danish title: Frygt og Bæven) is a philosophical work by Søren Kierkegaard, published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio (Latin for John of the Silence). The title is a reference to a line from Philippians 2:12, which says to "continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling." The Philippians verse is sometimes thought to reference Psalm 55:5, which says, "Fear and trembling came upon me."^[1]

Kierkegaard wanted to understand the anxiety^[2] that must have been present in Abraham during the Binding of Isaac. Abraham had a choice to complete the task or to refuse to comply with God's orders. He resigned himself to the three-and-a-half-day journey and to the loss of his son. "He said nothing to Sarah, nothing to Eliezer. Who, after all, could understand him, for did not the nature of temptation extract from him a pledge of silence? He split the firewood, he bound Isaac, he lit the fire, he drew the knife."^[3] Because he kept everything to himself and chose not to reveal his feelings he "isolated himself as higher than the universal." Kierkegaard envisions two types of people in Fear and Trembling and Repetition. One lives in hope, Abraham, the other lives in memory, The Young Man and Constantin Constantius. He discussed them beforehand in Lectures delivered before the Symparanekromenoi and The Unhappiest Man.^[4] One hopes for happiness from something "out there" while the other finds happiness from something in themself. This he brought out in his upbuilding discourse, published on the same date.

When one person sees one thing and another sees something else in the same thing, then the one discovers what the other conceals. Insofar as the object viewed belongs to the external world, then how the observer is constituted is probably less important, or, more correctly then what is necessary for the observation is something irrelevant to his deeper nature. But the more the object of observation belongs to the world of the spirit, the more important is the way he himself is constituted in his innermost nature, because everything spiritual is appropriated only in freedom; but what is appropriated in freedom is also brought forth. The difference, then, is not the external but the internal, and everything that makes a person impure and his observation impure comes from within. Søren Kierkegaard, Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1843, Hong p. 59-60

Kierkegaard says, "Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so anyone who has not made this movement does not have faith, for only in infinite resignation does an individual become conscious of his eternal validity, and only then can one speak of grasping existence by virtue of faith."^[5] He spoke about this kind of consciousness in an earlier book. "There comes a moment in a person's life when immediacy is ripe, so to speak, and when the spirit requires a higher form, when it wants to lay hold of itself as spirit. As immediate spirit, a person is bound up with all the earthly life, and now spirit wants to gather itself together out of this dispersion, so to speak, and to transfigure itself in itself; the personality wants to become conscious in its eternal validity. If this does not happen, if the movement is halted, if it is repressed, then depression sets in."^[6] Once Abraham became conscious of his eternal validity he arrived at the door of faith and acted according to his faith. In this action he became a knight of faith.^[7] In other words, one must give up all his or her earthly possessions in infinite resignation and must also be willing to give up whatever it is that he or she loves more than God.^[8]

Kierkegaard used the ethical system of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the aesthetic stories of Agnes and the merman,^[9] Iphigenia at Aulis and others to help the reader understand the difference between the inner world of the spirit and the outer world of ethics and aesthetics.^[10]

Several authorities consider the work autobiographical. It can be explained as Kierkegaard's way of working himself through the loss of his fiancée, Regine Olsen. Abraham becomes Kierkegaard and Isaac becomes Regine in this interpretation.

^ "Psalm 55:5 Fear and trembling to grip me, and horror has overwhelmed me".
^ "Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. ... Anxiety is freedom's possibility, and only such anxiety is through faith educative because it consumes all finite ends and discovers all their deceptiveness. And no Grand Inquisitor has such dreadful torments in readiness as anxiety has. No secret agent knows as cunningly as anxiety to attack his suspect in his weakest moment or to make alluring the trap in which he will be caught, and no discerning judge understands how to interrogate and examine the accused as does anxiety, which never lets the accused escape, neither through amusement, nor by noise, nor during work, neither by day nor by night." — Vigilius Haufniensis (Pseudonym), The Concept of Anxiety by Søren Kierkegaard p. 155-156, Reidar Thomte, 1980
^ Fear and Trembling p. 22; Kierkegaard also wrote about it in his Journals
"We read: And God tested Abraham, and he said to him: Abraham, and Abraham answered: Here I am. We ought to note in particular the trusting and God-devoted disposition, the bold confidence in confronting the test, in freely and undauntedly answering: Here I am. Is it like that with us" Journals IIIC4
^ See Either/Or Part I p. 163-228 Swenson and compare with Repetition p. 131-133, Nichol
^ Fear and Trembling p. 46
^ Either/Or II p. 188-189
^ Fear and Trembling p. 75-77
^ Kierkegaard wrote about resignation in 1835. "I have tasted the fruits of the tree of knowledge and time and again have delighted in their savoriness. But this joy was only in the moment of cognition and did not leave a deeper mark on me. It seems to me that I have not drunk from the cup of wisdom but have fallen into it. I have sought to find the principle for my life through resignation [Resignation], by supposing that since everything proceeds according to inscrutable laws it could not be otherwise, by blunting my ambitions and the antennae of my vanity. Because I could not get everything to suit me, I abdicated with a consciousness of my own competence, somewhat the way decrepit clergymen resign with pension. What did I find? Not my self [Jeg], which is what I did seek to find in that way (I imagined my soul, if I may say so, as shut up in a box with a spring lock, which external surroundings would release by pressing the spring). — Consequently the seeking and finding of the Kingdom of Heaven was the first thing to be resolved. But it is just as useless for a man to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, to which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize [realisere] its existence [Existents] and letting the rest come of itself." Journals & Papers of Søren Kierkegaard, 1A Gilleleie, August 1, 1835 http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/JournPapers/I_A.html Archived 2023-07-15 at the Wayback Machine
^ Fear and Trembling p. 94-98 The Deceived Merman (From The Old Danish) http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/15409/ Archived 2014-02-09 at the Wayback Machine Kierkegaard discussed this story in his Journals. "I have thought of adapting [the legend of] Agnes and the Merman from an angle that has not occurred to any poet. The Merman is a seducer, but when he has won Agnes' love he is so moved by it that he wants to belong to her entirely. — But this, you see, he cannot do, since he must initiate her into his whole tragic existence, that he is a monster at certain times, etc., that the Church cannot give its blessing to them. He despairs and in his despair plunges to the bottom of the sea and remains there, but Agnes imagines that he only wanted to deceive her. But this is poetry, not that wretched, miserable trash in which everything revolves around ridiculousness and nonsense. Such a complication can be resolved only by the religious (which has its name because it resolves all witchcraft); if the Merman could believe, his faith perhaps could transform him into a human being." Journals IVA 113 His point seems to be that God wants to work with human beings, not fantastic imaginary creatures. Faith transforms us from an imaginary being into a human being. (Editor) http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/JournPapers/IV_A.html Archived 2023-08-10 at the Wayback Machine
^ Fear and Trembling Preface: p. 5 Either/Or II 134-138

[1] "Psalm 55:5 Fear and trembling to grip me, and horror has overwhelmed me".

[2] "Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. ... Anxiety is freedom's possibility, and only such anxiety is through faith educative because it consumes all finite ends and discovers all their deceptiveness. And no Grand Inquisitor has such dreadful torments in readiness as anxiety has. No secret agent knows as cunningly as anxiety to attack his suspect in his weakest moment or to make alluring the trap in which he will be caught, and no discerning judge understands how to interrogate and examine the accused as does anxiety, which never lets the accused escape, neither through amusement, nor by noise, nor during work, neither by day nor by night." — Vigilius Haufniensis (Pseudonym), The Concept of Anxiety by Søren Kierkegaard p. 155-156, Reidar Thomte, 1980

[3] Fear and Trembling p. 22; Kierkegaard also wrote about it in his Journals
"We read: And God tested Abraham, and he said to him: Abraham, and Abraham answered: Here I am. We ought to note in particular the trusting and God-devoted disposition, the bold confidence in confronting the test, in freely and undauntedly answering: Here I am. Is it like that with us" Journals IIIC4

[4] See Either/Or Part I p. 163-228 Swenson and compare with Repetition p. 131-133, Nichol

[5] Fear and Trembling p. 46

[6] Either/Or II p. 188-189

[7] Fear and Trembling p. 75-77

[8] Kierkegaard wrote about resignation in 1835. "I have tasted the fruits of the tree of knowledge and time and again have delighted in their savoriness. But this joy was only in the moment of cognition and did not leave a deeper mark on me. It seems to me that I have not drunk from the cup of wisdom but have fallen into it. I have sought to find the principle for my life through resignation [Resignation], by supposing that since everything proceeds according to inscrutable laws it could not be otherwise, by blunting my ambitions and the antennae of my vanity. Because I could not get everything to suit me, I abdicated with a consciousness of my own competence, somewhat the way decrepit clergymen resign with pension. What did I find? Not my self [Jeg], which is what I did seek to find in that way (I imagined my soul, if I may say so, as shut up in a box with a spring lock, which external surroundings would release by pressing the spring). — Consequently the seeking and finding of the Kingdom of Heaven was the first thing to be resolved. But it is just as useless for a man to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, to which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize [realisere] its existence [Existents] and letting the rest come of itself." Journals & Papers of Søren Kierkegaard, 1A Gilleleie, August 1, 1835 http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/JournPapers/I_A.html Archived 2023-07-15 at the Wayback Machine

[9] Fear and Trembling p. 94-98 The Deceived Merman (From The Old Danish) http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/15409/ Archived 2014-02-09 at the Wayback Machine Kierkegaard discussed this story in his Journals. "I have thought of adapting [the legend of] Agnes and the Merman from an angle that has not occurred to any poet. The Merman is a seducer, but when he has won Agnes' love he is so moved by it that he wants to belong to her entirely. — But this, you see, he cannot do, since he must initiate her into his whole tragic existence, that he is a monster at certain times, etc., that the Church cannot give its blessing to them. He despairs and in his despair plunges to the bottom of the sea and remains there, but Agnes imagines that he only wanted to deceive her. But this is poetry, not that wretched, miserable trash in which everything revolves around ridiculousness and nonsense. Such a complication can be resolved only by the religious (which has its name because it resolves all witchcraft); if the Merman could believe, his faith perhaps could transform him into a human being." Journals IVA 113 His point seems to be that God wants to work with human beings, not fantastic imaginary creatures. Faith transforms us from an imaginary being into a human being. (Editor) http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/JournPapers/IV_A.html Archived 2023-08-10 at the Wayback Machine

[10] Fear and Trembling Preface: p. 5 Either/Or II 134-138

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