Product Description

Two works in one volume. Introduction by George Steiner; Translation by Walter Lowrie

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #608994 in Books
• Published on: 1994-05-10
• Released on: 1994-05-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
Great Ideas... is the right name for these slim, elegant paperbacks... They are written with precision, force, and care. -- The Wall Street Journal

Penguin Books hopes to provide an economical remedy for time-pressed readers in search of intellectual sustenance. -- USA Today

Review
“Fear and Trembling is among the best-known and influential works in nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophic theology and literature . . . The Book on Adler [is] one of the dark jewels in the history of philosophic psychology. As an examiner of the lives of the mind, of the associative pulses of the imagination, Kierkegaard has only two peers. His inquisition into Adler stands beside those descents into the deeps of the human psyche performed by Dostoevsky and by Nietzsche.” –from the Introduction by George Steiner

Language Notes
Text: English, Danish (translation)

Customer Reviews

Makes a philosopher weak in the knees
FEAR AND TREMBLING stands as one of Soren Kierkegaard's most widely read works. It's brevity is appealing to those with only a marginal interest in philosophy and theology. It's subject matter is what attracts those persons who want to find a nexus between ethics and theology.

In the work, Kierkegaard engages the famous passage in the Old Testament of the bible where Abraham is ordered by God (Yahweh) to sacrifice his son, Isaac. It stands today as the most salient episode in the bible where Plato's EUTHYPHRO dillema is confronted.

Now, what is the EUTHYPHRO dillema, you may ask? The dillema is set out by Socrates in Plato's dialouge of the same name. Basically, it comes down to this: are good and evil intrinsic to the universe itself? Or are the qualities of good and evil decided upon by God (or gods)? If the former is true, then God (or the head of a pantheon of gods) cannot be truly omnipotent, for there is at least one power that even he / she / it must follow. If, on the other hand, good and evil are decided by God(s), then might makes right.

Enter Kierkegaard, who spends the pages of this work acting more-or-less as a defense attorney for Abraham for his even contemplating the murder of his son. For Kierkegaard, the divine-command-theorist, the latter horn of the conundrum (i.e.: might makes right) is the only plausible alternative open for the religious believer. The first horn denies God's sovereign omnipotence over the universe and all of its affairs, which is utterly unacceptable.

So, the Dane offers to us the defense of what he calls the "teleological suspension of ethics." That is to say, while Abraham was acting out of direction from God, he was not subject to the ethical laws of the "everyday" universe that the rest of us live in every day.

That, in brief, is the topic that this book considers. For the complete explanation and polemics of his views, this book is highly recommended. That the subject matter of FEAR AND TREMBLING greatly disturbed Kierkegaard becomes readily obvious in the first pages. If the arguments presented are examined carefully, it is a topic whose implications may very well shock the modern-day theologian as well.

Is Going Beyond Faith Possible?
Kierkegaard first takes issue with the prevailing (i.e., Hegelian) notion that faith is something to be "transcended" by means of systematic philosophy, and almost baits the reader to consider what it means to go "beyond" faith anyway. Next, he postulates 4 thought experiments that (poetically) reconstruct the Abraham and Isaac ordeal, each of which is intended to show how the story might be harmonized with the prevailing Hegelian mode of understanding the "univeral" in ethical terms. Finally, the section on "Problemata" argues against three (at the time well-known) postulates of Hegelian ethical thought by showing that these are all inconsistent with some remarkable feature of the faith that Abraham evidences.

The section on the Knight of Infinite Resignation and the Knight of Faith provide, albeit obliquely, support for the view that the movement of faith is absolute, and cannot be transcended.

Hannay's introduction is excellent (however, I would suggest first skimming it, then reading Kierkegaard's book, then reading it in earnest at the end).

true faith is not completely reliant on logic
The value of this work is that it correctly argues that faith is ultimately a choice that cannot be completely supported by logic or rational proof. It was Kierkegaard's experience of losing the chance to be with the person he loved that forced him to confront the absurd nature of faith. Although believers in many religions will argue that their faith is logical and rational, Kierkegaard fully grasped that if conviction is based fully on logic, it does not need faith to support it.

Perhaps the best metaphor can be found in the New Testament passage where Christ invites Peter to walk on water -- Peter takes a step with faith and does not sink, but then looks down, and begins to evaluate the situation using his rational mind, and begins to sink. True faith walks on water. Only true faith could be sufficient to base a life on the conviction that a dead guy in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago came back from the dead and has his own kingdom where his followers will live forever in eternal bliss. On the other hand, this conviction has become so entrenched in the popular culture of the last 2,000 years that it has just become an unremarkable backdrop to the modern world and is considered a socially acceptable belief.

The challenge for a modern christian is to find true faith when they mistakenly believe that the story of Jesus Christ is completely supported by logic and rational thinking. The mere act of mentally assenting to what has been accepted in popular culture, a broad and shallow idea that God and Jesus exist, is not faith at all; just an unexamined conclusion of a lazy mind that has not yet questioned its own surroundings. True faith is a radical departure from the status quo, a renewal of personal conviction despite all contradictions and a recognition of UNCERTAINTY. Without a recognition of uncertainty, faith has no meaning. The strength of true faith is that it acknowledges that uncertainty exists, and yet still forges on in spite of the uncertainty, willingly accepting and embracing the consequences of conviction in the face of uncertainty. There is not fear that the conviction may be misled and flinching because of the uncertainty, there is a recognition that this lack of absolute rational proof and certainty is what gives faith its supreme virtue. This is what makes faith courageous and is something that only mortal humans can do, since angels are blessed with absolute knowledge whereas humans are blessed with uncertainty, which is the only way that true freedom can exist. Without this freedom, the choice of "faith" would not be possible, would not be courageous, and would not make mortals eligible for the reward of heaven.

The believer who claims that all faith is logical has not yet come to the moment of testing, like Abraham, like Kierkegaard, where the object of the soul's deepest longing and only happiness is seen, but yet out of reach. For Kierkegaard it was the girl he loved, that he could never be with, but yet he retained hope and transformed that hope into a lifetime of faith. The personal pain of such an experience leads a person to exclaim "it doesn't make sense!" Only when one reaches the point where it just doesn't make sense can the ultimate nature of real and profound faith be experienced and put into action. Anything else is a shallow beginning, and not yet a sufficient faith to walk on water, just as Peter found when he was invited to take that step...

This book is full of such profound insight because Kierkegaard understood this and knew that faith was not a shallow, cheap or easy achievement:

"In those old days it was different. For then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, not a skill thought to be acquired in either days or weeks. When the old campaigner approached the end, had fought the good fight, and kept his faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten the fear and trembling that disciplined his youth...." (p.42)