Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard (under pseudonym: Johannes de Silentio)

​Difficult read, I doubt my own ability to give a good book review but here is what I understood of it.

Fear and trembling is an extended meditation on faith partly through the story of Abraham. After 70 long, long years of waiting in faith with his wife Sarah, a miracle happens and God permits him to beget a son, Isaac, who was his joy. And then comes the ultimate test, God bids Abraham to sacrifice Isaac to him at Mount Moriah, a journey that takes three long days to complete. Once at Mount Moriah, Abraham would have been required to prepare the firewood, the pyre, to take out the knife, and finally, plunge the knife into his one and only beloved son, Isaac. But through this process and while performing these motions (how must have all this felt?) Abraham had faith in God, and doubted not even for a moment in God's command.

Faith: "the divine madness." Kierkegaard contrasts Abraham, "the knight of faith" with the "tragic hero." The tragic hero makes the "movement of infinite resignation" but does not go further--the tragic hero moves on the plane of the ethical which is the universal. If Abraham doubted and made the movement of infinite resignation (putting his actions on the plane of universal/ethical) then he would have plunged his knife in his own breast as a surrogate sacrifice for Isaac.

The knight of faith makes an additional movement and believes in "virtue of the absurd" and there is a paradox, for by faith (the virtue of the absurd) "the particular [the individual] is higher than the universal [system of ethics]." This is because "the individual as the particular stands in an absolute relation to the absolute [God]." And thus, by faith, Abraham keeps Isaac.

Faith, through the virtue of the absurd, is fear, is trembling, is dread. "...when I have to think of Abraham, I am as though annihilated. I catch sight every moment of that enormous paradox which is the substance of Abraham's life, every moment I am repelled... I strain every muscle to get a view of it--that very instant I am paralyzed" (p. 44).

Not being a believer, I personally cannot relate on a corporeal level to the dread that Kierkegaard has written about, but, like in his time, Kierkegaard challenges men and women of faith today--how many can read about Abraham with the same kind of reverence and terror?--how many can live in with faith confronted with the same sleep-stealing dread?

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