Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (1843) is a passionate exploration of faith through the lens of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Published under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, it asks what it truly means to believe—and whether faith can ever be understood.
The Story of Abraham
The book meditates obsessively on Genesis 22. God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac—the child of promise, given miraculously to Abraham and Sarah in their old age. Abraham obeys, traveling to Mount Moriah, binding Isaac, raising the knife. At the last moment, an angel stops him.
The story is troubling. Abraham prepares to murder his child because a voice told him to. Yet faith traditions revere him as the father of faith.
“Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal.”
Kierkegaard asks: What was going on in Abraham’s mind? How can we understand his faith?
The Teleological Suspension of the Ethical
Kierkegaard identifies the central problem: by ordinary ethical standards, Abraham is a murderer—or would-be murderer.
The Ethical Universal
The ethical, for Kierkegaard, is the realm of universal law. It applies to everyone equally. Murder is wrong—for everyone, always, without exception.
From this perspective, Abraham’s act is simply wrong. He has no justification. He should refuse God’s command as a moral duty.
The Suspension
Yet Abraham’s faith involves a “teleological suspension of the ethical”—suspending the universal in the name of a higher telos (purpose or end).
This suggests a religious stage of existence beyond the ethical—a realm where the individual stands in absolute relation to the Absolute. Here, the universal is suspended, not abolished.
The Problem
This is troubling because:
- How do we distinguish faith from fanaticism?
- What prevents anyone from claiming divine commands to justify anything?
- Isn’t this moral chaos?
Kierkegaard doesn’t provide easy answers. The problem is meant to be felt.
The Knight of Infinite Resignation
Kierkegaard distinguishes two movements of faith:
The Movement of Resignation
The knight of infinite resignation renounces the finite for the infinite. They give up worldly hopes and earthly attachments while maintaining inner peace.
This is difficult but comprehensible. The monk who renounces the world, the philosopher who transcends desire—these we can understand.
Features:
- Giving up finite goods
- Accepting loss as permanent
- Finding peace in the infinite
- A kind of Stoic resignation
A Tragic Hero
Many figures make this movement:
- Agamemnon sacrificing Iphigenia
- Jephthah sacrificing his daughter
- The tragic hero who sacrifices for a higher good
These are not knights of faith but tragic figures. Their sacrifice serves the universal—the state, the people, the moral order.
The Knight of Faith
The knight of faith makes a second movement, impossible by human standards: they believe that by virtue of the absurd, the finite will be restored.
Abraham’s Faith
Abraham didn’t simply resign himself to losing Isaac. He believed—against all reason—that he would receive Isaac back. “We will worship and return to you,” he tells the servants.
This is not resignation but paradox:
- Giving up Isaac completely
- Yet believing he will be restored
- Not through any possible means
- But “by virtue of the absurd”
The Absurd
“By virtue of the absurd” means: not through any human calculation or possibility. From a rational standpoint, Isaac’s restoration is impossible. Yet Abraham believes.
“He believed by virtue of the absurd; for there was no question of human calculation.”
This is what distinguishes faith from resignation. The knight of faith inhabits the paradox—fully renouncing while fully believing in restoration.
Faith Cannot Be Understood
The Hiddenness of Faith
From the outside, the knight of faith looks like anyone else. They don’t dress distinctively or act strangely. They engage with the world, enjoy life’s pleasures, do ordinary things.
But inwardly, they have made the movement of infinity and the movement of faith. This is invisible to observers.
Why Faith Is Incommunicable
Faith cannot be taught or explained because:
- It is a personal relation to God
- It cannot be mediated by the universal
- It looks like madness from outside
- Only the individual can make the leap
Abraham cannot explain himself. To Sarah, to Isaac, to the world, his action is inexplicable. The knight of faith is essentially alone.
The Silence
Abraham doesn’t speak about his ordeal. He cannot. Faith is incommunicable because it transcends the universal medium of language, which deals in the general.
“The one who walks the narrow way of faith has no one to advise him; no one understands him.”
Against Hegel
Kierkegaard writes against Hegel’s system, which absorbs the individual into the universal, the particular into the general.
Hegel’s View
For Hegel:
- The ethical is the highest
- The individual finds meaning through the universal
- Religion is a stage to be superseded by philosophy
- Faith can be understood and explained
Kierkegaard’s Response
For Kierkegaard:
- Faith transcends the ethical
- The individual can stand above the universal
- Religion is not superseded by philosophy
- Faith is paradox that cannot be mediated
The individual is not a moment to be sublated but an irreducible reality.
Existentialist Foundations
Fear and Trembling laid groundwork for existentialism:
Key Themes
- Individual existence over abstract systems
- Choice and decision as constitutive of selfhood
- Anxiety as fundamental to existence
- Limits of rationality in understanding existence
- Authenticity versus conformity to the universal
Influence
Kierkegaard influenced:
- Heidegger’s analysis of authentic existence
- Sartre’s emphasis on individual choice
- Jaspers’s “boundary situations”
- Buber’s I-Thou philosophy
- Even thinkers who reject his religious framework
Reading Fear and Trembling Today
The book remains relevant:
For Religious Believers
- What does faith really demand?
- How does faith relate to ethics?
- Can faith be defended or only lived?
For Secular Readers
- Are there limits to ethical universalism?
- What is the role of the individual versus the collective?
- Can we understand those who believe differently?
For Everyone
- How do we face the absurd?
- What does authentic existence require?
- Where do our ultimate commitments lie?
Conclusion
Fear and Trembling offers no easy answers. Faith remains a risk, a leap into the unknown. It cannot be justified from outside, only lived from within.
For Kierkegaard, this is precisely what makes faith valuable. True faith is not comfortable certainty but a constant renewal of the impossible. Abraham is father of faith not because his actions make sense but because he believed even when they didn’t.
The book invites us to examine our own highest commitments—and to ask whether we, like Abraham, could make the leap.