Fear and Trembling: With Linked Table of Contents

by Søren Kierkegaard

As soon as the individual would assert himself in his particularity over against the universal he sins,

it would be a contradiction to say that this might be abandoned (i.e. teleologically suspended),

For faith is this paradox, that the particular is higher than the universal

For if the ethical (i.e. the moral) is the highest thing, and if nothing incommensurable remains in man in any other way but as the evil (i.e. the particular which has to be expressed in the universal), then one needs no other categories besides those which the Greeks possessed or which by consistent thinking can be derived from them. This fact Hegel ought not to have concealed, for after all he was acquainted with Greek thought.

If the ethical is the highest, then it COULD have been discovered through reason and man’s effort.

And yet faith is this paradox — or else (these are the logical deductions which I would beg the reader to have in mente at every point, though it would be too prolix for me to reiterate them on every occasion) — or else there never has been faith . . .precisely because it always has been. In other words, Abraham is lost.

Now the story of Abraham contains such a teleological suspension of the ethical.

so paradoxical that it cannot be thought at all. He acts by virtue of the absurd, for it is precisely absurd that he as the particular is higher than the universal.

Hence it is that I can understand the tragic hero but cannot understand Abraham, though in a certain crazy sense I admire him more than all other men.

Abraham’s relation to Isaac, ethically speaking, is quite simply expressed by saying that a father shall love his son more dearly than himself.

If as an explanation they added, “This we believe by virtue of the absurd,” who would understand them better?

The difference between the tragic hero and Abraham is clearly evident. The tragic hero still remains within the ethical.

With Abraham the situation was different. By his act he overstepped the ethical entirely and possessed a higher telos outside of it, in relation to which he suspended the former. For I should very much like to know how one would bring Abraham’s act into relation with the universal, and whether it is possible to discover any connection whatever between what Abraham did and the universal . . . except the fact that he transgressed it. It was not for the sake of saving a people, not to maintain the idea of the state, that Abraham did this, and not in order to reconcile angry deities.

Abraham is great by reason of a personal virtue.

Why then did Abraham do it? For God’s sake, and (in complete identity with this) for his own sake.

A temptation — but what does that mean? What ordinarily tempts a man is that which would keep him from doing his duty, but in this case the temptation is itself the ethical.. .which would keep him from doing God’s will.

The tragic hero does not enter into any private relationship with the deity, but for him the ethical is the divine, hence the paradox implied in his situation can be mediated in the universal.

the individual is higher than the universal — which I can aptly express also by the thesis of Pythagoras, that the uneven numbers are more perfect than the even.

If Abraham had actually sacrificed Isaac, would he then have been less justified?

there is surely no one who thinks that a man became great because he won the great prize in the lottery.

Moral luck—a disproof of consequentialism. Actions must be judged by their intentions, not their results.

Who was ever so great as that blessed woman, the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary?

Jesus Christ was greater

She has no need of worldly admiration, any more than Abraham has need of tears, for she was not a heroine, and he was not a hero, but both of them became greater than such, not at all because they were exempted from distress and torment and paradox, but they became great through these.

was it not dreadful that He was God? Was it not dreadful to sit at table with Him?

Paradoxical and unbelievable that God would become man and walk with us

A man can become a tragic hero by his own powers — but not a knight of faith. When a man enters upon the way, in a certain sense the hard way of the tragic hero, many will be able to give him counsel; to him who follows the narrow way of faith no one can give counsel, him no one can understand. Faith is a miracle, and yet no man is excluded from it;

So perhaps faith is not by man’s power after all

the passions make all men again equal

what the king said in that instance a peasant too would have been able to say

But however good this sounds, that faith is open to all, this still assumes that faith is by the power of man and not God.

Thus it is a duty to love one’s neighbor, but in performing this duty I do not come into relation with God but with the neighbor whom I love.

In the Hegelian philosophy das Aussere (die Entäusserung) is higher than das Innere.

Faith, on the contrary, is the paradox that inwardness is higher than outwardness

A bit solipsistic?

The paradox can also be expressed by saying that there is an absolute duty toward God; for in this relationship of duty the individual as an individual stands related absolutely to the absolute.

The paradox of faith has lost the intermediate term, i.e. the universal. On the one side it has the expression for the extremest egoism (doing the dreadful thing it does for one’s own sake); on the other side the expression for the most absolute self-sacrifice (doing it for God’s sake).

And even if one were able, generally speaking, to define ever so precisely what should be intended by Isaac (which moreover would be the most ludicrous self-contradiction, i.e. that the particular individual who definitely stands outside the universal is subsumed under universal categories precisely when he has to act as the individual who stands outside the universal), the individual nevertheless will never be able to assure himself by the aid of others that this application is appropriate, but he can do so only by himself as the individual.

only the individual be-comes a knight of faith as the particular individual, and this is the greatness of this knighthood,

In Luke 14:26, as everybody knows, there is a striking doctrine taught about the absolute duty toward God: “If any man cometh unto me and hateth not his own father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”

One must at all events be honest enough to acknowledge what stands written and to admit that it is great, even though one has not the courage for it. He who behaves thus will not find himself excluded from having part in that beautiful story which follows, for after all it contains consolation of a sort for the man who had not courage to begin the tower.

Acknowledging the words and one’s lack of courage to follow them is itself a kind of faith?

when God requires Isaac he must love him if possible even more dearly, and only on this condition can he sacrifice him; for in fact it is this love for Isaac which, by its paradoxical opposition to his love for God, makes his act a sacrifice.

Only at the moment when his act is in absolute contradiction to his feeling is his act a sacrifice, but the reality of his act is the factor by which he belongs to the universal, and in that aspect he is and remains a murderer.

The tragic hero renounces himself in order to express the universal, the knight of faith renounces the universal in order to become the universal.

the marvelous glory this knight attains in the fact that he becomes God’s intimate acquaintance, the Lord’s friend, and (to speak quite humanly) that he says “Thou” to God in heaven, whereas even the tragic hero only addresses Him in the third person.

the task of most men in life is precisely to remain within their duty and by their enthusiasm to transform it into their wish. The tragic hero gives up his wish in order to accomplish his duty. For the knight of faith wish and duty are also identical, but he is required to give up both.

The true knight of faith is always absolute isolation, the false knight is sectarian. This sectarianism is an attempt to leap away from the narrow path of the paradox and become a tragic hero at a cheap price.

the knight of faith who in the solitude of the universe never hears any human voice but walks alone with his dreadful responsibility.

At this point men leap aside, they cannot bear the martyrdom of being uncomprehended, and instead of this they choose conveniently enough the worldly admiration of their proficiency.

Either there is an absolute duty toward God, and if so it is the paradox here described, that the individual as the individual is higher than the universal and as the individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute / or else faith never existed, because it has always existed,

So his ethical task is to develop out of this concealment and to reveal himself in the universal.

Hegelian philosophy holds that there is no justified concealment, no justified incommensurability.

In Greek tragedy concealment (and consequently recognition) is an epic survival grounded in the first instance upon a fate in which the dramatic action disappears from view and from which tragedy derives its obscure and enigmatic origin.

E.g. when Oedipus is unaware of what he has done throughout his life. Only when it is revealed does the tragedy end and relief is exhaled.

A son murders his father, but only afterwards does he learn that it was his father.

In case one who plays hide and seek (and thereby introduces into the play the dramatic ferment) hides something nonsensical, we get a comedy; if on the other hand he stands in relation to the idea, he may come near being a tragic hero.

the point is to show the absolute difference between the aesthetic concealment and the paradox.

she obeys her parents, she conceals her love, and “no one will ever know what she suffers.”