Fear and Trembling

About this book

Fear and Trembling is Søren Kierkegaard's profound meditation on faith, ethics, obedience, and the terrifying solitude of the individual before God. Written under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, the book returns again and again to the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, asking what it means for Abraham to be called the father of faith when his commanded act appears to stand beyond ordinary moral understanding.First published in 1843, Fear and Trembling became one of Kierkegaard's most influential works and a foundational text in the philosophy of religion and existential thought. Its central problem is stark: can faith require a "teleological suspension of the ethical," and can the single individual stand in an absolute relation to God that cannot be justified by public reason, social morality, or philosophical system? Kierkegaard does not make this question easy. He makes it urgent, painful, and impossible to dismiss.Readers interested in philosophy, Christian thought, existentialism, ethics, theology, and the problem of faith will find Fear and Trembling essential. It remains one of the great works on religious inwardness: a book about Abraham, but also about anxiety, silence, sacrifice, trust, and the terrible demand that faith may place upon a human being.