Some have praised the book as one of the lynchpins of the existentialist movement. It was reviewed in Kierkegaard's own time and his response to the review is in Kierkegaard's Journals.[56]
Hans Martensen, a contemporary of Kierkegaard's, had this to say about his ideas,
"Existence," "the individual," "will," "subjectivity," "unmitigated selfishness," "the paradox," "faith," "scandal," "happy and unhappy love," — by these and kindred categories of existence Kierkegaard appears intoxicated, nay, thrown as it were into a state of ecstasy. Therefore he declares war against all speculation, and also against such persons as seek to speculate on faith and strive after an insight into the truths of revelation: for all speculation is loss of time, leads away from the subjective into the objective, from the actual to the ideal, is a dangerous distraction; and all mediation betrays existence, leads treacherously away from the decided in actual life, is a falsifying of faith by the help of idea. Although he himself is amply endowed with imagination, yet the course of his individuality, throughout the various stages of its development, may be described as a continued dying to the ideal in order to reach the actual, which to him is the true, and which receives its value from the ideal glories, which must be cast aside in order to attain it. Kierkegaard's deepest passion is not merely the ethical, not merely the ethical-religious, but the ethical-religious paradox; it is Christianity itself, — such as this exhibits itself to his apprehension. Christianity is to him the divinely absurd (Credo quia absurdum), not merely the relative paradox, — namely, in relation to the natural man, ensnared in sin and worldliness, which has been the doctrine of Scripture and of the Church from the beginning, — but the absolute paradox, which must be believed in defiance of all reason, because every ideal, every thought of wisdom, is excluded there from, and in every case is absolutely inaccessible to man. Faith is to him the highest actual passion, which, thrilled by the consciousness of sin and guilt, appropriates to itself the paradox in defiance of the understanding, and from which all comprehension, all contemplation are excluded, as it is purely practical, a mere act of the will.[57]
An article from the Encyclopedia of religion and ethics has the following quote, "in writing B's Papers[58] [Kierkegaard] had personally attained to a deeper grasp of Christianity, and had come to feel that there was a stage of life higher than the ethico-religious standpoint of B. It was now, probably, that he became more fully cognizant of his plan, and of what was necessary to its development. The higher and more distinctively Christian form of religion is set forth in 'Fear and Trembling, the message of which is illustrated by the fact that Abraham was commanded to do what was ethically wrong, i.e., to kill Isaac, and obeyed in virtue or a personal relation to God; he had faith—he staked the earthly, and yet believed that he should possess it still. Such faith is no common or easy thing, but is a relation to the Absolute which Defies reason, and can be won and held only in an infinite passion."[59]
In 1921 David F. Swenson wrote, "Fear and Trembling uses the story of Abraham's sacrifice of his son. Abraham is not a tragic hero, for he cannot claim, like Jephtah or the Roman consul, a higher ethical justification for his deed. His intention to sacrifice his son has a purely personal motivation, and one which no social ethic can acknowledge; for the highest ethical obligation that his life or the situation reveals is the father's duty of loving his son. Abraham is therefore either a murderer, or a hero of Faith. The detailed exposition elucidates Abraham's situation dialectically and lyrically, bringing out as problemata the teleological suspension of the ethical, the assumption of an absolute duty toward God, and the purely private character of Abraham's procedure; thus showing the paradoxical and transcendent character of a relation in which the individual, contrary to all rule, is precisely as an individual, higher than the community." Scandinavian Studies and Notes Volume VI, No. 7 August 1921 David F. Swenson: Søren Kierkegaard p. 21
In 1923 Lee Hollander wrote the following in his introduction to Fear and Trembling:
Abraham chooses to be "the exception" and set aside the general law, as well as does the aesthetic individual; but, note well: "in fear and trembling," and at the express command of God! He is a "knight of faith." But because this direct relation to the divinity necessarily can be certain only to Abraham's self, his action is altogether incomprehensible to others. Reason recoils before the absolute paradox of the individual who chooses to rise superior to the general law.[60]
Jean-Paul Sartre took up Kierkegaard's ideas in his 1948 book, Existentialism and Humanism like this:
in truth, one ought to ask oneself what would happen if everyone did as one is doing; nor can one escape from that disturbing thought except by a kind of self-deception. The man who lies in self-excuse, by saying "Everyone will not do it" must be ill at ease in his conscience, for the act of lying implies the universal value which it denies. By its very disguise his anguish reveals itself.
This is the anguish that Kierkegaard called "the anguish of Abraham." You know the story: An angel commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son: and obedience was obligatory, if it really was an angel who had appeared and said, "Thou Abraham, shalt sacrifice thy son." But anyone in such a case would first wonder whether it was indeed an angel and secondly, whether I am really Abraham. Where are the proofs? Who can prove that I am the proper person to impose, by my choice, my conception of man upon mankind? I shall never find any proof whatever; there will be no sign to convince me of it. p.
30-31
In 1949 Helmut Kuhn wrote of the dread of following God. "The decisive act through which everything is won or lost is called choice a conception formulated by Kierkegaard and faithfully upheld by the majority of Existentialists. Choice, as the term is generally understood, is the act of giving preference to one among several possibilities or of deciding in favor of one or two alternatives. And since every choice has, at least potentially, a moral significance, the primary alternative, which underlies all other alternatives, will be that of good and evil. Choice, according to this common-sense view, lies between good and evil. Kierkegaard and his modern followers entertain an altogether different idea of choice. In the first place, the act under consideration, they insist, is not to be confused with those insignificant decisions with which in every minute of our waking existence we carry on our lives. Each one of these "little choices will reveal itself under analysis as the choice of a means towards a predetermined end. They give effect to a prior determination which underlies and guides them. Not with that merely executive activity are we chiefly concerned as moralists and philosophers. We must rather focus on those cardinal acts on which our whole existence hinges the moments which place us at the parting of roads, and as we then choose, our choice, the dread Either /Or, will either save or ruin us. It is this Great Choice which, as the organizing principle, animates the little choices of our daily lives."[61]
Bernard Martin asked, "Was the revelation to the biblical Abraham of the divine command to sacrifice his son, we may ask (following Kierkegaard), demonic possession or ecstasy? And even if it be allowed that "the ethical and logical norms of ordinary reason" constitute clear-cut and easily applicable criteria, how does ecstatic reason in revelation basically differ from ordinary reason, aside from an emotional "shaking," seeing that it merely affirms and elevates the principles of ordinary reason?[62] However, for Kierkegaard the "emotional shaking" is an external event, which could signify nothing or everything.
Josiah Thompson wrote a biography of Kierkegaard's life, and in it he said,
"Not merely in the realm of commerce but in the world of ideas as well our age is organizing a regular clearance sale," Johannes de Silentio begins in Fear and Trembling. A hundred pages later he ends on a similarly commercial note: "One time in Holland when the market was rather dull for spices, the merchants had several cargoes dumped into the sea to peg up prices." This frame of commercial metaphors around the book is not accidental but a device intended to suggest an essential polarity. On the one side is the world of commerce and sanity-the commercial men with their dollar calculi and the academics who, according to Johannes Silentio: "live secure in existence (...) with a solid pension and sure prospects in a well ordered state; they have centuries and even millennia between them and the concussions of existence." On the other side are those single individuals-Mary, Mother of Jesus; the Apostles; above all, Abraham-who in their own lives have suffered such concussions. These special individuals, their psyches stretched on the rack of ambiguity, have become febrile. Minds inflamed with absurdity, their lives burn with an unearthly glow.[63]
Mark C. Taylor, of Fordham University writes, "The Abrahamic God is the all-powerful Lord and Master who demands nothing less than the total obedience of his faithful servants. The transcendent otherness of God creates a possibility of a collision between religious commitment and the individual's personal desire and moral duty. Should such a conflict develop, the faithful self must follow Abraham in forgoing desire and suspending duty-even if this means sacrificing one's own son or forsaking one's beloved. (...) The Absolute Paradox occasions an absolute decision by posing the absolute either-or. Either believe or be offended. From the Christian perspective, this crucial decision is of eternal significance.[64]
Another scholar writes, "By writing about Abraham, Kierkegaard can perform a pantomime of walking along the patriarch's path, but he will remain incapable of the leap of faith that was necessary to accomplish the sacrifice. The poet can attain to the movement of infinite resignation, performed by tragic heroes such as Agamemnon who sacrificed his daughter to placate the gods, but this gesture will forever remain only a surrogate of Abraham's absolute faith. Abraham believed by virtue of the absurd, whereby the impossible will happen and all human calculation is abandoned. The commentator strains to approximate the knight's gesture of the absurd, yet lacking faith, he is forbidden to effectuate the transcendent leap. In his necessary reliance on the mediation of concepts to tell the story, the exegete cannot aspire to the uniqueness of Abraham's condition. Versions two and four of Kierkegaard's account state explicitly that, in contradistinction to the biblical model, the imagined Abraham returns home. The patriarch from the Book of Genesis does not even glimpse back towards home but moves on to live in a foreign land. When he settles in Beersheba and buys a burial plot there, he avows: "I am a stranger and a sojourner with you". (Genesis 23.4) He renounces all of his possessions, his family and neighbours, and, sustained by faith, he never mourns his loss. As Kierkegaard remarks, were he merely human, he would weep and long for what he had left behind."[65]
One critic says, "the relationship to Regine is played through with full orchestra by Johannes de Silentio, in the little book Fear and Trembling, which came out October 16, 1843, the same year as Either/Or. It begins with a paraphrase repeated four times, on the story of Abraham's journey to Mount Moriah to offer Isaac. The eulogy on Abraham continues this as "the father of faith" who believed by virtue of the absurd. The double meaning is clear: Abraham is the father who brings his son as an offering, and Kierkegaard who offers Regine."[66]
Julie Watkin explained more about Kierkegaard's relation to Regine Olsen in her book, Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard's Philosophy. She says, Kierkegaard wrote Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and Repetition as a way to get over Regine.[67][68]
John Stewart's review of the book removes Hegel from the whole structure of the book, He wrote, in 2007, "...nothing stands in the way of a commentator who wants to find a substantive philosophical discussion in these allusions to Hegel, and certainly there is no reason to think that Hegel's and Kierkegaard's views on philosophy of religion or political theory are the same or are consistent with each other. But this abstract comparison of their views does not explain what is at issue in the text. The main point of the references to Hegel here is to criticize Heiberg and Martensen and not any particular doctrine in Hegel's philosophy." He says this becomes more clear when Fear and Trembling is compared to The Concept of Irony.[69]
In 1838 Kierkegaard wrote,
I am going to work toward a far more inward relation to Christianity, for up until now I have in a way been standing completely outside of it while fighting for its truth; like Simon of Cyrene (Luke 23:26), I have carried Christ's cross in a purely external way. Journals IIA July 9, 1838
A famous dispute arose in France when Emmanuel Levinas criticized Kierkegaard and Jacques Derrida defended him. The argument centered upon the text of Fear and Trembling, and whether or not a practitioner of faith could be considered ethical.
Walter Kaufmann addressed faith and ethics:
If it really were axiomatic that God could never contravene our conscience and our reason - if we could be sure that he must share our moral judgments - would not God become superfluous as far as ethics is concerned? A mere redundancy? If God is really to make a moral difference in our lives, Kierkegaard insists, we must admit that he might go against our reason and our conscience, and that he should still be obeyed. Walter Kaufmann 1962, Introduction to The Present Age by Soren Kierkegaard 1846
