Fear and Trembling Soren Kierkegaard

References

  1. ^ "Psalm 55:5 Fear and trembling to grip me, and horror has overwhelmed me".
  2. ^ "Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. ... Anxiety is freedom's possibility, and only such anxiety is through faith educative because it consumes all finite ends and discovers all their deceptiveness. And no Grand Inquisitor has such dreadful torments in readiness as anxiety has. No secret agent knows as cunningly as anxiety to attack his suspect in his weakest moment or to make alluring the trap in which he will be caught, and no discerning judge understands how to interrogate and examine the accused as does anxiety, which never lets the accused escape, neither through amusement, nor by noise, nor during work, neither by day nor by night." — Vigilius Haufniensis (Pseudonym), The Concept of Anxiety by Søren Kierkegaard p. 155-156, Reidar Thomte, 1980
  3. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 22; Kierkegaard also wrote about it in his Journals

    "We read: And God tested Abraham, and he said to him: Abraham, and Abraham answered: Here I am. We ought to note in particular the trusting and God-devoted disposition, the bold confidence in confronting the test, in freely and undauntedly answering: Here I am. Is it like that with us" Journals IIIC4

  4. ^ See Either/Or Part I p. 163-228 Swenson and compare with Repetition p. 131-133, Nichol
  5. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 46
  6. ^ Either/Or II p. 188-189
  7. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 75-77
  8. ^ Kierkegaard wrote about resignation in 1835. "I have tasted the fruits of the tree of knowledge and time and again have delighted in their savoriness. But this joy was only in the moment of cognition and did not leave a deeper mark on me. It seems to me that I have not drunk from the cup of wisdom but have fallen into it. I have sought to find the principle for my life through resignation [Resignation], by supposing that since everything proceeds according to inscrutable laws it could not be otherwise, by blunting my ambitions and the antennae of my vanity. Because I could not get everything to suit me, I abdicated with a consciousness of my own competence, somewhat the way decrepit clergymen resign with pension. What did I find? Not my self [Jeg], which is what I did seek to find in that way (I imagined my soul, if I may say so, as shut up in a box with a spring lock, which external surroundings would release by pressing the spring). — Consequently the seeking and finding of the Kingdom of Heaven was the first thing to be resolved. But it is just as useless for a man to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, to which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize [realisere] its existence [Existents] and letting the rest come of itself." Journals & Papers of Søren Kierkegaard, 1A Gilleleie, August 1, 1835 http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/JournPapers/I_A.html Archived 2023-07-15 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 94-98 The Deceived Merman (From The Old Danish) http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/15409/ Archived 2014-02-09 at the Wayback Machine Kierkegaard discussed this story in his Journals. "I have thought of adapting [the legend of] Agnes and the Merman from an angle that has not occurred to any poet. The Merman is a seducer, but when he has won Agnes' love he is so moved by it that he wants to belong to her entirely. — But this, you see, he cannot do, since he must initiate her into his whole tragic existence, that he is a monster at certain times, etc., that the Church cannot give its blessing to them. He despairs and in his despair plunges to the bottom of the sea and remains there, but Agnes imagines that he only wanted to deceive her. But this is poetry, not that wretched, miserable trash in which everything revolves around ridiculousness and nonsense. Such a complication can be resolved only by the religious (which has its name because it resolves all witchcraft); if the Merman could believe, his faith perhaps could transform him into a human being." Journals IVA 113 His point seems to be that God wants to work with human beings, not fantastic imaginary creatures. Faith transforms us from an imaginary being into a human being. (Editor) http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/JournPapers/IV_A.html Archived 2023-08-10 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ Fear and Trembling Preface: p. 5 Either/Or II 134-138
  11. ^ to think that existing as the single individual is easy enough contains a very dubious indirect concession with respect to oneself, for anyone who actually has any self-esteem and concern for his soul is convinced that the person who lives under his own surveillance alone in a big wide world lives more stringently and retired than a maiden in her virgin's bower. It may well be that there are those who need coercion, who, if they were given free rein, would abandon themselves like unmanageable animals to selfish appetites. But a person will demonstrate that he does not belong to them precisely by showing that he knows how to speak in fear and trembling, and speak he must out of respect for greatness, so that it is not forgotten out of fear of harm, which certainly will not come if he speaks out of a knowledge of greatness, a knowledge of its terrors, and if one does not know the terrors, one does not know the greatness, either. Let us consider in somewhat more detail the distress and anxiety in the paradox of faith. The tragic hero relinquishes himself in order to express the universal; the knight of faith relinquishes the universal in order to become the single individual. Fear and Trembling p. 75
  12. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 9
  13. ^ The first of Kierkegaard's 18 Upbuilding discourses was about The Expectancy of Faith see Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Søren Kierkegaard 1843-1844 Copyright 1990 by Howard V. Hong Princeton University Press p. 7-28
  14. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 16
  15. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 30
  16. ^ from Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Søren Kierkegaard 1843-1844 Copyright 1990 by Howard V. Hong Princeton University Press
  17. ^ The Philosophy Of Right. p. 125-126 See Good and Conscience p. 129-141 https://archive.org/stream/cu31924014578979#page/n160/mode/1up
  18. ^ see Fear and Trembling 62-63
  19. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 55
  20. ^ "Universal, Universality: Hegel's use incorporates the familiar sense of universal as non-particular, without specific location in time and space; but he differs from platonists in denying that universals are timeless self-subsistents, and from nominalists in denying that universals are mere abstractions. The stages (moments) of the Concept in Hegel's triad are the universal, the particular, and the individual: universality develops, first into particularity, and then into individuality. The universal constitutes the essence of a thing; when a thing is fully developed (actual), the universal is concrete. Hegel denies that thought can refer to unique individuals: it is exclusively concerned with universals." [Hegel: Glossary "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-18. Retrieved 2010-12-15.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)]</ compare to Fear and Trembling p. 82
  21. ^ compare with Either/Or part 2 p. 250-258
  22. ^ compare with Kant's Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Boundary of Pure Reason 1793 translated by James W Semple, Advocate ,Edinburgh 1838 p. 251-253
  23. ^ Either/Or Part 2, p 346 See Either/Or Part 2 p. 339-354 for the whole discourse, He also took up the same expression in Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits
  24. ^ Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments p. 296-297and Great Books of the Western World, Robert Maynard Hutchins, 1952, Vol 46 Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, The Philosophy of History (from The Philosophy of History ) p. 175
  25. ^ Fear and Trembling p 70
  26. ^ GFW Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, p. 133
  27. ^ Compare to Fear and Trembling p. 68-69
  28. ^ René Descartes (1596–1650). Discourse on Method, The Harvard Classics. 1909–14 http://www.bartleby.com/34/1/1.html p. 2 and 3
  29. ^ Fear and Trembling Preface: p. 5-8
  30. ^ Fear and Trembling Preface: p. 8
  31. ^ Philippians 2:12-13 RSV http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=5357244
  32. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 7
  33. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 48
  34. ^ Hans Martensen explained this inversion for Kierkegaard: "From the former period we may here refer to the antagonism between Leibnitz and Spinoza, because the former, in opposition to the all-absorbing ocean of substance set forth by Spinoza, determines both God and Creation as monads, as individual beings, and causes the universal to be received into the individual. In our times we may refer to Schelling, according to his more recent system, which he has now brought into connected order. Whilst Hegel sets forth the Universal as the actually existing. Not as though he denied the value of ideas of universal concepts. But the ideal only arrives at participation in actual being, in existence, by becoming the attribute of the individual; and God is to him the absolute individual. Whilst Hegel says that it is the universal which individualizes itself, Schelling says that, on the contrary, it is the individual which universalizes itself. He inquires whence the universal should obtain the power to individualize itself and put itself into existence, which my also be expressed thus: that not thought as the universal and ideal, but the will as the essence of existence, is the supreme principle, which has the power to determine itself and others." Christian ethics (General part) by H. Martensen ; translated from the Danish with the sanction of the author by C. Spence. Published 1800 by T. & T. Clark in Edinburgh . Written in English. P. 220
  35. ^ Concluding Unscientific Postscript p. 105
  36. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 86-87
  37. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 84
  38. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 112 Concluding Unscientific Postscript p. 261-262
  39. ^ In a Journal entry from November 22, 1834 Kierkegaard explained the problem of being misunderstood by people using the literature of Goethe and Holberg

    Doubtless the most sublime tragedy consists in being misunderstood. For this reason, the life of Christ is supreme tragedy, misunderstood as he was by the people, the Pharisees, the disciples, in short, by everybody, and this in spite of the most exalted ideas which he wished to communicate. This is why Job's life is tragic; surrounded by misunderstanding friends, by a ridiculing wife, he suffers. The wife's situation in The Riquebourg Family is moving precisely because her love for her husband's nephew compels her to conceal herself, and therefore her apparent coolness. This is why the scene in Goethe's Egmont (Act V, Scene 1) is so genuinely tragic. The citizens wholly misunderstand Clara. No doubt it is for this reason that several of Holberg's comic characters have a tragic effect. Take, for example the busybody. He sees himself encumbered with an enormous mass of concerns; everyone else smiles at him and sees nothing. The tragedy in the hypochondriac's life also stems from this — and the tragedy in the character who is seized with a longing for something higher and encounters people who do not understand him.

  40. ^ Fear and Trembling, p. 7
  41. ^ "Bible Gateway passage: 1 Peter 1:8-9 - English Standard Version". Bible Gateway.
  42. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 116
  43. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 119 See also Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers IV B 73 n.d. 1843
  44. ^ Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Four Upbuilding Discourses, Against Cowardliness p. 373
  45. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 76–77 and 117–119
  46. ^ We read: And God tested Abraham, and he said to him: Abraham, and Abraham answered: Here I am. We ought to note in particular the trusting and God-devoted disposition, the bold confidence in confronting the test, in freely and undauntedly answering: Here I am. Is it like that with us, or are we not rather eager to evade the severe trials when we see them coming, wish for a remote corner of the world in which to hide, wish that the mountains would conceal us, or impatiently try to roll the burden off our shoulders and onto others; or even those who do not try to flee — how slowly, how reluctantly they drag their feet. Not so with Abraham, he answers undauntedly: Here I am. He does not trouble anyone with his suffering, neither Sarah, who he knew very well would be grief-stricken over losing Isaac, nor Eliezer, the faithful servant in his house, with whom, if with anyone, he certainly might have sought consolation. We read: He rose early in the morning. He hurried as if to a jubilant festival, and by daybreak he was at Moria, the place designated by the Lord. And he cut the wood for the fire, and he bound Isaac, and he lighted the fire, and he drew the knife. My listener, there was many a father in Israel who believed that to lose his child was to lose everything that was dear to him, to be robbed of every hope for the future, but there was no one who was the child of promise in the sense Isaac was to Abraham. There was many a father who had had that loss, but since it was always, after all, God's almighty and inscrutable governance, since it was God who personally obliterated, as it were, the promise given, he was obliged to say with Job: The Lord gave, the Lord took away. Not so with Abraham — he was commanded to do it with his own hand. The fate of Isaac was laid in Abraham's hand together with the knife. And here he stood on the mountain early in the morning, the old man with his one and only hope. But he did not doubt; he looked neither to the right nor to the left; he did not challenge heaven with his complaints. He knew it was the weightiest sacrifice God could ask, but he also knew that nothing was too great for God. Of course, we all know the outcome of the story. Perhaps it does not amaze us anymore, because we have known it from our earliest childhood, but then the fault does not really lie in the truth, in the story, but in ourselves, because we are too lukewarm genuinely to feel with Abraham and to suffer with him. He went home happy, confident, trusting in God, for he had not wavered, he had nothing for which to reproach himself. Suppose we imagine that Abraham, by anxiously and desperately looking around, discovered the ram that would save his son. Would he not then have gone home in disgrace, without confidence in the future, without the self-assurance that he was prepared to bring to God any sacrifice whatsoever, without the divine voice from heaven in his heart that proclaimed to him God's grace and love. Nor did Abraham say: Now I have become an old man, my youth is gone, my dream has not been fulfilled; I became a man and what I yearned for you denied me, and now that I am an old man you wonderfully fulfilled everything. Grant me now a quiet evening; do not summon me to new battles; let me rejoice in what you gave me, in the consolation of my old age. Journals of Søren Kierkegaard IIIC 4 1840-1841}
  47. ^ Either/Or part 2 P. 348
  48. ^ Fear and Trembling/Repetition, Hong 22, 27-28, 59, 62-63, 66-69 Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses Hong, p. 287-289, 322-324, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Hong p. 72-75, 81-85, 154-156, 264-2654, Practice in Christianity p. 31-36
  49. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 49-50
  50. ^ see Fear and Trembling 41-50 for the story of the princess or p. 94-98 for Agnes and the merman
  51. ^ Fear and Trembling p. 44
  52. ^ Journals and Papers of Soren Kierkegaard IVA 113
  53. ^ See Either/Or part II 37
  54. ^ See Either/Or part II 41-47
  55. ^ The Seducer’s Diary from Either/Or Vol 1 by Soren Kierkegaard, 1843 Swenson Translation P. 254
  56. ^ X6B 68 Reply to Theophilus Nicolaus's review of Fear and Trembling., http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/JournPapers/X_6_B.html Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine section 68
  57. ^ Christian Ethics : (General part) Martensen, H. (Hans), 1808-1884; Spence, C., tr 223-224
  58. ^ See Either/Or Part II (1843)
  59. ^ Encyclopedia of religion and ethics, Volume 7 edited by James Hastings, John Alexander Selbie, Louis Herbert Gray T. & T. Clark, 1915 p 698
  60. ^ Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard, 1923 p. 25 Hollander, Lee Milton, Austin : University of Texas
  61. ^ Encounter With Nothingness, An Essay on Existentialism, by Helmut Kuhn Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, Henry Regnery Company, Hinsdale, Illinois, 1949, p. 104-105
  62. ^ Bernard Martin, The existentialist theology of Paul Tillich 1963 p. 74-75
  63. ^ Kierkegaard, by Josiah Thompson, Alfred A. Knopf, 1973, p. 167-168
  64. ^ Journeys to selfhood: Hegel & Kierkegaard, By Mark C. Taylor Fordham University Press, 2000 p. 254, 258 see pages p. 252-261
  65. ^ Sacrificing The Text: The Philosopher/Poet At Mount Moriah © Dorota Glowacka see below for full text
  66. ^ Søren Kierkegaard, A Biography, by Johannes Hohlenberg, Translated by T.H. Croxall, Pantheon Books 1954 p. 118-120
  67. ^ Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard's Philosophy, By Julie Watkin, 2001 p. 84-85 also p. 184-185
  68. ^ for text from Kierkegaard's Journals about Regine Olsen and fear and trembling see Journal entries X5A 59 – 150 http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/JournPapers/X_5_A.html Archived 2023-07-15 at the Wayback Machine
  69. ^ Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, Cambridge University Press Jon Stewart 2007 P. 335 see p.305–335

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