Fear and Trembling (Green Integer) [Paperback]

Soren Kierkegaard (Author), Robert Payne (Translator)

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Green Integer (December 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931243085
• ISBN-13: 978-1931243087
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,834,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian, generally recognized as the first existentialist philosopher.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

145 of 158 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Makes a philosopher weak in the knees, April 28, 2002

By 

D. Roberts "Hadrian12" (Battle Creek, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fear and Trembling (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

FEAR AND TREMBLING stands as one of Soren Kierkegaard's most widely read works. It's brevity is appealing to those with only a marginal interest in philosophy and theology. It's subject matter is what attracts those persons who want to find a nexus between ethics and theology.

In the work, Kierkegaard engages the famous passage in the Old Testament of the bible where Abraham is ordered by God (Yahweh) to sacrifice his son, Isaac. It stands today as the most salient episode in the bible where Plato's EUTHYPHRO dillema is confronted.

Now, what is the EUTHYPHRO dillema, you may ask? The dillema is set out by Socrates in Plato's dialouge of the same name. Basically, it comes down to this: are good and evil intrinsic to the universe itself? Or are the qualities of good and evil decided upon by God (or gods)? If the former is true, then God (or the head of a pantheon of gods) cannot be truly omnipotent, for there is at least one power that even he / she / it must follow. If, on the other hand, good and evil are decided by God(s), then might makes right.

Enter Kierkegaard, who spends the pages of this work acting more-or-less as a defense attorney for Abraham for his even contemplating the murder of his son. For Kierkegaard, the divine-command-theorist, the latter horn of the conundrum (i.e.: might makes right) is the only plausible alternative open for the religious believer. The first horn denies God's sovereign omnipotence over the universe and all of its affairs, which is utterly unacceptable.

So, the Dane offers to us the defense of what he calls the "teleological suspension of ethics." That is to say, while Abraham was acting out of direction from God, he was not subject to the ethical laws of the "everyday" universe that the rest of us live in every day.

That, in brief, is the topic that this book considers. For the complete explanation and polemics of his views, this book is highly recommended. That the subject matter of FEAR AND TREMBLING greatly disturbed Kierkegaard becomes readily obvious in the first pages. If the arguments presented are examined carefully, it is a topic whose implications may very well shock the modern-day theologian as well.

66 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars true faith is not completely reliant on logic, November 11, 2006

By 

Xue Tian (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fear and Trembling (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

The value of this work is that it correctly argues that faith is ultimately a choice that cannot be completely supported by logic or rational proof. It was Kierkegaard's experience of losing the chance to be with the person he loved that forced him to confront the absurd nature of faith. Although believers in many religions will argue that their faith is logical and rational, Kierkegaard fully grasped that if conviction is based fully on logic, it does not need faith to support it.

Perhaps the best metaphor can be found in the New Testament passage where Christ invites Peter to walk on water -- Peter takes a step with faith and does not sink, but then looks down, and begins to evaluate the situation using his rational mind, and begins to sink. True faith walks on water. Only true faith could be sufficient to base a life on the conviction that a dead guy in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago came back from the dead and has his own kingdom where his followers will live forever in eternal bliss. On the other hand, this conviction has become so entrenched in the popular culture of the last 2,000 years that it has just become an unremarkable backdrop to the modern world and is considered a socially acceptable belief.

The challenge for a modern christian is to find true faith when they mistakenly believe that the story of Jesus Christ is completely supported by logic and rational thinking. The mere act of mentally assenting to what has been accepted in popular culture, a broad and shallow idea that God and Jesus exist, is not faith at all; just an unexamined conclusion of a lazy mind that has not yet questioned its own surroundings. True faith is a radical departure from the status quo, a renewal of personal conviction despite all contradictions and a recognition of UNCERTAINTY. Without a recognition of uncertainty, faith has no meaning. The strength of true faith is that it acknowledges that uncertainty exists, and yet still forges on in spite of the uncertainty, willingly accepting and embracing the consequences of conviction in the face of uncertainty. There is not fear that the conviction may be misled and flinching because of the uncertainty, there is a recognition that this lack of absolute rational proof and certainty is what gives faith its supreme virtue. This is what makes faith courageous and is something that only mortal humans can do, since angels are blessed with absolute knowledge whereas humans are blessed with uncertainty, which is the only way that true freedom can exist. Without this freedom, the choice of "faith" would not be possible, would not be courageous, and would not make mortals eligible for the reward of heaven.

The believer who claims that all faith is logical has not yet come to the moment of testing, like Abraham, like Kierkegaard, where the object of the soul's deepest longing and only happiness is seen, but yet out of reach. For Kierkegaard it was the girl he loved, that he could never be with, but yet he retained hope and transformed that hope into a lifetime of faith. The personal pain of such an experience leads a person to exclaim "it doesn't make sense!" Only when one reaches the point where it just doesn't make sense can the ultimate nature of real and profound faith be experienced and put into action. Anything else is a shallow beginning, and not yet a sufficient faith to walk on water, just as Peter found when he was invited to take that step...

This book is full of such profound insight because Kierkegaard understood this and knew that faith was not a shallow, cheap or easy achievement:

"In those old days it was different. For then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, not a skill thought to be acquired in either days or weeks. When the old campaigner approached the end, had fought the good fight, and kept his faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten the fear and trembling that disciplined his youth...." (p.42)

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This is NOT the Penguin Classics edition, January 26, 2009

By 

Scheisseler "Contemptible Greedhead" (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fear and Trembling (Paperback)

Fear and Trembling This is not a review of Kierkegaard's work (which is a seminal piece of modern philosophy), but instead of the quality of the Wilder Publications edition. Most of the reviews you will see of this title here on Amazon refer to the Penguin Classic edition, which would undoubtedly have to be a better-produced version of this book. The Wilder edition is a thin, print-on-demand paperback that resembles a pamphlet more than a book. There is no text on the spine (good luck finding this after it's been on your bookshelf for a few months) and there are no credits beyond Kierkegaard's -- that's right, no one takes or is given credit (or blame) for the translation. It's not enough to say I wouldn't have paid the asking price had I seen this in a store -- I WOULD NOT HAVE BOUGHT THIS if I had seen it in a store.

Print-on-demand publishers are responsible for keeping some great work available. Some of them are also responsible for presenting that work in the poorest possible light. Choose this book from a publisher you've heard of.