Biological Imagery in Fear and Trembling

Abstract

In Fear and Trembling, Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author, frequently uses images drawn from biological life, including images of generations, youth and old age, nutriment, and familial relations such as husbandwife and parent-child. ' In this essay, I will argue that Silentio uses these images as metaphors to illustrate the life of faith. Silentio begins in the Preface by equating the life of faith with a biological lifetime. He then follows out this lifetime in detail, beginning with imagery of childhood in the Exordium and concluding with images of marriage and parenthood in Problema ??. The process of biological development from child to adult parallels the development of the self from spiritual childhood to mature faith. Silentio uses the parallelism between biological and spiritual life to present his own account of the nature of the individual, and to critique the very different account which he finds in Hegel, the church, and his age generally. Silentio's critique of his social and intellectual surroundings involves a move toward a different conception of the teleology of the individual. Hegel, the church, and the age conceive of the individual as part of a larger whole. Understanding an individual therefore involves situating him within the context of his congregation, his place in history, and so on. For instance we say that Agamemnon sacrificed Iphigenia in order to sail for Troy. We therefore explain the sacrifice of Iphigenia by referring to the needs of Argos, and to Agamemnon's status as the king of Argos, which makes him responsible for fulfilling those needs. The entity in which the telos of the individual resides is therefore the whole in which the individual is situated and not the individual himself. Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia has as its end the polis of Argos and not Agamemnon himself.2 This line of thinking ultimately leads to the conclusion that Agamemnon cannot have any being, any content intrinsic to himself, except insofar as he is implicated in some one or other social whole. At the very least it would seem that he cannot justify his actions except insofar as he subsumes himself under some larger whole; in technical terms the temptation to exist outside a larger whole is a spiritual trial. Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia could only have its telos within Agamemnon himself if he sacrificed her simply because he wanted to; in other words if he were simply a murderer. The same analysis holds for the other tragic heroes, and also for the church and the age. People in the present age think that they are Christians because they live in Christendom. In other words, they reduce Christianity to a matter of living in a certain historical situation. They certainly do not think in terms of a subjectively held belief in a particular set of religious doctrines, as Silentio makes clear with his sketch of the sleepless parishioner, who takes his pastor's sermon to heart and decides to sacrifice his own son to God.3 Similarly, people in the present age think they can go further than doubt, because Descartes doubted.4 They thus situate themselves at a certain point in a shared intellectual heritage, a point after Descartes, and explain their ability to go further on the basis of that position. There is no need for them to personally enter into the existential state of doubt, because they are members of the modern age, and the modern age as a whole is not at the stage of doubt. Silentio, in contrast, holds that the individual in his faithful relation to God is a coherent whole in his own right. Abraham sacrifices Isaac for God and for himself.5 His action makes no reference to any larger whole - Abraham does not, for instance, sacrifice Isaac so it will rain and the crops will grow - but this does not mean that it has no telos, unless of course Abraham is simply a murderer. If we want to say that he is not, then we are forced to accept the conclusion that the telos of Abraham, and therefore of each individual, is specific to that individual and does not extend beyond the individual to incorporate others. …