“Developing” Fear and Trembling

Abstract

Once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough for an imperishable name as an author. Then it will be read, translated into foreign languages as well. - Soren Kierkegaards Papirer Kierkegaard was prophetic in his estimate of the place Fear and Trembling was to have in his authorship. Although several of his pseudonymous works have also become philosophical classics, Fear and Trembling continues to haunt us like no other of his writings. Its defense of individual existence still resonates at the end of a century marked by horrifying mass movements, while its depiction of radical religious obedience stirs new fears as we enter a period when older political ideologies are being replaced by renewed expressions of religious absolutism. Fear and Trembling remains so evocative partly because of its enigmatic nature. From the outset, by means of the famous epigraph drawn from Hamann, Kierkegaard signals that not everything that follows is as it seems. Beyond this, there is evidence that Kierkegaard designed Fear and Trembling as a text with hidden layers of meaning. In The Point of View for My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard tells us that the most important ethical and religious truths cannot be communicated directly, as though one were writing on a blank sheet of paper. They demand instead creative endeavor by the author and a corresponding effort by the reader that involves “bringing to light by the application of a caustic fluid a text which is hidden under another text” ( PV 40).