Soren Kierkegaard thought that his most famous work would end up being Fear and Trembling. He was right, and Michael Watts devotes a lengthy chapter to exploring the themes, explaining the ideas, and providing a nice basis for people to think about Kierkegaard’s perspective in more depth later on.
Fear and Trembling is a difficult, even troubling work. On the one hand it addresses the importance of respecting people’s individuality in generally anonymous societies — hardly something that merits criticism. On the other hand, though, it seems to elevate and praise a person who rejects moral stands and sets forth to kill their own son simply because they believe God has told them to. In effect, Fear and Trembling can read like a manifesto for faith-based murder or terrorism.
If you haven’t read it, Fear and Trembling is Kierkegaard’s attempt to plumb the depths of the biblical story of Abraham, blessed by God with a son late in life and then told that he would have to sacrifice Isaac — murder him — to this same God.
Abraham was forced to make a choice: follow the rational moral standards dictated by God (do not murder) or follow the immediate command of God and kill an innocent child. If he killed Isaac, he would lose his chance of having progeny; God, however, promised that Abraham would have innumerable progeny. What should he do?
Abraham decided to obey God’s command without reservation. Abraham shows what it means to have genuine, total faith — the sort of faith that has been lost in modern Christianity:
- “[F]aith is presented in Fear and Trembling as having an entirely independent status that lies beyond the grasp of rational thinking or social morality, and yet it requires a highly sensitive and morally mature individual to appreciate the true nature of its demands. Through its author Johannes de Silentio, Kierkegaard skillfully constructs, in a manner typifying his indirect subtle style of communication, a vivid picture of the requirements and full implications of what he regards to be the ‘highest passion of a person,’ a quality which for hundreds of years has been concealed beneath attractive, cheapened versions preached by worldly clergymen and misinterpreted by condescending rationalisations of faith offered by philosophers.”
Readers are faced with a very stark choice: either basic ethical rules are absolute or they are not; if they are absolute then Abraham must be treated as a criminal (aside from trying to murder his son, he also failed to tell others what he intended), but if Abraham is not a criminal and really is the “father of faith,” then ethical rules cannot be absolute.
There are many Christians today who tout the importance of faith and emphasize the need to have a personal relationship with God, but it isn’t clear that they fully realize or understand the implications of this. They are, after all, among the first and most vocal judges whenever someone claims to have been told by God to kill their children, as has happened more than once in America in recent years. They consider such behavior insane, but for Abraham it was a religious duty.
Then again, perhaps it is preferable that most Christians don‘t really believe their faith-based rhetoric — a society full of Abrahams would be very dangerous. Kierkegaard makes it clear that while he is in awe of Abraham’s ability to take his faith so seriously, he is also appalled at the implications such behavior can have. He cannot understand the mentality of such a person and neither can most people. Through Michael Watts, however, people are better able to understand Kierkegaard and what he was trying to accomplish in this and other works.
The Bottom Line
Kierkegaard is a very important philosopher. Most people who have heard of him don’t know a great deal about him — he’s certainly not commonly referenced in the Christian circles that one would assume should take his ideas about faith most seriously. People interested in religion, religious faith, and philosophy should be more familiar with Kierkegaard’s ideas and Michael Watts’ book is the best place to start.
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