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Summary: Kierkegaard Philosophy Influences My Major Work on Jesus.
Review: As a student of Theological Studies in the University in Toronto, I was learning all about christian philosophy. The one that made so much impact is Fear and Trembling. The dialogue rendered so poetically between Abraham,his son Isaac and God makes my pen turn red. It is so full of allegory that motivated me to write modern verses in Tamil Language about the Life of JESUS CHRIST. I was able to retrace His steps in Jerusalem and Bethelehem - during my Holy Land Journey in 2000. I lived the scenes that are evoked in the Holy Bible.
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Summary: Makes a philosopher weak in the knees
Review: 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.
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Summary: Uninteresting book , but a few good ideas
Review: Fear and Trembling. The title sounds good. However, do not be fooled. Fear and Trembling is a mind-numbing read. That is not to say there is no value in it. It presents a few important ideas, such as the idea that every generation has essentially the same struggle as the last, but do not expect to be entertained in the least.
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Summary: Fear and Trembling. One Jewish interpretation
Review: I am sure I do not understand Kierkegaard fully .But what I will try to do in this brief review is recall what I do understand and compare it to an interpretation of the very same event , the Akedah, the Binding and Sacrifice of Isaac from the Jewish point- of- view.
As I understand it Kierkegaard sees Abraham as an exemplar of the ' teleological suspension of the ethical' Already in Either- Or Kierkegaard spoke of these three realms, the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. This is a heirarchy . Abraham in effect transcends the second realm, transcends the ethical ( which would of course mandate against ' murder' and especially against the murder of one's own beloved child) and gives himself wholly to the ' religious' By this is meant he places his absolute trust in God . And his obedience to God, his absolute trust in God transcends any human committment even the highest ethical one. Thus the absurdity of his action is on the ethical level, but not on the level in which he totally commits himself to God. Obedience to God is faith in God is the highest way for the ideal religious figure that Abraham represents.
Yet Abraham is not permitted to carry out the sacrifice. ( Did he inwardly intuit that he would not be permitted to? And was this the sign of his far deeper trust in G-d?
Instead Abraham is prevented from continuing in the pagan tradition of child sacrifice and induced to set out on a new higher ethical way for mankind. (The path of ethical monotheism) in which each and every human life is sacred. And such sacrifice is forbidden because it violates the divine commandment against taking a human life, (And this when the human being is created in the image of G-d ) thus meaning the human is forbidden from sacrificing the divine in the human for the Divine.
Paradoxically in the Jewish tradition the whole completed action which is not simply Abraham's willingness to sacrifice but G-d's forbidding of this sacrifice is to affirm a higher ethical path. This I would venture is one Jewish interpretation of the Akedah, of a new dawn a higher way for mankind where human life is more sacred than before.
May the readers of this review forgive me for not resting with Kierkegaard's interpretation .We are all after all made in the image of G-d, and each one of us may and perhaps must have his own interpretation to give.
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Summary: Still Resonating All These Years Later...
Review: I'm in accord with the reviewer who marvelled at this book's staying power-- I first read Kierkegaard twenty years ago, and his ideas continue to resonate in my mind today. I'm a far different person now then I was then, but the passion for knowledge never diminishes, and Kierkegaard's philosophy (literally) echoes on. A life-altering book, one of the very few I have read.
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Summary: Everyman/Steiner
Review: It pleases me that so many readers have reviewed "Fear and Trembling" at amazon.com, yet infuriates me that so few have written anything of substance for those who wish to know whether Everyman's edition (translated by George Steiner) is the one to buy. Yes, "Fear and Trembling" is a response to Hegel. Yes, the story of Abraham is central to it. Truly, my hat is off to those who have thought carefully and insightfully about this work; however, most of amazon.com's reader reviews of "F&T" merely restate what one finds in Steiner's introduction--which (surprise, surprise!) is availible to every passerby, thanks to Amazon.com's "look inside" option. Ignore the critical interpretations availible here, and skip directly to Steiner's introduction. What you will find there should convince you that his is the translation worth your money. Quite simply, Steiner writes beautifully, with an almost hypnotizing lyrical precision; I have yet to find another translation of "F&T" that I believe compares to his.
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Summary: Radical Call to Christian Faith
Review: Kierkegaard first takes issue with the prevailing (i.e., Hegelian) notion that faith is something to be "transcended" by means of systematic philosophy, and almost baits the reader to consider what it means to go "beyond" faith anyway. Next, he postulates 4 thought experiments that (poetically) reconstruct the Abraham and Isaac ordeal, each of which is intended to show how the story might be harmonized with the prevailing Hegelian mode of understanding the "univeral" in ethical terms. Finally, the section on "Problemata" argues against three (at the time well-known) postulates of Hegelian ethical thought by showing that these are all inconsistent with some remarkable feature of the faith that Abraham evidences. The section on the Knight of Infinite Resignation and the Knight of Faith provide, albeit obliquely, support for the view that the movement of faith is absolute, and cannot be transcended.
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Summary: Is Going Beyond Faith Possible?
Review: Kierkegaard first takes issue with the prevailing (i.e., Hegelian) notion that faith is something to be "transcended" by means of systematic philosophy, and almost baits the reader to consider what it means to go "beyond" faith anyway. Next, he postulates 4 thought experiments that (poetically) reconstruct the Abraham and Isaac ordeal, each of which is intended to show how the story might be harmonized with the prevailing Hegelian mode of understanding the "univeral" in ethical terms. Finally, the section on "Problemata" argues against three (at the time well-known) postulates of Hegelian ethical thought by showing that these are all inconsistent with some remarkable feature of the faith that Abraham evidences. The section on the Knight of Infinite Resignation and the Knight of Faith provide, albeit obliquely, support for the view that the movement of faith is absolute, and cannot be transcended. Hannay's introduction is excellent (however, I would suggest first skimming it, then reading Kierkegaard's book, then reading it in earnest at the end).
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Summary: Certainly Seminal.
Review: Most of what I read 30 years ago for college classes remains a blur, but this text, along with "Sickness Unto Death," stands out as a notable exception. It appealed to my romantic nature and ironic temperament, and confirmed my suspicions of all organized religions while leaving room for faith--an insane leap into a relationship that by relating itself to itself is grounded transparently in the power that posited it. Somehow it made sense then, and still does. No one describes romantic fixation and unrequieted love as carefully yet passionately as Kierkegaard, then transforms it from mere narcissistic stasis into life-affirming energy.
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Summary: Faith, Adversity and Ethics
Review: Shakespeare's Fr. Lawrence remarked to Romeo that philosophy be adversity's sweet milk. If this is so, then the biblical story of Abraham's waiting for years to be granted a son in Isaac, and then being asked by God to sacrifice that son on top of a lonely mountain, is fitting material indeed for the philosopher. Kierkegaard uses the story as the centrepiece of his essay `Fear and Trembling', to discuss what he calls faith. After a long and lyrical opening, the essay frequently returns to two central questions, namely:
1. The nature of faith; and,
2. Whether Abraham's being prepared to sacrifice Isaac was ethical, and whether such an action occurring today would be ethically defensible.
I propose to concentrate on the first for this review. To understand Kierkegaard's thinking on faith, it is necessary to understand precisely what he means by the word. He uses an unusual framework: to Kierkegaard, the world is divided into the finite vs. the infinite or, equivalently, the temporal vs. the after-life/spiritual. Within this framework, he then postulates that faith can only apply over outcomes in the former. Thus, Abraham could have faith that God would grant him a son, and that his son would be the ancestor of a great nation, but it would not be faith to believe (say) that he would meet that son in heaven. If one reflects upon this for even an instant, one will immediately recognise this as an extremely narrow definition of faith. For example, Christian beliefs in heaven and spiritual (as opposed to bodily) resurrection are immediately outside the bounds of faith, by this definition of faith. Proceeding from his definition of faith, we come to the novelty of his argument, which is clearly outlined - with the aid of an example - on pp.71-79. I summarise it here: to have faith that outcome A will occur (temporally, remember), the individual must first be completely convinced by the impossibility of this. Kierkegaard refers to this stage as "infinite resignation", and depicts this stage as the individual's accepting that A can only occur in the spiritual realm. Yet infinite resignation is not faith; it is a necessary, although not sufficient, precondition for faith (p.75). Faith is then the belief by an individual who has already accepted infinite resignation, that A will actually occur in the temporal realm. Looked at in this way, we may then see the crux of Kierkegaard's argument. Faith is not an easy thing to have. Instead, it is the hardest thing in the world to have since one cannot attain it through any strength of one's own intellect. This conclusion follows directly from Kierkegaard's characterisation of faith as described in the previous paragraph; for, if what purports to be faith is in any way informed by one's intellect, then one has not accepted infinite resignation and hence does not have faith. A fair portion of the essay is taken up by Kierkegaard's continued insistence that he himself is not so admirable as to posses faith, but that he admires intensely those who do, such as Abraham. What should one make of this conclusion? Clearly, it is a result driven by its postulates. Another way of stating this observation is that Kierkegaard has a very exclusive concept of what faith is. I have already demonstrated above that, by insisting faith lies only over the temporal realm, one excludes belief over what is to come in the spiritual. Yet, even within the temporal realm, this definition of faith excludes a great deal, due to Kierkegaard's insistence that infinite resignation must occur before faith can even be considered. Thus, one who has not though about the sheer impossibility, by earthly standards, of what they believe, has no faith. Kierkegaard makes this quite clear on p.76 when considering the example of a hypothetical young girl who "in the face of all difficulties rests assured that her desire will be fulfilled...she is convinced in all her childlike simplicity and innocence." In no way does Kierkegaard think that this girl has faith: it is her childlike simplicity that stands in the way of making the movement of infinite resignation for her, and without that movement, faith for Kierkegaard can never be attained. So we can certainly view faith by this definition as a remarkably exclusive concept; one certainly at odds with Christian ideas of faith such as those of Christ in Mark 10:15 ("Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein."). But this in itself is neither good nor bad, although perhaps it may have been a service to his readers if Kierkegaard had made this point himself. In this reader's view, Kierkegaard's important message here is that quite a lot (now, as well as in the mid 19th century when he was writing) passes for faith. Yet, there is faith and faith, and faith is hardest for those who understand precisely what they have faith in, and hardest of all for those who have faith in otherwise unlikely (Kierkegaard would, and does, substitute "impossible") events and yet understand precisely what they have faith in. Yet, if this interpretation of Kierkegaard is accepted, some difficulties remain. Most importantly, it leaves unanswered the question of how one acquires faith: is it simply bestowed (or not) upon one at birth and left unexplained beyond that fact, or is it something which one can consciously acquire during one's life? Everything in Kierkegaard's framework appears to suggest the former for, certainly, one thing we can be sure of is that faith cannot possibly be informed by the intellect. So then, how can one acquire faith? It seems that all we can say is that (assuming one has already accepted infinite resignation) if one is the trusting kind, one will have faith and vice-versa. More formally, since there is no information content from one's intellect which can inform faith so defined, one's intellect - and presumably one's past experiences as interpreted by one's intellect - are orthogonal to one's faith. Yet, although his framework implicitly suggests faith cannot be explained and will appear to be randomly possessed within any population, Kierkegaard seems to disagree. He claims that "whatever truly is great is available equally to all (p.108)", which in the context of the discussion preceding this statement can only be referring to faith. On p.95, he claims that: "Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion, and faith is a passion." So if we are to accept that faith can be acquired, it must be by changing, or moulding, our `passions'. But, yet, this cannot be done by the intellect, so in what sense it remains `available' to all is left unexplained. It seems to this reader that a theory of faith should more carefully address such concerns.
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