Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is an interpretation of the scriptural story of Abraham and his son Isaac. This account from Genesis involves God commanding Abraham to leave his home for an unknown land where he will, by way of a forthcoming son, become the father of a great nation. Time elapses well past the point when Abraham could father a son, but God holds to His promise and Isaac is miraculously born. God then demands Abraham offer up Isaac in sacrifice and Abraham, without hesitation, sets out to fulfill God’s will. This seems on its face a horrific act and one unfitting of a man subsequently hailed as the father of the Christian faith. Kierkegaard contends, however, that Abraham is justified in his actions and that few people …show more content…
Under this system, there exist two stages of life. First is the aesthetic, low and basic, which involves individual experience. The higher stage of life is the ethical wherein an individual acts for the betterment of the universal, or some larger community. One moves from the aesthetic to the ethical by a movement of infinite resignation; this entails making personal desire subordinate to the greater good of the universal. Kierkegaard examines the actions of Abraham and considers how they would have been different had he adhered to the standards of the ethical. He consistently concludes that, while the actions would be admirable (such as losing hope when the sacrifice was demanded and offering himself instead), Abraham would not have achieved the status he ultimately attained. This leads Kierkegaard to posit the existence of a third stage of life higher than the ethical. He refers to this as the religious and continuously contrasts it with the ethical throughout Fear and Trembling. This contrast in necessary to glean any information about the religious stage of life because the religious defies explanation in itself because it is sustained by a paradox; the nature of this paradox is fully explained later