Fear and Trembling Themes

Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is a philosophical treatise on the nature of faith and what it means to truly have it. Kierkegaard feared that his world of mid-19th century Europe was becoming too eager to find something beyond faith and simple belief in God in the name of intellectualism. What exists beyond faith, though, is doubt—doubt of God’s existence, of an eternal life, and of the Bible. In Kierkegaard’s opinion, it’s far better…

Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling explains how one can achieve true faith in God in order to find meaning, happiness, and greatness. To Kierkegaard, real, deep, meaningful faith is not a passive action or a feeling that a person just accepts. Instead, a person must make a leap of faith and be willing to embrace the absurd. To Kierkegaard (and to many later European existentialists), embracing the absurd means accepting something (either a course…

In Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard (under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio) launches a powerful argument against the prevalence of religious indifference or even blatant disbelief in God’s existence. He mourns the fact that so many people want to “go further” than faith to find something more just to arrive at doubt. However, Kierkegaard also acknowledges that “stopping” at faith requires courage because the truly faithful are often misunderstood. Kierkegaard selects the biblical story…