Søren Kierkegaard was one of the most influential European philosophers of the 19th century, and Fear and Trembling is one of his most powerful and enduring works. In it, Kierkegaard explores the topic of religious faith and, through the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, tries to explain what real faith is and how to embrace it. According to Kierkegaard, one of the necessary steps a person must take in order to develop faith is infinite resignation, meaning they must be willing to sacrifice what is most precious to them. Abraham, who was willing to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac at God’s request, is one example of a “knight of faith,” which is a person who has moved past infinite resignation by sacrificing (or, in Abraham’s case, by being willing to sacrifice) the thing that is most precious to them, while simultaneously believing that they haven’t truly lost that thing in this world. On the other hand, a “knight of infinite resignation” is someone who has taken the step of infinite resignation, but not the next step into faith—they don’t believe they’ll get back whatever they’ve sacrificed in this world, although they’ve reconciled themselves to the pain of loss. Different still, a “tragic hero” is someone who makes an enormous one-time personal sacrifice for the greater good. Kierkegaard contrasts the knights of faith with the knights of infinite resignation, stating that a knight of faith keeps their hope and belief that they’ll get their sacrifice back in this life while a knight of infinite resignation simply resigns themselves to the idea that they’ve irrevocably lost what they love in this life. However, infinite resignation is one of the last steps before faith, which is why Kierkegaard believes that a person must resign themselves to losing everything in order to have it all.
Kierkegaard uses the story of Abraham and Isaac as an example of what both infinite resignation and faith looks like. The story begins when God asked Abraham to bring Isaac—Abraham’s beloved son—to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him on an altar. Kierkegaard explains why Abraham decided to do what God asked of him: “He knew it was God the Almighty that tried him, he knew it was the hardest sacrifice that could be demanded of him; but he also knew that no sacrifice was too hard when God demanded it.” In other words, Abraham was resigned to doing as God asked because he had faith that God wouldn’t have asked him to do it if it was too hard—in other words, if it meant truly losing Isaac in this world forever. Infinite resignation means giving up what’s most precious, so “When God asks for Isaac, Abraham must if possible love him even more, and only then can he sacrifice him.” In this way, Abraham faces the ultimate test: he must demonstrate his infinite resignation to prove himself to God, and he does this in the fervent belief that he will not really lose Isaac. As the story goes, God stopped Abraham from killing Isaac at the last second, although Kierkegaard argues that Abraham really sacrifices Isaac “when his act is in absolute contradiction with his feeling” (when he raises the knife). This both illustrates and justifies Abraham’s faith that he wouldn’t truly lose Isaac in this world by sacrificing him.
Like Abraham, a knight of infinite resignation or a tragic hero is willing to sacrifice what’s most precious to them, but the manner of their sacrifices are different. Kierkegaard writes, “The tragic hero renounces himself in order to express the universal; the knight of faith renounces the universal in order to be the particular.” This means that the tragic hero makes a personal sacrifice for the greater good, but a knight of faith violates what many people believe is the greater good for what seems like a much more specific (or personal) reason. Because of this, the “tragic hero acts and finds his point of rest in the universal.” Kierkegaard means that the tragic hero does everything with the greater good in mind, and that brings them comfort after their sacrifice. A knight of faith, however, “has only himself, and it is there the terrible lies.” In other words, a knight of faith really only has themselves to look to for comfort in this world after their sacrifice, and this would be terrible (they could be hounded by regret or despair) without their faith that they can still have what they sacrificed in this world.
The knight of faith’s journey doesn’t end with sacrifice but goes on because they keep the idea that they haven’t really lost anything alive in their heart and mind. Kierkegaard writes that the knight of faith “resigned everything infinitely, and then took everything back on the strength of the absurd.” This means that a knight of faith never really loses anything because their faith in God and the absurd tells them that through God they can have whatever in this life is most precious to them, even if they’ve already sacrificed it. In this way, the knight of faith can have it all. Through making a great sacrifice, they are able to develop true faith; in return, that faith restores to them whatever they sacrificed because it helps them believe that God can and will return their sacrifice in this world (rather than having to wait to be reunited in heaven after death).
Related Themes from Other Texts
Infinite Resignation ThemeTracker
Infinite Resignation Quotes in Fear and Trembling
Had Abraham wavered he would have renounced it. He would have said to God: ‘So perhaps after all it is not your will that it should happen; then I will give up my desire, it was my only desire, my blessed joy. My soul is upright, I bear no secret grudge because you refused it.’ He would not have been forgotten, he would have saved many by his example, yet he would not have become the father of faith; for it is great to give up one’s desire, but greater to stick to it after having given it up; it is great to grasp hold of the eternal but greater to stick to the temporal after having given it up.
Let us go further. We let Isaac actually be sacrificed. Abraham had faith. His faith was not that he should be happy sometime in the hereafter, but that he should find blessed happiness here in this world. God could give him a new Isaac, bring the sacrificial offer back to life. He believed on the strength of the absurd, for all human calculation had long since be suspended.
He drains in infinite resignation the deep sorrow of existence, he knows the bliss of infinity, he has felt the pain of renouncing everything, whatever is most precious in the world, and yet to him finitude tastes just as good as to one who has never known anything higher, for his remaining in the finite bore no trace of a stunted, anxious training, and still he has this sense of being secure to take pleasure in it, as though it were the most certain thing of all. […] He resigned everything infinitely, and then took everything back on the strength of the absurd.
I can see then that it requires strength and energy and freedom of spirit to make the infinite movement of resignation; I can also see that it can be done. The next step dumbfounds me, my brain reels; for having made the movement of resignation, now on the strength of the absurd to get everything, to get one’s desire, whole, in full, that requires more-than-human powers, it is a marvel.
Then why does Abraham do it? For God’s sake, and what is exactly the same, for his own. He does it for the sake of God because God demands this proof of his faith; he does it for his own sake in order to be able to produce the proof. The unity here is quite properly expressed in the saying in which this relationship has always been described: it is a trial, a temptation. A temptation, but what does that mean? What we usually call a temptation is something that keeps a person from carrying out a duty, but here the temptation is the ethical itself which would keep him from doing God’s will. But then what is the duty? For the duty is precisely the expression of God’s will.
The moment he is ready to sacrifice Isaac, the ethical expression for what he does is this: he hates Isaac. But if he actually hates Isaac he can be certain that God does not require this of him; for Cain and Abraham are not the same. Isaac he must love with all his soul. When God asks for Isaac, Abraham must if possible love him even more, and only then can he sacrifice him; for it is indeed this love of Isaac that in its paradoxical opposition to his love of God makes his act a sacrifice. But the distress and anguish in the paradox is that, humanly speaking, he is quite incapable of making himself understood. Only in the moment when his act is in absolute contradiction with his feeling, only then does he sacrifice Isaac, but the reality of his act is that in virtue of which he belongs to the universal, and there he is and remains a murderer.
The tragic hero renounces himself in order to express the universal; the knight of faith renounces the universal in order to be the particular.
But as the task is given to Abraham, it is he who must act, so he must know at the decisive moment what he is about to do, and accordingly must know that Isaac is to be sacrificed. If he doesn’t definitely know that, he hasn’t made the infinite movement of resignation, in which case his words are not indeed untrue, but then at the same time he is very far from being Abraham, he is less significant than a tragic hero, he is in fact an irresolute man who can resolve to do neither one thing nor the other, and who will therefore always come to talk in riddles. But such a Haesitator [waverer] is simply a parody of the knight of faith.
