Fear and trembling ; and, the sickness unto death

501 Pages·2013·22.08 MB·English

by  Soren Kierkegaard & Walter Lowrie & Gordon Marino

Fear and Trembling
and
The SickneSS UnTo deaTh

Fear and Trembling
and
The SickneSS
UnTo deaTh
Søren kierkegaard
TranSlaTed and wiTh noTeS
by walTer lowrie
wiTh a new inTrodUcTion
by gordon marino
Princeton University Press
Princeton and oxford
Fear and Trembling: a dialectical lyric and The Sickness Unto
death copyright © 1941 by Princeton University Press
Introduction by Gordon Marino copyright
© 2013 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
all rights reserved
Combined edition reissued in paperback, with a
new introduction by Gordon Marino, 2013
Library of Congress Control Number 2012955513
ISBN 978-0-691-15831-0
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
conTenTS
inTrodUcTion by gordon marino vii
FeAr AND TreMBLING 1
The SICKNeSS UNTO DeATh 235
index 479

inTrodUcTion
Gordon Marino
In his brief days under the sun, Søren Kier-
kegaard published more than twenty books.
True, there are a couple of tomes that could
have profited from another draft, but overall,
the otherworldly quality of his prose and the
wisdom embedded on every other page are of-
ten jaw- and, yes, book-dropping. There have
been many occasions in which my eye traveled
across a sentence and the text simply slipped
from my hands as I shook my head in wonder.
For example, I lost my page on this line from
Fear and Trembling:
If there were no eternal consciousness in a man,
if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly
seething power which writhing with obscure pas-
sions produced everything that is great and every-
thing that is insignificant, if a bottomless void
never satiated lay hidden beneath all—what then
would life be but despair? (30)
And then a long sentence later a perfectly
placed, “But therefore it is not thus . . .” Yes, Kier-
kegaard could move the waters of language.
These two texts, Fear and Trembling and The
Sickness Unto death, written, respectively, at the
vii
introduction
beginning and toward the end of Kierkegaard’s
writing career, were the best that ever flowed
from his stylus.
Almost all of Kierkegaard’s classic works
were written under nom de plumes. The pseu-
donyms refer to and critique one another. At
the same time that he published a pseudony-
mous work, Kierkegaard would also print a
religious discourse or reflection under his own
name. Over the years, the professors, whom
Kierkegaard fiercely detested, have grappled
over the question of how to interpret the use of
these pseudonyms. In his posthumously pub-
lished The Point of View of my Work as an author,
Kierkegaard entreats his readers not to confuse
him with his pen names. Abiding by his wish, I
read the entire oeuvre as a kind of novel, with
each of the pseudonyms representing a partic-
ular life perspective—and if there is one thing
that the man known in his youth as “the Fork”
was adamant about, it was the importance of
developing a perspective on life!
Published in 1843, Fear and Trembling appears
with the name Johannes de silentio on the title
page. As the author’s name shouts, silence is a
central motif in this work, whispering the les-
son that there are choices that cannot be medi-
viii
introduction
ated by language and thought, such as whether
to mold your life to an unseen God.
A brilliantly constructed reductio ad absur-
dum argument against the notion that revealed
truths are within the realm of reason, Fear and
Trembling works to reestablish the primitivity,
the attractive and yet repugnant aspect of faith.
In the New Testament, Jesus is forever plead-
ing, “Do not be offended in me.” Kierkegaard
was of the opinion that Christianity had to pre-
serve this power to defend against those who
would rationalize it into something any insur-
ance agent could easily believe. Or again, the
Danish forbearer of existentialism was on the
ramparts against the fantasy that a person only
needed to be fortunate enough to be born into
the right place and time for the pearly gates to
open. As Johannes de silentio obliquely warns,
remove the possibility of offense and you cru-
cify the possibility of faith.
Fear and Trembling is rich in lines of interpre-
tation; still, there can be no doubt that the text
rails against the idea of a cozy relationship be-
tween religion and ethics. Abraham is regarded
as the father of faith, and yet, from secular per-
spective, in his willingness to plunge his knife
into Isaac, “he is not even a tragic hero but a
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