Reviews

Timore e tremore. Aut-Aut [Diapsalmata] by Søren Kierkegaard

casparb's review against another edition

5.0

I was quite surprised by this one. K is sometimes referred to as a kind of 'lesser Nietzsche', or an exclusively Christian philosopher. The Nietzsche link is real (and fantastic). F+T is gorgeously written, despite K's denial of the 'poet' label. It explores a wonderful variety of texts - both testaments, Faust, Shakespeare, Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis, and a peculiar story about a merman that I didn't quite follow.

It's also shockingly effective, that is, concise, philosophically. The opening to problema II induced me to annotate a wow. Sharp, elastic writing. I'm looking forward to eventually reading Either/Or.

sarpdem's review against another edition

3.0

There is something compelling about the idea of having an entirely personal relationship with God, rather than one decreed by the ethical and universal category of existence. But daaaaaamn, could you be as faithful as Abraham, to resign his own son, and to happily believe that God will bring him back for you after the sacrifice has been done? To be a knight of faith? Maybe, if so, according to Kierkegaard, you're a greater person.

dylanl14's review against another edition

challenging reflective slow-paced

4.0

gaybf's review against another edition

i don't feel comfortable rating this because..... i did not understand it <3 here are some parts i understood and liked. there are also some parts i understood and rolled my eyes at....

• But Abraham had faith and did not doubt; he had faith in that which was contrary to reason. If Abraham had doubted-then he would have done something else, something great and glorious, for how could Abraham do anything other than what is great and glorious! He would have journeyed out to Mount Moriah, he would have split the firewood, lit the fire, drawn the knife--he would have cried out to God: "Do not disdain this sacrifice; it is not the best I own--that I know well, for what is an old man compared to a child of promise--but it is the best I can give you. Let Isaac never come to know this, so that he might console himself with youth." He would have plunged the knife into his own breast. He would have been admired in the world and his name would not be forgotten, but it one thing to be admired, something else to be a guiding star who saves those who are in distress. 
• You, to whom my discourse is addressed, was this how it was for you? When you saw dire events approaching from far off, did you not say to the mountains, "Conceal me"? did you not say to the heights, "Fall upon me"? Or, if you were stronger, did not your foot move slowly along the path, did not you long to be back on the old track, as it were? When you were called, did you answer, or did you not answer, perhaps softly and in a whisper? not so with Abraham: he answered joyfully, undaunted, confidently, volubly: Here am I. We read further: "and Abraham arose early in the morning." He hurried along, as if to a celebration, and early in the morning he was at the appointed place, on Mount Moriah. He said nothing to Sarah, nothing to Eliezer: who could have understood him? Indeed, had not the temptation itself required of him a vow of silence? "He split the firewood, he bound Isaac, he lit the fire, he drew the knife." My listener! 

[Problemata]

• How can one explain a contradiction such as that speaker's? Is it because Abraham has acquired a prescriptive right to be considered a great man, so that whatever he does is great, and if someone else does the same thing, it is sin, sin that cries out to heaven? In that case, I have no desire to participate in such mindless praise. If faith cannot transform willingness to murder one's son into a holy act, then let the same judgement fall upon Abraham as upon all others. If, perhaps, one lacks the courage to think one's thoughts through, to say that Abraham was a murderer, then it is surely better to acquire that courage than to waste time on undeserved words of praise. 
• Would it not be best that a person remained standing at faith, and that the person who is standing took care not to fall, for the movement of faith must always be made by virtue of the absurd, though, note well, in such a way that a person does not lose finitude, but gains it wholly and completely. For my part, I can certainly describe the movements of faith, but I cannot make them. If a person wants to make movements of swimming, he can put on a harness and suspend himself from the ceiling: he will certainly describe the movements, but he is not swimming. In the same way, I can describe the movements of faith, but when I'm thrown into the water, I certainly do swim (for I am not one of those who wade), but I make other movements, I make the movements of infinity, whereas faith does the opposite: after having made the movements of infinity, it makes those of finitude. 
• Thus, then, my intention in telling the story of Abraham is to extract from it, in the form of problems, the dialectical element it contains, so that we might see what an enormous paradox faith is, a paradox that is capable of turning a murder into a holy act that is well-pleasing to God, a paradox that restores Isaac to Abraham, which no thinking can master, because faith begins preciely at the point where thinking leaves off. 

[Problema 1]

• Expressed ethically, Abraham's relation to Isaac is quite simply this: that a father shall love his son more than himself. Nonetheless, the ethical has various gradations within its own domain; we will see whether this story contains any such higher expression of the ethical that can explain his conduct ethically, that can ethically justify him in suspending the ethical obligation toward the son without thereby moving beyond the teleology of the ethical. 
• So why does Abraham do it? For God's sake and--what is absolutely identical with that--for his own sake. He does it for God's sake because God requires this proof of his faith; he does it for his own sake so that he can provide the proof. The identity of these two is perfectly expressed in the word that has always been used to describe it: it was a trial, a temptation. A temptation--but what does that mean? In other circumstances, what tempts a person is of course that which would restrain him from doing his duty, but here the temptation is the ethical itself, which would restrain him from doing God's will. But what, then, is duty? Duty is of course precisely the expression for God's will. (Wtf.....)
• I am profoundly opposed to speaking inhumanly about what is great, letting it emerge darkly at an enormous remove and in indistinct form, letting it be great without permitting what is human in it to appear--whereby it ceases to be great. For what makes me great is not what happens to me, but what I do, and surely no one thinks that a man became great because he won the grand prize in the lottery. (??.. 77 abraham's existence)

[Problema II]

• If what has been set forth here is correct, if there is nothing incommensurable inherent in a human life, but whatever incommensurably is present is there only accidentally, from which nothing follows when existence is viewed in accordance with the idea--then Hegel is right. But Hegel is not right in speaking of faith or in allowing Abraham to be regarded as its father, for in this latter assertion Hegel has passed judgement upon both Abraham and upon faith. In Hegelian philosophy, das Aussere (the outer) (die Entausserung) [the externalization] is higher than das Innere [the inner]. This is more often illustrated by an example. The child is das Innere, the man is das Aussere; from this it can be seen that the child is in fact determined by the outer, and conversely, the man, as das Aussere, is in fact determined by das Innere. Faith, on the contrary, is this paradox: that inwardness is higher than outwardness, or to recall an expression mentioned previously, that the odd number is higher than the even number. 
• ...The paradox of faith is this: that there is an inwardness that is incommensurable with the outer, an inwardness which, note well, is not identical with that first inwardness, but is a new inwardness. 
• If, in demanding someone's love, a person thinks that this must also be demonstrated by that person becoming indifferent to everything else that had been dear to him--then he is not only an egotist, but also stupid, and to the extent he staked his life on this love from the desired person, the one who demands this sort of love is simultaneously signing his own death warrant. (then talks about how their love for others should be a balm sort of...) "If he had any notion of what love is, he would wish to discover that her love as a sister and a daughter was perfect and complete, and in this he would see the certainty that his wife would love him as did no other in the kingdom" blahblah, nice
• The legend could also be treated in another way. Even though he has seduced many in the past, the Merman does not want to seduce Agnete. He is no longer a merman, or, if you will, he is a poor unfortunate merman who has long sat in sorrow at the bottom of the sea. Yet he knows, as the legend indeed teaches, that he can be saved by the love of an innocent girl. But he has a bad conscience concerning girls, and her dares not approach them. Then he sees Agnete. Many times before, concealed in the rushes, he has seen her walking along the shore. Her loveliness, her quiet preoccupations with herself, captivates him, but in his soul all is sadness--no frenzied desire stirs within it. And then when the Merman adds his sigh to the whispering of the rushes, when she listens to it, when she stands quietly and lapses into dreaming, lovelier than any woman and yet as beautiful as an angel of salvation, the Merman is infused with confidence. The Merman takes courage, he approaches Agnete, he wins her love, he hopes for his salvation. But Agnete is no placid girl, she is very taken with the raging sea, and the plaintive whispering of the rushes pleased her only because it then raged even more powerfully within her. She wants to be away, away, storming wildly out into the infinite with the Merman whom she loves--so she incites the Merman. She disdained his humility--now pride awakens. And the sea rages, and the waves boil, and the Merman embraces Agnete and plunges with her down into the abyss. Never had he been so frenzied, so full of desire, for he had hoped for his salvation through this girl. Soon he grew tired of Agnete, through her body was never found, for she became a mermaid who tempted men with her songs. 
• ...Thus, the Merman would appear to have the proof that his silence is justified because he suffers all his pain in it. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that he is able to speak. If he speaks, then he can become a tragic hero, in my view a very great tragic hero. Perhaps only few will grasp wherein this greatness consists. Then he will have the courage to wrest himself free of every self-deception about using his arts to make Agnete happy; he will have the courage, humanly speaking, to crush Agnete. In addition, I will here make just one psychological remark. The more selfishly Agnete has been developed, the more dazzling the self-deception will be; indeed, it is not unthinkable that it could actually happen that by making use of his demonic shrewdness, the Merman could not only--humanly speaking--have saved Agnete, but have elicited from her something extraordinary, for a demon knows how to torture strengths out of even the weakest person, and in his way he can have very good intentions toward a person. 
• And it is inconceivable that the age itself has not already, by generatio aequivoca [spontaneous generation] given birth to its hero, the demon who will mercilessly perform the frightful drama of bringing the entire age to laugh and to forget that it is laughing at itself. Or, when a person has already attained what is highest by the age of twenty, what more is existence than something to laugh at? And yet, what higher movement has the age come up with since the time people stopped entering monasteries? What sits at the head of the able other than wretched worldly wisdom, shrewdness, faintheartedness, which in cowardly fashion induces people to imagine that they have accomplished what is highest and slyly restrains them from even attempting something lesser? The person who has made the movement into the monastery has only one movement left--that is the movement of the absurd. In our times, how many understand what the absurd is? In our times, how many people live in such a way that they have renounced everything or have gained everything? How many are even honest enough to know what they are capable of and what they are not capable of? And isn't it true insofar as there are such people, they are more likely to be found among the less cultivated and among women? (..............)

jcampbell's review against another edition

challenging slow-paced

3.5

Quite an unusual piece of philosophy work. IT is very lyrical and poetical throughout and while it talks about the paradoxical nature of faith and needing to believe in the unknown, I find a lot of it hard to relate to as the prerequisite of believing in the unprovable is not compatible with my world view. 

sonofstdavid's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative fast-paced

4.5

alanffm's review against another edition

5.0

I read this book a long time ago and didn't really understand much of it. That is definitely not the case this time around. After going through the book again, Kierkegaard's position as the father of existentialism is now made clear to me - the absurd is completely built into his philosophy. Fear & Trembling is astounding: Kierkegaard is lucid, articulate and sophisticated. If anyone is looking for a book that will reveal the importance of faith and the absurd, look no further than this.

jedwards97's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

A seminal work of existentialism that left me thinking about the posited questions and their analysis for days. His writing is incredibly complex, not in prose but in thought. I often replaced ’faith’ with ‘goal’ or ‘purpose’, and whilst this wasn’t his intention I find the idea perfectly interchangeable. There’s concepts beyond just faith, leaning into ethics, passions, the will and the self, making this much more than what it’s acclaimed for being. 

jung's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

3.0

Structurally a mess, but I see what Kierkegaard is getting at for the most part here. Some cool stuff on faith, and what it takes and means to leap into the unknown 

gabybusby's review against another edition

4.0

Not your typical philosophical piece of literature. A very poetic, very lyrical take on what faith is, what it means to live it, and how it is so absurd and paradoxical yet beautiful and great.