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Fear And Trembling Kierkegaard

2074 Words9 Pages

Parthiv Patel
Perspectives
Professor Atanassova
April 29, 2014

Faith Rooted in Fear In Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard investigates faith and its moral and ethical implications as well as its broader applications through a couple stories and parables. To demonstrate boundless submission towards God and show how human fear and passion is crucial in order to accept Him, Kierkegaard uses the biblical parable of Abraham and his son Isaac. He also expands on the definition of faith through the story of the two knights and the princess. He expands on the contrast between human ethics and spiritual discipline so that individuals may understand the complicated relationship between ultimate human love towards a baffling God and the difficulties …show more content…

Knowing that the relationship is impossible and highly impractical, the knight continues to venerate and hold the highest love for her. He believes in the absurd possibility that by some chance, he will one day gain her reciprocated love. This hope does not lie in something improbable or unlikely, but for something completely impossible and the person must be convinced of this fate. The individual must fully embrace the paradox to admit impossibility but at the same time continue to believe in it. Here, Kierkegaard recognizes different stages of behavior and thought one goes through before truly achieving faith. The three major stages consist of an aesthetic slave, knight of infinite resignation, and knight of faith . The aesthetic slave, in comparison with the knight and princess story, would resign his love and succumb to the impossibility of the scenario. He refuses to try, believe, and fight for his princess and thus settles for another lower class bride. He does not give up on the love, but accepts the fact that he will never be with the princess. Similar, the knight of infinite resignation gives up the dream of their relationship in the present but does believe that they will meet in the afterlife or eventually in the future. He waits and holds his love for her, even though he may have to wait an eternity. Finally, a knight of faith endures a great leap of faith, or accepting something that is impossible. Different from the others, he believes that in this world and life, he and the princess will be together. He believes in the impossible “…namely on the strength of the absurd, on the strength of the fact that for God all things are possible” (Kierkegaard 75) . This is the last stage one must go through before faith due to the aforementioned paradox of recognizing the impossible, while at the same time believing it. Kierkegaard

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