Kierkegaard's Fear And Trembling Essay

To better illustrate and understand the perspective of our present age as to that of Kierkegaard’s, we must first examine what Kierkegaard meant by these four phenomena which he claimed plagued his society in 1840’s Copenhagen. We will start by analyzing his concept of reflection. This reflection isn’t one of idleness which Kierkegaard shows praise towards but to that of overthinking. Through reflection, man overanalyzes situations before him to the point of driving the

up being driven mad by the guilt and she ends up taking her own life

To get a sense of what it is to be human, at least in the evolutionary world, we need only to compare our modern selves to our ancestors such as the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals were our closest hominin relative and died out thousands of years ago. Like us, they walked on two legs, hunted , made fire and tools, and lived in shelters (caves). They were more advanced than many of us imagine they were thanks to the way they are portrayed in the media. They had brains similar in size to ours, they stood fully upright (not hunched over), and had a surprisingly complex culture. When asked what it means to be human, you can compare many different aspects of our lives, such as biology, culture, and even religious beliefs. We obviously have

In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the theme of the power of fear

However, as Kierkegaard has embraced subjectivity and some of the problems of language, he cannot attempt to prove God's existence as Descartes had done previously. Instead, Kierkegaard embraces the subjectivity and individualism of his day and, as an existentialist, "seeks to recover the practice of New Testament Christianity" within individuals instead of an established church (45). This approach to Christianity originates in the Reformation, and, like Luther, Kierkegaard is a strong supporter of reading the Bible for itself "without a commentary as a love letter from God" (46). By placing emphasis on the individual, Kierkegaard avoids needing to prove God outside of his own faith. In some ways, modernity has made it more possible to believe in God, as the focus is on individual reality instead of a single provable truth. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard addresses God by writing, "I am convinced that God is love; this thought has for me a pristine lyrical validity" (Kierkegaard 63). Here Kierkegaard qualifies his understanding of God as uniquely personal, emphasized by his use of phrases such as "I am convinced" and "for me". He makes no sweeping generalization; he simply uses the questions of modernity against those who would advocate for understanding the universe as

Soren Kierkegaard, in his essay, the Present Age, writes about two ages—the passionate age and the present age: an age of dispassionate reflection. Kierkegaard believes the present age to be centered on reflection (deliberation, representation, anticipation), which substitutes for decisive action. The present age, according to Kierkegaard is “characterized by an ‘unhappy objectivity,’ in which the individual has become ‘leveled down’ and loses himself as part of a crowd. “ One aspect of this unhappy objectivity is that our age is an age of reflection rather than of passion. Kierkegaard suggests, "the most dangerous, if also the most respectable of all diseases" is to "admire in public what is considered unimportant in private - since

thousands of floors of office space or four large aircrafts, but rather was the creation

We are spiritual beings that were created to not only represent but also worship God. When God created man he not only made us in his likeness but gave us a living soul which is immortal thus giving us a spiritual life. Only humans are able to relate to Him in this way to be able to communicate and worship God.

How does the individual assure himself that he is justified? In Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, Abraham, found in a paradox between two ethical duties, is confronted with this question. He has ethical duties to be faithful to God and also to his son, Isaac. He believes that God demands him to sacrifice Isaac. But, Abraham, firmly adhering to his faith, submitted to what he believed was the will of God. By using his perspective and that of his alternative guise, Johannes de Silentio, Kierkegaard concentrates on the story of Abraham in such a way that his audience must choose between two extremes. Either Abraham is insane or he is justified in saying he will kill Isaac.

Despair being a universal experience for all humans at one time or another raises questions of internal unhappiness as a cause of all despair that we place on other aspects of our life. Kierkegaard expresses how he believes that “the sickness of the soul” is something a human experience when their soul is not spiritually lifted. On page 272 he exclaims that the Christian ability to acknowledge the sickness and have the ability to detect this, being a product of a lack of spiritual stimulation, is “man’s advantage over the beast” and that the Christian man is better off than the “natural man”. Could any kind of belief system be as effective as Kierkegaard describes being Christian when it comes to healing a person who experiences “the

In his famous work Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard declares that “no person has a right to delude others into the belief that faith is something of no great significance, or that it is an easy matter, whereas it is the greatest and most difficult of all things.” The difficulty of faith lies in the requirement of sacrifice. The story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his beloved son, Isaac, is what Kierkegaard utilizes to demonstrate how costly faith in God is. Here is a man, who after seventy years of waiting for God’s promise of offspring finally received his son, is commanded by God to slay his promised son with no stated reason for doing so. Kierkegaard, in attempting to experience what Abraham might have experienced in those moments, cries, “Now all is lost, God demands Isaac, I shall sacrifice him, and with him all my joy – but for all that, God is love and will remain so for me.” What bold words! The cost

There is no philosophical individual if there is no leap towards word of mouth. Kierkegaard exemplifies such mocking rhapsodies in his piece “Fear and Trembling”. Scattered within are multiple insults shot at individuals whom he wills deserving of it. Breezily crucifying ill-mannered beliefs, and rendering hopeless their application, Kierkegaard makes his first deprecatory stop at the gate of objective and speculative philosophy. Objective thinkers are swerved by Kierkegaard as he states “ When a cellar-dweller plays this game everyone thinks it is ridiculous...ridiculous for the greatest man in the world to do it.” (Kierkegaard 32). A conclusion can be drawn that the philosopher sees objective values as a tool with which existence can be understood an incorrect and confusing fantasy for “who is to write or complete such a system ?” (Kierkegaard 29). Declaring the objective thinkers self-equating of one to the whole, a method attainable by any man and comical in his eyes. His criticism of the aforementioned scholars doesn 't stop here as he follows with a like-minded observation of objective Christianity. He preludes that individuals seeking to understand Christianity through objective evidence, are not true believers for “ Herein lies the scholar’s exalted equanimity as well as the comedy of his parrot-like pedantry.” (Kierkegaard 34) The man who attains faith in this manner must remain mindful of the dragon at the door which waits to devour it (Kierkegaard 35). Kierkegaard

I found Kierkegaard’s account of the possible Abrahams to be interesting. I can remember learning this story in school and remember thinking, what a great sacrifice for one to give up one’s only child, because of their faith in God. In review Kierkegaard’s comparison of possible Abrahams in the Attunement along with his analysis of the Real Abraham, I believe that Kierkegaard’s indicates greatness about Abraham by first painting us a picture of what emotions that Abraham might have endure and had to overcome to carry out God’s will. For Abraham, God was the source of morality and that if he had faith in God that he would be obligated to obey God’s orders. That it was not Abraham’s moral actions that defined him but instead it was his true relationship

The Concept of Anxiety is one of Kierkegaard’s major works. It summarizes and anticipates themes that are developed in his other works. Even though Kierkegaard’s treasure on anxiety is not a readable material, that shines though the book is that anxiety is linked to love in the case of positively and also in the context of negative. A being in anxiety can close himself up within himself, but in anxiety he can also become aware of himself in such a way that he sees the relationship between himself and other human being. It is in this regard that anxiety, in Kafka’s words, can become an ‘anxiety for the greatest as well as for the smallest’, and also he added this with this word that, “this Anxiety is perhaps not only anxiety, but also a longing for something that is more than anything anxiety awakening.” In this book The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard deals with the number of different angles, including the analytical, existential, theological, linguistic and deconstructive interpretations.

Kierkegaard's works are not straightforward proclamations of his philosophy: he wrote under pseudonyms and assumed the persona of these fictional characters in his writing. Thus, one must be careful when attributing a particular position to Kierkegaard -- often the view is advanced by a pseudonym, so various inferential processes must be applied in order to substantiate a claim that Kierkegaard really meant any statement.