An investigation into the epilogue of Fear and trembling.

1. Kierkegaard commentary Phil 3011 22650172
The given passage is the Epilogue of Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard’s investigation into faith that
expresses three key ideas. That is “a concern about the declining value of faith” (Carlisle,2010:
171), an “attack on the ambition to go further” (Carlisle, 2010: 171) and whether or not we can
make a teleological suspension of the ethical1
by virtue of the absurd (acting against our empirical
reasoning). It forms an attack on the Hegelian idea that one can mediate (reason) one's self into
faith; believing it instead requires a qualitative leap. One can only mediate oneself into some sort of
aesthetic faith; not a true existence in the religious sphere; the sphere of existence that Johannes
considers the highest. Hegel believes that faith is simply an aesthetic category in a sphere of
existence that would be akin to Kierkegaard’s universal. However, aesthetic faith through Hegelian
mediation is not what Johannes; Kierkegaard’s pseudonym would call true faith such as that
Abraham demonstrates in the story of Abraham and Isaac. Throughout the book the idea of how we
can suspend the ethical sphere in favour of the religious sphere by virtue of the absurd is discussed,
as this is what Abraham appears to do through his absolute faith in God.
Before analysing the text it is important to consider the reliability of Johannes as a messenger. In the
Epigraph of Fear and Trembling he explains the story of Tarquinius Superbus, who sent his son a
message by asking a messenger to cut off the heads of the tallest of poppies in view of the son. The
messenger does not understand the meaning of the message however the fact that the son is privy to
special information allows him to take the intended meaning and act upon it. Just as the son of
Tarquinius was privy to special information which allowed him to understand as is anyone who has
eyes of faith able to understand Abraham in a special way. As well as somewhat explaining
Abraham’s actions without labeling him as a murderer, we start to understand that maybe we should
not take all of what Johannes says at prima facae as being what Kierkegaard wants to explain. This
is particularly important when we look at different interpretations of the text such as those
1
For the purposes of this essay, the words Ethical and Universal are used interchangeably, as living in the ethical sphere
is adhering to universal law.

2. Kierkegaard commentary Phil 3011 22650172
forwarded by Mulhall; including the anagogical reading that Abraham and Isaac represents God and
his son Jesus. Questions of authority and interpretation will be a recurring theme throughout this
analysis of the text.
The Epilogue of Fear and Trembling has huge similarities to the preface of the book, perhaps
suggesting that Johannes di Silentio is still struggling to understand the faith shown by Abraham
when God asks him to sacrifice his son Isaac. The preface provides “a frame that contextualises
Johannes di Silentio's re-telling and analysis of the story of Abraham” (Carlisle, 2010: 171), and it
appears that despite having postulated the existence of 4 different Sub-Abrahams in an attempt to
understand his faith, Johannes’ quandary remains the same; little of the questions that are posed in
the Preface are answered through the book. The frame of his worries therefore remains similar. It is
widely considered that this is Kierkegaard communicating through Johannes that although he does
not say it directly, he is struggling to find the true essence of how one can be in the religious sphere;
it would essentially require abandoning the universal which he finds impossible. This repetition of
ideas is emphasised by the use of the same analogy concerning spice merchants from Holland.
It is here that the Epilogue starts; with the story of Dutch spice merchants dumping some of their
cargo overboard in order to artificially raise the price of their goods through the supply and demand
principle. If there is less supply, demand will outstrip supply and therefore the price will be driven
up. This analogy has divided opinion amongst commentators; it is clear that Johannes wants us to
raise the value of faith, especially through his accentuation of the difficulty of Abraham's. However
the way in which we do this could be open to interpretation. Johannes calls the merchants actions a
“pardonable, perhaps necessary device” (Kierkegaard, 1986: 145), and continues “Is it something
similar we need in the world of spirit?” (Kierkegaard, 1986: 145). This appears to be on first
reading somewhat confusing, and has caused certain commentators2
, especially those who doubt
Johannes’ authority to suggest he appears to be calling on people to artificially raise their existence
2
From Routledge guide, John Lippit. Full reference in Bibiliography

3. Kierkegaard commentary Phil 3011 22650172
into the religious sphere. However as we continue reading the Epilogue it becomes clear that this is
not a call asking people to start deceiving themselves into faith, self-deception is “rather sufficiently
perfected already”(Kierkegaard, 1986: 146). People have already mediated themselves into faith in
God as it is a necessary condition for self-acceptance; as in a world of guilt and sin the only way to
accept to truly oneself is to postulate the existence of something or someone that loves you
unconditionally. Johannes appears to take issue with this Hegelian mediation into an aesthetic faith,
using the word ‘piously’ to describe the way we make ourselves believe. Piously is described by
freedictionary.com as marked by “false devoutness”(Freedictionary authors, 2013) or a
“conspicuous devoutness”(Freedictionary authors, 2013), this is clearly not the same faith as
displayed by Abraham or indeed the type of faith that Johannes goes on to call “the highest passion
in man” (Kierkegaard: 1986, 146). Rather it is simply a tactic to deceive oneself into falsely
believing they have true faith when really it is merely an aesthetic substitute.
True faith is rather, something much more difficult to achieve. Johannes says that in the search for
the passions of faith and love “no generation learns it from the forgoing” (Kierkegaard, 1986: 146).
This appears to suggest that to have passion does not belong in the realm of science and reason, as
these are things we can learn from our elders. He believes that all we can learn from the previous
generation is in fact how it “shirked its task and deluded itself” (Kierkegaard, 1986: 146). Instead,
we must approach the task of achieving faith with “an honest seriousness which lovingly watches
over the tasks” (Kierkegaard: 1986: 146), with unending patience and enthusiasm. Simply giving up
on a search for existence in the religious sphere and reasoning into an aesthetic faith as previous
generations have is not enough to elevate ourselves to the highest existence plain: the religious.
Johannes draws parallels between faith and love in this case, saying that in learning to love “no
generation begins at any other point than at the beginning” (Kierkegaard: 1986: 146). This
emphasizes the fact that “we are all in the position of Abraham as founders of faith” (Mensch,
2001), in other words there is a personal journey to faith that we must all take individually. In fact,

4. Kierkegaard commentary Phil 3011 22650172
“the true knight of faith is always in absolute isolation” (Kierkegaard: 1986: 97), he cannot use
language to express his faith as faith belongs to a completely different existence sphere, the
religious, as to the one in which language is created and describes; the universal. In the case of
Abraham, we see through Johannes’ positing of different Abrahams that shared their struggle with
others, isolation is actually a necessary condition of being a knight of faith. This journey to faith is
therefore always a personal one, taken by oneself without the knowledge and experience of others.
Johannes is keen to emphasize that this task is not an easy one, only “the Spirit which governs the
world and has patience enough not to grow weary” (Kierkegaard, 1986: 147) can ever start from a
place of faith; the rest of us must work for it. There is a temptation when one thinks of faith as a
qualitative leap to think of it as one easy step, this is not the case; the journey to finding this faith is
a difficult and necessary one. To emphasize this point, he uses the example of the tailor who went
up to heaven during his lifetime and contemplated the world. Viewing the world in this way without
making the necessary journey to true faith makes everything seem confusing and “upside
down”(Kierkegaard, 1986: 147).It is the most difficult thing to achieve however no-one can
complain because every person of every generation faces the same challenge. No wonder then, that
so many in previous generations have shirked the challenge and deceived themselves into the
aesthetic faith that Johannes deplores. In a mirror of A3
’s writing in Either/Or Johannes appears to
be pointing at boredom as an evil here, we become bored of trying to reach the religious sphere,
saying that “if the generation would only concern itself about its task, which is the highest thing it
can do, it cannot grow weary” (Kierkegaard, 1986: 147). He claims that the task of finding faith is
“always sufficient for a human life” (Kierkegaard, 1986: 147). We should approach the task like a
child and with the “lovable seriousness which essentially belongs to play” (Kierkegaard, 1986:
147), as children can play the same game for hours without becoming bored. In other words, we
must return to a childlike mind set, unburdened by reason and worldly concerns in order to achieve
3
Kierkegaards pseudonym who champions the aesthetic in Either/Or

5. Kierkegaard commentary Phil 3011 22650172
true faith, one finds support of this in the book of Matthew; “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not
receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”(Mark, 2001). In the Universal sphere,
faith is reduced to “an insignificance, to an ailment of childhood” (Kierkegaard, 1986: 147),
because it is outside reason and is therefore absurd; when in fact it is the highest passion of man.
Johannes believes that faith is not something to be intellectualised and “reflected on disinterestedly”
(Sparknotes authors, 2013), rather one has to throw “oneself passionately into it” (Sparknotes
authors, 2013). If we do this, there is no need to look any further than faith; even though humans
have always felt “an impulse to go further” (Kierkegaard, 1986:147); to do so would not be of
benefit. He explains this in the Epilogue by referring to the story of Heraclitus the obscure, who
said that “one cannot pass twice through the same stream” (Plato, Cratylus, 402 From Kierkegaard,
1986:147). That is to say that the water in a stream is always moving, therefore one cannot step in
the same water, at the same place more than once. His disciple, Zeno, attempting to go further to
reinforce Heraclitus’ point of perpetual change actually manages to prove through further
calculations and musings that change does not exist, and that everything is in flux, despite the fact
he “desired only to be a disciple” (Kierkegaard 1986: 147). If he had simply thrown himself into
believing Heraclitus’ conclusion without looking to go further, no such issues would have occurred.
This, Johannes believes, is how we should treat faith.
Evidently, this view of faith presents a problem for the categorical imperative. Kant suggests that ‘I
should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal
law” (Lippit, 2003: 86). In other words, would the world be a place I would want to live if everyone
was to act in the same way and make the same decision as me. By placing one’s personal faith and
relationship with God above the demands of the universal, one effectively treats oneself as an
exception to the categorical imperative. This makes faith the ‘ultimate paradox’, and extremely

6. Kierkegaard commentary Phil 3011 22650172
problematic for a functioning society; if we were to treat ourselves as exceptions to universal rules
one can only imagine the chaos that would ensue. This problem is avoided if we treat the text with
an anagogical reading; that is to say, foreshadowing events in the New Testament. On this reading,
supported by R Green and S Mulhall, Abraham represents God and Isaac represents Jesus. Only
God can transcend the standards set by the ethical, just as Abraham does, and in sacrificing his son
(Jesus) he performs a teleological suspension of the ethical. This allows God to transcend “a natural
sense of justice”(Lippit, 2003: 163) that would state that sinners do not deserve saving, and allow
for the idea of redemption in God’s eyes when people violate the universal. Redemption is one of
the key ideas of Christianity. It also means that we should continue to abide by ethical reasoning,
and that we are not an exception to the universal, two outcomes that are evidently desirable.
As the story of Heraclitus shows, Ancient Greek Philosophers struggled to understand the concept
of movement if everything was in flux, and it is this debate that Kierkegaard is trying to solve for
himself, not on a metaphysical but an existential and ethical level. If we abandon the universal and
therefore a certain sense of reason because of its tension with the religious, it can quickly appear
that everything is in flux and completely unpredictable. How then can one have faith and make
promises without engaging in some level of self-deception? There is simply no way to know what
will happen in the future. Carlisle believes that Johannes’ admission that he cannot understand
Abraham is an admission that a true understanding of the concept of faith, despite the fact he
reveres it, eludes him. This certainly seems to be the case, and the only thing that Johannes is truly
certain of from this epilogue is that one cannot reach this understanding through academia, reading
and reason. Rather it is of a completely different existence sphere that is unintelligible through the
tools of the universal sphere.
Word count: 2,132 (excluding references)

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