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 ix