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''Fear and Trembling'' (original Danish title: ''Frygt og Bæven'') is an influential philosophical work by Søren Kierkegaard, published in 1843 under the pseudonym ''Johannes de silentio'' (''John of the Silence''). The title is a reference to a line from Philippians 2:12, "...continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling." — itself a probable reference to Psalms 55:5,〔http://biblehub.com/psalms/55-5.htm〕 "Fear and trembling came upon me..." (the Greek is identical). Kierkegaard wanted to understand the anxiety〔"Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. ... Anxiety is freedom's possibility, and only such anxiety is through faith absolutely educative, because it consumes all finite ends and discovers all their deceptiveness. And no Grand Inquisitor has such dreadful torments in readiness as anxiety has, and no secret agent knows as cunningly as anxiety to attack his suspect in his weakest moment or to make alluring the trap in which he will be caught, and no discerning judge understands how to interrogate and examine the accused as does anxiety, which never lets the accused escape, neither through amusement, nor by noise, nor during work, neither by day nor by night." — Vigilius Haufniensis (Pseudonym), ''The Concept of Anxiety'' by Søren Kierkegaard p. 155-156, Reidar Thomte, 1980〕 that must have been present in Abraham when "God tested () and said to him, take Isaac, your only son, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering on the mountain that I shall show you."〔Gen 22: 1-2 The Bible〕 Abraham had a choice to complete the task or to refuse to comply to God's orders. He resigned himself to the three and a half day journey and to the loss of his son. "He said nothing to Sarah, nothing to Eliezer. Who, after all, could understand him, for did not the nature of temptation extract from him a pledge of silence? He split the firewood, he bound Isaac, he lit the fire, he drew the knife."〔Fear and Trembling p. 22; Kierkegaard also wrote about it in his Journals "We read: And God tested Abraham, and he said to him: Abraham, and Abraham answered: Here I am. We ought to note in particular the trusting and God-devoted disposition, the bold confidence in confronting the test, in freely and undauntedly answering: Here I am. Is it like that with us" Journals IIIC4〕 Because he kept everything to himself and chose not to reveal his feelings he "isolated himself as higher than the universal." Kierkegaard envisions two types of people in ''Fear and Trembling'' and ''Repetition''. One lives in hope, Abraham, the other lives in memory, The Young Man and Constantin Constantius. He discussed them beforehand in ''Lectures delivered before the Symparanekromenoi'' and ''The Unhappiest Man''.〔See ''Either/Or Part I'' p. 163-228 Swenson and compare with ''Repetition'' p. 131-133, Nichol〕 One hopes for happiness from something "out there" while the other finds happiness from something in themself. This he brought out in his upbuilding discourse, published on the same date. Kierkegaard says, "Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so anyone who has not made this movement does not have faith, for only in infinite resignation does an individual become conscious of his eternal validity, and only then can one speak of grasping existence by virtue of faith."〔Fear and Trembling p. 46〕 He spoke about this kind of consciousness in an earlier book. "There comes a moment in a person's life when immediacy is ripe, so to speak, and when the spirit requires a higher form, when it wants to lay hold of itself as spirit. As immediate spirit, a person is bound up with all the earthly life, and now spirit wants to gather itself together out of this dispersion, so to speak, and to transfigure itself in itself; the personality wants to become conscious in its eternal validity. If this does not happen, if the movement is halted, if it is repressed, then depression sets in."〔Either/Or II p. 188-189〕 Once Abraham became conscious of his eternal validity he arrived at the door of faith and acted according to his faith. In this action he became a knight of faith.〔Fear and Trembling p. 75-77〕 In other words, one must give up all his or her earthly possessions in infinite resignation and must also be willing to give up whatever it is that he or she loves more than God.〔Kierkegaard wrote about resignation in 1835. "I have tasted the fruits of the tree of knowledge and time and again have delighted in their savoriness. But this joy was only in the moment of cognition and did not leave a deeper mark on me. It seems to me that I have not drunk from the cup of wisdom but have fallen into it. I have sought to find the principle for my life through resignation (), by supposing that since everything proceeds according to inscrutable laws it could not be otherwise, by blunting my ambitions and the antennae of my vanity. Because I could not get everything to suit me, I abdicated with a consciousness of my own competence, somewhat the way decrepit clergymen resign with pension. What did I find? Not my self (), which is what I did seek to find in that way (I imagined my soul, if I may say so, as shut up in a box with a spring lock, which external surroundings would release by pressing the spring). — Consequently the seeking and finding of the Kingdom of Heaven was the first thing to be resolved. But it is just as useless for a man to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, to which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize () its existence () and letting the rest come of itself." Journals & Papers of Søren Kierkegaard, 1A Gilleleie, August 1, 1835 http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/JournPapers/I_A.html〕 Kierkegaard used the ethical system of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the aesthetic stories of Agnes and the merman,〔Fear and Trembling p. 94-98 The Deceived Merman (From The Old Danish) http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/15409/ Kierkegaard discussed this story in his Journals. "I have thought of adapting (legend of ) Agnes and the Merman from an angle that has not occurred to any poet. The Merman is a seducer, but when he has won Agnes' love he is so moved by it that he wants to belong to her entirely. — But this, you see, he cannot do, since he must initiate her into his whole tragic existence, that he is a monster at certain times, etc., that the Church cannot give its blessing to them. He despairs and in his despair plunges to the bottom of the sea and remains there, but Agnes imagines that he only wanted to deceive her. But this is poetry, not that wretched, miserable trash in which everything revolves around ridiculousness and nonsense. Such a complication can be resolved only by the religious (which has its name because it resolves all witchcraft); if the Merman could believe, his faith perhaps could transform him into a human being." Journals IVA 113 His point seems to be that God wants to work with human beings, not fantastic imaginary creatures. Faith transforms us from an imaginary being into a human being. (Editor) http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/JournPapers/IV_A.html〕 Iphigenia at Aulis and others to help the reader understand the difference between the inner world of the spirit and the outer world of ethics and aesthetics.〔Fear and Trembling Preface: p. 5 Either/Or II 134-138〕 Several authorities consider the work autobiographical. It can be explained as Kierkegaard's way of working himself through the loss of his fiancee, Regine Olsen. Abraham becomes Kierkegaard and Isaac becomes Regine in this interpretation. == Structure == Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works begin with a preface. ''Fear and Trembling'' begins with a Preface by Johannes de silentio. His Upbuilding Discourses begin with a dedication to the single individual, who has become Abraham in this work.〔to think that existing as the single individual is easy enough contains a very dubious indirect concession with respect to oneself, for anyone who actually has any self-esteem and concern for his soul is convinced that the person who lives under his own surveillance alone in a big wide world lives more stringently and retired than a maiden in her virgin's bower. It may well be that there are those who need coercion, who, if they were given free rein, would abandon themselves like unmanageable animals to selfish appetites. But a person will demonstrate that he does not belong to them precisely by showing that he knows how to speak in fear and trembling, and speak he must out of respect for greatness, so that it is not forgotten out of fear of harm, which certainly will not come if he speaks out of a knowledge of greatness, a knowledge of its terrors, and if one does not know the terrors, one does not know the greatness, either. Let us consider in somewhat more detail the distress and anxiety in the paradox of faith. The tragic hero relinquishes himself in order to express the universal; the knight of faith relinquishes the universal in order to become the single individual. ''Fear and Trembling'' p. 75〕 Next is his ''Exordium''. It begins like this, "Once upon a time there was a man who as a child had heard that beautiful story of how God tempted Abraham and of how Abraham withstood the temptation, kept the faith, and, contrary to expectation, got a son a second time." And ends like this, "That man was not an exegetical scholar. He did not know Hebrew; if he had known Hebrew, he perhaps would have easily understood the story of Abraham."〔Fear and Trembling p. 9〕 The Exordium is followed by the ''Eulogy on Abraham''. How did Abraham become the father of faith? Kierkegaard says, "No one who was great in the world will be forgotten, but everyone was great in his own way, and everyone in proportion to the greatness of that which he loved. He who loved himself became great by virtue of himself, and he who loved other men became great by his devotedness, but he who loved God became greatest of all. Everyone shall be remembered, but everyone became great in proportion to his expectancy.〔The first of Kierkegaard's 18 Upbuilding discourses was about ''The Expectancy of Faith'' see Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Søren Kierkegaard 1843-1844 Copyright 1990 by Howard V. Hong Princeton University Press p. 7-28〕 "One became great by expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal; but he who expected the impossible became greatest of all. Everyone shall be remembered, but everyone was great wholly in proportion to the magnitude of that with which he struggled. For he who struggled with the world became great by conquering the world, and he who struggled with himself became great by conquering himself, but he who struggled with God became greatest of all."〔Fear and Trembling p. 16〕 Now he presents his ''Problemata'' (problems): "Abraham has gained a prescriptive right to be a great man, so that what he does is great and when another does the same thing it is a sin. (...) The ethical expression of what Abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac, the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac – but precisely in this contradiction is the anxiety that can make a person sleepless, and yet, without this anxiety Abraham is not who he is."〔Fear and Trembling p. 30〕 He asked how a murderer can be revered as the father of faith. * ''Problema 1'': Is there a Teleological Suspension of the Ethical? * ''Problema 2'': Is there an Absolute Duty to God? * ''Problema 3'': Was it Ethically Defensible for Abraham to Conceal His Undertaking from Sarah, From Eliezer, and from Isaac? 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fear and Trembling」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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