Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling

Fear and Trembling, written when the author was only thirty years old, is in all likelihood Søren Kierkegaard's most-read book. This would not have surprised Kierkegaard, who wrote prophetically in his journal that “once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough for an imperishable name as an author. Then it will [be] read, translated into foreign languages as well.” In one sense the book is not difficult to read. It is often assigned in introductory university classes, for it is the kind of book that a novice in philosophy can pick up and read with interest and profit – stimulating questions about ethics and God, faith and reason, experience and imagination. However, in another sense the book is profoundly difficult, the kind of book that can be baffling to the scholar who has read it many times and studied it for years – giving rise to a bewildering variety of conflicting interpretations.

Many of these interpretations have focused on the book's relation to Kierkegaard's own life, and in particular on the widely known story of Kierkegaard's broken engagement to Regine Olsen. There is little doubt that part of Kierkegaard's own motivation for writing Fear and Trembling was to present a disguised explanation to Regine of his true reasons for breaking off the engagement. However, it is just as certain that the philosophical importance of the book does not depend on these personal and biographical points; the book can be read and has been read with profit by those with no knowledge of Kierkegaard's own life.