Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling

Not only in the commercial world but in the realm of ideas as well, our age is holding a veritable clearance sale. Everything is had so dirt cheap that it is doubtful whether in the end anyone will bid. Every speculative score-keeper who conscientiously keeps account of the momentous march of modern philosophy, every lecturer, tutor, student, every outsider and insider in philosophy does not stop at doubting everything but goes further. Perhaps it would be inappropriate and untimely to ask them where they are actually going, but it is surely polite and modest to take it for granted that they have doubted everything, since otherwise it would certainly be peculiar to say that they went further. All of them then have made this preliminary movement, and presumably so easily that they do not find it necessary to drop a hint about how, for not even the one who anxiously and worriedly sought a little enlightenment found so much as an instructive tip or a little dietary prescription on how to conduct oneself under this enormous task. “But Descartes has done it, hasn't he?” Descartes, a venerable, humble, honest thinker whose writings surely no one can read without the deepest emotion, has done what he has said and said what he has done. Alas! Alas! Alas! That is a great rarity in our age! As he himself reiterates often enough, Descartes did not doubt with respect to faith.