Fear and Trembling is one of Kierkegaard’s earliest works, which he wrote under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio. Kierkegaard had been a student of theology in Copenhagen, and had come to hate the Danish Church. He produced hundreds of leaflets against the Church during his lifetime. However his writing was largely ignored, and he was not a popular or well-regarded thinker in his own time. Hegel’s writing largely dominated philosophical thought throughout Kierkegaard’s life. Hegel believed that the highest goal for a person should be to loose oneself in the Universal. One should put aside his personal goals and ambitions and be motivated exclusively by the general interests of all. Kierkegaard regarded the individual above all else and so was repelled by Hegel’s communitarian ethic. His Fear and Trembling is a sustained response to Hegel’s ideas. It uses the story of Genesis 22, 1-18, where Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac without question, and only faith, to put across his own ideas and philosophy. Fear and Trembling is a required text on the UK A level syllabus.

Featuring new, original essays on Fear and Trembling, this collection casts new interpretive light on Kierkegaard's most influential work.

A concise and accessible introduction, this Reader's Guide takes students through Kierkegaard's most important work and a key nineteenth century philosophical text.

In this rich and resonant work, Soren Kierkegaard reflects poetically and philosophically on the biblical story of God's command to Abraham, that he sacrifice his son Isaac as a test of faith. Was Abraham's proposed action morally and religiously justified or murder? Is there an absolute duty to God? Was Abraham justified in remaining silent? In pondering these questions, Kierkegaard presents faith as a paradox that cannot be understood by reason and conventional morality, and he challenges the universalist ethics and immanental philosophy of modern German idealism, especially as represented by Kant and Hegel. This volume, first published in 2006, presents the first new English translation for twenty years, by Sylvia Walsh, together with an introduction by C. Stephen Evans which examines the ethical and religious issues raised by the text.

Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals was the first anthology of essays on Kierkegaard's classic to be published in English. The authors are a remarkable collection of scholars, some already well known and some standing at the beginning of their scholarly careers. The list of authors includes Louis Jacobs, David A. Pailin, Merold Westphal, Paul Holmer, Edward F. Mooney, John Donnelly, C. Stephen Evans, David J. Wren, Mark C. Taylor, Nancy Jay Crumbine, and Jerry H. Gill. The collection contains comparative, historical, and analytic essays focusing on Kierkegaard's relations to the Akedah, the multiple tensions raised by Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. These essays abound with penetrating insights into many Kierkegaardian concepts that are important not just in Fear and Trembling but found throughout Kierkegaard's writings, such as paradox, resignation, faith, the absurd, the individual, the poet, the hero, immediacy, the ethical and its suspension, the leap of faith, offence, and silence.

The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of history's most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-driven design that highlights the bookmaker's art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped our world. Regarded as the father of Existentialism, Kierkegaard transformed philosophy with his conviction that we must all create our own nature; in this great work of religious anxiety, he argues that a true understanding of God can only be attained by making a personal "leap of faith."

Writing under the pseudonym of Johannes de silentio, Kierkegaard uses the form of a dialectical lyric to present his conception of faith. Abraham is portrayed as a great man, who chose to sacrifice his son, Isaac, in the face of conflicting expectations and in defiance of any conceivable ethical standard. The infamous and controversial 'teleological suspension of the ethical' challenged the contemporary views of Hegel's universal moral system, and the suffering individual must alone make a choice 'on the strength of the absurd'. Kierkegaard's writings have inspired both modern Protestant theology and existentialism.