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Fear and Trembling

Søren Kierkegaard

Existentialism · Intermediate

Published pseudonymously, it made Kierkegaard the starting point of existential thought.

Søren Kierkegaard · first circulated 1843

Main ideas

  • Faith examined as a movement beyond ethical generality.
  • The individual who cannot fully explain himself.

Important themes

FaithAnxietyIndividuality

Reading context

Published in 1843 under a pseudonym, circling one story: Abraham commanded to sacrifice Isaac. Kierkegaard asks whether faith can require suspending ethics itself, and refuses to make the answer comfortable.

How to approach it

Read the four retellings of the story at the start, then the first problema. It is deliberately unsettling rather than systematic, and the pseudonym is part of the argument.