Fear and trembling

158 pages

English language

Published Jan. 6, 1985 by Penguin Books, Viking Penguin.

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4 stars (7 reviews)

Original title: Frygt og bæven

29 editions

Review of 'Fear and trembling' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I let this sit for a while, because I was hoping for some sort of eureka moment. But it never came. So I'm keeping this review simple. Kierkegaard (or the translation, I'm not sure) has a way with words. Throughout the entire book you get this comfortable, happy feeling, and his love for life and Christianity. But this work specifically seems to be meandering a lot. It does feel like there's a common thread, but there's so many weird tangents whose entire purpose seems to be to reiterate the same points, but very rarely in a way where they explain things better. For some reason, I was really entertained by what I pictured as a Christian Übermensch.

The annotated version is necessary, as the book is just riddled with obscure references and latin expressions.

The core concepts are very hard to grasp, and will probably require a reread, especially his …

Review of 'Fear and trembling' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I read just Fear and Trembling. Not a fan of Kierkegaard's style. It felt more like he would rather have been a poet than a philosopher. The work was full of mythic, poetic, and biblical examples (beyond just the main one, Abraham and Isaac) that didn't add that much to the work. Could probably have been half as long and made more sense. I'm looking into secondary literature to make more sense of Fear and Trembling.

I'm also not convinced that Abraham wasn't just a murderer.

Subjects

  • Christianity -- Philosophy