Fear and Trembling

In Kierkegaard’s philosophy, there exist three stages of life: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. The aesthetic involves seeking what’s interesting and beautiful, the ethical focuses on the individual’s greater duty in society, and the religious emphasizes the devotion and zeal in believing. This book focuses on the religious, using the story of Abraham’s sacrificing Isaac as the primary material for the discussion. Kierkegaard’s “religious” is very different from the conventional usage of the word “religious”. His “religious” is a strictly individual pursuit; conventional religion always includes groups, whether that be disciples or other worshippers, yet Kierkegaard notes that religious groups foster mob mentality and an inauthentic faith; only the individual can develop his own faith. His faith is the ascetic faith; paradoxical, unexplainable, and incredibly powerful. Even from my secular point of view, this work is profound, and it illustrates a faith that stands against conventional religious notions.

One of Kierkegaard’s dogmas on his three stages is his ordering of them: the aesthetic is lesser than the ethical, and the ethical is lesser than the religious. The high value that he places on faith for faith’s own sake is odd, and on this area I don’t agree with him. Rather, my ordering would be that the ethical is lesser than the religious, and the religious lesser than the aesthetic. The ethical embodies the Hegelian universal, which is the idea that people should submit to the communal good, and hence submit to the universal; the religious embodies the departure from groupthink, where the individual submits to faith instead. Yet, faith for faith’s sake doesn’t seem wholly good or admirable on its own. The aesthetic can appropriate the power of faith to an extent in order to transcend belief for belief’s sake and reach for what’s interesting and beautiful in the world.