Thus, rather than allow the reader to conclude that the sacrifice of Isaac was only a hypothetical test, Fear and Trembling emphasizes that Abraham had to be resolved to kill his beloved son. Moreover, Abraham had to sustain his resolution for several days, in the concrete presence of the one he was going to sacrifice. With his characteristically precise imagination, Kierkegaard recalls the weight of these actions: “We forget that Abraham only rode an ass, which trudges along the road, that he had a journey of three days, that he needed some time to chop the firewood, to bind Isaac, and to sharpen the knife.”7
By telling the story of Abraham’s sacrifice, Kierkegaard wants the reader to imagine him- or herself in the same situation. His narrative strategy is to make you engage with the story from a first-person standpoint: to ask yourself what you would have done. Imagine that you have waited your whole life for the birth of your son, whom you love with all your heart, and now you are commanded to kill him. Imagine further that you have to make this sacrifice, not for any reason in the world and not to save anyone else, but only for the sake of your commitment to God. Imagine finally that you are able to make this sacrifice with an unshakable trust in God. The greatness of Abraham, according to Fear and Trembling, is that he is not paralyzed by “the anxiety, the distress, the paradox” of having to kill Isaac and instead ventures everything on his faith in God.
Kierkegaard holds that anyone who has a living religious faith must be ready to make such a sacrifice: to give up the finite (Isaac) for the eternal (God). To prove your religious commitment, you must be able to renounce your secular devotion to any form of living on—including the living on of your most beloved child—by virtue of your complete faith in the eternal. At the same time, Kierkegaard recognizes that the question of faith precedes any religious commitment and is a general feature of human existence. To approach Fear and Trembling, then, we first need to understand how Kierkegaard identifies faith as an issue that is always at stake in our lives. While his ultimate aim is to defend a version of religious faith, his own work provides profound insights into the dynamic of secular faith that he seeks to overcome.
II
A good place to start is the general definition of faith in Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript: “Without risk, no faith. Faith is the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness and the objective uncertainty.”8 This may seem like a difficult definition, but by unpacking Kierkegaard’s terminology we can see how it makes sense.
Kierkegaard’s notion of “objective uncertainty” refers to how all knowledge is subject to time. While we can develop methods for better understanding what happened in the past, it is always possible that new evidence may come to challenge what we thought we knew, or that new questions present the given evidence in a different light. Thus, no matter how subjectively certain we may be about what has happened, there is an element of objective uncertainty in our knowledge, since our account of the past cannot ever be definitive and may be refuted. Likewise, we may develop better methods for predicting what will happen, but the future remains objectively uncertain, since we cannot know what has not yet taken place.
These forms of uncertainty mark our experience of the present itself, which is already becoming past and becoming related to the future. A moment is never a still point of certainty but always passing away (Forbigaaende) and opening itself to what may come (Tilkommende). This is why life—in Kierkegaard’s most famous phrase—can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards. We have to act in view of the future, but we cannot know the consequences of our actions, since these consequences are given only in retrospect. Moreover, as Kierkegaard emphasizes, your own self is inseparable from this temporality. You are not a stable essence but always existing temporally; you are not a given being but always in a process of becoming that may transform your sense of who you are.
Because of the objective uncertainty, faith is a necessary condition of experience. Neither the past nor the future can be known and have to be taken on faith. This temporal condition—what I call the necessary uncertainty of secular faith—binds faith to risk from the beginning. Given that your relation to the past and the future depends on faith, you may be deceived by what you think is certain, mistaken about what you take for granted, and shattered by what you never expected. Your vulnerability to these risks is due to the existential commitment of secular faith. Because you are existentially committed to someone or something, you can feel the pain of being deceived, mistaken, or shattered. Moreover, temporal finitude is intrinsic to why an existential commitment matters in the first place. It is because something can be lost—and because such loss would have irreversible consequences—that there is anything at stake in being faithful. Continued fidelity to someone or something is inseparable from the apprehension of loss. This risk of loss is the motivational force of secular faith. The risk of loss is an essential part of keeping faith, at the same time as it makes all fidelity precarious, something that must be continually achieved.
The three aspects of secular faith—necessary uncertainty, existential commitment, motivational force—can be illuminated in and by Kierkegaard’s own texts. Existential commitment is the aspect of secular faith that most occupies Kierkegaard. He understands that our lives can matter to us only if we are existentially committed to what we do. “Passion” and “appropriation” are two of Kierkegaard’s favorite words to describe such a commitment. For an activity to matter in an existential sense, it is not enough that you learn to do it correctly: you have to be passionate about doing it right and appropriate the activity as your own by putting yourself at stake in it.
Passion and appropriation are a matter of “inwardness” because they can be given only from a first-person standpoint. I can study what you do from a third-person standpoint, but whether or not you are existentially committed to what you do—whether you have actually put yourself at stake in what you are doing—can be decided only from your first-person standpoint. Moreover, even from your first-person standpoint, your commitment is not decided once and for all but is something that must be sustained. Kierkegaard describes this capacity for passionate appropriation as “infinite,” not because it is indestructible but because it consists in its own activity and defines what matters in your life. Your infinite passion is your capacity to be wholeheartedly devoted to your life as a finite being.
For the same reason, your infinite passion exposes you to loss. Even if you sustain your devotion—even if you keep faith with what you love—the object of your faith and devotion can itself be taken away from you. For example, if you dedicate your life to music or athletics, your body may break in such a way that you can no longer pursue the activity that made your life meaningful. Likewise, when you love another person he or she can leave you behind, and when you are devoted to a political project it can disintegrate despite your best efforts. This is why there is no faith without risk. To recall Kierkegaard’s definition, the infinite passion of inwardness (your devotion to someone or something) is always at odds with the objective uncertainty (the temporal finitude that may take away your object of devotion).
Accordingly, the more you devote yourself to something—the more you allow a given passion to define who you are—the more you put yourself in peril. By committing yourself to a person, a political struggle, or a way of life, you become dependent on something whose continued existence is objectively uncertain. Yet Kierkegaard maintains that it is only through such an existential commitment that you can become a self. Biologically we may be described as human beings, but who we are—our “self” in Kierkegaard’s existential sense—is defined by what we are committed to as well as how we sustain those commitments. This is why our self can live in more than a biological sense, but also why it can “die” before our biological death. If you fail to sustain a life-defining commitment—or have to give it up because it has become unsustainable—you suffer an existential “death” o
f your self, even though your life continues.
Kierkegaard can thus be seen to have a deep grasp of the dynamic of secular faith. An instructive example is his account of marriage. By marriage, Kierkegaard does not mean the legal procedure consecrated by a wedding, but the existential act of committing to another person for life. Such a life-defining commitment is eternal in a secular sense. To say that I will be committed to you forever is not to say that we will live forever or that our love can never end. Rather, it is to promise that I will sustain my love for you every day of my life. As Kierkegaard puts it: “The person who by marriage binds another person’s life to his own, who by marriage makes a commitment that no time will dissolve and every day will require to be fulfilled, from that person a resolution is required.”9 While the resolution is eternal in the sense of being binding for my whole life, it is by the same token temporal, since it can exist only through a continuous devotion. Accordingly, in the covenant of marriage “eternity is not finished with time, but the covenant is eternity’s beginning in time.” Moreover, “the eternal resolution” of marriage “must remain with the wedded pair in the union of love through time, and there is to be celebration at its remembrance and power in its recollection and hope in its promise” (emphasis added).10
The resolution of marriage is not a religious devotion to a timeless eternity but a secular devotion to living on in time. The very joy of the resolution—its celebration of the continued love—must rely on the precarious remembrance of the past and the uncertain promise of the future. The resolution does not secure my future; it only decides what is at stake for me in the future. In making the life-defining commitment of marriage, I acknowledge that who I am and what matters to me is defined by my love for you. By the same token, who I am and what matters to me is dependent on what happens to us, exposed to a future that exceeds my control. Kierkegaard emphasizes that this risk is not external but internal to the resolution itself. “The person who is ignorant of the danger, who excludes the danger and does not include an actual conception of it in the resolution,” he writes, “that person is not resolved.”11
To be resolved is thus to reckon with finitude. In sustaining my commitment to you, I must continually forgo other possible ways of living my life. Without this finitude—where the commitment to one future closes down other possible futures—my commitment would be meaningless and automatic, since there would be no alternatives. There would be nothing at stake in wedding my life to you, since I could not do otherwise. Furthermore, my resolute commitment must always reckon with the finitude that is inherent in the marriage itself. Our love may break under the strain of conflicts, be drained of vitality because the other is taken for granted, or slowly languish in habitual patterns. This finitude is what calls for a resolution in the first place. As Kierkegaard reminds us, love “perishes in adversity if no resolution holds it firm, it perishes in prosperity if no resolution holds it firm, it degenerates in the everyday if no resolution encourages it.”12 Finally, even the most resolute and life-defining commitment is finite because we can literally die. Even if we remain faithful to our love for as long as we live, our lives will come to an end. We can only be married until death do us part, leaving one of us to mourn the other.
Kierkegaard’s radical argument is that finitude in all these senses is vital for any meaningful commitment. Even if it were possible to have a life of guaranteed happiness, “the dangers of the life of resolution”13 are still preferable, since they are the conditions for a life worth living. For anything to matter—for anything to be at stake—the chance of happiness and flourishing must be shadowed by the risk of loss. Thus, in a striking passage, Kierkegaard recommends that “the bridal couple, before going to the house where the wedding reception is held, go to the house of sorrow, that is, to the earnest consideration from which one does not obtain the bridal veil but the resolution.”14 This relation between resolution and finitude runs throughout Kierkegaard’s work. As he argues in his remarkable text “At a Graveside,” the thought that everything ends with death—that all is over when we die—is not a reason to devalue life. On the contrary, the thought of death is the source of any “earnest” engagement with life and makes the given time all the more precious. “The earnest understanding,” Kierkegaard writes, “is that if death is night then life is day, that if no work can be done at night then work can be done during the day; and the terse but impelling cry of earnestness, like death’s terse cry, is: This very day.”15
Kierkegaard’s own insights can thus be employed against the religious ideal of being absolved from the pain of loss. A Stoic life of tranquil apathy or a Buddhist life of peaceful detachment is meaningless for Kierkegaard. He does not want to be free from passions; he wants to be passionately engaged and wholeheartedly committed. Moreover, Kierkegaard understands that such passion is inseparable from vulnerability. In passionately identifying myself with a project—a political cause, a romantic relationship, a creative ambition—I risk my own life and identity, which may be shattered if the project fails. Far from being a reason for detachment, the risk is for Kierkegaard part of what makes the project meaningful and a matter of earnest engagement. Without the anticipation of loss, one could never be resolved to make the most of the time that is given.
Nevertheless, Kierkegaard himself ultimately subscribes to a version of the religious ideal of being absolved from the pain of loss. This absolution does not take place through detachment but rather through faith in God’s power to redeem anything that is lost. Religious faith would thus enable you to be wholeheartedly committed and live with the danger of loss, without being defeated by any actual loss. “It is true that he who expects something in particular may be disappointed,” Kierkegaard writes in one of his edifying religious discourses, “but this does not happen to the believer.”16 Rather, even faced with the most terrible loss, the religious believer asserts:
There is an expectation that the whole world cannot take from me; it is the expectation of faith, and this is victory. I am not deceived, since I did not believe that the world would keep the promise it seemed to be making to me; my expectation was not in the world but in God. This expectation is not deceived; even in this moment I sense its victory more gloriously and more joyfully than all the pain of loss. If I were to lose this expectation, then everything would be lost. Now I have still conquered, conquered through my expectation, and my expectation is victory.17
This is the blueprint for Abraham’s religious faith in Fear and Trembling. As long as Abraham keeps his faith in God, he is insulated from the actual experience of losing what he loves. For Kierkegaard, this is the deepest virtue of religious faith. As long as you keep religious faith, you cannot be defeated by loss. If you lose your religious faith, then everything is lost, but as long as you keep it you are safe. Abraham is the supreme example, since he keeps faith in God’s promise regardless of what happens in the world. God has promised that Isaac will live a flourishing life, so Abraham keeps faith in this promise even when God’s own command and his own action (killing Isaac) apparently undermine the promise. Thus, Abraham can maintain his love for Isaac and take the greatest risks—including the risk of sacrificing his own son—without ever being shattered. Even if Abraham has to kill Isaac, he believes that God will bring Isaac back to life, and as long as he keeps this expectation he cannot be defeated.
In contrast, secular faith necessarily remains vulnerable. As long as you keep secular faith, you can be defeated by loss. Affirming your life-defining commitment as a parent—and loving your child wholeheartedly—does not protect you from the pain of conflict, the bereavement of broken hopes, or the possible devastation of losing your child. On the contrary, it is because you are keeping faith with your child—and holding on to your life-defining commitment as a parent—that you are all the more vulnerable to these experiences.
Such vulnerability is the condition for any form of responsiveness to—and responsibility fo
r—what happens to the one you love. In being devoted to someone who is finite, I have to be responsive to what befalls him or her, even if the events are adverse to my own hopes and desires. I am committed to fight for him or her to live on and flourish, but also bound to recognize if and when there is defeat. If I am Abraham and maintain my secular faith, I believe that Isaac’s life is priceless—I am devoted to his well-being as an end in itself—but I also believe that his life can be lost. Indeed, it is only by acknowledging and being responsive to Isaac’s finitude that I can care for him.
As we will see, it is precisely the capacity to care for Isaac—to be responsive and responsible with regard to his fate—that Abraham has to sacrifice for the sake of his religious faith. In Kierkegaard’s account, Abraham has a life-defining commitment to being a father. Abraham does not only have a sense of duty in caring for his son; he loves Isaac wholeheartedly and with such devotion that “there would not be many a father in the realms and lands of the king who would dare to maintain that he loved in this way.”18 Furthermore, Isaac is for Abraham the promise of his own future and of a blessed future for his people. It is through Isaac that Abraham makes sense of his life and it is only through Isaac that his legacy can survive. Thus, in having faith that Isaac will be born and live on, Abraham puts his own life at stake. His love for Isaac dramatizes—as Kierkegaard is keen to explore—an existential experience that goes beyond the particular details of biblical mythology. While most prospective parents do not have to face the unlikely odds of trying to have a child when they are as old as Abraham, any aspiring parent can feel the gravity of his situation. Regardless of the age of the parents, nothing can guarantee that a child will be born and nothing can secure his or her life after birth.
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