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Sacrifice in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Sylvia Fleming Crocker
Sylvia Fleming Crocker
Affiliation:
University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82070
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Extract

In Kierkegaard's hands the story of Abraham and Isaac is clearly a story about the relationship between the life of sacrifice and the religious life. By leading us on to deeper and deeper levels of sacrifice, he aims to make us grasp the essential nature of faith and, with it, the right relationship between the individual and God. He does this by means of a dialectic involving Abraham's response to God in contrast to (1) the other possible responses he might have made, and (2) Kierkegaard's own response to what he believed was the divine command to break his engagement to Regina Olsen.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , April 1975 , pp. 125 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1975

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References

1 Kierkegaard, Søren, Fear and Trembling, trans. by Lowrie, Walter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968) 53–54.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 51.

3 Ibid.

4 Kierkegaard, Søren, Philosophical Fragments, trans, by Swenson, David and Hong, Howard V. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962) 16–17.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 22–23.

6 Kierkegaard, Søren, The Sickness unto Death, trans, by Lowrie, Walter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968) 146.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 202.

8 Ibid., 146.

9 Ibid., 147.

10 Ibid., 175.

11 Ibid., 176, 174–75, 179.

12 Ibid., 188–89.

13 Ibid., 202.

14 Ibid., 201–02.

15 Ibid., 201.

16 Ibid., 196.

17 Ibid., 201.

18 Ibid., 203.

19 Ibid., 202–04.

20 Kierkegaard, Søren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans, by Swenson, David F. and Lowrie, Walter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941) 182.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 178.

22 Ibid., 173.

23 Ibid., 116.

24 Ibid., 182.

25 Ibid., 181.

26 Ibid., 182.

27 Ibid.

28 Sickness unto Death, 162.

29 Ibid., 164.

30 Ibid., 182.

31 Cf. Gen 12–23.

32 Heb 11:17–19.

33 Fear and Trembling, 57; The Sickness unto Death, 172.

34 On several occasions when I have taught this book I have had women students tell of parental disapproval when these young women left the convents where they had lived for a time. In each of these cases the student felt her own case illustrated Kierkegaard's point. The parents were ultimately glad, but not right away.