Book · 1843
Fear and Trembling
by Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard uses Abraham's knife at Isaac's throat to ask whether any act of faith can be explained to the person standing next to you.
What does Reddit think of Fear and Trembling?
Fear and Trembling pulls 58 mentions across 7 years, with r/askphilosophy owning 46 of them — the book is a philosophy classroom staple, not a casual pick. The ↑82 r/philosophy comment frames it cleanly: through Abraham and Isaac, Kierkegaard maps the anxiety of faith as a category that simply won't reduce to ethics. The ↑62 r/askphilosophy thread makes the real structural argument — aesthete, ethical man, knight of faith are not a ladder you climb but a set of incommensurable standpoints. Each finds the others incomprehensible. The contested read, surfaced in a ↑92 r/philosophy thread: the pseudonymous secular works, Fear and Trembling included, don't fully cohere unless you also read the religious writing — which almost nobody does. Kierkegaard's architecture requires the whole building.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · The teleological suspension of the ethical
- · The knight of faith vs. the tragic hero
- · Abraham and the paradox of religious obligation
- · Incommensurability of the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages
- · Anxiety and the individual before God
- · Pseudonymity and philosophical persona (Johannes de Silentio)
Common praise
- + The knight of faith description gives you a concrete figure to argue with instead of an abstraction.
- + r/philosophy (↑47) credits the discourse on faith as exceptionally well-structured for a theistic philosopher.
- + The three-stage framework keeps showing up in r/askphilosophy undergraduate reading lists because it actually organizes how people think about choice.
- + Short enough to finish in a sitting; dense enough to argue about for a semester.
Common criticism
- − The ↑92 r/philosophy thread lands the real problem: it doesn't fully make sense unless you read the religious works, and almost no one does.
- − Kierkegaard writes under a pseudonym so the narrator's commitments are deliberately obscured, which frustrates readers who want a straight answer.
- − 11 mentions in r/philosophy over 7 years suggests it circulates mainly in academic contexts rather than broader philosophical discussion.
- − The year-on-year mention count dropped from 10 in 2019–2020 to 2 in 2023 before recovering — not a book that generates sustained Reddit momentum.
Who it's for
If you're already in an ethics or existentialism course and hit the Abraham problem, this is the text you need — r/askphilosophy returns to it constantly across 46 mentions precisely because it's the sharpest formulation of why religious obligation can't be translated into moral terms. Come to it cold with no Kierkegaard background and the pseudonymous narrator will feel like a trick rather than a device. Read Either/Or first, or at minimum know what the stages of existence are before you open it. Theologians and philosophy undergraduates get the most out of it. Someone who wants existentialism without the religious architecture should go to Sartre instead — the ↑128 r/askphilosophy comment makes exactly that case.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
Which Reddit comments matter for Fear and Trembling?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“His work overall is less systematic, developed, and, simply put, philosophically interesting than the likes of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, or Beauvoir from his contemporaries. To some extent, we might see his insights as failing to break free of the "ligaments" which tie Camus into intellectua…
“As I was watching this, I imagined objections that people might make, and noticed that one problem with Kierkegaard is that his "secular" works (the psuedonymous ones that built his reputation, like _Fear and Trembling_) don't fully make sense unless you also read his religious ones (which nobody do…
“I’m on mobile so I’m going to try to make this succinct - Kierkegaard was *not* a nihilist. While he did believe it is an extremely difficult undertaking to, for example, become an individual before God, he does believe it is possible. In fact, he thinks that every single person has been **commanded…
“Fear and Trembling is a book by Søren Kierkegaard written under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio. Kierkegaard is famous for having multiple pseudonyms. Through the biblical story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Kierkegaard, as a great explorer of human psychology, looks into the anxiety that must …
“Well, that's the point. You're viewing the spiritual through the lens of the ethical, so it makes no sense to you. The aesthete (or hedonist) doesn't understand why the ethical man doesn't just do what makes him feel good and the ethical man doesn't understand why the knight of faith takes his leap.…
“Look at his description of a knight of faith in Fear and Trembling. That's probably the best place to go for a clear-ish description of what a D&D Kierkegaard character would look like. Name it something Latin. Johannes de Silentio, etc.
“Well, he's pretty much directly responsible for the concept that we choose our own path and are responsible for our own growth. Additionally, his discourse on faith in Fear and Trembling is, firstly beautiful, but also incredibly well structured. For a theistic philosopher, it's a staple of how such…
“Off the top of my head, these are the texts I've had to read in my first year as an undergraduate in the UK (not fully, but extracts most of the time): Plato - Republic Plato - Theaetetus Plato - Parmenides Aristotle - The Nichomachean Ethics Epicurus - The Art of Happiness Augustine - Confess…
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Readers also mention
Books that share discussion threads with Fear and Trembling — counted from the comments, not curated.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus
A 1942 essay that opens with the question of whether life is worth living and ends by insisting Sisyphus is happy.
On the Genealogy of Morals
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche traces where 'good' and 'evil' come from — and argues the answer involves priests, resentment, and a deliberate inversion of aristocratic values.
Being and Time
Martin Heidegger
Heidegger's argument that human existence only gets its meaning from death — 162 Reddit mentions, mostly from people explaining why it's so hard to read.
Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant
Kant's 1781 attempt to settle the limits of human knowledge — the book that split philosophy in two and still hasn't been fully digested.
Fear and Trembling — frequently asked
What does Reddit actually think of Fear and Trembling?+
Respect over enthusiasm. r/askphilosophy accounts for 46 of 58 total mentions over 7 years, and the comments explain and contextualize rather than recommend. Nobody calls it life-changing. The ↑82 r/philosophy comment treats it as a clean philosophical achievement; the ↑92 thread flags that it doesn't fully cohere without the religious works. Academic regard, not popular love.
Is Fear and Trembling a good entry point into Kierkegaard?+
Depends on your tolerance for confusion. A ↑92 r/philosophy comment argues directly that the pseudonymous secular works — Fear and Trembling among them — don't fully make sense unless you also read the religious writing, which most people skip. If you want Kierkegaard's existentialism without the theological architecture, Either/Or is a more honest starting point.
Who is the knight of faith in Fear and Trembling?+
A ↑62 r/askphilosophy thread gives the clearest account: someone who makes the leap of faith while remaining fully in the world, incomprehensible to both the aesthete and the ethical man. Kierkegaard describes the figure concretely enough that a ↑49 r/askphilosophy commenter uses it as a template for building a Kierkegaard-inspired D&D character.
Should I read Fear and Trembling if I'm interested in existentialism but not religion?+
Probably not first. The ↑128 r/askphilosophy comment argues Kierkegaard's insights don't break free of theological constraints the way Sartre, Heidegger, or Beauvoir do. Fear and Trembling is specifically about the religious stage and faith's suspension of ethics. If the Abraham problem doesn't interest you on its own terms, the book won't convert you.