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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fear and Trembling, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Belief vs. Doubt
Faith and the Absurd
Infinite Resignation
The Unintelligibility of Faith
Summary
Analysis
Johannes de silentio writes that, in the modern day, ideas are bought and sold on the cheap, and modern intellectuals are devoting all their energy to doubting everything. However, none of these doubters have shared how they took the first step towards doubt, and nobody who wants to understand this tendency will be able to find it out on their own. Johannes asserts that while the ancient Greeks believed doubt took an entire lifetime to perfect, most of today’s thinkers start with doubt. Nobody “stop[s]” at faith, although they must have experienced faith or else it’d be difficult to go beyond it. This, too, was different in the old days—people believed faith, like doubt, had to be developed over a lifetime, not just a few days or weeks. Johannes says he’s not a philosopher and believes this work will mostly be ignored, although some will criticize him.
Johannes de silentio is Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonym (one of many that he used throughout his writing career) and, roughly translated, means “John the silent.” Kierkegaard is specifically concerned with the fact that nobody “stop[s]” at faith. This implies that people do achieve faith, but then they leave it behind for something else, presumably something newer, bigger, and better. Kierkegaard displays a strong admiration for the past because that is when faith was really taken seriously, and people devoted their whole lives to it. It’s because people in the modern age don’t take faith seriously that Kierkegaard believes this book will be mostly ignored.
Themes
