Fear and Trembling and the Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard

Author:Søren Kierkegaard
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Religion, Philosophy, Classics, Spirituality
ISBN: 9780691158310
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1849-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

INTRODUCTION BY THE TRANSLATOR

MY book on Kierkegaard (pp. 408-449) furnishes a more ample introduction to the works of this period of S.K.’s life, and to this work in particular, than can be given here, and the following chapter (pp. 450-483) gives an account of the difficulty he encountered in deciding to publish them. A more searching analysis of the whole situation may be found in the Kierkegaard-Studien of Professor Emanuel Hirsch, pp. 357-389.

This is not said as a way of evading the task of writing an introduction to this book, but as a justification for restricting the scope of it to essential points which are illuminated by the Journal.

A part of this work, as S.K. says, “was written before the catastrophe” (i.e. the war with Germany and the Danish constitutional revolution, both of which were compressed within a period of a month in the spring of 1848), and hence before his Easter experience which altered radically the character of his writing. The polemical tone of the later chapters attests the effect of it.

Hirsch speaks of this work and the Training in Christianity as “the two masterpieces of Kierkegaard as a Christian writer,” and he affirms that along with The Point of View “no other Christian-religious or Christian-theological works of the nineteenth century stand so good a chance of being introduced into the rank of the imperishable works of the Christian Church.”

S.K.’s purpose in this work was essentially religious. He proposed to preface the book with a prayer, as he did all of his Edifying Discourses; but he discarded this thought when he reflected that “a prayer would give the book almost too much the semblance of the edifying” (VII B 143). Yet the prayer may well be cited here:

“Father in heaven, to Thee the congregation often makes its petition for all who are sick and sorrowful, and when someone amongst us lies ill, alas, of mortal sickness the congregation sometimes desires a special petition; Grant that we may each one of us become in good time aware what sickness it is which is the sickness unto death, and aware that we are all of us suffering from this sickness. O Lord Jesus Christ, who didst come to earth to heal them that suffer from this sickness, from which, alas, we all suffer, but from which Thou art able to heal only those who are conscious that they are sick in this way; help Thou us in this sickness to hold fast to Thee, to the end that we may be healed of it. O God the Holy Ghost, who comest to help us in this sickness if we honestly desire to be healed; remain with us so that for no single instant we may to our own destruction shun the Physician, but may remain with Him—delivered from sickness. For to be with Him is to be delivered from our sickness, and when we are with Him we are saved from all sickness.”

The word “psychological” was substituted in the title of this book for “edifying.

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