The series begins with Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (1843), an exploration of faith through the story of Abraham and Isaac. Like most of Kierkegaard’s published work, Fear and Trembling appeared under a pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio, and its playful relationship to the reader doesn’t stop there. Described as a ‘dialectical lyric’ on the title page, the book works through a variety of formats in its attempt to understand the nature of faith and the apparently unsolvable paradox that the father of the Abrahamic religions was prepared to murder his own son. James and Jonathan consider whether Kierkegaard thinks we can understand anything, and what Fear and Trembling has in common with the works of Dostoevsky and Kafka.
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Further reading in the LRB:
Jonathan Rée: Dancing in the Service of Thought https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard1
James Butler: Reading Genesis https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard2
Roger Poole: A Walk with Kierkegaard https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard3
Terry Eagleton: A Long Way from Galilee https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard4
James Wood teaches literature at Harvard University and is a staff writer for The New Yorker as well as a contributor to the London Review of Books. His books include How Fiction Works, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self.
Jonathan Rée is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and a freelance writer and philosopher. His most recent book on philosophy is Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English.
NEXT EPISODE: 'The Essence of Christianity' by Ludwig Feuerbach, out on Monday 3 February.
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