Pepper. Abraham. Who Could Possibly Understand Him

Abraham:
Who Could Possibly Understand Him?1

By THOMAS A. PEPPER
For Vivian and Viviana
That is to say, the purpose of repeating conventional statements

is to hide the disclosure, in the repetition, of unconventional
views. What matters is, then, not the conventional view, con-
stantly repeated, which may or may not be true, but the slight
additions to, or omissions from the conventional view which oc-
cur in the repetition and which transmit chapter headings of
the secret and true teaching.2
Whence comes the urge toward totality in the interpretation of a

text? The very question belabors the obvious, the obvious that is
given as soon as one speaks of a text, of one text. Once we have said
one text, the urge toward the construction of the whole, of an inter-
pretation of the entire work, is paramount, a necessity that seems to
go without saying. In the following remarks, I shall try to explain why
such a gesture should not go without saying. My motivation has noth-
1
This work was made possible by a generous grant from the S0ren Kierkegaard Re-
search Centre, which, together with a leave kindly granted by the University of
Miami, allowed me to spend the academic year 1994-1995 as Visiting Associate Re-
search Professor [Forskningslektor] at the Centre. I would like to thank Niels
J0rgen Cappel0rn for having had faith in my ability to think about Kierkegaard,
and I thank him and my other colleagues in Copenhagen for their thoughts and fri-
endship, without which not a word of this would ever have been thought or spoken.
References to Kierkegaard are to the text of Frygt og Bceven in S0ren Kierke-
gaard Samlede vcerker, 3. udg. ved P.P. Rohde, bd. 5, K0benhavn 1962, and to S0ren
Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling/Repetition, ed. and trans, by Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong, Princeton 1983. Further references to these editions will be indica-
ted in the text by an s., followed by the page number for the Danish, followed by a
slash and p., followed by the page number for the English.
2
Leo Strauss The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed, in his Perse-
cution and the Art of Writing, Chicago 1988 [1952], p. 64.
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212 Thomas A. Pepper
ing to do with an abstract desire to destroy a set of unspoken presup-

positions governing the activity of interpretation, presuppositions the
unmasking of which leaves us speechless in the absence of any alter-
native. Perhaps my desire is even more suspect than that. Perhaps I
am trying to explain what I seem to have been doing all along, and
what I think we all do all the time, although the terror of looking it in
the face, of owning up to it, is something that keeps us within our
comfortable prejudices by means of an apotropaically-generated
anxiety, the measure of which is the aggressivity by which we defend
these presuppositions.
Why, after all, should one tamper with the goal of reaching for the
whole, even if we all know this to be impossible? There would have to
be compelling reasons for doing so. Such reasons would have to do
with being able to produce a stronger interpretation, an interpretation
that would give a greater yield. Such reasons, furthermore, would have
to be stronger than simple perversity on the part of their would-be
guarantor, and more than simply random, more than dependant on
some kind of interpretative good luck. We all know the experience of
this good luck - how wonderful it is to have it, what it is like when it
does not come - and how perhaps we cover it up afterwards in order
to make the normal-scientific semblance that whatever we accomplish
comes through responsible, systematic, hard work.
What is the relation between fear and trembling! I do not put these
words into inverted commas, as is so common these days, scare
quotes being the first bracketing operation of philosophy in the twen-
tieth century. I do not do this because I am asking a much more sim-
ple, if banal, question: What is the relation between fear and trem-
bling?
Heretofore, in the context of Kierkegaard and of Kierkegaard
Studies (which two are not the same), this question has perhaps been
overlooked because of its obviousness. For it can safely be said that,
for all intents and purposes, Fear and Trembling, until now, has been
taken as one word, that is as a stock phrase. This is accounted for by
virtue of Kierkegaard's title, as well as by the reference to Saint
Paul's Letter to the Philippians which lends that title its authoritative
weight: Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in
my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling. (2 Philippians 12)
What is the relation between the phenomena fear and trembling?
What is fear? What is trembling? Fear is a passion, a passion that

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Abraham: Who Could Possibly Understand Him? 213
manifests itself, very often, in trembling. This is simple enough. But

the importance of the relation between fear and trembling, for
Kierkegaard's purposes, is not yet covered. Why not fear and shriek-
ing? Why not fear and anxiety? I have not chosen these two exam-
ples at random, although I might have. Shrieking is, or can be, verbal;
but in any case, it is close to the verbal, it is of the voice. Anxiety,
which has many interesting characteristics and of which Kierkegaard
himself gives one of the most important accounts in the literature, is
inner, and therefore itself only capable of being known by virtue of
its manifestation.
Fear manifests itself as trembling. Trembling is, to parody for a mo-
ment the definition of sacrament in the Book of Common Prayer, the
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. And
Kierkegaard's book is a poetics of manifestation. For is not one of Jo-
hannes de silentio's most important questions the one concerning the
possibility of knowing what a witnessing of a manifestation of faith
might be - in the bearing of a knight of faith, for example?
What is at issue then, in an objective consideration of the subjec-
tive philosophy of the moderns, is not, perhaps, first and foremost, the
ontological structure of emanation-as-manifestation (as is the case,
say, in Plotinus), but the matter of knowing about manifestation, thus
of certainty of knowledge of manifestation.3 Even the most cursory
reading of Either/Or or of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript will
bear out that one of the most important lemmas of Kierkegaard's at-
tack on Hegel is the notion that the outer is not the inner, else every-
thing is lost. If the outer is not the inner, then, there must be posed
the question of how the outer has knowledge of the inner, and vice
versa; or of how one has knowledge of the one through the other,
particularly of the inner through the outer. Perhaps this helps to fill
out what I am trying to get at when I use the word >manifestation.<
By asking a question about the phenomenological relation between
fear and trembling, I am asking a question about how these words,
these things communicate with each other. Understanding the mode
of this communication will help us to read Kierkegaard's book. If we
get lost in the biblical reference, or in other possible intertexts, we
might indeed be lost: For the biblical passage is simply a cliche, a ba-
nality. Here, at this moment, what is important is not the words, their
provenance, but the things themselves: fear and trembling.
3
In a most preliminary fashion we can say that it is still this problem that animates
Heidegger in the opening paragraphs of Being and Time.

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Let us move on from the title to the subtitle. Paratext is important,

for it is the very entry, the first determination, the setting of the tone,
the mood [Stemning] of our reading. What does >Dialectical Lyric<
mean? For my purposes, I approach it in the same naive manner in
which I approach the relation of fear to trembling. I begin with the
substantive for entirely classical, that is to say, pragmatic, naive,
metaphysically-laden reasons having to do with the fact that the noun
is the ens here, the terminus to which the amorist adjective, in and of
itself nothing, leads us.
What is a lyric? Or better yet, because Kierkegaard writes Dialec-
tical Lyric, and not >a dialectical lyric<, or >the dialectical lyric<, what
is lyric? Lyric is the one of the three poetic genres characterized by
the presence of a single voice, the speaker. Investigations into the ori-
gins of Greek Lyric, thus of what we call lyric, have attempted to
show the origins of the figure of the lyric speaker in the figure of the
choragos, the first speaker, the leader of the choros in Greek drama.4
This helps here because of the emphasis it puts on individuation -
precisely that with which Kierkegaard is concerned - with the ability
to say >I<. The lyric poet, quite simply, says >I<. That is enough: if we
know that, we can have all the rest. For the moment let us stay this
close to the sense of lyric.
What about dialectical, and its codetermination of lyric here?
From this moment on, we are already in paradox. For is not dialectic
that which manifests the intimate commingling of (at least) two
voices? What is a dialectical lyric? Would not the very presence of
the lyrical element preclude that of dialectic? Does not the solipsism
of lyric defy the conversational and synthetic sense of dialectic, even
of a negative dialectic? We may not get much further with this for the
moment than the posing of this very question. And Kierkegaard's
lack of further determination, the absence of any article here,
whether definite or not, helps by not helping. Fear and Trembling is
neither the dialectical lyric nor a dialectical lyric, but simply dialectical
lyric. This calls for a determination. Perhaps it is best to say that this
book is to be an exception, an exercise, perhaps the first exercise in
this paradoxical genre or mode. Coming forth as it does, without de-
termination, on the title page, this subtitle, in its very undetermined-
4
See Gregory Nagy Pindar's Homer, Baltimore 1990, as well as Carl Eduard Freiherr
von Erffa AID OS und verwandte Begriffe in ihrer Entwicklung von Homer bis De-
mokrit (Philologus, Supplementband XXX, 2), Leipzig 1937.

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ness, can make - merely by virtue of its positing - a determination.

We shall have to go on in order to flesh out this first paradox: what is
dialectical lyric? In yet another promise, I leave this moment sus-
pended.
Now I can move to the next line of text, the author's name: Johan-
nes de silentio. Johannes de silentio, Johannes the Seducer, Johannes
Climacus: clearly, in some way, Johannes is a name of privilege for
Kierkegaard, or a least a preponderant one. John the Baptist, John
the Evangelist and of the Apocalypse: John is in any case a Christian
name, a name that does not stand outside of relation to Christianity,
even if all of Kierkegaard's aforementioned Johns proclaim them-
selves not to be Christians in the sense to which they (and Kierke-
gaard through them) point.
The matter of silence, or of the silence, or from the silence, is dif-
ferent. First of all, the first edition of Frygt og Bceven gives us >Johan-
nes< in Gothic characters, followed by >de silentio< in Roman ones;
>silentio< is not capitalized. So the first name is a name, perhaps des-
ignating a Christian, while the last is Latin. The de poses the question:
>of< or >from<? Whose silence? Or whose John? The ablative follow-
ing the preposition incurs a double obliqueness, or a double agent, in
a way similar to that in which a genitive may be read both subjec-
tively and objectively. Does John speak of, about silence? Does he
speak from silence? Does he belong to silence? This riddle too per-
haps awaits clarification further within the covers.
The epigraph is the first discursive text we have, the first full sen-
tence of the book: Was Lucius Tarquinius Superbus in seinem
Garten mit den Mohnkpfen sprach, verstand der Sohn, aber nicht
der Bote. Already this is a very complex statement, the most com-
plex we have yet been offered. Malantschuk stresses the importance
of Hamann as author here with an anti-Enlightenment twist against
Kant.5 Certainly this is relevant. What is also no doubt relevant is
that Tarquinius Superbus was the last of the Seven Kings of Rome
before the founding of the Republic. The number seven emphasizes
the apocalyptic tone of the text, and sends us forward to the Seven
Seals of the Apocalypse of John, Johannes. Tarquinius Superbus, like
his predecessor, was a tyrant. Hence the name Rex became, from the
time of last two kings on, the common name for tyrant in Latin.
5
See Gregor Malantschuk S0ren Kierkegaards Frygt og Bceven, K0benhavn 1980,
p. 32.

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But the transition from kingdom, and despotic or tyrannical king-

ship, to republic, also emphasizes the relation between the old and
the new order, that is the Old and New Testaments. This is the re-
placement of the arbitrary and the despotic with the law that comes
to bear equally on all of its subjects, who are now citizens. The epi-
graph also speaks of silence, just as, perhaps, Johannes de silentio
does. The son, but not the messenger, understood what Lucius Tar-
quinius Superbus said in his garden with the poppies. What did the
Tyrant say? The son of the tyrant, who, like his father, is the son of a
tyrant, is ruling in one of the provinces. The locals are restless. The
son sends a messenger to the father-tyrant in order to ask what he
should do. The father says nothing, but takes the messenger into the
garden, where the king proceeds to knock off the heads of the pop-
pies with his stick.
We may call this an emblem or a device. Redolent as it is with alle-
gorical signification, we must pause to decode it. Hamann writes
about what (which is indefinite: we don't know what was communi-
cated) was said. But nothing was said. A gesture was made. And the
gesture was presumably told of to the son by the messenger in re-
porting speech. John is the messenger, the Evangelist. The messenger
speaks of the silence, like Johannes de silentio. The heads of the pop-
pies take us back to the head of John the Baptist. The poppy, symbol-
izing both memory and forgetting, is, like so many things, an ambiva-
lent symbol.
What is at issue in the epigraph is indirectness, or obliqueness of
communication. The one who carries the message from father to son
does not understand. The son performs an allegorical reading of the
father's message, and beheads the local upstarts upon his father's ges-
tural or figural command. The message is doubly oblique. Not only is
the speech (or silence) circuit conveyed via an instance of non-under-
standing (the messenger); but the message itself requires decoding ac-
cording to what might be called the language of action.
The speech circuit is not complete with two, with the father and the
son. It needs a third; a third, that is, in addition to the message itself.
The was, the matter of the communication, is not spoken. The crucial
aspect of the message here is that there are not two, but (at least)
three parties to it. The transmission of a secret requires three. There
are the two who share the secret - to whom it is not a secret, as they
share it. What makes it a secret is not what they share, but the fact
that a third, at least one, witnesses the act of communication and sees
only that the two who have communicated have a secret. Here, the

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witness is himself the very means of imparting the secret, and yet he
knows nothing of the content, of the was. He sees only that there is a
was, something that has been imparted. This is the opening of the
space of the secret.
Here the interpretant - the third, the son - does not interpret the se-
mantics of the imparted message, but rather something about its form.
The reader of Fear and Trembling, on reading this epigraph, is de-
ported into the space of this secret, is made party to a secret between
the Father - that is the King - and the Son. Something between fear
and anxiety is produced in the reader here. If fear is a passion before a
determined object and anxiety before a nothing, then this reception of
the fact of the secret, which takes place in the third party, is some-
where between fear and anxiety. The fact that there is a secret is deter-
mined; the matter, the was, of the secret is not. But is this in fact the
case? Could it be that the messenger does not even know that he has
witnessed a secret? He is a messenger, but does he even know of the
existence of the message? This too might be a secret to the messenger.
But what is the message itself? Is it the gestures of the father in
Rome, or the messenger's presumably verbal account of them? Un-
derstanding is achieved in the figure of the son, but not in the medi-
ating figure. This understanding manifests itself in the language of ac-
tion, that is in murder, slaughter. The father produces the son's action
by ordering it in silence, in gesture. This is an interpretation of this
language of action. What is important is not what is said but what is
done. The messenger, who is the only witness, the agent who sees and
tells, is not important; he does not understand.
So much for the possibility of the linking of a telling to an under-
standing. The one who tells here, who reports, does not understand.
Only the one who acts understands, has the possibility of showing
through his actions that he understands or does not. The son ad-
dresses a demand to the father. The father monstrates, acts, and the
son acts. What strikes the reader here is that the instance of speaking
- the messenger - is not only uncomprehending, but mediates be-
tween two agents who do not speak, but rather act. Reporting, that is
giving testimony of what one has witnessed, is not the same as under-
standing. The fact of understanding's having taken place is manifested
in a performance. Action compels speech which compels action.
Like father, like son. The son acts out what the father has pro-
grammed. The use of the expression >act out< here pushes toward the
register of what is called, in our century, hysteria. The child bears the
desire of the father in the form of an enactment, an enactment that
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manifests an understanding that goes beyond what has been reported

or said. Clearly this is the case, for the son understood, but not the
messenger. Shortly we shall have to consider the way in which this
father-son relationship foreshadows and relates to another, that of
Abraham and Isaac. But we are not there yet.
After the epigraph begins the foreword. This is obvious enough in the
case of a scholarly study or account. But this foreword forecloses or
ironizes its relation to such a form in its first sentence, which tells us
that not only in the business world but also in the world of ideas,
our age stages ein wirklicher Ausverkauf. (S. 9 / p. 5) Depending on
the Stimmung of the reader, this sentence should provoke either con-
sternation or wild laughter. The tone is certainly ironic disdain. This is
especially surprising, this tone of scorn, after the seriousness pro-
claimed by the title and the epigraph, which do not indicate the pos-
sibility of further light reading. But there is something else other than
the tone, that is the foreign expression, ein wirklicher Ausverkauf, an
actual sellout. Actuality, Wirklichkeit, is a sellout. The foreignness of
the German expression is maintained not only by the language, which
speaks the language of actuality, of contemporaneity, but also by the
lack of inflection, which marks the word as a foreign word, trans-
posed thus by convention into a language in which such an inflection
has no meaning.
What is an Ausverkauf? It is a situation in which everything is val-
ued according to the same standard, on the same level. Everything
must go! What is the first determination, here, of this sellout? It is the
fact that everyone who has no training, or who is making his training
(every assistant professor, tutor, and student, every rural outsider
and tenant incumbent in philosophy) is unable to stop with doubt-
ing but goes further. In other words, everybody is anxious to go fur-
ther, to take another step. In this process, what is important is missed.
This is the meaning of Nivellierung, or leveling. This movement of
doubting everything is a preliminary movement, a movement pre-
liminary to going further. They go further than Descartes, the model
of doubt. But, as our author is anxious to point out, Descartes himself
did not doubt one thing, that is, faith.
But even before the citation from this venerable, humble and
honest thinker is evoked to this effect, Descartes is characterized as
one who did what he said and said what he did.6 Descartes is one
On the gap between saying and what is done in saying, see Lacan's Jakobsonian ru-

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whose actions match his words and whose words match his actions.
All manifestations of his outer being (words, actions) match his inten-
tions. Descartes, primum mobile of modern thought, bespoke no gap
beween his actions and his words, between his words and his mon-
strations, between his saying and his showing. His cogito, ergo sum is
the para-divine / am that I am of modern philosophy.
But what of the tone of this reference to Descartes? Is it sincere?
And how are we to read it? There are many ways to characterize
Descartes, but the word humble is not one of the ones that most
readily comes to mind. First of all, even before his name has been
mentioned here, Descartes, modern father of systematic doubt (and
not the veteran disputant), has already been characterized as the one
who has opened the road for every idiot into philosophy. This is not a
compliment. This suspicion is borne out, for the one who is willing to
read it, after the next long citation from the Discourse on Method,
when Johannes de silentio writes:
What those ancient Greeks, who after all did know a little about philosophy, assumed
to be a task for a whole lifetime, because proficiency hi doubting is not obtained hi
days and weeks, what the old veteran disputant attained, he who had maintained the
equilibrium of doubt throughout all the specious arguments, who had intrepidly de-
nied the certainty of the senses and the certainty of thought, who, uncompromising,
had defied the anxiety of self-love and the insinuations of fellow feeling - with that
everyone begins in our age. (S. 10 / p. 6-7)
This is a most certain reference to Socrates, the old veteran dispu-

tant. But the reference to Socrates fades in here as the result of the
dismissal of Descartes, the one who made his Meditations of six nights
of doubt (not of six days of creation) into the foundation of modern
philosophy. The Meditations is a set piece. It is a piece of philosophi-
cal theatre, an experiment in a controlled laboratory. If the dialogical
structure of the Platonic Dialogues is also a dramatic device, at least
it takes the polis as its laboratory and has no need to abolish it, in the
way Descartes has to abolish the world in order to get on with it.
In the contrast between what the old, veteran disputant, Socrates,
attains, and what the modern laboratory trailblazer, Descartes, ob-
tains, one is reminded of Freud speaking about the way in which one
learns only from failures in psychoanalysis, for it is failures that pro-
duce difficulties to be resolved by new technique and theorization;
whereas bread-and-butter cases can be handled more mechanically
minations (prescient as they are of a later French reception of XL. Austin), in his
Les Quatre concepts fondamentawc de la psychanalyse, Paris 1990 [1973], passim.

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with nothing new being brought to light. The metaphor Freud uses
for the difference between the difficulty of breaking new ground as
opposed to the normal analysis that moves over ground that has been
broken elsewhere is that of an army crossing enemy territory and
which has to fight for every inch, whereas in peacetime the distance it
takes such an army weeks or months to cover can be crossed by a
passenger train in a few hours.7
Method as speed versus the invention of technique as time-con-
suming art is not far from the Cartesian demarche, which builds a
straight road to its goal, like Roman roads, which cover the distance
between two points more economically than roads that have been
made from peasant paths. Theory is the fruit, the precipitate and the
success of failure; it is slow and cognitive, the reaction to an event.
Kierkegaard's accusation against Descartes has almost the character
of an accusation of hubris. Descartes, introduced above as the one who
never doubted his faith, turns out to be the one who presupposed it
in order to go further, like all of his more modern descendants;
whereas the whole point of those who turn out to be the truly vener-
able ancients is that they never got so far that they could think about
going further, for for them the task of faith was the task of a lifetime.
But we are not yet finished with Descartes. For there are two other
motifs that deserve to be pointed out in the passages surrounding the
one Kierkegaard cites from the Discourse on Method:
Thus my design is not here to teach the Method which everyone should follow in or-
der to promote the good conduct of his Reason, but only to show in what manner I
have endeavoured to conduct my own. Those who set about giving precepts must es-
teem themselves more skilful than those to whom they advance them, and if they fall
short in the smallest manner they must, of course, take the blame for it. But regarding
this Treatise simply as a history, or, if you prefer it, as a fable in which, amongst cer-
tain things which may be imitated, there are possibly others also which it would not
be right to follow, I hope that it will be of use to some without being hurtful to any,
and that all will thank me for my frankness.8
In this famous passage, Descartes proclaims his own story to be pre-
cisely that - his story. Method becomes autobiography here. He is
even more specific in his calling his account a fable. A fable is a tell-
ing; but it also has a moral, a precept, a teaching, a lesson the teach-
7
Sigmund Freud, Studienausgabe, Bd. 1-11, Frankfurt am Main 1969-1979; Bd. 8, S.
129-133.
8
Descartes Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking
for Truth in the Sciences, in: Descartes: Selections, ed. Ralph M. Eaton, New York
1927, p. 3-4.

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ing of which is implied in the telling of the particular story. This mat-
ter of fable should make us pause for a moment about what is to fol-
low in Kierkegaard's own text, in which the story of Abraham will be
made into a fable by virtue of its telling and retelling, also by virtue
of the series of different lesson-endings appended to these tellings.
The other motif relevant to this discussion, and which calls out for
remarking in the Cartesian text, is the motif of pace, of path, of way,
of walking and of running. Not only in Fear and Trembling, but also
in its simultaneously-published companion piece, Repetition, much
would seem to be at stake in the pace. While this is not so present in
the passage cited above, this thematic is ever present in Descartes's
Discourse.9 It is always a question about how to proceed properly,
correctly, methodically. In Kierkegaard, the announcement of this
theme in the Fear and Trembling-Repetition diptych reaches almost
parodic proportions.10
But it is neither in this paragraph nor among the Greeks that what
it means to keep the faith is to be found in a model. It is the tried
and tested oldster [Olding] - who, it should be noted, is one, a singu-
lar entity, whose heart is still young enough not to have forgotten
the anxiety and trembling that disciplined his youth (S. 10 / p. 7) -
for whom this task, the task of faith, is reserved. This is the first refer-
ence in the text to Abraham. It is no accident that it is only here that
9
This matter of the discourse of the way, of pace, and of path has been magisterially
treated by Jacques Derrida in his La Langue et le discours de la methode in: La
Philosophie dans sa langue (Recherches sur la philosophic et le langage, vol. 3),
Grenoble 1983, p. 35-51.
10
While Fear and Trembling ends with the mention of Heraclitus' dictum that one can
never step into the same river twice, Repetition begins with Diogenes walking forth
as a silent protest against the denial of motion by the Eleatics. It would not be too
much to say that the matter of the relation, if not of the very continuity, between
these two books must be conceived by means of an analysis of the figural dimen-
sions of stasis, kinesis, and walking. This thematic necessitates an entire study on its
own, upon which I am working at present. For the purpose of this remark, suffice it
to say that this work will comprise an account of the relations between the move-
ments of the knights of infinity in Fear and Trembling (But to be able to come
down in such a way that instantaneously one seems to stand and to walk, to change
the leap into life into walking, absolutely to express the sublime in the pedestrian -
only that knight can do it, and this is the one and only marvel, (S. 39 / p. 41)) and
the companion passage on farce at the theatre in Repetition, where the actor B.
comes walking (S. 143/p. 163). These motions must be significantly linked to
Abraham's anabases at Genesis 12:4 (to Canaan) and 22:3 (to Mount Moriah). I am
deeply indebted to the watchful eyes of Dorothea Glckner and Kim Ravn for hav-
ing called my attention to the biblical passages and to the relation between the end
of Fear and Trembling and the beginning of Repetition.

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anxiety and trembling enter into the discursive vocabulary of the

book, for here they are at home. We are moving further and further
back in time, and have now left both Descartes and Socrates behind.
In the same manner that the tyrant-son of Hamann's fable is himself
the tyrant-son of a tyrant, who is in turn the tyrant-son of a tyrant,
the chain from Descartes back to Socrates goes back through another
generation to Abraham. And likewise, in the passages that follow,
Isaac will relate to his father, Abraham, as well as to God, father of
Abraham and of Isaac.
But why the substitution of Angest for Frygt here? Given the
cliche-like character of the locution Frygt og Baeven, this first allu-
sion within the covers cries out, in its very metamorphosis, for inter-
pretation. Angest is a word about which Kierkegaard will have
much to say further along. The occurrence of the locution Angest og
Baevelse here clearly draws attention to the title by reannouncing it,
while at the same time playing on the theme of minimal variation, a
form of exposition to which we are about to be exposed in the fol-
lowing pages on Abraham with even greater complexity. It is hardly
possible that the author simply inserts the title here while playing key
variations upon it by accident.
There is anachrony here: the replacement of Fear by Anxiety,
at the very moment when Kierkegaard's albeit short, cryptic narrative
is moving back towards an exemplum of the oldest of the old, begs
for comment. It is the replacement of a passion with an object by a
passion with none, and the replacement of an activity with a particip-
ial-gerundive form that is closer to the action of the verb. The effect
of these variations is thus not only one of anachrony but also of in-
tensification. Furthermore, Angest seems to be, for the most part, a
highly specific spelling, one which is largely, even if not entirely lim-
ited to his special delimitation of the concept of Angest in the
book of that title. Therefore, Kierkegaard's usage foreshadows the
role this special word will take on in the book of that name, and it is
in this context that not only his diction, but his spelling of it, is signifi-
cant. It singles out the word; it underlines the word; it highlights the
word. The minimal variation upon the cliche of the title serves as a
kind of retro-activation; a reactivation, furthermore, that justifies our
attention to the title, not just as a set phrase, as a citation, but in its
terms and concepts. By playing minimally upon his borrowed words,
Kierkegaard says, Pay attention! Having paid attention at the outset
to the things rather than to the words, the variation now authorizes
us to pay attention to the words themselves.

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This recalling of the title reminds us that going further means go-
ing further back, not forward. This is a kind of reanimating Rckruf,
combined with a thorough mistrust of progress that is completely
consonant with a basic tone Kierkegaard is in the course of establish-
ing.11 Back to Abraham, then.
Now it is time to enter into the scene of the setting of the basic tone
of Fear and Trembling. The matter of tone here could not possibly be
accidental, for the title of the next section of the book after the Pref-
ace is Stemning, tone. But this very title itself, this chapter head-
ing, has its own history within the composition of Kierkegaard's text.
In the earliest manuscript drafts of this section, the title is not
Stemning but Problemata, a title which, by the time of the final
fair copy of the manuscript, has been displaced to the later, major,
discursive sections, in which the author perhaps goes no further than
to give an exoteric version of what is contained in the compressed
tellings that originally bore the same title. The displacement of the ti-
tle Problemata from the compressed recountings that stand at the
beginning of the work as its first determination of tone after the Pref-
11
Two twentieth-century readers of Kierkegaard as different as Heidegger and
Adorno both come away from their most significant encounters with his text and
reproduce, in their own ways, this gesture of the step back. In the case of Heidegger,
this gesture circumscribes the entire postwar discourse on technology, on the Gestell
- in short, the great themes. For Adorno, the situation is somewhat more complex.
Certainly one must take into account the Dialectic of Enlightenment, that grand de-
fense of modernity Adorno wrote with Horkheimer in order to defend the goal of
emancipation precisely against the elitist and reactionary character of the very kind
of work exemplified by Leo Strauss in the text from which I cite hi my epigraph.
But a less restricted reading of Adorno, or, more positively, a more comprehensive
reading of Adorno would have to stress his universal pessimism, his loathing of
mass culture, his nostalgic tone for the good old days when human relations were
more transparent and less debased - even if at the same tune he also, in his own
dialectical lamentations, denounces such narratives of origin. What is decisive for
such an interpretation of Adorno is the matter of tone. Future interpretations of
our century will have to take into account the importance of the regressive tone
which both of these writers took from Kierkegaard - almost, apparently, without
knowing it (which is precisely what allows it to be so dominant). A reading of a
book such as Minima Moralia bears this out; so would a patient reading of the no-
tion of epochalization in Heidegger, of the Geschick of Being and of the destining
of the West - all of which implies the kind of steps back which Kierkegaard has un-
dertaken here, in the very Foreword to Fear and Trembling. Likewise, a comparison
of Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's attitudes to modern philosophy as the philosophy
of method, and the completion of this thought in the line from Descartes to Hegel,
would be revelatory. Kierkegaard is the silent messenger who communicates be-
tween these figures.

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ace might well indicate that the problems to which the writer refers
are already contained within the short texts themselves.
Taking this as a hint, it is time now, one and a half centuries after
the publication of this text, to attempt to read these gnomic fables.
But the failure to do so up to this point must itself not go without be-
ing remarked. The venture of this reader is that it is not only the fact
that Kierkegaard himself spends the rest of the book, after these
brief passages, glossing his own text, that has kept the tradition of
commentary away from an in-depth commentary on the details of
these pages; it is also a matter of the setting of the tone itself which
they perform that enforces a kind of noli me legere over them. On
the one hand, then, it would be reasonable to presume that the texts
gathered under the name Problemata (and there are at least four
of these, for the page upon which the title Problemata is given
comes before the Preliminary Expectoration,12 thus one chapter
heading before Kierkegaard begins with what he numbers Prob-
lema I) are glosses on the brief accounts of the story of Abraham's
Sacrifice, and thus the commentators have pushed the problem out of
the way by presuming that the author has in fact done their work for
them; on the other hand, the non-reception of these passages in
themselves might have something to do with the very tone-setting al-
ready indicated in the title that precedes them.
What tone do these pages set? This is an apparently simple, if es-
sential, question. A first characterization might be to note that their
very compression itself contributes to the effect of making them un-
touchable. Their simplicity induces a kind of hysterical blindness in
the reader, who passes over them in favor of the longer, more discur-
sive problems that follow. In and of itself, this is already rather inter-
esting, for these four stories are more concrete than any of the ab-
stractions and paradoxes present in the much larger body of the
following text. In these few pages the words that dominate the discus-
sion of Fear and Trembling as a philosophical exposition - words such
as Hegel, the universal, the particular, the ethical, the
12
Howard and Edna Hong are entirely correct to relate Preliminary Expectoration
to the Dialectical Lyric of the subtitle, (p. 343) But, going even further along this
road with them, and taking the next hint they provide to the effect that the Pre-
liminary Expectoration was substituted in the final draft of the manuscript for In-
troduction, we may assert that Fear and Trembling is really two books: the first
book encompasses everything up to the Problemata (- or perhaps ends right af-
ter the Stemning itself -); the second, to which the Preliminary Expectoration
was the Introduction, begins with the page labeled Problemata.

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knights (whether of faith, infinity or of resignation), spiritual trial

- here these words are neither used nor mentioned.
Whereas the language of abstraction is often considered to be
more difficult than the language of storytelling, especially when the
abstraction leads to paradox, as it so often does in the ensuing chap-
ters, it is the startling simplicity of these stories that makes them so
hard. Given the overwhelming preponderance of theological and
philosophical - as opposed to literary - criticism devoted to this book
and to Kierkegaard as a whole, it is hardly surprising that what has
remained unglossed is the simplest, the most concrete, that is to say,
the telling or the various retellings of a story or of a fable.
Let us then examine the text of this mood-setting, which begins
with the once upon a time to which readers of stories are accus-
tomed:
Once upon a time there was a man who as a child had heard that beautiful story of
how God tempted Abraham and of how Abraham withstood the temptation, kept the
faith, and, contrary to expectation, got a son a second tune. When he grew older, he
read the same story with even greater admiration, for life had fractured what had
been united in the pious simplicity of the child. The older he became, the more often
his thoughts turned to that story; his enthusiasm for it became greater and greater,
and yet he could understand the story less and less. Finally, he forgot everything else
because of it; his soul had but one wish, to see Abraham, but one longing, to have wit-
nessed that event. His craving was not to see the beautiful regions of the East, not the
earthly glory of the promised land, not that God-fearing couple whose old age God
had blessed, not the venerable figure of the aged patriarch, not the vigorous adoles-
cence God bestowed upon Isaac - the same thing could just as well have occurred
upon a barren heath. His craving was to go along on the three-day journey when
Abraham rode with sorrow before him and Isaac beside him. His wish was to be pre-
sent in that hour when Abraham raised his eyes and saw Mount Moriah hi the dis-
tance, the hour when he left the asses behind and went up the mountain alone with
Isaac - for what occupied him was not the beautiful tapestry of imagination but the
shudder of the idea.
That man was not a thinker. He did not feel any need to go beyond faith; he
thought that it must be supremely glorious to be remembered as its father, an envi-
able destiny to possess it, even if no one knew it.
That man was not an exegetical scholar. He did not know Hebrew; if he had known
Hebrew, he perhaps would easily have understood the story and Abraham. (S. 13 /
p. 9)
This is a story of obsession, of the obsession to which the reader, any

reader, a man, is exposed and subjected in the face of the beauti-
ful story of Abraham he had heard as a child. But the beauty of the
story gives way, in adulthood, to admiration, the attitude of wonder,
which excites the thirst for knowing the cause. For his growing older
had fractured [adskilt] the simplicity of the child's apprehension of

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the story. Adulthood, then, is the renunciation of the beautiful,

[skj0nne], a word that occurs again in this passage, and a word that,
while it represents the attitude of the man in the pious simplicity of
the child, becomes a matter to which he, now an adult, becomes or
has become indifferent, as is witnessed by the fact that he had a de-
sire [Begjering] for one thing, not to see the beautiful [skj0nne\ re-
gions of the East (the seductions of orientalist] luxury are foreign
to him), but to accompany Abraham on his journey. The indifference
to beauty is underlined by the statement that the same thing could
just as well have occurred on a barren heath.
In other words, the story is a kind of universal story, a fable. And to
apprehend the fable in its lesson requires the subtraction of all irrele-
vant details. In order to be studied in the proper fashion, the telling
must be bracketed, set off in its own space, or recognized as existing
in its own space, as a sententia that specifies its own possible world.
[W]hat occupied him was not the artful [kunstrige] tapestry of the
imagination, but the shudder of the idea. The man of whom the nar-
rator speaks desires to be a witness to the sublime, to the shudder,
the thrill [Gysen] - not to art.is
But th[is] man was not a thinker. He had no need to go beyond
faith, only to go along on the journey. The desire of this man is pure,
for it wills one thing. He thought that it must be the most glorious
thing [det Herligste] to be remembered as the father of faith. Glory
lines up here with admiration as that which, after the separation from
the beautiful stories of childhood, implies awe, enthusiasm, distance,
separation. All of these occur in the diminution of understanding of
13
Without a doubt the contrast here between the beauty of the imagination and the
beauty of the story on the one hand, and the barrenness of the locale to which the
narrator suggests transposing it and the thrill of the idea on the other - all of this
suggests a rather sophisticated reading of the tension between the rich organicism
of symbolism and the cold barrenness of allegory, a tension highlighted by
Kierkegaard's master Hegel in his Aesthetics. Unlike Hegel, however, Kierkegaard's
emphasis on the cold precision of the allegorical-sublime as opposed to the beauti-
ful here would decisively reverse the master's canonically-read privileging of the
symbol over allegory as an aesthetic form. This insight might well provide insight
into Kierkegaard's reading, not only of Hegel, but perhaps of the Danish Hegelians.
Verstand der Sohn, nicht der Bote - vielleicht aucht nicht der Vater. For crucial dis-
cussions of the profound ambivalence in Romanticism concerning the relations be-
tween allegory and symbol, see Paul de Man The Rhetoric of Temporality in:
Blindness and Insight, Second Edition, Minneapolis 1983 [1969,1971], p. 187-228, as
well as his Sign and Symbol in Hegel's Aesthetics in Critical Inquiry, 8:4, Chicago
1982, p. 761-75.

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the beautiful story of childhood. In order to break off the story of

this man, and to proceed with the kinds of thoughts he turned over in
his mind about Abraham, this introit will end with the assertion that
had he known Hebrew, he might have understood the story from the
understanding of which he felt ever more distant, the distance and
lack of understanding being compensated by a sense of awe. It is the
simple man, the one who is not a scholar, an exegete, or a thinker,
who thinks that knowledge, knowledge he does not have, might help
him. He thinks such positive knowledge perhaps [maaskee] might
help him to understand.
Here our man, the man who wants nothing more than to ride along
with Abraham and Isaac as a witness - this third man, even if he
would go along that road, he would understand nothing. For is he not,
on that ride, in the very position of the messenger of Hamann's word
in the epigraph, the one who reports, but who does not understand
the was, the matter of what took place? Who knows, not only what
happens within Abraham, but between Abraham and Isaac, between
father and son.14
What is it to know Hebrew? Or, better yet, who knows Hebrew
better than the Hebrews? To hope for a better understanding on the
basis of the understanding of the letter would be a very Hebrew
thing indeed, if one is to take Saint Paul seriously. And the one who
thinks thus - about the letter - may turn out to be the one who is
with the spirit of this text.
Already there is a potentially infinite series of doubles and
doublings opened up here. The man in question, the reader of the
story of Abraham, who reads it with increasing incomprehension, can
be a double, according to what follows, of Isaac, of Abraham himself,
of the narrator, of de silentio, of Kierkegaard, and of us as readers -
all of which adds up to a dizzying array indeed. The only way out of
this dizziness is to return to the text, that is to say, to the holy word,
the word upon which our man muses and ponders, preoccupied with
the shudder and thrill of the idea of it. And this is what happens in
the invocation of Genesis 22:1-3: And God tempted Abraham and
14
In order to answer this last question, we would have to enter the realm of the rela-
tion between the active verb (to sacrifice for another) and the middle verb (to sac-
rifice for oneself) such as Emile Benveniste explains it in his Actif et moyen dans
le verbe in his Problemes de linguistique generate, Paris 1966, as well as to go into
Jacques Lacan's commentary on the dream of the burning child (the opening pas-
sage of chapter seven of Freud's Traumdeutung) in his Les Quatre concepts fonda-
mentaux de la psychanalyse, Paris 1990 [1973], p. 63-75.

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said to him, take Isaac, your only son, whom you love, and go to the
land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on a mountain
that I shall show you.
This text is immediately followed by the first of the variations of our

man's ponderings:
It was early in the morning when Abraham arose, had the asses saddled, and left his
tent, taking Isaac with him, but Sarah watched them from the window as they went
down the valley - until she could see them no longer. They rode in silence for three
days. On the morning of the fourth day, Abraham said not a word but raised his eyes
and saw Mount Moriah in the distance. He left the young servants behind and, taking
Isaac's hand, went up the mountain alone. But Abraham said to himself, I will not
hide from Isaac where this walk is taking him. He stood still, he laid his hand on
Isaac's head in blessing, and Isaac kneeled to receive it. And Abraham's face epito-
mized fatherliness; his gaze was gentle, his words admonishing. But Isaac could not
understand him, his soul could not be uplifted; he clasped Abraham's knees, he
pleaded at his feet, he begged for his young life, for his beautiful hopes; he called to
mind the joy in Abraham's house, he called to mind the sorrow and the solitude. Then
Abraham lifted the boy up and walked on, holding his hand, and his words were full
of comfort and admonition. But Isaac could not understand him. Then Abraham
turned away from him for a moment, but when Isaac saw Abraham's face again, it had
changed: his gaze was wild, his whole being was sheer terror. He seized Isaac by the
chest, threw him to the ground, and said, Stupid boy, do you think I am your father?
I am an idolator. Do you think it is God's command? No, it is my desire. Then Isaac
trembled and cried out in anguish: God in heaven, have mercy on me, God of Abra-
ham, have mercy on me; if I have no father on earth, then you be my father! But
Abraham said softly to himself, Lord God in heaven, I thank you; it is better that he
believes me a monster than that he should lose faith in you.
When the child is to be weaned, the mother blackens her breast. It would be hard to
have the breast look inviting when the child must not have it. So the child believes
that the breast has changed, but the mother - she is still the same, her gaze is tender
and loving as ever. How fortunate the one who did not need more terrible means to
wean the child! (S. 14-15 / p. 10-11)
This first of the four variations is the longest and, on the part of both
of the main characters, the most verbose. The child Isaac, like the
child-man who grew up to ponder the story of Abraham with ever
greater incomprehension, has beautiful hopes. The gap between any
observer or reader of Abraham and Abraham himself is dramatized
here as the very gap of understanding between the father and the
son. For Isaac could not understand him. Thus the fantasy of our
man of the frame narration, who has no greater wish than to have
witnessed the event, is already confounded - at least as far as the
possibility of his understanding through any witnessing of the event is

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concerned. For if one of the two parties to the secret of the encoun-
ter himself cannot understand, then how could any third party under-
stand through an act of witnessing? Still, there is always the possibil-
ity that understanding, as in the case of the epigraph to our book,
could take place in and only in the third party. - That our man, him-
self being on the other side of the chasm separating him from the
beautiful things of childhood, thus being on the same side of the di-
vide of age as Abraham himself, might, by virtue of this majority, be
in somewhat of a more advantageous position than the child. But we
should remember that the third party, the son in the provinces, who
understands the message of the father in the epigraph, understands a
telling by interpreting it in the language of action; he does not under-
stand it by virtue of having been present.
What remains to be discussed here is the motif of deception, which
traverses not only the story but also its moral, the first of the even
more enigmatic and cryptic almost one-liners about the mother and
the child. On this matter of the lie, Abraham's obeying God's com-
mand, a religious gesture, is replaced, in the realm of this limit case of
the ethical (the father-son relation), by the deception of Abraham's
assertion of his idolatry. But the figure of the deception is itself re-
markable, for what Abraham asserts, when he says it is my desire
[Lyst], underscores the distinction between the desire on the part of
a man, a finite being, and that of the infinite - difficult as it is to
speak of the latter with the same word. Here is the incommensurabil-
ity between the divine Father and the human father. Isaac's plea to
God, that He be his father now that the father is no longer a father,
emphasizes the same incommensurability between the religious and
the ethical relations. But it also begs the question of what God's de-
sire is here - in the very temptation of his servant, Abraham. Is there
a competition between God and Isaac for Abraham's attention?
Does God feel threatened by the son of his son? Clearly. Is this
threat, the threat of this desire, of God's desire, what Abraham passes
on in his blessing, the blessing that, like the knife in the fourth vari-
ation, is delivered by the first occurrence of the hand in the text? (We
don't yet know what hand, but we shall soon see.)
Both in the story of Abraham and Isaac, as well as in the moral to
the fable of the mother and child (the child being the term common
to both, the necessary link), the adults perform a deception. Speech
erupts in the first part at the moment when Abraham tells Isaac a lie
in order to preserve the child's relation to God the Father. The fa-
ther's countenance has changed in an instant from that of benign

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love - what should be the very position of the father - to that of

frenzied madness. But this is an act. Abraham's lie could be the most
blantantly self-serving excuse, the attempt to try to divert attention
from the horror of God's very command that he sacrifice his own son
by claiming that he worships not God, but an idol.
The father covers up for God, standing as he does between the re-
ligiosity of the divine command and the ethical relation to the son.
Likewise, in order to wean the child, the mother blackens her breast
in order to make it as unappetizing to the child as possible. The
child believes that the breast has changed, but the mother - she is
still the same, her gaze is tender and loving as ever. The father ac-
complishes the deception by changing his face; the mother enforces
the deception, she holds the situation, by keeping her face the same
as ever, but by putting a mask on that part of her that sustains the
child.15 And the matter of whether it was a sin for Abraham to have
been willing to sacrifice his son is paralleled in the mother's blacken-
ing of her breast in order to enforce her own deception.
When there are too many words spoken, misunderstandings prolif-
erate in face of the general failure to understand, or to be able to un-
derstand.
It was early in the morning when Abraham arose: he embraced Sarah, the bride of his
old age, and Sarah kissed Isaac, who took away her disgrace, Isaac her pride, her hope
for all the generations to come. They rode along the road in silence, and Abraham
stared continuously and fixedly at the ground until the fourth day, when he looked up
and saw Mount Moriah far away, but once again he turned his eyes toward the
ground. Silently he arranged the firewood and bound Isaac; silently he drew the knife
- then he saw the ram that God had selected. This he sacrificed and went home. -
From that day henceforth, Abraham was old; he could not forget that God had or-
dered him to do this. Isaac flourished as before, but Abraham's eyes were darkened,
and he saw joy no more.
When the child has grown big and is to be weaned, the mother virginally conceals her
breast, and then the child no longer has a mother. How fortunate the child who has
not lost his mother in some other way! (S. 15 / p. 12)
15
The problem with an object-relations-oriented psychoanalytic interpretation here is
that it is too easy. The breast, in psychoanalysis, is indeed the name of the partial
object instar omnium. But of what use is it to say this here? How does it help us to
read this text? Yes, Kierkegaard's text looks like the paradigmatic instance of the
mother holding the situation, as Winnicott would say (see his Transitional Objects
and Transitional Phenomena and The Manic Defense in: D.W. Winnicott Col-
lected Papers: Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis, London 1958). But the prob-
lem is that The Breast itself, in psychoanalysis, is an allegorical entity, at once itself
and not itself.

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In contrast with the first and longest of the variations, this second is
the shortest. Here we have no speech at all, only gesture: Abraham's
gazing at the ground, which varies only for a short while. What sets
this most terse of the accounts off from the others is, quite, literally,
the appearance of the ram. The manifestation of God's provision is
followed by a series of three dashes, dashes that separate the young
Abraham from the old. It is at this moment, when God provides the
substitute term for the sacrifice, that Abraham's gaze - the gaze that
has largely kept itself to the ground - darkens.
Here, then, the father obeys sullenly and experiences no uplifting
through the encounter. Isaac flourishes as before - the hope in all
generations [Slcegter] goes on, but the father is used up, he is con-
sumed by the ressentiment of a memory. The return to the innocence
of the mother, who virginally conceals her breast, contrasts with the
breast's blackening in the first exercise.
The child has lost the mother in her retreat; God has lost Abraham
in the separation indicated by the dashes in the text; Perhaps God
has gained Isaac, who flourishes, the hope of all generations to come.
Abraham has been reduced to the status of the incomprehending me-
diator between God and the child.
Ill
It was early in the morning when Abraham arose: he kissed Sarah, the young mother,
and Sarah kissed Isaac, her delight [Lyjf], her joy forever. And Abraham rode
thoughtfully down the road; he thought of Hagar and the son, whom he drove out
into the desert. He climbed Mount Moriah, he drew the knife.
It was a quiet evening when Abraham rode out alone, and he rode to Mount
Moriah; he threw himself down on his face, he prayed to God to forgive him his sin,
that he had been willing to sacrifice Isaac, that the father had forgotten his duty to the
son. He often rode his lonesome road, but he found no peace. He could not compre-
hend that it was a sin that he had been willing to sacrifice to God the best that he
had, the possession for which he himself would gladly have died many times; and if it
was a sin, if he had not loved Isaac in this manner, he could not understand that it
could be forgiven, for what more terrible sin was there?
When the child is to be weaned, the mother, too, is not without sorrow, because she
and the child are more and more to be separated, because the child who first lay un-
der her heart and later rested upon her breast will never again be so close. So they
grieve together the brief sorrow. How fortunate the one who kept the child so close
and did not need to grieve any more! (S. 15-16 / p. 13)
The language of the universal creeps in here, as does non-understand-

ing - an interesting coincidence. Abraham here stands on God's side
of his own predicament: he cannot understand that it be a sin to offer
to God the best he has. The substitution-by-description of the best

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for Isaac here is augured by another substitution in thought, the one

Abraham did while riding, namely Isaac as replacement for Ishmael,
Hagar's son, and Sarah's re-replacement of Hagar. Hagar and her son
had been sacrificed in being driven out on the basis of God's promise,
that previously-barren Sarah would give him Isaac. It is only here, in
the third variation, that paradox arises in Abraham's own under-
standing of his situation, paradox stemming from the possibilities of
substitution offered by universal, that is to say, ethical, categories. The
paradox leaves him no rest. It is only in the evening, after the morn-
ing of the events, that Abraham cannot understand. His non-under-
standing comes after the fact, after the deed has been carried out.
This is the meaning of evening: it is always later. Theory, cognition, is
later. The very substitution is his sin.
And the paragraph in which the dialectical tension of the paradox
is introduced makes the scene into early evening, after the early
morning of the ride that has just taken place. At the end of the day,
when Abraham tries to understand what happened in the morning's
actions, Handlungen, he arrives in the paradox. The evening is the
time of reflection; the morning is the time for action. In the evening,
after the separation from his joy, the father's eyes are no longer
bright. It is reflection that has darkened his eyes.
Isaac here is Sarah's delight [Lyst], just as Abraham pretended to
his son that the desire to bind him was his own desire [Lyst]. So here
we are concerned with the desire of the mother and not that of the
father. This is borne out by the assertion of the mother's sorrow over
the increasing separation of herself from the child. They are more
and more to be separated [skilles ad}. Life, maturation - in the in-
troductory frame narration of these passages - had fractured [adskilt]
what had been united in the pious simplicity of the child. Between
these two uses of the verb there are, of course, the dashes in the sec-
ond telling, which marks the fracturing of Abraham's own joy, his
move into old age and the darkening of his eyes. But the mother's
sorrow with the child is brief. - As opposed to the separation from
his joy which Abraham endured in the earlier account.
The mother's desire is to keep the child close. For the father this is
not an option.
IV
It was early in the morning, and everything in Abraham's house was ready for the
journey. He took leave of Sarah, and Eliezer, the faithful servant, accompanied him
along the road until he turned back again. They rode along in harmony, Abraham and
Isaac, until they came to Mount Moriah. Abraham made everything ready for the sac-

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rifice, calmly and gently, but when he turned away and drew the knife, Isaac saw that
Abraham's left hand was clenched in despair, that a shudder went through his whole
body - but Abraham drew the knife.
Then they returned home again, and Sarah hurried to meet them, but Isaac had lost
the faith. Not a word is ever said of this in the world, and Isaac never talked to any-
one about what he had seen, and Abraham did not suspect that anyone had seen it.
When the child is to be weaned, the mother has stronger sustenance at hand so that
the child does not perish. How fortunate the one who has this stronger sustenance at
hand!
Thus and in many similar ways did the man of whom we speak ponder this event.
Every time he returned from a pilgrimage to Mount Moriah, he sank down wearily,
folded his hands, and said, No one was as great as Abraham. Who is able to under-
stand him? (S. 16 / p. 14)
What overwhelms here is the occurrence of the hand, which has mani-
fested itself only once before, in the first of the variations, as that
which bears the blessing Abraham offers to Isaac. It is not the place
here to go into a catalogue of the importance of the hand in the text of
Kierkegaard. Let us try to stay, for another moment, with the chosen
text. The left hand shudders. We know from a remark only a few pages
later, at the end of the Eulogy on Abraham, thus right before the
first part of the book ends and the Problemata begin, that the hand
which draws the knife is the right hand, not the left. (S. 23 / p. 22)
Abraham's left hand clenches, and the body shudders with the sub-
lime shudder, forerunner of the mark of the knights of infinity later
on in the book, who waver instantaneously as they land on the earth.
The mother has stronger sustenance at hand [ved Haanden] when the
child is weaned, and the one who has such sustenance at hand [ved
Haanden} is fortunate to do so. And, at the beginning of the second
part of the book, at the end of the first paragraph of the Preliminary
Expectoration, that is to say in the preface to the Problemata, we
are told that the signal difference between the world of material life
and the world of the spirit is that in the latter, as opposed to the for-
mer, only the one who works gets bread, and is capable of nourishing
or of giving birth to \f0der] his own father. (S. 27 / p. 27) At the end
of the frame narration, our man, the one who contemplates Abra-
ham's peregrinations, folds his hands in weariness and asserts the im-
possibility of understanding Abraham.
The synthesis of the father by the son, and its necessity for each
generation, is what makes it impossible for anyone, for any genera-
tion to go further - as Kierkegaard reminds us yet again in the Epi-
logue, when he speaks of the Dutch merchants who got themselves

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out of the problem of their falling spice prices by drowning a few

ships of their wares, thus preventing ein wirklicher Ausverkauf by
means of a sacrifice, in order to rescue their economy. (S. 109 / p. 121)
This is why Isaac has to lose the faith here. He loses it, because, in
contrast with his father - who, in sacrificing, synthesized his own Fa-
ther - he never really had it, for he had not yet worked. His vision of
his father's clenched left hand and shuddering severed him from the
pious simplicity of his childhood. But he, in turn, in order to get faith,
would have to make the same effort of synthesis as his father had
done - else, mother or no mother, he would not get bread. Under-
standing is not to be had; the concept will never get us there.
Isaac, then, is as much removed from being a witness to Abraham's
faith as anyone. No word is said of it, because no word could be said
of it - for who would understand it?
In trying to go so closely through the four variations with which

Kierkegaard presents us, perhaps we risk getting lost in the details.
Now is the moment to reflect and to see, after moving through the
opening pages of this dialectical lyric, whether any movement has
been made over the course of the retellings.
The first question, then, is what is gotten out of this writerly - and
readerly - strategy? What shall we do with all these repetitions with
differences? While it may not be easy to construct an unproblematic
narrative out of them, this should not frighten us away from the task.
Otherwise we must simply break off our investigation with no conclu-
sion. (At the same time we should be careful not to draw a conclu-
sion only for aesthetic reasons, to provide closure for what would
otherwise remain simply embarrassing.)
The four variations move from the first and longest account, the
only one containing direct speech, in which Abraham claims to be an
idolator and thus pushes Isaac to the point of calling upon God to be
his father, since he has no earthly father; through the second and
shortest account, in which Sarah says goodbye to Isaac, her pride and
hope for all the generations to come, and in which the ram appears,
but Abraham's eyes are darkened; the third, in which, during the eve-
ning, Abraham finds no rest, for he cannot understand the paradox in
which he is caught, the paradox itself being generated by his substitu-
tion, in thought, of the universal >the best< for his singular son, Isaac;
to the fourth, in which Isaac witnesses Abraham's left hand clench
with despair as the other hand draws the knife, in reaction to which
Isaac loses faith, a loss the secret of which has never been discussed

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in the history of the world, while this recurrence of the hand is also
massively emphasized and overdetermined by the double occurrence
of the locution at hand in the fabular moral about the mother and
child. The morals themselves move from the first, the blackening of
the mother's breast at the time of weaning, so that the child loses
only that part, whereas her loving gaze endures; through the second,
in which the mother's virginal concealing of the breast is considered
as the child's loss of the mother; through the third, which asserts the
increasing separation of the mother and child and their mutual grief
over the brief sorrow; to the fourth, where we find the mother's pro-
vision of stronger sustenance [F0de] so that the child does not perish.
It is easy to see the progression between the first and the last of
these variations if we take the first as showing Isaac's recognition of
God as his father and the last as the loss of that faith; and if we con-
sider the two intervening retellings as introducing the themes of
Abraham's own loss of faith (the darkening of the eyes in two) and
his evening-time non-comprehension of his situation because of the
failure of thought in three. But our inability to come up with a cer-
tain progression incorporating all the significant elements of each
variation is not necessarily a failure, for the allegorical thinker-man
who thinks these thoughts ponders them thus and in many similar
ways, thus leaving us with an open and potentially infinite series.
The evening of the third account tells us that Abraham finds no
peace after the fact. If he cannot, how should we?
Sometimes a strong reading, in its very deformation of the original

text (here, that of Kierkegaard) might cast an important light on the
original through a process of emendation, scission, and elision that is
known as - criticism. During February 1918, Franz Kafka wrote a se-
ries of aphorisms devoted to different texts of Kierkegaard. This series
ends with a set of notes on Fear and Trembling. These small texts them-
selves deserve a lengthy commentary, which I will not perform here,
choosing for my own purposes to cite only one, perhaps the clearest
one:
Abraham is caught in the following deception: he cannot bear the uniformity of the
world. But the world itself, on the contrary, is uncommonly manifold, a fact that can
be checked any tune one takes a handful of world and looks more closely. Naturally
Abraham also knows this. The lament over the uniformity of the world is therefore in
fact a lament about the not deep enough mixing in with the manifoldness of the
world. Therefore also a springboard into the world.16

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Without making any claim to the understanding of this aphorism, or

to that of any of the others surrounding it, we may always draw at-
tention to the elements: the tension between uniformity (certainly
parallel to the employment of the category of the universal, das All-
gemeine, in the other notes) and diversity (likewise parallel to the sin-
gularity, das Einzelne), also the mixture of these (so similar to the
movement hin und her between these, that is to say, the dialectic it-
self). But what interests me here is not these objective and rather
prosaic parallels, but the appearence of earth or world [eine Hand-
voll Welt], and of the idea that it is lamentation that serves as a
springboard [Sprungbrett] into the world. Despair - lamentation -
serves as a ground by which to go into the world here. Mixing-in is
commentary; manifoldness is variation.
On 17 January 1918, a few days before Kafka writes the aphorisms
explicitly devoted to an Auseinandersetzung with Kierkegaard, he
writes a parable called Prometheus:
Von Prometheus berichten vier Sagen: Nach der ersten wurde er, weil er die Gtter
verraten hatte, am Kaukasus festgeschmiedet, und die Gtter schickten Adler, die von
seiner immer wachsenden Leber fraen.
Nach der zweiten drckte sich Prometheus im Schmerz vor den zuhackenden
Schnbeln immer tiefer in den Felsen, bis er mit ihm eins wurde.
Nach der dritten wurde in den Jahrtausenden sein Verrat vergessen, die Gtter ver-
gaen, die Adler, er selbst.
Nach der vierten wurde man des grundlos Gewordenen mde. Die Gtter wurden
mde, die Adler wurden mde, die Wunde schlo sich mde.
Blieb das unerklrliche Felsgebirge. - Die Sage versucht, das Unerklrliche zu er-
klren. Da sie aus einem Wahrheitsgrund kommt, mu sie wieder im Unerklrlichen
enden.17
What is at issue in these four retellings of the Prometheus myth,

which were written down so close in time to the moment at which
16
Franz Kafka Hochzeitsvorbereitungen auf dem Lande und andere Prosa aus dem
Nachla, Frankfurt am Main 1983 [1935], p. 92, my translation. The date of composi-
tion seems to be 26 February 1918. The explicit references to Kierkegaard go back
at least to 8 February.
17
Kafka op. cit., p. 74. This parable is contained in the third of eight school notebooks,
which, according to internal dating, have been filled consecutively. The aphorisms
on Kierkegaard are scattered in the next (fourth) notebook, beginning with a note
on 8 February and ending 26 February. The note immediately following this text is
not without interest in this context: Das Gesetz der Quadrille ist klar, alle Tnzer
kennen es, es gilt fr alle Zeiten. Aber irgendeine der Zuflligkeiten des Lebens, die
nie geschehen durften, aber immer wieder geschehn, bringt dich allein zwischen den
Reihen. Vielleicht verwirren sich dadurch auch die Reihen selbst, aber das weit du
nicht, du weit nur von deinem Unglck. We should meditate this Quadrille.

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Kafka was making some of his most explicit references, not only to
Kierkegaard, but to Fear and Trembling! What is at stake here is the
Grund, the ground of the telling. All parties grow weary of that which
has become groundless, des grundlos Gewordenen, not only of that
which has become pointless, but, more importantly, of that which has
become and which is - yet, despite its becoming - without cause,
ground, or reason. What the story tries to make clear, to explain in
the way in which phenomena of the natural world are explained, er-
klrt, is the inexplicable, das Unerklrliche. Because the parable, die
Sage, comes out of the ground of truth, Wahrheitsgrund, it must end
again in the inexplicable.18
Whereas Kierkegaard gives us the tale of Abraham, the story from
the first book of the Hebrew Bible, the basic document of what we
call Judeo-Christian or western history, Kafka takes us back to the
before of human history: Prometheus is not a human, but a Titan,
punished by the gods for helping the humans by stealing fire. In do-
ing so, Kafka thus follows Kierkegaard's own backward sequence
from Descartes to Socrates to Abraham and further. What we witness
in Kafka's text is the birth of the human and of the divine in the for-
getting of the myth that came before history. But it is important that
the last story is not that of the forgetting, but of growing weary.
What remains, what remained at the end of all the accounts, is the
cliff face, das Felsgebirge. After Prometheus has become one with the
rock, after the affair has been forgotten by all the actants, after the
same parties have grown tired (no mention being made at all here of
the humans of whose anthropology the myth is part), what remains is
this rock. The rock, the Wahrheitsgrund, is inexplicable because it is
itself not something that is either true or not, but rather the ground
of the appearance of truth. That which is this condition of the appear-
ance of truth is itself neither true nor not true. Because the legend
comes out of this Wahrheitsgrund it must end again in the inexplica-
18
Hans Blumenberg has treated this Kafka story in and as the end of his magisterial
Work at Myth, Cambridge, MA., 1985 [1979]. But, even though Blumenberg stresses
the importance of the Grund here, he misses the simple complexity of Kafka's locu-
tion des grundlos Gewordenen as that which has become, das Gewordene, and
yet, contrary to the nature of all things that become, is grundlos, without a cause,
without an Erklrung. Perhaps Blumenberg misses this crucial paradox because,
having neglected the crucial Kierkegaard intertext, he cannot conceive of some-
thing-that-is-not-something, i.e., faith, which becomes (or doesn't) but has no cause.
Blumenberg sees Nietzsche, but he does not see Kierkegaard, the Sprungbrett des
grundlos Gewordenen into this Kafka text.

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ble. This again (wieder) must mean that the ground of truth and the
inexplicable are somehow correlated with each other, and are per-
haps the same.
Certainly, it is the rock, the cliff - that is the matrix, the mother -
from which autochthonous beings spring. Likewise the rock of the
sacrifice does not appear at all in Kierkegaard's variations upon
Abraham, because the matrix, the rock upon which the generations
are born and die, is, literally, the story of generation, that is to say the
stories of the mother and child and of their progressive separation.
But faith, that which does not appear through organic generation, or
according to the rules of causal, sufficient reason of any kind (and
which, perhaps, does not occur at all), does not occur in relation to
the matrix, the mother, the rock, but in the relation between father
and son. This is the reason why the rock does not appear in
Kierkegaard: for he who works can give birth to his own father - not
by means of procreation or any other mode of organic generation
(which is spiritually sterile), but by the hysteron proteron that is based
on the absence of the hysteron, the womb, the matrix, the mother.
Faith is not only hysteria, it is male hysteria: Her hjaelper det ikke at
have Abraham til Fader, eller 17 Ahner, den, der ikke vil arbeide,
harn passer det paa, hvad der staaer skrevet om Israels Jomfruer, han
f0der Vind, men den, der vil arbeide, han f0der sin egen Fader
(Here it does not help to have Abraham as father or to have seven-
teen ancestors. The one who will not work fits what is written about
the virgins of Israel: he gives birth to wind - but the one who will
work gives birth to his own father). (S. 27 / p. 27)19
In Kierkegaard's variations the rock is never mentioned. There, in-
stead of the Caucasus, we have Mount Moriah. The parallel between
the stories is astonishing: for it is not only that, in both cases, we are
dealing with a scene of sublime elevation (Mount Moriah, the cliff
19
I am much indebted to Juliana Schiesari The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism,
Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature, Ithaca, NY
1992, as well as to Michael Theunissen's lectures at the University of Copenhagen
during Spring 1995 (Melancholia - Acedia - Schwermut. Zur Vorgeschichte einer
Kierkegaardischen Anthropologie). Schiesari's account of the elision of woman via
the self-feminization of the melancholic man is essential to the understanding of
these opening passages of Fear and Trembling. But her claim that men, in this dis-
cursive regime, are melancholies, whereas women are depressed hysterics, requires a
more complicated articulation with the theme of the differences between masculine
and feminine despair (as Kierkegaard himself elaborates them later in the same
book) than I can do here.

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face in the Caucasus), but also that both stories are stories of genera-
tion. They are not just any myths for their respective cultures; for
each of them is the myth of the origin of the human: in the beginning
of civilization with fire, in the beginning of monotheism, of history,
with faith, that which is supposed to be handed down through the
generations. But, both in Kierkegaard and in Kafka, the mother and
the rock are the silent, third parties in the story of generation, the
ground upon which the father-son relationship takes place. Like the
messenger in Hamann's parable, they are not characters, but condi-
tions of possibility.
In both cases there is the motif of the conflict - one can surely say
the mortal conflict - between fathers and sons. The Titans were the
forbears of the gods, and the gods killed them off. But Prometheus'
>mortality< is the forgetting of him: everyone forgets him, even him-
self. And after the forgetting, they grow weary. This is the scene of a
wake. In the case of Abraham, the father is prepared (on the basis of
the command from his Father, God) to sacrifice, that is, to kill the
son. Fire, as we say, is - to use the metaphor so catastrophically it be-
comes absolutely redundant - what we call a Promethean discovery.
Once discovered - or given - it cannot be forgotten. But what of
faith? What is its fate? And is it found or given?
After the four variations Kierkegaard writes on Abraham, neither
Abraham, nor Kierkegaard, nor the man who ponders Abraham, nor
Johannes de silentio, nor Isaac, nor Sarah, nor Eliezer, nor Hagar, nor
Ishmael - nor any of their descendants, who populate the First Book
of Moses we call Genesis, nor, therefore, we ourselves - is in any bet-
ter position to know. Faith is grundlos: it is that which has come into
being, es ist geworden, which is why we revere Abraham and his
name. But, at the same time, it is without cause, in the sense of one
material thing causing another material thing - the kind of causality
explained by Erklrung - it is, to follow Kafka's exact formulation,
des grundlos Gewordenen. It is inexplicable, which is why we (the
Greeks, the Hebrews - and their children, the Christians) have to tell
stories, Sagen, in order to explain it. But Kafka says that the legend
tries [versucht] to explain it. He does not say that it explains it. For,
each time anyone tells the story, it is necessary that there be a ground
of truth that is, in itself, not explained. And it is thus that this ground,
which is the cause of lamentation, is the springboard, the board from
which one leaps, if not into faith, then into - or out of - the world.

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Abraham:

Who Could Possibly Understand Him?1

For Vivian and Viviana

That is to say, the purpose of repeating conventional statements

Whence comes the urge toward totality in the interpretation of a

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ing to do with an abstract desire to destroy a set of unspoken presup-

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manifests itself, very often, in trembling. This is simple enough. But

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Let us move on from the title to the subtitle. Paratext is important,

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ness, can make - merely by virtue of its positing - a determination.

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But the transition from kingdom, and despotic or tyrannical king-

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manifests an understanding that goes beyond what has been reported

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This is a most certain reference to Socrates, the old veteran dispu-

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anxiety and trembling enter into the discursive vocabulary of the

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knights (whether of faith, infinity or of resignation), spiritual trial

This is a story of obsession, of the obsession to which the reader, any

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the story. Adulthood, then, is the renunciation of the beautiful,

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the beautiful story of childhood. In order to break off the story of

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This text is immediately followed by the first of the variations of our

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love - what should be the very position of the father - to that of

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The language of the universal creeps in here, as does non-understand-

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for Isaac here is augured by another substitution in thought, the one

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out of the problem of their falling spice prices by drowning a few

In trying to go so closely through the four variations with which

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Sometimes a strong reading, in its very deformation of the original

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Without making any claim to the understanding of this aphorism, or

What is at issue in these four retellings of the Prometheus myth,

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