Fear And Trembling

“I prostrate myself with the profoundest deference before every systematic ‘bag-peerer’ at the custom house, protesting, ‘This is not the System, it has nothing whatever to do with the System.’”

In the Preface, Kierkegaard explains that his work is not meant to be an easy read, as faith cannot be easy. In this quotation, he explains that his work is not even a philosophical text and ought not to be read as having anything to do with the Hegelian “System” of philosophy, as the pseudonymous Johannes de Silentio claims to not even be a philosopher (34). But this statement is somewhat ironic since the work employs the System; in fact, this quotation proves that fact by using the negative (it is not a work of philosophy) to prove the affirmative (it is, just a philosophy of something indescribable).

“That man was not a thinker, he felt no need of getting beyond faith; he deemed it the most glorious thing to be remembered as the father of it, an enviable lot to possess, even though no one else were to know it.”

Kierkegaard uses the extended metaphor of a man who admires the story of Abraham and envisions four versions of the story to try to comprehend it. The non-thinking man is a metaphor for Kierkegaard himself who, despite being very much a thinker, is like the non-thinker in that he cannot understand faith. And, like the non-thinker, Kierkegaard too wishes he could simply end at faith instead of asking for more as many in his time do.