In order to do so, Kierkegaard centers his existential exploration of Christianity on the figure of Abraham, who is called by God in Genesis 22 to sacrifice his son, Isaac. He hoped to problematize what he felt were overly simplistic and uncritical interpretations of Christianity. Kierkegaard published Fear and Trembling in 1843. As in the passage quoted above, the narrator Johannes de Silentio speaks directly to us. Kierkegaard regularly wrote under pseudonyms, and Fear and Trembling is no exception.

Based in Copenhagen, Kierkegaard wrote prolifically in an effort to revive the Christian faith among Europeans and also explored aesthetics, ethics, and social criticism. He is often called the “father of existentialism” for his exploration of anxiety and absurdity. S øren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a nineteenth-century Danish philosopher. I am able to make from the springboard the great leap whereby I pass into infinity, my back is like that of a tight-rope dancer, having been twisted in my childhood, hence I find this easy with a one-two-three! I can walk about existence on my head but the next thing I cannot do, for I cannot perform the miraculous, but can only be astonished by it.” The dialectic of faith is the finest and most remarkable of all it possesses an elevation, of which indeed I can form a conception, but nothing more. “Generally people are of the opinion that what faith produces is not a work of art, that it is coarse and common work, only for the more clumsy natures but in fact this is far from the truth.

Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard