Abstract

This thesis argues that joy is a constitutive but underexamined feature of faith in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. While the text is often interpreted through sacrifice, silence, dread, paradox, and the teleological suspension of the ethical, these categories do not exhaust Johannes de Silentio’s account of Abraham. By foregrounding Abraham’s joy, this thesis shows that faith is not merely the willingness to surrender the finite, but the capacity to receive the finite again after it has been given up. Isaac is not only Abraham’s beloved son, but the child of promise, the visible form of God’s covenant, and the one through whom joy becomes embodied. For this reason, Abraham’s reception of Isaac “more joyfully than the first time” is not a minor emotional detail, but a decisive description of faith’s double movement. Through an analysis of de Silentio’s failed Abraham stories, the distinction between joy and happiness, the movement of infinite resignation, and the figure of the ordinary Copenhagen merchant, this thesis demonstrates that joy indicates the transformed relation by which the finite is received again without being possessed as security. Joy does not resolve the paradox of faith, nor does it erase dread, sacrifice, or secrecy. Rather, it makes visible how Abraham returns to Isaac, to ordinary life, and to the finite world after Moriah. In this sense, Fear and Trembling is not only a text about anxiety and sacrifice. It is also a text about the joy that makes faith livable.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; Comparative Arts and Letters

Rights

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