Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard
Published 1843 · 313 pages · 40,000 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Philosophy, Theology, Existentialism
How hard is Fear and Trembling to read?
Fear and Trembling scores 57 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
- Kierkegaard's vocabulary mixes theological, philosophical, and everyday language. Key terms — the absurd, infinite resignation, the knight of faith — are coined or repurposed with specific meanings.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- The prose alternates between elaborate philosophical periods and short, passionate declarations. The repetitive circling around the Abraham story creates a hypnotic rhythmic effect.
- Abstraction: 75 out of 100
- The argument operates at a high level of philosophical and theological abstraction, using the Abraham story as a springboard for fundamental questions about faith, ethics, and the individual.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Dense with philosophical argument but also deliberately repetitive. Kierkegaard circles the same problem from multiple angles, which spreads the conceptual content across the text.
- Narrative indirection: 60 out of 100
- The pseudonymous authorship, the multiple retellings of the Abraham story, and the deliberate refusal to reach a conclusion all create significant indirection.
- Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
- Abraham, Isaac, Mount Moriah, the knife, the ram — the biblical figures carry enormous symbolic weight and function simultaneously as narrative and philosophical concept.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- The pseudonymous narrator claims he cannot understand faith while demonstrating extraordinary insight into its structure. Kierkegaard's use of irony is complex and multilayered.
- Resolution withholding: 65 out of 100
- The book deliberately refuses to make faith comprehensible. Johannes de Silentio ends where he began — unable to understand Abraham, unable to stop thinking about him.
- Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
- Multiple preliminary sections followed by three 'problemata' that examine different aspects of the Abraham story. The repetitive structure is deliberately disorienting.
How Fear and Trembling is regarded
Fear and Trembling holds a literary regard score of 88 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.