Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death

One of the foundational books in existential psychology, it is an excellent read although it will challenge your understanding of life and philosophy.

Nice quality, has a good feel to it. As for the book, it's not an easy read but it is very good.

I’ve been wanting to read these two books for a long time now, but was intimidated to make this purchase due to its length. I pictured myself reading a few pages filled with heavy philosophical passages, setting it down, and attacking it more day by day over painstaking weeks. Boy was I wrong. The style of writing, detail of explanation, author’s notes, prologues… everything about its organized flow has got me annotating throughout with easy and has provided me with a deeper understanding, especially of the shift in SK’s feelings about Christianity, the church, and a relationship with God between the first and second book. What a pleasure and a treasure.

The closest I can relate this to is to say people who need it will get what they need out of it, but people who need it and aren't ready to accept help will not. All Kierkegaard did was put forth a proposal for people to try to, in my mind, help them become good under the conditions of which their environment and times put them under [which quite often in human history, is an oppressive and at least today, malevolently nihilistic one]. You're being asked to believe in something beyond yourself to actually find yourself as you are meant to be to maximize your fulfillment, not happiness, if that makes sense. You can be happy today, or even for a second, and miserable quickly after. Yet in any given experience this book taught me at least that misery suffered for some THING is beyond the brief fleeting satisfaction of sensual gratification. Getting a degree sucks with its costs and time investment, but most don't say they regret it necessarily. There's a righteousness to the negative aspects because you did not suffer through them for fleeting pleasure, for nothing, but for a greater goal you eventually, faithfully, achieved. I'd like to point out this is like, my opinion ad yours is just as valid so long as you actually bother to read this book. Seriously, give it a try.

This is one of the more readable books by Soren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling fits well with the biography I read of his life a few years ago and expands the reason why he broke off the engagement of marriage with his fiancé. It is also a very good at explaining the relationship between Abraham and Isaac. How his decision to sacrifice Isaac did not make him a murderer. The book Sickness Unto Death tackles the who issue of sin and how it robs us from really knowing ourselves. The sickness unto death is original sin and its terrible affect on humanity.

Great translation and intense reading, particularly of the Abraham and Isaac story.

This book, particularly the writing of The Sickness Unto Death, has given me the tools necessary to cope spiritually when in the throes of a depressed episode. God is with me and this painful existence is temporary.

Seriously challenges aesthetic life with valid questions.