Fear and Trembling
What is Johannes de Silentio's importance to the book, Fear and Trembling?
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Johannes de Silentio is the pseudonym Kierkegaard employs in writing Fear and Trembling. Johannes de Silentio literally means “John of the Silence” and is likely both a reference to John the apostle and the theme of silence explored in the text, i.e., both Abraham’s silence in complying with God’s command to sacrifice Isaac and the author’s persistent inability to fully comprehend or understand the fullness of Abraham’s actions. Many of Kierkegaard’s most famous works were written under the conditions of pseudonymity, both as a means of ironic indirect communication and as a way distancing himself from his texts. Several of these pseudonyms are the credited authors of more than one work, however Fear and Trembling is Johannes de Silentio’s only contribution to Kierkegaard’s corpus.
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