On Fear and Trembling’s Motif of the Promise: Faith, Ethics and the Politics of Tragedy

Abstract This article interrogates the concepts of faith, the ethical, and tragedy in Fear and Trembling by examining Johannes De Silentio’s allusions to heroic characters. I argue that these heroes are emblematic of faith or tragedy through their orientation to a promise in their respective mythic narratives. Abraham’s faith in the covenant with God commits him to the reconcilability of virtue and the good life, while the tragic heroes’ commitments to the ethical reveal their inability to transcend the (tragic) presumption that virtue and the good life are ultimately incommensurable. I conclude by sketching a politics corresponding to De Silentio’s conception of tragedy.