966 SØRENKIERKEGAARD
Niels Thulstrup,Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel,translated by George L. Stengren
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); John W. Elrod,Kierkegaard and
Christendom(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); C. Stephen Evans,
Kierkegaard’s “Fragments” and “Postscript”: The Religious Philosophy of
Johannes Climacus(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983); Merold
Westphal,Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society(Macon, GA: Mercer
University Press, 1987); C. Stephen Evans,Passionate Reason: Making Sense of
Kierkegaard’sPhilosophical Fragments (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1992); Louis Pojman,Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Religion(New York: University
Press of America, 1999); John Lipitt,Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling
(London: Routledge, 2003); Michael Theunissen,Kierkegaard’s Concept of
Despair,translated by Barbara Harshav and Helmut Illbruck (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2005); and David A. Roberts,Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical
Evil(London: Continuum, 2006). For collections of essays, see H.A. Johnson and
N. Thulstrup, eds.,A Kierkegaard Critique(Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1967); Jerry
H. Gill, ed.,Essays on Kierkegaard(Minneapolis, MN: Burgess, 1969); Josiah
Thompson, ed.,Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays(Garden City, NY:
Anchor Books, 1972); Harold Bloom, ed.,Søren Kierkegaard(New York: Chelsea
House, 1989); Célline Léon and Sylvia Walsh, eds.,Feminist Interpretations of
Søren Kierkegaard(College Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997);
Alistair Hannay and Gordon Marino, eds., The Cambridge Companion to
Kierkegaard(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Jonathan Rée
and Jane Chamberlain, eds.,Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader(Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1997).Søren Kierkegaard,Fear and Trembling,“Teleological Suspension of the Ethical,” edited and translated by
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Copyright © 1983 by Princeton
University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
FEAR AND TREMBLING (in part)
ISTHERE ATELEOLOGICALSUSPENSION OF THEETHICAL?
The ethical as such is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which
from another angle means that it applies at all times. It rests immanent in itself, has noth-
ing outside itself that is its telos[end, purpose] but is itself the telosfor everything
outside itself, and when the ethical has absorbed this into itself, it goes not further. The
single individual, sensately and psychically qualified in immediacy, is the individual who
has his telosin the universal, and it is his ethical task continually to express himself in
this, to annul his singularity in order to become the universal. As soon as the single indi-
vidual asserts himself in his singularity before the universal, he sins, and only by
acknowledging this can he be reconciled again with the universal. Every time the single