As part of my review for my final, I’ve decided to blog about some of the texts I felt I never fully understood (*cough* or read *cough*) throughout the year with Arts One so that I can at least be a little prepared if I have to identify a quote during the exam.

First on my list is Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard, read along with the Book of Genesis, but I haven’t finished rereading that one. So first thing’s first.

The first time around, I had difficulty fully comprehending Kierkegaard, and I still obviously don’t fully comprehend it. Kierkegaard and I are better friends now, though. A lot of his argumentation seemed very stream-of-consciousness at the first time I read it, thus I had a hard time connecting ideas together and relating it to “the big picture”, but rereading the text has helped me appreciate the ideas better.

Something that didn’t quite occur to me the first time around was the implication that Kierkegaard was making on faith. Growing up in a very Catholic Filipino family and attending an all-girls Catholic school for five years, faith becomes something of the every day. Say your prayers–“God will provide”, even if not in the way that you expect. I agree with Kierkegaard, however, that faith isn’t something of the every day. It is beyond all logic, paradoxical in its premise and in its execution because of the universal.

I think Kierkegaard’s endeavor isn’t something that I engaged myself in completely the first time I read his book. I didn’t grasp how engaging in faith was engaging in something incomprehensible, and I definitely didn’t find myself admiring Abraham the same way that Kierkegaard does, but I’m beginning to see it now.