FACING THREATS TO EARTHLY FELICITY

This essay offers a close reading of Fear and Trembling against the backdrop of what the author thinks are weaknesses in how the work has been interpreted by others. Some read the text allegorically, as containing a distinctively Christian message about Pauline soteriology. Others read it anagogically, with an emphasis on the moral psychology of Abraham as a human character. In partial disagreement with each, the present essay assembles and interprets the textual evidence around the threat to human happiness posed by our problematic reliance on what Aristotle calls external goods.