Kierkegaard stumbles across the great rift between religious tradition and secular humanism in this fascinating little book. Over the course of fifty some-odd pages, he grapples with the glaring inconsistency of ethics found in many old testament stories and religious traditions in general.

How are we to judge a man today that takes his only child to the mountains to murder him in the name of God? We would undoubtedly lock the man in prison. Why, then, do we revere Abraham as the Father of faith rather than a mad man? What is the difference? How are we to recognize the difference as outside observers? Kierkegaard’s conclusion, somewhat unsatisfyingly, is that we simply cannot understand Abraham. Nor can we understand any man of faith, for that matter, as he relates to humanity in general or, in other words, the ethical.

Kierkegaard's attempt to refute Hegel's interpretation of the ethical left me more persuaded by Hegel in the end. I can only conclude, for my own sense of what is moral and ethical, that my actions must not harm or compel another if we have no means by which the question of rightness can be collectively settled. Perhaps I, like Kierkegaard, simply cannot make the two movements of faith and, instead, I can only be content with never understanding the hero of faith, and must merely govern myself according to the ethical.