Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Fear and Trembling
Faith requires a "teleological suspension of the ethical" — Abraham is great because he believes the absurd
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Fear and Trembling (Early) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Both |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Finite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Fear and Trembling
Time is the existential medium of the leap — the moment of decision in which eternity intersects time. The Christian category of the "moment" (Øieblikket) is central to Kierkegaard's philosophy more broadly (developed in Philosophical Fragments); within Fear and Trembling, the three-day journey to Moriah is the temporal extension of Abraham's decision.
Space
Fear and Trembling
Substantival, Christian-cosmological, lived. Moriah is a real mountain; the journey there is a real spatial movement. Kierkegaard's "geography" is always also existential — the journey *to* the place of sacrifice is inseparable from the inward journey of the knight of faith.
Matter
Fear and Trembling
Material reality is real but not philosophically central. The knife, the wood, the ram — these are concrete particulars that anchor the spiritual drama, but Kierkegaard does not theorise about matter.
Observer
Fear and Trembling
The Kierkegaardian observer is the single individual before God — embodied, plural at the empirical level, but philosophically radically singularised by faith. Agency is genuinely free in the existential sense — Abraham could have refused. Knowledge is immediate (faith is not a philosophical proposition but a way of being). The metaphysical agency is personal in the strongest sense: God speaks, commands, tests, provides. Moral authority is scripture, but with the radical claim that the individual's relation to God can suspend the ethical universal.
Energy
Fear and Trembling
Not thematised. Christian cosmological background of created, substantival, conserved energy.
Information
Fear and Trembling
God's knowledge is total and personal; the inscribed record of Abraham's faith is in Genesis 22. Personal information is unambiguously conserved — Christian resurrection. The inwardness of the single individual before God means that personal identity is conserved at the deepest possible metaphysical level.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The "teleological suspension of the ethical" has shocked readers since 1843. If Abraham's readiness to kill Isaac is praiseworthy because God commanded it, what stops any fanatic's claim of divine command? Kierkegaard's text raises this question (the figure of the "demonic" knight is a serious engagement with the worry) but does not finally answer it; the work is, by design, "fear and trembling," not resolution. Modern readers split sharply on whether the work is profound religious phenomenology or a dangerous endorsement of anti-ethical fanaticism.