ABSTRACT
After the Problemata, Fear and Trembling closes with a brief ‘Epilogue’ that returns to the economic imagery with which the book began. Johannes mentions a tactic used by Dutch spice merchants during a slump in the market: dumping cargo at sea in order to ‘force up the price’ (FT 145) of what was left. Johannes claims: ‘That was a pardonable, perhaps necessary, stratagem. Is it something similar we need in the world of spirit?’ (FT 145). Note how this echoes the book’s opening: that the age is putting on ‘a veritable clearance sale’ (FT 41), selling faith at a knock-down price. In the Epilogue, Johannes insists – twice – that faith is ‘the highest passion in a human being’ (FT 145, 146). Despite what the Hegelian mantra of the age would have us believe, Johannes insists that one cannot ‘go further’ than faith (FT 147).
