Das Verhältnis von Selbstwerdung und Gott bei Sören Kierkegaard – eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme

In his Fear and Trembling Søren Kierkegaard (alias Johannes de Silentio) wrote that Abraham wanted to sacrifice Isaac for God’s sake as well as for his own sake. Drawing mainly on what Kierkegaard wrote (alias Anti-Climacus) in his Sickness unto Death I disclose that Kierkegaard construes Abraham as someone who becomes a true self, that is, as someone who becomes transparent before God. What this means and how our relationship to God is supposed to be involved in the process of becoming a self is the focus of my paper. While various papers have been written on that topic, my aim here is to give the most charitable interpretation of Kierkegaard’s theses and the theological concepts involved.