Fear and Trembling up to Boston

Today’s cool morning air was a great relief from yesterday’s beating sun. After last night’s break from the books to practice swing dancing, students on the New England High School Summer Program turned their minds back to their studies this morning after breakfast.

For the day’s only class, the programmers read Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which considers four dramatizations of the story of Abraham and Isaac to contemplate the greatness of Abraham’s faith. Tutors challenged Kierkegaard’s position, leading students to ponder what made Abraham so great in Kierkegaard’s eyes.

Sections considered Kierkegaard’s four retellings of the trip to Mt. Moriah, where Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac as the Lord had commanded. “Each of the four stories had some failing in either Abraham or Isaac,” said attendee Mary B. “But those failings aren’t present in Scripture, and so it seems to highlight how great Abraham was.” But Kierkegaard’s admiration for the patriarch’s faith verges on the extreme. “He talks about Abraham’s faith as thought it was unreasonable,” said Naomi P. “He used the word ‘preposterous,’ as though that was what made it so great.”

Students will continue to ponder that seeming conflict between faith and reason later in the Summer Program, but today they are taking a break from the usual two-class schedule, clearing the afternoon for a day trip to Boston! Students and prefects gathered in Gould Hall after class, where they played foosball and chatted while waiting for the buses to arrive to ferry them to “the Cradle of Liberty”.

Please check out the Summer Program Blog tomorrow to read all about their trip!