What Does Kierkegaard Mean By Eternal Consciousness

Question 1) in fear and trembling, Kierkegaard talks about Eternal Consciousness. He does this on page 49. What I believe Kierkegaard means by the eternal consciousness is our ability to think. We have this ability to think and make decisions so we have some sort of control over what we do. This becomes clear when Kierkegaard talks about people going through the world like a “ship through a sea”(Kierkegaard, p.49) and a “wind through the desert” (Kierkegaard, p.49). It seems by using those two examples he essentially says that if we cant think then we just go through life aimlessly. By having this eternal consciousness we can think and actually make decisions so we don’t go through life aimlessly. I also believed this can be related to faith as well, people choose to have faith. Abraham could have not gone and try to sacrifice Isaac, but he chose to do it because he had faith. Even prior to the sacrifice when Abraham was praying to have children Kierkegaard says that it is ok to be sad, but it is “greater to have faith and more blessed to behold the believer” (Kierkegaard, p.51). This implies that making the decision to believe is most important. That’s what I think he means by Eternal Consciousness,
The way he uses it is odd, because he doesn’t completely reject it, he says that it is a sort of starting point to a fact (Marcel, p.16). At the very end of page sixteen he does say that he does reference the body as a machine and that he doesn’t know what happens when it no longer works (Marcel, p.16). When he refers to that he is talking about death and he is basically saying we don’t know what happens to us. Why this concept is important because in his essay he seems to look at the relationship between our bodies and us. And because incarnation is about being attached to a body he tries to see if it is