Monday, March 21, 2022

Kierkegaard / Repetition - Summary

Repetition or On Repetition: A Psychological Experiment is a philosophical work by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, published under the pseudonym Constantin Constantius.

The work, through a love story and some reflections on the biblical story of Job , exposes the meaning of repetition, interpreted by many Greek philosophers. 

Repetition was written by Kierkegaard in Berlin and Copenhagen two years after the breakup of his engagement to Regine Olsen. The first part of the work is made up of two independent accounts, the account of unhappy love and that of the Danish philosopher and theologian's stay in Berlin. Constantius says that these stories are "both a failed attempt at repetition".

Another part of Kierkegaard's Repetition deals with the biblical figure of Job. According to some scholars, the ending of this part was "reworked" after the news that Regine Olsen had married someone else. 

 

Concept of Rpetition

Kierkegaard explains the title of his work which concerns the conscious repetition of situations he has already experienced. In his opinion, repetition «plays a very important role in modern philosophy, since repetition is a decisive term for what was 'reminiscence' among the Greeks. Just as they taught that all knowing is a remembering, so the new philosophy will teach that the whole of life is a repetition".  He distinguishes recollection and repetition. While the object of remembrance is repeated "backward" and makes one unhappy, the repetition remembers its object "forward", and if such repetition succeeds, it makes one happy.

 

Definition of Repetition

Kierkegaard defines repetition as follows: "The dialectic of repetition is simple: what is repeated in fact has been, otherwise it could not be repeated; but the very fact that this has been determines the novelty of the repetition. Saying that all knowing is remembering, the Greeks said: "the whole present existence has existed". By saying that life is a repetition, it is said: "the past existence comes to exist now". Without the category of reminiscence or repetition, the whole of life vanishes in an empty and insubstantial noise. "

 

The Unhappy Love

The account of unhappy love in Kierkegaard's Repetition holds again and again that 

"the only happy love is that of memory" that Constantin Constantius attributes to a writer " who, as far as I know, is sometimes a bit of a cheat". The story concerns a very handsome young man who confides to the author that he is in love. 

But at one point despite being proud and confident, the young confidant burst into tears, leaving the narrator confused  The author who had promised to be close to him in those melancholy moments took him, with his carriage, out of Copenhagen, among the woods and other landscapes, but there was nothing that could detach him from his deep melancholy. Kierkegaard concludes that his mistake  "was this, to stick to the end instead of the beginning. But such a mistake is the assured ruin of a man".

 

The lover slowly loses his faith in his future marriage until the author advises him to get rid of the girl without hurting her honor (like Kierkegaard tried to do with Regina). The young lover approved the plan but in the end does "not have the strength to carry out the plan [...] because he would hardly have endured the horrors of the adventure". The conclusion of this account of unhappy love is, according to Kierkegaard, this : «My young friend did not understand repetition, did not believe in it and did not want it strongly. The trouble with his fate was that he really loved the girl, but to really love her he would first have to get out of the poetic confusion into which he had fallen".

 

 

Journey to Berlin

The second part of Kierkegaard’s Repetition is the journey to Berlin (a real event from Kierkegaard's life). in this part the philosopher travels to Berlin "to ascertain how far a repetition was possible" by retracing a trip he already made. He rather quickly reaches the conclusion that no repetition is possible: "The only thing to repeat was the impossibility of a repetition". Angered, the philosopher decides to return home only to find the his servant did not foresee his early return, and everything is in disorder. 

 


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