Repetition (Kierkegaard) - Criticism

Criticism

Max Scheler wrote Ressentiment in 1913 which applied some of Kierkegaard's ideas to the spirit of the early 20th century. What Scheler called ressentiment (resentment) Kierkegaard called envy. Kierkegaard published these words on the same day he published Repetition.

When stinginess lives in the heart, when one gives with one eye and looks with seven to see what one obtains in return one readily discovers the multiplicity of sin. But when love lives in the heart, then the eye is never deceived, because when love gives, it does not watch the gift but keeps its eye on the Lord. When envy lives in the heart, the eye has the power to elicit the impure even from the pure; but when love lives in the heart, the eye has the power to love forth the good in the impure, but his eye sees not the impure but the pure, which it loves, and loves forth by loving it. Yes, there is a power in this world that in its language translates good into evil, but there is power from above that translates evil into good-it is the love that hides a multitude of sins. … When hate lives in the heart, sin is right there at the door of a human being, and the multitude of its cravings is present to him. But when love lives in the heart, then sin flees far away and he does not even catch a glimpse of it. When quarreling, malice, anger, litigation, discord, factionalism live in the heart, does one then need to go far to discover the multiplicity of sin, or does one need to live long to bring it forth all around one? But when joy, peace patience, gentleness, faithfulness, kindness, meekness, continence live in the heart, no wonder then that a person, even if he stood in the middle of the multiplicity of sin, would become a stranger, a foreigner, who would understand only very little of the customs of the country; if an explanation were required of him, what a covering of a multitude of sins this would be! Soren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong, p. 61-62

'The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 1915, had a short article about Soren Kierkegaard. They wrote,

In Gjentagelsen (' Repetition,' October 1843), Kierkegaard sketches an abortive transition to the religious sphere. 'Repetition' is one of his characteristic ideas; it signifies persistence in, and faithfulness to, a chosen course of life, and is thus opposed to the (esthetic standpoint, with constancy only in change. But Kierkegaard also gives the word a more special meaning—that rather of 'resumption' (Gjentagelse, 'taking again')—implying that each higher stage of life carries with it the lower in a transfigured form. Gjentagelsen tells of a young man who seeks to pass from the (esthetic to the religious sphere, but for want of a true penitence becomes merely a romanticist; i.e., he simply resumes his old self; and his case is contrasted with that of Job, who humbled himself utterly before God, and at last regained all that he had lost, and more—the true ' repetition."

Lev Shestov was a philosopher who wondered how Russia had missed Kierkegaard. He understood Repetition in the following way.

"Here is how Kierkegaard tells of this in his Repetition: "The greatness of Job is therefore not that he said, 'The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord' - what he indeed said at first and did not later repeat... The greatness of Job lies in the fact that the passion of freedom is not choked or calmed in him by any false expression... Job demonstrates the compass of his world view through the firmness with which he knows how to eschew all crafty ethical evasions and cunning wiles." Everything that Kierkegaard says of Job can also be said of himself. And here is the closing passage in which Kierkegaard says, "Job is blessed and received everything back again double. This is what people call a repetition... Thus there is a repetition. When does it come? When did it come for Job? When all conceivable human certainty and probability was on the side of impossibility." And, according to Kierkegaard's deep conviction, this repetition will "obtain a very important role in the newer philosophy," for "the new philosophy will teach that all of life is a repetition." Kierkegaard As A Religious Philosopher, by Lev Shestov, 1938

Kierkegaard wrote,

What kind of power is it that wants to deprive me of my honor and my pride and do it in such a meaningless way! Am I inevitably guilty, a deceiver, whatever I do, even if I do nothing? Or have I perhaps gone mad? Then the best thing to do would be to lock me up, for people cravenly fear particularly the utterances of the insane and the dying. What does it mean: mad? What must I do to enjoy civic esteem, to be regarded as sensible? Why does no one answer? I offer a reasonable reward to anyone who invents a new world! I have set forth the alternatives. Is there anyone so clever that he knows more than two? But if he does not know more, then it certainly is nonsense that I am mad, unfaithful, and a deceiver, while the girl is faithful and reasonable and esteemed by the people. Repetition p. 202

He is always asking himself questions just as Johann Gottlieb Fichte had done in his 1800 book, The Destination of Man, also called The Vocation of Man where he wrote against the easy answer for every question by vain repetitions.

The book is therefore not intended for philosophers by profession, who will find in it nothing that may not be found in other writings of the same author. It is intended to be intelligible to all readers who are able really to understand a book at all. Those who have accustomed themselves merely to the repetition of certain sets of phrases in varied order, and who mistake this operation of memory for that of the understanding, will probably find it unintelligible. It ought to exercise on the reader an attractive and animating power, raising him from the sensuous world, to that which is above sense. The author at least has not performed his task without some of this happy inspiration.

Kierkegaard was influential in Martin Buber's Philosophy and Martin Heidegger's development of the "new philosophical category" Dasein.

Rollo May wrote an excellent history of Existentialism from the psychological point of view. He said,

The existential way of understanding human beings has some illustrious progenitors in Western history, such as Socrates in his dialogues, Augustine in his depth-psychological analysis of the self, Pascal in his struggle to find a place for the “heart’s reasons which the reason knows not of.” But it arose specifically just over a hundred years ago in Kierkegaard’s violent protest against the reigning rationalism of his day Hegel’s “totalitarianism of reason,” to use Maritain’s phrase. Kierkegaard proclaimed that Hegel’s identification of abstract truth with reality was an illusion and amounted to trickery. “Truth exists,” wrote Kierkegaard, “only as the individual himself produces it in action.” Rollo May, The Discovery of Being, 1983 p. 49 See also p. 68ff

Kierkegaard was very concerned about his relationship with God. C. Stephen Evans, says that

"Kierkegaard regarded himself as a psychologist. Three of his books, The Concept of Anxiety, Repetition, and The Sickness Unto Death, are designated as psychological by their subtitles, and he frequently called himself a psychologist in his journal. … Imagine a naïve Christian who knows nothing about psychology as a science-let’s call him “Kirk”-engaged in conversation with a knowledgeable psychologist-“Dr. John.” Dr. John tells Kirk that psychology models itself after the natural sciences and attempts to gain a scientific understanding of human behavior and mental processes. Kirk asks Dr. John what psychologists think about God and God’s relationship to human beings. Dr. John replies that individual psychologists have different beliefs about God. He himself is a Christian, he tells Kirk, and of course, for him any ultimate understanding of human beings requires a theological perspective too. But, he hastens to add, his personal religious beliefs do not enter into psychology as a scientific discipline because science restricts itself to the natural realm, which can be studied by empirical methods.

Dr. John’s answer leaves Kirk dissatisfied. He has a lot of lingering misgivings. Kirk can understand that science may have to limit itself to the empirically observable, but he questions the value, or even the truthfulness, of the knowledge gained by such a science. After all, he thinks, isn’t the most important thing about human beings their relationship to God? Can anyone hope to understand them without understanding them in this light?" Soren Kierkegaard's Christian Psychology: Insight for Counseling and Pastoral Care By C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard as a Psychologist, p. 25-26

Clare Carlisle described the internal and external struggle that every existing individual has to go through. "The struggle between philosophy and existence (often a struggle internal to the individual, especially to the intellectual and perhaps academic individual who is this text’s likely reader) is essential to Kierkegaard’s dramatization of his conflict with Hegel. Throughout Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship the ‘abstract thinker’, the ‘pitiful professorial figure is criticized from the perspective of the existing individual. Challenging the Hegelian view that the Concept expresses the highest form of truth, texts such as Repetition constitute ‘a polemic against the truth as knowledge’ and suggest instead that truth must be grasped in terms of ‘subjectivity’ or ‘inwardness’."

Both Constantin and the Young Man had the power to act as single individuals instead of trying to become world historically famous or worrying about the crowd but neither of them used the power. They both just pursued the idea. Kierkegaard says of them,

Is it not something to make one shutter in a period of quiet, to make one feel faint in the odd moment-to have power and not know for what purpose one has it! Civil justice keeps watch so that everyone stays within his bounds, so that each individual may serve the whole. When it discovers a man whose power is attracting everyone’s attention, it demands that he explain for what purpose he uses it, and if he is unable to do so, he is suspected of not being a good citizen but perhaps a thug. Human justice is only a semblance of divine justice, which also directs itself to the single individual, and its scrutiny is more rigorous. If it meets a person who, on being asked for what purpose he has his power, can give no other answer than that he himself does not really know, then justice turns out to cast suspicion on him. Perhaps it does not take the power from him, since he may not have misused it yet, but the suspicion becomes an anxiety in his soul that awakens when he least expects it. What does such a person lack? What else but strengthening in the inner being. Three Upbuilding Discourses, Strengthening in the Inner Being, October 16, 1843, from Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses p. 91

Later, in The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard discusses this power again in terms of the eternal. His idea of the eternal is comparable to Nietzsche's idea of eternal return, only backwards. Niels Nymann Eriksen has written about Kierkegaard's category of repetition. This book explores "the Other" and "Becoming" as well as "Recollection" and "Repetition."