Somers-Hall, (0.4), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘0.4 Kierkegaard (5–9/5–10)’, summary

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own.]

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition.
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Part 1
A Guide to the Text

 

 

0 Introduction: Repetition and Difference

0.4 Kierkegaard (5–9/5–10)

Summary

Brief summary:

Kierkegaard presents a notion of repetition in moral life which does not fit the idea of a universal law. Kant says that Abraham should not have assented to God’s request to kill his only son Isaac, since doing so goes against the categorical imperative. Kierkegaard thinks that there is an absolute (God) which is of a higher moral authority than the ethical universal. Repetition in moral life, for Kierkegaard, is not obeying the same law over and over, but rather obeying an absolute whose commands are not homogeneous or self-consistent. What is notable in this conception of repetition is that it is not the reiteration of the same action but rather each time behaving differently in a different situation.

 

 

Summary

“Deleuze claims that there are three thinkers who ‘oppose repetition to all forms of generality’: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Peguy (DR 5/6)” (SH 11). SH will treat Nietzsche’s eternal return later and for now focus mainly on “Kierkegaard’s alternative to generality” (11). Deleuze is concerned mostly with Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. Recall that here Kierkegaard tells the story of God testing Abraham’s obedience by commanding him to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Abraham was willing to do so, but God spares Isaac and allows a ram to be sacrificed instead (12). While Kant thinks that Abraham should not have attempted to kill his son, as this goes against the categorical imperative, Kierkegaard thinks that Abraham has a faith so strong that it overrides such ethical laws.

For Kant, the fact that the commandment to commit murder contravenes the categorical imperative means that it could not have been a commandment given by God, and hence Abraham acted immorally in being willing to fulfil it” (12).

[In Kant, the universal is the absolute. But in Kierkegaard, there is an absolute, God, that has a higher authority than the universal.]

The position that Kierkegaard puts forward in Fear and Trembling is rather that the incommensurability of Abraham’s actions with the moral law shows that Abraham’s faith is higher than any ethical considerations [the following sentence quotes Kierkegaard]:

The paradox of faith, then, is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual – to recall a distinction in dogmatics rather rare these days – determines his relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal. (Kierkegaard 1983: 70)

What ultimately justifies Abraham’s actions is a direct relationship with God that is incomprehensible from the point of view of universal law. This is a relationship that necessarily falls outside of the sphere of generality and law.
(12, quoting: Kierkegaard, Søren (1983), Fear and Trembling/Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press.)

[I do not find the following point regarding Job to be clear enough for me to summarize. I cannot grasp what about Job’s story is repetition. Is Kierkegaard saying that the reiteration of punishments is repetition, and Bildad argues that by letting them come repeatedly, that they will come to be exhausted? Is the thunderstorm the end of the reiterations, but in Deleuze’s interpretation, somehow a repetition?  I will quote it so you can interpret it properly for yourself.]

Kierkegaard makes clear the relation of this moment of faith to repetition in Repetition, this time with a discussion of Job. Job is also tested by God, who allows him to suffer misfortunes to prove to the devil that Job’s faith is not a consequence of God’s protection of him from misfortune. In this case, Job’s restoration is equated with repetition in a way that mirrors the return of Isaac to Abraham [the following paragraph quotes Kierkegaard]:

So there is a repetition, after all. When does it occur? Well, that is hard to say in any human language. When did it occur for Job? When every thinkable human certainty and probability were impossible. Bit by bit he loses everything, and hope thereby gradually vanishes, inasmuch as actuality, far from being placated, rather lodges stronger and stronger allegations against him. From the point of view of immediacy, everything is lost. His friends, especially Bildad, know but one way out, that by submitting to the punishment he may dare to hope for a repetition to the point of overflowing. Job will not have it. With that the knot and the entanglement are tightened and can be untied only by a thunderstorm. (Kierkegaard 1983: 212–13)

Repetition, therefore, is this moment that falls outside of the categories of reason (the thunderstorm introduced by Kierkegaard). It is not a physi-| cal repetition (the Bible tells us Job gets back twice what he lost, putting the repetition outside of the sphere of quantitative identity). Rather than being based on universality, as it is for Kant, for Kierkegaard (and for Deleuze) it is based on singularity.
(12-13, quoting Kierkegaard, same text)

Deleuze then summarizes the philosophies of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Peguy in terms of repetition, giving “four criteria for a philosophy of repetition” (13).

1. Make repetition something new by connecting it with a test that will affirm one’s freedom even in the face of moral and natural law demanding otherwise.

2. Oppose repetition to the law of nature.

3. Oppose repetition to moral law.

4. Oppose repetition to the generalities of habit and to the particularities of memory (13).

[The criteria seem to continue from the above discussion, except for the memory part. Here perhaps memory ties the present too often to the past, and redundantly so, by means of association.] Deleuze will ultimately reject Kierkegaard’s notion of repetition since it is based on the relationship between a subject and object and for that reason is tied too much to the physical and moral worlds [in where we make these distinctions, but which do not hold when we think more of pure difference itself.] “Nonetheless, Kierkegaard prefigures Deleuze in seeing the need for a radical rethinking of the nature of repetition.” (14).

 

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

Kierkegaard, Søren (1983), Fear and Trembling/Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Søren Kierkegaard, Entry Directory

by Corry Shores
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Fear and Trembling

Fear and Trembling, Entry Directory

Descartes References in Kiekegaard's Fear and Trembling Preface



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Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Prelude

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. The prelude in full is placed at the end.]

Kierkegaard will tell the story of Abraham's sacrifice. He tells it from the perspective of a man who first heard the story as a child. While young, he enjoyed the story, and he likes it even more as a man. For, now the richer complexities of the story are more apparent.

When the child became older he read the same story with even greater admiration, for life had separated what was united in the pious simplicity of the child. The older he became, the more frequently his mind reverted to that story, his enthusiasm became greater and greater, and yet he was less and less able to understand the story.

The man's sole desire was to witness the dramatic event.

His only wish was to be present at the time when Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw Mount Moriah afar off, at the time when he left the asses behind and went alone with Isaac up unto the mountain; for what his mind was intent upon was not the ingenious web of imagination but the shudder of thought.

The man revered Abraham for being the father of faith. And he was neither a thinker nor someone who felt the need to go beyond faith.

Curiously, Kierkegaard ends the prelude by writing:

if he had known Hebrew, he perhaps would easily have understood the story and Abraham.

From the translation of Kierkegaard's text:

Prelude

Once upon a time there was a man who as a child had heard the beautiful story about how God tempted Abraham, and how he endured temptation, kept the faith, and a second time received again a son contrary to expectation. When the child became older he read the same story with even greater admiration, for life had separated what was united in the pious simplicity of the child. The older he became, the more frequently his mind reverted to that story, his enthusiasm became greater and greater, and yet he was less and less able to understand the story. At last in his interest for that he forgot everything else; his soul had only one wish, to see Abraham, one longing, to have been witness to that event. His desire was not to behold the beautiful countries of the Orient, or the earthly glory of the Promised Land, or that godfearing couple whose old age God had blessed, or the venerable figure of the aged patriarch, or the vigorous young manhood of Isaac whom God had bestowed upon Abraham -- he saw no reason why the same thing might not have taken place on a barren heath in Denmark. His yearning was to accompany them on the three days’ journey when Abraham rode with sorrow before him and with Isaac by his side. His only wish was to be present at the time when Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw Mount Moriah afar off, at the time when he left the asses behind and went alone with Isaac up unto the mountain; for what his mind was intent upon was not the ingenious web of imagination but the shudder of thought.

That man was not a thinker, he felt no need of getting beyond faith; he deemed it the most glorious thing to be remembered as the father of it, an enviable lot to possess it, even though no one else were to know it.

That man was not a learned exegete, he didn’t know Hebrew, if he had known Hebrew, he perhaps would easily have understood the story and Abraham.

From:

Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling. Available online at:

http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=2068

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Entry Directory

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Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Preface

Descartes References in Kiekegaard's Fear and Trembling Preface

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Prelude

Descartes References in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling Preface

by Corry Shores
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In the preface to Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard quotes in Latin from two Descartes texts without indicating the source.

Below are the sections in English and Latin. I place in bold the parts that Kierkegaard quotes specifically. At the end I place the English translation of the relevant Kierkegaard passage from Fear and Trembling.

1) Principles of Philosophy

XXVIII. That we must examine, not the final, but the efficient, causes of created things.

Likewise, finally, we will not seek reasons of natural things from the end which God or nature proposed to himself in their creation (i. e., final causes), [Footnote: "We will not stop to consider the ends which God proposed to himself in the creation of the world, and we will entirely reject from our philosophy the search of final causes!"--French.] for we ought not to presume so far as to think that we are sharers in the counsels of Deity, but, considering him as the efficient cause of all things, let us endeavour to discover by the natural light [Footnote: "Faculty of reasoning."--FRENCH.] which he has planted in us, applied to those of his attributes of which he has been willing we should have some knowledge, what must be concluded regarding those effects we perceive by our senses; bearing in mind, however, what has been already said, that we must only confide in this natural light so long as nothing contrary to its dictates is revealed by God himself. [Footnote: The last clause, beginning "bearing in mind." is omitted in the French.]

[Click on images for enlargment]

LXXVI. That we ought to prefer the Divine authority to our perception:* but that, apart from things revealed, we ought to assent to nothing that we do not clearly apprehend.

Above all we must impress on our memory the infallible rule, that what God has revealed is incomparably more certain than anything else; and that we ought to submit our belief to the Divine authority rather than to our own judgment, even although perhaps the light of reason should, with the greatest clearness and evidence, appear to suggest to us something contrary to what is revealed. But in things regarding which there is no revelation, it is by no means consistent with the character of a philosopher to accept as true what he has not ascertained to be such, and to trust more to the senses, in other words, to the inconsiderate judgments of childhood than to the dictates of mature reason.

2) Discourse on Method

My present design, then, is not to teach the method which each ought to follow for the right conduct of his reason, but solely to describe the way in which I have endeavored to conduct my own. They who set themselves to give precepts must of course regard themselves as possessed of greater skill than those to whom they prescribe; and if they err in the slightest particular, they subject themselves to censure. But as this tract is put forth merely as a history, or, if you will, as a tale, in which, amid some examples worthy of imitation, there will be found, perhaps, as many more which it were advisable not to follow, I hope it will prove useful to some without being hurtful to any, and that my openness will find some favor with all.

From my childhood, I have been familiar with letters; and as I was given to believe that by their help a clear and certain knowledge of all that is useful in life might be acquired, I was ardently desirous of instruction. But as soon as I had finished the entire course of study, at the close of which it is customary to be admitted into the order of the learned, I completely changed my opinion. For I found myself involved in so many doubts and errors, that I was convinced I had advanced no farther in all my attempts at learning, than the discovery at every turn of my own ignorance.

From Fear and Trembling:

"But Descartes did it." Descartes, a venerable, humble and honest thinker, whose writings surely no one can read without the deepest emotion, did what he said and said what he did. Alas, alack, that is a great rarity in our times! Descartes, as he repeatedly affirmed, did not doubt in matters of faith. ‘‘Memores tamen, ut jam dictum est, huic lumini naturali tamdiu tantum esse credendum, quamdiu nihil contrarium a Deo ipso revelatur. . . . Praeter caeter autem, memoriae nostrae pro summa regula est infigendum, ea quae nobis a Deo revelata sunt, ut omnium certissima esse credenda; et quamvis forte lumen rationis, quam maxime clarum et evidens. aliud quid nobis suggerere videretur, soli tamen auctoritati divinae potius quam proprio nostro judicio fidem esse adhibendam." He did not cry, "Fire!" nor did he make it a duty for everyone to doubt; for Descartes was a quiet and solitary thinker, not a bellowing night-watchman; he modestly admitted that his method had importance for him alone and was justified in part by the bungled knowledge of his earlier years. "Ne quis igitur putet me hic traditurum aliquam methodum quam unusquisque sequi debeat ad recte regendum rationem; illam enim tantum quam ipsemet secutus sum exponere decrevi. . . . Sed simul ac illum studiorum curriculum absolvi (sc. juventutis), quo decurso mos est in eruditorum cooptare, plane aliud coepi cogitare. Tot enim me dubiis totque erroribus imblicatum esse animadverti, ut omnes discendi conatus nihil aliud mihi profuisse judicarem, quam quad ignorantiam meam magis magisque detexissem."

Descartes. Oeuvres de Descartes. Vol 6. Available online:

http://www.archive.org/details/uvresdedescartes06desc

Descartes. Oeuvres de Descartes. Vol 8. Available online:

http://www.archive.org/details/uvresdedescartes08desc

Descartes. Discourse on Method. Available online at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=jZgDAAAAQAAJ&oe=UTF-8

Descartes. Principles of Philosophy. Available online at:

http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Principles-of-Philosophy1.html

Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling. Available online at:

http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=2068

 

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Preface

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. The preface in full is placed at the end.]

A current trend of skepticism has degraded the values placed on philosophical ideas. Skeptics seem so certain of their success in radical doubt, that they no longer feel obligated to explain how they performed this feat. They think it is fully precedented, by Descartes.

However, even Descartes did not doubt in matters of faith. Nor did he alarm people to the need to doubt. His method was a personal remedy for the shortcoming of his early education. [For the specific cited Descartes texts, see the entry on the quotation.]

The ancient Greeks considered full skeptical doubt to take a life-time to develop. But current thinkers start immediate from an absolute position of doubt.

Many today do not rest with faith, but want to go further than what faith tells them. But what drives them forward must be faith in something beyond faith.

Before, it took a lifetime to obtain faith. And even at death, after finally obtaining faith, one still recalled the fear and trembling that once shook faith:

When the tried oldster drew near to his last hour, having fought the good fight and kept the faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten that fear and trembling which chastened the youth, which the man indeed held in check, but which no man quite outgrows. . . except as he might succeed at the earliest opportunity in going further.

Those today who go further than faith presume to already be past fear and trembling.

Philosophers now have systematized thought and conceptualized faith. The author does not pretend to be a philosopher. He fancies himself an amateur author who does not aim to write in a way that sells books. He fears that if his writing were simplified, it would collapse under critique. The following work is not a philosophical System, because such a project is doomed to fail anyway.

From the original text:

Preface

Not merely in the realm of commerce but in the world of ideas as well our age is organizing a regular clearance sale. Everything is to be had at such a bargain that it is questionable whether in the end there is anybody who will want to bid. Every speculative price-fixer who conscientiously directs attention to the significant march of modern philosophy, everyPrivatdocent, tutor, and student, every crofter and cottar in philosophy, is not content with doubting everything but goes further. Perhaps it would be untimely and ill-timed to ask them where they are going, but surely it is courteous and unobtrusive to regard it as certain that they have doubted everything, since otherwise it would be a queer thing for them to be going further. This preliminary movement they have therefore all of them made, and presumably with such ease that they do not find it necessary to let drop a word about the how; for not even he who anxiously and with deep concern sought a little enlightenment was able to find any such thing, any guiding sign, any little dietetic prescription, as to how one was to comport oneself in supporting this prodigious task. "But Descartes did it." Descartes, a venerable, humble and honest thinker, whose writings surely no one can read without the deepest emotion, did what he said and said what he did. Alas, alack, that is a great rarity in our times! Descartes, as he repeatedly affirmed, did not doubt in matters of faith. ‘‘Memores tamen, ut jam dictum est, huic lumini naturali tamdiu tantum esse credendum, quamdiu nihil contrarium a Deo ipso revelatur. . . . Praeter caeter autem, memoriae nostrae pro summa regula est infigendum, ea quae nobis a Deo revelata sunt, ut omnium certissima esse credenda; et quamvis forte lumen rationis, quam maxime clarum et evidens. aliud quid nobis suggerere videretur, soli tamen auctoritati divinae potius quam proprio nostro judicio fidem esse adhibendam." He did not cry, "Fire!" nor did he make it a duty for everyone to doubt; for Descartes was a quiet and solitary thinker, not a bellowing night-watchman; he modestly admitted that his method had importance for him alone and was justified in part by the bungled knowledge of his earlier years. "Ne quis igitur putet me hic traditurum aliquam methodum quam unusquisque sequi debeat ad recte regendum rationem; illam enim tantum quam ipsemet secutus sum exponere decrevi. . . . Sed simul ac illum studiorum curriculum absolvi (sc. juventutis), quo decurso mos est in eruditorum cooptare, plane aliud coepi cogitare. Tot enim me dubiis totque erroribus imblicatum esse animadverti, ut omnes discendi conatus nihil aliud mihi profuisse judicarem, quam quad ignorantiam meam magis magisque detexissem."

What those ancient Greeks (who also had some understanding of philosophy) regarded as a task for a whole lifetime, seeing that dexterity in doubting is not acquired in a few days or weeks, what the veteran combatant attained when he had preserved the equilibrium of doubt through all the pitfalls he encountered, who intrepidly denied the certainty of sense-perception and the certainty of the processes of thought, incorruptibly defied the apprehensions of self-love and the insinuations of sympathy -- that is where everybody begins in our time.

In our time nobody is content to stop with faith but wants to go further. It would perhaps be rash to ask where these people are going, but it is surely a sign of breeding and culture for me to assume that everybody has faith, for otherwise it would be queer for them to be . . . going further. In those old days it was different, then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, because it was assumed that dexterity in faith is not acquired in a few days or weeks. When the tried oldster drew near to his last hour, having fought the good fight and kept the faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten that fear and trembling which chastened the youth, which the man indeed held in check, but which no man quite outgrows. . . except as he might succeed at the earliest opportunity in going further. Where these revered figures arrived, that is the point where everybody in our day begins to go further.

The present writer is nothing of a philosopher, he has not understood the System, does not know whether it actually exists, whether it is completed; already he has enough for his weak head in the thought of what a prodigious head everybody in our day must have, since everybody has such a prodigious thought. Even though one were capable of converting the whole content of faith into the form of a concept, it does not follow that one has adequately conceived faith and understands how one got Into it, or how it got into one. The present writer is nothing of a philosopher; he is,poetice et eleganter, an amateur writer who neither writes the System nor promises of the System, who neither subscribes to the System nor ascribes anything to it. He writes because for him it is a luxury which becomes the more agreeable and more evident, the fewer there are who buy and read what he writes. He can easily foresee his fate in an age when passion has been obliterated in favor of learning, in an age when an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such a way that the book can easily be perused during the afternoon nap, and take care to fashion his outward deportment in likeness to the picture of that polite young gardener in the advertisement sheet, who with hat in hand, and with a good certificate from the place where he last served, recommends himself to the esteemed public. He foresees his fate -- that he will be entirely ignored. He has a presentiment of the dreadful event, that a jealous criticism will many a time let him feel the birch; he trembles at the still more dreadful thought that one or another enterprising scribe, a gulper of paragraphs, who to rescue learning is always willing to do with other peoples’ writings what Trop "to save appearances" magnanimously resolved to do, though it were "the destruction of the human race" -- that is, he will slice the author into paragraphs, and will do it with the same inflexibility as the man who in the interest of the science of punctuation divided his discourse by counting the words, so that there were fifty words for a period and thirty-five for a semicolon.

I prostrate myself with the profoundest deference before every systematic "bag-peerer" at the custom house, protesting, "This is not the System, it has nothing whatever to do with the System." I call down every blessing upon the System and upon the Danish shareholders in this omnibus -- for a tower it is hardly likely to become. I wish them all and sundry good luck and all prosperity.

Respectfully,

Johannes De Silentio

Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling. Available online at:

http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=2068