SKC Project Seminar: Raquel Carpintero Acero

(Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Spain)

Time or Eternity: An Approach to the Moment Through the Notion of Spirit

The aim of this seminar is to introduce the widely explored problem of the relation between exteriority and interiority, or between the human being and the absolute. This problem has been addressed in French phenomenology, and especially  by Levinas. However, starting from a discussion of Levinas’ critique of Kierkegaard - as defending a subjectivity that arises without the advent of alterity-, we will delve into Kierkegaard’s use of the moment to expose the relation between time and eternity. This will allow us to show how exteriority is also present in the coming into existence of subjectivity placing this exteriority not outside the subject, but paradoxically in itself. This relation between the human being and the actuality that is given to him, which precedes him and overflows him, and yet urges him to give an answer, can be clarified with Kierkegaard’s notion of spirit. This notion illuminates the way in which the eternal and the temporal are placed in relation in the human being describing it as a task which takes place repeatedly - in the moment.