SKC Workshop Autumn 2024

Michele Ferrando

(Università di Pavia, Italy)

Kierkegaard's Repetition. A deconstruction

The present paper aims to approach as rigorously as possible the philosophically new concept of repetition, elaborated by Kierkegaard in the 'strange book' Repetition (1843). Considering the major problems related to the presentation of the concept in the context of Kierkegaard's entire production, this paper will elaborate a negative and apophatic interpretation of repetition that aims to frame it within the precise theoretical coordinates expressed by Kierkegaad in the years following Repetition. The numerous aporias that cloud the expressive and conceptual horizon of Repetition are thus ascribed to the aporetic and transcendent nature of its meaning. Especially, the peculiar presence of the concept is highlighted within the Kierkegaard's entire production - within the works that analyze the concept from a theoretical point of view and within the 1843 work itself. The analysis will then focus on Kierkegaard's theory of communication attempting to answer the problems raised before. Subsequently, the paper will attempt to frame the theoretical scope of the concept through the theoretical works published in 1844. Finally, following the Kierkegaardian practice of psychological experiment, an 'in concreto' investigation of four typical Kierkegaardian characters will be carried out. The last character analyzed, “the sinner” of the 'Edificant Discourses' of the years 1849-1851, corroborates the thesis of the aporetic and apophatic nature of Repetition, which thus finds its expression in a different time and context than those of its birth.