Andrew Jampol-Petzinger

In this paper, I compare Gilles Deleuze’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s concepts of “repetition.” Although Deleuze have argued that Kierkegaard’s use of this concept valorizes the role of unity in selfhood, I claim that, in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works, repetition in fact serves as a practical task linked to self-overcoming and rebirth. From this perspective, I argue that Kierkegaard’s conception of repetition as a function of “faith” can helpfully inform an understanding of Deleuze: self-overcoming in Deleuze will have many features in common with a Kierkegaardian conception of acting out of faith.

In this paper, I compare Gilles Deleuze’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s concepts of “repetition.” Although Deleuze have argued that Kierkegaard’s use of this concept valorizes the role of unity in selfhood, I claim that, in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works, repetition in fact serves as a practical task linked to self-overcoming and rebirth. From this perspective, I argue that Kierkegaard’s conception of repetition as a function of “faith” can helpfully inform an understanding of Deleuze: self-overcoming in Deleuze will have many features in common with a Kierkegaardian conception of acting out of faith.

In this article, I present an interpretation of Kierkegaard’s ethics in terms of Gilles Deleuze’s distinction between immanent ethics and transcendent morality. I argue that Kierkegaard’s skepticism towards moral prescription, his emphasis on the single individual as the basis of normative evaluation, and his view of Christianity as somehow “beyond” the scope of moral obligation are all functions of a Deleuzian conception of immanent ethics as a non-moralistic form of normativity. On this basis, I argue for two conclusions: first, that Kierkegaard’s work is better understood through this frame-work than through either aretaic or deontological frameworks; and second, that Deleuzian ethics is better served by Kierkegaardian illustrations like patience and stillness, than by the tropes of destruction that are often associated with it. Dans cet article, je présente une interprétation de l’éthique de Kierkegaard du point de vue de la distinction deleuzienne entre l’éthique immanente et la moralité transcendante. Dans cette perspective, je soutiens que le scepticisme de Kierkegaard quant à la prescription morale, sa conception d’un christianisme « en dehors » du champ de l’obligation morale, et l’accent qu’il fait porter sur le seul individu comme étant la base des évaluations normatives, sont tous fonction d’une conception deleuzienne de l’éthique immanente, en tant que forme amorale de la normativité. Sur cette base, j’affirme deux conséquences : la première, que l’oeuvre kierkegaardienne est mieux comprise selon ce cadre que selon, d’une part, le cadre de l’éthique de la vertu, et d’autre part, le cadre déontologique. La deuxième, que l’éthique deleuzienne s’illustre mieux par les exemples kierkegaardiens, comme ceux de la patience et de la tranquillité, que par les tropes de la destruction auxquels elle est souvent associée.

In this paper, I compare Gilles Deleuze’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s concepts of “repetition.” Although Deleuze (and interpreters after him) have argued that Kierkegaard’s use of this concept valorizes the role of unity in selfhood, I claim that, in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works, repetition in fact serves as a practical task linked to self-overcoming and rebirth. From this perspective, I argue that Kierkegaard’s conception of repetition as a function of “faith” can helpfully inform an understanding of Deleuze: self-overcoming in Deleuze will have many features in common with a Kierkegaardian conception of acting out of faith.

In this paper I consider the thought of two Jewish existentialists from the first half of the 20th century, showing how their critique of pantheistic and panentheistic thinking grounded novel ideas about politics, history and human thought. In place of a concept of history directed towards a teleological redemption of suffering in the future, Lev Shestov (1866–1938) and Benjamin Fondane (1898–1944) abandoned notions of philosophical rationality in order to avow a ‘reversal’ of history according to which historical suffering could be expiated through the unforeseeable powers of the divine. From here, I look at the work of a contemporaneous philosopher – Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) – for the way in which his own conception of history as ‘rescuing’ the past provides an alternative panentheism, one according to which political responsibility derives from a need to redeem God whose existence has been exiled throughout the mundane world.