Volume 11, Tome II: Kierkegaard's Influence on Philosophy: Francophone Philosophy (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources) [1 ed.] 9781409446385, 1409446387

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Kierkegaard’s Influence on Philosophy Tome II: Francophone Philosophy

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources Volume 11, Tome II

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources is a publication of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre

General Editor Jon Stewart Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Editorial Board FINN GREDAL JENSEN Katalin Nun peter Šajda Advisory Board Lee c. barrett maría j. binetti IstvÁn CzakÓ Heiko Schulz curtis l. thompson

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Philosophy Tome II: Francophone Philosophy

Edited by JOn Stewart

First published 2012 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2012 Jon Stewart and the contributors Jon Stewart has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kierkegaard’s influence on philosophy – Anglophone philosophy. Tome 3. – (Kierkegaard research; v. 11) 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855 – Influence. 2. Philosophy, Modern – 19th century. 3. Philosophy, Modern – 20th century. I. Series II. Stewart, Jon (Jon Bartley) 198.9-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kierkegaard’s influence on philosophy: Francophone philosophy / edited by Jon Stewart. p. cm. — (Kierkegaard research; v. 11, t. 2) Includes indexes. ISBN 978-1-4094-4638-5 (hardcover) 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855— Influence. 2. Philosophers—French-speaking countries. 3. Philosophy—French-speaking countries. I. Stewart, Jon (Jon Bartley) B4377.K51254 2012 198’.9—dc23 2011030813 ISBN 9781409446385 (hbk) Cover design by Katalin Nun

Contents List of Contributors   List of Abbreviations   Sylviane Agacinski:   Reading Kierkegaard to Keep Intact the Secret Kevin Newmark

vii ix

1

Roland Barthes:   Style, Language, Silence Joseph Westfall

23

Georges Bataille:   Kierkegaard and the Claim for the Sacred Laura Llevadot

43

Maurice Blanchot:   Spaces of Literature / Spaces of Religion Daniel Greenspan

63

Gilles Deleuze:   Kierkegaard’s Presence in his Writings José Miranda Justo

83

Jacques Derrida:   Faithful Heretics Marius Timmann Mjaaland

111

Jacques Ellul:   Kierkegaard’s Profound and Seldom Acknowledged Influence on Ellul’s Writing Sarah Pike Cabral

139

Pierre Hadot:   Philosophy as a Way of Life: Hadot and Kierkegaard’s Socrates Nicolae Irina

157

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Emmanuel Levinas: An Ambivalent but Decisive Reception Jeffrey Hanson

173

Jean-Luc Marion:   The Paradoxical Givenness of Love Leo Stan

207

Paul Ricoeur:   On Kierkegaard, the Limits of Philosophy, and the Consolation of Hope Joel D.S. Rasmussen

233

Index of Persons Index of Subjects

257 263

List of Contributors Sarah Pike Cabral, Portico Faculty, Fulton Hall 352A, Carroll School of Management, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA. Daniel Greenspan, California State University, Dominguez Hills, 1000 E. Victoria St., SAC-2, Carson, CA 90747, USA. Jeffrey Hanson, Australian Catholic University, Faculty of Philosophy, St. Patrick’s Campus, 115 Victoria Parade, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia. Nicolae Irina, York University, Department of Philosophy, S428 Ross Building, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada. Laura Llevadot, Departament d’Historia de la Filosofia, Estetica i Filosofia de la Cultura, Facultat de Filosofia, Universitat de Barcelona, c/ Montalegre, 6, 08001 Barcelona, Spain. José Miranda Justo, Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, Alameda da Universidade, P-1600-214 Lisbon, Portugal. Marius Timmann Mjaaland, Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Box 1023 Blindern, 0315 Oslo, Norway. Kevin Newmark, Boston College, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Lyons Hall 204C, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3804, USA. Joel D.S. Rasmussen, Mansfield College, Oxford University, Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TF, UK. Leo Stan, Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario, Somerville House, Rm. 2345A, London, Ontario N6A 3K7, Canada. Joseph Westfall, Department of Social Sciences, University of Houston-Downtown, Houston, TX 77002, USA.

List of Abbreviations Danish Abbreviations B&A

Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaard, vols. 1-2, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1953–54.

Bl.art. S. Kierkegaard’s Bladartikler, med Bilag samlede efter Forfatterens Død, udgivne som Supplement til hans øvrige Skrifter, ed. by Rasmus Nielsen, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1857. EP

Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, vols. 1–9, ed. by H.P. Barfod and Hermann Gottsched, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1869–81.

Pap.

Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. I to XI–3, ed. by Peter Andreas Heiberg, Victor Kuhr and Einer Torsting, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1909–48; second, expanded ed., vols. I to XI–3, by Niels Thulstrup, vols. XII to XIII supplementary volumes, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, vols. XIV to XVI index by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1968–78.

SKS

Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vols. 1–28, vols. K1–K28, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, Alastair McKinnon and Finn Hauberg Mortensen, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag 1997– 2013.

SV1

Samlede Værker, ed. by A.B. Drachmann, Johan Ludvig Heiberg and H.O. Lange, vols. I–XIV, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag 1901–06. English Abbreviations

AN

Armed Neutrality, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

AR

On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1955.

ASKB The Auctioneer’s Sales Record of the Library of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by H.P. Rohde, Copenhagen: The Royal Library 1967.

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BA

The Book on Adler, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

C

The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

CA

The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by Reidar Thomte in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980.

CD

Christian Discourses, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

CI

The Concept of Irony, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989.

CIC

The Concept of Irony, trans. with an Introduction and Notes by Lee M. Capel, London: Collins 1966.

COR

The Corsair Affair; Articles Related to the Writings, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982.

CUP1 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982. CUP2 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982. CUPH Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2009. EO1

Either/Or, Part I, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1987.

EO2

Either/Or, Part II, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1987.

EOP

Either/Or, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1992.

EPW

Early Polemical Writings, among others: From the Papers of One Still Living; Articles from Student Days; The Battle Between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, trans. by Julia Watkin, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990.

EUD

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990.

List of Abbreviations

xi

FSE

For Self-Examination, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990.

FT

Fear and Trembling, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1983.

FTP

Fear and Trembling, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1985.

JC

Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985.

JFY

Judge for Yourself!, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990.

JP

Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 1–6, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk (vol. 7, Index and Composite Collation), Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press 1967–78.

KAC

Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom,” 1854–1855, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944.

KJN

Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, vols. 1–11, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble, and K. Brian Söderquist, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press 2007ff.

LD

Letters and Documents, trans. by Henrik Rosenmeier, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978.

LR

A Literary Review, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 2001.

M

The Moment and Late Writings, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

P

Prefaces / Writing Sampler, trans. by Todd W. Nichol, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

PC

Practice in Christianity, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1991.

PF

Philosophical Fragments, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985.

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PJ

Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1996.

PLR

Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Occasion May Require, trans. by William McDonald, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1989.

PLS

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1941.

PV

The Point of View including On My Work as an Author, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, and Armed Neutrality, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

PVL

The Point of View for My Work as an Author including On My Work as an Author, trans. by Walter Lowrie, New York and London: Oxford University Press 1939.

R

Repetition, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1983.

SBL

Notes of Schelling’s Berlin Lectures, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989.

SLW

Stages on Life’s Way, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1988.

SUD

The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980.

SUDP The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Alastair Hannay, London and New York: Penguin Books 1989. TA

Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978.

TD

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1993.

UD

Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1993.

WA

Without Authority including The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air, Two Ethical-Religious Essays, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, An Upbuilding Discourse, Two Discourses at the Communion on

List of Abbreviations

xiii

Fridays, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997. WL

Works of Love, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1995.

WS

Writing Sampler, trans. by Todd W. Nichol, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

Sylviane Agacinski: Reading Kierkegaard to Keep Intact the Secret Kevin Newmark

Sylviane Agacinski was born on May 4, 1945 in a small village of the Auvergne, near the center of France. She studied philosophy in the mid-1960s at the University of Lyon, taking courses there with Gilles Deleuze (1925–95). In 1968, she came to Paris, worked for a year at Paris Match, the French weekly news and style magazine, and eventually obtained her “Agrégation,” a highly competitive civil service certification which entitled her to become a professor of philosophy within France’s system of public higher education. Since 1991, she has been affiliated with the prestigious École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, where she has taught a varied series of courses in philosophy as well as courses on many different topics in the history and theory of the arts. Author of nearly a dozen books to date, Agacinski’s work within and beyond the discipline of philosophy is diverse enough to preclude any easy classification. Along with Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1940–2007), and Jean-Luc Nancy (b. 1940), she participated actively in efforts during the 1970s to bring the academic study of philosophy in France into closer contact with other intellectual, disciplinary, and socio-political activities. In 1977, she published an important book on Kierkegaard, Aparté: Conceptions et morts de Søren Kierkegaard­­, which was translated into English in 1988 as part of the series Kierkegaard and PostModernism at Florida State University Press.1 She was invited to give two lectures on Kierkegaard at the University of Copenhagen in September 1981. These two lectures, “When Philosophy Appears on a Signpost” and “The Absolute Knowledge of Antigone,” were delivered in French and later appeared as articles in French journals.2 A third lecture on Kierkegaard, “We are not Sublime,” was delivered at a Colloquium sponsored by the Collège Internationale de Philosophie and held in Paris during the fall of 1988. It then appeared as an essay in a French journal the following year, and was later translated into English for Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader.3 All Sylviane Agacinski, Aparté: Conceptions et morts de Søren Kierkegaard, Paris: Aubier-Flammarion 1977. (English translation: Aparté: Conceptions and Deaths of Søren Kierkegaard, trans. by Kevin Newmark, Gainesville: Florida State University Press 1988.) 2 See Sylviane Agacinski, “Le savoir absolu d’Antigone,” digraphe, March 29, 1983, pp. 53–70 and “La philosophie à l’affiche,” Revue des Sciences Humaines, no. 185, 1982, pp. 13–24. 3 Sylviane Agacinski, “Nous ne sommes pas sublimes,” Cahiers de la Philosophie, nos. 8–9 (Kierkegaard: vingt-cinq Études), pp. 167–85. (English translation: “We Are Not 1

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three of these essays on Kierkegaard were slightly revised and then collected in Agacinski’s 1996 book, published only in French, ­La Critique de l’égocentrisme.4 In the 1990s, Agacinski also published a book on architecture entitled Volume. Philosophie et politique de l’architecture and a book on the relation between the sexes called Politique des sexes, mixité et parité, which was translated into several languages, including into English as Parity of the Sexes.5 In 2000, she published a book on modernity, technology, photography, and politics: Le Passeur de temps, modernité et nostalgie, translated into English as Time Passing—Modernity and Nostalgia.6 In the years following she published an autobiographical commentary on the French presidential elections of 2002 (Journal interrompu),7 a personal reflection on politics, the body, and sexual difference (Engagements),8 another study of the relations between the sexes (Métaphysique des sexes, masculin féminin aux sources du christianisme),9 and a critical study of Scandinavian representations of the battle between the sexes (Le Drame des sexes: Ibsen, Strindberg, Bergman).10 More recently, in 2009, she has published another book that deals with some of the most pressing and difficult bio-political and ethical issues that are now confronting governmental legislation on the treatment of human bodies, such as, for example, the laws concerning surrogate mothers and the donation and sale of organs (Corps en miettes).11 A very public figure in France both personally and as a social and political thinker, Sylviane Agacinski is perhaps most widely recognized internationally under the rather vague and dated rubric of “French feminist.” Although the existence of her work on Kierkegaard is well known throughout the philosophical establishment, references to it still tend, by and large, to remain superficial. This may be due principally to the fact, as is already evident in the series title under which Aparté appeared in English, that Agacinski’s writings on Kierkegaard have often enough simply been lumped together with all those post-1968 Sublime: Love and Sacrifice, Abraham and Ourselves,” in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, ed. by Jonathan Rée and Jane Chamberlain, Oxford: Blackwell 1998, pp. 129–50.) 4 See Sylviane Agacinski, “La philosophie s’adresse-t-elle? Réception et déception de Kierkegaard à Derrida,” in ­her La Critique de l’égocentrisme: L’événement de l’autre, Paris: Galilée 1996, pp. 47–72; Sylviane Agacinski, “La faute, l’autre et le tragique moderne: Une étrange Antigone,” in ­her La Critique de l’égocentrisme, pp. 73–104; Sylviane Agacinski, “Nous ne sommes pas sublimes: L’amour et le sacrifice, Abraham et nous,” in her La Critique de l’égocentrisme, pp. 105–32. 5 See Sylviane Agacinski, Volume. Philosophie et politique de l’architecture, Paris: Galilée 1992; and Sylviane Agacinski, Politique des sexes, mixité et parité, Paris: Seuil 1998. (English translation: Parity of the Sexes, trans. by Lisa Walsh, New York: Columbia 2001.) 6 Sylviane Agacinski, Le Passeur de Temps: Modernité et Nostalgie, Paris: Seuil 2000. (English translation: Time Passing: Modernity and Nostalgia, trans. by Jody Gladding, New York: Columbia 2003.) 7 Sylviane Agacinski, Journal interrompu, 25 janvier–25 mai 2002, Paris: Seuil 2002. 8 Sylviane Agacinski, Engagements, Paris: Seuil 2007. 9 Sylviane Agacinski, Métaphysique des sexes, masculin féminin aux sources du christianisme, Paris: Seuil 2005. 10 Sylviane Agacinski, Le Drame des sexes: Ibsen, Strindberg, Bergman, Paris: Seuil 2008. 11 Sylviane Agacinski, Corps en miettes, Paris: Flammarion 2009.

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French figures who are considered the standard-bearers of what goes by the catchall term of “postmodernism.” Historicizing gestures like this, of course, nearly also always include an element of resistance and nostalgia, and in the case of Kierkegaard studies, this element is clearly in evidence when it comes to Agacinski. To the extent that the reception of Kierkegaard has acquired institutionalized features of its own, it is only natural that anything which might threaten to unsettle them would be viewed with suspicion if not outright hostility. Calling certain interpretations of Kierkegaard “postmodern”—whether in order to celebrate or to denounce them for it—may be more convenient than legitimate, for in the long run it serves only to reattach an air of familiarity to what might otherwise remain more elusive and difficult to identify and then assimilate to accepted patterns of understanding. Thus, it is a rare work on Kierkegaard that takes the time and trouble to read Agacinski carefully enough even to perceive the precise nature of her philosophical argument, much less to register and engage with the many fine details that she adds to an appreciation of what Kierkegaard actually wrote, and why he wrote it the way he did. Rather than attempt to characterize Agacinski’s interpretation of Kierkegaard by referring it to a postmodernity that could by now only appear out of step with both an earlier “canonical” reception and with later, more “contemporary” approaches that today already stretch well beyond trends associated with the late twentieth century, it might be better, then, to begin by underscoring Agacinski’s deeper affinity with another reader of Kierkegaard who has never quite “made it” within the Kierkegaard establishment. It was in December 1941, a year before Albert Camus (1913–60) published his Myth of Sisyphus and nearly two years before Jean-Paul Sartre (1905– 80) published Being and Nothingness, that Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) wrote a short piece in the Journal des débats called “Kierkegaard’s Journals.”12 It would obviously make little sense to place the beginning of “postmodernity” before the avowedly “modern times” of French existentialism, except perhaps by means of an a posteriori reconstruction of temporality (like the one Kierkegaard himself proposes in The Concept of Anxiety to deal with the phenomenon of “original sin”), which would by the same token undo the very historicizing scheme it attempted thereby to deploy and control. Nonetheless, it is indeed this little-referred-to article by Blanchot that has left an indelible mark on Agacinski’s approach to Kierkegaard. “Like his entire authorship,” Blanchot writes there, Kierkegaard’s Journal is dominated by the two figures upon which this extraordinary mind never abandoned its meditation, that of his father, a profoundly religious man whose later years were dogged by the memory of a double fault, and that of his fiancée, Regine Olsen, with whom he broke off his engagement after only a year. Revolving around these two images, his thought would search incessantly for itself, eventually extracting from them an entire world, the tragic response to a truly unintelligible universe….13

Maurice Blanchot, “Le ‘Journal’ de Kierkegaard,” now collected in Faux Pas, Paris: Gallimard 1971 [1943], pp. 25–30. My translation. 13 Ibid., p. 25. 12

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A brief overview of Sylviane Agacinski’s interpretation of Kierkegaard would thus have to emphasize the way she inherits from Blanchot precisely the concerns that are exhibited in this axiomatic portrait of the Journal’s author. For Agacinski, then, Kierkegaard’s writing first of all was and will remain a creative reaction to unintelligibility, more specifically it is a response to the peculiarly unintelligible forces that impinged upon his whole existence through the burden placed on him by the memory of the father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard (1756–1838), and the broken promise to the fiancée, Regine Olsen (1822–1904). The insistent summons emitted by paternal authority on one side, the imperative to sacrifice the beloved on the other, both combined, according to Agacinski, following here in the steps of Blanchot, to provide Kierkegaard with an unending source of reflection for his own writing. What Kierkegaard had to but could not quite comprehend, what he fervently believed in without ever fully piercing, was the secret link that could have explained how, exactly, the painful memory of the father was connected to the perceived need to break with the fiancée. Put in terms of the two types of discourse most readily available to Kierkegaard for exploring this enigma through writing—which writing, always according to Blanchot and Agacinski, would eventually constitute the entirety of Kierkegaard’s world—his authorship was as though destined to take place between the poles of G.W.F. Hegel’s (1770–1831) philosophy on the one hand and Abraham’s faith on the other. What accounts for Kierkegaard’s irresistible attraction to these two figures is the way that, in both cases, the possibility of moving forward, of entering into history in order to build a genuine future, can be realized only on the basis of an originary encounter with certain forces of negativity. For Hegel, this means the dialectical negativity that must look death in the face for the sake of what is absolute in thought, and for Abraham, it means the religious negativity of a faith that must, for the sake of life itself, sacrifice absolutely what is nearest and dearest in life. It is the experience of this unrelenting tension between the negativity of thought and the negativity of faith that nourished Kierkegaard’s own authorship and that orients the critical interest in Kierkegaard for both Agacinski and Blanchot. However, as Blanchot also spells out in his short treatment of Kierkegaard, to the negativity that is proper to thought and the negativity that is proper to faith, Kierkegaard would be compelled to add a third mode of negativity, one that may be related to both of the others without in the end being proper to either of them: the negativity of language.14 As is well known, the idiom in which Kierkegaard created his written world is neither the dialectical argumentation of philosophical thought nor the pure silence that would characterize the true knight of faith. Rather, his idiom is that of a “poet” whose mode of language is necessarily one of “indirect communication” and in whose element philosophical and religious truth may appear only “sequestered,” or “incognito,” like the pseudonymous authorship with which his own signature is forever indissociable.15 It is for this reason that Blanchot, immediately after claiming that Kierkegaard’s most faithful thought is devoted to his father and to Regine, subtly Ibid., p. 28. The figure for this incognito, as for so many others in Kierkegaard, is also Abraham: “If he at least could explain why he wants to do it….Nor could Abraham explain further, 14 15

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indicates the one and only mode in which such devotion could ultimately become legible: in the form of images whose reality will have always already been displaced through the imaginative faculty of the poet. Now, if it is exclusively in the indirect mode of images that Regine and the father are allowed to enter and be kept in Kierkegaard’s writing, then it will be inevitable that, in order even to begin to assess and understand the meaning of their place there, it will become at some point necessary to develop protocols of reading that are themselves geared specifically to the creation and decipherment of such poetic images. Readings of Kierkegaard that proceed along disciplinary lines tend in the final analysis to presuppose that his writings could be treated as though they were, in essence, examples of philosophical, or religious, socio-historical, or autobiographical discourse, and that they can by the same token be effectively interpreted and understood as arguments, disquisitions, opinions, or disclosures; in short, as various kinds of statements. Agacinski, meanwhile, exhibits in everything she writes a fidelity to the poetic and therefore literary dimensions in which each of these discourses—philosophical, religious, socio-political, and autobiographical—is actually carried out in the authorship. Nonetheless, it would be an error to believe that Agacinski’s attentiveness to what one could thus call the rhetorical dimension of Kierkegaard’s writing precludes a serious engagement with all those other concerns. On the contrary, a truly serious consideration of Kierkegaard’s signal contributions to philosophy, religion, history, and psychoanalysis could never afford simply to ignore or efface the fact that such contributions are themselves at least in part the result of a stylistic indirection whose effects are never negligible, nor are they reducible to disciplinary models of understanding that could be considered independently of their specifically linguistic constitution. In Kierkegaard, the faculty of the imagination is never simply in the service of philosophy or any other discipline or intention for that matter; the relation between the image and what it both discloses and conceals is finer and more unsettling than a straightforward equivalence between figure and concept, or sign and meaning. A relevant case in point is exemplified by Agacinski’s 1981 lecture delivered in Copenhagen, entitled “When Philosophy Appears on a Signpost.”16 Taking her cue from a short aphorism found in the “Diapsalmata” of Either/Or, Part One, Agacinski is able to demonstrate how Kierkegaard himself never lost sight of the curious manner in which philosophy depends on specifically linguistic factors and functions that it remains incapable of mastering completely. “What philosophers say about actuality,” the aphorism reads, “is often as disappointing as it is when one reads on a sign in a secondhand shop [Marchandiser]: Pressing Done Here. If a person were to bring his clothes to be pressed, though, they would be duped, for the sign is merely for sale.”17 The aphorism, Agacinski has no difficulty showing, for his life is like a book under divine confiscation and never becomes publice juris [public property].” See SKS 4, 168 / FT, 77. 16 See Agacinski, “La philosophie à l’affiche,” which was republished as “La philosophie s’adresse-t-elle? Réception et déception de Kierkegaard à Derrida” (see note 4 above). My translation. 17 SKS 2, 41 / EO1, 32.

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points up the way that language always possesses a performative function which, operating in addition or next to its constative and cognitive dimensions, also serves to open up a rhetorical space that generates its own complexities and complications, some of which may indeed turn out to be wholly incompatible with its semantic and referential functions. Long before the British philosopher J.L. Austin (1911–60) reminded us of the problems posed by “performative utterances,” Kierkegaard’s analysis and use of indirect communication served as a cogent warning about the way such language can do things with the truth value of its philosophical, theological, psychoanalytical, and socio-political content that no philosophy, theology, political science, or psychoanalysis could all by itself ever fully know, much less restate, with unequivocal certainty. The fact that Kierkegaard’s witty aphorism just happens to take “reality” or “actuality” (Virkelighed) as its own target is yet another sign of what remains forever at stake in the performative function of language. For the reality of thought, faith, the self, or the state is precisely what regional discourses like philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and political science will always need to claim as their principal justification and their ultimate and proper objects of study. However, to the extent that every “reality” must as such be susceptible to leaving a trace of its own existence in the world, no reality whatsoever will ever be fully immune from the potential displacements and “deceptions” brought into play by the properly linguistic, that is, “secondhand” context in which alone such a reality can first of all be registered and preserved as trace. To go on from there to suggest, as the aphorism penned by A and edited by Victor Eremita actually does, that one of these possible displacements will involve the economic profit to be gained by whatever individual or group is able to establish and then maintain proprietary control over this unruly context is by the same token to expose to critical analysis another layer of self-interest that makes the incentive for deceit all the more redoubtable and difficult to govern. Every sign, no matter where it is posted, can thus always and for a variety of ulterior motives serve to conceal precisely that reality that it also claims to communicate, though necessarily by indirection, ruse, or pretense. “Reality” is not only a fundamentally hermeneutic issue of determining the limits of truth and illusion with all possible precision; it is also a performative field of competing rhetorical forces, each vying with all the others to acquire and then keep the rights to assign reality’s meaning a fixed place and price. For these same reasons, Agacinski’s reading of this one fragment becomes an indirect figure for Either/Or as a whole, if not for Kierkegaard’s entire authorship. But before assuming that such a figure is just another example of synecdochal totalization, wherein an individual part promises, and rather economically at that, to grant access to the whole of meaning in which every other meaningful part can also eventually be subsumed, we should remember the radically fragmented nature of this particular particle. For this fragment—which by itself indicates the way in which the meaning of “reality” and the means by which the reality of this meaning must be signaled can always part ways over and over again—operates as a figure for the whole only to extent that it also reveals the concealed manner in which the whole is constantly and anew coming apart. Thus it is, for instance, that the papers among which the Diapsalmata were in fact “found” before they could be published under a

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pseudonym randomly chosen by someone else for this volume were themselves the “secret” contents of a “secondhand” writing desk, that is, a Secretair in Danish, that the editor, Victor Eremita, had purchased in a secondhand shop, en Marchandiser, with wholly other intentions in mind.18 It is therefore not just the “sign” of philosophical reality deposited in the fragment of the Diapsalmata that has been uprooted from its proper site and that is henceforward used “merchandise” put on sale to whoever can afford to “pay,” in other words speak or account for it. Rather, that single fragment, the Diapsalmata, the Papers of A, Either/Or, Kierkegaard’s authorship as such, they all end up advertising or performing a meaning that is forever fractured to the precise extent that none of them can ever hope to arrest and therefore master or own it once and for all. The fact that Victor Eremita “discovered,” though only through an admittedly unintentional and thus “lucky blow,” the hidden contents that accidentally spilled out of the desk when it cracked open under the violent force of his hatchet can in no way ensure that he, or anyone else for that matter, will ever be able to disclose the precise origin and significance of their secret writing. Every new claim to break into the secret will only repeat the exposure of the cracks beyond which an even more deeply buried reality signals its concealed presence. “For in the most rigorous sense,” Victor concludes before deciding to publish his surprising discovery, “these papers, as is ordinarily said of all printed matter, are silent.”19 Silent, of course, not in the trivial sense that they say nothing whatsoever—but in the much more profound sense that Socrates famously complained in Plato’s Phaedrus about all writing. The papers published in Either/Or will continue to speak to whoever listens, that is, to whoever reads them. But they will do so only at the price of wandering further and further from the lost source of their actual “authority.” The “reality” of philosophical truth, religious faith, socio-economic conditions, or the innermost self can, as a consequence, never be made accessible to thought beyond the reach of all rhetorical complication and deflection. In each and every case, the corresponding realities are always at least in part the secondhand products of linguistic devices specific to this or that particular language, each one of them exceptional in this or that individual respect by comparison to the “comparable” but non-identical devices available to other languages. Such “letters of patent” would remain an impenetrable trade secret in the very untranslatability with which they confront all other idioms, even and especially when, like the Danish word Marchandiser, moreover, they have actually been negotiated from somewhere else. And it is precisely the always secondhand nature of these verbal commodities that constitutes their efficacy and durability as genuine material realities as well as their unstoppable potential to lead us astray when they appear as written images in Kierkegaard’s authorship. Aparté, published in France in 1977 and translated into English in 1988, remains Agacinski’s most important and sustained examination of the quasi-totality of Kierkegaard’s writings from this perspective. Starting from an extended analysis of Kierkegaard’s thesis, The Concept of Irony, Agacinski brilliantly develops the way philosophical, rhetorical and personal indirection functions throughout Kierkegaard’s 18 19



SKS 2, 11–14 / EO1, 4–6. SKS 2, 20 / EO1, 12.

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oeuvre both to solicit and to frustrate traditional models of interpretation and understanding. Along the way, and in addition to the nearly fifty pages she devotes to The Concept of Irony, she offers highly original and penetrating readings of Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling, The Concept of Anxiety, Repetition, Prefaces, The Point of View, and the journals. Other texts—such as, for instance, Either/Or, Stages on Life’s Way, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, The Moment, Practice in Christianity, Two Ethical-Religious Essays, the edifying discourses— are also referred to on occasion for the light they help to shed on Agacinski’s main objects of study. With this book, Agacinski takes her not inconsiderable place alongside the most innovative and powerful readings of Kierkegaard in the twentieth century, though she does so by means of a certain indirection of her own. With very few exceptions—its debt to Blanchot having already been mentioned being the main one—Aparté eschews direct reference to earlier readings of Kierkegaard, proceeding as though the originality of her own reading practice were itself something of a private matter. In other words, perhaps the aparté within Kierkegaard’s writing that interests Agacinski also points to a momentary necessity for her to turn or step aside, aparté, from precisely those readings of Kierkegaard whose attention to the linguistic complications of his texts remains subservient in the final analysis to extratextual considerations. Far from continuing to read Kierkegaard according to the preexisting protocols that have been developed by canonical methods of philosophy, religion, political economy, or psychoanalysis, Agacinski’s work suggests that we must begin reading again from scratch by taking stock of the way that Kierkegaard’s writings contain the power to transform the languages of philosophy, religion, psychoanalysis, and political science in unpredictable and radically new ways. Like all legitimate approaches to Kierkegaard, moreover, Agacinski’s reading will ultimately have to be measured against its capacity to isolate and account for the privileged position that existence occupies in all of his writings. If existence is in Kierkegaard the bottom line, the first and last word, this in no way implies that we have yet understood what is meant by existence in his writing, least of all, for instance, when we have succeeded in attaching the sempiternal adjective “existentialist” to his name. The task that Agacinski has first of all set herself in Aparté is therefore to examine with care the philosophical and religious concepts of existence as Kierkegaard inherits and re-works them in dialogue with both Hegel and the main texts of the biblical tradition. On the other hand, though, and this aspect is so intimately intertwined with the conceptual process that it threatens along the way to become indistinguishable from it, there is the actual existence of Kierkegaard as it was uniquely experienced by him and then forever inscribed indirectly in his writing through the twin figures of his father and Regine. It is at this point, moreover, that the concept and experience of existence form an inextricable knot with what one could call the birth of the image in Kierkegaard’s writing. For what will happen if the experience of one’s own existence can become philosophically conceivable to the subject it alone will have constituted only retrospectively, if the singularity of subjective experience must somehow fade away into the generality of thought before it can be said to exist philosophically in the full sense of the term? This, of course, is the running debate that Kierkegaard will engage with Hegel throughout his life, always insisting that Hegel’s conception of thought economizes unfairly

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on the individual existence in which it must somehow remain rooted. As a result, and precisely in order to wrest subjective existence away from the mummified state in which philosophical thought is obliged to place it simply in order to preserve it, Kierkegaard will have recourse throughout his writings to re-conceiving his existence, over and over again, in the oblique particularity of images whose aim is to resist such philosophical conceptualization. The aparté is therefore itself just such an image that Agacinski borrows from the theater in order to stage in her own writing the images that will have been engendered by Kierkegaard himself to resist the philosophical reduction of subjective existence to a merely objective concept or content. At least one of the meanings of Repetition, in fact, whose subtitle is “a venture in experimenterende psychology,” will have to recall the rather curious experience of the self or psyche that is entailed in such apartés. Possessing on its own no direct means of access to its inmost reality, subjective existence will therefore have to experience itself by experimenting with derivative reflections in which it must repeat and thus seek to recover itself, as if in an echo chamber. The most originary experience of the self is in this way always also a theatrical experiment; a representation in which subjective existence undergoes the unthinkable ordeal of having to find itself only in the deflected image of the other.20 Every new image, as we are reminded at the Berlin Königstädter Theater that opens up in the middle of Repetition, thus becomes a turning aside from the philosophical tendency to drain existence of its actuality. But the price for entering into this private theater of the aparté is that experience “itself” ultimately appears as an endless succession of “exceptional” roles for which no original, and no definitive escape, can from now on ever be found. The origin and end of all the apartés thus remains forever concealed, cut-off from the one whose very identity consists in performing them. Each role effectively inaugurates a new conception of subjective existence in its absolute particularity, but, as also becomes legible in Repetition—itself nothing but a proliferating series of examples written to illustrate the kind of resistance that subjective existence must repeatedly offer to universalizing concepts like recollection, interiorization and mediation—subjective existence, or one’s “self” as it is called by one of the book’s two abysmally specular figures, is born to itself at the very same moment that it “keeps something inward, as a secret that it cannot explain.”21 Even the “image” of a religious point of view that would, presumably, at some extreme point of development no longer require any merely “aesthetic” images in which to project itself, will be constrained to occur as yet one more role that is both experimented with and thus “experienced” in Kierkegaard’s text, though like all the others, always only indirectly and therefore inadequately. Fear and Trembling is a particularly spectacular recounting of just such an experience/ experiment of the ordeal (Prøvelse). God puts Abraham to the test (Prøve) in order that Abraham might for the first time enter into history as the promise of his own infinite future in Isaac. “Faith” is another name for the repetition by which Abraham will have been able to receive Isaac back for a second time, though only after he has been exposed to the mortal peril of losing both himself and Isaac in the process. 21 SKS 4, 94 / R, 229. 20

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In Kierkegaard’s writing, it is precisely the innermost depth of subjective existence that remains most inexplicably secret to the self. At this depth of selfsecrecy, it would no longer make any sense even to attempt to establish a priority either to the “private” figures of father and fiancée or to the “universal” figures of God and Abraham that are all inscribed there as impossible figures for the exceptional experience of existence as such. Rather, Kierkegaard is itself the proper name for that originality wherein the exception and the universal have no meaning outside their hyperbolically differential and therefore mutually obliterating relation to one another. It would be just as legitimate in this case to suppose that Kierkegaard was compelled to invent the inexplicable relationship to his father and the equally inexplicable rupture of his relationship to Regine in order to provide himself with a particularly apt poetical image for the secrecy of all subjective existence, as it would be to continue to imagine that somewhere behind all the philosophical and religious texts on the subject there stand hidden but empirically verifiable autobiographical experiences that would one day be capable of illuminating them. To the degree that the self in Kierkegaard keeps a secret that it cannot explain, period, it will only ever be able to re-experience its own existence through the unintelligible touch of the other, in other words, as a mere image. The father and Regine are of course the readiest images at Kierkegaard’s disposal for exploring this touch—but each and every image, inasmuch as it inaugurates a genuine aparté within the secret depths of the self, will repeat this unintelligibility even as it attempts with every stroke of the pen to touch and thereby regain hold over it. What Kierkegaard constantly sought in the written images of his father and Regine was therefore most definitely not a faithful portrait of his father’s or of Regine’s existence. It was rather the displaced image of himself, and more particularly, the exceptional nature of that self whose “own” existence was in the first place unintelligible to itself as a strict consequence of its having been experienced most profoundly as an inexplicable secret. But what exactly is an “experience” that is in such a manner not experienced directly by the subject? In strict conformity with the way Kierkegaard was to develop the images of the father and Regine, such an experience will have to acquire certain general characteristics. When existence is experienced by the self only as the inheritance of a secret passed down from the parent, and which, for the very same reason, could never be shared, that is to say, revealed as such even to the most intimate and trusted other, or fiancé(e), it will by necessity affect every conceivable understanding of history. For history is a philosophical concept that depends in the first and last instance upon a more stable and organic understanding of experience than is granted to it by Kierkegaard. What kind of history can result from an experience that can never become present to itself but can only ever be compulsively rehearsed in its very inaccessibility? Should one still call “history” that which challenges or even precludes the concepts of presence and process, disclosure and progress, concepts without which the most recognizable conceptions of history would have to founder? These are questions Agacinski had already broached in Aparté when she interrogated the more than curious status of temporality as it is affected by Kierkegaard’s re-working of “original sin” in The

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Concept of Anxiety.22 However, the full magnitude of the impact that Kierkegaard’s characterization of original sin as “retrogressive” will eventually have made, not just on the religiously teleological history of Christianity, but also, and especially, on every model of history as such, becomes apparent only in the second lecture Agacinski delivered in Copenhagen during the fall of 1981, entitled “The Absolute Knowledge of Antigone.” Commenting mainly on another short text from Either/Or, Part One, “The Reflex of the Ancient Tragic in the Modern Tragic,” Agacinski will develop the ways in which the experience of subjectivity as treated by Kierkegaard moves counter to the entire modern tradition, from René Descartes (1596–1650) to Hegel. That tradition, according to Agacinski, thinks the subject, at least in its most massive and consistent development, on the basis of ever ascending levels of self-presence and self-consciousness. Kierkegaard, however, displaces this emphasis on self-reflexive presence toward an acknowledgement of the always belated structure of what he, or rather the anonymous author of this lecture, terms a “re-flex.” It is from within the confines of such a re-flex, or “echo,” that every subject, originally conceived as “child,” can ultimately know itself historically only by learning what it has already inherited through vestiges left behind from “other” members of the same family. In this way, Kierkegaard offers a wholly alternate model for history itself, since no generation is able to do anything more than “repeat” all the generations that have preceded it. If, for Hegel, the child is conceived as that which allows the parent, through its simple negation in the next generation, to return to itself in the future unfolding of higher and higher layers of self-consciousness, in Kierkegaard, the child becomes the locus where the parent’s own lack of self-consciousness is somehow handed down as an impenetrable secret that must be forever and otherwise reconceived anew. Put in terms of a historical framework, Kierkegaard’s insistence on identity as a secret “legacy” that can only repeat what was already missing from an earlier stage will prevent the concept of “modernity” from achieving any genuine dialectical coherence or closure. A heritage is in this respect by definition secret to the degree that, like a dowry, moreover, it has always already been accumulated without one’s direct participation, and it becomes operative only at the moment that it alters unpredictably and irreversibly the future course of the one upon whom it is finally bestowed. For Kierkegaard, then, and in distinction to the historical pattern of overcoming and development that is the thematic engine of Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics (the specific text which Kierkegaard takes as his target in the lectureessay on modernity), the mode of self-consciousness that characterizes “modernity” cannot be represented as an increased level of self-awareness, and in no way does it constitute an advance over antiquity. The more that the modern subject becomes selfaware, in fact, the more it suffers from the knowledge of the secret legacy it carries without being able either to reveal or explain it—least of all to itself. The concept of history in Kierkegaard involves self-awareness, to be sure, but it is a self-awareness that does not proceed by way of a simple reflection of its own consciousness. Rather, Agacinski, Aparté: Conceptions et morts de Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 77–85. (Aparté: Conceptions and Deaths of Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 96–105.)

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history can be said to occur as modernity only at the moment when its subject rediscovers for itself, and thus repeats in a bent mode, that is, a re-flex, that which, as antiquity, has always already taken place elsewhere. Not that modernity could, by a symmetrical reversal, be considered for the same reasons a decrease in selfawareness by comparison to an antiquity in which self-consciousness would at its origin have been more fully present to itself. As is already abundantly clear in the exemplary case of Oedipus, for instance, ancient subjectivity can be termed “tragic” only and precisely to the degree that its consciousness of self has always been radically deficient, or “blind.” By the time Oedipus understands anything about what he has already accomplished, it is over and done, and he is therefore in the curious condition of having “inherited” this legacy of subjective non-understanding from “himself.” The historical model of modernity that is operative in Kierkegaard’s text must therefore be characterized as having no identity other than that of providing antiquity with a disintegrating “echo” of itself: a repetition whose “own” diffuseness serves only to bring out the way the “original” was already lacking something essential. Hence, according to Agacinski, Kierkegaard’s strategic choice of Antigone for embodying the most legitimate “subject” of a tragic modernity that in its very incompletion, as a necessarily “posthumous” echo of antiquity, will also always remain provisional and therefore “yet to come.” For Antigone, as she reappears in Kierkegaard’s text, is exceedingly well placed to function as an image for the tragic “re-flex” of antiquity in today’s modernity. Already in Sophocles, the parents’ legacy is necessarily reflected in the child’s destiny—Ismene reminds her sister at one point in the play of the crimes that have been committed by Oedipus and Jocasta. But in the ancient tragedy this hereditary blindness does not itself and as such become a subject for Antigone’s self-reflection, which remains focused on her own objective act of defiance aimed at Creon for the sake of what she owes her dead brother, Polyneices. What is lacking in the ancient Antigone to be “modern” in Kierkegaard’s sense is for her to become aware of herself not simply as the one who in her own terms defies the present rule of Creon, but rather as the one who, on behalf of her father, Oedipus, carries forward a legacy of blindness more ancient than she or her brother. The movement of history that is suggested here, if it is one, does not occur in such a way that the blind heritage of Oedipus would in any way be resolved or dispelled by its self-conscious resumption in modernity. Rather, the legacy is displaced in the very act of repeating it, its own eyeless sockets re-echoed and thus reinscribed in another version, just as the unintelligibility of Sophocles’ Antigone will have been duplicated and displaced in Kierkegaard’s uncanny rehearsal of it in this section-fragment of Either/Or, Part One. Kierkegaard’s text therefore rewrites Antigone for modernity so that Antigone can finally begin to see that she has indeed inherited her father’s blind ignorance as a secret that she must herself continue to keep. For the one thing that this Antigone can never know for certain is whether and to what extent her father Oedipus was himself aware of this secret that he has from now on bequeathed to her. In Kierkegaard’s version, then, no one, including perhaps Oedipus himself, knows a thing about this secret; his crime of stubborn blindness has somehow gone virtually unnoticed in its “modern” re-edition. “Everyone knows that he has killed the sphinx

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and freed Thebes, and Oedipus is hailed and admired and is happy in his marriage with Jocasta.”23 Only the daughter, Antigone, knows the truth of all that remains concealed from the others, in other words, the radical inexplicability of their nonknowledge. Antigone thus comes to self-awareness simultaneously as both daughter and fiancée, in other words in the impossible conjuncture of a past inherited and a promised future, and she does so at precisely the moment she “experiences” this secret blindness that has from time immemorial defined the existence of her father. The radical alterity of this experience tears Antigone asunder, and along with her the concept of history as self-presence and understanding. Because she is in a radical sense already “wed” to the past as a secret, Antigone cannot by the same token give herself to Haemon. Along with her projected marriage to Haemon, Antigone will thus also be deprived of the promise of a new future that could somehow surpass the past that she now bears concealed within her. All that Antigone can carry “forward” is therefore the echo of a secret; or, rather, she will herself be carried by this secret and in wholly unknowable directions. Kierkegaard’s modernity, as repetition, thus requires a rethinking of history as an occurrence of radical interruption, discontinuity, and continual displacement—motifs that can in no way be reassimilated to organic models of history as a temporal and teleological process of development for both individual and collective subjectivities. However, and as Agacinski herself notes, such a model of history does serve to place Kierkegaard within a particularly noteworthy constellation of “modern” thinkers whose impact on twentieth-century thought has been equally decisive, though it has not always been registered in the same way or to the same degree of effectiveness. Agacinski mentions, for instance, Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) in this context, and the way he developed a model of history, as break, or caesura, and precisely in relation to his own translations of Sophocles’ Antigone. She could easily have also mentioned Walter Benjamin (1895–1940) and his reading of the way “modernity” has to be understood in the writings of the exemplary French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) on the basis of an experience of surprise and even shock. Much more work thus needs to be done on the reception of Kierkegaard, not only in terms of those cases where his texts have actually been read and may have had some direct or occult influence, but also, and perhaps especially, in those even more curious cases where it can be demonstrated that no contact whatsoever has taken place. The historical accident that Hölderlin in Germany, Kierkegaard in Denmark, and Baudelaire in France just happened at more or less the same moment to feel compelled in their writings to reconceive of history as the occurrence of caesura, repetition, and shock is too coincidental not to remain, like pure chance, forever beyond our own powers to understand and thus to control with the help of familiar historical categories like chance and determination. It allows, at any rate, for a reconsideration of the way that Kierkegaard’s peculiar conception of repetition as constitutive of existence in both its subjective and historical determinations necessarily dovetails with a modernity whose limits have not yet been reached, let alone surpassed by our own reflections on it.

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SKS 2, 153 / EO1, 154.

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Of all of Kierkegaard’s texts, it is no doubt Fear and Trembling that most vertiginously restages the problems of repetition, subjective existence, and the peculiar historicity that characterizes the modernity in which alone they might occur. And so it is no surprise that Agacinski will return to this text when she extends the question of Antigone’s “legacy” to a level of generality that can no longer be qualified as being in any way idiosyncratic or contingent. The fact that Oedipus himself is blind, and that he bequeaths this blindness as a secret heritage to Antigone, could always be explained away by reference to Greek cultural history or to the psychological effect Michael Pederson Kierkegaard exerted on his own son Søren, in other words, to assumedly human determinations that in the final analysis serve only to illustrate the particular kind of finitude they already presuppose as given. But with Fear and Trembling the law of the secret and the price to be exacted for it become absolute: it is now God—as a principle of generality that by definition stands beyond all human finitude—who speaks, and what God says can have meaning only on the basis of the promises and demands that it makes—to Abraham, on Abraham, in the first place, and then behind Abraham, after Abraham, within history and for the rest of us. Fear and Trembling will therefore always have been the crucial text in this regard, not just because it, like all of Kierkegaard’s texts, insists on the experience of existence as finitude. Rather, it is an inescapable text because it attempts to account for the peculiar way that each and every experience of finitude ultimately depends for its possibility on an absolute law that is also infinite in scope. As such, all finitude, all existence remains conditioned by a law with which it has nothing in common and that therefore must remain an absolute secret for it. If we are, if we exist in finitude, it is merely as a result of the law of this secret. But to know this is also to know that we ourselves remain radically separated from any true knowledge of this law to which we remain nonetheless impossibly indebted. We are in our finitude only insofar as we experience an infinite distance from the absolute law of our own existence. At least that is what, in the context of all her earlier writings, the title of Agacinski’s last sustained encounter with Kierkegaard, originally published in 1989, will have first of all suggested: “We are not Sublime.” For Abraham, presumably, is sublime, and the possibility that Abraham, alone, can be sublime would therefore present us with an ineluctable dilemma. If, to go further, we recall that the sublime is that, according to Kant, by comparison to which all else is small, then we begin to sense the proportions of this dilemma to which Agacinski seems to refer us here. How could Abraham, in his very sublimity, which is by definition his incommensurability, become an example, a rule, a measure in any way appropriate to the rest of us? We are not sublime; that is, we may not ever be sublime, like the one and only Abraham, but we better nonetheless come to terms with the way this unbreachable distance that separates us once and for all from Abraham and his sublimity intimately concerns us, addresses us, marks us all in all that we do in history as sons and daughters of Abraham and his faith. We are not sublime, but whatever it is that we in fact are as historical beings, we are only as a result of what we thus call Abraham and his sublimity. This, however, and surprisingly enough, is not at all the direction that Agacinski actually pursues in her last essay, her adieu, as it were, to Kierkegaard. For this very reason, then, the difference between “We are not Sublime” and her other work on Kierkegaard becomes of all the more interest to document and interpret.

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Agacinski begins her essay by calling attention to the way that her reading of Kierkegaard’s Abraham has undergone an important shift since she began rereading Fear and Trembling a few years after the publication of Aparté in 1977. Now, in 1988 that is, returning to the text after having put it aside for a considerable length of time, she is no longer inclined to view Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God as the definitive example of faith, as the absolute risk of religious passion, or as a mysterious heroism that impinges on us while still lying lies beyond our reach. Rather, she is now inclined to view this exaltation of the great, the absolute, the incommensurable “with suspicion.”24 What could possibly have happened between the two lectures Agacinski delivered in Copenhagen in 1981 and “We are not Sublime,” a paper she presented seven years later in Paris, at the Collège International de Philosophie, in October of 1988? Is there a secret here that, if we could only know it, would allow us to explain why exactly Agacinski was moved to change from what she calls her “fascination” with Abraham’s faith to her “suspicion” of this same Abraham and the sublime sacrifice of his son? Agacinski suggests just such a secret meaning when she glosses the “we” of her title in the opening pages of the essay. Perhaps, she says, this is the “we” of a certain historical age, such as Kierkegaard’s or our own, that is no longer able, like Abraham, to sustain a relationship to the absolute. Or, perhaps it is the Hegelian “we” that no longer even feels the need for the sublime simply because it has already surmounted the opposition between the finite and infinite. But, she then adds with a kind of wink, perhaps the “we” in her title is meant in a more private and indirect manner, the way, for example, Søren Kierkegaard secretly addressed himself to Regine in so many of his own texts. In this last case, of course, it would be Sylviane Agacinski herself who is saying to someone or other in her present or past life: “we would be able to go on loving each other forever even after such a terrible loss, if only we were sublime….”25 Or, Agacinski next suggests, perhaps the indirect address of her title goes in yet a different direction, and is meant more like this: “We know that eternity is precisely what we do not have, and by knowing that, we are relieved of the temptation to miss it. What we have is time, though time is all we have. We are not sublime.”26 That is Agacinski’s final hypothesis with respect to how her title might be intended, though she then qualifies it by saying “in this case, it would mean: above all let’s not be sublime, for all that exists is finite.”27 As though, in the end, Abraham and his sublime faith could function only as a lure and temptation, cheating us for the sake of the unattainable infinite out of the only existence we actually have left in which to love: that of our own finitude. As fascinating as it would always be to pursue the question of how Agacinski’s lived experiences have left certain traces in her written works, we should by now have developed our own suspicions about the capacity of such traces to help in any way understand whether and to what extent the text called “We are not Sublime” See Agacinski, “Nous ne sommes pas sublimes,” p. 107. (“We Are Not Sublime,” p. 129; translation modified.) 25 Agacinski, “Nous ne sommes pas sublimes,” p. 109. (“We are not Sublime,” p. 130.) 26 Ibid. 27 Agacinski, “Nous ne sommes pas sublimes,” p. 109. (“We are not Sublime,” p. 131.) 24

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represents a genuine advance in her reading of Kierkegaard and, more particularly, of the text called Fear and Trembling. For, in this respect, the same general law that applies to Søren Kierkegaard himself applies to Sylviane Agacinski, and this law was clearly enunciated on more than one occasion in Fear and Trembling by none other than Johannes de silentio, its pseudonymous author: “Either there is a paradox, that the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute, or Abraham is lost.”28 In other words, if Søren’s broken commitment to Regine, or Sylviane’s reference to an indirect and private “we” that was not one day and perhaps will not ever be sublime can hold any truly philosophical—as opposed to merely anecdotal—interest for “us” still today, it can be only by virtue of the paradox that such particular and individual instances always also stand as such in an absolute relation to the absolute. A text that promises, as every text in fact does, to possess “human” interest for whoever one day wrote and reads it is not necessarily or not yet a text that actually confronts the philosophical obligation to think the category of the human in all its potentially disruptive conditions of possibility. To determine whether and how such a paradoxical trembling, shudder, or collision between the individual and the absolute does in fact ever or anywhere occur, it would therefore be necessary once again to turn to the exemplary proper name we have inherited for just such an event, in other words, Abraham. Now the most curious aspect of “We are not Sublime” is precisely the way that it does not dwell on Abraham, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, it does not dwell upon Abraham as he is portrayed by Kierkegaard in the text of Fear and Trembling. It is as though Agacinski were adding her own “fifth” variation on Abraham in order to counter the four little fictions that Kierkegaard includes in the Exordium section that precedes the main body of Fear and Trembling. “I’d like to think,” Agacinski writes, “that Abraham would never have gone through with the sacrifice.”29 In this respect, Agacinski’s Abraham is already not exactly identical to Kierkegaard’s, and he moves even farther away when Agacinski imagines that he never really believed that God would ultimately require the sacrifice of his son, Isaac. By taking Isaac to Mount Moriah, Agacinski suggests, Abraham was actually testing, even teasing God: “You’re asking me for my son? Alright, but I don’t believe you really want that from me….Let’s see if God is really going to ask me to sacrifice Isaac. I just don’t believe it.”30 It is to say the least difficult to believe that Abraham, the father of faith, can in this way become precisely the one who does not or cannot believe. For what would remain of faith once belief, credence, and the bestowal of credibility upon the word of another have been removed from it? Agacinski’s own response, however, would have us believe that “Abraham’s faith might lie less in his blind obedience than in his skepticism,” which would by the same token amount to his not believing: “You’re asking me for my son? I just don’t believe it.”31 That a father might go to any length to resist believing in a law that would require the sacrifice of his unique and beloved son is certainly believable from a purely human SKS 4, 207 / FT, 120. Agacinski, “Nous ne sommes pas sublimes,” p. 112. (“We are not Sublime,” p. 133.) 30 Agacinski, “Nous ne sommes pas sublimes,” p. 114. (“We are not Sublime,” p. 134.) 31 Ibid. 28 29

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and empirical point of view. But what assures us that the kind of belief that is above all implied in Abraham’s faith is an exclusively human faculty in the first place? For instance, how could faith as a constitutive mode of belief ever be simply equated with “blind obedience,” a secondary determination that already presupposes human agency as a byproduct of the knowing subject? But it is precisely such knowledge that, in faith, Abraham will always lack. Could one even be said to “obey” the law—either blindly or with eyes wide open—without a prior and more unconditional “belief” that the law as such exists and is somewhere enunciated? Finally, and most difficult of all, how could “faith” ever be manifested in not believing? Kierkegaard’s text, at least, seems not to waver on this point. If Abraham does not believe and with his whole heart and soul acknowledge the “impossibility” of keeping Isaac that he hears pronounced in the law, Johannes insists, then “he is deceiving himself and his testimony is neither here nor there, since he has not even attained infinite resignation.”32 Obedience to or freedom from the law is not yet at issue for Abraham, since both can become intelligible for him only through a prior belief, as unconditional as it is unjustifiable, in God’s inaugural promise, which also happens to include the demand that he give Isaac up. Abraham undergoes a spiritual trial precisely to the degree that he would be tempted to understand God’s word, that he could without further ado know its meaning as anything other than this promise that simultaneously demands that he separate himself from all that is most dear and thus meaningful to him. Abraham hears God’s word first of all as this summons that is addressed to him in an absolute way; as such it is also that in which Abraham can originally only believe, in other words, that to which he can at first respond only by saying yes, which is also to say: “here I am.” Faith thus remains incommensurate to both obedience and freedom, passivity and activity, as they are ordinarily conceived from the point of view of the knowing subject, and in that respect faith must, as de silentio reminds us, also go beyond “all human calculation.”33 Knowing only that one does not and cannot know what it will have eventually meant to respond to the inaugural call of the infinite, the finite self will have always already been carried far beyond its own limits: how Abraham entered into the paradox “is just as inexplicable as how he remains in it.”34 What Kierkegaard calls existence, a finitude that is at every instant renewing the shudder of its collision with the infinite, is this secret that necessarily exceeds the faculties of every human subject at the very moment that it makes them possible. Consequently, as de silentio insists, Abraham, who may speak only on condition of guarding this secret, also and for the same reason “speaks no human language.”35 The concept of the human, it would appear, cannot emerge unscathed by Abraham’s faith, and so it, too, as a stable philosophical category, gives way to trembling here. If it is true, as de silentio also says, that “every language calls [Abraham] to mind,” then it is equally true that every language also recalls that aspect of Abraham’s faith

34 35 32 33

SKS 4, 141 / FT, 47. SKS 4, 131 / FT, 35–6. SKS 4, 159 / FT, 66. SKS 4, 202 / FT, 114.

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that can belong to no human tongue, in other words, that secret element that is not itself reducible to the human as such. Of course, it is also at this point that the strict divergence between Kierkegaard’s text and “We are not Sublime” comes into full view. As a text that was written partly when Agacinski was “still fascinated” by Abraham and his faith, partly after she had become “suspicious” of this exaltation of the incommensurable, “We are not Sublime” is itself fractured, its own sutures of these two wholly incompatible moments sometimes blurring the lines between them. However, the last section, entitled, “Human Loves,” is clearly written on the far side of a fascination with Abraham and his sublimity, and as a consequence it leaves no doubt about its own ambition to offer an alternative to “a sacrificial operation” that characterizes the sublime law to which Kierkegaard, according to Agacinski, was always to remain attached. Leaving Fear and Trembling aside, Agacinski turns abruptly to Works of Love, where she finds that Kierkegaard, writing in his own name for once, underwrites a concept of ethical love that would be essentially Kantian, and as a consequence, “egocentric” in nature. Such a concept, Agacinski goes on to suggest, reintroduces a kind of universal imperative whose ultimate aim would be to preserve the loving subject by freeing it for eternity from the temporal constraints of finitude. Set free from the despair that always shadows the finite self in its precarious attachments to any finite other, Agacinski argues, the self would at the same time become detached from every single empirical other as such. This ideal version of “religious” love, which Agacinski does not hesitate to ascribe to Kierkegaard and his broken promise to Regine, is willing to humble itself before the law of the eternal but not before the finite individuality of the other. At long last, and after all these years, one begins to hear, as in a re-flex, the concrete particularity of Regine’s own voice rise in protest against Kierkegaard’s sacrifice of her. If fluency, measure and finesse are attributes of true eloquence, then it is certainly the case that Sylviane Agacinski attains in these final pages on human love a degree of eloquence that Kierkegaard himself rarely if ever managed to achieve in his writings. What is missing here, though in the sense of its having been excised rather than in the sense of its merely being absent, is the nervous shrillness that tends to become audible in Kierkegaard’s own text at precisely those moments when a simple affirmation of human finitude appears over the horizon. For Kierkegaard, as Agacinski knows as well as anybody else, Abraham is and will always remain the figure in which the most profound love of human finitude goes hand in hand, though unthinkably, with an inhuman belief that he must give it all up. Abraham’s love for Isaac as the single other closest to him therefore also goes hand in hand with his treatment of Isaac as the absolute and wholly separate other. Agacinski’s writings on Kierkegaard bring us in the end to this ineluctable task: to know just what kind of love it is that Abraham gives to Isaac, and further to know if there might exist any legitimate alternatives to such love. She herself, most emphatically with “Human Loves,” would like to propose a thinking of love based on the “pure address of one singularity to another, the predilection of one finite being for another,”36 and thus a knowing how to love that could do without all reference to the sublime and as a

36

Agacinski, “Nous ne sommes pas sublimes,” p. 131. (“We are not Sublime,” p. 146.)

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result to the absolute. Such a love would, in its very capacity to accept the lack of eternity and immortality characterizing all things human, also include the possibility to “think the gift, and to think love as the gift; for what more can I give than my time, which is to say neither my life nor my death, but rather the essence of my mortality?”37 Still, the story of Abraham as it is silently and thus secretly recalled by Kierkegaard suggests that one does not in love simply give one’s time and one’s mortality to the other, above all and especially not in the purity of one’s own name, without any pseudonymous or fictitious contamination and interference. As we have seen, over and over again, it is precisely in its relationship to the most intimate other that the self in Kierkegaard experiences itself as an unimpeachable secret. For the same reason, too, whatever the “gift” that is inscribed in Kierkegaard’s writing, it lies forever beyond the powers of the finite self—either to receive or to give it all on its own. What we call a “self” could therefore never be at the origin of such a gift but is much rather a displaced name for the trace of its effects, one of which, as Kierkegaard reminds us, is a permanent trembling. What remains intact and always ready to tremble again in the proper name Abraham is that enigma wherein he received the gift of time in the very instant that he offered the gift of Isaac’s death, which is another way of saying that “he” is not even the one we recognize as Abraham until after such an incomprehensible ordeal of belief has been undergone. The question of knowing whether it is humanly possible to love in such a way that one could make the trembling stop, that one could ever succeed once and for all in separating the gift of time from the gift of death is no doubt the most enduring legacy that Sylviane Agacinski has bequeathed to all future readings of Kierkegaard.

37



Agacinski, “Nous ne sommes pas sublimes,” p. 129. (“We are not Sublime,” p. 145.)

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Agacinski’s Corpus Aparté: Conceptions et morts de Søren Kierkegaard, Paris: Aubier-Flammarion 1977. (English translation: Aparté: Conceptions and Deaths of Søren Kierkegaard, trans. by Kevin Newmark, Gainesville: Florida State University Press 1988.) “La philosophie à l’affiche,” Revue des Sciences Humaines, no. 185, 1982, pp. 13–24. (Republished as “La philosophie s’adresse-t-elle? Réception et déception de Kierkegaard à Derrida,” in La Critique de l’égocentrisme: L’événement de l’autre, Paris: Galilée 1996, pp. 47–72.) “Le savoir absolu d’Antigone,” digraphe, March 29, 1983, pp. 53–70. (Republished as “La faute, l’autre et le tragique moderne: Une étrange Antigone,” in La Critique de l’égocentrisme: L’événement de l’autre, Paris: Galilée 1996, pp. 73–104.) “Nous ne sommes pas sublimes,” Le Cahiers de la Philosophie, nos. 8–9, 1989 (Kierkegaard: vingt-cinq Études), pp. 167–85. (Republished as “Nous ne sommes pas sublimes: L’amour et le sacrifice, Abraham et nous,” in La Critique de l’égocentrisme: L’événement de l’autre, Paris: Galilée 1996, pp. 105–32; English translation: “We Are Not Sublime: Love and Sacrifice, Abraham and Ourselves,” in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, ed. by Jonathan Rée and Jane Chamberlain, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, pp. 129–50.) “On a Thesis,” in Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by Harold Bloom, New York and Philadelphia: Chelsea House 1989 (Modern Critical Views), pp. 117–48. “An Aparté on Repetition,” in Feminist Interpretations of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by Céline Léon and Sylvia Walsh, University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press 1997, pp. 131–46. Le Passeur de Temps: Modernité et Nostalgie, Paris: Seuil 2000, p. 22; p. 31; p. 106. (English translation: Time Passing: Modernity and Nostalgia, trans. by Jody Gladding, New York: Columbia 2003, p. 14; p. 22; p. 96.) Le Drame des sexes: Ibsen, Strindberg, Bergman, Paris: Seuil 2008, pp. 50–2; p. 72; p. 74; p. 86; p. 152; p. 209. II. Sources of Agacinski’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Blanchot, Maurice, “Le ‘Journal’ de Kierkegaard,” in his Faux Pas, Paris: Gallimard 1971 [1943], pp. 25–30. Brandes, Georg, Sören Kierkegaard. Ein literarisches Charakterbild, Hildesheim: Olms 1975. Brandt, Frithiof and Else Rammel, Kierkegaard og Pengene, Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard 1935.

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Clair, André, Pseudonymie et paradoxe, Paris: J. Vrin 1976. Deleuze, Gilles, Différence et répétition, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1968, pp. 12–20; p. 38; p. 39, note 1; pp. 126–7; p. 289, note 1; pp. 347–8; p. 377; p. 397. Hohlenberg, Johannes, Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: H. Hagerup 1940. Kierkegaard, Søren, Hâte-toi d’écouter; quatre discours édifiants, trans. and ed. by Jacques Colette, Paris: Aubier-Montaigne 1970. Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’Unesco à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, Paris: Gallimard 1960. Lukács, Georg, La destruction de la raison, vols. 1–2, trans. by Stanislas George et al., Paris: L’Arche 1958–59, vol. 1, pp. 213–66. Viallaneix, Nelly, Ecoute, Kierkegaard, Paris: Editions du Cerf 1979. III. Secondary Literature on Agacinski’s Relation to Kierkegaard Blanchot, Maurice, L’Écriture du désastre, Paris: Gallimard 1980, p. 60; p. 79. Fenves, Peter, Chatter: Language and History in Kierkegaard, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1993, p. 255; p. 265; p. 276; p. 282. — “The Irony of Revelation: The Young Kierkegaard Listens to Old Schelling,” The Concept of Irony, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 2001 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 2), p. 395. Newmark, Kevin, “Taking Kierkegaard Apart,” Diacritics, vol. 17, no. 1, 1987, pp. 70–80. — “Secret Agents: After Kierkegaard’s Subject,” Modern Language Notes, vol. 112, no. 5, 1997, pp. 734–35. Walsh, Sylvia, “Kierkegaard and Postmodernism,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 29, 1991, pp. 113–22.

Roland Barthes: Style, Language, Silence Joseph Westfall

In an anthology introduction entitled “Writing Itself,” Susan Sontag (1933–2004) writes: “Teacher, man of letters, moralist, philosopher of culture, connoisseur of strong ideas, protean autobiographer…of all the intellectual notables who have emerged since World War II in France, Roland Barthes is the one whose work I am most certain will endure.”1 Sontag’s assessment of Roland Barthes (1915–80) is not without its merits, but it is interesting to note that, of the many vocations she ascribes to Barthes in her introduction, the ones which seem today to have constituted his enduring legacy—literary critic and theorist of the death of the author—are absent from her list. This is not to say that Sontag’s portrait of Barthes is not an accurate one, although to take Barthes at his word would be to deny the possibility of anything like an “accurate portrait”—or, at least, to deny that one portrait of Barthes could be any more or less “accurate” than another, granting that portraiture is one way of reading a text. For a thinker like Barthes, there will be any number of possibly accurate portraits of Barthes; Susan Sontag’s is one, Roland Barthes’ Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975) is, famously, another.2 Nevertheless, from the perspective of early twenty-first-century philosophy, Barthes’ importance seems to be primarily literary theoretical—that is, however unfair the taxonomy, not philosophical— primarily concerned with his fertile notion of the death of the author. Outside of literary studies, Barthes’ single most famous and influential work is his 1968 essay, “The Death of the Author,”3 wherein he argues that authorial intention

1 Susan Sontag, “Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes,” in A Barthes Reader, ed. by Susan Sontag, New York: Hill and Wang 1982, p. vii. 2 See Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1975; Oeuvres complètes, vols. 1–5, ed. by Éric Marty, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 2002, vol. 4, pp. 575–771. (English translation: Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, trans. by Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang 1977.) 3 Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” trans. by Richard Howard, Aspen, vols. 5–6, 1967 (since Aspen was published as a “multimedia magazine” in a box, rather than as a bound journal, the original publication of Barthes’ essay is unpaginated). The first publication of the untranslated French version of the essay was as “La mort de l’auteur,” Manteia, vol. 5, 1968, pp. 12–17; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 40–5. (Anthologized English translation: “The Death of the Author,” in Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, ed. and trans. by Stephen Heath, New York: Hill and Wang 1977, pp. 142–8.)

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has no role to play in interpretation. Barthes concludes the essay with something of a call to arms: Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature. We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favour of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers, or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.4

Elements of this view were already latent in Barthes’ first book, Writing Degree Zero (1953),5 where the author as an individual recedes to make room for “writing” (écriture) and “style,” such that, as George Wasserman notes, “the writer becomes aware that merely the ‘writing,’ simply the written form, is what speaks.”6 Sontag reads Writing Degree Zero as a direct response to Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1905–80) What is Literature? (1947).7 Sartre’s position is that a writer has an ethical and political obligation, a stance he calls “engagement”; Barthes’ position begins to isolate writing from the demands of ethics and politics.8 That isolation will continue in Barthes’ work, from Writing Degree Zero to “The Death of the Author,” and culminating in writings almost wholly concerned with writing (if not their own “writtenness”), like S/Z (1970), A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (1977), and Writer Sollers (1979).9 Barthes, “La mort de l’auteur,” Oeuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 45. (“The Death of the Author,” p. 148.) 5 Roland Barthes, Le Degré zéro de l’écriture, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1953; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 169–224. (English translation: Writing Degree Zero, trans. by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, New York: Hill and Wang 1968.) 6 George R. Wasserman, Roland Barthes, Boston: Twayne Publishers 1981 (Twayne’s World Authors Series, vol. 614), p. 26. 7 Jean Paul Sartre, Qu’est-ce que la littérature?, published first in Les Temps modernes, no. 17, 1947, pp. 769–805; no. 18, 1947, pp. 961–88; no. 19, 1947, pp. 1194–1218; no. 20, 1947, pp. 1410–29; no. 21, 1947, pp. 1607–41; and no. 22, 1947, pp. 77–114; published as book: Paris: Gallimard 1964. (English translation: What is Literature?, trans. by Bernard Frechtman et al., New York: Harper & Row 1965.) See Susan Sontag, “Preface,” to Writing Degree Zero, pp. x–xvi. 8 According to Sontag, for Sartre, “The writer is (potentially) a giver of consciousness, a liberator. His medium, language, confers on him an ethical obligation: to aid in the project of bringing liberty to all men—and this ethical criterion must be the foundation of any sound literary judgment.” Sontag, “Preface” to Writing Degree Zero, p. xi. In contrast, Sontag continues, in “Preface” to Writing Degree Zero, p. xiv: “What Barthes is trying to allow is a more complex view of literature—a view of literature freed from the simplifications imposed by yielding to ethical euphoria, innocent of the necessity of ‘judgment.’ ” 9 Roland Barthes, S/Z, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1970; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 119– 346. (English translation: S/Z: An Essay, trans. by Richard Miller, New York: Hill and Wang 1974.) Roland Barthes, Fragments d’un discours amoureux, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1977; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5, pp. 25–296. (English translation: A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, trans. by Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang 1978.) Roland Barthes, Sollers écrivain, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1979; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5, pp. 579–620. (English translation: Writer Sollers, trans. by Philip Thody, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1987.) 4

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It thus seems likely the case that, as Sontag concludes, “Barthes’ writing, with its prodigious variety of subjects, has finally one great subject: writing itself.”10 Barthes was familiar with Kierkegaard from a relatively early stage in his authorship, and his references to Kierkegaard appear scattered throughout his writings from 1944 to 1979. He shares a number of interests with Kierkegaard— not only writing and authorship, but also aesthetics, love, and the nature of the self—and he writes in what one might call a Kierkegaardian vein, often blurring the lines between philosophical prose, narrative fiction, journalism, and autobiography. Thus, it is somewhat surprising that Barthes never devoted even a single work to the study, analysis, or criticism of Kierkegaard. Instead, Kierkegaard appears in Barthes only occasionally, almost always in the context of a comparison, and always very briefly. There are, in total, only 13 references to Kierkegaard in the entire Barthesian corpus—and one of these is but the mere mention of Kierkegaard as the subject of a play by Henri Lefebvre (1901–91),11 about which Barthes has absolutely nothing to say; his interest is to use the occasion of the play to say something about the French dramatic and literary critics of the day.12 This decreases the number of Kierkegaard references in Barthes to an even dozen.13 Sontag, “Writing Itself,” p. vii. Henri Lefebvre, “Le Don Juan du Nord, pièce en 3 actes (à la Kierkegaard),” Europe: Revue mensuelle, vol. 28, 1948, pp. 24–72. 12 Roland Barthes, “Critique muette et aveugle,” in Mythologies, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1957, p. 35; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 697. (English translation: “Blind and Dumb Criticism,” in Mythologies, ed. and trans. by Annette Lavers, New York: Hill and Wang 1972, p. 34.) 13 The references to Kierkegaard in Barthes, in chronological order of original publication, are the following: “Réflexion sur le style de ‘L’Etranger,’ ” Existences: Bulletin de l’Association des étudiants du sanatorium de St-Hilaire du Touvet, 1944, pp. 79–83; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 78; “ ‘L’Etranger,’ roman solaire,” Bulletin du Club du meilleur livre, no. 12, 1954, pp. 6–7; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 478; Sur Racine, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1963, p. 40; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 82 (English translation: On Racine, trans. by Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang 1964, p. 30); “La réponse de Kafka,” in Essais critiques, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1964, p. 142; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 398 (English translation: “Kafka’s Answer,” in Critical Essays, trans. by Richard Howard, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 1972, p. 137); “Trois fragments: ‘Edipo,’ ‘I tre dialoghi,’ ‘Arte, Forma, caso,’ ” trans. by Guido Neri, Il Menabò, vol. 7, 1964, pp. 46–9; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 560; Critique et vérité, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1966, p. 60; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 790 (English translation: Criticism and Truth, trans. and ed. by Katrine Pilcher Keuneman, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1987, pp. 76–7); “Chateaubriand: ‘Vie de Rancé,’ ” in Le degré zéro de l’écriture suivi de Nouveaux essais critiques, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1972, p. 119; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 4, p. 65 (English translation: “Chateaubriand: ‘Life of Rancé,’ ” in New Critical Essays, trans. by Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang 1980, p. 53); Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, p. 178; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 4, p. 747 (Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, p. 175); Fragments d’un discours amoureux, p. 248; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5, p. 258 (A Lover’s Discourse, p. 209); Leçon, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1978, pp. 15–16 and p. 27; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5, p. 432 and p. 438 (English translation: “Inaugural Lecture, Collège de France,” trans. by Richard Howard, in A Barthes Reader, pp. 461–2 and pp. 468–9); Sollers écrivain, p. 31; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5, p. 593 (Writer Sollers, p. 56). 10 11

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Despite their brevity, however, and their limited number, a distinct picture of Barthes’ Kierkegaard does emerge from these references, and the rest of this article will be devoted to drawing at least the outlines of that picture. To that end, I will consider first Barthes’ early references to Kierkegaard, wherein Kierkegaard is most often associated with existentialism and, specifically, the existentialism of Albert Camus (1913–60); in the second section, I will consider Barthes’ more numerous later references to Kierkegaard, where the focus shifts away from death, existence, and absurdity and toward the more centrally Barthesian themes of language, silence, and literature. Here, I think we will see something of Barthes’ relation to Kierkegaard more generally, both as a reader and critic of Kierkegaard and as a peculiar kind of Kierkegaardian author or writer himself. I. Early Barthes: The Leap and the Absurd The earliest reference to Kierkegaard in Barthes’ authorship is from a review article, published in Existences in 1944, titled “Reflection on the Style of The Stranger.”14 In his essay on The Stranger (1942)15—a novel by Albert Camus—Barthes writes: Thus, to sacrifice style would be, in the order of rhetoric, a “leap” analogous to that which Camus denounces in the sacrifice of the intellect of Loyola or of Kierkegaard. Style remains the precarious perch where the absurd man must remain between infinite ideas and inconsistent words. The absence of style would eventually be nothing more than a sort of stylistics of consolation, just as rationalist atheism is nothing more—with regard to the absurd—than a new leap into hope.16

The Stranger was published two years prior to Barthes’ essay, but in the same year as another work by Camus that had a significant influence on Barthes, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942).17 Camus’ notion of the absurd plays a central role in both works, but an explicit account of the absurd’s relationship to style occurs only in the latter, and Barthes is clearly influenced by that discussion here. For Camus, in what he calls an absurd work of fiction, style is all: the absurd appears in a written work only stylistically, never in terms of plot, character, or other content.18 Situating “the absurd man” between ideas and words, as Barthes does, is really to depict the absurd man in the specific guise of an absurd writer, a creator of absurd works of fiction. Thus, Barthes’ analysis of Camus is in distinctly Camusian terms.

14 See Barthes, “Réflexion sur le style de ‘L’Etranger,’ ” Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 75–9. 15 Albert Camus, L’Étranger, Paris: Gallimard 1942. (English translation: The Stranger, trans. by Matthew Ward, New York: Vintage International 1988.) 16 Barthes, “Réflexion sur le style de ‘L’Etranger,’ ” Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 78. (My translation.) 17 Albert Camus, Le mythe de Sisyphe, Paris: Gallimard 1942. (English translation: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. by Justin O’Brien, New York: Vintage International 1955.) 18 See Camus, Le myth de Sisyphe, pp. 127–39. (The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 93–104.)

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Camus’ pairing of Kierkegaard with Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) occurs in the section of The Myth of Sisyphus called “An Absurd Reasoning: Philosophical Suicide,” wherein Camus maintains that, for Kierkegaard, antinomy and paradox become criteria of the religious. Thus, the very thing that led to despair of the meaning and depth of this life now gives it its truth and its clarity…what Kierkegaard calls for quite plainly is the third sacrifice required by Ignatius Loyola, the one in which God most rejoices: “The sacrifice of the intellect.”19

Camus depicts the Ignatian sacrifice of the intellect—the Kierkegaardian leap—as a “philosophical suicide,” the denial of the experience of meaninglessness that Camus sees at the heart of human existence. In locating the most meaningful thing—God or faith—in irrationality and the absurd, Kierkegaard and Loyola stay themselves and their disciples from fully encountering the existential crisis Camus takes to be the only essential element of an authentically human life. In the absurd work of fiction, for Camus, style stands in as the representative of the absurd. Thus, according to Barthes, the problem with the “sacrifice of style” is that it is, like the sacrifice of the intellect, a total evasion of the essential aspect of, in this case, a work of literature (namely, Camus’ The Stranger). It is the work of thought to explain, and of style to depict or describe. Without style, the novel is nothing but explanation, and this for Camus constitutes an escape or evasion such as that characteristic of religious faith (although it is a sort of inversion—faith is all style and no thought or explanation, whereas writing without style is nothing but explanatory). The absurd man walks a difficult line between explanation and description; as Barthes notes in his commentary on Camus, an absurd writer must remain always in a tension between the two. To deny either is to deny one’s basic humanity. Thus, the comparison of an absence of style with rationalist atheism—both, like Kierkegaardian faith and the Ignatian sacrifice of the intellect, try to make sense of nonsense, and thus provide meaning or the promise of the possibility of meaning—hope—where there is really only obscurity, ambiguity, and the threat of meaninglessness. Barthes returns to Camus and to Kierkegaard in another essay on “The Stranger: Solar Novel,” published in the Bulletin du Club français du livre a decade later, in 1954.20 There, Barthes returns to the association of Kierkegaard with the Camusian absurd, reading Kierkegaard as a kind of existentialist. Here, however, Barthes’ tone is somewhat less appreciative of existentialism. He writes: The book seemed, perhaps more than it does now, to uphold a new philosophy, that of the absurd. It’s the moment when the myth of the disoriented consciousness “takes,” solidifies itself, passes from the quill of the ancestors to be consumed by the great intellectual public; Kierkegaard, German existentialism, Kafka, the American romantics, Sartre, a whole constellation of thinkers or creators of diverse origins and epochs, reunited pell-mell in the public consciousness to define there a new myth of freedom.21 Camus, Le mythe de Sisyphe, p. 57. (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 37.) Barthes, “ ‘L’Etranger,’ roman solaire,” pp. 6–7; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 4, pp. 478–81. 21 Barthes, “ ‘L’Etranger,’ roman solaire,” p. 6; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 4, p. 478. (My translation.)

19 20

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Here, again, we see the association of Kierkegaard with Camus’ philosophy of the absurd in Barthes, although now the nature of the relationship has changed. In the first reference, from 1944, Barthes maintained (alongside Camus) that Kierkegaard was very much in opposition to Camus’ position in The Stranger and elsewhere. Now, however, in the 1954 reference, Barthes sets Kierkegaard at the head of the list of thinkers, writers, and movements united for public consumption in Camus’ novel. The essay says very little about Barthes’ thoughts on Kierkegaard, except to resituate him in his relation to Barthes himself: Kierkegaard has gone from antiCamusian (and thus, in the first essay, anti-Barthesian) to more or less neutral in his relationship to both Camus and Barthes, a figure—like so many other figures—noted only for his historical significance. Camus himself seems, on Barthes’ view, likewise to have receded somewhat into history, to have been distanced from Barthes. Although this early, “existentialist” period of Barthes’ thought and authorship seems to have come to an end by the mid-1950s, some of Camus’ and existentialism’s concerns—perhaps especially the focus on death and the work of Franz Kafka (1883– 1924)—appear in Barthes’ references to Kierkegaard from the early 1960s. In a brief passage from his study Sur Racine (On Racine, 1963), Barthes discusses death as it appears in the plays of Jean Racine (1639–1699). Barthes’ fundamental point seems to be that death in Racine is something like the opposite of death for the existentialist; whereas death is for existentialism the constant threat of meaninglessness before which all human beings are essentially passive, in Racine death is almost always (in all but one case, Barthes maintains) what he calls tragic death, “a name, a part of speech, the final term of a contestation.”22 Whereas the threat of death in Camus, for example, is the threat of absolute insignificance, death in Racine is but one more mode of signification. As Barthes writes: Very often, death is merely a way of indicating the absolute state of a sentiment, a kind of superlative destined to signify a zenith, a heraldic sign. The frivolity with which the tragic individual manipulates the idea of death (announcing much more often than effecting it) attests a still-infantile humanity, in which man is not completely fulfilled: opposite all this funeral rhetoric, we must put Kierkegaard’s phrase: “the higher one sets man, the more terrible death becomes.”23 Tragic death is not terrible; it is generally an empty grammatical category.24

The contrast between Camus and Racine could not be clearer, and the terms of that contrast are, for Barthes, most succinctly Kierkegaardian. The greatness of the human and the terribleness of death increase in direct proportion; death in Racine is not so terrible; therefore, Racinian man is not so great. The absurd man, however, for whom one’s own death shakes the meaning of everything all the way to the ground, would by this logic be among the greatest human types. The line from Kierkegaard comes from a footnote in The Concept of Anxiety, where Vigilius Haufniensis writes: Barthes, Sur Racine, p. 40; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 82. (On Racine, p. 30.) SKS 4, 395, note / CA, 92, note. 24 Barthes, Sur Racine, pp. 40–1; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 82. (On Racine, p. 30. Translation slightly modified.) 22 23

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This is a progression, with the analogue, si placet, that even in relation to the external phenomenon, death declares itself more terrible the more perfect the organism is. Thus while the death and decay of a plant spread a fragrance almost more pleasing than its spring breath, the decay of an animal infects the air. It is true in a deeper sense that the higher man is valued, the more terrifying is death. The beast does not really die, but when the spirit is posited as spirit, death shows itself as the terrifying.25

Death is only terrifying, for Haufniensis, when it is the death of spirit—a purely corporeal death such as that of the beast, he claims, is not really death at all: “the beast does not really die.” In like fashion, Barthes uses Kierkegaard (Barthes does not respect the pseudonymity of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works, and refers always to Kierkegaard as their author) to show that the Racinian man is more beast than man. While it would be going too far, I think, to ascribe to Barthes Haufniensis’ belief that spirit is “higher” than “mere” body, it is nevertheless the case that Barthes is claiming here that Racine’s characters are, on the whole, neither honest nor true representations of the authentically human. And this last point—that the authentic human being is authentic in his or her relation to death, and lives a life of greater or lesser value depending upon the nature and intensity of that relation—places On Racine, or, at least, Barthes’ thoughts on Kierkegaard as they appear in On Racine, still within the orbit of Camus and his particular brand of existentialism. The shift of focus in Barthes’ interest in Kierkegaard occurs in the early 1960s, and the beginnings of that shift can be seen in an essay of Barthes first published in 1960 and then included in his volume of essays, Critical Essays (1964), four years later.26 The essay is entitled “Kafka’s Answer” and originally appeared in FranceObservateur as a review of Marthe Robert’s (1914–96) Kafka of the same year.27 A change in Barthes’ understanding of the role of literature and criticism can already be seen in the announcement that constitutes the essay’s opening sentences: “A moment has passed, the moment of committed literature. The end of the Sartrean novel, the imperturbable indigence of socialist fiction, the defects of political theater—all that, like a receding wave, leaves exposed a singular and singularly resistant object: literature.”28 This is a different approach to that Barthes took in his earlier work, Writing Degree Zero, which seemed to constitute an attack and counter-argument against Sartre’s What is Literature? and the notions of “engagement” and “committed literature” presented therein. Of course, Barthes’ anti- or non-Sartreanism is clear in most of his early works; in the division between Sartre and Camus, Barthes sides with the latter. Nevertheless, “Kafka’s Answer” announces the beginning of a postSartrean era in French literature and criticism. Sartre’s “socialist fiction” is a thing of the past, and France is now ready for (what Barthes calls) literature. After Sartre, Barthes thinks the world of French literature is confronted with a series of related questions: “Is our literature forever doomed to this exhausting SKS 4, 395, note / CA, 92, note. Barthes, Essais critiques, pp. 138–42; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, pp. 395–9. (Critical Essays, pp. 133–7.) 27 Marthe Robert, Kafka, Paris: Gallimard 1960. 28 Barthes, “La réponse de Kafka,” p. 138; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 395. (“Kafka’s Answer,” p. 133.) 25 26

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oscillation between political realism and art-for-art’s-sake, between an ethic of commitment and an aesthetic purism, between compromise and asepsis? Must it always be poor (if it is merely itself) or embarrassed (if it is anything but itself)? Can it not have a proper place in this world?”29 Barthes maintains in this essay that “this question now receives an exact answer: Marthe Robert’s Kafka. Is it Kafka who answers? Yes, of course…but we must make no mistake: Kafka is not Kafka-ism.”30 Thus, somewhat ironically for Barthes, to locate an answer to the question of the future of French literature, we must look back to the writings of a German-Bohemian-Jewish author decidedly of the past. Naturally, Barthes is not recommending to French writers that they attempt to emulate the writing of Kafka— this, he maintains, is but a cheap “Kafka-ism,” and it is ultimately quite worthless. Instead, French writers of postwar, post-socialist, post-Sartrean France must do the thing that Kafka did, but in their own way and for themselves. Barthes is not looking for Kafka’s influence in modern French writing (although, he admits, all modern writing is decidedly Kafkaian); he is looking for modern French writers to produce more than mere fiction, to produce literature. The difference between literature and other forms of creative writing is, for Barthes following Robert, the difference between symbolism and allusion. Sartrean engagement can at best produce symbolic novels, according to Robert according to Barthes, narratives woven of symbols. “The symbol (Christianity’s cross, for instance) is a convinced sign, it affirms a (partial) analogy between a form and an idea, it implies a certitude.”31 An artist writing in symbols has a truth he or she wants to communicate through the aesthetic product: a politically engaged Sartrean socialist, for example, writes his or her solidarity with the proletariat into his or her works, advocates revolution and rule by the working class, uses his or her novels or plays or essays or poems as instruments of the truth of which he or she is absolutely convinced. In that way, a writer in symbols attempts to change the world, and writing becomes a kind of revolutionary or otherwise political action. A Kafkaian writer in allusion, however, has no certainty with which to imbue symbols in his or her writing. Whereas symbolic writing is assertive, allusive writing is interrogatory—open to possibilities it does not yet know, aware of its own finitude, limitations, and ignorance. Using the example of Kafka himself as a means to compare symbolic writing to allusive writing, Barthes writes, If the figures and events of Kafka’s narrative were symbolic, they would refer to a positive (even if it were a despairing) philosophy, to a universal Man: we cannot differ as to the meaning of a symbol, or else the symbol is a failure. Now, Kafka’s narrative authorizes a thousand equally plausible keys—which is to say, it validates none.32

Ibid. Barthes, “La réponse de Kafka,” p. 138; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 395. (“Kafka’s Answer,” pp. 133–4.) 31 Barthes, “La réponse de Kafka,” p. 140; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 397. (“Kafka’s Answer,” p. 135.) 32 Barthes, “La réponse de Kafka,” p. 140; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 397. (“Kafka’s Answer,” pp. 135–6.) 29 30

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Narratives in the works of both symbolic and allusive authors refer the objects or events of the narrative (characters, plot points, relationships, allegiances, institutions, and so on) to something other than and outside of the narrative itself, but they refer differently. Symbolic narratives attempt, again, to communicate one truth to everyone in the same way. Allusive narratives open up a question about truth, try on one or more possibilities as if they might function like symbols, but ultimately decide nothing. The reader of symbolic fiction either understands or does not understand, either agrees or disagrees, with what the author is trying to say by way of the fiction. The reader of allusive fiction—the only kind of writing to which Barthes seems willing to grant the name “literature”—is ultimately left to his or her own devices in trying to establish the “truth” and “meaning” of the work. Literature allows for widely divergent and infinitely multiple valid interpretations of a single work; symbolic fiction does not. Here, then, we begin to see not only a transition in Barthes’ understanding of literature and writing, but the beginnings of the transition in Barthes’ thought from something like existentialism (and structuralism) to something more like postmodernism (and post-structuralism).Thus, Barthes writes As Marthe Robert puts it, Kafka’s relations with the world are governed by a perpetual yes, but….One can fairly say as much of all our modern literature (and it is in this that Kafka has truly created it), since it identifies, in an inimitable fashion, the realistic project (yes to the world) and the ethical project (but…).33

Kafkaian literature refrains from assertion, and in so doing—in writing allusively— it demonstrates what Barthes calls “the uncertainty of signs.”34 It is never clear in Kafka, or in any work of literature, if things are as the work seems to say they are, because the work refuses to limit the possibilities for meaning with any kind of assertive certainty. Narratives of any sort are composed of the same basic elements, for Barthes, and thus an allusive work of literature is going to “tell a story,” much as a work of symbolic fiction would do. The uncertainty in the Kafkaian approach is not situated on the level of the signs themselves, but on the level of signification: it remains ever uncertain what awakening one morning to find oneself metamorphosed into an insect really means. For Barthes, this is where an author like Kafka confronts the ethical in literature, and where Kafka himself makes (according to Barthes) an improvement upon Kierkegaard. Barthes writes: Kafka’s technique says that the world’s meaning is unutterable, that the artist’s only task is to explore possible significations, each of which taken by itself will be only a (necessary) lie but whose multiplicity will be the writer’s truth itself. That is Kafka’s paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisible, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. Thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies: a work’s authority is never situated at the level of its esthetic, but only at the level of the moral experience which makes it an assumed lie; or rather, as Kafka says correcting Kierkegaard: we Barthes, “La réponse de Kafka,” p. 141; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 398. (“Kafka’s Answer,” p. 136.) 34 Ibid. 33

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It is unclear what specifically Barthes is thinking of when he refers to Kafka’s correction of Kierkegaard in the final portion of the quoted passage, but the general philosophical point seems rather clear. The Kierkegaard of the second volume of Either/Or, Philosophical Fragments, or Concluding Unscientific Postscript could be read to agree with most of the Kafkaian conclusion that the true fulfillment of the aesthetic is through the ethical. But given Barthes’ particular understanding of certainty as a species of pride or arrogance,36 as well as Barthes’ basically Camusian understanding of Kierkegaard, Barthes must understand both the ethical and the religious stages in Kierkegaard as instances of pride, of certainty about truth, of what he might call on the basis of the Kafka essay “symbolic thinking.” The “moral experience” Barthes associates with Kafkaian literature is a far more ambiguous and undecided thing than Barthes gives Kierkegaard credit for. The author of a work of literature must lie in order to tell the truth, and cannot tell the truth without lying. This is, as Barthes notes, a paradox.37 The Kierkegaard in the early Barthes is thus a kind of dogmatic irrationalist, à la Camus’ presentation of Kierkegaard in The Myth of Sisyphus, and Barthes would have to view such a figure as profoundly (philosophically) arrogant. The lack of pride Barthes ascribes to Kafka—Kafkaian humility—is essentially a brand of uncertainty about meaning and the world, and is demonstrated in Kafka (and other writers) through the use of allusion. Faith, for the early Barthes, is always confident—his use of the Christian cross as his sole example of a symbol is not accidental—and the view, shared by Kafka, Camus, Robert, and Barthes, that discourse on the meaning of life is the stuff of literature and must always lie is, from this Barthesian perspective, deeply anti-Kierkegaardian. “Kafka’s Answer” sets Barthes up for the transition into his later period, however, in the focus (admittedly also central to Writing Degree Zero) not only on writing and on literature, but also and more importantly on technique in writing, technique as literature: “This is Kafka’s truth, this is Kafka’s answer (to all those who want to write): the being of literature is nothing but its technique.”38 While this will undoubtedly strike a specifically Kierkegaardian note for some readers of Kierkegaard and Barthes—Barthes here is reminiscent of Johannes Climacus in the famous distinction he makes in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, “Objectively

Barthes, “La réponse de Kafka,” pp. 141–2; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 398. (“Kafka’s Answer,” p. 137.) 36 L’orgueil, in French, can mean both. 37 The Barthes of this period seems not to have had much unmediated exposure to Kierkegaard and is thus perhaps understandably unaware of the central role played by paradoxes of, if not the same, at least a very similar sort in some of Kierkegaard’s works. I am thinking here specifically of Philosophical Fragments and Fear and Trembling, the latter of which is at the center of Barthes’ later dealings with—and improved estimation of— Kierkegaard. 38 Barthes, “La réponse de Kafka,” p. 140; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, pp. 396–7. (“Kafka’s Answer,” p. 135.) 35

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the emphasis is on what is said; subjectively the emphasis is on how it is said”39— we will not find a Barthesian appreciation of Kierkegaard concentrated on what Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms say. Rather, in his references to Kierkegaard after 1964, Barthes is nearly exclusively concerned with silence and the role of silence in both language and heroism—which is, of course, Kierkegaardian and Climacusian in its own performative way, as well. II. Late Barthes: To Have the Last Word Beginning in 1964, Barthes’ understanding of Kierkegaard comes to be centered almost exclusively on Fear and Trembling—and, specifically, on the figure of Abraham as silent knight of faith. Barthes had touched upon the themes central to Fear and Trembling before, at least in his criticism of the Kierkegaardian notion of the leap, but in those passages Barthes seemed always to be channeling Camus’ criticism from The Myth of Sisyphus. Now, in Barthes’ later writings, we begin to see him stepping away from Camus in his interpretation of Kierkegaard. Of the eight references to Kierkegaard in the Barthesian authorship from 1964 to 1979, fully six of them are references to notions of language, silence, and universality or generality as they appear in Fear and Trembling. The remaining two references are of a very different sort: the first, from 1966, simply names Kierkegaard as one element in the accumulated influences a reader or theatergoer brings to the tragedies of Sophocles. The second, from 1979, is a passage on the relations between writing, time, and the body from Writer Sollers. I will turn first to these two exceptions, and then devote the rest of this article to the more frequent point Barthes makes in his use of Kierkegaard in this period. In a part of Criticism and Truth (1966)40 dealing again with the playwright, Racine, Barthes returns to the notion of death—but this time, the death of the author, not death as represented in the characters within a work. As Barthes writes, “Death has another significance: it renders unreal the author’s signature and transforms the work into myth….”41 While Racine was alive, theatergoers related to Racine’s plays as plays; whether they were good or bad plays, members of the audience evaluated them as individual products of a popular dramatic culture. After Racine’s death, however, and especially after the elevation of Racine into one of the three great playwrights of seventeenth-century France,42 theatergoers go to the theater not to see a play that happens to be by Racine; they go to see “a Racine.” “Popular sentiment is SKS 7, 185 / CUP1, 202. It is not clear, however, that in “Kafka’s Answer” Barthes means to associate objectivity and subjectivity in a manner akin to Climacus. If anything, to emphasize what is said—the content, rather than the technique, symbol rather than allusion— is, for Barthes, to engage in a deeply subjective enterprise, characterized by one’s pride or arrogance. 40 Barthes, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, pp. 757–801. 41 Barthes, Critique et vérité, p. 59; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 790. (Criticism and Truth, p. 76.) 42 Alongside Molière (stage name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–73) and Pierre Corneille (1606–84). 39

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well aware of the fact: we do not go to see ‘a work of Racine’s’ performed but rather ‘Racine,’ in much the same way as one would go to see ‘a Western.’ ”43 Racine has ceased to be an artist or a playwright, and has become after his death a myth or an idea, something beyond the historical individual, something timeless and impersonal and, really, not related to the man, Jean Racine, at all. Thus, Barthes writes, we don’t go to see Phèdre but ‘La Berma’ in Phèdre,44 just as we would read Sophocles, Freud, Hölderlin and Kierkegaard in Oedipus Rex and Antigone. And we are right, for we refuse thus to allow the dead to hold the living in their grip, we free the work from the constraints of intention, we rediscover the mythological trembling of meanings. By erasing the author’s signature, death founds the truth of the work, which is enigma.45

Barthes prefigures here “The Death of the Author,” published two years after Criticism and Truth, and which attempts once and for all to free written works from the constraints of authorial intention in interpretation. More importantly for our purposes, however, is that Barthes includes Kierkegaard among those thinkers and writers whose association with Oedipus Rex and Antigone is great enough to accompany readers or spectators in their reading or viewing of the Sophoclean tragedies—alongside Sophocles. The second exception in the later authorship of Barthes is also the last reference to Kierkegaard in the Barthesian authorship. In a short book on the work of the French writer and Barthes’ friend Philippe Sollers (b. 1936), Barthes makes passing mention of Kierkegaard as standing at the head of “our modernity.” Barthes writes: Classical rhetoric had produced codes to measure the historical period of time in which writing took place, such measurements being normally applied to the golden age, that of the coming to awareness, that of speech. The time it evokes is that of the body waking up, still new and neutral, untouched by meaning and by the act of remembrance. It gives us the Adamic dream of a total body, marked at the dawn of our modernity by Kierkegaard’s cry: “But give me a body!”46

Barthes compares time as it appears in narrative, rhetoric, and the work of Sollers, and identifies time in all three cases as somehow essentially corporeal: the time of the body. The body and embodiment are central to Barthes’ later works, as is the view that an awakening to or renewed awareness of the body is characteristic of the late modern and contemporary periods of European writing and thought.

43 Barthes, Critique et vérité, p. 60; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 790. (Criticism and Truth, p. 76.) 44 Phèdre is a tragedy by Racine. La Berma is a character from À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust (1871–1922). Specifically, she is an actress famous for her performance as the title character in Phèdre. 45 Barthes, Critique et vérité, p. 60; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 790. (Criticism and Truth, pp. 76–7.) 46 Barthes, Sollers écrivain, pp. 30–1; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5, p. 593. (Writer Sollers, p. 56.)

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Barthes claims that this trend begins with Kierkegaard—specifically, in a passage from Kierkegaard’s journals. In an entry from 1850 entitled “About Myself,” Kierkegaard writes: Suffering frightful anguish, frequently to the point of the impotence of death—my spirit at such a time is strong and I forget all that in the world of ideas. But then I am upbraided for only wanting to be a thinker and for not being like other men: they grant me every possible suffering and abuse as well-deserved punishment. O, how false and foolish you are! Give me a body, or if you had given me that when I was twenty years old, I would not have been this way. But you are envious, and this is the suffering the more highly endowed person, spiritually-intellectually, has to suffer in his generation.47

Kierkegaard’s request—“Give me a body”—does not seem to have the sense with which Barthes imbues it. Barthes uses Kierkegaard to exemplify the transition to a greater appreciation of the self as a body in modern thought and literature; Kierkegaard, on the other hand, seems to be saying only that, had he been granted early on a body “like other men,” he would not have become the thinker he became— and that those who abuse him for his abnormality do so ultimately out of envy for the kind of person Kierkegaard is. Kierkegaard seems in this journal entry in fact to be embracing his “lack” of a body and the suffering caused thereby as fundamental to his identity—whereas Barthes’ point seems fundamentally opposed to that point of view, using Kierkegaard instead to dramatize the view that identity is in some sense fundamentally corporeal. In this, Barthes seems to miss Kierkegaard’s point, however much doing so helps him clarify his analysis of Sollers.48 The remaining references to Kierkegaard in Barthes’ work are more or less of a piece, and constitute the closest thing to a sustained commentary on Kierkegaard to appear in Barthes. The inaugural reference of this later period is from a very brief work called “Trois fragments” (“Three Fragments,” 1964).49 There, Barthes sets the agenda for the rest of his Kierkegaard interpretation in some comments on dialogue and, with specific reference to the use of Kierkegaard, scholastic disputation. He claims that, in the disputation, a new art is born: the art of “the last word.” Following from that claim, Barthes writes: This art is that of tragedy, it is of a dramatic order, in accordance with which it is precisely possession of the last word that consecrates one of two speakers as a hero—to which Kierkegaard opposed the silence of the knight of faith, as the refusal of language, that is to say, of the general.50

SKS 23, 296, NB18:65 / JP 6, 6626. Barthes seems to follow Camus once again in the use of this passage from Kierkegaard’s journals, although Camus uses the passage for his own purposes. See Le mythe de Sisyphe, p. 59. (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 39.) 49 Barthes, “Trois fragments,” Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, pp. 559–62. 50 Barthes, “Trois fragments,” Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 560. (My translation—from Barthes’ French, which treats the three fragments as parts of a larger whole. The text was originally published, however, in an Italian translation by Guido Neri, each of the fragments printed in a different part of vol. 7 of the Italian literary journal, Il Menabò. The passage 47 48

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We see here the association of language with the universal—what Barthes will call le général—that we find in Johannes de silentio’s argument in Fear and Trembling. To speak or otherwise to use language successfully is in some fundamental sense always to be understood.51 Language is the medium through which individuals make themselves understood or understandable to others, and it is through language and the functions of language that conformity with a universal law—a moral law—is maintained. Only those individuals who can make their actions understood to the rest of us can be considered to have acted legitimately; to defy the understanding is to defy the law, to fall outside of what is universally expected or commanded or, to use specifically Kierkegaardian language, to set the singular above the universal.52 In scholastic disputation, the speaker who can manage to force the other into silence— to leave the other with nothing else to say—is the one to emerge victorious. In philosophical terms, the speaker who gets the last word is the speaker who has most closely approximated universal truth (if not the mind of God). Involuntary silence is the frustrated destination of the other speaker, the one who could not make himself or herself understood, and such silence is the first step in the direction of acquiescence to and conformity with the view of the victorious party. In the passage from “Three Fragments,” Barthes only glances in the direction of a third possibility. There, he suggests that Kierkegaard provides us in the knight of faith the image of a different kind of hero, an anti- or non-heroic hero whose heroism shows itself, not in having the last word, but in a kind of voluntary silence. Such a hero does not victoriously attain the universal but, instead, refuses to engage the universal altogether. In his or her silence, the knight of faith refuses language and thus persists in his or her inability to be understood. Barthes returns to this theme specifically in A Lover’s Discourse where, in a passage labeled “Kierkegaard,” he writes: What is a hero? The one who has the last word. Can we think of a hero who does not speak before dying? To renounce the last word (to refuse to have a scene) derives, then, from an anti-heroic morality: that of Abraham: to the end of the sacrifice demanded of him, he does not speak. Or else, as a more subversive because less theatrical riposte (silence is always insufficient theater), the last word may be replaced by an incongruous pirouette: this is what the Zen master did who, for his only answer to the solemn question “What is Buddha?,” took off his sandal, put it on his head, and walked away: impeccable dissolution of the last word, mastery of non-mastery.53

Here, we see three fundamental changes to or revisions of the view set forth in “Three Fragments.” First, the name of Abraham is substituted for the knight of faith; quoted appears in the second fragment, “Les trois dialogues” (“The Three Dialogues,” or “I tre dialoghi”). 51 Johannes de silentio writes: “Abraham remains silent—but he cannot speak. Therein lies the distress and anxiety. Even though I go on talking night and day without interruption, if I cannot make myself understood when I speak, then I am not speaking.” SKS 4, 201 / FT, 113. 52 SKS 4, 148 / FT, 54. 53 Barthes, Fragments d’un discours amoureux, p. 248; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5, p. 258. (A Lover’s Discourse, p. 209.)

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this is a particularly common, and thus unremarkable, move in readings of Fear and Trembling. Second, a theatrical element is made explicit in the “contest” for the last word. While scholastic disputations are no doubt dramatic, Barthes uses the notion of performance and the “sufficiently theatrical” here to modify the possibilities opened up in the earlier passage. Third, a post-Abrahamic possibility is suggested, identified with “the Zen master,” who remains silent in the manner of Abraham but nevertheless moves beyond him. In response to the theatrical demands of scholastic—or, in this case, Buddhistic—interrogation, the Zen master acts. He does not get the last word—in Barthes’ vignette, the unnamed questioner gets the last word with the question, “What is Buddha?”—but the Zen master’s response to the questioner is nevertheless not simple silence, either. While the questioner gets the last word, the Zen master is the one who comes out of the interrogation victorious, heroic in his anti-heroism, having dissolved the discourse of the last word in performance: silent, enigmatic, singular, corporeal action. We see the same contrast between the universality of language and the singularity of corporeality in a passage from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, where Barthes associates himself with what he (apparently grudgingly) admits is the distinctly Christian view of Kierkegaard. There, under the heading “Tel Quel,”54 Barthes writes (of himself): His friends on Tel Quel: their originality, their truth (aside from their intellectual energy, their genius for writing) insist that they must agree to speak a common, general, incorporeal language, i.e., political language, although each of them speaks it with his own body. —Then why don’t you do the same thing? —Precisely, no doubt, because I do not have the same body that they do; my body cannot accommodate itself to generality, to the power of generality which is in language. —Isn’t that an individualistic view? Wouldn’t one expect to hear it from a Christian—a notorious anti-Hegelian—such as Kierkegaard?55

Barthes goes on to suggest the confounding potential of confronting the political apparatus by “thrusting into it—alive, pulsing, pleasure-seeking—my own unique body.”56 Centrally important here, however, is the opposition in Barthes’ presentation of language and generality, on the one hand, and the uniqueness of his own body, a uniqueness that in its opposition to generality (if in no other way) reminds Barthes of the Christian, anti-Hegelian individualism of Kierkegaard. The figure of Kierkegaard Barthes portrays here is not in itself Barthesian, but Barthes aligns his Christian Kierkegaard with his vision of himself or, at least, of his potential for the sort of enigmatic and disruptive corporeal act characteristic of a “thrusting, alive, pulsing, pleasure-seeking” body—or of the Zen master walking, his sandal balanced precariously atop his head. There are then at least three different examples in 54 Tel Quel was a French journal for literature, published in Paris from 1960 to 1982, founded by Philippe Sollers and Jean-Edern Hallier (1936–97). Barthes was a regular contributor. 55 Barthes, Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, pp. 177–8; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 4, p. 747. (Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, p. 175.) 56 Ibid.

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Barthes at this point of silence as a means of resisting—and perhaps overcoming— the universalizing tendency of language: Kierkegaard, the Zen master, and Roland Barthes. They are not all Kierkegaardian, but they all share something essential with (Barthes’) Kierkegaard. Returning to his concern with literature, and proposing a strategy for perhaps the least likely of “silent heroes,” Barthes uses the remaining three references to Kierkegaard to suggest an approach to writing that might learn something from Abraham’s sacrifice, not of Isaac, but of language itself. In an essay titled “Chateaubriand: ‘Life of Rancé’ ” (1965), Barthes posits a conflict within every writer between “a Rancé and a Chateaubriand.” In this conflict, a writer’s internal Armand Jean Le Bouthillier de Rancé (1626–1700) argues that the writer’s self would never survive an attempt at communication in language; the writer’s internal François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) argues, contrariwise, that the tumult that is the writer’s self must express itself in language. “For nearly two centuries,” Barthes writes, “this contradiction has haunted our writers: consequently we find ourselves dreaming of a pure writer who does not write.”57 Barthes continues: This is obviously not a moral problem, not a matter of siding with or against a fatal ostentation of language; on the contrary, it is language, as Kierkegaard saw, which, being the general, represents the category of the ethical, since to be absolutely individual, Abraham doing sacrifice must renounce language; he is condemned not to speak. The modern writer is and is not Abraham: he must be at once outside the ethical and within language; he must create the general with the irreducible, rediscover the amorality of his existence through the moral generality of language: it is this hazardous passage which is literature.58

What makes this passage—between Rancé and Chateaubriand, between generality and individuality, between language and hidden inwardness—hazardous is the apparent impossibility of it for normal human beings. Kierkegaard allows for such a tenuous suspension, as Barthes notes, only in Abraham and the knight of faith; another of Barthes’ influences in this regard, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), only finds such formidable duplicity in what he calls the Übermensch, the “superman.” And so, for the solution—or what serves as a solution—to this writerly riddle, Barthes turns to a point of comparison between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, a point that seems to bind together all of the disparate claims and observations Barthes has collected heretofore. In his inaugural lecture upon the occasion of his 1977 election to the chair of literary semiology at the Collège de France, published in 1978 as Leçon, Barthes writes: Unfortunately, human language has no exterior: there is no exit. We can get out of it only at the price of the impossible: by mystical singularity, as described by Kierkegaard when he defines Abraham’s sacrifice as an action unparalleled, void of speech, even interior speech, performed against the generality, the gregariousness, the morality of language; Barthes, “Chateaubriand: ‘Vie de Rancé,’ ” p. 118; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 4, p. 64. (“Chateaubriand: ‘Life of Rancé,’ ” p. 53.) 58 Barthes, “Chateaubriand: ‘Vie de Rancé,’ ” pp. 118–19; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 4, pp. 64–5. (“Chateaubriand: ‘Life of Rancé,’ ” p. 53.) 57

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or again by the Nietzschean “yes to life,” which is a kind of exultant shock administered to the servility of speech, to what Deleuze calls its reactive guise. But for us, who are neither knights of faith nor supermen, the only remaining alternative is, if I may say so, to cheat with speech, to cheat speech. This salutary trickery, this evasion, this grand imposture which allows us to understand speech outside the bounds of power, in the splendor of a permanent revolution of language, I for one call literature.59

And thus we begin to see, perhaps, that the similarity between Kierkegaard and Barthes lies in their dissimilarity. Whereas the Kierkegaardian knight of faith can somehow mystically sacrifice language for mystical silence, and the Zen master, a bit more human than Abraham, can perform a silent act to overcome language, and the Nietzschean Übermensch can simply say “yes” to life, repurposing language to his or her own ends, the Barthesian writer has no such direct route to resolution of the Rancé-Chateaubriand divide within him- or herself. The writer, for Barthes, in the absence of any legitimate options, must cheat. And that cheating, Barthes calls literature. By “literature,” however, as we have already seen, Barthes does not mean the cold dead letter or the dusty tome. Literature is, above all else, a technique, as he wrote in the Kafka essay. As technique, literature is active—and, as technique in language, literature is, for Barthes, always at least potentially performative, theatrical. Only in this way, according to Barthes, can one possibly speak the impossible—to answer and not to answer the question about the Buddha, for example, to speak and not to speak the political language of generality. Thus, also in Leçon, Barthes writes: To designate the impossible in language, I have cited two authors: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Yet both have written. It was in each instance, however, in a reversal of identity, as a performance, as a frenzied gambling of proper names—one by incessant recourse to pseudonymity, the other by proceeding, at the end of his writing life, as Klossowski has shown, to the limits of the histrionic. We might say that literature’s third force, its strictly semiotic force, is to act signs rather than to destroy them.60

Kierkegaardian pseudonymity becomes linked, in Barthes’ final analysis, with what he calls the “semiotic force” of literature, its power to perform signs rather than merely to dissipate or consume them. Literature is thus as much action as it is language, and in fact, taken in this purely semiotic sense, literature is silent action in language’s stead. Literature—Barthesian literature—acts. The Zen master who says nothing is, in this sense, literature. And the Kierkegaardian pseudonym, who speaks but whose speech is subverted always by the fictionality and multiplicity of the voices speaking is, likewise, itself not merely literary, but literature. For Barthes, then, Kierkegaard’s pseudonymity is but one more example of the silence he understands to be characteristic of Kierkegaard’s Abraham, the knight of faith who acts rather than speaks, the performer who performs that which is impossible in the language of the universal. Abraham cannot speak his faith so that he will be Barthes, Leçon, pp. 15–16; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5, pp. 432–3. (“Inaugural Lecture, Collège de France,” pp. 461–2.) 60 Barthes, Leçon, pp. 27–8; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5, p. 438. (“Inaugural Lecture, Collège de France,” pp. 468–9.) 59

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understood by Sarah, Eliezer, and Isaac, and so Abraham cannot speak. Similarly, for Barthes, Kierkegaard cannot write his technique so that he will be understood by his modern readers, and so Kierkegaard cannot write. Instead of speaking or writing, then, Abraham and Kierkegaard both turn to non-linguistic performance. Abraham’s faith is performed, not spoken; Kierkegaard’s technique is not written, it is performed. Kierkegaardian (and, for Barthes, Nietzschean) performative writing reveals something about the nature of writing and literature in the modern world, something that is characteristic even of Barthes himself. As Susan Sontag writes, to write is a dramatic act, subject to dramatic elaboration. One strategy is to use multiple pseudonyms, as Kierkegaard did, concealing and multiplying the figure of the author. When autobiographical, the work invariably includes avowals of reluctance to speak in the first person. One of the conventions of Roland Barthes [by Roland Barthes] is for the autobiographer to refer to himself sometimes as “I,” sometimes as “he.” All this, Barthes announces on the first page of this book about himself, “must be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel.”61

Barthes’ Kierkegaard is not always identical with Kierkegaard’s Kierkegaard, or our contemporary scholarly understandings of Kierkegaard, as we have seen. In some sense, Barthes finds in Kierkegaard precisely what we would expect Barthes would want to find there. Yet, despite the fact that Barthes’ use of Kierkegaard is idiosyncratic, biased, and extremely limited, it is nevertheless clear from that use that Barthes finds in Kierkegaard—at least later in his career, after the influence of Camus and the existentialists has worn a little thin—a kindred spirit of a sort, a fellow writer writing ultimately about writing, as far as Barthes can see, so as better to understand what it is one is doing when one writes. And this is not altogether unKierkegaardian at all.

Sontag, “Writing Itself,” p. xv. The Barthes quotation is from Barthes, Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, p. i; Oeuvres complètes, vol. 4, p. 577. (Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, p. 1.) 61

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Barthes’ Corpus “Réflexion sur le style de ‘L’Etranger,’ ” Existences: Bulletin de l’Association des étudiants du sanatorium de St-Hilaire du Touvet, 1944, pp. 79–83. “ ‘L’Etranger,’ roman solaire,” Bulletin du Club du meilleur livre, no. 12, 1954, pp. 6–7. Sur Racine, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1963, p. 40. (English translation: On Racine, trans. by Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang 1964, p. 30.) “La réponse de Kafka,” France-Observateur, March 24, 1960. (Republished in Essais critiques, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1964, pp. 138–42; English translation: “Kafka’s Answer,” in Critical Essays, trans. by Richard Howard, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 1972, pp. 133–7.) “Trois fragments: ‘Edipo,’ ‘I tre dialoghi,’ ‘Arte, Forma, caso,’ ” trans. by Guido Neri, Il Menabò, vol. 7, 1964, pp. 46–9. “Chateaubriand: ‘Vie de Rancé,’ ” in Le degré zéro de l’écriture suivi de Nouveaux essais critiques, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1972, pp. 118–19. (English translation: “Chateaubriand: ‘Life of Rancé,’ ” in New Critical Essays, trans. by Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang 1980, p. 53.) Fragments d’un discours amoureux, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1977, p. 248. (English translation: A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, trans. by Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang 1978, p. 209.) Leçon, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1978, pp. 15–16; 27–8. (English translation: “Inaugural Lecture, Collège de France,” trans. by Richard Howard, in A Barthes Reader, ed. by Susan Sontag, New York: Hill and Wang 1982, pp. 461–2; pp. 468–9.) Sollers écrivain, Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1979, p. 31. (English translation: Writer Sollers, trans. by Philip Thody, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1987, p. 56.) II. Sources of Barthes’ Knowledge of Kierkegaard Camus, Albert, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Paris: Gallimard 1942, p. 39; pp. 42–3; p. 51; pp. 56–61; p. 65; pp. 69–72. Lefebvre, Henri, “Le Don Juan du Nord, pièce en 3 actes (inspiration à la Kierkegaard),” Europe: Revue mensuelle, vol. 28, 1948, pp. 73–104. Robert, Marthe, Kafka, Paris: Gallimard 1960, p. 34; p. 39; p. 244; p. 261; p. 273. Sartre, Jean-Paul, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, Paris: Gallimard 1943 (Bibliothèque des Idées), pp. 58–84; pp. 94–111; pp. 115–49;

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pp. 150–74; pp. 291–300; pp. 508–16; pp. 529–60; pp. 639–42; pp. 643–63; pp. 669–70; pp. 720–2. — Critique de la raison dialectique, Tome I: Théorie des ensembles pratiques, Paris: Gallimard 1960, p. 117, note. III. Secondary Literature on Barthes’ Relation to Kierkegaard Brown, Andrew, Roland Barthes: The Figures of Writing, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992, pp. 232–3. Lang, Candace D., Ironie, humour: Essais de langages, Kierkegaard, Baudelaire, Stendhal, Barthes, Ph.D. Thesis, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 1979. — Irony/Humor: Critical Paradigms, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1988. Sontag, Susan, “Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes,” in A Barthes Reader, ed. by Susan Sontag, New York: Hill and Wang 1982, pp. xiv–xv. Smyth, John Vignaux, A Question of Eros: Irony in Sterne, Kierkegaard, and Barthes, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1986 (Kierkegaard and Postmodernism, vol. 2), pp. 263–302. Weiss, Gail, “Reading/Writing between the Lines,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 31, 1998, pp. 387–409. Westfall, Joseph, “The Death of the Apostle: Authorial Authority in The Book on Adler and Roland Barthes,” in The Book on Adler, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 2008 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 24), pp. 167–92. — The Kierkegaardian Author: Authorship and Performance in Kierkegaard’s Literary and Dramatic Criticism, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2007 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 15), pp. 11–18. Westphal, Merold, “Kierkegaard and the Anxiety of Authorship,” International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1, 1994, pp. 5–22.

Georges Bataille: Kierkegaard and the Claim for the Sacred Laura Llevadot

I. General Introduction to Bataille’s Life and Works Georges Bataille (Billom, 1897–Paris, 1962) is an author normally linked with French post-structuralism, along with Gilles Deleuze (1925–95), Michel Foucault (1926–84), and Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), despite his work being prior to most of these philosophers. The reason behind this association is due to his thorough review of Nietzsche’s thinking and its influence on his work. Bataille’s case is quite peculiar in that, unlike Deleuze, Foucault, and Derrida, he was never actually a teacher of philosophy. He studied at l’École des Chartres (1918–22) and later entered the School of Advanced Hispanic Studies in Madrid with a fellowship (1923–24). He was a medievalist and specialist in Hispanic Studies and became a librarian by profession in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris from 1924 to 1942. Afterwards, he worked in the Carpentras Library in Provence and, finally, became keeper of the Orleans Municipal Library from 1951 to 1962. The fact of never having been a teacher of philosophy and, therefore, never having needed to translate his thinking into didactical and communicative language is probably what makes him a “writer” in the strongest sense of the word. In exactly this same sense, Marguerite Duras (1914–96) stated that Bataille “wrote” whereas Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) “didn’t write,”1 clearly alluding to the intellectual disagreement between the two.2 In this sense, Bataille was a prolific, multifaceted, and in a certain way controversial writer, whose works include philosophical texts but also pornographic novels and books on economics. Perhaps the key feature of Bataille’s intellectual biography is his ability to combine his discrete life as a librarian with that as a condemned writer of considerable intellectual, political, and artistic actions. Thus, he was able to meet and work with the most outstanding intellectuals of the day. This article has been made possible by the financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology. Research Project: “El horizonte de lo común. Entre una subjetividad no personal y una comunidad no identitaria,” FFI2009–08557 (FISO). 1 Cited in Georges Bataille. Actes du Colloque International d’Amsterdam (21 et 22 de juin 1985), ed. by Jon Versteeg, Amsterdam: Rodopi 1987, p. 117. 2 See Jean-Michel Heimonet and Emoretta Yang, “Bataille and Sartre: The Modernity of Mysticism,” Diacritics, vol. 26, no. 2, 1996, pp. 59–73.

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Indeed, Bataille was soon associated with the surrealists despite his differences with André Breton (1896–1966), which would eventually cause his split from the group. What he had in common with the surrealists was their wish to unify poetry and life beyond the tight circle of bourgeois literature.3 Sharing their political motivation, he and Breton founded both the group known as Contra-Attaque (Union de lutte des intellectuels révolutionaires), in 1935, and the journal of the same name. However, the group dissolved quite soon afterwards. His interest in ethnology and sociology, along with inspiration drawn from the anthropology of Marcel Mauss (1872–1950) and Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), led to the founding of the Collège de Sociologie in 1939, in association with Michel Leiris (1901–90) and Roger Caillois (1913–78). Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) attended sessions in the Collège during his stay in Paris. He was sometimes accompanied by his compatriots Theodor W. Adorno (1903–69) and Max Horkheimer (1905–73)4 from the Frankfurt School. The aim of the Collège was to study the manifestations of the sacred in modern society. Indeed, the question of the sacred is one of the most frequently occurring topics throughout his literary work and his essays. Besides this, Bataille was also the founder and editor of journals of considerable influence in the French intellectual panorama. Publications such as Documents (1929–30), Acéphale (1936–37) and Critique (1946–62) included the writings of thinkers of the caliber of Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Pierre Klossowski (1905–2001), Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003), and Jean-François Lyotard (1924–98), amongst others. The edition of Bataille’s complete works, presented by Michel Foucault, edited by Klossowski amongst others, leads us to think that there are three well-defined genres in his work: literary works (volumes 3 and 4); books of meditation, which Bataille himself would call the Somme Athéologique (volumes 5 and 6), and the texts on economics (from volume 7 to 10). As well as these, there are countless articles on thinking and literary criticism which make up a considerable part of Bataille’s writings (volumes 11 and 12), along with his first published writings in volumes 1 and 2. However, despite this apparent variety of genres, a conceptual constant is appreciable. This constant lends unity and consistency to his work and it can be explained through the notion of “expenditure,” according to Bataille’s philosophy. Actually, a great many of the principles developed by Bataille throughout his multifaceted work are included in one of his first articles whose title echoes precisely this idea: “La notion de dépense.”5 Therein, the following can be read: Human life, distinct from juridical existence, existing as it does on a globe isolated in celestial space, from night to day and from one country to another—human life cannot See George Bataille, “Breton, Tzara, Élouard,” in La critique sociale, no. 7, January 1933, pp. 49–50 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 1–12, Paris: Gallimard 1970–88, vol. 1, 1970, p. 324). 4 See Bernd Witte, Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography, Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1991, pp. 194ff. 5 Georges Bataille, “La notion de dépense,” La critique sociale, no. 7, 1933, pp. 7–15 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 1, pp. 302–20). (English translation: “The Notion of Expenditure,” in Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927–1939, trans. by Allan Stoekl, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1985, pp. 116–29.) 3

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in any way be limited to the closed systems assigned to it by reasonable conceptions. The immense travail of recklessness, discharge, and upheaval that constitutes life could be expressed by stating that life starts with a deficit of these systems….In fact, in the most universal way, isolated or in groups, men find themselves constantly engaged in processes of expenditure.6

The idea that life in its fullest sense necessarily exceeds the limits of rationality, economic pragmatism, and the principle of utility is a constant that runs through Bataille’s work and is the very essence of it. Bataille’s texts on economics constitute his latter works. They are an attempt to found a science of economics, to which he gave the name “General Economy.” These writings were based on the principle of loss, waste, and unproductive expenditure, which would replace the classic principle of utility characterizing “Restricted Economy.” The latter is what Bataille saw as the classical model of economics. Texts addressing this issue include Théorie de la religion (1948),7 and a long text called La Part maudite,8 which was to have been completed in three volumes. The first was published with the subtitle La Consumation (1949);9 the second appeared as an independent reference work called L’Erotisme (1957);10 his final work remained unedited and was due to be named “La Souveraineté.”11 What all these writings have in common is the attempt to think of an economy born of the idea of expenditure as the fundamental economic principle of human activity. Thus, this explains Bataille’s keen interest in the works of Mauss regarding potlach. Mauss proves the secondary nature of acquisition and production with respect to the first form of exchange which he called potlach. This was actually a move away from classical economics in which primitive exchange was based on barter. Potlach represented a considerably valuable gift, which could lead to self-destruction, and which was offered with the purpose of humiliating, challenging or forcing the submission of a rival. In this way, the potlach system proves the positive nature of losses in all economies, along with luxury, duels, wars, the construction of sumptuous monuments, arts or perverse sexual activity, completely unrelated to genital activity. These are activities which are ends to their own means and are not carried out with the aim of achieving greater profits, but instead are simply unproductive expenditure.

6 Georges Bataille, “La notion de dépense,” pp. 318–19. (“The Notion of Expenditure,” p. 128.) 7 Georges Bataille, Théorie de la religion, Paris: Gallimard 1974. (English translation: Theory of Religion, trans. by Robert Hurley, New York: Zone Books 1989.) 8 Georges Bataille, La part maudite. Essai d’économie générale, vol. 1, La consummation, Paris: Minuit 1949. (English translation: The Accursed Share, vols. 1–3, trans. by Robert Hurley, New York: Zone Books 1988–91.) 9 Ibid. 10 Georges Bataille, L’Érotisme, Paris: Minuit 1957. (English translation: Erotism: Death and Sensuality, trans. by Mary Dalwood, San Francisco: City Lights Books 1986.) 11 Georges Bataille, “La Souveraineté.” This work was not published by Bataille and only appears in Oeuvres Complètes, Paris: Gallimard 1970–88, vol. 8, pp. 243–456 (handwritten box 17 G and H).

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The claim for the sacred, for unproductive expenditure, is what leads Bataille to consider in particular all experiences related to eroticism when the latter is understood as a strictly human attitude, one that liberates sexuality from utility. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that Bataille devoted a great deal of his written production to erotic literature, even to pornographic novels, since these were one of his earliest and most persistent forms of writing. In 1928, he published his first book Histoire de l’Oeil—under the pseudonym Lord Auch.12 Later on, under the pen name Pierre Angelique, he went on to publish novels such as Le blue du ciel (1957),13 Madame Edwarda (1937),14 or L’Abbé C (1950).15 However, a critical examination of science and classical anthropology lies at the heart of these seemingly pornographic stories. As such, both Histoire de l’Oeil and Dossier de l’Oeil Pineal challenge the anthropological claim in which the man is seen as the great winner in the fight for life, in much the same way as Darwinian evolutionary theory tried to prove. Instead, he suggests mankind to be the most luxurious yet useless production of nature. The metaphor of the pineal eye—an eye which, being located on the upper end of the head, can only see the blue color of the sky—seeks to symbolize the luxurious situation of the human animal. Thus, expenditure appears at the early stages of his writing as well as in the literary work. Likewise, those books regarded as books of meditation represent what Bataille grouped under the name Somme Athéologique, which is made up of his most relevant works in the field of philosophy: Le Coupable (1944),16 Sur Nietzsche (1945),17 Méthode de Méditation (1947),18 and L’Expérience Intérieur (1943).19 Expenditure or excess take the form of unproductive thinking in these writings. Herein, Bataille depicts the figure of the whole man as opposed to that of the mutilated one: “One must choose the arduous, turbulent path—that of the non-mutilated whole man.”20 The Georges Bataille [Lord Auch], Histoire de l’Oeil, Paris: n.p. 1928. (English translation: Story of the Eye, trans. by Joachim Neugroschal, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1982.) 13 Georges Bataille, Le Blue du ciel, Paris: J.J. Pauvert 1957. (English translation: Blue of Noon, trans. by Harry Mathews, Harmondsworth: Penguin 2001.) 14 Georges Bataille, Madame Edwarda, Paris: Éditions du Solitaire 1937. (English translation: My Mother: Madame Edwarda and The Dead Man, trans. by Austryn Winehouse, London and New York: Marion Boyars 1989.) 15 Georges Bataille, L’Abbé C, Paris: Minuit 1950. (English translation: L’Abbé C, trans. by Philip A. Facey, London: Marion Boyars 1988.) 16 Georges Bataille, Le Coupable, Paris: Gallimard, 1944. (English translation: Guilty, trans. by Bruce Boone, Venice (San Francisco): The Lapis Press 1988.) 17 Georges Bataille, Sur Nietzsche, volonté de chance, Paris: Gallimard 1945. (English translation: On Nietzsche, trans. by Bruce Boone, London: Continuum 2004.) 18 Georges Bataille, Méthode de méditation, Paris: Éditions Fontaine 1947. (English translation: “Method of Meditation,” in Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, trans. by Michelle Kendal and Stuart Kendal, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2001, pp. 77–99). 19 Georges Bataille, L’Expérience intérieure, Paris: Gallimard 1943. (English translation: Inner Experience, trans. by Leslie Anne Boldt, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press 1988.) 20 Bataille, L’Expérience intérieure, p. 46. (Inner Experience, p. 23). 12

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whole man is the one who sees life as existence and not only as time consumption. We spend a great deal of our lives trying to achieve goals, prioritizing work over our own existence so as to carry out a project or to achieve an objective. This is what Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) referred to as living in the perspective of a goal.21 On the contrary, the whole man is to Bataille the one who is able to live in the privacy of existence, without either postponing or deferring it, without any kind of aim or goal whatsoever. Within Nietzsche’s eternal return one finds the key to understanding what shapes Bataille’s idea of existence: I think the idea of the eternal return should be reversed. It’s not a promise of infinite and lacerating repetitions: It’s what makes moments caught up in the immanence of return suddenly appear as ends. In every system, don’t forget, these moments are viewed and given as means: Every moral system proclaims that “each moment of life ought to be motivated.” Return unmotivates the moment and frees life of ends—thus first of all destroys it. Return is the mode of drama, the mask of human entirety, a human desert wherein each moment is unmotivated.22

To Bataille, the whole man is able to live in the prospect of eternal return, that is, a man whose actions, behaviors and attitudes are not driven by a particular end or benefit. Even in the last resort, a whole man does not behave as though governed by utility. Even the idea of goodness has an influence on behavior as actions are dictated by an ulterior value. What Bataille is really concerned about are those actions which are entirely disinterested, those which have neither goodness nor kindness as motivation. The perspective of repetition implies eternal return, meaning that actions should be willingly undertaken. Eternal return calls for the whole man to live in such a way that every single experience would want to be repeated. Thus, this perspective dismisses all sorts of actions which are worthless in themselves but which seek to achieve a particular ulterior goal, even if this may never be ever accomplished. According to Bataille, the gateway to whole existence is contingent on the consideration of sovereign behaviors. However, these activities or sovereign behaviors—that is to say, those behaviors unbound from utility such as sacrifice, celebration or eroticism are in fact “limited acts of transgression.”23 Sacrifice, celebration, and eroticism ultimately depend on an object that returns these experiences back to the world of utility: the object of sacrifice is the useful part; celebration, with all its debauchery and excess always ends with the return to the world of work; eroticism usually depends on the beautiful object. Even potlach is a limited expenditure insofar as it has a purpose, even if this is to humiliate one’s opponent. However, Bataille’s books of meditation—Inner Experience in particular—contemplate the possibility of opening oneself to the kingdom of existence, the whole, the sacred, without resorting to any external means: “It is necessary to reject external means.”24 Inner experience takes the form of a meditation through which sovereignty and liberation from any utility can be achieved as a Bataille, Sur Nietzsche, p. 32. (On Nietzsche, p. XXIX.) Ibid. 23 Bataille, L’Erotisme, p. 39. (Erotism: Death and Sensuality, p. 68.) 24 Bataille, L’Expérience intérieure, p. 29. (Inner Experience, p. 12.) 21 22

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result of the fusion of the subject and the object. This is the explanation behind the likeness between inner experience and mystical experience. Nevertheless, they are differentiated by the disappearance of any kind of hope whatsoever: “It is no longer a question of salvation: this is the most odious of evasions.”25 This criticism is that which Bataille levels at Christianity since sovereign experience is limited by the existence of mysticism through the idea of God, goodness, and salvation—hence his interest in Nietzsche and what the fact of “the death of God” means to the man who seeks to be whole. Unproductive expenditure here also stands for the principle that rules our thought and guides a meditation that aims to detach itself from discursive thinking through that very same thought, using reasoning to sacrifice and challenge it. Bataille would later explain the precise nature of inner experience, saying, it is “to emerge through project from the realm of project.”26 As such, Bataille converges with Kierkegaardian philosophy, having had the chance to read Kierkegaard’s works between 1936 and 1941. He shared Kierkegaard’s interest in the sacred, in the living of life to the fullest—far from the distractions involved in the perspective of a project—in the role of anxiety and sin in accessing this type of existence, in the importance of sacrifice as well as their interest in the contributions of Christianity and its mysticism. In fact, the idea of unproductive expenditure which dictates Bataille’s work can be reinterpreted, as it has undoubtedly been, under the gaze of Kierkegaard’s ethics.27 What Bataille would draw from his reading of Kierkegaard must first be considered. II. Bataille, Kierkegaardian Reader The fact that Bataille worked as a librarian in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris means we have great knowledge of the works he consulted during the long period of time he worked there. Thanks to the Bibliothèque Nationale Archive, we know that Bataille was a tireless reader, and amongst the countless works he borrowed, there are several volumes of Kierkegaard’s works translated into French. These include Fear and Trembling (May 1936) translated by Paul-Henri Tisseau with an introduction by Jean Wahl (1888–1974); The Concept of Anxiety, also translated by Tisseau, in February 1937, although he would later borrow the same work, this time translated by Knud Ferlov and Jean-Jacques Gateau in September 1941; Repetition, in April 1937; “In vino veritas” (in September 1937), which despite being a part of Stages on Life’s Way, was published in France as a separate work and translated by André Babelon and Cécile Lund; and, finally, Philosophical Fragments in September 1941.28 Ibid. Bataille, L’Expérience intérieure, p. 77. (Inner Experience, p. 46.) 27 Kenneth Jay Itzkowitz, “A Deadly Gift. To Derrida, from Kierkegaard and Bataille,” in Extreme Beauty: Aesthetics, Politics, Death, ed. by James E. Swearingen and Joanne Cutting-Gray, New York: Continuum 2002, pp. 194–207. 28 Records of books borrowed by Bataille in the Bibliothèque Nationale can be consulted in his Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 12, pp. 553–627. Therein appears the following record of numbered library loans of Kierkegaard’s works: 659. May 5, 1936: Kierkegaard, 25 26

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Bataille is thus part of Kierkegaard’s first reception in France, an author who influenced the thinking of the period through authors such as Lev Shestov (1866– 1938), Rachel Bespaloff (1895–1949), Dennis de Rougemont (1906–1985) and, specially, Jean Wahl.29 In fact, Bataille would even assist in the translation of some works by Shestov,30 the author of Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle31 and had the chance to strike up a personal friendship with Jean Wahl. Thus, it should come as no surprise when the first reference to Kierkegaard we come across in Bataille’s oeuvre appears in a 1931 review of Jean Wahl’s work. The review is entitled “Jean Wahl: Hegel et Kierkegaard.”32 As the title indicates, Bataille’s interest in Kierkegaard stems from the latter’s opposition to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Actually, Bataille would always consider himself indebted to Hegelianism: “I don’t hide the fact that I am a Hegelian above all, but not an absolute one.”33 Bataille feels part of the Hegel–Marx tradition and is particularly interested in the Hegelian concept of negativity and the master–slave dialectic as the explanation behind class struggle. However, it is Kierkegaard’s idea regarding existence and the sacred that will undoubtedly be of concern to Bataille. This is why the references to Kierkegaard in his work mostly focus on the three following questions: the relationship between Crainte et Tremblement. Lyrique-dialectique, par Johannes de Silentio, trans. by PaulHenri Tisseau, introduced by Jean Wahl, Paris: Fernand Aubier; Éditions Montaigne 1935 (returned on August 21). 712. February 3, 1937: Kierkegaard, Le concept de l’angoisse, trans. by Jean-Jacques Gateau and Knud Ferlov, Paris: Gallimard 1935 (returned on July 10). 718. April 17, 1937: Kierkegaard, La Répétition. Essai d’expérience psychologique par Constantin Constantius, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, Paris: Alcan 1933 (returned on July 13). 729. September 27, 1937: Kierkegaard, In vino veritas, trans. by par André Babelon and C. Lund, introduced by André Babelon, Paris: Éditions du Cavalier 1933 (returned on January 14, 1939). 806. September 11, 1941: Kierkegaard, Le concept de l’angoisse, trans. by Jean-Jacques Gateau and Knud Ferlov, Paris: Gallimard 1935 (returned on March 22, 1943). 807. September 11, 1941: Kierkegaard, Les Riens philosophiques, trans. by Jean-Jacques Gateau and Knud Ferlov, Paris: Gallimard 1937 (returned on July 16, 1942); and Jean Wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, Paris: Aubier 1938 (returned on March 22, 1943). 29 See Samuel Moyn, “Morality and History: Emmanuel Levinas and the Discovery of Søren Kierkegaard in France,” Yale French Studies, no. 104, 2004, pp. 22–54. 30 Lev Shestov, L’idée du bien chez Tolstoi et Nietzsche, trans. by T. Beresovski-Chestov and Georges Bataille, Paris: Editions du siècle 1925. 31 Lev Shestov, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, Paris: Vrin 1936. (Originally as Киргегард и экзистенциальная философия (Глас вопиющего в пустыне) [Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy (Vox clamantis in deserto)], Paris: Sovremenniye zapiski i Dom Knigi 1939; republished, Moscow: Progress-Gnosis 1992; English translation: Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy, trans. by Elinor Hewitt, Athens: Ohio University Press 1969.) 32 Georges Bataille, “Jean Wahl: Hegel et Kierkegaard,” La Critique Sociale, no. 6, September 1932, p. 273 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 1, pp. 299–300). 33 Georges Bataille, “Discussion sur le péché,” in Dieu vivant, no. 4, 1945, pp. 81–133, see p. 120. (English translation: “Discussion on Sin,” The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, trans. by Michelle Kendal and Stuart Kendal, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2001, pp. 26–75.)

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Kierkegaard and Hegel; the notion of existence as opposed to the conception defended by existentialism; finally, the question of the sacred and its relation to sin. Each of these points should be considered in the way that Bataille deals with them when referring explicitly to Kierkegaard. A. Kierkegaard and Hegel Bataille took the courses given by Alexandre Kojève (1902–68) on the Phenomenology of Spirit in Paris and had the opportunity to look into Hegel’s work in depth. He wrote several relevant articles about the German philosopher.34 In fact, both Nietzsche and Hegel are the foremost influences on Bataille’s thinking.35 This is why his early interest in Kierkegaard, due to his readings of Jean Wahl, is directly related to Hegelian thought. In the abovementioned review, for instance, the following can be read: However, whether he liked it or not, after his death, nothing will remain of him [Hegel] except for a closed construction. Kierkegaard’s Christian criticism is subsequently taken as a vital need in a mystical spirit bewitched by both the greatness and the strength of the system. As well as this, the rebellion against a mere reduction of life to pure logic is contemplated. Somehow, the Hegel–Kierkegaard dilemma consummates the dilemma implied in Hegelian thinking itself and takes it to the extreme.36

In this quotation, Kierkegaard’s conception of a “mystical spirit” should be held first and foremost. Bataille himself will share this idea along with his will to rebel against any rational and logical systems which seek to reduce life to mere discursive thinking. This framework of understanding is clearly seen through his claim for existence in his texts on meditation. Therefore, Bataille would converge more with Kierkegaard’s ideas regarding the Kierkegaard–Hegelian dilemma. However, the key point in Bataille’s reading lies with his recognition that this “vital need” to escape is already present in Hegel: “The young Hegel has been profoundly religious. As such, he is considered as an irrationalist.”37 This explains the statement which contemplates the Kierkegaard-Hegelian dilemma to be “implied in Hegelian thinking itself.” Bataille will insist on this point throughout his works and, in particular, in a later article. In this writing, namely “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie” (1947–48),38 he will deal with this question in depth. Herein, Bataille states his strong views on the matter in an altogether more forceful way: See Georges Bataille, “La critique des fondements de la dialectique hégélienne,” La Critique Sociale, no. 5, 1932, pp. 209–14 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 1, pp. 277–90); and “Hegel, la mort et le sacrifice,” Decaulion, no. 5, 1955, pp. 21–43 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 12, pp. 326–45). 35 Jacques Derrida also sees it in this way in “From Restricted to General Economy,” in Writing and Difference, trans. by Alan Bass, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul and Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1978, pp. 317–50. 36 Bataille, “Jean Wahl: Hegel et Kierkegaard,” p. 273. 37 Ibid. 38 Georges Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” Critique, December 19–21, 1947, pp. 515–26, and February 19–21, 1948, pp. 127–41. (English translation: “From 34

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It is strange today to apperceive that which Kierkegaard could not know: that Hegel, like Kierkegaard, understood the refusal of subjectivity before the absolute idea. One would have imagined in principle that Hegel’s refusing would be a matter of a conceptual opposition: on the contrary. The fact is not deduced from a philosophical text but from a letter to a friend, to whom he confides that, for ten years he feared becoming mad. The reason for this was the necessity to renounce in himself the individual (representing to himself the necessity of being no longer himself, the particular being, the individual that he was, but rather the universal Idea, to fall into the divine personality, as it were—in a word, to become God, he felt himself becoming mad). This did not last for a single night, or for two days, but for ten years. In a sense, the rapid sentencing of Hegel had perhaps a force that even the long cry of Kierkegaard did not have. The rapid sentencing is not less given in existence—which trembles and exceeds—than is this cry.39

In this article Bataille does not resort to Hegel’s early works to discover an inner rebellion within the system—which he did in his review of Jean Wahl’s work. On the other hand, he takes a simple letter in which Hegel confesses that for ten years he believed he was becoming insane as a result of the need to dissolve his individuality in the universality of the Idea. In both cases, the question raised is the superiority of Hegelian thinking over Kierkegaard’s “scream.” Not only was Hegel able to build a rational system with undeniable rigor, but he was also able to include the need to escape the system. This need is very much part of the existence that Kierkegaard argues for so vehemently. In fact, this is what Bataille’s intellectual adventure is fundamentally about: bringing Hegel to the point of no return where absolute knowledge is no longer the observance of rational thinking. On the contrary, rational thinking leads inevitably to the concept of not-knowing: the point where existence, now liberated from any projects, regains its sovereignty once again. “Not-knowing is the ends, and knowing is the means.”40 What Bataille tries to prove is that Kierkegaard’s scream—which lines itself up as no-knowledge, thus opposing itself to discursive knowledge—is foreseen and contained within the Hegelian system. Bataille will uphold this premise right through to the end, instead of withdrawing from it, in order to achieve what Kierkegaard had already claimed. However, he will not adhere to the commonly held explanation of rational thought: “Kierkegaard had the leisure of arguing with or of subtly escaping from the argumentation of the other (of misunderstanding him). Hegel could not but obey his own reason—or lose it.”41 These remarks show that Bataille was interested in Kierkegaard, as he made the same point as Hegel regarding the concept of excess, as exuberance that destroys its closed system. Hegel has been aware of this all along. Bataille first finds this excess in the system in the young Hegel and, later on, in a letter to a friend. In both cases, however, Bataille highlights the coincidence between Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” trans. by Jill Robins, in Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1999, pp. 155–79.) 39 Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” pp. 522–3. (“From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” p. 162.) 40 Bataille, L’Expérience intérieure, p. 172. (Inner Experience, p. 111.) 41 Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” p. 523. (“From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” p. 162.)

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the excess surrounding Hegel’s system and Kierkegaard’s claim for individual existence. Thus, on the one hand, Bataille affirmed, “But Hegel, doubtless, cannot be understood entirely without Kierkegaard”42 since Kierkegaard’s philosophy makes explicit reference to what Hegel just hints at but predicts beforehand. Also, on the other hand, Bataille might deny Kierkegaard any understanding of Hegel’s thinking: No one more than him [Hegel] understood in depth the possibilities of intelligence. No doctrine is comparable to his; it is the summit of positive intelligence. Kierkegaard made a superficial critique of it in that: 1) he had an imperfect knowledge of it; 2) he only opposes the system to the world of positive revelation, not to that of man’s notknowledge.43

Bataille’s criticism of Kierkegaard in this fragment of The Inner Experience, which takes up his thoughts about Hegelian excess once again, admitted by Hegel himself, points out something of greater importance that did not appear in previous works. However, Kierkegaard’s ignorance of the complete works of the German thinker is obvious. In fact, for Bataille, Kierkegaard does not oppose negativity, not-knowing to absolute knowing—something Bataille will do by himself. He could only oppose “positive revelation,” meaning Christian revelation, with God and the idea of salvation and grace, a concept that will be severely criticized by Bataille. Therefore, the Kierkegaard–Hegelian dilemma as seen by Bataille is of the utmost importance. First, the claim for individual existence is even more strongly adhered to in Hegel than in Kierkegaard. Secondly, the superseding of the Hegelian positive system is only developed by Kierkegaard through his appeal to the positive relation of Christianity. He did not take into account the negativity to be learnt from Hegel’s own thought, something which Bataille would later do. B. Existence vs. Existentialism In the above-mentioned article, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie” (1947), as well as in a latter article he wrote entitled “L’existentialisme” (1950),44 Bataille attempted to show his admiration for Kierkegaard’s concept of existence while setting himself apart from any ties with existentialism as a philosophical school: “For my part I regret being personally placed among the French existentialists.”45 Bataille’s aversion to this philosophical movement stems from both his personal controversy with Sartre and from the inherent contradiction in this type of thinking Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” p. 162. (“From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” p. 164.) 43 Bataille, L’Expérience intérieure, p. 170, note. (Inner Experience, p. 109.) 44 Georges Bataille, “L’existentialisme,” Critique, no. 41, 1950, pp. 83–6 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 12, 1988, pp. 11–15). 45 Herein, Bataille responds to Rainer Heppenstall, author of an introduction to the English version of Guido Da Ruggieri, Existentialism (London: Secker and Warburg 1946), which, among French existentialists, names not only Sartre and Camus but also Bataille and Blanchot. See Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” p. 517, note. (“From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” p. 157.) 42

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in his view. On the one hand, Bataille admits that existentialism and Marxism both prioritize life over thought. However, he believes existentialism contradicts itself through its wish fully to understand those very things which it finds hard to grasp. This explains his statement in the following text: “Existentialists are hardly faithful to their point of departure: they philosophize, and Marxists live.”46 It is precisely due to this excess of philosophy, to this overestimation of abstraction and thought despite trying to think existence, that Bataille criticizes existentialism while setting Kierkegaard apart from this school of thought: “the term existentialism when applied to Kierkegaard is superadded.”47 On the contrary, Bataille’s admiration for Kierkegaard is explained in the following: He himself was an existent: even if existence, as he believed, was sin, he wished it within himself to be exacerbated, strained, and suspended. The God before whom he existed was not the immutable truth in himself, but this unknowable and unjustifiable existent that reason cannot attain to, which is the God of Abraham. From this starting point, he cannot have philosophy, strictly speaking, but rather the cry, which, I have said, is the expression of an existence, of subjectivity.48

What Bataille admires in Kierkegaard is easily recognizable in his work, especially in his books of meditation. It consists of the ability to write—not only a well-reasoned philosophical discourse, but the transcription of a personal experience which is not purely biographical.49 Writing as an expression of existence is what Bataille sees in Kierkegaard and aims at in his own work. Actually, Bataille can be seen in the same way that he sees Kierkegaard: in order to understand him, “he would have to be Kierkegaard and not just know him.”50 Despite his approach on “positive revelation,” Kierkegaard’s God should not be considered as the truth or a God who serves as a moral or epistemological explanation. Instead, God should be taken as unknown and irrational, as he appears in Fear and Trembling. Kierkegaard’s importance in philosophical thought stems from various key roles and not simply because he started a “philosophy of existence,” as existentialism would have liked him to do. The first of these lies in his illustrating the meaning of translation and expressing subjectivity. The second reason for his importance is that he demonstrated how religion can be a privileged platform to think about human concepts and existence, in spite of their reduction to the profane world of utility and exchange. For Bataille, after Kierkegaard “myths and rites have no more interest than philosophical, indeed

Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” p. 516. (“From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” p. 156.) 47 Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” pp. 519–20. (“From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” p. 159.) 48 Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” p. 519. (“From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” pp. 158–9.) 49 Arthur Adamov (1908–70) makes reference to this in Bataille, “Discussion sur le péché,” p. 101. (“Discussion on Sin,” p. 44.) 50 Bataille, “L’existentialisme,” p. 84. 46

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dogmatic, knowledge.”51 On the other hand, existentialism represents a kind of betrayal of Kierkegaard: It is no longer the subjective of the individual who poses the questions but the very exigency of thinking. Doubtless it is for this reason that Jaspers, as Jean Wahl repeats, said that existentialism was the death of the philosophy of existence. One could contend rigorously (as Emmanuel Levinas does) that professorial existentialism has revealed Kierkegaard, that it has situated him exactly within the history of philosophy. If this is so, the existentialism of our day is comparable to the older sacrifice which revealed the truth of a victim by killing him.52

The idea that existentialism is unfaithful to Kierkegaard’s existentialist thought at the very time he is trying to explain it, to locate it on the horizon of philosophical history and to confer it with a philosophical meaning is a constant in Bataille’s writings.53 Thus, Bataille accuses existentialism of explicitly opposing itself to Kierkegaard’s way of thinking in its intellectualization of discourse about existence. This explains why Bataille’s admiration for Kierkegaard lies in his tendency to consider issues from “the subjective life of the individual”54 instead of doing so from the requirements of thought. This is also evident in the following extract from one of his literary works: I thought: “None of them even poses a little question.” Then: “They pose no question at all unless one of them commits a crime.” I picture philosophy (Wolf, Comte, and the swarm of teachers) as a village wedding: no questions are posed, but only when Kierkegaard has got a headache does he ask questions (providing himself with the answers, at least he asks).55

Kierkegaard is also the only one, amongst all philosophers, to raise questions from his own subjectivity. This is what Bataille will recover from his concept of existence, and above all, from his understanding of the relationship between thought and existence. C. The Sacred: Sin Despite Bataille’s reflection upon the sacred in his work and the influence of Kierkegaard’s works to this end, the Danish author is not even mentioned in any of the works Bataille explicitly devoted to this issue. Neither in Théorie de la réligion nor in L’Erotisme can we find any clear reference to Kierkegaard. He is quoted, though, in one of his first works: “La conjuration 51 Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” p. 519. (“From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” p. 159.) 52 Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” p. 520. (“From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” pp. 159–60.) 53 About Sartre see Bataille, “L’existentialisme,” p. 85. 54 Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” p. 520. (“From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” p. 159.) 55 Georges Bataille, Le Petit, Paris: n.p. 1943. (No English translation.) In Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 3, p. 49.

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sacrée” (1936),56 along with Sade and Nietzsche. “La conjuration sacrée” is, in a certain way, a seminal text that was published in the first edition of the magazine Acéphale, founded by Bataille. Along with some quotations by Sade and Nietzsche, Bataille refers to a fragment of Kierkegaard’s journals that reads: “What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.”57 In order to understand why this particular statement by Kierkegaard is invoked here, the importance that Bataille conferred to the issue of the sacred in the social and political sphere must be taken into account. In fact, this text by Bataille is a sort of manifesto where he affirms the following: “WE ARE FEROCIOUSLY RELIGIOUS….A world that cannot be loved to the point of death—in the same way that a man loves a woman—represents only self-interest and the obligation to work.”58 Bataille thus stresses the value of what, in other texts, he will call “heterogeneous elements” of society as opposed to homogenous elements. The homogeneous elements of a given society are those that are bound by the general laws of utility, so that any homogeneous activity is valid as far as it is carried out towards a particular end. Therefore, they are related to economic calculation. Heterogeneous elements, by contrast, are upheld as inherently valid ends: games, the arts and so forth. Amongst these elements, those activities linked with the sphere of the sacred stand out. In fact, many activities usually considered as political activities—thus, belonging to the world of calculation—are interpreted by Bataille to be heterogeneous elements. He sees fascism as a political movement which has been able to mobilize the heterogeneous elements of society while betraying the ideal of an infinite human community.59 In Bataille’s view, neither liberalism nor Marxism has been able to do so. This explains the relevance of Kierkegaard’s sentence: “What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.”60 This actually works as an early explanation of fascism, which Bataille subsequently tried to fight and understand.61 However, it is perhaps in the famous “Discussion on Sin” where Kierkegaard’s influence over Bataille’s thought is most evident. The discussion features leading intellectuals such as Pierre Klossowski, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Massignon (1883– 1962), Maurice de Gandillac (1906–2006), and Jean Hyppolite (1907–68), amongst others, and follows a presentation of a text by Bataille that would later be included in On Nietzsche, in an article entitled, “Summit and Decline.”62 In the discussion, Georges Bataille, “La conjuration sacrée,” Acéphale, no. 1, June 24, 1936, pp. 2–4. (English translation: “The Sacred Conspiracy,” in his Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927–1939, trans. by Allan Stoekl, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1985, pp. 178–81.) 57 See Bataille, “La conjuration sacrée,” p. 3. (“The Sacred Conspiracy,” p. 178.) 58 Bataille, “La conjuration sacrée,” p. 3. (“The Sacred Conspiracy,” p. 179.) 59 See Maurice Blanchot, La communauté Inavouable, Paris: Éditions Minuit 1983. (English translation: The Unavowable Community, trans. by Pierre Joris, Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press 1988.) 60 Bataille, “La conjuration sacrée,” p. 3. (“The Sacred Conspiracy,” p. 179.) 61 See Georges Bataille, “La structure psychologique du fascisme,” La critique sociale, no. 10, 1933, pp. 159–65; no. 11, 1934, pp. 205–11 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 1, pp. 339–71). 62 Bataille, Sur Nietzsche, pp. 53–91. (On Nietzsche, pp. 13–48.) 56

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Bataille opposes the “summit morality,” including both evil and therefore sin, to the “morality of decline” which is, according to Bataille, every morality based on criteria of merit, good, calculation or, at the end of the day, the useful cause as a means to an end. A summit morality would then imply complete disinterest, unmotivated action in much the same way as Nietzsche saw the moment. Bataille’s line of reasoning in this text, and in other texts such as Le Coupable,63 is that this morality calls for the experience of sin as a necessary condition in order to free the profane world from finality and utility. To this end, Kierkegaard is mentioned on various occasions by his co-speakers. In the end, Bataille feels obliged to discuss the issue with direct reference to Kierkegaard: I am astounded by Father Daniélou’s mention of Kierkegaard on this subject; he said that the church always saw the great sinners as people who were kind of neighbors to sanctity. Here I will add that it is lawful from quiet another point of view to see the great saints as people who were very close to the largest of sins. Perhaps one might consider, on one side and the other, the saints and the debauched as failures, as people who failed, and I think that in truth they each have their reasons.64

In order to understand this answer, the objection made by Jean Daniélou (1905– 74) must be considered. If Bataille establishes an opposition between the summit morality and morality of decline, where he would include Christianity (“My relations with Christianity can’t be friendly relations; they are purely and simply hostile”65), Daniélou believes Christianity is directly opposed to moralism precisely through the notion of sin: “Becoming conscious of sin is therefore the decisive act that makes the encounter with the sacred possible—and the act that permits one to part from the sphere of moralism.”66 Moralism represents a kind of self-satisfaction that Christianity cannot stand, and what Christianity does is to take disciplinary action against the self-satisfaction of Pharisees who view themselves as good, honest, salvation-deserving men. Sin is that very punishment, since it makes man aware of his own impotence. Here is where Kierkegaard is invoked to counter the concept of sin defended by Bataille: We see how sin is in a way an introduction to the sacred, insofar as it drives man to despair and forces man towards the act of faith, insofar as it brings about the transfiguration of the world. There is, therefore, according to the Kierkegaardian schema, innocence, sin and glory. But glory and sin are two contrary realities that cannot coexist, yet are tightly connected. Mr. Bataille applies himself specifically to making them coexist. For him, once again, the sacred is defined by communication; communication by dissolution. Sin brings about through dissolution. And through dissolution, which permits fusion, which is glory, fulguration, ecstasy.67

See Bataille, Le Coupable, pp. 43–7. (Guilty, pp. 65–8.) Bataille, “Discussion sur le péché,” pp. 126–7. (“Discussion on Sin,” p. 67.) 65 Bataille, “Discussion sur le péché,” p. 132. (“Discussion on Sin,” p. 73.) 66 Bataille, “Discussion sur le péché,” p. 93. (“Discussion on Sin,” p. 36.) 67 Bataille, “Discussion sur le péché,” p. 94. (“Discussion on Sin,” p. 37.) 63 64

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Herein, Father Daniélou summarizes Bataille’s approach precisely. Access to the sacred and, therefore, to a whole and non-mutilated existence demands what Bataille calls “communication.” According to Bataille, we are single beings, individuals and, as such, we subject ourselves to the world of utility and work, to projects and goals. And it is only when we are at risk, when we go beyond the circle of our own individuality and break it, that we actually communicate with another being: “If there is no communication, a separate being will droop and wither.”68 But communication takes place precisely through the transgression of the limits of the very being who individualizes us, and through the morality that holds and secures this being. That is why communication needs evil and sin. Hence the proximity that Bataille defends between sin and grace as ways of accessing the sacred (communication) and his defense of Kierkegaard as the one who was able to see the coincidences between these two spheres.69 However, the reference to Kierkegaard in Le Coupable when raising the question of sin and its link with anguish is yet more emphatic: Reading Kierkegaard’s Concept of Dread. (Dread or anguish) For those who understand communication as laceration, communication is sin, or evil. It’s a breaking of the established order. …I say: communication is sin. But the opposite is evident! Only selfishness would be a sin.70

In this enigmatic text, Bataille defends the concept of sin as communication, while admitting that it is possible to conceive sin as individuality and selfishness, therefore, as solitary confinement. Kierkegaard pointed out elsewhere “the despair of willing to be oneself.”71 Yet Bataille always stuck to his idea: “the idea of sin should be reconsidered. I tell him [Daniélou] that there is no communication that is not sin in essence.”72 In fact, this is precisely what Bataille provides, complementing views held by Kierkegaard and other authors, such as Heidegger and Jaspers. This is evident in the manuscript of Madame Edwarda, in which the above quoted text is reproduced and the following note included: “It is possible that I remain in Kierkegaard’s horizon; however, above these [horizons], I have seen the light of communication and of glory rise.”73 Actually, this was already the difference that Bataille realized between the existentialists’ perspective and his own. In the above-mentioned article, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” the title already suggested this improvement, which Bataille summarized as follows: “The philosophy of existence has posited subjectivity, and it is to the extent that this positing necessarily

Bataille, Sur Nietzsche, p. 65. (On Nietzsche, p. 13.) Although Bataille does not refer here to any of Kierkegaard’s works, one only has to think of “The Woman who was a Sinner.” See WA, 135–44 / SKS 11, 273–80. 70 Bataille, Le coupable, p. 43. (Guilty, pp. 65–6.) 71 SKS 11, 129 / SUD, 13. 72 Georges Bataille, “Notes to Madame Edwarda,” in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 5, p. 543. 73 Ibid., p. 542. 68 69

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implies the ruin of the subject posited that this philosophy is worthy of interest.”74 The dissolution of the subject is what Bataille calls communication, brought into play, sin, and what brings about anxiety when facing such dissolution. This is the priority of the “General Economy” Bataille defends as opposed to existentialism: the possibility of understanding all those activities that involve the dissolution of the subject as a sanctuary of unproductive expenditure. This is also where Bataille sees himself above Kierkegaard, despite their points of agreement: Bataille understands sin as a higher form of communication and dissolution of the self. III. Hyperchristianity: Kierkegaard and Bataille According to the present account, Bataille’s criticism of Kierkegaard is focused on the following points: first, Bataille accuses Kierkegaard of having opposed the Hegelian system to positive revelation instead of doing so with the concept of notknowing; secondly, he criticizes Kierkegaard’s philosophy for its salvation of the subject, when according to Bataille, what should really happen is that the subject dissolves in communication. Finally, Bataille reinterprets sin from a positive angle that would, at the same time, allow us to conceive it as grace. In Kierkegaard, this is not so evident. However, in spite of the differences that Bataille addresses with respect to Kierkegaard, it is important to show the basic affinities that link them. Bataille refuses to admit these affinities. The issue is about the reinterpretation of Christianity as opposed to Christian moralism, what Kierkegaard calls Christendom, a question dealt with by both authors. In the introduction to Discussion on Sin Bataille states: “I do not know how I could overemphasize: ‘We want to be the heirs of meditation and of Christian penetration’…‘to go beyond all Christianity by means of a hyper-Christianity [Überchristliches] and without contenting ourselves with giving Christianity up.’ What Nietzsche affirms, I affirm after him without changing a thing.”75 Bataille could have called upon Kierkegaard once again. This is what both Father Daniélou and Klossowski do. At least, this is what he does in Inner Experience when he affirms: “Kierkegaard is the extreme limit of the Christian.”76 In Discussion on Sin, Daniélou and Klossowski compare Bataille’s thesis with that of Kierkegaard, doing so in a particularly enlightening way. As indicated, Daniélou tries to show how the summit morality that Bataille defends coincides with Christian ethics: “I believe that Christ’s message, on the contrary, is a message of gratuitousness and of luxurious expenditure.”77 In this regard, Klossowski indicated that it is precisely the ethical aspect of religion that horrifies Bataille: For him the sacred, so as not to integrate the ethical, so as to disintegrate it, will at the same time be confused with the aesthetic. This is why his a-theology implies a Bataille, “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” p. 141. (“From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” p. 180.) 75 Bataille, “Discussion sur le péché,” p. 83. (“Discussion on Sin,” pp. 26–2.) 76 Bataille, L’Expérience Intérieur, p. 72. (Inner Experience, p. 43.) 77 Bataille, “Discussion sur le péché,” p. 96. (“Discussion on Sin,” p. 40.) 74

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valorization of the evil….Here we are moved entirely into the category delimited by Kierkegaard as the Interesting.78

Just as Klossowski states, it is undoubtedly true that Bataille’s conception of the sacred verges on the domain of aesthetics. Hence, his appraisal of eroticism, for instance, as a sphere that enables one to access the sacred. However, we should also bear in mind that ethics is what Bataille’s quest is about, that is, a mode of existence that avoids both the mundane nature of material reality and the world of work, as well as the utilitarian moral supporting it. As such, Bataille and Kierkegaard must search in Christianity for that way of life that values existence without forcing it to depend on the achievement of material results. In fact, just as has been discovered, Bataille admires Kierkegaard’s appeal to Abraham, the unknown God. It is precisely in the suspension of ethics in favor of religious fact, as it appears in Fear and Trembling, that we must look into the similarities between Kierkegaard and Bataille. Therefore, it is under the guise of the second ethic developed by Kierkegaard in Works of Love—a work Bataille was oblivious to—that the similarities, correspondences, and resonances between their styles of thought can be found. Kierkegaard, in the same way as Bataille, denounces the moralization of Christianity and demands the radicalism of Christian religion—which includes crime and faith as extreme forms of not-knowing. Bataille’s criticism of Kierkegaard’s overt positivism could not understand that. This is precisely where a context for consensus can be found in order to rethink what, according to Bataille, is at stake in contemporary thinking. This is a line of thought that, much like Derrida in The Gift of Death,79 seeks to develop a hyperchristianity capable of meeting the ethical needs, be they vital or existential, of contemporary man.

78 79



Bataille, “Discussion sur le péché,” p. 98. (“Discussion on Sin,” p. 41.) Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1996.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Bataille’s Corpus “Jean Wahl: Hegel et Kierkegaard,” La Critique Sociale, no. 6, September 1932, p. 273 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 1–12, Paris: Gallimard 1970–88, vol. 1, pp. 299–300). Le Petit [under the pseudonym Louis Trente], no place: n.p. 1934 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 1–12, Paris: Gallimard 1970–88, vol. 3, p. 49). “La conjuration sacrée,” Acéphale, no 1, June 24, 1936, pp. 2–4 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 1–12, Paris: Gallimard 1970–88, vol. 1, pp. 442–6). L’Expérience intérieure, Paris: Gallimard 1943, p. 29; p. 72; p. 170, note (in Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 1–12, Paris: Gallimard 1970–88, vol. 5, p. 24; p. 56; p. 128, note; English translation: Inner Experience, trans. by Leslie Anne Boldt, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press 1988, p. 12; p. 41; p. 109). “Pour lire le Concept d’angoisse,” in his Le Coupable, Paris: Gallimard 1944, pp. 43–7 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 1–12, Paris: Gallimard 1970–88, vol. 5, pp. 305–9). “Discussion sur le péché,” Dieu vivant, no. 4, 1945, pp. 81–133, see p. 94; p. 98; pp. 126–7 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 1–12, Paris: Gallimard 1970–88, vol. 6, p. 325; p. 329; p. 353; English translation: “Discussion on Sin,” in The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, trans. by Michelle Kendal and Stuart Kendal, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2001, pp. 26–75). “De l’existentialisme au primat de l’économie,” Critique, nos. 19–21, December 1947, pp. 515–26 and February 1948, pp. 127–41 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 1–12, Paris: Gallimard 1970–88, vol. 11, pp. 279–306; English translation: “From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy,” trans. by Jill Robins, in Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1999, pp. 155–79). “L’existentialisme,” Critique, no. 41, October 1950, pp. 83–6 (in Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 1–12, Paris: Gallimard 1970–88, vol. 12, pp. 11–15). “Notes to Madame Edwarda,” in Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 1–12, Paris: Gallimard 1970–88, vol. 5, pp. 541–3. II. Sources of Bataille’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Benda, Julien, Tradition de l’existentialisme ou les Philosophies de la vie, Paris: Grasset 1947, p. 27; p. 43; p. 99. Bespaloff, Rachel, Cheminements et carrefours, Paris: Vrin 1938, pp. 119–200.

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Da Ruggeri, Guido, Existentialism, ed. by Rainer Heppenstall, trans. by E.M. Cocks, London: Secker and Warburg 1946, pp. 19–31; p. 37; pp. 42–7; pp. 51–61; pp. 65–6; p. 70; p. 86. Hersh, Jeanne, L’Illusion Philosophique, Paris: F. Alcan 1936, pp. 141–6. Kierkegaard, Søren, La Répétition. Essai d’expérience psychologique par Constantin Constantius, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, Paris: Alcan 1933. — In vino veritas, trans. by par André Babelon and C. Lund, introduced by André Babelon, Paris: Éditions du Cavalier 1933. — Crainte et Tremblement. Lyrique-dialectique, par Johannes de Silentio, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, introduced by Jean Wahl, Paris: Fernand Aubier; Éditions Montaigne 1935. — Le concept de l’angoisse, trans. by Jean-Jacques Gateau and Knud Ferlov, Paris: Gallimard 1935. — Les Riens philosophiques, trans. by Jean-Jacques Gateau and Knud Ferlov, Paris: Gallimard 1937. Mesnard, Pierre, Le vrai visage de Kierkegaard, Paris: Beauchesne 1948. Shestov, Lev, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, Paris: Vrin 1936. Wahl, Jean, “Hegel et Kierkegaard,” Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, nos. 111–12, November–December 1931, pp. 321–80. — Études kierkegaardiens (Suivi d’extraits du Journal de Kierkegaard, 1834–1839 et 1849–1854), Paris: Aubier 1938. — Petite histoire de l’existentialisme (suivi de Kafka et Kierkegaard), Paris: Club Maintenant 1947. III. Secondary Literature on Bataille’s Relation to Kierkegaard Götsch, Dietmar, “Die Zweideutigkeit des Augenblicks. Bataille und Kierkegaard,” in Georges Bataille, Vorreden zur Überschreitung, ed. by Andreas Hetzel and Peter Wiechens, Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann 1999, pp. 93–111. Ichihasi, Akinori, “Georges Bataille et Kierkegaard, l’angoisse de l’influence dans La conjuration sacrée,” 仏語仏文学研究 [Bulletin d’études françaises de l’Université Chuo], vol. 23, 2001, pp. 147–64. Itzkowitz, Kenneth Jay, “A Deadly Gift. To Derrida, from Kierkegaard and Bataille,” in Extreme Beauty: Aesthetics, Politics, Death, ed. by James E. Swearingen and Joanne Cutting-Gray, New York: Continuum 2002, pp. 194–207. — Economy and Difference (Plato, Kierkegaard, Bataille, Derrida, Heidegger), Ph.D. Thesis, State University of New York, Stony Brook 1987. Klossowski, Pierre, Sade mon prochain (suivi de deux essais sur Kierkegaard et Georges Bataille), Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1947.

Maurice Blanchot: Spaces of Literature / Spaces of Religion Daniel Greenspan

There are five books where Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) names Kierkegaard directly. Two of them are important sources for his influence on Blanchot and place in Blanchot’s thought: the early collection of essays, Faux Pas, opening with a piece on the journals, as well as an introduction featuring Kierkegaard, and later, The Space of Literature. The other mentions in The Work of Fire, The Infinite Conversation and The Writing of the Disaster are more incidental, but help clarify Blanchot’s core ambivalence toward Kierkegaard. He reads Kierkegaard largely in relation to Franz Kafka (1883–1924) and Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), whose artistic practices explain “the work” of literature in terms of a triple task: solitude, the sacred, and negation. I. Faux Pas: Kierkegaard’s Solitude and the Issue of Mediation A. “Author’s Introduction” Blanchot’s introduction to Faux Pas begins with a reflection on the apparent absurdity of writing about solitude. Solitude revokes the need for writing since there are no more addressees. Blanchot turns immediately to Kierkegaard. “Why would someone, in the uttermost throes of solitude, write ‘I am alone,’ or, like Kierkegaard, ‘I am here all alone?’ ”1 The expression of solitude appears to be self-revoking because it relates this experience at solitude’s expense. The relation takes place through the essentially public medium of language. Another way of speaking about this “relation” would be to use the Hegelian vocabulary so often lampooned by Kierkegaardian authors and to which Blanchot often turns. To relate solitude by writing about it is a “mediation” which for Kierkegaard could only be Hegelian sleight of pen. Solitude as solitude cannot be communicated. The rejection of mediation exposes Kierkegaard’s writing to the jibes and accusations of self-defeat that interest Blanchot. G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) agrees on the impossibility of mediating the solitary existence of the author, not because this pure exteriority must be preserved, but because existence outside of the relation which language makes possible—unmediated solitude—does Maurice Blanchot, Faux Pas, Gallimard: Paris 1943, p. 10. (Faux Pas, trans. by Ann Smock, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2001, p. 2.)

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not exist. For the Hegelian, even solitude is a fundamentally relational phenomenon (a point which Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) persuasively reiterates).2 Blanchot sympathizes with the impossibility of Kierkegaard’s task and argues, alongside him, that solitude does not necessarily expire in being related. His reasoning, however, ultimately divides him against Kierkegaard, whose authorship he reads as an indirect communication of the solitary author. There is no prior experience of solitude which writing spoils: “It is not the one who is alone who experiences the feeling of being alone; this monster of desolation needs another for his desolation to have meaning, another who, thanks to his intact reason and his protected senses, makes the distress that was powerless until then instantly possible.”3 Solitude comes to be in the expression of solitude that takes place alongside others and in their language: “The writer is not free to be alone without expressing that he is.”4 It is a different conclusion from the Hegelian one that solitude is a sham, and the educations of consciousness require a progressive loss of individuality, or dialectical identification of the individual with the community. But it remains, as Blanchot points out, paradoxical, since “[t]hat which destroys language in him also makes him use language.”5 Blanchot’s commitment to paradox defends the possibility of Kierkegaard’s solitary writing from the Hegelian accusations of comic nonsense. Blanchot’s use of Kierkegaard leads back to an essential difficulty in Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and the Hegelian response of mediation. It will require a moment’s backtracking. How can we think the relation consciousness has to the world it stands against as an always rational object (Gegenstand) without dissolving this object and the relation itself back into the reason it reflects? Kant tried to solve this problem with a “pure synthesis” of “productive” imagination grounding the unity of apperception (i.e., the transcendental subject) through which he secures the possibility of knowledge.6 This productive synthesis originates both the possibility for reflection (i.e., apperception) and its objects, capable of being known and counting as “experience” only insofar as they remain available to reflection.7 The See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, New York: Harper and Row 1962, p. 157: “The Other can be missing only in and for a Being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of Being-with; its very possibility is the proof of this.” 3 Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 10. (Faux Pas, p. 2.) 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by Norman Kemp Smith, New York: St. Martin’s Press 1963, A118, pp. 142–3: “The transcendental unity of apperception thus relates to the pure synthesis of imagination, as an a priori condition of the possibility of all combination of the manifold in one knowledge. But only the productive synthesis of the imagination can take place a priori; the reproductive rests on empirical conditions. Thus the principle of the necessary unity of pure (productive) synthesis of imagination, prior to apperception, is the ground of the possibility of all knowledge, especially of experience.” 7 Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, B131–2, pp. 152–3: “It must be possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me.” 2

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doctrine of apperception remains disappointingly abstract, for Hegel, in its formality and therefore unable to account for the legitimate independence of the world from consciousness.8 Kant’s transcendental position also leads to both a series of inevitable paralogisms and antinomies, as well as the unwieldy remainder of that beyond of consciousness—the “thing in itself”—about which Kant’s theory compels him nevertheless to speak.9 These difficulties point to Kant’s unintended sacrifice of the independence and determinacy of the pure intuitions of sensibility from the concepts of the understanding.10 Hegel resolves the inevitable antinomies into which Kant’s position leads and the unaccounted for remainder of the thing in-itself by identifying this pure apperceptive “I” as one negation requiring yet another, reconciling the content of consciousness with its form.11 Kierkegaard interests Blanchot as one of several writers exploring the ground of the first negation, i.e., the experience of subject and object, and suffering the negation or loss of all relations. He calls this experience “anguish.” “The case of the writer is privileged because it represents the paradox of anguish in a privileged way,” destroying the realities and purposes of intelligence and yet forcing reason “to be there.”12 The practice of writing embodies the troubling difference internal to Kant’s transcendental “I” (i.e., paralogisms, antinomies and the apparent necessity of the thing-in-itself) and fueling the “suffering labor” of Hegel’s “negative,” through

See Robert B. Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989, p. 36. Pippin directs us to the “Consciousness” section dealing with Kant in Hegel’s Berlin Phenomenology. 9 On the antinomies, see Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, A406/B433–A407/B434, pp. 384–5. On the paralogisms, see A339/B397–A341/B399, pp. 327–8. On Kant’s thing in itself, see A576/B604, p. 490. The trio are discussed further in the following note. 10 For Kant’s doctrine of sensibility’s “pure intuitions” of space and time, see Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, A26/B42–A30/B46, pp. 71–4; A31/B47–A32/B48, pp. 74–5; A39/ B56–A41/B59, pp. 80–2. The objective world tends to bleed into the transcendental subject, and so reason, in the paralogisms and antinomies, oversteps its bounds, mistakenly imposing features of or consequent upon reason (for example, substantiality, unity, simplicity, etc.) onto its objects. Kant anchors these phenomena in the inassimilable thing in itself, “a transcendental ideal which serves as basis for the complete determination that necessarily belongs to all that exists. This ideal is the supreme and complete material condition of the possibility of all that exists—the condition to which all thought of objects, so far as their content is concerned, has to be traced back.” 11 G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1977, p. 10: “This Substance is, as Subject, pure, simple negativity, and is for this very reason the bifurcation of the simple; it is the doubling which sets up opposition, and then again the negation of this indifferent diversity and of its antithesis [the immediate simplicity]. Only this self-restoring sameness, or this reflection in otherness within itself—not an original or immediate unity as such—is the True.” Pippin calls attention to this passage and links it with another three paragraphs later, in which Hegel even more clearly invokes Kant’s apperceptive “I”—the “I which is for itself”—as “pure negativity.” See Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness, p. 105. His discussion on pp. 35–41 has been especially useful for my reading of Hegel’s critique of Kant’s epistemology. 12 Blanchot, Faux Pas, pp. 12–3. (Faux Pas, p. 4.) 8

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which the Concept reconciles the division of the transcendental subject from things themselves.13 Although introduced as a writer epitomizing the paradox of an essentially relational consciousness—that we experience and communicate our most private selves in terms of an essentially public language—Blanchot situates “anguished writing” both alongside Kierkegaard and against him. “[B]y writing under a mask, by borrowing pseudonyms, by making himself unknown, he aligns himself with the solitude that it is his destiny to understand in the very act of writing,”14 Blanchot grants. He criticizes Kierkegaard, though, for misunderstanding the mystery of this solitude, and finds in the willfulness of Kierkegaard’s veils an estheticizing of the “ambiguity” and “enigma” of writing. This estheticizing reduces the concealments of the work to something that ideally can and should be revealed. He consigns him to a psychological category introduced by one of these pseudonyms, Vigilius Haufniensis’ “demonic.”15 Kierkegaard made the demonic one of the most profound forms of anguish, and the demonic refuses to communicate with the outside; he does not want to make himself manifest; even if he wanted to, he could not; he is confined inside that which makes his anguish inexpressible; he is anguished by solitude and by the fear that solitude could be broken. But that is because, for Kierkegaard, mind must be revealed; anguish comes from this: since all direct communication is impossible, to enclose oneself in the most isolated interiority seems like the only authentic way to go toward the other, a path that itself only has a destination if it presents itself as having no destination.16

Blanchot distances himself from Kierkegaard insofar as Kierkegaard wants essentially to reveal himself, and this revelation demands that the author represent himself in his work.

Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 10. Cf. Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 13 (Faux Pas, p. 4.), where Blanchot again clearly links anguish to Kantian faculty psychology. “Anguish itself is possible only because in all its power there remains the faculty that it annihilates and makes impossible.” Blanchot’s invocation of the annihilation of the world recalls the Kantian sublime in which understanding survives the loss of an intelligible world, affirming its “morally purposive” superiority to the world of appearances, that is, objects. See Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment, trans. by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000, pp. 128–30. “[T]hat which, without any rationalizing, merely in apprehension, excites in us the feeling of the sublime, may to be sure appear in its form to be contrapurposive for our power of judgment, unsuitable to our faculty of presentation, and as it were doing violence to our imagination, but is nevertheless judged all the more sublime for that”; “for what is properly sublime cannot be contained in sensible form, but concerns only ideas of reason, which, though no presentation adequate to them is possible, are provoked and called to mind precisely by this inadequacy, which does allow of sensible representation….[T]he mind is incited to abandon sensibility and to occupy itself with ideas which contain a higher purposiveness.” 14 Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 19. (Faux Pas, p. 10.) 15 See SKS 4, 421–36 / CA, 118–34. 16 Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 21. (Faux Pas, p. 11.) 13

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Blanchot confirms in The Work of Fire this identification of Kierkegaardian solitude with a “demonic silence,” mistakenly cutting itself off in the belief that it has something specific—namely, the author himself—that painfully must be both hidden and communicated.17 Writers tend to understand the mysterious element in their language in one of two misguided ways. The first belongs to Kierkegaard. (1) The “meaning” of the poem must remain essentially cut off from the poem, since the author’s mind contains more than poetry could ever communicate; (2) The poem has no meaning apart from the linguistic object, because its mystery overwhelms and negates everything mental, dissolves all meaning. Is the mysterious silence in literature “[s]ilence by lack or silence by excess?”18 asks Blanchot. He concludes that it is neither. We should not privilege the inability of language to disclose the mystery, silence, or secret enlivening poetry. The secret is constituted in and through language that demands that the secret of its origin be kept. Kierkegaard’s solitude— the necessity of his silence—should not have encountered writing as an obstacle, but rather as its own paradoxical condition, behind which there was nothing. The writer “does not seek to express his anguished ‘I’…he is not [anxiety’s] spokesman or the spokesman of an inaccessible truth there might be in it.”19 Kierkegaard’s apparent insistence on the integrity of the “I” makes it impossible for Blanchot ultimately to affirm his writing. For a similar reason, Levinas, a colleague and close friend to Blanchot since their studying at the University of Strasbourg, refuses Kierkegaard’s ethics as “the egoist cry of the subjectivity, still concerned for happiness or salvation.”20 Blanchot subtly links this Christianity of Kierkegaard’s with the fraudulent desire to preserve and communicate himself in his work (a connection which returns later, more explicitly, in The Space of Literature) through the related issue of representation. The author’s absence and the absence of any truth, therefore, which an author might express, undermines the possibility of representational writing. A Christian author like Kierkegaard, afflicted by the anguish of literature, wants to “represent this condition, with the result that if he succeeds at representing it, his unhappiness will be changed into joy and his fate accomplished.”21 When the author gives up on salvation and the idea that his anguish is meaningful and conceals the potential anodyne of interpretation, he puts aside representations of his own truth, experience or psychology and submits to anguish for its own sake. The logic of “inside” and “outside,” concealment and representation, which seems to have obsessed Kierkegaard, no longer concerns the writer. Blanchot, La Part du feu, Paris: Gallimard 1949, p. 65. (The Work of Fire, trans. by Charlotte Mandell, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995, p. 60.) For a brief elaboration of Kierkegaard’s category of the demonic, in terms of authorly confession, see La Part du feu, p. 248 (The Work of Fire, p. 241). Anticipating L’espace litérraire, La Part du feu opposes a demoniac Kierkegaard, who had “taken the side of the secret,” to Kafka, who “could not take either side.” (See La Part du feu, p. 11 (The Work of Fire, p. 3).) 18 Blanchot, La Part du feu, p. 65. (The Work of Fire, p. 60.) 19 Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 21. (Faux Pas, p. 12.) 20 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. by Alphonso Lingis, Duquesne: Duquesne University Press 1969, p. 305. 21 Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 22. (Faux Pas, p. 13.) 17

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Blanchot recasts the productive opposition between the freedom of transcendental subjectivity and the constraints and independent reality of the world in terms of literary creation rather than mental representation. He replaces the categories of judgment (according to which the understanding, for Kant, translates blind intuitions into objects of experience) with rules implicit in originary works of literature. This literature exceeds the consciousness of its author; its “conscious coherence”22 belongs to the work and not to the one holding the pen. The work comes upon its author as a kind of accident, un coup de dés (roll of the dice): It is extremely hard to produce a thoroughly aware and harmonious work by assimilating at every moment the rational forces that produce it with an actual play of chance. It is in this sense that the rules define the art of writing, the constraints imposed on it, the fixed forms that transform it into a necessary system, insurmountable obstacles to the throw of the dice, are for the writer all the more important when they make more exhausting the act of awareness by which reason that observes these rules must identify with an absence of these rules.23

The work is a special kind of object that fails to conform to the rules of intelligibility, fails to be “objective,” and so cannot appear to any authorial subject, who, in any case, disappears into the work’s anguish. Like Kant’s productive imagination, or Hegel’s Concept, the work exists prior to the distinction between subject and object, as the writer witnesses “a storm of order” and suffers “a paroxysm of awareness” in which “a faultless order” reveals itself as likewise “an absolute lack of order.”24 Writing takes the writer hostage, asserting its independence and revoking the writer’s ability to impose an intelligible reality according to the custom of his own mind and language. But its significance is nevertheless “the gift” of the author, a function of the technical ability to “restore” to words the original force of their signifying.25 In the work the author encounters a limit at which thought stops, from out of which come the distinctions between subject and object, inside and outside, author and book; it is the paradoxically senseless sense of the work whose meaning, “since linked to chance, is non-meaning,” that makes these distinctions possible.26 B. “Kierkegaard’s Journals” “Kierkegaard’s Journals,” the opening essay of Faux Pas, retains the ambivalence toward Kierkegaard of the introduction but provides a clearer framework for interpreting the mediation of consciousness and world in the paradoxical writing of solitude. Blanchot applies his reading of Kierkegaard’s journals to “every work of Kierkegaard’s,” extrapolating from one of the most well-known journal entries to the authorship as a whole.27 These works—pseudonymous and veronymous Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 24. (Faux Pas, p. 15.) Blanchot, Faux Pas, pp. 23–4. (Faux Pas, p. 14.) 24 Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 25. (Faux Pas, p. 15.) 25 Ibid. 26 Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 26. (Faux Pas, p. 16.) 27 SKS 17, 18–30, AA:12 / KJN 1, 13–25. 22 23

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alike—mirror the journals as part of the unified pursuit of “an idea that was his truth and that gave meaning to all that he was and did.”28 For multiple reasons, Blanchot glosses, Kierkegaard was able to express neither the truth of his own subjectivity nor this salvific idea. He “explains himself and he veils himself,” reporting on a life that “seems essentially unable to be revealed in its truth and its profound drama.”29 But this “seems” should not, according to Blanchot, be overlooked, and the incommunicability of the Kierkegaardian subject falls short of the ideal paradox embodied in solitary writing. Kierkegaard seduces the reader with a play of shadows, but only as manipulation of something that could in principle be revealed. Citing the journals, Blanchot acknowledges the extent to which Kierkegaard was committed to this secret: After me, no one will find in my Papers (this is my consolation) one single clarification of that which at bottom has filled my life; one will not find in the depths of my soul the text that explains all….On that which constitutes in a total and essential way, in the most intimate way, my existence, I cannot speak.30

Blanchot reads “cannot” here as “will not,” because Kierkegaard stakes existence itself on the secret, “as if to save something for oneself were to save oneself wholly.”31 Still, the “appalling things” that Kierkegaard refused to expose to Regine could have been disclosed; the distance the inability to reveal the horror places between Kierkegaard and Regine made room for the pseudonymous antics and obfuscations through which alone, on Blanchot’s account, Kierkegaard could communicate with his one-time fiancée. Kierkegaard required this solitary distance to relate himself to others. Secrecy was useful in this way, but only because he was fortunate enough to have something to hide. Blanchot explains the self-revoking nature of Kierkegaard’s communications in terms of his failure to measure up to a Christian ideal. “If I am a poet,” Blanchot cites, “it is the expression of the fact that I do not identify with the ideal,” and so “my destiny seems to be to expose the truth, insofar as I discover it, all the while destroying at the same time all of my possible authority.”32 The desire to “announce his secret to others,” which he can only do “by abolishing it,”33 torments Kierkegaard and encloses him within himself as one grand literary dodge. His problem is again the Hegelian one of mediation, the difficulty of relating the disparate elements of self and other; Blanchot observes Kierkegaard’s assertion of this incommensurable mystery of the truth of a person “against Hegel.”34 As a fiancé, he wants to announce his secret erotically and establish this relationship romantically, so he breaks the engagement to Regine before the intimacy of their wedding night. As a philosopher, Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 27. (Faux Pas, p. 17.) Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 28. (Faux Pas, p. 18.) 30 Cited by Blanchot, Faux Pas, pp. 28–9. (Faux Pas, p. 18.) SKS 18, 169–70, JJ:95 / KJN 2, 157. 31 Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 29. (Faux Pas, pp. 18–19.) 32 Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 31 (Faux Pas, p. 20.) 33 Ibid. 34 Blanchot, Faux Pas, p. 32 (Faux Pas, p. 21.) 28 29

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he wants to announce it conceptually and establish this relationship dialectically, and so he parodies dialectics and dismantles the Concept from within. Christianly, he wants to announce it dogmatically and establish this relationship through faith, and so he attacks the church and scandalizes himself as apostate. Kierkegaard, at one point in 1848, declares the seal on his secret broken. He “must speak,” he writes—confirming the investment in the possibility of disclosure that Blanchot resents—though he soon recants and on his deathbed, insisting on the impossibility of communication, lets slip only that “I was the exception.”35 Kierkegaard’s suicidal imaginations in “Does a Man Have the Right to Let Himself Be Killed for Truth?” (from Two Ethical-Religious Essays) certifies for Blanchot his estheticizing of the mysterious secret of writing and the anguished disappearance of the author in his work. Blanchot concludes by turning to this fantasy of violence in which Kierkegaard succumbs fatally to his opposition to the world, and being murdered in the street by a Copenhagen mob becomes a useful occasion for the communication of solitude: “Men cause the being whom they persecute to speak in the death that they give him…[T]he persecutors, by striking him, establish in him a complete relationship of interiority between idea and existence.”36 The truth of singularity is communicated directly, speaks finally from the corpse as that which, as Emmanuel Levinas wrote, cannot be murdered, looking back “at me as the eye that in the tomb shall look at Cain” and “leads us toward an order of which we can say nothing.”37 On this silence that envelops his entire work, by which it offers itself as an enigma and demands of others that they become enigmas in their turn, one can only recall the words of Chestov that Jean Wahl cites in his remarkable Études Kierkegaardiennes: “Perhaps it is because Kierkegaard (as in the Andersen tale) had hidden his little pea under eighty mattresses, that it sprouted and grew to grandiose proportions, not only in the eyes of Kierkegaard, but even in the eyes of his distant descendants. If he had openly shown it to everyone, no one would have looked at it.”38

Blanchot sees in this unremitting “little pea” of Kierkegaardian subjectivity a last minute substitution, a Romantic and then religious hedge against passing into the null space, without goals and against good reason, literature wants to occupy. Kierkegaard fills this vacuum with the impossible goal of being an individual and a good husband, a good thinker, or a good Christian. The meaning of Kierkegaard’s writings becomes existentially deferred, but, though concealed, still rests solidly on the reasons and goals of the individual writer. The Infinite Conversation clarifies further Blanchot’s need to marginalize an “existential” thinker like Kierkegaard, whom he pairs with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) only to distinguish them as belonging to separate trajectories of Ibid. Blanchot, Faux Pas, pp. 31–2. (Faux Pas, p. 21.) 37 Levinas Totality and Infinity, p. 233. Cf. also p. 198. “The alterity that is expressed in the face…exceeds my powers infinitely, and therefore does not oppose them but paralyzes the very power of power.” 38 Blanchot, Faux Pas, pp. 32–3. (Faux Pas, p. 22.) 35 36

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thought. Nietzsche belongs, as Heidegger (whom Blanchot here cites) explains, to the history of metaphysics as its “final completion.” Kierkegaard’s “philosophy of existence”39 sequesters itself outside of the university boundaries that mark “[t]he high period of philosophy, that of critical and idealist philosophy…From Kant onward, the philosopher is primarily a professor.”40 Still, “the philosopher can no longer avoid being a professor of philosophy,” and so mistakenly, even “Kierkegaard engenders great Academics,”41 although he ought to be situated “apart from what has been expressed in Western history since Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel.” He “thought existentially” and not “metaphysically,” “using literary images or formulas meant to express certain incommunicable existential experiences.”42 Kierkegaard degrades the work by divorcing himself only existentially from the possibility of communicating solitude; to achieve this paradox Kierkegaard would have had to recognize solitude so immense it no longer belonged to him, because he no longer belonged to himself. II. The Space of Literature: Sacredness and the Other Death A. Kafka’s Daimonic Religion The Space of Literature simplifies Blanchot’s view of Kierkegaard, resolving the ambivalences of Faux Pas and identifying Kierkegaard’s writing clearly as a religious evasion of literature, divorcing him from the “destiny” of philosophy which the artist shares. Blanchot perceives this destiny already “in Descartes: a perpetual play of exchange between an existence that becomes an increasingly pure, subjective intimacy and the ever more active and objective conquest of the world…Hegel was the first to account fully for this double movement” and “made its culmination possible” in the work of writers such as Kafka and Rilke.43 Still, Blanchot’s take on literature, as a solitary act of religion in an age where religion is no longer possible, appears to suggest Kierkegaard endlessly. His use of “the leap,” “absolute passion,” “the task,” “risk,” “repetition,” “infinite striving,” “perpetual beginning,” “the impossible,” and so on, evokes sharply the alienated striving of Kierkegaard’s authors. Blanchot elaborates on this connection in a passage from The Infinite Conversation (1969): Kierkegaard’s Christianity…like the atheism of Nietzsche or the young Marx…belongs to that turning point in the history of the world from which the light of the divine has withdrawn. God is dead; God means God, but also everything that, in rapid succession, Maurice Blanchot, L’Entretien infini, Paris: Gallimard 1969, p. 211. (The Infinite Conversation, trans. by Susan Hanson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1992, p. 141.) 40 Blanchot, L’Entretien infini, p. 3. (The Infinite Conversation, p. 4.) 41 Blanchot, L’Entretien infini, p. 4. (The Infinite Conversation, p. 5.) 42 Blanchot, L’Entretien infini, pp. 211–12. (The Infinite Conversation, p. 141.) 43 Maurice Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, Paris: Gallimard 1955, p. 223. (The Space of Literature, trans. by Ann Smock, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1982, p. 215.) 39

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Direct references to Kierkegaard are more sparing but come at pivotal moments, and typically try to establish, usually through the apparent similarity of a concept, a useful contrast for Blanchot. Kierkegaard’s first appearance in The Space of Literature introduces Blanchot’s reading of Kafka, whose commitments to the work of literature he understands by analogy both with Kierkegaard himself and Fear and Trembling’s Abraham. The task of literature (as in Faux Pas) remains the Hegelian one—though disrupted by mysteries and ecstasies proper to daimonic religion, contesting the supremacy of the Concept—of mediating a solitary consciousness with its estranged world. Blanchot launches his Kafka interpretation with a theme from his reading of Kierkegaard’s journals, the “little pea” of failed romance he placed at the center of Kierkegaard’s writings. During his engagement celebration in Berlin, Blanchot reports from the Diaries, Kafka was “bound like a criminal.”45 “‘If I’d been tied in a corner with real chains, policemen before me…it would have been no worse.’…Soon afterwards, the engagement is broken off, but the aspiration persists—the desire for a ‘normal’ life, to which the torment of having wounded someone dear lends a heartrending force.”46 Kafka explicitly identified his life story with Kierkegaard’s, but Blanchot stipulates that “the conflict is different.”47 Regine was a sacrifice for Kierkegaard whose expense bought him the solitary poetics of religion. Using a hermeneutic based on Fear and Trembling, Blanchot identifies Kierkegaard’s passage to the religious with this tragic-heroic overcoming of worldly obstacles, especially love, and differentiates Kafka’s romance and the embattled relation to the mundane it represents as “Abraham’s eternal dilemma.”48 Kierkegaard resembles the Agamemnon of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, Johannes de silentio’s exemplar of the ethical, as opposed to the murdering Abraham who paradoxically founds faith. The warrior-king sacrificed his daughter so the wind would fill the fleet’s empty sails and take them to Troy. The tragically necessary death of his daughter glorifies Agamemnon, despite his entering at the moment of sacrifice into “the demonic” isolation from intelligible goals and language through which Blanchot consistently understands Kierkegaard.49 The temporarily demonic hero of tragedy occupies the ethical and not the religious, since the goals of his action are both intelligible and celebrated by the community.

Blanchot, L’Entretien infini, p. 217. (The Infinite Conversation, p. 144.) Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 56. (The Space of Literature, p. 61.) 46 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, pp. 56–7. (The Space of Literature, p. 61.) 47 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 57. (The Space of Literature, p. 61.) 48 Ibid. 49 See SKS 4, 157 / FT, 63–4. For a longer discussion of tragedy and the demonic in Fear and Trembling, see Daniel Greenspan, The Passion of Infinity: Kierkegaard, Aristotle and the Rebirth of Tragedy, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 2008 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 19), pp. 199–203. 44 45

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Blanchot uses de silentio’s boundary between the intelligibility of ethics and the profound inscrutability of religion to restrict Kierkegaard to the much less impressive space of the ethical. He redefines Kierkegaardian religion as not quite religious enough and sees in Abraham the possibility of a deeper sacredness embodied in Kafka’s writing, which originates in the absence of a telos and with it a language for what he does. The impossibility of the sacrifice—be it slaying Isaac or sitting down for another sleepless night at the writing desk—makes the sacrifice possible. Abraham sacrifices Isaac without reason, purpose or reward; Kafka, too, spends himself recklessly. He works for nothing. Writing places Kafka on a peak like Abraham’s Mount Moriah—where he wavers as if dying: “Others waver too, but in lower regions, with greater strength. If they threaten to fall, a relative who walks next to them for this purpose holds them up. But I waver on the heights.”50 The uncertainty writing forces on Kafka exposes him to the possibility of a salvation that Blanchot worries might mistakenly seem Christian. In the Diaries of 1915–16, Kafka begs: “Take me, take me, I am only a snarl of pain….Have pity on me, I am a sinner in all the reaches of my being….Do not reject me among the damned.”51 But whom is Kafka addressing? Blanchot points out that “God” does not figure in the Diaries, but acknowledges the “religious direction” of these entries, which must forego God in order to conserve the uncertainty that gives this religious movement its force.52 The issue of salvation returns with renewed power after a long hiatus in the Diaries, where Kierkegaard’s Abraham again becomes the trope for an increasingly enigmatic Kafka. The writer likens his work to the land of Canaan promised to Abraham, and the world outside of writing to the desert in which Abraham wandered from Haran, not knowing where God would send him—even as he arrived. “Perhaps I shall keep in Canaan after all?” writes Kafka, who in “happy times” enjoys “on another plane the freedom of movement which I completely lack” in “the world of men.”53 Alongside others “I am the most miserable…Canaan necessarily offers itself as the sole Promised land,”54 a vacant land of literature preserving him from the sociality and marriage that Kafka both desired and fled. Blanchot’s reading of an allegedly Abrahamic Kafka seems to break with Fear and Trembling in its endorsement of the salvific force of the third-person perspective. Kierkegaard’s Abraham cannot be detachedly observed. We cannot relate to Abraham, mediate his climb or the knife raised over his son with preexisting images or concepts. The analogy through which we might join him on the mountain always fails.55 But the world Kafka enters through his work converts “the first person” perspective “to the third person, from observation of oneself, which was Kafka’s torment, to higher observation, rising above mortal reality toward the Kafka’s Diaries, August 6, 1914, as cited by Blanchot in L’espace littéraire, p. 62. (The Space of Literature, p. 66.) 51 Quoted by Blanchot in L’espace littéraire, p. 63. (The Space of Literature, p. 67.) 52 Ibid. 53 Kafka’s Diaries, January 28, 1922, as cited by Blanchot in L’espace littéraire, p. 65. (The Space of Literature, pp. 68–9.) 54 Ibid. 55 SKS 4, 128–9 / FT, 33. “I think myself into the hero; I cannot think myself into Abraham; when I reach that eminence, I sink down, for what is offered me is a paradox.” 50

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other world, the world of freedom.”56 This has to be freedom in the Hegelian sense: consciousness discovers itself in its object and “in this absolute differentiation remains identical with itself.”57 It relates to these disparate elements as mediator. The third-person perspective, however, cannot be the disinterested perspective of Abraham’s frustrated observer. Writing frees him from his individuality, because the work and the writer seep into one another ecstatically, as Kafka and “the world of men” cannot. He can, according to Blanchot, blot out his solitary self-consciousness with the stroke of a pen. “[T]he power that liberates,” concludes Blanchot, “conjure[s] up spirits” possessing this writer, who testifies that “writing is wages received of the diabolical powers one has served….For my part, I know only this way, in the nights when anguish torments me at the edge of sleep.”58 The aim of this desire for mediation (i.e., relationship) that besets an individual such as the land surveyor of The Castle, or Kierkegaard or Kafka, on the brink of alienation from all relations, cannot be represented. “[Its] image as such can never be attained and it hides from him the unity of which it is the image.”59 “It is essential not to turn toward Canaan”60 or the companion image of the Castle’s lofty peaks, where the land surveyor looks forward to a mutual recognition that would reconcile his harried subjectivity with the world.61 He must look forward to nothing—deprived of ideas, images or feelings of his own (as Aristotle characterized daimonic possession)—inhabiting what Hegel called “the negative,” upon which mediation turns and Blanchot turning to Rilke calls “death’s space.”62 B. Rilke in Death’s Space: Poetic Labor and the Negative Rilke imagines “the torn unity which alone founds dialogue” in his sonnet to Orpheus, the birth of language and understanding from the muteness of the organic world in the fragmentation of the poet.63 “O you, lost god! You infinite trace! / By dismembering you the hostile forces had to disperse you / To make of us now hearers and a mouth of nature.”64 As in Faux Pas, anguish—of dismemberment now, of Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 70. (The Space of Literature, p. 73.) Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 119. 58 As cited by Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, pp. 70–1. (The Space of Literature, pp. 73–4.) 59 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 77. (The Space of Literature, pp. 79–80.) 60 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 74. (The Space of Literature, p. 76.) 61 See Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, pp. 112ff. 62 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, trans. by J. Solomon, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vols. 1–2, ed. by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984, vol. 2, 1225a 28–34. “Therefore those who are inspired and prophesy, though their act is one of thought, we still say have it not in their own power either to say what they said, or to do what they did…. So that some thoughts and passions do not depend on us, nor the acts following such thoughts and reasonings, but, as Philolaus said, some logoi are too strong for us.” 63 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 236. (The Space of Literature, p. 226.) See also L’espace littéraire, p. 240. (The Space of Literature, p. 229), where Blanchot defines “the work” by “the antagonism which unifies by splitting[.]” 64 He excerpts this poem from Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, 26, I. 56 57

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death—defines the work of literature in its power to relate the absence of relation, mediate its founding immediacy, and so to speak of nothing. Blanchot recognizes Kierkegaard’s direct influence on Rilke and the historically specific nature of the despair Kierkegaard ascribed to the age of “the anonymous existence of big cities.”65 He defines the writer’s despair of inhabiting “death’s space” specifically against the despairing relation to death Kierkegaard pseudonymously analyzes in The Sickness unto Death. “This situation is, perhaps, despair—not what Kierkegaard calls ‘sickness unto death,’ but the sickness in which dying does not culminate in death, in which one no longer keeps up hope for death, in which death is no longer to come, but is that which comes no longer.”66 Blanchot has a habit of neglecting ambivalences in Kierkegaard’s use of terms.67 Despair, for instance, takes on different forms, and Blanchot unfortunately chooses the more rudimentary and deceived.68 Blanchot discovers in the progress of Rilke’s writings, from the Book of Hours (1903), through Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), and culminating in the Duino Elegies (1922), a movement between two different desires for death. In the first, the artist mistakes the obvious death of bodies, what he calls voluntary death, for the essential absence of “the other death, over which I have no power.”69 “To kill oneself is to mistake one death for the other.”70 Hence, the Romantic appeal of suicide. Suicide wants to claim death as its own, choose the time, place and means, while the artist, Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, pp. 123–4. (The Space of Literature, p. 122.) Referring specifically to Malte Laurids Brigge, Blanchot continues: “Contempt plays no part in Rilke’s discreet and silent intimacy. But the anguish of anonymous death confirmed him in the views which the views of Simmel, Jacobsen and Kierkegaard had first awakened in him.” 66 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 103. (The Space of Literature, p. 103.) 67 See Maurice Blanchot, L’Ecriture du désastre, Paris: Gallimard 1980, p. 185. (The Writing of the Disaster, trans. by Ann Smock, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1995, pp. 120–1.) Blanchot chides Kierkegaard for the banality of his understanding of anonymity. “On account of the passivity of patience, the ‘me’ has nothing to submit, having lost unto death the capacity of a privileged ‘me’ without ceasing to be responsible. There is no longer any name, but this without-name is not common anonymity, like the one Kierkegaard defined (anonymity, supreme expression of abstraction, of impersonality, of the absence of scruples and of responsibility, is one of the deep sources of the degeneracy of the modern); There is a lot of confusion in this phrase, as if anonymity was anonymity exercised in the world, for example, anonymity understood as bureaucratic.” (My translation from the Gallimard edition.) In fact, the anonymity Blanchot aims for has also been thematized by Kierkegaard in The Point of View for My Work as an Author. SV1 XIII, 601 / PV, 115: “The Single Individual can mean the most unique of all, and the single individual can mean everyone.” Likewise, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments, anonymity attests to the radical singularity of the individuality, when, forgetting something so uniquely one’s own as a name “signifies not so much forgetting his name as the singularity of his nature [væsen].” See SKS 7, 117 / CUP1, 120. 68 SKS 11, 164 / SUD, 48–9. According to Anti-Climacus, one can either be conscious or unconscious of the fact that “suicide is despair.” The forms of despair are progressively more and more conscious, and so only the regressively unconscious form of despair could think of suicide as therapeutic. 69 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 104. (The Space of Literature, p. 104.) 70 Ibid. 65

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consciously or not, seeks something incapable of being appropriated. Death has a meaning for the suicide, retains its signifying power, and so they relate to death as another element in the story of their life, worrying about how it will look, writing a note, beginning the story of their death for others to continue, and so on. Suicide, on closer inspection, displays a refusal to die and avoidance of a higher order of despair. Kierkegaardian despair, according to Blanchot, wants the death of the body, a false desire—the body dies, we do not—that a Christian psychology such as AntiClimacus’ ought to relieve. Psychological analysis diagnoses despair as a refusal of the God that relates the disparate elements of the self (i.e., infinite and finite, subject and object, and so on), and mediates their distinguishing negation. Kierkegaard’s books ought to produce a recognition of the derivativeness of despair and the religious will to go on living eternally. The literal death wish of despair in The Sickness unto Death, as well as that of the Romantics (of Novalis (1772–1801) especially, but also symbolists such as Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–98), and finally Rilke, whose career develops this wish into a desire for the other death), represses the writer’s need to die a more menacing death in the work. Kierkegaard affirms the self and the persistence of life, while Blanchot wants to dismantle the self that paradoxically desires a death so completely null that “[w]hoever despairs cannot hope to die either voluntarily or naturally; he has no time, he has no present upon which to brace himself in order to die.”71 The mistaken desire for a literal death springs from the repressed relation to that which undermines all relation, even the relation to one’s own demise. “[This other death] is what I cannot grasp, what is not linked to me by any relation of any sort. It is that which never comes and toward which I do not direct myself.”72 What could be the value and significance of the unmediated, the unconditioned, that which has not been subjected to the categories, concepts or structures of interpretation (hermeneutic or linguistic) that make meaning and therefore experience as such possible?73 How do we approach it? The theoretical impossibility of the experience of immediacy, the endless frustrations of its form, makes it possible artistically. Rilke gradually stops poetizing a voluntary and possible death and engages the impossibility of the other death. Before submitting himself to this paradox, he claims death as his own—as in the third part of The Book of Hours— bounded by the poet’s skill to picture and to uplift. Images of the same type surface later in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.74 “[O]ne had one’s death within one, as the fruit its core. Children had a little one, adults a big one. Women carried it in Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 103. (The Space of Literature, p. 103.) Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 104. (The Space of Literature, p. 104.) 73 Rilke returns us to a question at least as old as Sophocles’ Oedipus, whose knowledge amounts to blindness and exile from the intelligent space of the city. The exemplary thinker whom Plato describes similarly as atopos tis (one without place), possibly a terrible monster, inassimilable to the human domain, provokes the same question with a different face. Plato, Phaedrus, 229d–230a. Kierkegaard makes multiple use of this Plato passage. Pap. X–5 B 107, p. 301 / PV, Supplement, p. 141. SKS 4, 243 / PF, 37. Blanchot returns in the final pages of The Space of Literature to the issue of tragedy and Oedipus, “the hero who was constrained to live apart from the gods and from men.” See Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 272. (The Space of Literature, p. 272.) 74 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 124. (The Space of Literature, p. 123.) 71 72

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their womb, men in their breast. They truly had their death, and that awareness gave dignity, a quiet pride.”75 But Rilke must—Blanchot infers and Plato first counseled— accomplish the existential task of learning how to die; he must inhabit this death beyond relation in which relation (i.e., mediation) originates.76 Blanchot sees this poetic task forcing Rilke into death’s space—the relation of relation as such—as Kierkegaardian (associated, to be sure, with the theory of indirect communication he both admired and rejected in the journals). Without doubt, “Kierkegaard says something that Rilke understood when he awakens the deep reaches of subjectivity and wants to free it from general categories and possibilities so as to grasp it afresh in its singularity.”77 He immediately distinguishes the poet, however, from the religious thinker, implying the limitations of Kierkegaard’s Christianity. Rilke abandons all “surpassing of the earthly: if the poet goes further and further inward, it is not in order to emerge in God, but in order to emerge outside and to be faithful to the earth.” He does not succumb to “theistic temptations which encumber his ideas on death.”78 Blanchot characterizes the death which Rilke apprentices with a Hegelian metaphor for the power of negation at its purest and most fierce, the Terror of the French Revolution, “when dying and killing have no more importance than ‘taking a drink of water or cutting the head of a cabbage.’ ”79 Poetry allies itself with negation because negation mediates and brings “form to the formless, definition to the indefinite.”80 “This is what Hegel has shown. ‘The life of the mind begins with death.’ ”81 It allows humanity to “form the notion of an ‘all’ ” and “to exist in view of a totality.”82 But we can only exist in this way when all is lost, empty as a drinking glass or a halved cabbage, which it becomes so enthrallingly for Rilke. Rilke’s education requires patience enough to accomplish the Hegelian task of negating (i.e., relating and mediating) the negation dividing consciousness from its world. The task “consists not only in humanizing or in mastering the foreignness of our death by a patient act,” so that heads no longer roll senselessly as ruffage, “but in respecting its ‘transcendence.’ We must understand in it the absolutely foreign, obey what exceeds us, and be faithful to what excludes us.”83 The completion of Malte Laurids Brigge begins a period of infertile wandering for Rilke. This practice in crisis lasts for 10 years. Rilke acquires this patience.84 “Malte has come up behind As cited by Blanchot in L’espace littéraire, p. 125. (The Space of Literature, p. 124.) Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge provides this nostalgic image of a kind of death no longer available in “an age of haste and idle amusement.” 76 Plato, Phaedo, 80e. 77 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 141. (The Space of Literature, p. 138.) 78 Ibid. Blanchot cites Holderlin’s hymn, “So on a festival day.” 79 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 125. (The Space of Literature, p. 123.) See also Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 360. 80 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 252. (The Space of Literature, p. 240.) 81 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 264. (The Space of Literature, p. 252.) 82 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 252. (The Space of Literature, p. 240.) 83 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 130. (The Space of Literature, pp. 127–8.) 84 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 134. (The Space of Literature, p. 131.) Rilke’s poetry has a practical dimension, and aims along moral psychological lines at the mastery of fear 75

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everything, to a certain extent behind death, so that nothing is possible for me any more, not even dying.”85 He expends an abundance of restlessness. For years he moves on average less than every 5 weeks.86 Then, after this decade, come the Duino Elegies. The poems divulge the language patience has wrought from this “lost and desolate region,” where Rilke has, “ever since Malte was finished,” “been living like a rank beginner and in truth like someone who does not begin.”87 The problem and task of Rilke’s poetry—tarrying with the other death—has carried the problems of reflexive consciousness from the bureaus of Königsberg and Berlin into Abraham’s desert. He has overcome “the principle difficulty” of consciousness in the mystic ecstasies of Capri (1907) and Duino (1912), and preserved this overcoming in a poetry where “the pure force of the undetermined is affirmed.”88 The epistemological problem, the power of the Elegies witness, has been resolved in foreign terms, beyond even the individual poet. Blanchot compounds the earlier paradox of writing about solitude with an imagination beyond the visible. The “true poem” becomes a sacrifice as senseless as Isaac’s in Fear and Trembling, a “silent intimacy” into which again, for Rilke, God enters, “a pure expenditure in which our life is sacrificed—and not in view of any result, in order to conquer or acquire, but for nothing.”89 “To sing in truth is a different breath / A breath around nothing. A stirring in God. The wind.”90 Poetic images or ideas—that is, representations—in this context are not images or ideas of anything. They correspond to nothing, and yet are not nonsense, at least not in the sense of the disconfirmation of anticipated meaning, a failure to match a prethrough the development of the impossible habit of something inappropriable. Blanchot quotes him: “Whoever does not consent to the frightful in life and does not greet it with cries of joy never enters into possession of the inexpressible powers of our life.” (See L’espace littéraire, pp. 131–2. (The Space of Literature, p. 129).) Blanchot connects this practice in bravery with the classical virtue of sophrosyné that nevertheless risks “losing the significance of its immoderation.” (See L’espace littéraire, p. 130, note 1. (The Space of Literature, p. 130, note 11).) Its aim, like the ethics and psychology of the Greeks, is the avoidance of misery and the conquest of happiness. Malte writes: “this time I will be written. I am the impression that will be transformed. Just a little more and I could, ah! understand all this, acquiesce in everything. Only one step, and my profound misery would be happiness.” (See L’espace littéraire, p. 133. (The Space of Literature, p. 131).) 85 See Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (ca. 1910), as cited by Blanchot in L’espace littéraire, p. 134. (The Space of Literature, p. 132.) 86 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 134. (The Space of Literature, p. 132.) 87 See Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (ca. 1919), as cited by Blanchot in L’espace littéraire, pp. 134–5. (The Space of Literature, p. 132.) 88 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 137; p. 138. (The Space of Literature, p. 134; p. 136.) Blanchot comments on Rilke’s letter of February 25, 1926: “[I]t is ‘the low degree of consciousness’ which puts the animal at an advantage by permitting it to enter into reality without having to be the center of it.” (See L’espace littéraire, p. 137. (The Space of Literature, p. 135.)) He points to the account of the ecstasies of Capri and Duino in “Adventure I, Adventure II” of Rilke’s Prose Fragments. 89 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 149. (The Space of Literature, p. 145.) 90 Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, I, 3, as quoted by Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 148. (The Space of Literature, p. 144.)

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established idea of a pre-established object. They are the suspension of all possible sense, where consciousness still refuses to abstain and to abstain from relating itself as no one to this absence (assuming the third-person perspective of any “one” that freed Kafka from the desert of personal relationships). What might appear as aesthetic disinterest devolves into the radical singularity of a more fundamental decision, which Rilke describes in a letter to Clara Rilke, returning to the language of God which has turned irremediably Christian: “No more than one choice is permitted. He who creates cannot turn away from any existence; a single failing anywhere at all snatches him from the state of grace, makes him faulty through and through.”91 To live an event as an image is not to remain uninvolved, to regard the event disinterestedly in the way that the esthetic version of the image and the serene ideal of classical art propose. But neither is it to take part freely and decisively. It is to be taken.92

Blanchot returns again to the tragic side of Greek thinking and the fissure in Plato through which it shines, the possession by daimón that “Plato called enthusiasm.”93 The daimonic character of Rilke’s writing and of the God whose poem-messengers all terrify (“Every angel is terrifying,” begin the Duino Elegies) echoes the religion Blanchot discovered in Kafka’s solitude.94 Art is “intimately allied with the sacred”95 as a “relation with what admits of no relations,”96 the unspeakable ground of relation as such. Through the motions of terror and grace, the unaccompanied poet accomplishes the philosophical task of returning consciousness to the world, generating knowledge whose grasp does not eliminate the impossible object of their art.

Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 153. (The Space of Literature, p. 153.) Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 274. (The Space of Literature, p. 261.) 93 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 162. (The Space of Literature, p. 156.) See Plato, Phaedrus, 244a–245a. For more on daimón in The Space of Literature, see Blanchot’s discussion of the place of the Erinyés, “daughters of Night,” in Greek thought (L’espace littéraire, p. 174; The Space of Literature, p. 168); his discussion of automatic writing, in which “this active hand” becomes “a sovereign passivity, no longer a means of livelihood, an instrument, [or] a servile tool, but [rather] an independent power” (L’espace littéraire, p. 187; The Space of Literature, p. 179); his discussion of the Eumenides (L’espace littéraire, p. 216; The Space of Literature, p. 206). 94 Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. by Stephen Mitchell, New York: Random House 1982, p. 151: “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed in the overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every Angel is terrifying.” 95 See Blanchot’s discussion of the historical progress of “the work” in L’espace littéraire, pp. 240–4. (The Space of Literature, pp. 230–3.) 96 Blanchot, L’espace littéraire, p. 250. (The Space of Literature, p. 239.) 91 92

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Blanchot’s Corpus Faux Pas, Paris: Gallimard 1943, p. 10; p. 21; pp. 27–33. (English translation: Faux Pas, trans. by Charlotte Mandel, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2001, pp. 2–3; pp. 10–11; pp. 17–22.) La Part du feu, Paris: Gallimard 1949, p. 11; p. 65; p. 241. (English translation: The Work of Fire, trans. by Charlotte Mandel, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995, p. 3; p. 60; p. 248.) L’espace littéraire, Paris: Gallimard 1955, p. 57; p. 103; p. 123; p. 141. (English translation: The Space of Literature, trans. by Ann Smock, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1982, p. 61; p. 103; p. 122; p. 138.) L’Entretiens Infini, Paris: Gallimard 1969, pp. 3–4; pp. 211–12; p. 217. (English translation: The Infinite Conversation, trans. by Susan Hanson, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1992, pp. 4–5; p. 141; p. 144.) L’Ecriture du désastre, Paris: Gallimard 1980, p. 185. (English translation: The Writing of the Disaster, trans. by Ann Smock, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1995, pp. 120–1.) II. Sources of Blanchot’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Wahl, Jean, Études Kierkegaardiennes, Paris: Aubier 1938. III. Secondary Literature on Blanchot’s Relation Kierkegaard Hart, Kevin, The Dark Gaze: Maurice Blanchot and the Sacred, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2004, p. 3; p. 11; p. 19; p. 31; p. 41; p. 210; p. 240; p. 264. Hartman, Geoffrey H., “Maurice Blanchot: Philosopher-Novelist,” Chicago Review, vol. 15, no. 2, 1961, pp. 1–18. Keenan, Dennis King, The Question of Sacrifice, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2005, p. 4; p. 8; pp. 123–4; pp. 149–52; p. 154; p. 184. Mole, Gary D., Levinas, Blanchot, Jabes: Figures of Estrangement, Gainesville: University of Florida Press 1997, p. xii; p. 2; p. 100; pp. 126–8. Taylor, Mark C., Altarity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. xxiii; p. xxx; p. xxxiii; p. 3; p. 65; p. 77; p. 85; pp. 94–6; p. 109; p. 136; p. 143; p. 151; pp. 154–6; p. 158; p. 163; p. 165; pp. 175–6; p. 179; p. 185; pp. 187–8; pp. 204–6; p. 209; p. 213; p. 222; p. 227; p. 233; p. 250; p. 259; p. 266; p. 276; p. 287; p. 289;

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pp. 294–5; pp. 305–9; pp. 313–14; p. 316; p. 320; p. 322; p. 324; pp. 326–7; pp. 330–7; pp. 339–45; p. 347; p. 348; pp. 350–1; p. 353. — “Withdrawing,” in Maurice Blanchot—Nowhere Without No, ed. by Kevin Hart, Newtown, New South Wales: Vagabond Press 2003, pp. 25–6. Popovics, Zoltán, “ ‘Hemiplegia.’ Maurice Blanchot Kierkegaard-ról és a szorongásról” [“Hemiplegia.” Maurice Blanchot on Kierkegaard and Anxiety], Pro Philosophia Füzetek, no. 32, 2003, pp. 1–17. Visker, Rud, “Whistling in the Dark,” Ethical Perspectives: Journal of the European Ethics Network, vol. 8, no. 3, 2001, pp. 168–78. Weston, Michael, “Kierkegaard, Levinas and Absolute Alterity,” in Levinas and Kierkegaard: Ethics, Politics and Religion, ed. by John Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 153–68.

Gilles Deleuze: Kierkegaard’s Presence in his Writings José Miranda Justo

Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) studied philosophy at the Sorbonne between 1944 and 1948. Among his professors, we find some of the most eminent names of the rich academic philosophical world in those days: Georges Canguilhem, Jean Hyppolite, Ferdinand Alquié, and Maurice de Gandillac. He taught philosophy at a secondary level for some years, and in 1957 he found a post at the Sorbonne, where he lectured until he obtained a position at the University of Lyon which he held for five years (1964–69). From 1969 onwards he occupied a chair at the University of Paris VIII, Vincennes, where he lectured until 1987.1 In 1943, just before starting his university studies, Deleuze and his friend Michel Tournier were invited by Maurice de Gandillac to attend the cultural gatherings held by Marie-Magdeleine Davy in her home on the outskirts of Paris.2 On these occasions and subsequently on several others at Marcel Moré’s salon, Deleuze became familiar with the influence of Jean Wahl (1888–1974) in those circles. Almost thirty years later, Deleuze underlined Jean Wahl’s significant stimulus for him and many others, before and after World War II: The importance of Jean Wahl for my generation was 1. To make known a prodigious number of thinkers, to make them alive, introducing them in France, be it Kierkegaard or Whitehead. It is obviously clear that Jean Wahl’s books dominate everything that has been done afterwards. He has completely shaken French philosophy. 2. By means of his tone, his humor, his typical irony, and above all his style, he actually pulls down all kinds of partitioning between philosophy and poetry….Jean Wahl came up as a poet-philosopher irreducible to philosophy. 3. His own thought and the topicality of his thought: he was the one who reacted against dialectics when Hegel dominated the university. He was the one who vindicated the value of the construction of the “AND.”

1 The biographical note follows the outline presented in Die französische Philosophie im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. by Thomas Bedorf and Kurt Röttgers, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2009, p. 106. 2 Marie-Magdeleine Davy (1903–98) was a theologian who during that period of Nazi occupation maintained at La Fortelle a cultural circle that in part served as a cover for her humanitarian activities.

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José Miranda Justo He was the one who was the thinker of intensities and even of criticism of totality. In all that is of importance, before and after the war, the signs of Jean Wahl are to be found.3

Jean Wahl had escaped the Jewish persecution and taken shelter in the United States from 1942 until 1945. But before the war, in 1938, Wahl had already published his first version of Études kierkegaardiennes,4 a collection of articles published mostly between 1931 and 1935, and had thus become responsible, in the words of Politis, for the “introduction in France of Kierkegaard the philosopher.”5 Kierkegaard’s reception by Deleuze, with the abovementioned intertwining of themes and valuation of style in philosophy, is greatly indebted to Jean Wahl. The present article was conceived and written on the assumption that, generally speaking, Deleuze’s reception is not commonly spread or taken into account by a considerable sector of Kierkegaard scholarship; the option was hence to make exhaustive reference—though sometimes in a condensed formulation—to all the passages where Kierkegaard is mentioned in Deleuze’s writings (as well as in the works authored by Deleuze and Félix Guattari). These passages present in the most direct manner Kierkegaard’s contribution to the development in Deleuzian thought of a considerable range of topics, of acknowledged revelance not only to continental philosophy in the last decades, but also to recent philosophical debates surrounding traditionally non-philosophical topics, as is the case of Deleuze’s studies on cinema. I. In the “Introduction” to the second part of the sixth volume of his International Kierkegaard Commentary, Robert L. Perkins inserts a footnote on what he calls “postmodernist contribution(s) to the study of Repetition.” Perkins writes: Significant in the French aspect of the movement is Gilles Deleuze, Difference et répétition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986). Deleuze includes (12–20) the first postmodernist statement about Repetition known to me, but little seems to be gained by considering Nietzsche and Kierkegaard along with Péguy in the same brief treatment.6

Perkins is certainly right, since he writes from the point of view of a scholar who feels rightly entitled to demand a specific value from any consideration on Kierkegaard in The letter, dated July 17, 1972 is quoted in François Dosse, Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari. Biographie croisée, Paris: Éditions de La Découverte 2007, pp. 137–8 (my translation). 4 Jean Wahl, Études Kierkegaardiennes, Paris: Aubier 1938 (new edition, Paris: Vrin 1967). 5 Hélène Politis, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, Paris: Éditions Kimé 2005, p. 110; for Jean Wahl’s reception of Kierkegaard, see Chapter V, pp. 109–30 (my translation and emphasis). 6 See Robert L. Perkins, “Introduction,” in Fear and Trembling and Repetition, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1993 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 6), p. 195, note 1. 3

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order to get a better understanding of Repetition (and more generally of Kierkegaard’s concept of “repetition”). Nevertheless, the fact that Deleuze begins Difference and Repetition with “the triptych of priest, Antichrist and Catholic” (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Péguy)7 has a well-defined purpose in the economy of the book, since the “triptych” allows for the discussion of what may be designated as preliminary aspects of the problem of repetition: repetition taken as “the fundamental category of a philosophy of the future,” the non-metaphorical sense of the word repetition, repetition taken as a style of thought, and his actual primary goal—repetition as opposed to generality.8 Deleuze enumerates four “propositions which indicate the points on which they coincide.”9 The first aspect to be underscored concerns the way repetition introduces the new: “Kierkegaard specifies that it is not a matter of drawing something new from repetition, of extracting something new from it. Only contemplation, or the mind which contemplates from without, ‘extracts.’ ”10 Repetition connects instead “with a test, with a selection or selective test,”11 this meaning that it is necessary to “make it the supreme object of the will and of freedom.”12 In Kierkegaard, repetition is not a simple mechanism allowing for the execution of a hermeneutical task to be carried out on a level which depends on the labor of one’s cognitive activity. Deleuze rightly understands that what is at stake in Kierkegaard is not the possibility of isolating a problem of knowledge from the topic of “life”—or of action—and even less, of taking it as the general basis for a philosophical architecture.13 There is not an outer surface in repetition out of which an eye can be cast over it. Should the problem of the category of repetition be understood in the original Kierkegaardian context, where according to Constantius, “all life is a repetition”14 and “repetition is the watchword in every ethical view,”15 it is hence to be understood that repetition is a question of choice (or selection) where freedom and the willingness to sense are crucially entailed. On this view, the “object of the will and of freedom” means above all the object on which the exercising of freedom and of the will can be posited. But, on the other hand, it also means the object towards which activity progresses; that is why Deleuze says that in Kierkegaard repetition is “a task of freedom,”16 i.e., not Gilles Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1968, p. 12. (English translation: Difference and Repetition, trans. by Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press 1994, p. 5.) 8 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, pp. 12–20. (Difference and Repetition, pp. 5–11.) 9 In this context Deleuze refers almost exclusively to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. 10 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 13. (Difference and Repetition, p. 6.) 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 In 1953, in what may be his first written testimony on Kierkegaard, a review of Knud Ejler Lögstrup, Kierkegaard und Heideggers Existenzanalyse und ihr Verhältnis zur Verkündigung, Deleuze had already written: “according to Kierkegaard, man questions his own existence by grasping that it is not merely by means of knowledge that he shall be raised.” See Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, vol. 143, 1953, p. 108. 14 SKS 4, 9 / R, 131. 15 SKS 4, 26 / R, 149. 16 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 13. (Difference and Repetition, p. 6.) 7

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only does it stand as the starting point for the consideration of sense, but it is also the active task of building sense by the exercising of freedom, and this freedom only becomes what it is by that very same task. The second point underscored by Deleuze concerns the opposition between repetition and the laws of nature. Kierkegaard does not mention repetition in nature and as for Deleuze, he “condemns as aesthetic repetition every attempt to obtain repetition from the laws of nature by identifying with the legislative principle….”17 In fact, when Constantius introduces the Heraclitian concept of kinesis in opposition to the criticism of the Eleatics against movement, he does not intend to imply a cosmological meaning; on the contrary, Constantius understands movement as movement of the thought, itself under the law of freedom, and as a result, alien to the legislative principle which regulates the transformations of sameness in the opposite edge of the minimal differences involved in repetition. The third feature observed by Deleuze opposes repetition to moral law and this time in a way that is fundamentally structured by the opposition of the general/ universal and the singular. Repetition is a logos, but it is the logos of the solitary and the singular, the logos of the “private thinker.” Both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche develop the opposition between the private thinker, the thinker-comet and bearer of repetition, and the public professor and doctor of law, whose second-hand discourse proceeds by mediation and finds its moralising source in the generality of concepts.18

If repetition is taken, as Deleuze argues, “to the point where it becomes the suspension of ethics, a thought beyond good and evil,”19 that will not be so because the ethical gesture of choosing oneself is experienced as alien, but precisely because the ethical gesture is not sufficient to escape entirely from the conventional distinction between good and evil: the distinction between good and evil is still a product of the generality of concepts. The fundamental distinction in this context is thus the one that is made between the singular and the general: now the singular—not to be mistaken with the incommunication of the particular—is exactly (in the tradition that Kierkegaard receives from Hamann) the factor that redirects thought towards a transpositional surplus of sense, by replacing a deficit image by an image that proves efficient totally apart from the realm of general concepts. The fourth and last topic surveyed by Deleuze may be summed up by the expression “memory criticism,” as used by the author in the footnote where he collects the relevant bibliographical references.20 It has to do with how to “[o]ppose repetition not only to the generalities of habit but also to the particularities of memory.”21 The point here is to perceive the importance of the often-ignored distinction between the singular and the particular. Instead of denying the general Ibid. Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 14. (Difference and Repetition, p. 7.) 19 Ibid. 20 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 16, note 1. (Difference and Repetition, p. 305, note 4.) 21 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 15. (Difference and Repetition, p. 7.) 17 18

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or of besetting the general by some kind of resistance, the particular stands by the general and feeds it: “With habit, we act only on the condition that there is a little Self within us which contemplates: it is this which extracts the new—in other words, the general—from the pseudo-repetition of particular cases. Memory, then, perhaps recovers the particulars dissolved in generality.”22 The role of memory and of its particulars is essentially a preserving one, that is, memory is the ultimate protection that generalization needs to assume its reductive and preventive functions against the production of what is actually new. This is the reason why memory— and its “psychological” condition—needs to be posited as the object of criticism. In the Deuleuzian frame of mind, these “psychological movements are of little consequence”;23 for Kierkegaard (as later for Nietzsche), these movements do not resist the idea of repetition as the condemnation of habit and memory. The positive power of forgetting lies not only in the ability of reshaping what was lived but above all in the active force of reshaping life and thought: In this way, repetition is the thought of the future: it is opposed to both the ancient category of reminiscence and the modern category of habitus. It is in repetition and by repetition that Forgetting becomes a positive power while the unconscious becomes a positive and superior unconscious….Everything is summed up in power.24

Still on the issue of memory criticism, Deleuze states that when Kierkegaard speaks of repetition “as the second power of consciousness, ‘second’ means not a second time but the infinite which belongs to a single time, the eternity which belongs to an instant, the unconscious which belongs to consciousness, the ‘nth’ power.”25 Deleuze surely refers to that moment in the “Concluding Letter” by Constantius when this Kierkegaardian author comments on the attitude of the Young Man in the following terms: “He explains the universal as repetition, and yet he himself understands repetition in another way, for although actuality becomes the repetition, for him the repetition is the raising of his consciousness to the second power.”26 What may be the cause of some perplexity when first addressing Deleuze’s comment is the fact that Constantius clearly sets himself apart from the Young Man’s standpoint. For Constantius, the universal is actually “explained as repetition” and “actuality becomes repetition,” but “the raising of…consciousness to the second power” contradicts the former statements. At first sight, Deleuze ignores such a distinction. Nonetheless, Constantius is not Kierkegaard. The pseudonymous author, as it happens with the various enunciation subjects in Kierkegaard’s authorship, only enunciates a singular possibility of the understanding of a certain topic, in this case, repetition. Now Constantius’ perspective is still marked by the predominance of a separative principle of logic which rules that repetition stands either in the relation of actuality to the universal, or it stands at the level of consciousness. Kierkegaard

Ibid. Ibid. 24 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 15. (Difference and Repetition, pp. 7–8.) 25 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 15. (Difference and Repetition, p. 8.) 26 SKS 4, 94 / R, 229. 22 23

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obviously stays out of this exclusive disjunction, which accounts for the correction of Deleuze’s appropriation of Constantius’ quoted statement. Why does it then matter to underline the claim that repetition is “the second power of consciousness”? In fact, this is the way Deleuze manages to introduce the triad “infinite,” “eternity,” and “unconscious,” and by doing so, he establishes the main topics for the critique of the limits proper to the categories linked to time and typical of the psychologist’s exclusiveness of consciousness. Taken as the “second power of consciousness,” repetition is said of the singularity of the single, and it is said of the precise punctuality of the instant—it is said of the consciousness as interaction between the conscious and the unconscious. Therefore, the infinite, eternity, and the unconscious are features of thought, once this thought is viewed as the bond between its own development and its radical productivity. Deleuze is clearly explicit about his approach to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche: “We are not suggesting any resemblance whatsoever between Nietzsche’s Dionysus and Kierkegaard’s God. On the contrary, we believe that the difference is insurmountable.”27 What brings together the two thinkers has then to do with an instance of thought, which might be called the problem of expression in philosophy and its major consequences: “Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are among those who bring to philosophy new means of expression. In relation to them we speak readily of an overcoming of philosophy.”28 The question is then to know what is meant by overcoming philosophy. Deleuze insists on the topic of movement and he proceeds to claim that Kierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s “objection to Hegel is that he does not go beyond false movement29—in other words, the abstract logical movement of ‘mediation.’ They want to put metaphysics in motion, in action.”30 The issue here at stake is not getting to know how to represent movement correctly, but, instead, overcoming definitely the frame of representation, since “representation is already mediation.”31 “[It] is a question of producing within the work a movement capable of affecting the mind outside of all representation; it is a question of making movement itself a work, without interposition; of substituting direct signs for mediate representations; of inventing vibrations, rotations, whirlings, gravitations, dances or leaps which directly touch the mind.”32 Hence we obtain the enumeration of some of the figures pertaining to a movement of thought which posits itself diametrically in opposition to the logical dynamics of the system, in order to stage a new order of dynamics, which in turn generates and stages “an incredible equivalent of theater within philosophy, thereby founding simultaneously [the] theater of the future and Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 16. (Difference and Repetition, p. 8.) Ibid. 29 See Gilles Deleuze, Le bergsonisme, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1966, p. 38, note 2. (English translation: Bergsonism, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, New York: Zone Books 1991, p. 124, note 14.) Here, Deleuze had inserted a footnote underscoring what he believed to be a frequent topic in Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, described as the “denunciation of the Hegelian dialectic as false movement, abstract movement, failure to comprehend real movement.” 30 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 16. (Difference and Repetition, p. 8.) 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 27

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a new philosophy.”33 Expression is no longer pictured as the mere argumentative manifestation of a systematic philosophical truth built within the canon of reason; it becomes on its own the active mode of being of philosophical reasoning, built on modalities of movement which perform in the text—but also in space, through philosophical imagination—the danced steps or leaps of a thought not only posited beyond the conventions of good and evil, but also beyond the historical conventions of thinking. The universality of thought gains here a new meaning, because the universality of the movement figures subsumes the very universals of reason, and allows a glimpse over the poor situation of the particulars wearing the mask of universality. Deleuze proceeds: “One thing…is certain: when Kierkegaard speaks of ancient theater and modern drama, the environment has already changed; we are no longer in the element of reflection.”34 Though we shall look at what in Kierkegaard and according to Deleuze replaces reflection, a word must be said about what is at stake in abandoning it. What Deleuze finds to be thoroughly new, in relation to philosophical tradition, has its central point in the critique of what might be called the latent and subreptitious secondary effect of optical metaphors in philosophical language. The long tradition in the use of such metaphors in Western thought conceals the illusion which sustains that philosophical work consists in developing specular mechanisms apt to unveil or reveal a hidden truth solidly established before the production of philosophical speech. The metaphor of reflection is probably the most obvious of such mechanisms. In this case, a mode of thinking (as in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) willing to be taken as synonym to life demands tactical strategies and procedures which directly set movement into interplay, by opposition to the mechanics of contemplative visual distancing, which are exactly those that separative reason traditionally presents itself armed with so as to uncover truth. Deleuze, however, insists on the idea that Kierkegaard acts in philosophy as a true “man of the theater,”35 “a director before his time,”36 who fills the void of the masks with the difference between the finite and the infinite, this way creating “the idea of a theater of humor and of faith.”37 In Deleuze’s statement that “(w)hen Kierkegaard explains that the knight of faith so resembles a bourgeois in his Sunday best38 as to be capable of being mistaken for one, this philosophical instruction must be taken as the remark of a director showing how the knight of faith should be played,”39 one understands that this staging, indicating precisely the way a philosophical character should be performed, is to be read as acting, that is, it is to indicate explicitly and Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 17. (Difference and Repetition, p. 8.) Ibid. 35 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 16. (Difference and Repetition, p. 8.) 36 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, pp. 16–17. (Difference and Repetition, p. 8.) 37 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 17. (Difference and Repetition, p. 9.) 38 Deleuze recalls this image several times; see, for example, the preface to the American edition of Nietzsche and Philosophy; see Gilles Deleuze, Deux Regimes de Fous. Textes et entretiens 1975–1995, Paris: Minuit 2003, pp. 192–3. (English translation: Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995, trans. by Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina, New York and Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) 2007, p. 209.) 39 Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 17. (Difference and Repetition, pp. 8–9.) 33 34

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materially the “how” of the movement; it is more than moving around or describing movement, it is to prefigure movement by means of an interposited individuality, it is therefore to direct all the specificities of a certain movement, it is to live and to make live movement in order to give to the perception of the other—the spectator— not a sign of something absent, by using a language strange to the absentee, but the explicitation, simultaneously and coincidently, of the form and the content of a thought, which is presented more as spacial design than as conceptual painting: in a nutshell, a radical alternative to the abstract understanding of a problem. In this passage, though Deleuze does not mention it, one is reminded that he often claims that the paradigm of the theater of the future is Antonin Artaud’s “theater of cruelty,” conceived as the vital expression of concreteness diametrically opposed to the cognitive and ethical values of any form of intellectualism.40 Due to obvious space problems, we cannot analyze in its complete extension Deleuze’s arguments in the present context and in the rest of his references to Kierkegaard in Difference and Repetition. We provide instead a list of the topics commented on by Deleuze. Kierkegaardian theatricality deserves further attention in the analysis of an important passage in Fear and Trembling: “I pay attention only to the movements” (SKS 4, 133 / FT, 38), taken as the expression of a movement “which would directly touch the soul” (Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 17 (Difference and Repetition, p. 9)), and already seeing this movement in the leap of the knight of faith (Deleuze digs a deep abyss between the leap in Kierkegaard and dancing in Nietzsche; this issue had already been discussed to considerable extent in 1962 in Nietzsche et la Philosophie, pp. 41–3 (Nietzsche and Philosophy, pp. 36–7), where Kierkegaard—as well as Pascal and Shestov—is seen as a thinker who is “still tied in the web of resentment,” dispossessed of the Nietzschean sense, “the sense of exteriority”; in 1966, in Le Bergsonisme, apropos the Bergsonian analysis of language, Deleuze mentions that according to Bergson we immediately settle ourselves into sense and past, by means of a “near Kierkegaardian leap,” see Deleuze, Le Bergsonisme, pp. 52–3 (Bergsonism, p. 57). Deleuze proceeds with the opposition between “theater of repetition” and “theater of representation,” and ends with an explicit confrontation between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche—the “theater of faith” is seen as the opposite of “the death of God” and “the dissolution of faith,” see Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, pp. 19–20 (Difference and Repetition, pp. 10–11). In a footnote still in the introduction, Deleuze brings Kierkegaard and Gabriel Tarde together in the critique of Hegelian dialectics, see Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 30, note 1 (Difference and Repetition, pp. 307–8, note 15). In the chapter “Repetition for Itself,” while giving a general overview of the “three syntheses of time,” Deleuze discusses the role of Kierkegaard (and Charles Péguy) in overcoming repetition as a category of the past or as category of the present, and in claiming that it is a “category of the future” especially in what concerns the reconversion of the idea of fundamentation, see Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, pp. 125–7 (Difference and Repetition, pp. 93–6). In this context, attention is also given to the Nietzschean concept of repetition, which is operational at all times, and Kierkegaardian repetition which “invites us to rediscover once and for all God and the self in a common resurrection,” see Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 127 (Difference and Repetition, p. 95). The essential elements of this distinction are also discussed in his Logique du sens, p. 349 (The Logic of Sense, pp. 300–1). In the chapter “Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible,” in a footnote, the position of Albert Camus is seen as standing close to Émile Meyerson and André Lalande, in spite of the fact that Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Shestov are invoked in The Myth of Sisyphus, see Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 289, note 1 (Difference and Repetition, p. 329, note 4). In the “Conclusion” of Difference and Repetition there are two references to Kierkegaard, 40

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II. Deleuze and Guattari published A Thousand Plateaus in 1980.41 The first explicit reference to Kierkegaard comes up in the section “Three Novellas, or ‘what happened?,’ ” in the context of the commentary to the First Novella—“In the Cage” by Henry James. The commentary wants to follow the “living lines”42 in James’ text: one line is decribed as a “molar or rigid line of segmentarity,” and it comprehends the identifying elements of the main character, the telegraphist, mainly within her love relationship to her fiancé, the young man working at the grocery store; a second line is described as a “line of molecular or supple segmentation the segments of which are like quanta of deterritorialization,”43 comprehending the links of the telegraphist with two other characters, a couple, who put forward another type of relation, seen in particular from the point of view of the male figure; thus, a new type of relation is introduced, not a relation within a couple, but a relation between doubles, “less localizable”44 relations than the ones of the first line, which are “relations that are always external to themselves and instead concern flows and particles,” eluding “classes, sexes, and persons”;45 the heroine will return to the first line type of relation, but in the meanwhile “everything has changed,”46 since she “reached…a new line, a third type, a kind of line of flight.”47 This time, the line “no longer tolerates segments,”48 it rather acts “like an exploding of the two segmentary series,”49 in such a way that the telegraphist “attained a kind of absolute deterritorialization.”50 For Guattari and Deleuze, the key moment in James’ novella lies here: “She ended up knowing so much that she could no longer interpret anything. There were no longer shadows to help her see more clearly, only glare.”51 For the two authors, this moment stands as the radical limit on the threshold of pure abstraction: “You cannot the first, see Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, pp. 347–8 (Difference and Repetition, p. 271) alluding to the absence of the value of repetition linked to representation, “repetition for the deaf” (see SKS 4, 26 / R, 150), and the second, restating the opposition between repetition in Nietzsche and in Kierkegaard, see Deleuze, Différence et Répétition, p. 377. (Difference and Repetition, p. 295). 41 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, Paris: Minuit 1980. (English translation: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1987.) 42 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 238. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 195.) 43 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 239. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 196.) 44 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 240. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 196.) 45 Ibid. 46 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 241. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 197.) 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid.

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go further in life than this sentence by James….on this third line there is no longer even any form—nothing but a pure abstract line.”52 It is precisely in this dramatic point, the moment of pure abstraction, that Kierkegaard (via Johannes de silentio) is summoned to confirm what we might call the subtle nature of a new perspective concerning difference—the unnameable difference, the difference of the “true double at the other end of the line,” the difference of someone who paints himself “gray on gray”53: “As Kierkegaard says, nothing distinguishes the knight of the faith from a bourgeois German going home or to the post office: he sends off no special telegraphic sign; he constantly produces or reproduces finite segments, yet he is already moving on a line no one even suspects.”54 The condensed use of this passage of Fear and Trembling may eventually be found to be too hasty, but it becomes obvious that the focus is on that absence of “a bit of…telegraphy from the infinite…that would betray the infinite in its heterogeneity with the finite,”55 that is to say, the focus is on the possibility of a “fold” which conceals and unconceals at the same time the infinite line along which the knight of faith keeps moving. Nevertheless, from the point of view of Guattari and Deleuze, one reaches that line only by positing one’s thought in such a way that it first allows us to understand that “the telegraphic line is not a symbol,”56 and second, that “it is not simple,”57 with the complexity of the task ensuing from the triple order of the lines whose inner structure was above explained: at the level of the third line, it will eventually be seen that “one can finally speak ‘literally’ of anything at all,”58 and this results from the fact that “it is no longer possible for anything to stand for anything else.”59 The analysis we have just detailed establishes a curious connection with a passage from the section “Micropolitics and Segmentarity” and its corresponding note. The authors distinguish between the inherent segmentarity of the “administration of sin” by the “Church power” (that is, types of sin, measurement units, rules on equivalence

Ibid. Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 242. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 197.) 54 Ibid. 55 SKS 4, 133 / FT, 39. 56 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 242. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 197.) 57 Ibid. 58 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 242. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 198.) 59 Ibid. The same treatment of the knight of faith occurs in A Thousand Plateaus when the point is the discussion of the meaning of “becoming imperceptible”: “Becomingimperceptible means many things. What is the relation between the (anorganic) imperceptible, the (asignifying) indiscernible, and the (asubjective) impersonal? A first response would be: to be like everybody else. That is what Kierkegaard relates in his story about the ‘knight of the faith,’ the man of becoming: to look at him, one would notice nothing, a bourgeois, nothing but a bourgeois.” See Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 342. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 279.) 52 53

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and on atonement), and what they label as “the molecular flow of sinfulness”60— since in this section the authors are only dealing with the distinction between the macropolitics of segmentary flows and the micropolitics of molecular flows, there is no opportunity to develop the abovementioned third line. Now, when they come to the specificity of that molecular flow, one reads that in spite of staying near the linear zone, as though negotiated through it, itself “has only poles (original sinredemption or grace) and quanta (‘that sin which is the default of consciousness of sin’; the sin of having a consciousness of sin; the sin of the consequence of having a consciousness of sin).”61 Moreover, in the corresponding note, one reads the following: “On ‘quantitative sinfulness,’ quanta, and the qualitative leap, one may refer to the microtheology constructed by Søren Kierkegaard in The Concept of Dread [that is, Anxiety].”62 The Kierkegaardian microtheology is thus taken as an example of micropolitics and, in the authors’ frame of mind, it brings into existence the two flows taken together. In a way, it works as a suggestive hint on how to read Kierkegaard’s text: instead of detecting a mere system of oppositions between the Kierkegaardian categories of sinfulness and the molar system of ecclesiatically segmentarized sin, one should detect the functional articulation between both flows, in order that the logic of the latter might ultimately become understandable by means of the more sophisticated categories of the Kierkegaardian molecular flow. The more relevant references to Kierkegaard in A Thousand Plateaus are probably the ones mentioned in the section “Becoming-Intense, BecomingAnimal, Becoming-Imperceptible,” when discussing the imperceptibility (and the perceptibility) of movement. Deleuze and Guattari start by setting up movement and imperceptibility into an equation: “Movement…is by nature imperceptible. Perception can grasp movement only as the displacement of a moving body or the development of a form. Movements, becomings, in other words, pure relations of speed and slowness, pure affects, are below and above the threshold of perception.”63 In order to grasp what they name as “infinite slowness”64 and “infinite speed,”65 essential to movement within the framework of the “microintervals”66 which are the point of interest for these two authors, it turns out to be necessary “to reach the photographic or cinematic threshold.”67 And at this point, in a first step, Kierkegaard is used, in a way, to specify a maximal understanding of this point of view which will later be contradicted:

Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 266. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 218.) 61 Ibid. 62 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 266, note 17. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 537, note 17.) 63 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 344. (A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 280–1.) 64 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 344. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 281.) 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 60

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José Miranda Justo When Kierkegaard adopts the marvelous motto, “I look only at the movements,” he is68 acting astonishingly like a precursor of the cinema, multiplying versions of a love scenario (between Agnes and the merman) according to variable speeds and slownesses. He has all the more reason to say that there is no movement that is not infinite; that the movement of the infinite can occur only by means of affect, passion, love, in a becoming that is the girl, but without reference to any kind of “mediation”; and that this movement as such eludes any mediating perception because it is already effectuated at every moment, and the dancer or lover finds him- or herself already “awake and walking” the second he or she falls down, and even the instant he or she leaps.69 Movement, like the girl as a fugitive being, cannot be perceived.70

The remarks that Deleuze had formerly made on theater, in Difference and Repetition, have now been moved to cinema. In this context, however, what seems more significant than identifying Kierkegaard as a kind of forerunner of cinema, is the fact that, according to the authors, Kierkegaard—precisely as forerunner of cinema, as he is able to manipulate different types of velocity, speeding up and slowing down—can understand what is fundamental in the imperceptibility of movement: it is exactly because movement is imperceptible that there is no movement except for the movement of the infinite. One should keep in mind that in Fear and Trembling, infinite movement is applied to the “infinite movement of resignation,”71 the movement of the tragic hero—but not to the movement of the knight of faith— being therefore an insufficient movement. But nevertheless it is sufficient to question mediation, it is sufficient to take place “by means of affect, passion, love,”72 and to render clearly understandable where its own insufficiency lies. This is the course outlined in Deleuze’s and Guattari’s claim: “However, we are obliged to make an immediate correction: movement also ‘must’ be perceived, it cannot but be perceived, the imperceptible is also the percipiendum.”73 Let us observe it closely: if we depart from the “plane of transcendance, that renders perceptible without itself being perceived,”74 and if we then proceed to the “other plane, the plane of immanence or consistency, [on which] the principle of composition itself must be A more accurate translation would be “he may be,” more obviously fitted to suit the argument to be developed next. 69 The authors insert here the following note: “Fear and Trembling seems to us to be Kierkegaard’s greatest book because of the way it formulates the problem of movement and speed, not only in its content, but also in its style and composition.” See Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 344, note 52. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 543, note 66.) 70 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 344. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 281.) See also Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, Paris: Flammarion 1977, p. 154. (English translation, Dialogues II, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, New York: Columbia University Press 2007, p. 127.) 71 See, among other examples, SKS 4, 142 / FT, 48. SKS 4, 145 / FT, 52. 72 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 344. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 281.) 73 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 345. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 281.) 74 Ibid. 68

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perceived, cannot but be perceived at the same time as that which it composes or renders,”75 then we shall realize that “movement is no longer tied to the mediation of a relative threshold that it eludes ad infinitum.”76 Deleuze and Guattari explain further on that “[i]t is in jumping from one plane to the other, or from the relative thresholds to the absolute threshold that coexists with them, that the imperceptible becomes necessarily perceived.”77 At this point, Kierkegaard may once again be summoned in order to finish the gesture previously initiated. The infinite plane will then be submitted to a key transformation procedure: Kierkegaard shows that the plane of the infinite, which he calls the plane of faith, must become a pure plane of immanence that continually and immediately imparts, reimparts, and regathers the finite: unlike the man of infinite resignation, the knight of the faith or man of becoming will get the girl, he will have all of the finite and perceive the imperceptible, as “heir apparent to the finite.” Perception will no longer reside in the relation between a subject and an object, but rather in the movement serving as the limit of that relation, in the period associated with the subject and object. Perception will confront its own limit; it will be in the midst of things, throughout its own proximity, as the presence of one haecceity in another, the prehension of one by the other or the passage from one to the other: Look only at the movements.78

“The heir of the finite,”79 the knight of faith, is considered as “the only happy man,” whereas “the knight of resignation is a stranger and an alien”;80 thus, the knight of faith escapes totally to the perceptive narrow-mindedness, typical of the subject– object relational schemata which had been, after all, the determinant factor for the infinitive movement, and he can now apprehend the very limits of the relation, the movements taken as micro-movements behind and beyond the brink of perception which had rendered movement imperceptible. The last reference to Kierkegaard in A Thousand Plateaus, in the section entitled “Treatise on Nomadology: The War Machine,” is apparently of minor relevance as it seems to be absolutely circumstantial. However, we shall see that this same reference appears in other texts by Deleuze, always with the intention of identifying Kierkegaard as an example of those “private thinkers”81 who do not fit into the imperatives of the “cogitatio universalis”—seen “as the thought of the Law,”82 which produces its own images, namely those that establish a direct link between Ibid. Ibid. 77 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 345. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 282.) 78 Ibid. (my emphasis). 79 SKS 4, 144 / FT, 50. 80 Ibid. 81 The first time that Deleuze sets Kierkegaard in this context is very probably in a note in Nietzsche and Philosophy, where besides Nietzsche he summons Feuerbach and Shestov, see Deleuze, Nietzsche et la Philosophie, p. 107, note 2 (Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 209, note 22). See also section I. 82 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 466. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 376.) 75 76

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thought and the state apparatus. After defining “noology” as “precisely the study of images of thought, and their historicity,”83 the authors give details about the the role of private thinkers: But noology is confronted by counterthoughts, which are violent in their acts and discontinuous in their appearances, and whose existence is mobile in history. These are the acts of a “private thinker,” as opposed to the public professor: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or even Shestov. Wherever they dwell, it is the steppe or the desert. They destroy images.84

However, Deleuze and Guattari account for their dissatisfaction concerning the expression “private thinker.” First, they state that the idiom “exaggerates interiority, when it is a question of outside thought,”85 and second, “[a]lthough it is true that this counterthought attests to an absolute solitude, it is an extremely populous solitude, like the desert itself, a solitude already intertwined with a people to come.”86 This has to do with Deleuze’s and Guattari’s distinction between striated space and smooth space, a distinction that makes the insertion of Kierkegaard in the context of a thought external to the idea of “method” sound more obvious: “A ‘method’ is the striated space of the cogitatio universalis and draws a path that must be followed from one point to another. But the form of exteriority situates thought in a smooth space…for which there is no possible method, no conceivable reproduction, but only relays, intermezzos, resurgences.”87 This form of exteriority will be further developed until it is posited as a mode of thought that is essentially capable of being pathos, a “war machine”88 (the examples are Artaud and Kleist), completely external to the speech of logos and of mythos. III. In 1983 and 1985, Deleuze published the two volumes of his remarkable study on cinema—Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image. In the first of those volumes, Chapter 6, entitled “The Affection-Image. Qualities, Powers, Any-Space-Whatevers,” Deleuze makes use of a wide range of motifs taken from Kierkegaard, in order to accomplish a keen delineation of the characteristics inherent

Ibid. Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 467. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 376.) 85 Ibid. 86 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 467. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 377.) 87 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, pp. 467–8. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 377.) 88 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, p. 468. (A Thousand Plateaus, p. 378.) 83 84

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to the cinematographic procedure identified as “lyrical abstraction,”89 including under this designation, J. v. Sternberg, C. Dreyer, and R. Bresson. Lyrical abstraction is defined by the relation of light with the white, but in it “shadow retains an important role albeit very different from its role in Expressionism.”90 This is explained by means of an either-or: “The point is that Expressionism develops a principle of opposition, of conflict or of struggle: struggle of the spirit with darkness. While for the adherents of lyrical abstraction, the act of the spirit is not a struggle but an alternative, a fundamental ‘Either…or.’”91 The statement serves as the Kierkegaardian motto for the subsequent analysis. Shadow no longer performs the extension of a state of affairs to infinity, “it will, rather, express an alternative between the state of things itself and the possibility, the virtuality, which goes beyond it.”92 The alternative may present itself in different forms—aesthetic or passional, ethical, or religious—but in all the situations it will always be a case of “a matter of passion or of affect, in so far as, in Kierkegaard’s phrase, faith is still a matter of passion, of affect and nothing else.”93 Nevertheless, as the problem of lyrical abstraction is complexified, it is possible to identify more rigorously the contours of the notion of alternative: “From its essential relation with the white, lyrical abstraction draws two consequences which accentuate its difference from Expressionism: an alternation of terms instead of an opposition; an alternative, a spiritual choice instead of a struggle or a fight.”94 Thus, we have on the one hand, “the white–black alternation,”95 and on the other hand the “spiritual alternative.”96 But what definitely matters is that, “[f]inally, the spiritual alternative never bears directly on the alternation of terms, although the latter serves as its basis. A fascinating idea was developed from Pascal to Kierkegaard: the alternative is not between terms but between the modes of existence of the one who chooses.”97 Deleuze can now develop the theme of this alternative between “modes of existence”: “The spiritual choice is made between the mode of existence of him who chooses on the condition of not knowing it, and the mode of existence of him who knows that it is a matter of choosing. It is as if there was a choice of choice or

Gilles Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, Paris: Minuit 1983. (English translation: Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, London: Athlone Press 1986.) For this quotation, see Deleuze Cinéma 1: L’Imagemouvement, p. 158. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 112.) 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 159. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 113.) 94 Deleuze Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 160. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 113.) 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 160. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 114.) 89

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non-choice.”98 As he proceeds to summarize what lies in “Pascal’s wager,”99 Deleuze adds: In short, choice as spiritual determination has no other object than itself: I choose to choose, and by that I exclude all choice made on the mode of not having the choice. This was also to be the essential point of what Kierkegaard calls “alternative,” and Sartre “choice,” in the atheist version which he puts forward.100

This means that the Kierkegaardian choice of oneself, in Enten/Eller, emerges here as the detection criteria of a group of film characters who stand for the same number of concrete modes of existence (Deleuze presents five modes); the first three belong to false choice, “of that choice which is only made on condition of denying that there is choice (or that there is still choice).”101 This false choice, however, lets one clearly see where true choice lies: the consciousness of choice as steadfast spiritual determination. It is not the choice of Good, any more than of evil. It is a choice which is not defined by what it chooses, but by the power that it possesses to be able to start afresh at every instant…and in this way confirming itself by itself, by putting the whole stake back into play each time.102

And immediately afterwards we find a statement that, after what had been said in Difference and Repetition—that in Kierkegaard repetition “operates once and for all”103—actually takes us by surprise: And even if this choice implies the sacrifice of the person, this is a sacrifice that he only makes on condition of knowing that he will start it afresh each time, and that he does it for all times (here again, this is a very different conception from that of Expressionism, for which the sacrifice is once and for all).104

What had been the cision between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, seen from the angle of repetition, becomes now, seen from the angle of “authentic choice” or from the angle of “the consciousness of choice,”105 a kind of unthinkable alliance, built around

Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 161. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 114.) 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 162. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 115.) 102 Ibid. It should be noticed that among the ten references of Deleuze to Kierkegaard in the taped lectures of the years 1979–87, five of them are precisely on the topic of “choice.” See Frédéric Astier, Les cours enregistrés de Gilles Deleuze 1979–1987, Mons: Éd. Sils Maria 2006, p. 60; pp. 63–4. 103 See note 40. 104 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 162. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 115.) 105 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 163. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 115.) 98

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“affection” and its implications for its own “pure potentiality,”106 as opposed to the “actuality” of affection in the characters of false choice: the character who makes true choice raises the affect to its pure power or potentiality… but also embodies it and carries it into effect all the more as it liberates in him the part of that which does not let itself be actualized, of that which goes beyond all execution (the eternal rebirth [i.e., recommencement]).107

Deleuze is quick to hold back such an alliance, as there are surmounting factors— moralism and faith—which prevail over choice, affection and pure potency; moralism “has nothing to do with Nietzsche, but has much in common with Pascal and Kierkegaard, with Jansenism and Reformism (even in the case of Sartre). It weaves a whole set of relations of great value between philosophy and the cinema.”108 Where does that value exactly lie? It lies in the capacity that Deleuze recognizes in E. Rohmer and in Dreyer, of being able, as in Pascal and Kierkegaard, to “restore everything to us.” And Deleuze proceeds to claim what true choice can mean to us: [It] will enable us to rediscover everything, in the spirit of sacrifice, at the moment of the sacrifice or even before the sacrifice is performed. Kierkegaard said that true choice Ibid. Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 163. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, pp. 115–16.) 108 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 163. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 116.) Here Deleuze inserts the following footnote: “In the second half of the nineteenth century philosophy not only strove to renew its content, but to conquer new means and forms of expression, in very different thinkers, whose only common feature is that they feel themselves to be the first representatives of a philosophy of the future. This is clearly true of Kierkegaard….Remaining with Kierkegaard, one of his particular methods is to introduce into his meditation something that the reader has difficulty in identifying formally: is this an example, or a fragment of an intimate journal, or a tale, an anecdote, a melodrama, etc.? For example, in The Concept of Dread…it is the story of the bourgeois who takes his breakfast and reads his newspaper with his family and suddenly rushes to the window shouting, ‘I must have the possible, or else I will suffocate.’ In Stages on Life’s Way…it is the story of the accountant who goes mad for one hour a day, and seeks a law which could capitalise and fix resemblance: one day he was in a brothel, but retains no memory of what happened there, it is ‘the possibility which makes him mad…’ In Fear and Trembling…it is the tale ‘Agnes and the triton’ as an animated drawing, of which Kierkegaard gives several versions. There are many other examples. But the modern reader has perhaps the wherewithal to classify these bizarre passages: in each case it is already a kind of script, a veritable synopsis, which thus appears for the first time in philosophy and theology.” See Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Imagemouvement, p. 163, note 16. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 233, note 17.) This long note also stands as a significant remark on a topic dear to Deleuze: the idea that there are forms of thought which completely stay out of the canon of the universality of reason. Thus one might say that Kierkegaard is once again summoned as witness in the role of private thinker, this time by means of his proto-cinematographic synopses. On the example taken from The Concept of Anxiety, see also Gilles Deleuze, Cinéma 2: L’image-temps, Paris: Minuit 1985, p. 221. (English translation: Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, London: Athlone Press 1989, p. 170.)

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José Miranda Justo means that by abandoning the bride, she is restored to us by that very act; and that by sacrificing his son, Abraham rediscovers him through that very act. Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, but out of duty, duty alone, and in choosing not to have the choice. Abraham, on the contrary, sacrifices his son, whom he loves more than himself, through choice alone, and through consciousness of the choice which unites him with God, beyond good and evil: thus his son is restored to him.109

“Beyond good and evil” betrays again the close vicinity of Nietzsche and, in this context, it is Deleuze’s way of referring to the whole, to that totality which in the history of lyrical abstraction is the negation of symbolic systems traditionally associated with black, white, and grey; as soon as pure light, immanent or spiritual, is reached, it restores everything to us. It restores the white to us, but a white which no longer confines the light. It finally restores the black to us, the black which is no longer the cessation of light. It even restores to us the grey, which is no longer uncertainty or indifference.110

Deleuze can hence conclude: “We have reached a spiritual space where what we choose is no longer distinguishable from the choice itself.”111 In Cinema 1, Chapter 8, “From Affect to Action: The Impulse Image,” Deleuze tries to put Stroheim and Buñuel side by side. In Stroheim’s case, Deleuze states that “the fundamental movement is that which the originary world imposes on milieux, that is, a degradation, a descent or an entropy.”112 And Deleuze proceeds on the issue of salvation in these terms: “Consequently, the question of salvation can only be posed in the form of a local increase of entropy, which would indicate a capacity of the originary world to open up a milieu, instead of closing it.”113 As for Buñuel, Deleuze’s conclusion is contrariwise: “entropy [is] replaced by the cycle or the eternal return.”114 No matter how catastrophic, eternal return becomes just like entropy, and no matter how degrading the cycle in all its constituent parts is, both the eternal return and the cycle release “a spiritual power of repetition, which poses in a new way the question of a possible salvation.”115 Repetition is capable of “breaking out of its own cycle and of ‘leaping’ beyond good and evil,”116 and this is the point for Deleuze to summon Kierkegaard:

Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 164. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 116.) 110 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 165. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 117.) 111 Ibid. 112 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 184. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 131.) 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid. 116 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 184. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 131.) 109

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It is repetition which ruins and degrades us, but it is repetition which can save us and allow us to escape from the other repetition. Kierkegaard had already opposed a fettering, degrading repetition of the past to a repetition of faith, directed towards the future, which restored everything to us in a power which was not that of the Good but of the absurd. To the eternal return as reproduction of something always already accomplished, is opposed the eternal return as resurrection, a new gift of the new, of the possible.117

“Bad repetition” and “good repetition”118 stand in direct opposition, just as the “indefinite” stands opposite to the “decisive instant,” just as the “closed” operation stands opposite the “open” operation, that is, just as a “repetition which not only fails, but induces failure” stands opposite to a repetition “which not only succeeds, but recreates the model or the originary.”119 It is true that Deleuze has doubts concerning Buñuel’s ability to carry through his decision between the two types of repetition; however, this does not prevent him from acknowledging that in the work of Buñuel the “repetition of faith”120 is posited so as to face the future, and this implies that despite the impracticality of materialization, it is actually “spiritually possible,”121 by virtue of an instant that creates time, which succeeds in breaking the cycle, and leaves space for a time vector which definitely has the future as its target. Cinema 2 contains an important observation on what is classified as a “special relation” between cinema and belief (or faith).122 Cinematographic image, by opposition to what takes place in the theater, is considered as having shown since its very beginnings “the link between the man and the world.”123 What is actually taken as new in the modern situation is the fact that the existing links between man and the world seem to have been broken: “Henceforth this link must become an object of belief: it is the impossible which can only be restored within a faith.”124 In this perspective “[t]he cinema must film, not the world, but belief in this world, our only link….It is a whole transformation of belief.”125 Now, this transformation in cinematography has a philosophical antecedent: “It was already a great turningpoint in philosophy, from Pascal to Nietzsche: to replace the model of knowledge with belief.”126 It is easy to realize that the model of knowledge referred to is one that shows an exclusive belief in knowledge, that is, a belief which is not a “belief in this

117 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, pp. 184–5. (Cinema 1: The MovementImage, p. 131.) 118 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 185. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 132.) 119 Ibid. 120 Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’Image-mouvement, p. 186. (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 132.) 121 Ibid. 122 Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, p. 222. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 171.) Deleuze makes indistinct use of “croyance” and “foi.” 123 Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, p. 223. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 171.) 124 Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, p. 223. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 172.) 125 Ibid. 126 Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, p. 224. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 172.)

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world.”127 At this point Deleuze inserts a footnote where the role of Kierkegaard in the process becomes clear: In the history of philosophy, the substitution of belief for knowledge takes place in authors of whom some are still believers, while others carry out an atheistic conversion. Hence the existence of real couples: Pascal–Hume, Kant–Fichte, Kierkegaard– Nietzsche, Lequier–Renouvier. But, even with the believers, belief is not now directed towards another world, it is directed to this world: faith according to Kierkegaard, or even Pascal, restores man and the world to us.128

Shortly after this passage we have the second reference to Kierkegaard in Cinema 2, when Deleuze goes on to differentiate between “theorematic direction” and “problematic direction” in cinema, enhancing the importance of the “outside” in the latter.129 He starts by a commentary on film directors—Jean Renoir, Orson Welles and, above all, Pier Paolo Pasolini—and their “abandoning of figures, metonymy as much as metaphor.”130 In the chosen cases, the depth of field is said to make “the unrolling of the film a theorem rather than an association of images, it makes thought immanent to the image.”131 However, positing the problem of the theorematic direction in this way proves insufficient, and Deleuze subsequently uses a second mathematical instance which also allows us better to understand what was at stake in the first. This instance is called the “problem”: A problem lives in the theorem and gives it life, even when removing its power. The problematic is distinguished from the theorematic (or constructivism from the axiomatic) in that the theorem develops internal relationships from principle to consequences while the problem introduces an event from the outside—removal, addition, cutting—which constitutes its own conditions and determines the “case” or cases. This outside of the problem is not reducible to the exteriority of the physical world any more than to the psychological interiority of a thinking ego.132

It is the irreducible nature of the outside that is the fundamental point in this passage: from the inside, from within the theorem, one only grasps what was already said or, at least, what the seminal content of the principle was, the principle that rules over the consequences it brings about. We have now a typical example: “As Kierkegaard says, ‘the profound movements of the soul disarm psychology,’ precisely because they do not come from within.”133 This use of Kierkegaard allows us to check that Ibid. Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, p. 224, note 30. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 311, note 30.) 129 Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, pp. 225ff. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp. 173ff.) 130 Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, p. 226. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 173.) 131 Ibid. 132 Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, p. 227. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp. 174–5.) 133 Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, pp. 227–8. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 175.) It is difficult to indicate with rigor the source of this presumable quotation; in any case, it would be adequate to passages from The Concept of Anxiety, where sin completely escapes the scientific systematic approach of psychology. 127 128

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the issue of the “problem” is, after all, another version of the topic of the private thinker, namely when it is posited in a context other than philosophical thought, in this case with the aim of serving an analytical partition of the functioning modes of cinematographic image. Nonetheless, the Kierkegaard-based extension of the “problem” carried out by Deleuze goes further, as the author unifies the issue of the outside with the topic of choice—“It is characteristic of the problem that it is inseparable from a choice.”134—in order to determine the use of Kierkegaardian stages by Rohmer. Deleuze exemplifies this with geometry: to inscribe a right angle in a semi-circle is a theorem, since any angle inscribed in a semi-circle is a right angle; but to inscribe a equilateral angle in a semi-circle is a problem with an infinite number of solutions depending on the choice. And “when the problem concerns existential determinations and not mathematical matters, we see clearly that choice is increasingly identified with living thought, with an unfathomable decision. Choice no longer concerns a particular term, but the mode of existence of the one who chooses.”135 This way, the choice is co-extensive to thought, it goes from non-choice to choice, and it covers all the variants that are possible in between. To support his claim, Deleuze summons Kierkegaard once again: Kierkegaard drew all the consequences of this: choice being posed between choice and non-choice (and all their variants) sends us back to an absolute relation with the outside, beyond the inward psychological consciousness, but equally beyond the relative external world, and finds that it alone is capable of restoring the world and the ego to us.136

Apart from what has already been said concerning similar passages, the point is now to underline that the variants of choice and non-choice may receive different sorts of cinematographic thematization of Christian inspiration in Dreyer or in Bresson, but in Rohmer they gain features that render them the aspect of a defined application of the “Kierkegaardian stages on the ‘path of life’: the aesthetic stage in La Collectionneuse, the ethical stage in Beau marriage, for example, and the religious stage in My Night at Maud’s or especially in Perceval le Gallois.”137 Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, p. 230. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 176.) Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, p. 230. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 177.) 136 Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, p. 231. (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 177.) 137 Ibid. In this passage, a note points out the identity of perspectives shared by Rohmer and Kierkegaard in what concerns choice when it is “posed in view of the ‘marriage’ which defines the ethical stage,” see Deleuze, Cinéma 2: Image-temps, p. 231, note 40 (Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 312, note 40). In another text from 1986, published in Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 380, pp. 25–32, entitled “Le cerveau, c’est l’écran,” there is a similar reference to Rohmer and Kierkegaard, adding that examples such as the cases of Rohmer, Dreyer, Bresson, and others show that “cinema puts movement not just in the image; it puts it in the mind.” See Gilles Deleuze, Deux régimes de fous. Textes et entretiens 1975–1995, Paris: Minuit 2003, p. 264. (Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995, trans. by Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina, New York and Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) 2007, p. 288.) In Pourparlers 1972– 1990, during a brief interview about Cinema 2, “Sur l’image temps,” published in Cinéma, no. 334, December 18, 1985, pp. 2–3. Deleuze refuses to submit Dreyer to psychoanalytical analysis, and states that Dreyer should rather be put side by side with Kierkegaard, since the 134

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IV. In What Is Philosophy?, dating from 1991, a work still bearing the signatures of Deleuze and Guattari, several considerations directly or indirectly motivated by Kierkegaard can be found in “Conceptual Personae,” the third chapter in Part One. Rather unexpectedly, the chapter starts with the identification of the conceptual character of “the idiot”138 in Descartes, which is seen as “somewhat mysterious, that appears from time to time or that shows through and seems to have a hazy existence halfway between concept and preconceptual plane, passing from one to the other.”139 This “idiot” is straightaway identified as “the private thinker, in contrast to the public teacher,” the private thinker who says “I,” and therefore will be able to say “I think,” as if it were evidence he reaches by the effect of “natural light.”140 When the case, however, is that of a “new opposition between private thinker and public teacher,” in which evidence is no longer at work and one finds, instead, the role of the “absurd” that demands justification for “every victim of History,”141 Lev Shestov based on Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard would create a new idiot142 who is “closer to Job than to Socrates.”143 However, the conceptual persona is not the philosopher’s representative but, rather, the reverse: the philosopher is only the envelope of his principal conceptual persona and of all the other personae who are the intercessors, the real subjects of his philosophy. Conceptual personae are the philosopher’s “heteronyms,” and the philosopher’s name is the simple pseudonym of his personae.144

This remark could well be applied to a significant part of Kierkegaard’s authorship, also in the penetrating formulation it assumes subsequently: “I am no longer myself but thought’s aptitude for finding itself and spreading across a plane that passes through me at several places.”145 Although the text moves on in the direction of the Nietzschean conceptual characters, Kierkegaard comes up in a particularly instructive mode: “the philosophical shifter is a speech-act in the third person where it is always a conceptual persona who says ‘I’: ‘I think as Idiot,’ ‘I will as Zarathustra,’ ‘I dance latter already thought that what really matters is to “make” the movement, and that it is choice only that makes the movement: “cinema’s proper object becomes spiritual choice.” See Gilles Deleuze, Pourparlers 1972–1990, Paris: Minuit 1990, 2003, p. 84. (Negotiations 1972–1990, trans. by Martin Joughin, New York: Columbia University Press 1995, pp. 58–9.) 138 Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, Paris: Minuit 1991. (English translation: What is Philosophy?, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, New York: Columbia University Press 1994. For this quotation see Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 60. (What is Philosophy?, p. 61.) 139 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 60. (What is Philosophy?, p. 61.) 140 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 60. (What is Philosophy?, p. 62.) 141 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 61. (What is Philosophy?, p. 63.) 142 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 61, note 2. (What is Philosophy?, p. 221, note 2.) 143 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 61. (What is Philosophy?, p. 63.) 144 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 62. (What is Philosophy?, p. 64.) 145 Ibid.

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as Dionysus, ‘I claim as Lover.’ ”146 “I claim as Lover” cannot obviously be the condensed formula for a Shestovian or Nietzschean character, it is, rather, the exact synthesis of that Kierkegaardian pseudonymity directly identifiable in The Young Man in Repetition (and to a certain extent in “In vino veritas”), but indirectly present in all the writings which have commonly been read by critics eager to call upon Kierkegaard’s biographical incidents in his relationship with Regine Olsen. The text continues by making a distinction between “conceptual characters” and “aesthetic figures”147: the first “are the powers of concepts,” the second “are the powers of affects and percepts.”148 “The former take effect on a plane of immanence that is an image of Thought-Being (noumenon), and the latter take effect on a plane of composition as image of a Universe (phenomenon).”149 The great aesthetic figures of the novel, of thought, but also of painting, sculpture, and music, “produce affects that surpass ordinary affections and perceptions, just as concepts go beyond everyday opinions.”150 Art and philosophy can be differentiated inasmuch as art thinks by means of “affects and percepts,” whereas philosophy thinks by means of “constitutions of immanence or concepts.”151 This state of affairs, though, does not prevent that forms of communication between the two fields come about, namely when an aesthetic figure becomes a conceptual character, as it is the case “[w]ith Kierkegaard, [and] the theatrical and musical figure of Don Juan.”152 A thinker may “decisively modify what thinking means, draw up a new image of thought, and institute a new plane of immanence,” and can do it, “instead of creating new concepts that occupy” the plane of immanence,” by peopling it “with other instances, with other poetic, novelistic, or even pictorial or musical entities.”153 Although in What is Philosophy? it is acknowledged that no list enumerating “features of conceptual personae can be exhaustive,”154 some types of features may be discerned; and once again Kierkegaard is summoned when the moment comes to deal with “relational features” and “dynamic features.”155 On the former, one can read the following: And how could a “Fiancée” be denied her place in the role of conceptual persona, although it may mean rushing to her destruction, but not without the philosopher himself

Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 63. (What is Philosophy?, p. 64.) Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 64. (What is Philosophy?, p. 65.) 148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. 150 Ibid. 151 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 64. (What is Philosophy?, p. 66.) 152 Ibid. 153 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 65. (What is Philosophy?, pp. 66–7.) 154 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 68. (What is Philosophy?, p. 70.) 155 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, pp. 69–70. (What is Philosophy?, pp. 70–1.) 146

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José Miranda Justo “becoming” woman? As Kierkegaard asks (or Kleist, or Proust): is not a woman more worthwhile than the friend who knows one well?”156

This is a passage that clearly shows how the above-mentioned expression “I claim as Lover” establishes a relational link with the character of the “Fiancée” within a kind of dialogue, which goes beyond the possibilities of strictly argumentative writing and which stands as a transformation process or a process of becoming, as Deleuze prefers to say, in which deterritorilization operates as the opening to a form of thinking which is no longer held as possible within the communion of “friends,” for the communion of friends simply repeats what has already been said or lived.157 As for the “dynamic features,” the text states that “if moving forward, climbing, and descending are dynamisms of conceptual personae, then leaping like Kierkegaard, dancing like Nietzsche, and diving like Melville are others for philosophical athletes irreducible to one another.”158 We have already enhanced the importance given by Deleuze to the difference between the Kierkegaardian leap and the Nietzschean dancing; what matters now is “to pick out the pure dynamic difference expressed in a new conceptual persona.”159 And this consideration is developed further on: Kierkegaard leaps outside the plane [of immanence], but what is “restored” to him in this suspension, this halted movement, is the fiancée or the lost son [Isaac], it is existence on the plane of immanence. Kierkegaard does not hesitate to say so: a little “resignation” will be enough for what belongs to transcendence, but immanence must also be restored.160

In the end, the dynamic difference is intended to be directly focused on what is one of the preferred Deleuzian topics—immanence; in the case of Kierkegaard, it is not set against transcendence, it is set in spite of transcendence. There are only immanent criteria, taken independently from good and evil and from any transcendent value; the only criterion is the “intensification of life.”161 And despite the obvious Nietzschean tone in this kind of “intensification of life,” the text takes as examples specifically the thinkers whose conflict between transcendence and immanence is eventually solved for the benefit of the latter: “Pascal and Kierkegaard, who were familiar with infinite movements, and who extracted from the Old Testament new conceptual personae able to stand up to Socrates, were well aware of this.”162 It may be true that the knight of faith or the player in Pascal are men of transcendence and faith, but the fact is that “they constantly recharge immanence: they are philosophers or, rather, intercessors, conceptual personae who stand in for these two philosophers and who Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 69. (What is Philosophy?, p. 71.) Another brief reference to the conceptual character of the “fiancée” in Kierkegaard occurs in the “Correspondence” with Dionys Mascolo, in a letter dated August 6, 1988. See Deleuze, Deux Regimes de Fous, p. 307. (Two Regimes of Madness, p. 334.) 158 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, pp. 69–70. (What is Philosophy?, p. 71.) 159 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 70. (What is Philosophy?, p. 71.) 160 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 71. (What is Philosophy?, p. 73.) 161 Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 72. (What is Philosophy?, p. 74.) 162 Ibid. 156 157

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are concerned no longer with the transcendent existence of God but only with the infinite immanent possibilities brought by the one who believes that God exists.”163

Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 72. (What is Philosophy?, p. 74.) In What Is Philosophy?, in the following chapter, “Geophilosophy,” this problem continues to be treated in a curious way, still on Pascal and Kierkegaard: “We have seen this in Pascal or Kierkegaard: perhaps belief becomes a genuine concept only when it is made into belief in this world [i.e. in immanence] and is connected rather than being projected. Perhaps Christianity does not produce concepts except through its atheism, through the atheism that it, more than any other religion, secretes.” See Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, p. 88. (What is Philosophy?, p. 92.)

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Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Deleuze’s Corpus “K.E. Lögstrup—Kierkegaard und Heideggers Existenzanalyse und ihr Verhältnis zur Verkündigung,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, vol. 143, nos. 1–3, 1953, pp. 108–9. Nietzsche et la philosophie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1962, pp. 41– 3, 107, note 2. (English translation: Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson, New York: Columbia University Press 1983, pp. 36–7; p. 209, note 22.) Le bergsonisme, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1966, p. 38, note 2; p. 53. (English translation: Bergsonism, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, New York: Zone Books 1991, p. 124, note 14; p. 57) Différence et répétition, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1968, pp. 12–20; p. 38; p. 39, note 1; pp. 126–7; p. 289, note 1; pp. 347–8; p. 377; p. 397. (English translation: Difference and Repetition, trans. by Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press 1994, pp. 5–11; p. 25; pp. 94–5; p. 271; p. 295; pp. 305–6; p. 308, note 15; p. 315, note 12; p. 329, note 4.) Logique du sens, Paris: Minuit 1969, p. 349. (English translation: The Logic of Sense, trans. by Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, London: Athlone Press 1990, pp. 300–1.) Cinéma 1: L’image-mouvement, Paris: Minuit 1983, pp. 158–64; pp. 184–5. (English translation: Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, London: Athlone Press 1986, pp. 112–16; p. 131; p. 233, note 17.) Cinéma 2: L’image-temps, Paris: Minuit 1985, p. 224, note 30; pp. 227–8; pp. 230– 1. (English translation: Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, London: Athlone Press 1989, pp. 174–5; pp. 176–7; p. 311, note 30; p. 312, note 40.) Pourparlers 1972–1990, Paris: Minuit 1990, p. 84. (English translation: Negotiations 1972–1990, trans. by Martin Joughin, New York: Columbia University Press 1995, pp. 58–9.) Deux régimes de fous: Textes et entretiens 1975–1995, Paris: Minuit 2003, p. 192; p. 264; p. 307. (English translation: Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995, New York and Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) 2007, p. 209; p. 288; p. 334.) Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, Paris: Flammarion 1977, p. 154. (English translation: Dialogues II, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, New York: Columbia University Press 2007, p. 127.)

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Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux, Paris: Minuit 1980, p. 242; p. 266, note 17; pp. 344–5; pp. 467–8. (English translation: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by Brian Massumi, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press 1987, pp. 197–8; pp. 281–2; pp. 377–8; p. 537, note 17; p. 543, note 66.) Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, Paris: Minuit 1991, pp. 60–1; p. 64; pp. 68–9; pp. 71–3; pp. 88–9. (English translation: What is Philosophy?, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, New York: Columbia University Press 1994, pp. 61–3; pp. 65–6; pp. 70–1; pp. 73–4; p. 92; p. 221, note 2; p. 222, note 7.) II. Sources of Deleuze’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Butor, Michel, Répertoire I, Paris: Ed. de Minuit 1960, pp. 94–109; pp. 110–14. Éliade, Mircea, Le Mythe de l’éternel retour, Paris: Gallimard 1949, pp. 162–4. Kierkegaard, Søren, Le traité du désespoir, trans. by Knud Ferlov and Jean-Jacques Gateau, Paris: Gallimard 1932. — La Répétition: Essai d’expérience psychologique par Constantin Constantius, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, Paris: Alcan 1933. — Crainte et Tremblement: Lyrique-dialectique, par Johannes de Silentio, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, introduced by Jean Wahl, Paris: Fernand Aubier; Éditions Montaigne 1935. — Le concept de l’angoisse, trans. by Jean-Jacques Gateau and Knud Ferlov, Paris: Gallimard 1935. — Les miettes philosophiques, trans. by Paul Petit, Paris: Éditions du Livre français 1947. — Étapes sur le chemin de la vie, trans. by Ferdinand Prior and Marie-Henriette Guignot, Paris: Gallimard 1948. Løgstrup, Knud E., Kierkegaard und Heideggers Existenzanalyse und ihr Verhältnis zur Verkündigung, Berlin: Erich Blaschker 1950 (Breviarium litterarum, vol. 3). Sartre, Jean-Paul, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, Paris: Gallimard 1943 (Bibliothèque des Idées), pp. 58–84; pp. 94–111; pp. 115–49; pp. 150–74; pp. 291–300; pp. 508–16; pp. 529–60; pp. 639–42; pp. 643–63; pp. 669–70; pp. 720ff. Shestov, Lev, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, trans. by Tatiana Rageot and Boris de Schloezer, Paris: Vrin 1936. Wahl, Jean, Études Kierkegaardiennes, Paris: Aubier 1938. III. Secondary Literature on Deleuze’s Relation to Kierkegaard Badiou, Alain, Deleuze: “La clameur de l’Être,” Paris: Hachette Littératures 1997, p. 21. Battersby, Christine, The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Patterns of Identity, New York: Routledge 1998, pp. 148–75; pp. 176–97.

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Chiesa, Lorenzo, “A Theater of Subtractive Extinction: Bene Without Deleuze,” in Deleuze and Performance, ed. by Laura Cull, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2009, pp. 71–88. Colebrook, Claire, “Inhuman Irony: The Event of the Postmodern,” in Deleuze and Literature, ed. by Ian Buchanan and John Marks, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2000, pp. 100–34; see pp. 113–17; p. 127. Fioravanti, Andrea, “L’indicibile come paradosso: il volto in Bergman attraverso l’analisi di Gilles Deleuze,” Quaderni di Studi Kierkegaardiani, vol. 3, 2003, pp. 59–70. Hughes, Joe, Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: A Reader’s Guide, London and York: Continuum 2009, p. 22; pp. 33–4; p. 87; p. 190, note 8. Lambert, Gregg, “On the Uses and Abuses of Literature for Life,” in Deleuze and Literature, ed. by Ian Buchanan and John Marks, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2000, pp. 135–66, see p. 151. Politis, Hélène, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une reception, Paris: Kimé 2005, p. 233; p. 246, note 33. Poxon, Judith, “Embodied Anti-Theology: The Body without Organs and the Judgement of God,” in Deleuze and Religion, ed. by Mary Bryden, London and New York: Routledge 2001, pp. 42–50. Smith, Daniel W., “The Place of Ethics in Deleuze’s Philosophy,” in Deleuze and Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and Culture, ed. by Eleanor Kaufman and Kevin J. Heller, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1998, p. 256; p. 258; p. 267, note 28.

Jacques Derrida: Faithful Heretics Marius Timmann Mjaaland

But it is Kierkegaard to whom I have been most faithful and who interests me most: absolute existence, the meaning he gives to the word subjectivity, the resistance of existence to the concept or the system—this is something I attach great importance to and feel very deeply, something I am always ready to stand up for.1 Jacques Derrida

Derrida (1930–2004) has not written very extensively on Kierkegaard, but his philosophy seems to be all the more profoundly influenced by the Danish philosopher, in particular when it comes to questions of religion. I will argue that the influence goes further than the topic of religion, though, and extends to the general approach and rationality Derrida develops in his philosophy, including questions of ethics, politics, subjectivity, pseudonymity, writing/speech, secrecy, and death. There are other philosophers who have occupied Derrida more consistently, like Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas, but the dependence on Kierkegaard runs through his entire oeuvre like a dark but decisive thread in the texture. A basic trait in both philosophers is the occupation with texts and topics from the Western philosophical tradition in a non-traditional way or—as Kierkegaard writes—the effort “at the distance of double-reflection to read solo through the original writing of the individual human conditions of existence once more…in an even more passionate way, if possible.”2 Although they are passionate readers, faithful to the text (to Scripture and to writing), they have both been accused of heresy. In a particular sense, they have chosen to read otherwise than their predecessors in the Western intellectual canon. Hence, the accusation is, in fact, justified: the heretic is by definition someone who emphasizes the individual choice and challenges a particular system of beliefs. 1 Jacques Derrida and Maurizio Ferraris, Il gusto del segreto, Rome and Bari: Laterza 1997, p. 37. (English translation: A Taste for the Secret, trans. by Giacomo Donis, Cambridge: Polity Press 2001, p. 40.) 2 See SKS 7, 573 / CUP1, 629–30: “…paa en Afstand som er Dobbelt-Reflexionens Fjernhed at ville…læse de individuelle, humane Existents-Forholds Urskrift solo igjennem endnu engang, om muligt paa en inderligere Maade.” My translation.

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The Gift of Death is Derrida’s most sustained occupation with Kierkegaard,3 and includes a detailed reading of some passages in Fear and Trembling (1843). The second important text is Derrida’s discussion with Levinas in “Violence and Metaphysics” from 1964 (published in Writing and Difference in 1967) on how to understand Kierkegaard’s subjectivity. The other references are scattered in footnotes, margins, and passages where Kierkegaard plays a minor role. After the first section on Derrida, Kierkegaard, and Levinas, my analysis will therefore focus on questions raised by The Gift of Death, which then gives the textual basis for discussing further connections and some basic differences between Kierkegaard and Derrida concerning the questions of secrecy, gift, and responsibility, alterity and subjectivity, the concept of God, the madness of decision, the relation to Hegel, and, finally, hospitality and forgiveness. I. The Other as Pseudonymous Self In Writing and Difference we find Derrida’s first published essays from the years 1962–67. In the chapter called “Violence and Metaphysics” he discusses the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and spends three pages on Levinas’ criticism of Søren Kierkegaard.4 Levinas is simultaneously against Hegel and against Kierkegaard since he is afraid of being identified with “a subjectivism, or with a Kierkegaardian type of existentialism, both of which would remain, according to Levinas, violent and premetaphysical egoisms.”5 In Derrida’s opinion, however, Levinas has misunderstood what he calls the “egoism” of Kierkegaard, since Kierkegaard is not speaking of himself as an ego but of subjectivity in general, and hence, in fact, of what Levinas has identified as the other: The other is not myself…but it is an Ego, as Levinas must suppose in order to maintain his own discourse. The passage from Ego to other as an Ego is the passage to the essential, non-empirical egoity of subjective existence in general. The philosopher Kierkegaard does not only plead for Sören Kierkegaard, (“the egoistic cry of a subjectivity still concerned with Kierkegaard’s happiness or salvation”), but for subjective existence in general (a noncontradictory expression); this is why his discourse is philosophical, and not in the realm of empirical egoism. The name of a philosophical subject, when he says

Jacques Derrida, Donner la mort, Paris: Éditions Galilée 1999 (this is now the standard version; an earlier version was published as the article “Donner la mort,” in L’éthique du don. Jacques Derrida et la pensée du don. Colloque de Royaumont décembre 1990, ed. by JeanMichel Rabaté and Michael Wetzel, Paris: Métailé-Transition 1992, pp. 11–108). (English translation: The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret, trans. by David Willis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2007.) 4 See Jacques Derrida, “Violence et métaphysique,” in L’écriture et la difference, Paris: Seuil 1967, pp. 117–228, see in particular pp. 162–4. (English translation: “Violence and Metaphysics” in Writing and Difference, trans. by Alan Bass, London: Routledge 1978, pp. 79–153, see in particular pp. 109–11.) 5 Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, p. 162. (Writing and Difference, p. 110.) 3

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I, is always, in a certain way, a pseudonym. This is a truth that Kierkegaard adopted systematically….6

The distinction between myself and subjectivity is indeed necessary in order to avoid mere subjectivism when reading Kierkegaard—a common fallacy in the many biographical interpretations of his texts. Moreover, the pseudonymous strategy allows Kierkegaard to explore the difference between absence and presence, between a “name” and a person, without fixing the “identity” of the I to either one of them. If we take a look at some of the key concepts in Derrida’s early philosophy, including his opus magnum Of Grammatology (1967), they are all occupied with such a distinction between presence and absence. A typical example is the difference between the “signifier” (signifiant) and the “signified” (signifié), which Derrida sees as unstable and in continuous change through time. Philosophers have always tried to determine the sign as precisely as possible and fix the meaning to the alleged intention of the author, and hence to the presence of the speaking or writing subject. But Derrida points out that a written text is separated from its author and underlies a similar ambiguity and instability through time as any concept in ordinary language. The problem of pseudonymity in Kierkegaard, that is, that there is no fixed identity between the name and the subject (or object), has thus been further generalized by Derrida into a general topic of language and signification. Hence, in both respects there may be good reason to doubt “the accuracy of that familiar thesis that the outer is the inner and the inner is the outer.”7 The three pages where he discusses Kierkegaard in Writing and Difference precede a long passage discussing the exteriority and interiority of language by Levinas. In this longer passage, Derrida adopts a point of view which is in concordance with Kierkegaard. His opposition to Hegel does not move in direction of an absolute otherness beyond the system (Levinas), but rather an infinite otherness which breaks up the system from within, in an open rupture. He finds it untenable to assume an identity between the inner and the outer (Hegel), or an identification of the signifier with the signified, but it seems just as impossible to move beyond these categories to the “non-spatiality” of language (Levinas). Kierkegaard’s approach represents a third option for Derrida; hence, philosophical reflection remains in time and in space in order to reflect upon difference and “the irreducibility of the totally-other.”8 The difference as such, between inner and outer, between signifier and signified, between appearing and appearance, becomes pivotal for Derrida’s theory of how meaning in general originates and changes through time; it is later combined with the temporal concept “deferral” into the ambiguous French term différance.9 Moreover, the difference between meaning defined through speech (i.e., in terms of self-presence, “myself” and intentionality) and writing (hence, pseudonymity Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, pp. 162–3. (Writing and Difference, p. 110.) SKS 2, 11 / EO1, 1. 8 Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, p. 163. (Writing and Difference, p. 111.) 9 See Jacques Derrida, “Différance” in his Marges de la philosophie, Paris: Minuit 1972, pp. 1–30. (English translation: Margins of Philosophy, trans. by Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1982, pp. 1–28.) 6 7

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and absence of the unequivocal intentional self) becomes determinant for Derrida’s philosophy as a whole. In phenomenological terms, he defines the origin of sense in general as the difference between the appearing and the appearance, but he focuses on the difference as such, that is, difference conceptualized as trace.10 Giving priority to the thinking of the trace, of writing prior to speech, absence prior to presence, and so on, is, for Derrida, a way of re-opening the space of interpretation and opposing the alleged phonocentrism and logocentrism of Western philosophy since Plato.11 Both phonocentrism and logocentrism are actually expressions of egocentrism in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, and phenomenology, an egocentrism which Derrida seeks strategies to overcome in his thought. The quoted passage shows, in fact, that Kierkegaard plays a decisive role in Derrida’s criticism of Levinas (who first formulated the theory of the trace), and hence of developing his own theory of the trace and of sense in general. Moreover, the pseudonymous Ego or Self—as an example of otherness—displays three aspects of language, sense, and subjectivity which are further pursued throughout Derrida’s authorship: firstly, a certain nominalism connected to the pseudonyms and the theory of repetition; secondly, the question of how to conceive of the (absolute) other; and thirdly, the foundation of ethical responsibility. All three reveal profound “convergences and affinities” with Kierkegaard,12 and I will therefore discuss them successively in the remainder of this section. Firstly, Derrida assumes that there is always a surplus of meaning implied in a statement, a text, or a name. The nominalism of this theory implies a dissociation of the name from the “thing” or signified—including the Ego—which brings meaning into flux, into a continuous play. This opens up the space of interpretation for a series of new possibilities in a philosophical or literary text, in principle an infinite number of possibilities. Derrida often ventures to show that an allegedly consistent text proves to be aporetic or even contradictory. The contradiction thus proves the author’s inability to control and delimit the meaning of a text according to his or her intentions (although not, however, the renunciation of intentionality all together). As soon as the words are written, the author has renounced the control over their sense, and meaning is continuously re-produced through the re-iteration, that is, the repetition, of the nominal expression.13 This is perfectly in line with Kierkegaard’s thinking of subjectivity or self in the philosophical sense: he mostly speaks through a pseudonym and of a pseudonym, as a name for oneself and for the other. Since Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, Paris: Seuil 1967, p. 95. (English translation: Of Grammatology, trans. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1982, p. 65.) 11 Derrida, De la grammatologie, p. 101 (Of Grammatology, p. 70) and Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, pp. 162–3 (Writing and Difference, p. 110). 12 Cf. the similar description of Levinas and Feuerbach in L’écriture et la difference, p. 164 (Writing and Difference, p. 111), which is then specified as follows: “We are speaking here of convergences and not of influences; primarily because the latter is a notion whose philosophical meaning is not clear to us….” 13 See SKS 4, 25–6 / R, 148–9. For a more detailed analysis of the question of repetition, nominality, and metaphysics, see Marius Timmann Mjaaland, Autopsia, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 2008, pp. 230–9. 10

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the name and the concept are insufficient in describing the “truth” or “essence” of subjective existence, there is always a secret of the self which evades description. Derrida’s reference to Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous strategy therefore captures its philosophical consequences: when Kierkegaard speaks of egoity or self in philosophical terms, that secret expresses the open gap between “self” and self, “I” and I, “Kierkegaard” and Kierkegaard, and so on.14 Secondly, Derrida sees Kierkegaard’s subjectivity in direct relation to the concept of the other and the question of truth (or even essence) of subjective existence. This is definitely a major concern of Kierkegaard’s but based on a concept of self and interiority which Levinas seeks to abandon through the reference to the other and the exterior (in a non-spatial sense). Derrida doubts the very possibility of doing so without renouncing philosophical discourse: …is not this essence of subjective existence presupposed by the respect for the other, which can be what it is—the other—only as subjective existence? In order to reject the Kierkegaardian notion of subjective existence Levinas should eliminate even the notions of an essence and a truth of subjective existence (of the Ego, and primarily of the Ego of the Other). Moreover, this gesture would comply with the logic of the break with phenomenology and ontology. The least one might say is that Levinas does not do so, and cannot do so, without renouncing philosophical discourse.15

At first glance, Derrida’s criticism appears to be a bit unjust here, since such a break with ontology and phenomenology is exactly what Levinas aims at, with the concepts of the face, the trace, and the other (of which the latter two remain important for Derrida). But his ironical comment, that Levinas is not able to do so without leaving philosophical discourse, nevertheless hits the mark, since there is an inner contradiction between Levinas’ movement beyond language, beyond discourse, to the purity of non-violent otherness, and the necessary return to that discourse in order to define ethics as First Philosophy. It is, however, and this is a critical point for Derrida, impossible to attain such purity and refer to such a Beyond—except through posing the question of closure, of “belonging and the opening.”16 When referring to Kierkegaard here, Derrida is in fact developing his own position, that is, that leaving philosophical discourse is impossible but questioning the limits of and presuppositions for philosophical discourse may still be necessary, both formally and thematically, in terms of an “inscribed description” of “the relations between the philosophical and the nonphilosophical.”17 The other is thereby not reducible to the discourse on “the same,” but is dependent on other strategies of writing in order to display otherness; Derrida describes it as an “unheard of graphics” of displacements,

Jacques Derrida, Passions, Paris: Éditions Galilée 1993, pp. 31–3. (English translation: “Passions” in On the Name, trans. by David Wood, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995, pp. 12–13.) 15 Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, p. 163. (Writing and Difference, p. 110.) 16 Ibid. 17 Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, p. 163. (Writing and Difference, pp. 110–11.) 14

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deferrals, repetitions—and pseudonymity.18 The truth of being a “self” thus always returns as a question—and a questioning—of the other and of the limits of discourse. The naïve wish to abandon philosophical discourse, however, will soon be caught up by the very logic of thesis and antithesis: that is, the Aufhebung of absolute and infinite otherness within the finitude of Hegelian and post-Hegelian philosophical logic. In order to avoid such a destiny when writing about the other, Derrida takes his refuge with Kierkegaard. And he does so throughout his entire oeuvre. In this sense he remains so faithful to Kierkegaard that he does not even take the trouble to refer to particular texts: whenever he discusses otherness, closure, and language, then the name (and the many pseudonyms) of Kierkegaard is simply presupposed and thus inscribed into the description of (absolute) otherness—in fear and trembling.19 Thirdly, Derrida thinks that Kierkegaard has discussed exactly the problem Levinas seeks to define, namely in Fear and Trembling and in connection with a certain Abraham: Let us add, in order to do him justice, that Kierkegaard had a sense of the relationship to the irreducibility of the totally-other, not in the egoistic and esthetic here and now, but in the religious beyond of the concept, in the direction of a certain Abraham. And did he not, in turn—for we must let the other speak—see in Ethics, as a moment of Category and Law, the forgetting, in anonymity, of the subjectivity of religion? From this point of view, the ethical moment is Hegelianism itself, and he says so explicitly. Which does not prevent him from reaffirming ethics in repetition, and from reproaching Hegel for not having constituted a morality.20

Here, Derrida simply points out that Levinas seems to get trapped in some of the same dilemmas as Kierkegaard when he moves beyond Ethics and beyond the Law in order to constitute morality. Whereas Levinas seeks to define this morality in absolute non-violence, Kierkegaard situates it in the fear and trembling of absurd violence, of having to respond to the demand for sacrifice. Derrida insists, however, that there is an irreducible otherness in Kierkegaard which is neither egoistic nor aesthetic, and yet opposed to the ethical in Hegelianism. This reference to the other, this call from the other for a response and an absolute responsibility, appears in the opening towards the religious, at the limit where philosophical discourse breaks down and is reaffirmed in an act of repetition, which is called the “doublemovement” (Dobbeltbevægelsen) by Kierkegaard. Such a duplicity, such a double In Glas, Derrida quotes Kierkegaard’s (i.e., Johannes Climacus’) description of how it is possible to escape the Hegelian logic in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript as an exact model for his own strategy: “All that is needed [in order to emancipate oneself from Hegel] is sound common sense, a fund of humor, and a little Greek ataraxy. Outside the Logic, and partly also within the same, because of a certain ambiguous light which Hegel has not cared to exclude, Hegel and Hegelianism constitute an essay in the comical.” See Jacques Derrida, Glas, Paris: Galilée 1974, p. 259. (English translation: Glas, trans. by John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press 1986, p. 232.) 19 Cf. Jacques Derrida, Foi et savoir, Paris: Seuil 2001, p. 9. (English translation: “Faith and Knowledge,” trans. by Samuel Weber, in Acts of Religion, ed. by Gil Anidjar, London: Routledge 2002, p. 45.) 20 Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, pp. 163–4. (Writing and Difference, p. 111.) 18

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movement and such a double bind of the ethical and the religious is what Derrida has recognized in Kierkegaard, and it dominates his own strategy when facing questions of philosophical logic and terminology, the problem of textual interpretation, the problem of traditional metaphysics, and later on the problems of ethics, politics, and religion. Kierkegaard included the problem of violence and evil, the “plus d’un,” in his discourse on otherness, whereas Levinas seeks to avoid the same. Hence, even though he adopts Levinas’ terminology, Derrida’s approach is more typically Kierkegaardian. Kierkegaard is of course not the only source for such a strategy, but the essay on Levinas has shown that the Danish philosopher is a key figure in Derrida’s efforts to encounter the inherited challenges from Hegel’s philosophy and a certain Platonism of Western philosophy.21 II. The Gift of Death: Religion, Responsibility, and Heresy What is a religion? The question is posed by Derrida on the first pages of The Gift of Death. And he responds with a description of human responsibility: “Religion presumes access to the responsibility of a free self [d’un moi libre].”22 This concept of religion, is undoubtedly influenced by the uniquely historical character of the Christian religion, but that is exactly the topic of this text, which inquires into the relationship between the subject, responsibility, and history; “a genealogy of the subject who says ‘myself,’ the subject’s relation to itself as an instance of liberty, singularity, and responsibility, the relation to self as being before the other: the other in its infinite alterity, one who regards without being seen but also whose infinite goodness gives in an experience that amounts to a gift of death [donner la mort].”23 The Gift of Death is the only text of Derrida which is primarily occupied with Kierkegaard. Already on the opening pages we may observe the ambiguity between this infinite goodness of the other and the disturbing experience of sacrifice, of death, of demonic mystery and even the demonic plurality within oneself which occurs in the experience of the difference between oneself and the other, and the dissemination of the name of the Father into the “plus qu’Un.”24 The book sets out from a careful analysis of Jan Patočka’s Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. A pivotal question is the relationship between secrecy, “or more precisely the mystery of the sacred,” in its relation to responsibility.25 Patočka carefully distinguishes between the secrecy of demonic mysteries, for example, of the Neoplatonic mystery cults, and responsibility in order to secure that the free and responsible self subjects demonic mystery to itself, while freely subjecting itself only to the wholly and infinite other. Whereas Patočka is concerned with the Cf. Mjaaland, Autopsia, pp. 23–38; pp. 119–25 for a more detailed argument concerning the structural and thematic relationship between the thought of Kierkegaard and Derrida. 22 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 15. (The Gift of Death, p. 4.) 23 Derrida, Donner la mort, pp. 18–19. (The Gift of Death, p. 5.) 24 Cf. the last section of the essay “La littérature au secret” in Donner la mort, in particular pp. 190ff. (The Gift of Death, pp. 143ff.) 25 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 15. (The Gift of Death, p. 3.) 21

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heteronomic distinction, Derrida is more interested in the mutual dependency of secrecy and responsibility in defining the origin of history: “History can neither be a decidable object nor a totality capable of being mastered, precisely because it is tied to responsibility, to faith, and to the gift.”26 According to Derrida, the mutual dependency of history, secrecy, death, faith, and gift has not yet been sufficiently acknowledged by Christianity itself, and thus still needs to be thought through. As indicated by the title of Patočka’s essays, it is then difficult to avoid heresy. Moving beyond the tradition in order to think through the conditions for a Christian, responsible self implies with necessity a heretic gesture. Such a movement is, however, necessary in order to remain faithful to the tradition, in any case if the self is supposed to relate responsibly to the tradition.27 Such is the aporia of religious tradition expressed by Patočka, with reference only to Christianity but possibly applicable also for other religions in modernity: true belonging presupposes a separation from tradition, from the imagined continuity and closure of history and from the community of believers. Hence, there is a demand for secrecy in individual responsibility which expels the free self into absolute silence and solitude in the moment of decision. The necessity of heresy thus applies to Kierkegaard as well as to Patočka and Derrida, who all see the truth of Christian responsibility more in terms of the future than of the past. Derrida’s heresy implies inter alia that he insists that his interpretation of the Christian tradition, as orthodox as it may appear, is not dependent on a particular revelation,28 although he clearly confesses the dependency of his own thinking on the Christian tradition, hence (like Kierkegaard, but also like Kant, Heidegger, Levinas, even Nietzsche) it belongs and dissociates itself from “Christianity.”29 On the one hand, Derrida emphasizes the terrifying option of self-sacrifice as giving one’s life for the other, i.e., giving oneself death [se donner la mort] as a consequence of the Christian mysterium tremendum.30 On the other hand, he confronts Heidegger’s egocentric interpretation of death by relating death to the gift, to a goodness beyond all calculation, though on the condition that “goodness forgets itself, that the movement be a movement of the gift that renounces itself, hence a movement of infinite love.”31 The mysterium tremendum of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is introduced in this ambiguous way, without any intention of modifying the difficulties of Kierkegaard’s paradoxical discourse. Even his interpretation of Kierkegaard may therefore appear heretical to more traditional Kierkegaard scholars, but it can hardly be denied that this heresy is profoundly faithful to the letter of the text.

Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 20. (The Gift of Death, p. 7.) Cf. Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 46. (The Gift of Death, p. 27.) See also Tilman Beyrich, Ist Glauben wiederholbar?, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 2001, p. 137. 28 See Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 77. (The Gift of Death, p. 52.) 29 See Derrida, Donner la mort, pp. 73–5; p. 157. (The Gift of Death, pp. 49–51; p. 116.) 30 See Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 52. (The Gift of Death, p. 32.) 31 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 77. (The Gift of Death, p. 52.) 26 27

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III. The Secret and the Sacred Secrecy is a key word in Derrida’s relation to Kierkegaard, and it dominates his most extensive reading of Kierkegaard as well: the interpretation of Abraham’s sacrifice and silence in Fear and Trembling. Derrida focuses on the aporias of responsibility, on the dilemma of, on the one hand, being responsible in the public sphere, and hence being required to defend one’s actions with generally accepted arguments, and, on the other, being absolutely responsible before God, who sees in secret and gives no reasons for his judgment.32 When there is a conflict here, the person who acts solely upon the latter perspective will be totally irresponsible in the eyes of the public; he represents the treason of responsibility per se. That is what happens to Abraham. The person who acts solely upon the former perspective is transparent for the society; hence he represents no danger, but he lacks the courage to take his own responsibility. Hence, he is unable to respond as a single individual to the call for action, that is, he is not responsible in the qualified sense. In the case of a Sittlichkeit gone astray—as in Germany in the 1930s (and that discussion on the Holocaust and Akedah is continuously presupposed throughout the book)—he would be a willing henchman. Derrida therefore describes Abraham’s problem as follows: Abraham is thus at the same time the most moral and the most immoral, the most responsible and the most irresponsible of men, absolutely irresponsible because he is absolutely responsible, absolutely irresponsible in the face of men and his family, and in the face of the ethical, because he responds absolutely to absolute duty, disinterestedly and without hoping for a reward, without knowing why yet keeping it secret; answering to God and before God.33

Derrida acknowledges the morality of Abraham, since he accepts Kierkegaard’s argument of a singular call and a religious justification of the sacrifice. Such a justification belongs to what he earlier called “nonphilosophy,” however, since it would not be acceptable for philosophy, nor for ethics or politics, which have no space for ultimate secrets.34 The absolute duty introduces a conflict in terms of duty, though, since acting “out of duty” is insufficient in order to fulfill a duty towards God. Hence, Derrida sees this duty as belonging to the order of gift, an absolute gift: “This is the dimension that provides for a ‘gift of death’ which, beyond human responsibility, beyond the universal concept of duty, is a response to absolute duty.”35 Derrida’s analysis of Abraham’s situation follows the text of Johannes de silentio rather closely, though with a particular emphasis on his silence, secrecy, and exclusivity. He cannot share his knowledge with the others, not even the closest family members. They remain foreign to him in every sense; his secret is absolutely incommensurable to them. Hence, even when he speaks, he remains silent: “By speaking without lying, he responds without responding. This is a See Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 89. (The Gift of Death, p. 62.) Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 103. (The Gift of Death, p. 73.) 34 Cf. Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 91 (The Gift of Death, p. 64) and Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, p. 163 (Writing and Difference, p. 111). 35 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 91. (The Gift of Death, p. 64.) 32 33

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strange responsibility that consists neither of responding nor of not responding. Is one responsible for what one says in an unintelligible language, in the language of the other?”36 Given the amount of moral criticism of Abraham and Kierkegaard/Johannes de silentio over the last century, Derrida’s questioning of morality itself is a relief. He focuses on the essential questions of the text and accepts Abraham’s silence as an expression of irony, of saying something and yet not saying anything. He defines this irony as “meta-rhetorical,” since it is void of figures, metaphors, ellipses, and enigmas.37 Abraham does not know what is going to happen—and that is the reason for his silence. He cannot speak. And Derrida even absolves him of guilt in the face of the absolute other, even though he remains guilty in ethical respects: Without being so, then, he nevertheless feels absolved of his duty toward his family, toward the human species [le genre humain] and the generality of the ethical, absolved by the absolute of a unique duty that binds him to God the one. Absolute duty absolves him of every debt and releases him from every duty. Absolute ab-solution.38

There is a particular emphasis on otherness in Derrida’s reading, which is closely connected to the question of secrecy. Since everyone responds in secret and is ultimately responsible towards the other in an absolute duty, the simple concepts of alterity and singularity become just as decisive for the concept of duty as that of responsibility, Derrida contends. All these concepts which are basic for ethics, religion, and action suddenly become deeply disturbed through a principal reflection on Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac: As a result, the concepts of responsibility, of decision, or of duty, are condemned a priori to paradox, scandal, and aporia. Paradox, scandal, and aporia are themselves nothing other than sacrifice, the exposure of conceptual thinking to its limit, to its death and finitude. As soon as I enter into a relation with the other, with the gaze, look, request, love, command, or call of the other, I know that I can respond only by sacrificing ethics, that is to say by sacrificing whatever obliges me to also respond, in the same way, to all the others.39

Up to this point, Derrida’ reading is detailed and rather traditional. He remains close to the text and reflects further on the main points in Kierkegaard’s text. He addresses some key questions concerning sacrifice, silence, ethics, and duty, and underscores the aporetic and scandalous character of these questions in Fear and Trembling. Thus, he remains faithful to a methodological principle of grammatology: to firmly base all interpretations in the text, and thereby draw an ellipse of understanding around two focal points in that text. In the quoted passage, however, we may observe a gesture which introduces the second move, the drawing of a second ellipse, which

Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 105. (The Gift of Death, p. 74.) Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 109. (The Gift of Death, p. 77.) 38 Derrida, Donner la mort, pp. 103–4. (The Gift of Death, p. 73.) 39 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 98. (The Gift of Death, p. 69.) 36 37

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establishes an extended space of interpretation.40 The stepping stone is given with the concept of alterity, which is not only radicalized but also disseminated into a series of new contexts, which are rather different from Abraham’s exception. In order to “double” the text and draw a second ellipse, Derrida introduces the French shibboleth: tout autre est tout autre.41 The repetition of the expression tout autre does, on the one hand, radicalize the alterity (in the sense of das ganz Andere and wholly other) and, on the other hand, normalize the alterity by inscribing it upon any thinkable situation where you are in relation with anyone or anything else, be it your cat (!), your neighbor, the billions of poor people around the world, or God. His point is that the aporia of responsibility and of sacrifice enters into all these situations in a similar way as in Abraham, when he is torn between his duty towards his family and his duty towards God: “This formula [tout aute est tout autre] disturbs Kierkegaard’s discourse on one level while at the same time reinforcing its most extreme ramifications. It implies that God, as wholly other, is to be found everywhere there is something of the wholly other.”42 Derrida points out that there is no final solution to these situations of otherness, and hence every decision, every priority given, and every sacrifice falls back on the single individual: the single individual is therefore at the same time radically heteronomous, sub-jected to the call from the other, and radically autonomous in its responsibility and duty. It is not difficult to detect a trajectory from Luther through Kant and Kierkegaard to Derrida which underscores this radical heterogeneity in human responsibility. I would even speak of an influence in this case. In Derrida’s case, I would like to add, this heterogeneous alterity is at the same time an exemplary model for his ethics of interpretation: his strategy of interpretation is, on the one hand, very faithful to the original text and remains close to the letter and the spirit of Fear and Trembling—but, on the other hand, the interpretation is also very different from the original at some decisive points, and this is the caesura between the texts which I will follow more closely in the next section, in particular when it comes to the concepts of subjectivity and alterity. The faithfulness and the heresy seem to break up and fall apart at this breaking point (point de brisure). IV. Subjectivity and Alterity In the last chapter of Gift of Death, simply entitled “Tout autre est tout autre,” Derrida ponders upon the different variations of this expression. At first glance, it looks like a tautology. Read a bit differently, however, it becomes “the very proposition of the most irreducible heterology.”43 When these two readings are taken together in the hetero-tautological position, Derrida sees the definition of otherness according to

See Derrida’s essay “Éllipse,” in L’écriture et la difference, pp. 429–36 (Writing and Difference, pp. 295–300). 41 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 98; pp. 110–11. (The Gift of Death, p. 69; pp. 78–9.) 42 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 110. (The Gift of Death, p. 78.) 43 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 115. (The Gift of Death, p. 83.) 40

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Hegel’s speculative idealism within the horizon of absolute knowledge, hence “the law of speculation, and of speculation on every secret.”44 The separation of the tautology from the radical heterology, however, moves beyond the speculative horizon, and thus Derrida finds the definition of alterity both by Kierkegaard and Levinas. This is in fact what separates both of them from the Hegelian absolute knowledge, since they both try to separate clearly between the infinite otherness of God and the infinitely other as another human. Whereas Kierkegaard separates the religious from the ethical and sees the former as “higher” than the latter, this is what Levinas criticizes; he sees here a justification of the radical exception from ethics, for example, in Carl Schmitt’s political theology and the killing of the Jews during the Holocaust.45 Derrida retains that both of them are unable to draw a sharp limit between the religious and the ethical: Kierkegaard’s religiosity is deeply ethical, dealing with the question of responsibility as such, and Levinas’ ethics is already a religious one. Although they are different, they are bound to each other in the expression which separates them: tout autre est tout autre. Derrida concludes that the border between the ethical and the religious becomes “more than problematic” in both cases—and he takes this juxtaposition as a point of departure (i.e., a breaking point; point de rupture) for further deliberation on subjectivity and alterity, including the secret and sacred otherness inscribed upon the name of God as wholly other: “God is the name of the possibility I have of keeping a secret [la possibilité pour moi de garder un secret] that is visible from the interior but not from the exterior.”46 Derrida sees the origin of subjectivity in a call from the other, the other who as wholly other is beyond my power of definition.47 Hence, alterity has become written into the structure of subjectivity as such; that is, one cannot know oneself unless one can hear the call from the Other. Analyzing the difference between self and other as an interior distinction, however, is a critical undertaking, since the difference between alterity and subjectivity becomes less significant. Derrida levels not only the distinction between every other and the wholly other but also between oneself (as another) and God. Hence, rather critical distinctions seem to get lost when he introduces the question of God’s existence—based on the production of “invisible sense”: As soon as such a structure of conscience exists, of being-with-oneself, of speaking, that is to say of producing invisible sense, as soon as I have within me, thanks to the invisible word as such, a witness that others cannot see, and who is therefore at the same time other than me and more intimate with me than myself, as soon as I can have a secret relationship with myself and not tell everything, as soon as there is secrecy and secret witnessing within me, and for me, then there is what I call God, (there is) what I call God in me, (it happens that [il y a que]) I call myself God—a phrase that is difficult to distinguish from “God calls me,” for it is on such a condition that I can call myself or Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 116. (The Gift of Death, p. 83.) Cf. Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 143. (The Gift of Death, pp. 104–5.) See also Emmanuel Levinas, Noms Propres, Montpellier: Fata Morgana 1976, p. 113. 46 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 147. (The Gift of Death, p. 108.) 47 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 96. (The Gift of Death, pp. 67–8.) 44 45

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be called in secret. God is in me, he is the absolute “me” or “self,” he is that structure of invisible interiority that is called, in Kierkegaard’s sense, subjectivity.48

The reference to Kierkegaard in the last sentence is quite astonishing, however. The reference to God as absolute “self” or subjectivity “in Kierkegaard’s sense” is not exactly typical of Kierkegaard—except when he is deeply ironical or polemical (or both). The very point of Kierkegaard’s discourse on subjectivity and truth, in particular when related to God, is that the subject seeking truth in itself, notably as “absolute” me or self, will find itself tangled up in untruth.49 Given that Kierkegaard, whom Derrida counts as a witness of truth, witnesses against Derrida in his attempt to redefine God, what should we think of his more radical claim that as soon as there is secrecy, then “what I call God exists, (there is) what I call God in me, (it happens that) I call myself God….”? As a structural condition for speaking about God—and of self—in the first place, that is, the opening up of an interiority which is invisible from the outside, the observation of his secret of otherness is quite precise. But the distinction between God and self is a complex issue in Kierkegaard, and the conflation of this distinction in Hegel’s philosophy of religion combined with the construction of God in one’s own image is exactly the reason why he writes the following so polemically in The Sickness unto Death: As sinner, man is separated from God by the most chasmic qualitative abyss. In turn, of course, God is separated from man by the same chasmic qualitative abyss when he forgives sins. If by some kind of reverse adjustment the divine could be shifted over to the human, there is one way in which man could never become like God: in forgiving sins. At this point lies the most extreme concentration of offense, and this has been found necessary by the very doctrine that has taught the likeness between God and man. 50

In relation to the Hegelian theology of mediation, Kierkegaard sets forth the offense. Hence, a theory confessing that “I call myself God” will be condemned as heretical and separated from Kierkegaard’s with the most chasmic qualitative abyss. The fact that Derrida discusses God’s existence at all is still quite interesting, in particular since he is normally unwilling to discuss the existence of anything at all. We should therefore consider once more, and from a different angle, what it means when he writes that “what I call God exists, (there is) what I call God in me.” In the phenomenological faction of North American philosophy of religion over the last two decades, dominated by scholars like Mark C. Taylor, Richard Kearney, and John D. Caputo, there has in fact been a remarkable consensus based on the a priori assumption that God cannot be.51 They all refer to God as the Other, as Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 147. (The Gift of Death, p. 108.) Cf. SKS 7, 190–93 / CUP1, 207–10. I have previously discussed this problem in Autopsia, pp. 304–11. 50 SKS 11, 233 / SUD, 122. 51 Cf. Richard Kearney, God Who May Be, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2001; John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1987; John D. 48 49

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possibility beyond the impossible; they qualify God as Good beyond Goodness, and so on. Hence, they intend to leave the questions of onto-theology behind and finally move beyond the closed history of metaphysics. But the “closure” of this history turns out to be yet another illusion of postmodern philosophy which seems to belong to a rhetorical style rather than referring to a critical discussion of how the history of metaphysics still influences philosophical and religious discourse.52 It sometimes seems as if the mentioned scholars are more interested in omitting the wrong words than in questioning the conditions for speaking of God. The right words have already betrayed the speaker, however, since the expectance of the Other in Beyond and In Coming presuppose that there is a God—after all. Moreover, this Other is a very precise Other, confined by limits of goodness and weakness (passive and powerless) and conforming to a particular political ideal. He (or She) is, in short, a prior I, the I every philosopher with a good heart would like to be and/or could imagine to define a priori as a Good heavenly Father (or Mother). A similar problem adheres to Derrida’s definition, but is treated in a far more complex, and therefore more challenging, way. Two aspects of Derrida’s reflections have been remarkably absent in the American discourse: (i) the formalization of the problem, the abstract reflection on different possibilities and thus the destabilization of one’s own position,53 and (ii) the spacing of the discourse, which establishes an attempt to reflect upon the “third term” (triton genos) in philosophy; neither mythos nor logos, neither Being nor Non-being, etc.54 The third term eludes temporal definition and therefore opens up a space for thinking otherwise, even on that which is not graspable: God, totality, origin—and oneself. The strange thing about Derrida’s confession is that it may be read as the most heretical statement, identifying oneself with God in a speech act of blind hubris, but also as the most faithful confession, admitting the ultimate dependence on the

Caputo, More Radical Hermeneutics, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2000; and Mark C. Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1984. 52 Hence, Derrida is profoundly critical of all the scholars who take him to be a scholar of “postmodernity,” discussing philosophy after metaphysics, etc.: “Hence, I never associated the theme of deconstruction with the themes that were constantly coming up during the discussion, themes of ‘diagnosis,’ of ‘after’ or ‘post,’ of ‘death’ (death of philosophy, death of metaphysics, and so on), of ‘completing’ or of ‘surpassing’ (Überwindung or Schritt zurück), of the ‘end.’ One will find no trace of such vocabulary in any of my texts. This is not fortuitous, as you might well believe, and it is not without enormous consequence.” Jacques Derrida, Voyous: Deux essais sur la raison, Paris: Éditions Galilée 2003, pp. 206–7, note. (English translation: Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michel Naas, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2005, p. 174, note.) 53 Cf. Derrida, Donner la mort, pp. 116–17; p. 146. (The Gift of Death, p. 87; p. 108.) See also Jacques Derrida, Sauf le nom, Paris: Éditions Galilée 1993, pp. 76–80; p. 96. (On the Name, ed. by Thomas Dutoit, trans. by David Wood, John P. Leavey, Jr., and Ian McLeod, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995, pp. 66–8; p. 76.) 54 Cf. Jacques Derrida, Khora, Paris: Éditions Galilée 1993, pp. 19–38. (On the Name, pp. 91–100.)

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other for the existence of a self, for its calling and responsivity.55 Given the context it is written into, I suspect that Derrida deliberately professes both, the heresy and the unconditional faith. But given that it is written in dependence on Kierkegaard, it will in any case be read as a supplement to the other text he refers to. If we therefore return to the description of God who is at the same time other than me and more intimate with me than myself and presuppose subjectivity in Kierkegaard’s sense, this otherness opens a “chasmic qualitative abyss” within the self, disparate from itself and devoid of any firm ground. The self not only abandoned by God, but abandoned even by itself; it is searching for identity, for borders and necessity; for the opportunity of being itself, submitted to the other. Read from this point of view, The Gift of Death is also a text about limits, about how to draw decisive limits, or rather, how to trace the limits which are already there. This is a critical and confessional task of all the Humanities, their “profession of faith,” as Derrida defines it.56 The problem involved in such discussions is evident: even when priority is given to the other, as in Levinas’ philosophy, the other is constructed or “invented” by the one who defines, through negation and differentiation, even when we admit that we do not and cannot fully understand the other in his or her otherness. The relationship between oneself and the other is most convenient when it is regulated by a calculable economy, with restrictions and mutual obligations, with duties, justice, and gestures of politeness.57 Thus symmetry or a stable asymmetry may be established as basis for the relationship—and alterity has been reduced to the logic of the Same, to the expectation that every other is similar to myself and is constructed and reconstructed “in my similitude.” In Derrida, the discussion on alterity and subjectivity is kept in suspense. But as we have observed here, this suspense without equilibrium is also the topos of a crisis in Derrida’s philosophy—a crisis at times dominated by the empty “production” of selves and others and at times by the collapse and leveling of the difference as such, between alterity and subjectivity. In order to resist this leveling of alterity, there ought to be presupposed a space for otherness prior to the definition, situated in the very act of defining. As long as this commandment is observed, as the first commandment of deconstruction, the discourse on self and other will remain open for the possibility of an interruption, for a revolt, interference or breakdown of discourse, properly opening the gap of alterity, which is a permanent occasion for offense. Should that alterity be considered the ultimate condition for subjectivity? Moreover, do we here Cf. the expression “oblique offering,” which Derrida explicitly relates to Kierkegaard and “A First and Last Declaration” in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, where Kierkegaard acknowledges that he is the author “as people would like to call it” of… Derrida comments: “The allusive reference to Kierkegaard is very important to me here, because it names the great paradoxical thinker of the imitation of Jesus Christ (or of Socrates)—of the Passion, of attestation, and of the secret.” See Derrida, On the Name, p. 139 (the note is the result of a discussion between Derrida and the translator and is missing in the French original). 56 Jacques Derrida, L’université sans condition, Paris: Galilée 2001, p. 78. (English translation: “The Future of the Profession; or, The University Without Condition” in Without Alibi, ed. and trans. by Peggy Kamuf, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2002, p. 236.) 57 Cf. Derrida, Donner la mort, pp. 98–9. (The Gift of Death, p. 69.) 55

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see the contours of an ultimate condition for philosophical discourse, for judgment, for the Law, for ethics, politics, and religion? The question remains, in Kierkegaard and Derrida, as an interrogation of God. V. Structural Convergences on Secrecy and Resistance to Hegel Through Hegel’s philosophy, a general economy of the sacrifice, with reference to the sacrifice of Isaac, is inscribed into the history of Christianity, Derrida claims.58 This sacrifice is intimately connected to the speculative movement of Aufhebung. Derrida explicitly refers to the book called Glas, which revolves around the question of Aufhebung and includes at least three important references to Kierkegaard.59 All three are concerned with the question of Aufhebung in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. The first discusses the concept as such and deliberates ironically on the meaning of the Danish word ophæve which does not have the same meaning as the German word Aufhebung, and hence the entire speculative discourse ends up with nonsense.60 The second quotation is concerned with the lack of double-reflection in Hegel, whereas the third makes an ironical point about the lack of irony and Socratic self-knowledge in Hegelian philosophy.61 The quotations clearly show that both Kierkegaard and Derrida are occupied with Hegel: Kierkegaard as an unappeasable critic of the Danish Hegelians and Derrida as a more remote and elegant reader of Hegel, looking for strategies to escape the totalizing tendency of his philosophy. Both thinkers are, however, deeply influenced by Hegel, and the question of how they relate to his thought is therefore a complex issue. In this section I will turn to one of Kierkegaard’s major books, namely, The Sickness unto Death, in order to show his systematic but critical dependence on Hegel, and then turn to Derrida’s discussion of Hegel and death in Margins of Philosophy. We are perhaps speaking of “convergences and affinities” rather than direct influence in this case, but I think that the parallels show a deeper structural and thematic similarity between Kierkegaard and Derrida than the reference to scattered quotations is able to demonstrate. In the introductory passage A.A in The Sickness unto Death, a human being is defined as follows: A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation, but is the relation’s relating itself to itself.62

Kierkegaard applies the terms “spirit” and “self” in a way which strongly reminds of Hegel, and he seems deliberately to have chosen a Hegelian terminology and framework for his analysis of despair. The self is further defined as a synthesis of Cf. Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 130. (The Gift the Death, p. 94.) Ibid. 60 See Derrida, Glas, pp. 224–5. (Glas, Lincoln 1986, p. 200.) 61 Cf. Derrida, Glas, pp. 259–60 (Glas, Lincoln 1986, pp. 232–3.) 62 SKS 11, 129 / SUD, 13. 58 59

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finitude and infinitude, temporality and eternity, freedom and necessity. So far, Kierkegaard’s construction of the self is compatible with Hegelian dialectics. In the third section of chapter A.A, however, he infers the following distinction: “Such a relation that relates itself to itself, a self, must either have posited itself or have been posited by another.“63 According to my reading, the disjunction of this short third section marks the caesura of the whole passage, enabling Kierkegaard to redouble the structure of the self on the double assumption that the self is posited by another but nevertheless ought to be posited by the self relating to itself. More precisely, this disjunction operates as the Derridean dissension of self-consciousness, “a cleavage and torment interior to meaning in general, interior to logos in general, a division within the very act of sentire.”64 Hence, in relating to itself the self always implicitly relates to the other, but the decisive question is whether the self is conscious of its own inability to posit itself, hence of its dependence on God and of death. Both influence self-consciousness, either consciously or unconsciously, and draw the power of definition (that is, of positing the self) away from the self. Its interior cleavage and torment is a symptom of despair, of the sickness unto death. Kierkegaard has thus defined the problem of the self as an aporia experienced as a double despair: in despair to will to be oneself and in despair not to will to be oneself. The latter refers to the self relating to itself, the former to the self relating to the other in this self-relationship. I have argued that these two forms of despair are analyzed as equally original (gleichursprünglich) in the self.65 Thus, when analyzed under the perspective of despair, the double structure of the self comes to the fore.66 My analysis of the thanatology of despair is organized according to this heterogenic structure: on the one hand, Kierkegaard goes along with Hegel and accepts a Hegelian organization of the self as far as the self relates primarily to itself. On the other hand, he insists on a misrelation in this relationship and maintains that the misrelation is reflected infinitely into the relationship to the other.67 Hence, the whole dialectic is subverted by his insistence on a contradiction of the will which is irresolvable, of despairingly willing and not willing to be oneself. Not even the insight into this problem could resolve it speculatively; it would rather intensify the experience of a loss, the loss of oneself (or being lost without hope and without even the name of God). Kierkegaard’s only alternative is given beyond this dialectic, when the self opens up to a radical possibility beyond the aporia of despair. It is a radical possibility beyond subjective control and calculation: that for God everything is possible. Or, as Kierkegaard redefines God’s name in the form of a chiasmus: “God is this, that everything is possible, or that everything is possible, is God.”68 This excess of possibility is only conceivable as an absolute gift, hence SKS 11, 129 / SUD, 13 (emphasis added). Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, p. 62. (Writing and Difference, pp. 38–9; translation modified.) 65 See Marius Timmann Mjaaland, “X. Alterität und Textur in Kierkegaards Krankheit zum Tode,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, no. 1, 2005, pp. 58–80. 66 Cf. Mjaaland, Autopsia, pp. 176–9. 67 Cf. Ibid., p. 184. 68 SKS 11, 156 / SUD, 39. 63 64

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also absolutely impossible, beyond the dialectic of self-consciousness. The structure of self is thus broken up and reconstructed or deconstructed around a breaking point (point de rupture) of infinite otherness. In Part Two of the book, Kierkegaard analyzes despair from a theological point of view. This is not, however, in order to present a solution to the problem discussed in Part One. On the contrary, the problem becomes even more scandalous when theological distinctions are conflated in a speculative theology. Hence, the philosophical critique of theology is just as sharp as the diagnosis of philosophical rationality. The paradox again plays a significant role in order to oppose the Hegelian mediation of divine and human spirit in the concept of the “God-man.” Kierkegaard once more insists on the absolute difference between God and man—and argues that God’s absolute alterity (separated from the self by “the most chasmic qualitative abyss”) is a necessary condition for forgiveness and reconciliation, the only way of (mutual) recognition in dependence on the other which may overcome the sickness unto death. Kierkegaard is, in fact, one of the first philosophers to undertake a consistent and original criticism of Hegel’s system, of its closure and of the method of sublation (Aufhebung). He breaks up the Hegelian system from within, although he remains dependent on Hegel in his most significant texts. Kierkegaard’s critique has therefore become paradigmatic, and was well known in post-war France through Heidegger, Sartre, and Hyppolite. Therefore, it is not so astonishing after all that Derrida frequently applies strategies which are clearly converging with Kierkegaard’s without explicitly referring to him. Occasionally he refers to him in general terms, for example, when speaking of “absolute subjectivity” in the rather unorthodox sense “that Kierkegaard gave to existence and to all that resists the concept or frustrates the system, especially the Hegelian dialectic,”69 but such references are more commonly silenced—they remain secret. When he does refer to Kierkegaard, however, the point of view is so close to his own that he could just as well have referred to an alter ego or a pseudonym.70 In the article “The Pit and the Pyramid” in Margins of Philosophy, Derrida applies exactly the same strategy as Kierkegaard in his reading of Hegel: he reads some passages of Hegel’s Phenomenology and the Encyclopedia in detail, looking for “all that resists the concept and frustrates the system.” He focuses on Hegel’s theory of the sign, which is located in the heart of his psychology.71 Hegel uses the pyramid as a metaphor for the sign. The pyramid is also a sign for the tomb, however, containing a dead body. Derrida claims that Hegel represents a philosophy of presence where the detours and plural meanings of dead writing have been overlooked. Hegel himself Derrida, Passions, pp. 57–8. (“Passions,” in On the Name, p. 24.) Cf., for example, Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, pp. 162–3. (Writing and Difference, p. 110.) See also, Derrida, Passions, pp. 21–8; and Khora, pp. 57ff. (“Passions,” in On the Name, pp. 8–10; and “Khora,” in On the Name, pp. 108ff.) 71 See G.W.F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, ed. by Friedrich Hogemann and Walter Jaeschke, Hamburg: Meiner 1980 (vol. 20 in G.W.F. Hegel, Gesammelte Werke, ed. by the Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Hamburg: Meiner 1968–), see pp. 445–58 (§§ 451–8). The formation of the sign and of the concept are described in the two sections called “Die Erinnerung” and “Die Einbildungskraft.” 69 70

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has defined death as “a pit of the unconscious,” however, and Derrida identifies the sign for death (the pyramid) as such a dark pit in Hegel’s text, a sign which is beyond human control. Including this concept of death in a theory of the sign therefore problematizes (a) the theory of interpretation and conceptualization and (b) the concept of self as self-consciousness.72 Derrida sees death as a concept which is indefinable, which eschews the control of consciousness, but nevertheless remains decisive for the definition of a self.73 Hence, he opens up the “space” of writing inside Hegel’s system in two respects: the concept of self is inflicted by the alterity of death, and the concept of the sign (and of the Concept) is opened up to deferral, to different interpretations in time.74 Both are oppositional strategies to the Hegelian logic of Aufhebung: due to the dialectical structure of his thought, in a perpetual progress through positions and negations, it is difficult to offer a critique of Hegel without getting consumed by the totality and closure of the system. This is an argument Derrida often turns against philosophers who believe that they are in a “post-metaphysical” period, both phenomenologists, structuralists, positivists and analytical philosophers.75 It is, therefore, also typical for his deconstruction of traditional metaphysics and onto-theology: he claims that the attempt to escape metaphysics by declaring its death and avoiding metaphysical notions is simply a subtler way of continuing the history of metaphysics without even knowing it. Hence, his critique aims instead at breaking up texts from inside, pointing out inconsistencies and contradictions, giving concessions to the original text, but nevertheless showing how this text may be read otherwise. Between the two texts—in this case Hegel’s and Derrida’s—there remains an irreducible space of interpretation, which is the open space of writing as trace.76 The work of interpretation thus takes place on the “passageway of deferred reciprocity between reading and writing.”77 Derrida has occasionally been accused of inaccurate interpretation, but his reading of Hegel betrays a very detailed, although critical, exegesis of the text. And that is in my opinion typical of Derrida’s approach, even when there is a “deconstruction” at work. Such a detailed exegesis of the text Cf. Derrida, Marges de la philosophie, p. 87. (Margins of Philosophy, p. 75.) See also Hegel, Enzyklopädie, p. 452. 73 Cf. SKS 5, 461–3 / TD, 93–5. See also Mjaaland, “The Autopsy of One Still Living,” in Prefaces and Writing Sampler and Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 2006 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vols. 9–10), pp. 359–86. 74 For a more detailed analysis, see Mjaaland, Autopsia, pp. 30–7. 75 Cf., for example, Derrida’s argument against Foucault in “Cogito et l’histoire de la folie” and Levinas in “Violence et métaphysique,” in his L’écriture et la difference, pp. 51–97; pp. 117–28 (Writing and Difference, pp. 31–63; pp. 79–153); against Benveniste in “Supplement de la coupole,” and Austin in “Signature événement contexte,” in his Marges de la philosophie, pp. 175–206; pp. 307–30 (Margins of Philosophy, pp. 175–206; pp. 307–30). 76 See Derrida, Marges de la philosophie, pp. 123–4. (Margins of Philosophy, pp. 104–5.) 77 This is in fact a redefinition of “God” in an early text of Derrida: “Is not that which is called God, that which imprints every human course and recourse with its secondarity, the passageway of deferred reciprocity between reading and writing?” See Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, pp. 22–3. (Writing and Difference, p. 11.) 72

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according to its grammar, rhetoric, and logic in order to read it otherwise, is what I see as the rigor of deconstruction.78 The oppositional strategy called deconstruction is given a rather extensive meaning when applied to the entire history of philosophy, as a resistance to and ambush attack on metaphysics and onto-theology in all its forms. But in the more rigorous and humble sense of a reading strategy, which is subjective in the sense of passionate, but still argues philosophically and at a very general level, I see a clear convergence between Derrida and Kierkegaard.79 Derrida has confessed it several times, and his confession is connected to the secrecy of subjectivity, which has withdrawn from phenomenology and ontology in order to seek truth in a different way, in disguise and always under a different pseudonym, even when he speaks in his “own” name, as an I.80 The opposition to Hegel is hardly possible without such an I which has withdrawn from exteriority, which keeps a secret in the interior and wakes over it: And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to God if you wish, is a secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that a secret belongs, that it is proper to or belongs to some “one,” or to some other who remains someone? It is perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy, namely, that is not a matter of knowing and that it is there for no-one.…Such is the Unheimlichkeit of the Geheimnis, and we need to systematically question the reach of this concept as it functions…beyond an axiomatic of the self or the chez soi as ego cogito, as consciousness or representative intentionality, for example, and in an exemplary fashion in Freud and Heidegger.…The question of the self: “who am I?” not in the sense of “who am I” but “who is this ‘I’” that can say “who”? What is the “I,” and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the “I” trembles in secret?81

The secrecy of subjectivity thus opens up for difference, for non-identity, and spatial or temporal possibilities of plurality, even in one and the same person, or in the name. There is an intimate connection between this secret subjectivity and writing. It “is” only in so far as it is written.82 In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard explores the psychology and the theology of this hidden I: a self which is split in and by itself, in its inner connection with the other. The criticism of Hegel concerns the alleged identity of the secret self with the philosophical self of self-consciousness.83 The hidden self is exactly what philosophy according to Kierkegaard is unable to penetrate properly, since it evades the positing self. The combination of such misrelations between representations of Cf. Mjaaland, Autopsia, pp. 42–3. See Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, p. 163. (Writing and Difference, p. 111.) Cf. also SKS 7, 573 / CUP1, 629–30. 80 See Derrida, Passions, pp. 21–8. (“Passions,” in On the Name, pp. 8–10.) See also John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1997, p. 207. 81 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 127. (The Gift of Death, p. 92.) 82 Cf. Derrida, Passions, pp. 57–8. (“Passions,” in On the Name, pp. 24–5.) 83 Cf. SKS 11, 158–9 / SUD, 43–4. 78 79

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the self and the darkness of the interior I is called despair and analyzed according to a contradiction of the will—and always in its dependence on another, on God as the power which originally has posited the self and thereby left a trace in secret.84 That is the reason why Kierkegaard succeeds in resisting the concept as com-prehension of the self and demonstrates the auto-matism of the system in its self-centeredness. And—converging in style as well as in strategy—Derrida, through detailed exegesis, shows the inconsistency between theory and practice in Hegel’s own text: the structure of the sign is said to transform death into life and interiority, but it thereby contains something which remains opaque and can never be made present or re-presented (that is, death).85 It remains absent, even in the re-presentation, and this secret hidden in the text reveals itself as the secret of the self: its inability to control the meaning of a text by way of intentions. Derrida’s own reading shows that the deferral of the text frustrates the totality of the system and in a certain sense liberates the subject, the self and the other from the automatism and the possible danger of (conceptual and political) totalitarianism inherent to systematic closure. VI. Absolute Absolution In the later period of his authorship, Derrida reveals a growing interest in the ethical, political, and religious aspects of deconstruction. Not only The Gift of Death but also other texts on the gift, on terror and rogue states, and on the mystical foundation of authority focus on the difficulties of decision, and on situations of undecidability similar to the one Abraham experiences when faced with the conflicting demands of obligation to unquestionable authority and absolute responsibility: “In both general and abstract terms, the absoluteness of duty, of responsibility, and of obligation certainly demands that one transgress ethical duty, although in betraying it one belongs to it and at the same time recognizes it. The contradiction and the paradox must be endured in the instant itself.”86 The transgression thus mentioned is important in order to understand Derrida’s thought on ethics and responsibility, on religion, on decision and interpretation, on rationality as such. It is an instant of transgression which surpasses the law of reason, and the very distinction between reason and its opposite, for example, madness. Derrida repeatedly refers to Kierkegaard when he describes that movement of transgression, to a sentence which he quotes by heart: “the instant of decision is madness,” Kierkegaard says elsewhere. The paradox cannot be grasped in time and through mediation, that is to say in language and through reason. Like the gift and “the gift of death,” it remains irreducible to presence or to presentation, it demands a temporality of the instant without ever constituting a present.87

Cf. SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 14. SKS 11, 182–5 / SUD, 68–71. Cf. Derrida, Marges de la philosophie, pp. 124–7. (Margins of Philosophy, pp. 105–8.) 86 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 95. (The Gift of Death, p. 66.) 87 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 94. (The Gift of Death, p. 66.) 84 85

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The quotation is taken from Philosophical Fragments and is quoted in at least two other places: introducing the essay on “Cogito and the History of Madness” and with reference to the undecidability of the law in Force de loi.88 This movement beyond reason and beyond decision in order to reflect on their conditions of possibility is in fact a transcendental gesture, similar to the transcendental deduction of the I in the Critique of Pure Reason and the discovery of the ego through the cogito in Descartes’ Meditations and the Discourse on Method. They do, however, display the impossibility of the subject to discover and to decide the conditions of its own existence and the final reasons and the ultimate authority for its own decisions. Hence, Derrida confesses in the discussion of Foucault on Descartes’ cogito: “I philosophize only in terror, but in the confessed terror of being mad.”89 One cannot protect oneself against the possibility of being mad by confining the insane in the asylum or drawing a sharp rational distinction between reason and madness. The only alternative is to recognize the distinction everywhere and in each situation. The original undecidability repeats itself in every situation of action and thought, including political and ethical decisions. While remaining in the discourse on justice, on authority, or on good and evil, the movement beyond the discourse in the moment of decision reveals the impossibility of establishing general rules without exception. The general ethical rule is thus inhuman without the suspension of the ethical. The suspension is necessary in order to remain awake, in order to question the mechanical movements of thought and the most common mechanisms of politics as well as philosophy. This is also the genuine originality of Cartesian doubt: the questioning of the conditions for thought. But Derrida repeatedly points out that in order to understand the conditions of subjectivity, including the secrets of the self, it is necessary to move “beyond an axiomatic of the self or the chez soi as ego cogito, as consciousness or representative intentionality.”90 When it comes to the law of sacrifice and the mystical authority of justice, it inevitably transforms the experience of responsibility into one of guilt: I have never been and never will be up to the level of this infinite goodness nor up to the immensity of the gift, the frameless immensity which must in general define (in-define) a gift as such. This guilt is originary, like original sin.91

The link between the original responsibility and sin is the basic point of discussion in Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death and the despair he analyzes originates in the inability to move beyond these impossible contradictions, in order to rest “transparently in the power that established” the self (the formula for faith).92 He further insists that this possibility is more basic to subjectivity and responsibility See SKS 4, 255 / PF, 52. See also Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, p. 51 (Writing and Difference, p. 31) and Jacques Derrida, Force de loi, Paris: Galilée 1994, p. 58. 89 See Derrida, L’écriture et la difference, p. 96. (Writing and Difference, p. 62; translation modified): “Je ne philosophe que dans la terreur, mais la terreur avouée, d’être fou.” 90 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 127. (The Gift of Death, p. 92.) 91 Derrida, Donner la mort, p. 77. (The Gift of Death, p. 52.) 92 SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 14. SKS 11, 242ff. / SUD, 131ff. 88

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than the cogito: it is the option of moving beyond the “chasmic qualitative abyss” within the self—and in that movement to re-confirm and reconcile its validity in an act of forgiveness. Hospitality and the gift of forgiveness are topics which gain importance towards the very end of Derrida’s authorship, including the complex relations of justice, ethics, politics—and religion. In the second session of a seminar on “Hospitality,” printed in Acts of Religion, Derrida discusses the problem of asking for forgiveness even for one’s Being-there (être-la) and concludes that no one is entitled to forgive unless he is able to become a subject, not as subjectum or substantia in the classical sense, but as a subjection to the law that is above him: “this is indeed submission, subjection, sub-jection of one who is who he is only insofar as he asks for the forgiveness of the other.”93 Derrida takes this original grounding or constitution of the subject back to a “cogito” even prior to the Cartesian cogito: “as soon as I say I, even in solitude, as soon as I say ego cogito, I am in the process of asking for forgiveness or being forgiven, at least if the experience lasts for more than an instant and temporalizes itself.”94 What may seem surprising is that Derrida ascribes an ontological significance to such an “event” of forgiveness. Quoting an early text of Levinas, he discusses how this ontological event of everything that is being, such as “being forgiven” or “being there,” receives its ontological qualification by breaking with traditional ontology, inscribing the “I” in a leap into a temporalized structure where the self is redefined by its relation to the other.95 Formulating this being temporally as “beingthere” interrupts and redefines the task of ontology. Supposed God is there, as Derrida does when reflecting upon forgiveness, we are still facing the problem of defining the limits between oneself and the other. In the secularized West, at least in Europe, we may probably presuppose—with Kierkegaard and with Derrida—that the “I” speaking is already abandoned. But this destiny also carries the seed of new possibilities: If forgiveness can be asked for by me but granted only by the other, then God, the God of mercy, is the name of he who alone can forgive, in the name of whom alone forgiveness can be granted, and who can always abandon me, but also—and this is the equivocal beauty of this word abandonment—the only one to whom I can abandon myself, to the forgiveness of whom I can abandon myself.96

93 Jacques Derrida, “Hospitality” trans. by Gil Anidjar (translated version of earlier unpublished lecture notes) in Acts of Religion, ed. by Gil Anidjar, p. 388. 94 Derrida, “Hospitality,” p. 391. 95 “Reaching the other is not something justified by itself; it is not a matter of shaking me out of my boredom. It is, on the ontological level, the event of the most radical breakup of the very categories of the ego, for it is for me to somewhere else than my self; it is to be pardoned, not to be a definite existence.” Derrida quoting Emmanuel Levinas from De l’existence à l’existant, Paris: Vrin 1990, p. 144 (emphasis added) in his “Hospitality,” p. 391. 96 Derrida, “Hospitality,” p. 389.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Derrida’s Corpus L’écriture et la différence, Paris: Seuil 1967, p. 51; p. 138  ; p. 143; pp. 161–5. (English translation: Writing and Difference, trans. by Alan Bass, London: Routledge 1978, p. 31; p. 93; p. 96 (p. 314, note 27); pp. 109–12.) Glas, Paris: Galilée 1974, pp. 224–5; pp. 258–9. (English translation: Glas, trans. by John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press 1986, p. 200; pp. 232–3.) Force de loi, Paris: Galilée 1994, p. 58. (English translation: “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority,’ ” trans. by Mary Quaintance in Derrida’s Acts of Religion, ed. by Gil Anidjar, New York: Routledge 2002, pp. 230–98, see p. 255.) Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas, Paris: Galilée 1997, p. 24; pp. 166–7; p. 209. (English translation: Adieu to Emmanuel Lévinas, trans. by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Nass, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2007, p. 11; p. 94; p. 152, note 135.) Donner la mort, Paris: Galilée 1999. (English translation: The Gift of Death & Literature in Secret, trans. by David Willis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2007.) Ferraris, Maurizio and Jacques Derrida, Il gusto del segreto, Rome and Bari: Laterza 1997, p. 7; pp. 36–7; pp. 51–2 (English translation: A Taste for the Secret, trans. by Giacomo Donis, Cambridge: Polity Press 2001, p. 6; p. 40; pp. 57–8.) “Epoché and Faith: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” by John D. Caputo, Kevin Hart, and Yvonne Sherwood, transcribed by Brooke Cameron and Kevin Hart, in Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments, ed. by Yvonne Sherwood and Kevin Hart, New York and London: Routledge 2005, p. 35; p. 36; p. 39. II. Sources of Derrida’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Bataille, Georges, L’Expérience intérieure, Paris: Gallimard 1943, p. 29; p. 72; p. 170, note. Blanchot, Maurice, Faux Pas, Paris: Gallimard 1943, p. 10; p. 21; pp. 27–33. — La Part du feu, Paris: Gallimard 1949, p. 11; p. 65; p. 241. — L’espace littéraire, Paris: Gallimard 1955, p. 57; p. 103; p. 123; p. 141. — L’Entretiens Infini, Paris: Gallimard 1969, pp. 3–4; pp. 211–12; p. 217. — L’Ecriture du désastre, Paris: Gallimard 1980, p. 185. Heidegger, Martin, Sein und Zeit, Halle: Niemeyer 1927, pp. 175–96, see also p. 190, note 1; p. 235, note 1; and p. 338, note 1.

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Levinas, Emmanuel, Totalité et Infini. Essai sur l’extériorité, The Hague: Nijhoff 1961, p. 10; p. 282. — Dieu, la mort et le temps, Paris: Grasset 1993, p. 9; p. 224; p. 247. — Altérité et Transcendance, Montpellier: Fata Morgana 1995, p. 72. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Gallimard 1945, p. 8; p. 100. — Sens et non-sens, Paris: Nagel 1948, pp. 127–8; p. 151; p. 158; p. 359. — Éloge de la philosophie et autres essais, Paris: Gallimard 1960, p. 14. — Signes, Paris: Gallimard 1960, p. 192. — Le visible et l’invisible, Paris: Gallimard 1964, p. 234. Sartre, Jean-Paul, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, Paris: Gallimard 1943 (Bibliothèque des Idées), pp. 58–84; pp. 94–111; pp. 115–49; pp. 150–74; pp. 291–300; pp. 508–16; pp. 529–60; pp. 639–42; pp. 643–63; pp. 669–70; pp. 720–2. — L’existentialisme est un humanisme, Paris: Nagel 1946, pp. 27–33. — “Un nouveau mystique,” in his Situations I, Paris: Gallimard 1947, pp. 143–88, see pp. 154–5; pp. 162–3; pp. 168ff. — “Questions de Methode,” in Critique de la raison dialectique, vol. 1, Théorie des ensembles pratiques, Paris: Gallimard 1960, pp. 13–111, see pp. 15–32. — “Kierkegaard: L’universal Singulier,” in Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’Unesco à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, Paris: Gallimard 1966, pp. 20–63. Wahl, Jean, Études kierkegaardiens (Suivi d’extraits du Journal de Kierkegaard, 1834–1839 et 1849–1854), Paris: Aubier 1938. III. Secondary Literature on Derrida’s Relation to Kierkegaard Bennington, Geoffrey and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida: Derridabase & Circonfession, Paris: Seuil 1991, p. 328. Beyrich, Tilman, Ist Glauben wiederholbar? Derrida liest Kierkegaard, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 2001 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 6). Bosch, Hans van den, Een apologie van het onmogelijke. Een kritische analyse van Mark C. Taylors a/theologie aan de hand van Jacques Derrida en John D. Caputo, Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum 2002. Bridges, Thomas, “Derrida, Kierkegaard, and the Orders of Speech,” Philosophy Today, vol. 32, 1988, pp. 95–109. Butin, Gitte, “Abraham—Knight of Faith or Counterfeit? Abraham Figures in Kierkegaard, Derrida, and Kafka,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 21, 2000, pp. 19–35. Caputo, John D., “Instants, Secrets, and Singularities. Dealing Death in Kierkegaard and Derrida,” in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, ed. by Martin J. Matuštík and Merold Westphal, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 1995, pp. 216–38. — The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 1997.

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— “Looking the Impossible in the Eye. Kierkegaard, Derrida, and the Repetition of Religion,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2002, pp. 1–25. — “Either/Or, Undecidability, and Two Concepts of Irony. Kierkegaard and Derrida,” in The New Kierkegaard, ed. by Elsebet Jegstrup, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2004, pp. 14–41. Collins, Guy, “Thinking the Impossible: Derrida and the Divine,” Literature & Theology, vol. 14, 2000, pp. 313–34, see especially pp. 319–22. Demirhan, Ahmet (ed.), Kierkegaard ve Din: Jacques Derrida, Søren Kierkegaard, Emmanuel Levinas, John Milbank, Dorota Golwacka, Hent de Vries [Kierkegaard and Religion: Jacques Derrida, Søren Kierkegaard, Emmanuel Levinas, John Milbank, Dorota Golwacka, Hent de Vries], Istanbul: Gelenek Publications 2003. Deuser, Hermann, “ ‘Und hier hast du übrigens einen Widder’: Genesis 22 in aufgeklärter Distanz und religionsphilosophischer Metakritik,” in Opfere Deinen Sohn! Das Isaak-Opfer im Judentum, Christentum und Islam, ed. by Bernhard Greiner et al., Tübingen: Francke Verlag 2007, pp. 1–17. Dooley, Mark, “Murder on Moriah. A Paradoxical Representation,” Philosophy Today, vol. 39, 1995, pp. 67–82. — “Playing on the Pyramid. Resituating the ‘Self’ in Kierkegaard and Derrida,” Imprimatur (University of Luton), vol. 1, nos. 2–3, 1996, pp. 151–61. — “The Politics of Exodus: Derrida, Kierkegaard, and Levinas on ‘Hospitality,’ ” in Works of Love, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1999 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 16), pp. 167–92. — “Kierkegaard and Derrida. Between Totality and Infinity,” in The New Kierkegaard, ed. by Elsebet Jegstrup, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2004, pp. 199–213. Goicoechea, David, “The Moment of Responsibility (Derrida and Kierkegaard),” Philosophy Today, vol. 43, 1999, pp. 211–25. Guerrero, Luis Martínez, “Derrida deconstruye Temor y temblor,” Boletín Informativo de la Sociedad Iberoamericana de Estudios Kierkegaardianos, no. 9, 2001. — “Kierkegaard—Derrida. El silencio como contrapunto de la filosofía,” Revista de Filosofía (Mexico), vol. 37, no. 113, 2005, pp. 101–19. — “El silencio como contrapunto de la ética. Kierkegaard—Derrida,” in Kierkegaard and Great Philosophers, ed. by Roman Králik et al., Šaľa: Sociedad Iberoamericana de Estudios Kierkegaardianos 2007 (Acta Kierkegaardiana, vol. 2), pp. 196–212. Itzkowitz, Kenneth Jay, Economy and Difference (Plato, Kierkegaard, Bataille, Derrida, Heidegger), Ph.D. Thesis, State University of New York, Stony Brook 1987. — “A Deadly Gift. To Derrida, from Kierkegaard and Bataille,” in Extreme Beauty: Aesthetics, Politics, Death, ed. by J.E. Swearingen et al., New York and London: Continuum 2002, pp. 194–207. Jegstrup, Elsebet, “Kierkegaard and Deconstruction. Is Kierkegaard inter alia Anywhere in Derrida’s ‘The Gift of Death,’ ” Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter, no. 41, 2001, pp. 19–23.

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Kawakami, Shoushuu, “実存から他者へ—レヴィナス、デリダのキルケゴ ール読解” [From Existence to the Other—Kierkegaard Read by Levinas and Derrida], 哲学･思想論集 [Studies in Philosophy (University of Tsukuba)], vol. 21, 2001, pp. 1–17. Kulak, Avron, “Derrida and Kierkegaard Thinking the Fall,” The European Legacy, vol. 6, 2001, pp. 305–18. — “Kierkegaard, Derrida, and the Context of Context(s),” Philosophy & Theology, 17, nos. 1–2, 2006, pp. 133–55. Llewelyn, John, “Rester. (Af og fra Fragmenter af Kierkegaard i ‘Glas’),” K&K, vol. 99, 2005, pp. 107–31. — Margins of Religion: Between Kierkegaard and Derrida, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2009. Mjaaland, Marius Timmann, Autopsi: Døden og Synet på Selvet, Oslo: UniPub 2005. — “En tenker krysser ditt spor,” in Tänkarens Mångfald. Nutida perspektiv på Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by Jan Holmgård, Lone Koldtoft, and Jon Stewart, Göteborg: Makadam förlag 2005, pp. 24–38. — “X. Alterität und Textur in Kierkegaards Krankheit zum Tode” in Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, no. 1, 2005, pp. 58–80. — “The Autopsy of One Still Living. On Death: Kierkegaard vs. Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida,” in Prefaces and Writing Sampler and Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 2006 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vols. 9–10), pp. 359–86. — “Funderinger over Abrahams offer: Fundamentalisme, mysterium og teologisk suspensjon i Kierkegaards Frygt og Bæven,” Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift, no. 2, 2007, pp. 116–43. — Autopsia: Self, Death and God after Kierkegaard and Derrida, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 2008 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 17). — “Supposed God Is There: Derrida Between Alterity and Subjectivity,” in Phenomenology and Religion: New Frontiers, ed. by Jonna Bornemark and Hans Ruin, Huddinge: Södertörn University Press 2010, pp. 165–82. Plath, Sylvia, “Kierkegaard’s Erotic Hermeneutics as a Proto-Feminist Alternative to Hegelian, Nietzschean, and Derridean-Deconstructive Hermeneutics,” in Kierkegaard and the Word(s): Essays on Hermeneutics and Communication, ed. by Poul Houe and Gordon D. Marino, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 2003, pp. 71–80. Pyper, Hugh, “Forgiving the Unforgivable: Kierkegaard, Derrida and the Scandal of Forgiveness,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 22, 2002, pp. 7–23. Randall, David Stanley, Irony and Literary Criticism: Tropic Supplementarity in the Philosophy of Expressivism, Ph.D. Thesis, State University of New York at Binghamton 1987. Roberts-Cady, Sarah Elizabeth, Rethinking Justice with Kierkegaard, Lévinas, and Derrida, Ph.D. Thesis, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 2000. Shain, Ralph, “Situating Derrida: Between Kierkegaard and Hegel,” Philosophy Today, vol. 44, 2000, pp. 388–403. Stern, David S., “The Bind of Responsibility: Kierkegaard, Derrida, and the Akedah of Isaac,” Philosophy Today, vol. 47, 2003, pp. 34–43.

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Taylor, Mark C. (ed.), Deconstruction in Context: Literature and Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1986. Valastyán, Tamás, “Az inkognitó, a griff és a töredék. Az aforisztikus és metaforikus beszédmódokról és azok koraromantikus vonatkozásairól—Kierkegaard, Derrida, F. Schlegel” [Incognito, Grasp and Fragment: The Aphoristic and the Metaphorical Way of Speaking and their Connections to the Early Romanticism— Kierkegaard, Derrida, F. Schlegel], in Pro Philosophia Füzetek, no. 28, 2001, pp. 33–44. Weiss, Gail, “Reading/Writing between the Lines,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 31, 1998, pp. 387–409. Whitmire, John Floyd, On the Subject of Autobiography: Finding a Self in the Works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Derrida, Ph.D. Thesis, Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania 2005. Zavodny, John, The Marks and Noises of the Monster at the End of the Book. From Irony to Camp with Rorty, Kierkegaard, and Derrida, Ph.D. Thesis, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 1997.

Jacques Ellul: Kierkegaard’s Profound and Seldom Acknowledged Influence on Ellul’s Writing Sarah Pike Cabral

Jacques Ellul (1912–94), author of over fifty sociological, philosophical, and theological works, taught at the University of Montpellier and the University of Strasbourg, before finishing his academic career at the University of Bordeaux. Ellul names Karl Marx (1818–83), Karl Barth (1886–1968), and Kierkegaard as having a formative influence on his life and thought. Though Marx awakened Ellul to political and sociological concerns and Barth gave Ellul a way to think about theology, Kierkegaard captivated Ellul’s soul. Ellul maintained a critical distance from both Marx and Barth, but he “only listened…and replied” to Kierkegaard.1 In fact, the kinship between Ellul and Kierkegaard is so profound that Patrick Troude-Chastenet calls Ellul “not merely Kierkegaard’s spiritual heir but his kindred spirit,”2 and Vernard Eller describes Ellul and Kierkegaard as “closer than brothers.”3 Despite this characterization of Ellul and Kierkegaard, there is a surprising lack of scholarship on the relationship of their work. From an external point of view, Ellul’s likeness to Kierkegaard is not immediately apparent, since Ellul married and had children, accepted a professorship, and became a member of the Reformed Church of France. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, famously broke off his engagement with Regine Olsen and refused an official position in academia and the church.4 These differences, however, are superficial in light of Ellul’s clear indebtedness to Kierkegaard, which is referenced in his works: L’impossible prière (Prayer and the Modern Man (1971)),5 L’espérance oubliée (Hope in the Time Jacques Ellul, “Preface,” in Nelly Viallaneix, Écoute, Kierkegaard: Essai sur la communication de la parole, vol. 1, Paris: Cerf 1979, p. iii. I use my own translations unless otherwise noted. 2 Patrick Troude-Chastenet, Jacques Ellul on Religion, Technology, and Politics: Conversations with Patrick Troude-Chastenet, trans. by Joan Mendés France, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press 1998, p. 4. 3 Vernard Eller, “Ellul and Kierkegaard: Closer than Brothers,” in Jacques Ellul: Interpretive Essays, ed. by Clifford G. Christians and Jay M. VanHook, Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press 1981, p. 52. 4 Frédéric Rognon, Jacques Ellul: une pensée en dialogue, Geneva: Labor et Fides 2007, p. 169. 5 Jacques Ellul, L’impossible prière, Paris: Centurion 1971. (English translation: Prayer and the Modern Man, trans. by C. Edward Hopkin, New York: Seabury Press 1973.) 1

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of Abandonment (1972, 1973)),6 Éthique de la liberté (The Ethics of Freedom, vols. 1–2 (1973–4, 1976)),7 “Preface” in Nelly Viallaneix’s Écoute, Kierkegaard: Essai sur la communication de la parole (1979),8 La foi au prix du doute: “Encore quarante jours…” (Living Faith: Belief and Doubt in a Perilous World (1980, 1983)), La Parole humiliée (The Humiliation of the Word (1981, 1985)),9 La subversion du Christianisme (The Subversion of Christianity (1984, 1986)),10 Les Combats de la liberté (The Ethics of Freedom, vol. 3 (1984)),11 La raison d’être: Méditation sur l’Ecclésiaste (Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes (1987, 1990)),12 and Le bluff technologique (The Technological Bluff (1988, 1990)).13 Ellul’s most substantial piece on Kierkegaard is found not in one of his own books, but rather in the preface to Nelly Viallaneix’s Écoute, Kierkegaard: Essai sur la communication de la parole. Here Ellul claims that he writes about Kierkegaard neither as a philosopher nor as a specialist but rather “as a mere reader of Kierkegaard and as a simple player.”14 Based on Ellul’s own approach to Kierkegaard, he finds it intriguing that Kierkegaard is studied as a philosopher by philosophers. Ellul writes: “I hardly understand what philosophers would write about Kierkegaard. When I read Kierkegaard, I feel the ground floor. A man speaks to me. When I read most of the commentators, I am perplexed, because I do not recognize anything in the Kierkegaard that I think I have met.”15 Ellul acknowledges that philosophers may accurately trace a criticism of Hegel in Kierkegaard’s writing and point out how Kierkegaard differs from other existential philosophers, but Ellul believes that Kierkegaard requires his Jacques Ellul, L’espérance oubliée, Paris: Gallimard 1972. (English translation: Hope in the Time of Abandonment, trans. by C. Edward Hopkin, New York: Seabury Press 1973.) 7 Jacques Ellul, Éthique de la liberté, vol. I, Geneva: Labor et Fides 1973 and Les combats de la liberté (Éthique de la liberté, vol. 3), Geneva: Labor et Fides 1984. (English translation: The Ethics of Freedom, trans. and ed. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1976.) 8 Jacques Ellul, “Preface,” in Nelly Viallaneix, Écoute, Kierkegaard: Essai sur la communication de la parole, vol. 1, Paris: Cerf 1979. 9 Jacques Ellul, La foi au prix du doute: “Encore quarante jours…” Paris: Hachette 1980. (English translation: Living Faith: Belief and Doubt in a Perilous World, trans. by Peter Heinegg, San Francisco: Harper & Row 1983.) 10 Jacques Ellul, La Parole humiliée, Paris: Seuil 1981. (English translation: The Humiliation of the Word, trans. by Joyce Main Hanks, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1985.) 11 Jacques Ellul, La subversion du christianisme, Paris: Seuil 1984. (English translation: The Subversion of Christianity, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1986.) 12 Jacques Ellul, La raison d’être: Meditation sur l’Ecclésiaste, Paris: Seuil 1987. (English translation: Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes, trans. by Joyce Main Hanks, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1990.) 13 Jacques Ellul, Le bluff technologie, Paris: Hachette 1988. (English translation: The Technological Bluff, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1990.) 14 Ellul, “Preface,” in Viallaneix, Écoute, Kierkegaard: Essai sur la communication de la parole, vol. 1, p. ii. 15 Ibid., p. iii. 6

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reader to read everything or else understand nothing. For one may find a single work of Kierkegaard’s “interesting,” but still miss the point of the text, since “for the most part, it is the link, the report, the correlation, the contradiction between all the texts,” which reveals the meaning and purpose of each text.16 Although Ellul recognizes that one must not sever Kierkegaard’s authorship only to retain philosophical elements, he does provide an explication of Kierkegaard’s opposition to certain philosophical and theological systems. Ellul writes: Hegel, in Kierkegaard’s eyes, did exactly what you are not to do when you are Christian. He founded a system. The desire to understand and embrace everything eliminates the questioning. It assigns to God the role of the creator and savior, a role he must henceforth play in a given philosophical system, which provides an interpretation of history and the world. Kierkegaard challenges all of this and Hegel’s methodological shattering of the incompatibility of the Revelation of the living God and the approach of the philosopher (the philosopher is always Hegel).17

Ellul locates Marx on the side of Hegel, even though he does not think that Marx intended for his philosophy to be reduced to an ideology. Ellul writes: “Marx adopts the perspective of a docile comprehensive history that has meaning and that leads to an ending; he remains locked inside the thought of the Progress of Humanity.”18 The agreement between Hegel and Marx, regarding a comprehensive, meaningful, and progressive history, is primary to the opposition between idealism and materialism, according to Ellul. For Kierkegaard, however, “history is an idealistic construction foreign to any living reality,” which puts him at odds with both Hegel and Marx.19 Thus, Kierkegaard, not Marx, is able consistently to challenge Hegel’s constructions. Kierkegaard stands apart not only from the philosophy of Hegel and Marx but also from the theology of Barth. Even though Kierkegaard undoubtedly influenced Barth’s thinking, for example Barth’s appropriates Kierkegaard’s “infinite qualitative distinction” between God and man, Ellul writes that “to the extent that there is a collective and systematic conceptualization of the Christian, Barth departs from Kierkegaard.”20 Ellul describes Kierkegaard as “the lonely” and “the solitary one,” due to his decision to contest Hegelian thought and the Church of Denmark.21 Ibid., p. iv. Ibid., p. vii. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., p. viii. 20 Ibid., p. ix. See Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans, London: Oxford University Press 1933. Barth writes: “if I have a system, it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called the ‘infinite qualitative distinction’ between time and eternity, and to my regarding this as possessing negative as well as positive significance: ‘God is in heaven, and thou art on earth.’ The relation between such a God and such a man, and the relation between such a man and such a God, is for me the theme of the Bible and the essence of philosophy,” p. 10. See also The Sickness unto Death. Anti-Climacus writes, “As sinner, man is separated from God by the most chasmal qualitative abyss. In turn, of course, God is separated by man by the same chasmal qualitative abyss when he forgives sins,” SKS 11, 233 / SUD, 122. 21 Ellul, “Preface,” in Viallaneix, Écoute, Kierkegaard: Essai sur la communication de la parole, vol. 1, p. viii; p. ix. 16 17

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Kierkegaard’s loneliness signals the radical nature of his approach to theology. Ellul read Kierkegaard while studying Roman Law and found him to be unlike any other theologian. He writes: “here is a man who is not an idiot…who listens, who receives his truth as is, without claiming to dominate it by a so-called scientific method.”22 Ellul could neither objectify nor take any distance from what he read by Kierkegaard, explaining: “I face a truth that I cannot prove, but only live.”23 Ellul notes that Kierkegaard is described as a theologian of decision, which is right, if we understand this to mean that “the decision is to be taken again…at every meeting of the Word of God….It is to be new every time. It is to commit our whole selves every time.”24 With Kierkegaard, Ellul is committed to escaping “the System,” choosing to test a truth by living it.25 Ellul writes: “All other methods of interpretation… have their legitimacy, but they condemn themselves to the uncertainty in their claim of objectivity.”26 Kierkegaard’s message, according to Ellul, has not been heard, because his questioning is intolerable to many. Acceptable or popular philosophies both attack a “fictitious other,” such as a corporation, a sexuality, or an economy, and offer a “program of reconstruction.”27 Kierkegaard’s questioning, on the other hand, does not lead to an end or agenda that a person can accomplish on her own, for all depends on grace, and this is what many find intolerable. Ellul himself does not find Kierkegaard’s questioning intolerable but rather inspiring, and he makes continuous reference to Kierkegaard in his own writing on prayer, hope, freedom, faith, discourse, Christianity, and the Bible, politics, and technology. In Prayer and the Modern Man, Ellul defines prayer as both an act of obedience and a struggle, since one in communication with God must combat distraction, consumption, and acquisition.28 Ellul purports that the focus of prayer ought to be God and not oneself or what one thinks she wants or needs. On this point, Ellul cites Kierkegaard, who writes in his journals: The spontaneous, immediate person believes and imagines that when he prays the main thing, the thing he has to work at especially, is that God hears what it is he is praying about. And yet in truth’s eternal sense it is just the opposite: the true prayer-relationship does not exist when God hears what is prayed about but when the pray-er continues to pray until he is the one who hears, who hears what God wills. The immediate, spontaneous person uses a lot of words and therefore is actually demanding when he prays. The true pray-er is simply obedient.29

While Kierkegaard recommends attending to and waiting for God, prayer is not meant to be passive, since prayer requires one to struggle with God, based upon a Ibid., p. xi. Ibid., p. xii. 24 Ibid., p. xiii. 25 Ibid., p. xiv. 26 Ibid., p. xv. 27 Ibid., pp. xvii–xviii. 28 Jacques Ellul, L’impossible priére, Paris: Centurion 1971, p. 120. (Prayer and Modern Man, trans. by C. Edward Hopkin, New York: Seabury Press 1973, p. 111.) 29 Cited in Ellul, L’impossible priére, p. 120. (Prayer and the Modern Man, p. 111.) This passage corresponds to SKS 18, 295, JJ:464 / KJN 2, 272. 22 23

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lack of oneness between God and the world.30 Yet, prayer is not to be conceived of as unlimited combat, since “it involves the discovery of God here below, in this very abandonment.”31 Ellul ultimately determines that prayer is the inward battle against the promptings of the world, a battle won when communion with God is achieved. Though Ellul acknowledges that the person of faith may view herself in a place of abandonment on earth, she is not without hope, defined by Ellul as “passion for the impossible” in Hope in the Time of Abandonment.32 Ellul’s definition of Christian hope is opposed to what he deems the aesthetic person’s definition of hope to be in Either/Or, passion for the possible. On hope and possibility, Ellul writes: The exploring of all the possibles is the act of the aesthetic approach, not of the ethical, still less is it that of faith. The determination to actualize the possible is the attitude of the person without hope, precisely because that possible is never more than a duplication of the present. Very explicitly, at the end of Either/Or in “Ultimatum,” Kierkegaard shows that to do everything one can is the reverse of faith. There he goes counter, in the ethical stage, to what he has set forth in the first part, and he shows, without, however, using this formula, that faith in Jesus Christ presupposes the passion for the impossible.33

If one merely hopes for what is possible, then this is not the hope associated with faith, which is concerned with the impossible. Ellul, following Kierkegaard, is challenging the idea of Christian hope being directed at what is already likely to happen, a much weaker version of hope than what Ellul and Kierkegaard propose. Ellul holds that, in addition to Christian hope, Christian freedom is also a confused notion. The significance of an individual’s freedom in relationship to God is Ellul’s focus in The Ethics of Freedom. While Ellul acknowledges that God has constantly and historically intervened in human life, it is only in freedom that the individual can choose the good. Ellul writes: “the phenomenon of freedom is precisely what prevents Christianity from becoming what Kierkegaard calls a handful of axioms.”34 For Ellul and Kierkegaard, it is of the utmost importance that one chooses the good out of a place of freedom “with no antecedents or conditions.”35 If one wills the good out of fear of punishment, then one is not a free person, and one must also accept that freedom comes by way of suffering.36 Since happiness refuses suffering, happiness can be “a force that is destructive of freedom.”37 Those who view it from the outside misunderstand the close association of freedom and suffering in Christian living. To exemplify this point, Ellul refers to Kierkegaard’s biographers. He writes: Ellul, L’impossible priére, p. 149. (Prayer and the Modern Man, p. 139.) Ellul, L’impossible priére, p. 152. (Prayer and the Modern Man, p. 143.) 32 Jacques Ellul, L’espérance oubliée, Paris: Gallimard, 1972 p. 188. (Hope in Time of Abandonment, trans. by C. Edward Hopkin, New York: Seabury Press 1973, p. 196, note.) 33 Ellul, L’espérance oubliée, p. 188 (Hope in the Time of Abandonment, p. 195n.) 34 Jacques Ellul, Éthique de la liberté, vol. 1, Geneva: Labor et Fides 1973, p. 113. (The Ethics of Freedom, trans. and ed. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1976, p. 100.) 35 Ibid. 36 Ellul, Éthique de la liberté, vol. I, p. 296, note. (The Ethics of Freedom, p. 260, note.) 37 Ibid. 30 31

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Sarah Pike Cabral Without judging whether or not Kierkegaard was a Christian living in the freedom of Christ, for Christians are not to judge one another, we may recall the enormous amount of interpretive material that clusters around his life and work. Some have tried to explain his acts in terms of a traumatic childhood. Others have tried to explain his work apart from the reference to Christ which he himself made so clearly in his own self-explanation. When Christian freedom is lived out, then, it is not received as such by men….The entire work of freedom can only dash itself against the wall of incomprehension, refusal, and judgment.38

Ellul, linking Christian freedom with suffering, anticipates a lack of understanding surrounding Kierkegaard’s life. Following The Ethics of Freedom, Ellul’s Living Faith builds on Kierkegaard’s perception that God speaks to the singular, unique individual. Ellul maintains that the central experience of faith is God speaking to the individual. He writes: “of all Christian authors Kierkegaard is the one who has given us the best, the most genuine, the most radical account of the existential reality of faith.”39 For Ellul and Kierkegaard, to exist as a person of faith is to be “made unique.”40 Ellul observes that the meaning of “holy” is “separated” in the Bible, and, he explains, “To be holy is to be separated from everyone else, from the people, the world, the group, to be made unique for the sake of a task that can be accomplished by no one else, which one receives through faith, after being awakened to faith by the creative and distinctive word.”41 The individual, who wants to be part of the church, is not to ignore her own uniqueness, since the church is meant to be a collection of individuals, where not everyone is the same. Ellul, like Kierkegaard, perceives Christendom and the church as promoting “belief,” or conformity, and thereby leading individuals away from living faith. While “belief” is safe and makes “us” comfortable with God, faith preserves doubt and fear and trembling before God. Ellul writes: Kierkegaard, of course, quite rightly stayed on the human level in measuring the distance between his faith and Abraham’s. If my faith isn’t the very same kind that Abraham had, it’s nothing. It’s as simple as that. Faith inevitably leads me to this measuring up, this fateful encounter—either Abraham’s sort of faith or nothing. And so the only thing that faith can bring me to recognize is my impotence, my incapacity, my inadequacy, my incompleteness, and consequently my incredulity (naturally faith is the most unerring and lethal weapon against all beliefs). But that’s precisely what makes it faith; that’s how it exists and how it shapes me.42

Instead of promoting faith, in which one’s relationship to God is “pure gratitude,” the church makes it “hard for God to make himself heard,” since one’s “ear [is] already Ellul, Éthique de la liberté, vol. 1, pp. 310–11. (The Ethics of Freedom, p. 274.) Jacques Ellul, La foi au prix du doute: “Encore quarante jours…” Paris: Hachette 1980, p. 139. (Living Faith, trans. by Peter Heinegg, San Francisco: Harper & Row 1983, p. 106.) 40 Ellul, La foi au prix du doute, p. 139. (Living Faith, p. 107.) 41 Ibid. 42 Ellul, La foi au prix du doute, pp. 145–6. (Living Faith, p. 112.) 38 39

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filled with the echoes of hymns” and one’s mind filled with answers to religious questions.43 Ellul notes: It’s more difficult, [Kierkegaard] argues, for people brought up on all the lore of Christmas, for those who have had all their little religious needs met by the church, to receive the shock of revelation, to discover the Unique One, and to enter into the dark night of the soul, than it is for those who have done nothing but search continuously without ever coming upon a satisfying answer.44

Ellul, inspired by Kierkegaard, deems his own literary task in Living Faith as warning readers of the obstacles to faith, which include “belief” and the church. Ellul aims his attack against not only Christendom and the church, but also speculative philosophy and human discourse in The Humiliation of the Word. Ellul credits speculative philosophy and human discourse with having destroyed the word of God, the divine message hidden within creation. Like Kierkegaard, Ellul believes that we have incorrectly prioritized speaking over hearing, and thus we have strangled any opportunity to discern the echo of God’s word in creation. Ellul writes: The philosopher who refuses to listen also refuses both truth and reality. He lives within one set of categories and thinks with others….These philosophers may not listen to anything, but of course they talk! They do nothing else!…Their verbal inflation has no foundation. This becomes clear when they use language only for constructing systems.45

Speculative philosophy and human discourse “with its particularities, its excessive destruction, its squandering of discourse, its inflated style, and its nonsense” has amounted to “the permanent destruction of the word.”46 Instead of speaking, Kierkegaard urges the individual to be silent, since “nothing but silence can allow a person to hear a word of truth again.”47 Thus, Ellul emphasizes that the individual who is in a position to hear the true word of God is one who attends to God in silence and obedience. Ellul’s dissatisfaction with Christendom and the church is given its fullest treatment in Ellul’s The Subversion of Christianity, which opens with a quotation from Kierkegaard’s The Moment: Christendom is the human race’s striving to get to walk on all fours again, to be rid of Christianity, knavishly in the name of its being Christianity and with the claim that this is the perfecting of Christianity….Thus our Christianity (“Christendom’s”) is also designed for this; it removes from the essentially Christian the offense, the paradox, etc. and replaces it with: probability, the direct. That is, it changes Christianity into

Ellul, La foi au prix du doute, p. 206; p. 159. (Living Faith, p. 167; p. 123.) Ellul, La foi au prix du doute, p. 159. (Living Faith, p. 123.) 45 Jacques Ellul, La Parole humiliée, Paris: Seuil 1981, p. 44. (The Humiliation of the Word, trans. by Joyce Main Hanks, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1985, p. 38.) 46 Ellul, La Parole humiliée, p. 218. (The Humiliation of the Word, p. 197.) 47 Ellul, La Parole humiliée, p. 217. (The Humiliation of the Word, p. 196.) 43 44

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Sarah Pike Cabral something completely different from what it is in the New Testament, indeed, into the very opposite; and this is the Christianity of “Christendom” (of us human beings).48

Ellul, in affirmation of the above passage, writes: “the practice of the church and Christians [today]…has been the total opposite of what is required of us [in the Bible].”49 Ellul recognizes his task as an author in France in the late twentieth century to be the same as Kierkegaard’s in Denmark in the mid-nineteenth century. For both men, when Christianity denotes an ideology or doctrine, an “-ism,” then Christianity has been subverted. Ellul asserts that this sort of subversion has not only occurred with Christianity but also with Kierkegaard’s philosophy. He writes: “Marx and Kierkegaard both tried to prevent their thinking from being reduced to an ideological mechanism. But they could not stop their successors from freezing their living thought in one (or many) systems, and in this way an ideology arose.”50 When Christianity and existential thinking becomes an “-ism,” then “originality is eliminated and replaced by commonplaces, [and] life and thought lose their radical and coherent character.”51 The church’s attempt to make Christianity more pleasing by making it a “type of organization or mass movement” is bewildering to Ellul, since the New Testament implies that being a Christian is “profoundly disagreeable to us” and will not “bring revenues and earthly profits.”52 According to Ellul, the more Christians there are, the more Christianity becomes void, for one can only be a Christian in opposition. Although Ellul and Kierkegaard are disparaging of Christendom, Ellul shares with Kierkegaard an affirmative view of the Bible, which is evident in Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes. Ellul explains the two pseudonymous authors of Ecclesiastes, Qohelet and Solomon, with reference to Kierkegaard’s Climacus and Anti-Climacus. He cites Kierkegaard: All the previous pseudonymity is lower than “the upbuilding author”; the new pseudonym is a higher pseudonymity. But indeed “a halt is made” in this way: something higher is shown, which simply forces me back within my boundary, judging me, that my life does not meet so high a requirement and that consequently the communication is something poetical.53

According to Ellul, the contradiction of Qohelet and Solomon and of Climacus and Anti-Climacus is of the “philosopher, skeptic, and poet, with all the details of his Cited in Jacques Ellul, La subversion du christianisme, Paris: Seuil 1984, p. 7. (The Subversion of Christianity, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1986, p. 1.) This passage corresponds to SKS 13, 232–4 / M, 182–4. 49 Ellul, La subversion du christianisme, p. 14. (The Subversion of Christianity, p. 7.) 50 Ellul, La subversion du christianisme, p. 17. (The Subversion of Christianity, p. 10.) 51 Ibid. 52 Ellul, La subversion du christianisme, p. 17; p. 181. (The Subversion of Christianity, p. 10; p. 154.) 53 Cited in Jacques Ellul, La raison d’être: Meditation sur l’Ecclésiaste, Paris: Seuil 1987, pp. 24–5. (Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes, trans. by Joyce Main Hanks, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1990, p. 21.) This passage corresponds to SKS 13, 12, note / PV, 6, note. 48

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thought processes, on the one hand, and the affirmation of faith, on the other.”54 The meaning of the pseudonymous authorship is only understood when the pseudonyms are read in light of one another, as aiming at one thing. Ellul writes: the one thing is the religious, but the religious altogether and utterly transposed into reflection that it is altogether and utterly withdrawn from reflection and restored to simplicity–that is to say, he will see that the road travelled has the aim of approaching, of attaining simplicity.55

The added complexity of the pseudonyms is meant to engage the reader in her movement between reflection and faith, with the ultimate goal of reaching simplicity. Ellul claims that there is only one way of expressing the truth and that is indirectly. He writes: “No direct statement of truth is possible, because it does not belong to the order of our intellectual capacity or to our dimension. This principle applies not only to God’s truth but to everything that belongs to the order of truth.”56 Ellul, following Kierkegaard, bases Jesus’ “primary suffering” in “indirect communication,” for Jesus “could not communicate directly to people that he was the Christ, the Son of God, God himself (this explains why he never applies these titles to himself, using instead ‘son of man’).”57 Jesus maintained indirect communication, so that there could be “both the possibility of faith and the possibility of scandal.”58 Ellul refers here to Kierkegaard, who writes: “For if there were no possibility of offense, there would be direct recognizability, and then the God–man would be an idol; then direct recognizability is paganism.”59 Ellul concludes that indirect communication makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the people around Jesus to understand him, and that the reader of Ecclesiastes should expect a similar obscurity in the text due to its indirect communication. Adding to the complexity of Ecclesiastes is the authors’ refusal to provide definite solutions to problems, such as the vanity of life. Ellul writes that “we learn each day, perhaps especially in these tragic times we live in, that we are truly mist on the surface of a mirror (see James 4:14). All our efforts to find ourselves end up as a grasping for wind that no one can catch.”60 Ellul cannot resist here including a lengthy quotation from Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Johannes Climacus writes: But if a person, existing, is supposed to bear in mind every day and hold fast to what the pastor says on Sundays and comprehend this as the earnestness of life, and thereby in turn comprehend all his capability and incapability as jest—does this mean that he will not undertake anything at all because all is vanity and futility? Oh no, in that case he will not have the opportunity to understand the jest, since there is no contradiction in putting it together with life’s earnestness, no contradiction that everything is vanity in the eyes Ellul, La raison d’être, p. 25. (Reason for Being, p. 22.) Ibid. 56 Ellul, La raison d’être, p. 117, note. (Reason for Being, p. 118, note.) 57 Ellul, La raison d’être, p. 117, note. (Reason for Being, p. 119, note.) 58 Ibid. 59 Cited in ibid. This passage corresponds to SKS 12, 146 / PC, 143. 60 Ellul, La raison d’être, p. 152, note. (Reason for Being, p. 157.) 54 55

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Sarah Pike Cabral of a vain person. Laziness, inactivity, snobbishness about the finite are a poor jest or, more correctly, are no jest at all. But to shorten the night’s sleep and buy the day’s hours and not spare oneself, and then to understand that it is all a jest: yes, that is earnestness. Viewed religiously, the positive is always distinguishable by the negative—earnestness by the jest—that is religious earnestness, not direct earnestness, a councilor’s obtuse official self-importance, a journalist’s obtuse self-importance for contemporaries, a revivalist’s obtuse self-importance before God, as if God could not create millions of geniuses if he were in any kind of predicament. To have the fate of many people in one’s hand, to transform the world, and then continually to understand that this is jest—yes, that is earnestness! But in order to be capable of this, all the passions of finitude must be dread, all selfishness rooted out, the selfishness that wants to have everything and the selfishness that proudly turns away from everything.61

Ellul is drawn to this passage in Kierkegaard, because Kierkegaard properly comprehends that one who accepts that life is vanity and then does nothing is not participating in “the jest.” Rather, “the jest” occurs when one considers herself to be performing heroic deeds, when, in reality, she is mere “mist on a mirror.” If she understands this—that she is mist on the mirror—in her attempt to influence others and “transform the world,” then she is engaged in what Climacus calls “earnestness,” towards which one ought to aim. Therefore, even though human existence may appear insignificant in view of the vast universe and eternity, one is not to avoid living one’s life. Rather, one is to go about one’s tasks with proper selfunderstanding. Finally, Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death shapes Ellul’s examination of human existence in The Technological Bluff.62 Referencing Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death, Ellul writes: The self, the person, cannot constitute itself, or exist, or have a history, or freely become itself, unless it enters into the game of the possible and the necessary, of freedom and necessity. There is no individual, no human being, no self, if there is no freedom, no possibility. It is no good if there is no margin of freedom on which the self can constitute itself. Conversely, freedom is not real unless the self comes up against a necessity or a group of necessities. The play between these two realities is what makes human existence possible.63

For both Ellul and Kierkegaard, human beings have the freedom to do and create, in such a way that distinguishes us from other beings; however, what is possible for us is ultimately limited. Human beings run up against limitations, and these limitations separate us from the Wholly Other, God. Cited in Ellul, La raison d’être, p. 152, note. (Reason for Being, p. 158.) This passage corresponds to SKS 7, 428 / CUP1, 471–2. 62 See The Sickness unto Death, where Anti-Climacus writes: “Possibility and necessity are equally essential to becoming (and the self has the task of becoming itself in freedom)….A self that has no possibility is in despair, and likewise a self that has no necessity,” SKS 11, 151 / SUD, 35. 63 Jacques Ellul, Le bluff technologie, Paris: Hachette 1988 p. 262. (The Technological Bluff, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1990, p. 217.) 61

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Despite the numerous references to Kierkegaard in Ellul’s corpus, there are very few articles, written either in English or French, on the subject of Kierkegaard’s influence on Ellul. Published in 1981, Vernard Eller’s article, “Ellul and Kierkegaard: Closer than Brothers,” in Jacques Ellul: Interpretive Essays, is the most referenced article on Ellul and Kierkegaard. In 2007, however, Frédéric Rognon published the most comprehensive comparison of Ellul and Kierkegaard in his chapter “Ellul lecteur de Kierkegaard: la source fondamentale,” in Jacques Ellul: une pensée en dialogue. While other notable scholarship includes Daniel B. Clendenin’s Theological Method in Jacques Ellul (1987),64 David Lovekin’s Technique, Discourse, and Consciousness: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jacques Ellul (1991),65 and Lawrence Terlizzese in Hope in the Thought of Jacques Ellul (2005),66 considering that it has been thirty years since Eller’s article, one would assume there to be more. Vernard Eller, in his article, examines the complexity of Ellul and Kierkegaard’s authorships. Eller regards both authorships as having two parts to one whole, identifying that “Kierkegaard has the aesthetic and theological works and Ellul has sociological studies and theological works.”67 According to Eller, Ellul and Kierkegaard’s texts have at least two distinctive styles and themes for a specific purpose, which is to lead the reader to think for herself. Eller here cites Ellul, who writes: “I want to provide Christians with the means of thinking out for themselves the meaning of their involvement in the modern world.”68 Kierkegaard, like Ellul, deems his own authorial mission as aimed at the reader’s independent appropriation of self-knowledge. Kierkegaard writes in his journals: “I am the only Danish author who is so situated that it can serve his idea to have every possible lie and distortion and nonsense and gossip come out, confusing the reader and thus helping him to self– activity and preventing a direct relationship.”69 Kierkegaard uses poetic and seductive methods to keep the reader at a distance from himself yet close to the authorship’s goal. Daniel Clendenin picks up on the seductive capability of both Kierkegaard and Ellul, writing: “Like Kierkegaard before him, one of Ellul’s primary strengths is his ability to hold his reader’s attention, to lure him into a dialectical exchange of ideas, and to move us off of dead center and on to fresh insights.”70 The meaning of any single work of Ellul or Kierkegaard is best understood in relationship to the purpose of their respective authorships, which is self-discovery. Daniel B. Clendenin, Theological Method in Jacques Ellul, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America 1987. 65 David Lovekin, Technique, Discourse, and Consciousness: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jacques Ellul, Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses 1991. 66 Lawrence J. Terlizzese, Hope in the Thought of Jacques Ellul, Eugene: Cascade Books 2005. 67 Eller, “Ellul and Kierkegaard: Closer than Brothers,” in Jacques Ellul: Interpretive Essays, p. 53. 68 Jacques Ellul, “From Jacques Ellul,” in James Y. Holloway, Introducing Jacques Ellul, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1970, p. 6, cited in Eller, “Ellul and Kierkegaard: Closer than Brothers,” in Jacques Ellul: Interpretive Essays, p. 54. 69 SKS 20, 20, NB:7 / JP 5, 5888. 70 Daniel B. Clendenin, Theological Method in Jacques Ellul, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America 1987, p. 143. 64

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In addition to discussing the structure and meaning of Ellul and Kierkegaard’s authorships, Eller also describes how we are to understand Ellul and Kierkegaard as “Christians” and “existentialists.” Ellul and Kierkegaard, according to Eller, are both promoting “a rigorous and thoroughgoing version of biblical Christianity… characterized as ‘radical Christian discipleship’ ” in their writing.71 Both authors claim the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ as their primary source of inspiration. Eller writes: “Ellul and Kierkegaard are very close, not only in the fact that their thought is very much biblically oriented, but as well in the way they use the Bible. Notice that Ellul has claimed even his method of existential dialectic as being of biblical derivation.”72 Ellul and Kierkegaard are striving both to represent familiar biblical stories in a new, radical, and life-changing way and to mimic the indirect communication of the Bible. Ellul and Kierkegaard’s concern with influencing change not only in the minds but also the lives of their reader is what makes them “existential,” according to Eller. Eller writes: Certainly there is a sense in which both Kierkegaard and Ellul must be called “existential,” namely, that their discourse is life-centered rather than thought centered, concerned with historical realities rather than with intellectual theory, and pointed toward changing behavior rather than defining doctrine….Yet what commonly goes by the name of “existentialism” is something quite different, namely, systematic philosophies dealing in concepts of existence (concepts which are just as far from being existence as are concepts of any other sort). There is no evidence that Kierkegaard would have had any time for such “existentialism”; all sorts of evidence indicate that Ellul does not.73

An emphasis on the individual reader, however, should not be taken to mean that Ellul and Kierkegaard want “the believer’s subjective action and experience [to be] so central that the objective subsistence of God and his acts are beside the point.”74 Their goal is to give “ ‘passion’ theological significance…[and to] involve the totality of the individual’s historical existence.”75 Eller notes that beyond a shared focus on passion in their writing, Ellul and Kierkegaard, more importantly, lived passionately, as “they have written out of their hearts (with a proportionate deterioration of academic footnoting) from a gut-level concern for God and the people.”76 This commonality, perhaps more than any other, goes further to explain the great appeal of both figures. Rognon considers Eller’s article insightful and significant, but he accurately designates Eller’s work as incomplete, since it was written before Ellul’s publication of The Humiliation of the Word, The Subversion of Christianity, Les combats de la liberté (The Ethics of Freedom, vol. 3), The Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes, and The Technological Bluff. Rognon makes use of these texts, as well as Troude-Chastenet’s 1994 interview of Ellul, in his own study. While Rognon, in Eller, “Ellul and Kierkegaard: Closer than Brothers,” in Jacques Ellul: Interpretive Essays, p. 54. 72 Ibid., p. 57. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid., p. 60. 75 Ibid., p. 62. 76 Ibid. 71

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the first half of his chapter, mainly covers topics previously addressed by Eller, his focus, in the second half, is on new and distinct themes. In regards to the architecture and purpose of Ellul’s authorship, Rognon, like Eller, holds that Ellul’s authorship is made up of two parts with one ultimate purpose, to encourage independent thinking on the part of the reader. In Ellul’s interview with Troude-Chastenet, Ellul defends the coherence of his authorship, by citing a dialectical interplay between his sociological and theological works. Ellul views these two parts of his authorship as complementary to one another, but not in a reconciliatory way. Rognon writes that the theological works do not “provide an answer or solution to the [sociological works], but they register as a theological counterpoint to sociological problems.”77 Ellul believes that his sociological works would be radically despairing, if not understood in light of the love of God and hope of the Kingdom. In his section on dialectics, Rognon cites Eller, who properly acknowledges that Ellul and Kierkegaard are engaged in a concrete, existential dialectic, rather than merely an intellectual one.78 Instead of only being concerned with the interplay of text with text, Ellul and Kierkegaard hope for the interaction of the reader’s life with the text. Rognon’s sections on politics and technique offer valuable explication not found in Eller’s article. In his section on politics, Rognon explains that Ellul, after participating in the city council of Bordeaux, became aware of the “political illusion” or double illusion that (1) the politician holds power over the state, and (2) the citizen holds power over her political representative. The realization of this double illusion led Ellul “not only to retire from politics, but never to vote again.”79 Ellul brings to the fore yet another political illusion in Les combats de la liberté with reference to Kierkegaard’s “Gospel of Sufferings”: namely, that one can achieve freedom by overthrowing a tyrant or government. Kierkegaard writes: Ah, it is easy enough to overthrow a tyrant…he can certainly be overthrown; at least it is possible, indeed easy, to take aim at him…But this evil spirit, the small-minded fear of people in relation to equals and the tyranny of the equal, this evil spirit, which we ourselves conjure up and which does not reside in any individual person and is not any individual person but covertly sneaks around and seeks its prey, insinuates itself into the relation among individuals—this evil spirit, which essentially wants to do away with every individual’s relation to God, is very difficult to eradicate. People are scarcely aware that it is a slavery they are creating; they forget this in their zeal to make people free by overthrowing dominions. They are scarcely aware that it is a slavery; how could it be possible to be a slave in relation to equals? Yet it is rightly taught that a person is also a slave of what he is unfreely dependent upon. But our freedom-loving age thinks otherwise; it thinks that if one is not dependent on a ruler, then there is no slave either. One is scarcely aware that it is a slavery that is being created, and just this makes it so difficult to tear oneself away from it. This slavery is not that one person wants to subjugate many (then one would of course become aware), but that individuals, when they forget the relation to God, become mutually afraid of one another; the single individual becomes afraid of the more or of the many, Rognon, Jacques Ellul: une pensée en dialogue, p. 174. Ibid., p. 176. 79 Ibid., p. 191. 77 78

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Here Kierkegaard expresses that freedom exists when one individually relates herself to God, which is achieved independent of politics. Overthrowing a ruler will not result in freedom for the individual. Freedom requires one to avoid following or fearing the crowd. Clendenin also stresses this point, writing: Freedom must be fought for and taken up by each individual person. Authentic revolution, for example, could only begin by rejecting “the mounting ascendancy of groups over individuals” and by moving towards “the rediscovery of individual autonomy and the redemption of individuality.” Any view of freedom which forgets this fundamental distinction is, in Ellul’s view, wrongheaded.81

Understanding freedom and revolution to be concerned with individuality, Ellul finds an overlap between anarchy and Christianity, even though these movements are considered antagonistic and have divergent views of human nature.82 As Rognon discusses, Ellul reads the Bible as containing a set of anti-political and anti-state passages, and argues that Kierkegaard “shows himself to be an anarchist,” due to Kierkegaard’s association of power with what is official and impersonal.83 Ellul portrays Kierkegaard’s criticism of the church as more radical than the attack of non-Christian anarchists. In regards to the subject of technique, Rognon believes Ellul to “allow himself great freedom” in reading Kierkegaard as warning against technique, although he traces four reasons Ellul has for doing so.84 First, Ellul compares Kierkegaard’s stage of “aesthetics” to the use of modern technology, suggesting that both act as a means of evading oneself. Second, Ellul refers to Kierkegaard’s category of “the interesting” as “devoid of any serious and existential meaning” and locates television within this category, since it confuses one’s sense of what is real.85 Third, Ellul shares Kierkegaard’s valuation of means. Rognon writes that Ellul “has always argued that illegitimate means corrupt the noblest of ends,” in his writing on the technological society of the twentieth century.86 Finally, Ellul appropriates the Cited in Jacques Ellul, Les combats de la liberté, Éthique de la Liberté, vol. 3, Geneva: Labor et Fides 1984, pp. 136–7. (Ethics of Freedom, pp. 400–1.) This passage corresponds to SKS 8, 418 / UD, 326–7. 81 Clendenin, Theological Method in Jacques Ellul, p. 100, with citations from Jacques Ellul, Autopsie de la révolution, Paris: Calmann-Lévy 1969, p. 322; p. 330. (Autopsy of Revolution, trans. by Patricia Wolf, New York: Knopf 1971, p. 275; pp. 281–2.) 82 Rognon, Jacques Ellul: une pensée en dialogue, p. 193. 83 Jacques Ellul, Anarchie et christianisme, Lyon: Atelier de Création Libertaire 1988, p. 13. (Anarchy and Christianity, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1991, p. 8.) 84 Rognon, Jacques Ellul: une pensée en dialogue, p. 195. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid., p. 197. 80

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notion put forward in Sickness unto Death that reality is a synthesis of possibility and necessity. Ellul attributes modern man’s anguish to a failure to acknowledge human limitations. The relationship of Ellul’s conception of reality as the synthesis of possibility and necessity and Ellul’s notion of technique is given more detailed treatment by Lovekin and Terlizzese. Lovekin writes: “Technique is determined from within by becoming the universal, by providing all the answers for human meaning and survival. Technique thus becomes the necessary without which nothing is possible, which is never more than the technically possible.”87 If technology is able to answer all questions about human existence, then there are no more questions, and possibility and human freedom is removed. Ellul and Kierkegaard, according to Lovekin, agree that “God…is always beyond systematic understanding and inclusion and, thus, in a value always beyond the hic et nunc, the here and now.”88 For Ellul, this means that God is beyond, and not limited to, modern technology. Terlizzese, like Lovekin, explains that modern technology is inappropriately thought of as making everything possible. Terlizzese writes: Ellul fleshed out in the concrete reality of technique what Kierkegaard argued for abstractly. Absolute power leads to impotence, because all possibility has been exhausted. There is nothing left to do. Technology makes everything possible. It grants our heart’s desires—whatever and whenever we want—and in so doing inevitably leads to absolute exhaustion and terminal boredom. We lose ourselves in the pursuit of more and more possibilities; always striving but never reaching the goal; always wanting more but never satisfied with what we have already attained. We are placed on a treadmill of constantly desiring success, money, career advancement, things; but never being satisfied with what we have, because there is always more laid out before us: a bigger house, possessions, or the latest gadget.89

If we believe that technology provides us with everything, then we will think that we can have and do everything and we will become satisfied with nothing. However, as human beings, we do face limitations, and modern technology cannot change this reality. Our failure to acknowledge this reality places us in an illusory world, where limitations do not exist. When our illusion is challenged by our own necessities in the real world, we experience anguish, which can only be overcome, according to Ellul, by finally accepting Kierkegaard’s notion that reality is a synthesis of the possible and the necessary. In summary, Ellul’s writing on prayer, hope, freedom, faith, discourse, Christianity, and the Bible is a tribute to Kierkegaard’s own views on these same topics. In addition, Ellul makes a noteworthy case for Kierkegaard’s supposed consensus with his ideas on politics and technology. After an examination of the two men and their respective authorships, it is clear why those who have written Lovekin, Technique, Discourse, and Consciousness: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jacques Ellul, p. 23. 88 Ibid., p. 67. 89 Lawrence J. Terlizzese, Hope in the Thought of Jacques Ellul, Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books 2005, pp. 56–7. 87

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on Ellul and Kierkegaard consider them so alike as to call them “kindred spirits,” even “closer than brothers.” 90 For it is not only passionate writing but also Ellul and Kierkegaard’s concern with passionate living, their reader’s and their own, that unites them.

Patrick Troude-Chastenet, Jacques Ellul on Religion, Technology, and Politics: Conversations with Patrick Troude-Chastenet, p. 4, Eller, “Ellul and Kierkegaard: Closer than Brothers,” in Jacques Ellul: Interpretive Essays, p. 52. 90

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Ellul’s Corpus “L’homme au pied du mur,” Réforme, vol. 946, 1963, p. 8. L’impossible priére, Paris: Centurion 1971, p. 9; p. 120; p. 149. (English translation: Prayer and the Modern Man, trans. by C. Edward Hopkin, New York: Seabury Press 1973, p. vii; p 111; p. 139.) L’espérance oubliée, Paris: Gallimard 1972, p. 58; pp. 188–9, note. (English translation: Hope in the Time of Abandonment, trans. by C. Edward Hopkin, New York: Seabury Press 1973, pp. 53–4; p. 195.) Éthique de la liberté, vol. 1, Geneva: Labor et Fides 1973, p. 49; p. 66; p. 83; p. 92, note; p. 95 note; p. 113; p. 125, note; p. 128, note; p. 296, note; pp. 310– 11. (English translation: The Ethics of Freedom, trans. and ed. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1976, p. 45; p. 57; p. 73; p. 81; p. 83; p. 100; p. 111; p. 113; p. 260; p. 274.) “Preface.” In Nelly Viallaneix, Écoute, Kierkegaard: Essai sur la communication de la parole, vol. 1, Paris: Cerf 1979, pp. i–xvii. La foi au prix du doute: “Encore quarante jours…” Paris: Hachette 1980, pp. 138– 9; pp. 145–6.; p. 159; p. 206; p. 222. (English translation: Living Faith: Belief and Doubt in a Perilous World, trans. by Peter Heinegg, San Francisco: Harper & Row 1983, pp. 106–7; p. 112; p. 123; pp. 166–7; p. 180.) La Parole humiliée, Paris: Seuil 1981, pp. 43–5; p. 122; pp. 216–18. (English translation: The Humiliation of the Word, trans. by Joyce Main Hanks, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1985, pp. 37–9; p. 109; pp. 195–7.) Les combats de la liberté, L’Éthique de la liberté, vol. 3, Geneva: Labor et Fides 1984, p. 8; p. 28, note; p. 33, note; p. 115, note; pp. 136–7; pp. 160–1, note; p. 162, note; p. 169, note. (English translation: The Ethics of Freedom, trans. and ed. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1976, p. 312; p. 318, note; p. 382, note; pp. 400–1; pp. 404–5, note; p. 416, note. La subversion du christianisme, Paris: Seuil 1984, p. 7; p. 14; p. 17; p. 46; p. 181; pp. 233–4. (English translation: The Subversion of Christianity, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1986, p. 1; p. 7; p. 10; p. 17; p. 36; p. 154; p. 199; p. 201.) La raison d’être: Meditation sur l’Ecclésiaste, Paris: Seuil 1987, p. 14; p. 22; p. 51; p. 63; p. 117, note; p. 152, note; p. 230; pp. 236–7; p. 260; pp. 276–7 (English translation: Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes, trans. by Joyce Main Hanks, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1990, p. 10; p. 18; p. 21; p. 49; p. 62; p. 119, note; pp. 157–8; p. 241; p. 248; p. 273; p. 291.)

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Anarchie et christianisme, Lyon: Atelier de Création Libertaire 1988, p. 13. (English translation: Anarchy and Christianity, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1991, p. 8.) Le bluff technologie, Paris: Hachette 1988, p. 262; p. 396; p. 411. (English translation: The Technological Bluff, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1990, p. 217; p. 335; p. 411.) II. Sources of Ellul’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Viallaneix, Nelly, Kierkegaard et la Parole de Dieu, Paris: Champion 1977. — Écoute, Kierkegaard: Essai sur la communication de la parole, vol. 1, Paris: Cerf 1979. III. Secondary Literature on Ellul’s Relation to Kierkegaard Clendenin, Daniel B., Theological Method in Jacques Ellul, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America 1987, p. 5; p. 10; p. 12; p. 14; pp. 16–18; p. 26; pp. 35–6; p. 40; pp. 48–9; p. 54; p. 73; pp. 101–2; p. 125; p. 127; p. 140; pp. 142–3; p. 145. Eller, Vernard, “Ellul and Kierkegaard: Closer than Brothers,” in Jacques Ellul: Interpretive Essays, ed. by Clifford G. Christians and Jay M. Van Hook, Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1981, pp. 52–66. Garrigou-Lagrange, Madeleine, In Season, Out of Season: An Introduction to the Thought of Jacques Ellul, trans. by Lani K. Niles, San Francisco: Harper and Row 1982, p. 17; p. 59; p. 81. Lovekin, David, Technique, Discourse, and Consciousness: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Jacques Ellul, Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses 1991, pp. 22–3; p. 52; p. 59; p. 67; p. 131. Rognon, Frédéric, Jacques Ellul: une pensée en dialogue, Geneva: Labor et Fides 2007, pp. 168–209. Terlizzese, Lawrence J., Hope in the Thought of Jacques Ellul, Eugene: Cascade Books 2005, p. 14; p.16; p. 24; pp. 56–8; p. 166; p. 205; p. 224. Troude-Chastenet, Patrick, Jacques Ellul on Religion, Technology, and Politics: Conversations with Patrick Troude-Chastenet, trans. by Joan Mendés France, Atlanta: Scholars Press 1998, p. 4; p. 5; p. 16; p. 49; p. 54; p. 85; p. 113.

Pierre Hadot: Philosophy as a Way of Life: Hadot and Kierkegaard’s Socrates Nicolae Irina

I. An Ancient Model for Our Present Age Pierre Hadot was born in Paris on February 21, 1922 and died on April 24, 2010.1 It was his mother’s decision that he too, just like his two older brothers, would become a priest. In fact, as Hadot recalls, in his childhood he “never imagined that [he] could do anything in life other than what [his] brothers did, and thus [he] naturally found [himself] at the Petit Séminaire de Rheims at the age of ten.”2 He has since become one of the most distinguished specialists in ancient philosophy who unveiled its relevance in relation to the existential challenges of our present times. Hadot was Director of Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (1964–85), requesting that the title of his Chair, Latin Patristics, be changed to Theologies and Mysticisms of Hellenistic Greece and the End of Antiquity. At the time of his death at the age of 88, Hadot was Professor Emeritus at the Collège de France, where he previously held the Chair of the History of Hellenistic and Roman Thought (1982–91). A corresponding member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur (Mainz, since 1972), and of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Munich, since 2001), he also received a doctorate honoris causa in philosophy from the University of Neuchâtel (1985), and another one from Laval University (Québec, November 2002). In recognition of his lifetime’s work, Hadot received the Grand Prix de Philosophie de l’Académie Française in 1999. He specialized in

It should perhaps be noted here that some sources mistakenly give Rheims (Marne, Champagne-Ardenne) as Pierre Hadot’s birthplace (see, for instance, Alan D. Schrift’s otherwise excellent book Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell 2006, p. 135) when in fact his family had to flee Rheims in 1914 only to return to “a city almost entirely destroyed by the bombings” a month after his birth in Paris. Cf. Pierre Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre. Entretiens avec Jeannie Carlier et Arnold I. Davidson, Paris: Éditions Albin Michel 2001, p. 18. (English translation: The Present Alone Is Our Happiness: Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson, trans. by Marc Djaballah, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2009, p. 2.) 2 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 21. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 4.) 1

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Neoplatonism, but he has also written extensively on Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Wittgenstein, Goethe, and others.3 An enthusiastic admirer of ancient wisdom, Hadot admits that the task of evaluating the history of the reception of ancient philosophy can only be a selective task. In his What is Ancient Philosophy?, Hadot focuses on Montaigne, Descartes, and Kant (although he mentions other thinkers as well, including Kierkegaard) in order to illustrate how the influence of the ancient model is reflected in the modern conception of philosophy as “a concrete, practical activity but also as a transformation of our way of inhabiting and perceiving the world.”4 Furthermore, Arnold I. Davidson clarifies in his “Introduction” to Philosophy as a Way of Life that Hadot contends that “In more recent times, we can find the spirit of the ancient philosopher’s demand that we radically change our way of living and seeing the world in Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard.”5 It is Hadot’s constantly emphasized idea that ancient philosophy is far from being a mere collection of obscure texts and obsolete doctrines. For him, it became most certainly true that ancient philosophy did not aim at constructing philosophical systems, now outdated, but, on the contrary, at offering a vibrant and current set of recommendations as to how one could live his or her life. Hadot’s books have themselves an “indirectly protreptic character,” as Jeannie Carlier puts it, being written with the “aim to turn (trepein in Greek) the reader toward philosophical life,”6 and thus, in Hadot’s own words, “very modestly [attempting] to propose a theory of existential practices.”7 Trying to pursue a different understanding of philosophy, in stark contrast with the current main philosophical streams mostly oriented toward a cognitive approach, Hadot is more readily inclined to value the formative interest of ancient philosophy, rather than its sheer informative character. Hadot’s perspective on systematical philosophical constructions is very suggestively transparent in many of his writings and interviews. For instance, when A.I. Davidson asks him if there is “a fundamental difference between an existential metaphysics and existential practices,” Hadot’s initial reply is clearly an indication 3 In 1968, Hadot submitted a doctoral thesis on Porphyry and Victorinus, in 1997 he published Plotin ou la simplicité du regard, and in 1999 he published another book on Plotinus and Porphyry. Hadot’s most recently published book is N’oublie pas de vivre. Goethe et la tradition des exercices spirituels, Paris: Éditions Albin Michel 2008. 4 Pierre Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, Paris: Éditions Gallimard 1995, p. 407. (English translation: What is Ancient Philosophy?, trans. by Michael Chase, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press 2002, p. 270.) 5 Arnold I. Davidson, “Introduction: Pierre Hadot and the Spiritual Phenomenon of Ancient Philosophy,” in Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, ed. by Arnold I. Davidson, trans. by Michael Chase, Malden, Massachusetts and Oxford: Blackwell 1995, pp. 1–45, see p. 33. Philosophy as a Way of Life is, in part, a translation of Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, 2nd ed., Paris: Études Augustiniennes 1987. 6 Jeannie Carlier, “Introduction,” in Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 7. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. ix.) 7 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 210. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 132.)

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of his reluctance to consider a systematic approach. He first takes note of the tremendous difficulties of advancing a theory of freedom; however, confronted with such widely debated and still current academic issues, Hadot also tries to make an indirect suggestion as he claims that one “must follow Diogenes the Cynic, who, without saying anything, simply proved the existence of movement by walking.”8 Remarkably enough, Kierkegaard, too, uses this anecdote about Diogenes of Sinope’s opposition to the Eleatics’ denial of motion.9 In what follows, I intend to determine if the “indirectness” of Hadot’s approach supports the claim that Kierkegaard’s main influence on the French thinker consists precisely in Hadot’s explicit appropriation of the Dane’s Socratic “method of indirect communication.” To that aim, it will be necessary to unfold Hadot’s understanding of Kierkegaard’s “Socratic task,” but also to investigate the significance of Kierkegaard’s reading of Socrates as seen by Hadot. II. Hadot and Kierkegaard’s Socratic Task In the collection of interviews titled The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, Hadot explains in more detail why he prefers to refer to the ancient Greeks when trying to offer a solution to the current problems of the modern individual. He answers that something akin to Kierkegaard’s indirect type of existential communication is indeed necessary in order to allow “a call to be heard,” regardless of the reader’s response: Why this detour? I would say that, for my part, it is a matter of what Kierkegaard called the method of indirect communication. If one says directly, do this or do that, one dictates a conduct with a tone of false certainty. But thanks to the description of the spiritual exercises lived by another, one can give a glimpse of and suggest a spiritual attitude; one allows a call to be heard that the reader has the freedom to accept or to refuse. It is up to the reader to decide. One is free to believe or not to believe, to act or not to act.10

Hadot thinks that such a method is in fact very efficient, judging by the many good reactions he received, yet he declines any personal merit. Hadot’s main role in this context is that of a mediator between his contemporaries and the inexhaustible yet not properly exploited resource of ancient wisdom. One could easily notice that, by associating his own method with Kierkegaard’s indirectness, Hadot implicitly Ibid. SKS 4, 9 / R, 131. See also B&A vol. 1, p. 169 / LD, Letter 150, p. 215. For this particular anecdote, see Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 2, 39. Kierkegaard’s source is Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers which plays a significant role in Kierkegaard’s understanding of many an ancient philosopher. For more details regarding Kierkegaard’s use of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives, see Nicolae Irina, “Diogenes Laertius: Kierkegaard’s Source and Inspiration,” in Kierkegaard and the Greek World, Tome II, Aristotle and Other Greek Authors, ed. by Jon Stewart and Katalin Nun, Aldershot: Ashgate 2010 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 2), pp. 111–21. 10 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 232. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 147.) 8 9

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admits that his approach is a Socratic approach, just like Kierkegaard’s, for Hadot very clearly acknowledges that Kierkegaard repeatedly emphasized the Socratic character of his method of indirect communication.11 According to Hadot, Socratic irony becomes necessary on the grounds of the realization that “direct language is not adequate for communicating the experience of existing, the authentic consciousness of being, the seriousness of life as we live it, or the solitude of decision making.”12 Indeed, any attempt to communicate directly the seriousness of a profound existential experience can be easily condemned to banality and superficial dismissal, yet, as Hadot contends, this is precisely what makes indirect communication possible and apparently more persuasive.13 Hadot holds that Kierkegaard has “beautiful pages” about the Socratic method, as he puts it. According to Hadot, Kierkegaard believes that Socrates’ midwifery comes with no pretentions to being a master, that is, with “no pretentions on the soul of his disciple, no more than the disciple on the soul of his master.”14 Such a purpose requires “indirectness” as a very useful tool indeed in creating a sort of a level playing field where the existential message of the master can be conveyed without authority. Thus, by refusing to claim his authority, the master’s indirectness becomes a pedagogical necessity.15 However, it takes more than this to explain Socrates’ pedagogical use of irony, some of which is utterly erotic in character. Socrates pretends to be in love with his disciple until, as it ironically turns out, it is the reverse situation that occurs eventually: the pursued Alcibiades becomes the pursuer and thus the beloved ends up as the victim of an unrequited love.16 Indeed, given the way it brings about the Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 84. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 151.) In an endnote, Hadot refers to Jean Wahl’s subchapter on indirect communication in Chapter VIII (“La théorie de l’existence”) of Jean Wahl’s, Études kierkegaardiennes, 3rd ed., Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin 1967, pp. 281–8. 12 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 93. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 156.) 13 Cf. Ibid. Hadot cites Wahl again and his remarks “on the relationship between the divine incognito and the incognito of the writer.” Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 93, note 70. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 174, note 68.) Here Hadot refers to Wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, p. 285, note 1. 14 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 197. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 123; translation modified.) In Éloge de Socrate, Hadot quotes the relevant passage from the French translation of Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments, namely, Riens philosophiques, trans. by Knud Ferlov and Jean-Jacques Gâteau, Paris: Gallimard 1948, p. 68, but also Søren Kierkegaard, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 1–20, Paris: Éditions de l’Orante 1966–86, vol. 7, p. 23. Cf. Pierre Hadot, Éloge de Socrate, Paris: Éditions Allia 1998, p. 30, note 1. Cf. SKS 4, 231 / PF, 24. Éloge de Socrate is a revised version of an earlier conference paper titled “La figure de Socrate,” given at the Eranos session in Ascona (Switzerland) in 1974. The conference paper was initially published in Annales d’Eranos, vol. 43, 1974, pp. 51–90 and in Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, pp. 77–116. 15 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 85. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 151.) 16 Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 97. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 159.) In Plato’s Symposium (217–18), as Hadot recalls, “[s]uch is the story Alcibiades 11

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reversal of situation described above, Socrates’ “erotic irony” is dialectical in nature, as Hadot admits,17 and, moreover, it is also akin to what Kierkegaard describes as one of the main characteristics of the seducer. In fact, Hadot appears to be quite convinced that one can hardly “imagine a better commentary on this passage than the following one, by Kierkegaard,”18 quoted from The Concept of Irony: one might possibly call [Socrates] a seducer, for he deceived the youth and awakened longings which he never satisfied….He deceived them all in the same way as he deceived Alcibiades who…observes that instead of the lover, Socrates became the beloved…he attracted the youth to him, but when they looked up to him, when they sought repose in him, when forgetting all else they sought a safe abode in his love, when they themselves ceased to exist and lived only in being loved by him—then he was gone, then the enchantment was over, then they felt the deep pangs of unrequited love, felt that they had been deceived and that it was not Socrates who loved them but they who loved Socrates.19

Just like Socrates’ strategy, Kierkegaard’s indirectness is equally deceiving. As already pointed out, Hadot contends indeed that Kierkegaard is “perfectly aware of the Socratic character of his method.”20 Albeit deceitful, such a method is not misleading in fact, but rather intended to serve a noble aim, for, in Kierkegaard’s view, the deceitful method has the well-defined role of leading one “into the truth.” In support of this claim, Hadot quotes extensively from Kierkegaard’s The Point of View for My Work as an Author:

tells in his speech in praise of Socrates. Alcibiades, believing in the sincerity of the numerous declarations of love Socrates had made to him, invited Socrates home one night in order to seduce him. He slipped into bed with him, and wrapped his arms around him. Much to Alcibiades’ surprise, however, Socrates remained in complete control of himself, and did not let himself be seduced at all. ‘Since that time,’ declares Alcibiades, ‘I am the one who has been reduced to slavery, and I’m in the state of a man bitten by a viper.’ ” Cf. Symposium, 217–18, in Plato, Complete Works, ed. by John M. Cooper, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett 1997, pp. 499–500. 17 Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 98. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 158.) Mary-Jane Rubenstein explains: “Pierre Hadot refers to this sort of Socratic reversal of identity as ‘erotic irony,’ which structurally reiterates dialectic irony. The latter, dialectic irony, describes the process whereby Socrates feigned ignorance, identifying with his student, and pretending his student might have something to teach him.” See Mary-Jane Rubenstein, “Kierkegaard’s Socrates: A Venture in Evolutionary Theory,” Modern Theology, vol. 17, no. 4, 2001, pp. 468–9. 18 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 97. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 159.) 19 Cf. SKS 1, 108 / CI, 188. Hadot quotes Kierkegaard from a secondary source, namely, Wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, p. 60. Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, pp. 97–8. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, note 84, p. 174; the English translation uses Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony, trans. by Lee M. Capel, New York: Harper & Row 1965, p. 213.) 20 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 83. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 150.)

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Nicolae Irina From the point of view of my whole activity as an author, integrally conceived, the aesthetic work is a deception, and herein is to be found the deeper significance of the use of pseudonyms. A deception, however, is a rather ugly thing. To this I would make answer: One must not let oneself be deceived by the word “deception.” One can deceive a person for the truth’s sake, and (to recall old Socrates) one can deceive a person into the truth. Indeed, it is only by this means, i.e. by deceiving him that it is possible to bring into the truth one who is in an illusion.21

Socrates’ deceitfulness has a twofold significance. As a deceiver, Socrates wears a mask, yet he is simultaneously used as a mask by others, as Hadot puts it.22 Hadot seems to suggest that many a philosopher has in fact found inspiration and refuge in the Socratic use of irony as a mask: “Because he was himself masked, Socrates became the prosopon or mask, of personalities who felt the need to take shelter behind him.”23 Hadot’s theory of the mask explains Kierkegaard’s authorship too, and the use of pseudonyms as masks in the Dane’s work.24 Moreover, Hadot claims that there is a direct correspondence between the various pseudonyms and the different stages in which Kierkegaard formulated his indirect message regarding Christianity: As is well known, most of Kierkegaard’s works were first published under a variety of pseudonyms: Victor Eremita, Johannes Climacus, etc. We are not dealing here with an editorial caprice. Rather, for Kierkegaard, all these pseudonyms correspond to different levels—the “aesthetic,” “ethical,” and “religious”—at which the author was supposed to be situated. Kierkegaard speaks successively of Christianity as an aesthete, then as a moralist, in order to force his contemporaries into the awareness that they are not true Christians.25 Cf. SV1 XIII, 540–1 / PV, 53. Here, the English version of Hadot’s text quotes Kierkegaard’s The Point of View, trans. by Walter Lowrie, New York: Harper 1962, pp. 39–40. In Éloge de Socrate, Hadot quotes from Kierkegaard’s Point de vue explicatif de mon œuvre d’ecrivain, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, Bazoges-en-Pareds: privately published by the translator 1940, p. 35, and he also indicates the location of the same passage in Kierkegaard’s French complete works, see Kierkegaard, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 16, p. 28. Cf. Hadot, Éloge de Socrate, pp. 17–18. Many of Hadot’s endnotes refer to available French translations of Kierkegaard’s works, but also to German editions, especially when he quotes Kierkegaard indirectly, referring to Wahl’s Études kierkegaardiennes. See, for instance, Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 84, note 25. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 172, note 25.) 22 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 80. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 148.) Furthermore, Hadot points out: “To use Kierkegaard’s expression, Socrates was a cobold….Socrates’ exterior appearance—ugly, buffoon-like, impudent, almost monstrous— was only a mask and a façade.” See Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 80. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 148.) In the revised version, Hadot quotes from Le Concept d’ironie, in Kierkegaard, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 2, p. 11. Cf. Hadot, Éloge de Socrate, p. 11, note 2. 23 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 81. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 149.) 24 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 83. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 150.) 25 Ibid. 21

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The climax of Kierkegaard’s indirect method bears the troubling truth about an alienated Christendom. The task of disclosing such a truth to a reluctant audience requires a carefully elaborated strategy, which, for Hadot, explains Kierkegaard’s existential attitude. According to Hadot, “[w]henever thinkers have been aware of— and frightened by—the radical renewal of which they were the bearers, they too have used a mask to confront their contemporaries. They have usually chosen to use the ironic mask of Socrates.”26 Wearing the mask of Socrates’ irony and indirect communication becomes an essential existential attitude and therefore a necessity for Kierkegaard’s unveiling of a disquieting truth. Thus Socrates is, for Kierkegaard, the proper mask for a highly challenging task. Hadot discusses Kierkegaard’s authorship in further detail and shows that “Kierkegaard used pseudonymy to give voice to all the different characters within him…[to] his various selves, without recognizing himself in any of them, just as Socrates, by means of his skillful questions, objectified the self of his interlocutors without recognizing himself in any of them.”27 On the one hand, Hadot claims that Kierkegaard remains hidden, even to himself, behind the various pseudonymous masks put on as a result of a psychological need.28 To substantiate his claim, Hadot quotes another full passage from Kierkegaard’s journals: “Because of my melancholy, it was years before I was able to say ‘thou’ to myself. Between my melancholy and my ‘thou,’ there was a whole world of fantasy. I exhausted it, in part, in my pseudonyms.”29 Yet, on the other hand, it becomes quite transparent to Hadot, as already indicated, that Kierkegaard’s “real mask was Socratic irony itself; it was Socrates himself: ‘O Socrates! Yours and mine are the same adventure! I am alone. My only analogy is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task.’ ”30 Ibid. Hadot quotes here Wahl’s remark that “[Kierkegaard] hid himself beneath the mask of an artist and half-believing moralist to speak about what he believed most deeply.” See Wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, p. 282. Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 83, note 24. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 150 and p. 172, note 24.) 27 Pierre Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 84. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, pp. 150–1.) 28 That is also the case of Nietzsche, according to Hadot: “As for Kierkegaard, so for Nietzsche: masks were a pedagogical necessity, but also a psychological need.” See Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 85. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 151.) 29 Cf. SKS 20, 97, NB:141 / JP 5, 5980. In Éloge de Socrate, Hadot indicates that the source of this passage is Wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, p. 52, but he also quotes the direct source in Knud Ferlov and Jean-Jacques Gâteau’s translation of Kierkegaard’s Journal. Extraits, vol. 2, 1846–49, Paris: Gallimard 1954, p. 97. Cf. Hadot, Éloge de Socrate, p. 18. Cf. also Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 84. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 172, note 26; the English translation refers again to Kierkegaard’s German translation.) 30 Cf. SKS 13, 406 / M, 341. SKS 25, 347. NB29:87 / JP 4, 4728. In Éloge de Socrate, Hadot quotes Tisseau’s translation of Kierkegaard’s L’Instant, Bazoges-en-Pareds: privately published by the translator 1948, no. 10, pp. 174–6, but also Kierkegaard’s Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 19, pp. 300–1, although one element of Hadot’s composite quotation of Kierkegaard’s words (that is, “ton aventure est la mienne”) is on p. 302. Cf. Hadot, Éloge de Socrate, p. 19. Cf. also Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 84. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 172, note 27; the English version of Hadot’s text refers again to the German translation.) 26

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III. From Insurmountable Shortcomings to a Way of Life As we have seen, Hadot describes Kierkegaard’s method as being genuinely Socratic. According to Hadot, “Kierkegaard’s goal was to make the reader aware of his mistakes, not by directly refuting them, but by setting them forth in such a way that their absurdity would become clearly apparent,” and one could easily agree with Hadot that “[t]his is as Socratic as it can be.”31 More specifically, in the context of Socrates’ method of indirect communication, what Socrates famously does by means of his stance of ignorance is to reject any resemblance with the figure of the sage. Nevertheless, what unites both Socrates and those who fall under his scrutiny and spiritual midwifery is the desire to reach the wisdom of the sage which neither Socrates himself nor any of his interlocutors has. As Hadot argues, they all lack and desire wisdom; this acknowledgment is precisely what makes them philo-sophers: “Just as Kierkegaard is Christian only by his awareness that he is not Christian, Socrates is wise only by his awareness that he is not wise. It is in this respect that [Socrates] is a philosopher, deprived of wisdom, but in love with wisdom.”32 It is thus clearly noticeable that there are many resemblances between the indirect methods used by Socrates and Kierkegaard. Indeed, as we have seen, Hadot considers valid Kierkegaard’s parallel between his “protestation that he was not a Christian,” on the one hand, and “the Socratic insistence that he was not a sage,”33 on the other, as Thomas Flynn points out. Indeed, in Philosophy as a Way of Life, Hadot holds that analyzing Kierkegaard’s stance of ignorance is a key element in the process of understanding the significance of Socrates’ complex figure. Hadot’s interpretation of this parallel and his explanation as to why, for Kierkegaard, it is “virtually impossible” to be truly a Christian are in fact reminiscent of Hadot’s own critique of the ecclesiastical establishment, conducive in part to his decision to leave the Church in June of 1952.34 Kierkegaard asserts that he knows only one thing: that he is not a Christian. He was intimately convinced of this fact, because to be a Christian is to have a genuine personal and existential relationship with Christ; it is to interiorize Christ in a decision emanating from the depths of the self. Since such interiorization is so very difficult, it is virtually impossible for anyone truly to be a Christian. The only true Christian was Christ. At any rate, the least we can say is that the best Christian is he who is aware of not being a Christian, insofar as he recognizes that he is not a Christian.35

31 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 84. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 150.) 32 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 197. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 123.) 33 Cf. Thomas Flynn, “Philosophy as a Way of Life: Foucault and Hadot,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 31, nos. 5–6, 2005, p. 616. 34 Cf. Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, pp. 48–50. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, pp. 21–2.) 35 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 94. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 157.) For more on this topic, Hadot refers again to Wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, p. 387.

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Furthermore, Hadot considers that both Kierkegaard and Socrates have identical, genuine yet divided existential consciousnesses. Indeed, as Hadot claims, “Socratic consciousness is also torn and divided: not by the figure of Christ, but by the transcendent norm of the figure of the sage.”36 What the two have in common is the paradoxical nature of such an existential consciousness, given by the fact that its very existence resides “only in its consciousness of not truly existing.”37 Kierkegaard’s struggle with the insurmountable shortcomings of being truly a Christian has its ancient correspondent in the effort to emulate the figure of the sage. To illustrate this, Hadot quotes Kierkegaard’s testimonial in The Moment: O Socrates, you had the accursed advantage of making it painfully obvious, by means of your ignorance, that others were even less wise than you. They didn’t even know that they were ignorant. Your adventure was the same as mine. People become exasperated with me when they see that I can show that others are even less Christian than I; I who respect Christianity so much that I see and admit that I am not a Christian!38

Trying to clarify Plato’s definition of “philosopher” in the Symposium, Hadot holds that the ancient text confers a tragic note to the insuperable separation of the philosopher from the wisdom he or she so dearly desires. Hadot supports his claim with a re-nuanced comparison of the tragic philosopher with Kierkegaard’s attempt to emulate a Christ-like paradigm. For Hadot, philosophy has a tragic tonality “because the bizarre being called the ‘philosopher’ is tortured and torn by the desire to attain this wisdom which escapes him, yet which he loves. Like Kierkegaard,39 the Christian who wanted to be a Christian but knew that only Christ is a Christian, Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 95. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 157.) 37 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 94. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 157.) As Hadot clarifies: “Just as Kierkegaard was only Christian insofar as he was conscious of not being a Christian, Socrates was a sage only insofar as he was conscious of not being wise.” See Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 95. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, pp. 157–8.) 38 Cf. SKS 13, 407 / M, 342. Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, pp. 94–5. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 157.) Once again, Hadot’s refers to Tisseau’s translation of Kierkegaard’s L’Instant, no. 10, p. 176, but also to the German version. Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 95, note 74. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 174, note 72.) See also Kierkegaard’s Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 19, pp. 301–2. “My Task” (SKS 13, 403–11 / M, 340–7), dated September 1, 1855, is included in Kierkegaard’s unfinished manuscript for the tenth issue of The Moment. Muench considers “My Task” to be “in effect Kierkegaard’s last pronouncement upon the various activities he has been engaged in as a writer and thinker since the completion and defense of his dissertation,” in which “Kierkegaard openly refuses to call himself a Christian and at times he even denies that he is a Christian.” See Paul Muench, “Kierkegaard’s Socratic Point of View,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 24, 2007, pp. 132–3. 39 In a footnote, Hadot refers here to Kierkegaard, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 19, pp. 300–1. Cf. Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, p. 81, note 1. (What is Ancient Philosophy?, p. 288, note 15.) However, this is not a direct quotation from Kierkegaard. Cf. SKS 13, 406–7 / M, 341–2. 36

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the philosopher knows that he cannot reach his model and will never be entirely that which he desires.”40 According to Hadot, the figure of the sage in antiquity became gradually focused on Socrates, but this is to be understood as always indicating a preference for a model to be emulated, a transcendent ideal or norm capable to inspire one’s life rather than a reference to the historical person.41 Moreover, Hadot argues that Socrates plays in fact the role of a mediator between the figure of the sage and one’s life, that is, between the “transcendental ideal of wisdom and concrete human reality.”42 Socrates’ midwifery thus helps one aspire to the ideal of wisdom, but it also inspires a way of life. Yet, despite its antique connotations, the figure of the sage is not out of date; it remains current, as Hadot explains, throughout the history of Western thought: one finds the figure of the ancient sage, for example, in the traits of the free man in Spinoza or in the form of the Idea of the philosopher, of whom Kant speaks when he says (incidentally thereby anticipating Kierkegaard), “A philosopher corresponding to this model does not exist any more than a true Christian really exists. Both are norms.”43

IV. The Emergence of the Individual As we have seen, Hadot contends that it is ultimately a mythical and not a historical Socrates that greatly influenced the entire history of Western thought from Plato to our

Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, p. 81. (What is Ancient Philosophy?, p. 46.) 41 Cf. Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 187; p. 189. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 117.) 42 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 78. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 147.) 43 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 188. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 117.) Hadot’s endnote gives the reference as Immanuel Kant, Vorlesungen über die philosophische Enzyclopädie, in Kants gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1-29, ed. by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin: Georg Reimer and Walter de Gruyter 1900ff.), vol. 29, p. 8. Cf. Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 188, note 2. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 189, note 23.) The same Kantian passage appears slightly modified in Hadot’s What is Ancient Philosophy?: “There exists no philosopher corresponding to this model, any more than there exists any true Christian. Both are models….Models must serve as norms….The ‘philosopher’ is only an idea. Perhaps we may glance at him, and imitate him in some ways, but we shall never totally reach him.” Cf. Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, pp. 399–400. (What is Ancient Philosophy?, p. 266.) Hadot also claims that Kant’s Socratism “foreshadows that of Kierkegaard, who said he was a Christian only insofar as he knew he was not a Christian.” Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, p. 400. (What is Ancient Philosophy?, p. 266.) Hadot quotes Kant again here: “The Idea of wisdom must be the foundation of philosophy, just as the idea of sanctity is the foundation of Christianity.” Cf. Kant, Vorlesungen über die philosophische Enzyclopädie, p. 8. Cf. Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, p. 400, note 1. (What is Ancient Philosophy?, p. 320, note 43.) 40

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time.44 Therefore, Hadot is not interested in dealing with the attempt to reconstruct the image of the historical Socrates, but rather with the effort to highlight the main traits of the figure of Socrates and its influence. Hadot restricts his investigation to the figure of Socrates as it appears in Plato’s Symposium, and as proposed by “those two great Socratics, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.”45 In response to A.I. Davidson’s question about the relation between the historical Socrates, on the one hand, and the constant reference to the figure of the ancient thinker throughout the history of philosophy, on the other, Hadot reminds us that Merleau-Ponty, in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, praises Socrates with an enthusiasm that “echoes a text written by Plutarch nineteen centuries earlier.”46 Yet it is primarily for the ancients, as Hadot explains, and particularly for the Stoics and the Cynics, that “Socrates has always been the model of the philosopher, and more precisely the model of the philosopher for whom life and death are the main teaching.”47 The nineteenth century sees a renewal of this interest, Cf. Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 197. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 123.) According to Hadot: “Plato was the first philosopher who began to project his own philosophical conceptions onto the figure of Socrates. He is at the origin of the mythical Socrates. And almost all the philosophers who have discussed Socrates have discussed the figure of Socrates such as it is drawn by Plato, or at times by Xenophon, but this latter one too is probably rather mythical. Plato idealized Socrates, but to put him into relation with his own Platonic perspectives, and also perhaps because he wanted to valorize all the philosophical signification of the figure of Socrates.” See Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 198. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, pp. 123–4.) 45 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 78. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 147.) Regarding Hadot’s secondary sources of Kierkegaardian studies in this area, it is worth mentioning here that he uses mainly German books and articles or their translations. For instance, on the relationship between Kierkegaard and Socrates, one of Hadot’s footnotes in the original version recommends Jens Himmelstrup, Sören Kierkegaards Sokrates-Auffassung, Neumünster: Wachholtz 1927; J. Wild, “Kierkegaard and Classic Philology” Philosophical Review, vol. 49, 1940, pp. 536–7; Jean Wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, Paris: Aubier 1938; Edo Pivčevič, Ironie als Daseinsform bei Sören Kierkegaard, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag Haus Mohn 1960; Torsten Bohlin, Sören Kierkegaard. L’homme et l’œuvre, trans. by PaulHenri Tisseau, Bazoges-en-Pareds: privately published by the translator 1941. Cf. Hadot, Éloge de Socrate, p. 8, note 1; and Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 78, note 3. 46 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 194. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 121.) Hadot’s reference is to Plutarch’s De genio Socratis from which Kierkegaard quoted as well. For instance, Kierkegaard notes on the inside front cover of a copy of The Concept of Irony, “In his De genio Socratis, Plutarch tells that Socrates’ father had received the oracle about his son stating that he must compel him in no way but allow him to follow his inclinations completely.” Cf. Pap. IV A 200 / CI, Supplement, p. 448. See Plutarch, “On the Sign of Socrates,” 20, Moralia, 589e–f (in Plutarch’s Moralia, vols. 1–15, trans. by Frank Cole Babbitt et al., Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1967–84, vol. 7, pp. 457–9). For more details regarding Kierkegaard’s notes on Plutarch, see Nicolae Irina, “Plutarch: A Constant Cultural Reference,” in Kierkegaard and the Greek World, Tome II, Aristotle and Other Greek Authors, pp. 301–11. 47 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 195. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 122.) 44

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but only in a certain area of philosophical discourse; Hadot indicates that those who have “associated themselves with [Socrates] are primarily existentialist thinkers, such as…Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.”48 For both of them, Socrates is a tragic figure and, although apparently different, their interpretations can ultimately be reconciled, as Hadot claims. On the one hand, Hadot argues that Nietzsche’s understanding of Socrates relies on a problematic interpretation of Socrates’ last words at the end of the Phaedo: “Crito, we owe a cock to Aesclepius; make this offering to him and do not forget.”49 Nietzsche reads this as a hidden indication of Socrates willingness to make a “sacrifice of recognition to the god of medicine for having cured him of life.”50 Nietzsche’s construal of the “life as an illness” reading of Socrates’ last utterance puts into question the truthfulness and implications of Socrates’ teachings. As Hadot explains, it is by arguably revealing the truth about his view of life only when faced with the immediate prospect of his own death that Nietzsche’s Socrates becomes tragic.51 However, Nietzsche’s reading generates a contradiction, according to Hadot. In disagreement with Nietzsche’s interpretation, Hadot contends that “the meaning of Socrates’ statement is not that life in itself is an illness, but [Platonically] that the life of the body is an illness and that the only true life is the life of the soul.”52 On the other hand, Kierkegaard’s Socrates is “tragic from the outset,” representing, as Hadot claims, “the seriousness of the existential responsibility of the Individual, of the Existing, who is the Individual and the Existing precisely because he is strange, unclassifiable, divided, and torn by his inner incompleteness, deprived of the one he loves.”53 Just as in Kierkegaard’s tragic denial of being truly a Christian, the tragic aspect of Socrates reveals itself in the peculiar character of his incessant and excruciating pursuit of a wisdom that constantly escapes his grasp (even more inaccessible to the ones Socrates challenges to provide proof of possessing it), which nevertheless constitutes his very nature. Hadot holds that this is “the Individual dear to Kierkegaard—the Individual as unique and unclassifiable personality.”54 Ibid. Phaedo 118a, in Plato, Complete Works, p. 100. 50 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 196. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 122.) 51 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 197. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 122.) In fact, as Hadot contends, Nietzsche’s doubts concerning Socrates might reveal his “own doubt on the subject of the meaning of life.” See Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 197. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 123.) The various interpretations of Socrates’ last words in Phaedo (118a) generated in fact a quite interesting debate. For a brief survey, see Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Plato and the Trial of Socrates, New York: Routledge 2004, see especially 4.4 “Socrates’ famous last words,” pp. 265–71. 52 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 196. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, pp. 122–3.) 53 Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre, p. 197. (The Present Alone Is Our Happiness, p. 123.) 54 Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, pp. 56–7. (What is Ancient Philosophy?, p. 30.) Elsewhere, Hadot writes: “Socrates was indeed an individual: that individual so dear 48 49

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As has already been shown, Kierkegaard’s self-described task can be readily compared, in many respects, with Socrates’ similar endeavor: “The only analogy I have before me is Socrates; my task is a Socratic task, to audit the definition of what it is to be a Christian.”55 Kierkegaard clearly indicates that his own stance of ignorance “almost sounds like a kind of lunacy,”56 quite similar to Socrates’ (self-) description as atopos. Hadot shows that Kierkegaard has already indicated in The Point of View for My Work as an Author57 that this “is the true explanation of the terms atopos, atopia, and atopotatos which recur so often in the Platonic corpus to describe Socrates’ character.”58 Perhaps the most disconcerting effect of Socrates’ “powerful individuality” is that he has the ability to “awaken the individuality of his interlocutors,”59 yet this comes with an unexpected outcome. The “seriousness of existence” to which Kierkegaard’s Socrates summons his interlocutors brings about Socrates’ own tribulation, since, according to Hadot, “Concern for one’s individual destiny cannot help but lead to to Kierkegaard that he would have liked to have as an epitaph: ‘He was That Individual.’ ” Cf. SV1 XIII, 604 / PV, 118. Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 96. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 174, note 79.) In the revised version, Hadot gives the source as Kierkegaard, Point de vue explicatif de mon œuvre d’ecrivain, in Kierkegaard, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 16, p. 94. Cf. Hadot, Éloge de Socrate, p. 40. The first representation of “this Individual” occurs, admittedly, in Alcibiades’ speech in praise of a unique Socrates (Symposium, 221c–d), as Hadot submits: “impossible to classify; he cannot be compared to any other man….He is atopos, meaning strange, extravagant, absurd, unclassifiable, disturbing.” See Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, p. 57. (What is Ancient Philosophy?, p. 30.) The figure of Socrates could be thus described as the “first individual in the history of Western thought.” Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 95. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 158.) 55 SKS 13, 406 / M, 341. Muench points out: “Immediately after he claims that he stands alone in Christendom, Kierkegaard makes the perhaps even more remarkable claim that there does exist one person prior to him whose activity is analogous.” See Muench, “Kierkegaard’s Socratic Point of View,” p. 135. 56 SKS 13, 403 / M, 340. My emphasis. However, Kierkegaard claims that he is not ignorant of the real meaning of Christianity (“I know what Christianity is; I myself acknowledge my defects as a Christian—but I know what Christianity is.” SV1 XIII, 505 / PV, 15 (see the first paragraph of the Appendix to “On My Work as an Author”). His struggle concerns only the emulation of the Christian model, just like Socrates’ difficulty to accept the oracle’s words. 57 Here, Kierkegaard translates ἀτοπώτατος as “the most eccentric of men.” SV1 XIII, 554 / PV, 68–9. Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 96, note 77. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 174, note 75.) In Éloge de Socrate, Hadot adds also Kierkegaard, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 16, p. 44. Cf. Hadot, Éloge de Socrate, p. 39. 58 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 96. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 158.) See, for instance, the recurrence of such terms in Plato’s Symposium, 215a; Phaedrus, 229–30; Alcibiades, 106a. Cf. Plato, Complete Works, p. 497, pp. 509–10, and p. 560, respectively. Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 96, note 78. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 174, note 76.) 59 Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, p. 60. (What is Ancient Philosophy?, pp. 31–2.)

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conflict with the state.”60 Socrates’ irony ultimately turns against Socrates himself and triggers his trial and eventually his death sentence.61 Despite such a dramatic consequence, he remains unremittingly attached to his teachings, and thus, as Hadot puts it, “we have an instance of the ‘seriousness of existence’ of which Kierkegaard speaks.”62 Hadot claims that Kierkegaard understands how Socrates’ unconditional commitment to his own life guidelines proves the existential role of philosophy, namely, its penchant for fostering the individual’s uniqueness and responsibility: “For Kierkegaard, Socrates’ merit was that he was an existing thinker, not a speculative philosopher who has forgotten what it means to exist. Kierkegaard’s fundamental category of existence is the individual, or the unique, isolated in the solitude of his existential responsibility. For Kierkegaard, Socrates was its discoverer.”63 All of the above shows that the real significance of Kierkegaard’s Socrates, according to Hadot, resides in revealing the importance of “the individual” in the context of a tragic struggle to enact a life commitment. Thus, in lieu of a conclusion, one could certainly agree that Hadot links Kierkegaard’s significance not only to a methodological artifice meant to make communication of “serious” existential matters more valuable, but also to a fruitfully developed reinterpretation of the figure of Socrates. Kierkegaard’s reading of the paradigmatic Socratic individual is significant in terms of influencing Hadot’s own views regarding the way philosophy should be practiced as a spiritual exercise, that is, as a dedication to a way of life based on a set of existential practices.

60 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 92. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 156.) 61 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 93. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 156.) 62 In the original version, Hadot refers to Wahl’s, Études kierkegaardiennes (1967), pp. 350ff. Cf. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 93, note 65. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 174, note 66; the English translation refers to Lowrie’s translation of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944, pp. 82ff. Cf. SKS 7, 273 / CUP1, 358. 63 Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, p. 93. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 156.) Here Hadot refers to the French version of Kierkegaard’s Point de vue explicatif de mon œuvre d’ecrivain, in Kierkegaard, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 16, p. 44. Cf. Hadot, Éloge de Socrate, p. 34, note 5. This passage corresponds to SV1 XIII, 554 / PV, 68–9.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Hadot’s Corpus Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, Paris: Études Augustiniennes 1981, p. 78; p. 80; pp. 83–5; p. 90; pp. 92–8; p. 104, note 107. See especially “La Figure de Socrates,” pp. 77–116 (republished as Éloge de Socrate, Paris: Éditions Allia 1998, p. 8; p. 11; pp. 17–20; pp. 29–30; p. 32; p. 34; pp. 36–40; p. 42; p. 55, note 1). (English translation: Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. by Michael Chase, Malden, Massachusetts and Oxford: Blackwell 1995, p. 33, pp. 150–1; pp. 154–9; p. 45, note 210; p. 170, note 3; pp. 170–1, note 3; p. 172, notes 24–8; p. 173, notes 52–3; p. 174, notes 66–8, notes 71–2, note 75, note 79, note 84; p. 175, note 107; p. 285, note 3.) Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, Paris: Éditions Gallimard 1995, pp. 56–7; p. 81; p. 400; p. 407. (English translation: What is Ancient Philosophy?, trans. by Michael Chase, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press 2002, p. 30; p. 47; p. 266; p. 270; p. 288, note 15.) La philosophie comme manière de vivre. Entretiens avec Jeannie Carlier et Arnold I. Davidson, Paris: Éditions Albin Michel 2001, p. ix, 117; pp. 121–3; p. 147. (English translation: The Present Alone Is Our Happiness: Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson, trans. by Marc Djaballah, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2009, p. ix; p. 117; pp. 121–3; p. 147.) II. Sources of Hadot’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Bohlin, Torsten B., Sören Kierkegaard. L’homme et l’œuvre, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, Bazoges-en-Pareds: privately published by the translator 1941. Himmelstrup, Jens, Sören Kierkegaards Sokrates-Auffassung, Neumünster: Wachholz 1927. Kierkegaard, Søren, Point de vue explicatif de mon œuvre d’ecrivain, trans. by PaulHenri Tisseau, Bazoges-en-Pareds: privately published 1940. — Riens philosophiques, trans. by Knud Ferlov and Jean-Jacques Gâteau, Paris: Gallimard 1948. — L’Instant, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, Bazoges-en-Pareds: privately published 1948. — Journal. Extraits, vol. 2, 1846-1849, trans. by Knud Ferlov and Jean-Jacques Gâteau, Paris: Gallimard 1954. — Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 1-20, trans. and ed. by Paul-Henri Tisseau and EliseMarie Tisseau, Paris: Éditions de l’Orante 1966-86.

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Pivčević, Edo, Ironie als Daseinsform bei Sören Kierkegaard, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus G. Mohn 1960. Wahl, Jean, Études kierkegaardiennes, Paris: F. Aubier 1938. Wild, John, “Kierkegaard and Classic Philology,” Philosophical Review, vol. 49, no. 5, 1940, pp. 536–51. III. Secondary Literature on Hadot’s Relation to Kierkegaard Flynn, Thomas, “Philosophy as a Way of Life: Foucault and Hadot,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 31, 2005, pp. 609–22, see especially pp. 616–19.

Emmanuel Levinas: An Ambivalent but Decisive Reception Jeffrey Hanson

The widely influential ethical thinker Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95) was placed by circumstance in the midst of Kierkegaard’s reception in the interwar French philosophical scene. A key inheritor of the phenomenological tradition as practiced by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), and an important transmitter of their thought to a French-speaking audience, Levinas was also influenced by Kierkegaard, though to a degree that is a matter of debate. While he clearly knew something of Kierkegaard’s works (and again there is some debate as to exactly how familiar he was with the whole sweep of Kierkegaard’s corpus,1 though he responds directly to Fear and Trembling, and there is some textual evidence that he was at least acquainted with some of the non-pseudonymous writings),2 his reaction to Kierkegaard was notoriously ambivalent. Recent Englishlanguage scholarship has argued for greater affinities between the two than Levinas Merold Westphal, the pre-eminent scholar of the relationship between Kierkegaard and Levinas, remarks: “Levinas writes as if he had never even heard of Works of Love, much less read it. But he does seem aware of the Climacus writings, to which he makes apparent reference.” Merold Westphal, “The Many Faces of Levinas as a Reader of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2008, p. 22. See footnote 27 below for Levinas’ explicit reference to Climacus’ Philosophical Fragments. Samuel Moyn points out in private correspondence with this author that Levinas was reviewing books about Kierkegaard when he was only 30 years old and, due to the influence of Jean Wahl (1888– 1974), was arguably reasonably familiar with Kierkegaard’s works. It is also quite certain that Levinas read Wahl’s massive Études kierkegaardiennes (Paris: Aubier 1938), which he wrote about in published essays that are referenced in the next section, and Lev Shestov’s (1866–1938) Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle (Paris: Vrin 1936), his review of which is mentioned below. 2 I discuss the textual evidence for familiarity with the non-pseudonymous writings at the conclusion of this article. Levinas did leave an archive, but it is inaccessible, and so it is impossible to say what his notes might include by way of reference to Kierkegaard. Levinas also participated in a television program entitled “Le mystère Søren Kierkegaard,” produced by Denis Huisman and Marie-Agnès Malfray for the French channel TF1 and broadcast November 23, 1977, but it can to my knowledge only be viewed at the “Centre de consultation” of the Institut national de l’audiovisuel, located at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (site François Mitterand, Quai François Mauriac, Paris 13e). This article therefore confines itself to published works. For a précis of the Levinas archive, see Salomon Malka, 1

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himself acknowledged and has fostered increased critical attention to the issues orbited by both thinkers.3 As for Levinas’ own published reflections on Kierkegaard, they reveal a mix of tempered praise and criticism, sometimes quite harsh. While Levinas was enthusiastic about Kierkegaard’s efforts to break with the speculative totalization represented primarily by Hegel’s system, and he praised what he called Kierkegaard’s theory of a “persecuted truth” as opposed to the “truth triumphant” upheld by imperialistic rationality, he feared that Kierkegaard was ultimately a thinker of egotism and that his version of subjectivity was violent and extra- (not to say anti-) philosophical. In particular, he had strong words of disapproval for the tone of Kierkegaard’s polemicism and for what he took to be his granting to individual subjectivity the privilege of transcending or suspending ethics. Finally, it is clear from a number of writings that Levinas did not believe that Kierkegaard was an acceptable inspiration for Judaism or for the contemporary effort to revive Jewish spirituality and reflection. Nevertheless, while his own discussions of Kierkegaard were comparatively few in his enormous body of work, and rarely in-depth, Levinas’ voice among the chorus of those contemporary French thinkers with whom he was a frequent conversation partner is an important and influential one in the way Kierkegaard was inherited by French philosophy.4 I. Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas Emmanuel Levinas was arguably one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century and certainly one of the most important ethical theorists. Born in Kaunas, Lithuania, Russian was the language of his early youth, though he also mastered German and was taught Hebrew as part of his religious education. He studied philosophy in Strasbourg, beginning in 1923. In Strasbourg he met Maurice Emmanuel Levinas: His Life and Legacy, trans. by Michael Kigel and Sonja M. Embree, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press 2006, p. 284; p. 312, note 8. 3 Of paramount importance here are the essays of Merold Westphal collected in his Levinas and Kierkegaard in Dialogue, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2008, and the essays furnished by contributors to Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion. Also of great historical import is Samuel Moyn, Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press 2005. See especially chapter 5. A complete list of resources for continued study of Kierkegaard and Levinas is provided in the bibliography to this article. 4 The most important conversation partners for Levinas on the subject of Kierkegaardian thinking were Wahl, Shestov, and obliquely, one might say, Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). Other participants in the 1964 UNESCO conference “Kierkegaard vivant,” which Levinas’ attended, included Jean Beaufret (1907–82) on behalf of Martin Heidegger (in absentia), whose paper made no mention of Kierkegaard but was accepted as a tribute to him nonetheless, Lucien Goldmann (1913–70), Jeanne Hersch (1910–2000), Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), Enzo Paci (1911–76), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80), and Jean Wahl. Levinas was joined in the roundtable discussions by Jean Hyppolite (1907–68) among others. Levinas also referred quite frequently to Kierkegaard via his writings on Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) and Martin Buber (1878–1965).

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Blanchot (1907–2003), with whom he would share a lifelong friendship. He attended Husserl’s final lectures at Freiburg in 1928 and 1929 and was introduced to Heidegger and his work. Through his reviews and early essays Levinas would later become one of the most important early transmitters of both men’s philosophies to a French-speaking audience. He published his doctoral thesis as The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology in 1930,5 one of the first works in French to treat Husserl’s phenomenology in any depth. The same year he was naturalized as a French citizen. In 1939 he served in the French army as an interpreter of both Russian and German but was captured with his unit and sent to an officers’ prisoner-of-war camp outside Hannover where he was subjected to forced labor. His wife, Raisa, and his daughter were concealed in a French monastery during the war until his release, an arrangement made possible by Blanchot, who also facilitated communication between Levinas and his family. His father, two brothers, and his mother- and father-in-law were murdered in the Holocaust. Levinas’ distress at the events of the Holocaust precipitated a break with Heideggerean thinking and caused him to vow to never again return to Germany. Levinas published “On Escape” in 19356 and after the war presented a series of four lectures at a philosophical colloquium hosted by Jean Wahl that were published as “Time and the Other.” 7 Both were eventually reissued in book form. In 1947 he published Existence and Existents.8 During this time he was teaching at and eventually became director of the École Normale Israélite Orientale. He did not hold a university position until after the publication of Totality and Infinity, when he began teaching at Poitiers. His concerns with Jewish spirituality and education in the wake of the Holocaust are expressed in his collection of essays entitled Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism from 1963.9 Levinas’ reputation as a philosopher was cemented with what is universally hailed as his first magnum opus, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority from 1961.10 A second great work, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence,11 which in Emmanuel Levinas, La Theorie de l’intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl, Paris: Alcan 1930. (English translation: The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, trans. by André Orianne, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 1973.) 6 Emmanuel Levinas, “De l’évasion,” Recherches philosophiques, vol. 5, 1935, pp. 373–92 (republished as De l’évasion, Montpellier: Fata Morgana 1982). 7 Emmanuel Levinas, “Le temps et l’autre,” in Le Choix–le Monde–L’Existence. Cahiers du Collège Philosophique, ed. by Jean Wahl et al., Paris: Arthaud 1947, pp. 125–96 (republished as Le temps et l’autre, Montpellier: Fata Morgana 1979). 8 Emmanuel Levinas, De l’existence à l’existant, Paris: Revue Fontaine 1947. (English translation: Existence and Existents, trans. by Alphonso Lingis, The Hague: Nijhoff 1978.) 9 Emmanuel Levinas, Difficile liberté. Essais sur le judaïsme, Paris: Albin Michel 1963. 10 Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et Infini. Essai sur l’extériorité, The Hague: Nijhoff 1961. (English translation: Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. by Alphonso Lingis, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press 1969.) 11 Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence, The Hague: Nijhoff 1974. 5

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many ways traverses the same themes, did not appear until 1974. Levinas taught at Nanterre and finally at the Sorbonne. He continued to publish a variety of essays under the titles Proper Names (1976),12 Of God Who Comes to Mind (1982),13 and Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other (1991),14 as well as a number of Talmudic studies collected in Quatre lectures Talmudiques (1968), Du sacré au saint (1977),15 and Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures (1982).16 We have called Levinas an ethical thinker, and that is so, but he is not so in the Aristotelian sense of a cultivator of the virtues or one who counsels the development of a certain kind of character nor in the Kantian sense of a legislator of laws or prescriptive rules. The central theme for which Levinas is rightly famous is his continual meditation on the privileged place of the Other.17 Throughout his career Levinas subjected to critique the history of ontology,18 which he regarded as having suppressed with disastrous ethical consequences the place of the Other (Autrui in French, normally translated as “Other” with a capital “O” as opposed to “other,” which refers only to autre; in keeping with standard French usage, Autrui denotes the other human being). “A calling into question of the same—which cannot occur within the egoist spontaneity of the same—is brought about by the other. We name this calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other ethics.”19

Emmanuel Levinas, Noms propres, Montpellier: Fata Morgana 1976. Emmanuel Levinas, De Dieu qui vient à l’idée, Paris: Vrin 1982. 14 Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous. Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre, Paris: Grasset 1991. 15 Emmanuel Levinas, Quatre lectures Talmudiques, Paris: Minuit 1968 and Emmanuel Levinas, Du sacré au saint, Paris: Minuit 1977. (English translation of both texts in Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. by Annette Aronowicz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1990.) 16 Emmanuel Levinas, L’au-delà du verset, Paris: Minuit 1982. This list is by no means exhaustive. For a complete chronological list of Levinas’ publications see Bibliographie d’Emmanuel Levinas. 1929–2005, ed. by Patrick Fabre, Paris: Institut d’études lévinassiennes 2005, pp. 39–60. 17 No brief summary can do justice to a thinker of such tremendous output and importance. The few themes discussed here are those most of interest to beginners in Levinas and most important for understanding his use of Kierkegaard. References in the “Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas” will be confined to Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, and “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 6, 1957, pp. 241–53 (English translation: “Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, trans. by Alphonso Lingis, Dordrecht: Nijhoff 1987, pp. 47–60), an accessible essay that provides an excellent orientation for those wholly unfamiliar with Levinas’ philosophy. 18 It should be noted that Levinas uses the word “ontology” pejoratively. In its place he prefers the word “metaphysics” as a kind of thinking of being that is open to the Other. This latter kind of thinking is animated by the thought of infinity, which forever resists assimilation to totality, hence the key terms of the title of his first great work. See Levinas, Totalité et Infini, pp. 12–18. (Totality and Infinity, pp. 42–8.) 19 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. 13 (Totality and Infinity, p. 43.) 12 13

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This conception of ethics is fundamental for Levinas, preceding ontology and every other discipline, and is equally not to be usurped by any other discipline.20 According to Levinas, the ethical horrors of Western civilization, and perhaps especially those of the twentieth century, are rooted not merely in the vices of their perpetrators but in the philosophical and everyday conceptuality of the Western tradition, which in its totalization and violence does not leave a place for the Other but aggressively attempts to reduce the Other to the same. “Thus Western thought,” he wrote, “very often seemed to exclude the transcendent, encompass every other in the same, and proclaim the philosophical birthright of autonomy.”21 The prize of thinking, truth, is thus not generally the result of disinterested curiosity but one of the spoils of war, gained at the price of “victory” and “integration,”22 so, for Levinas, “comprehension” is also usually “domestication” and “possession.”23 As such, “Philosophy is atheism, or rather unreligion, negation of a God that reveals himself and puts truths into us.”24 The atheism and “egology”25 of philosophy can only be challenged, according to Levinas, by a genuine transcendence, a phenomenon that presents itself as wholly Other and thus a point of resistance to the ego’s efforts to assimilate the other to itself. Such an encounter will expose the subject to itself as fundamentally unjust.26 Counterexamples of such a moment occur in the philosophical tradition from time to time, most notably when Plato identifies the Good as beyond being and thus irreducible to confident and complacent comprehension and in Descartes’ account of the idea of the Infinite.27 Such figures, Levinas argues, provide the subject with 20 See Emmanuel Levinas, “L’ontologie est-elle fondamentale?,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 56, 1951, pp. 88–98. (English translation: “Is Ontology Fundamental?” in Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. by Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 1996, pp. 1–10.) 21 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 242. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, p. 48.) See also the preface to Totalité et Infini, p. x (Totality and Infinity, p. 21): “The visage of being that shows itself in war is fixed in the concept of totality, which dominates Western philosophy.” 22 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 243. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” p. 49.) 23 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 244. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” p. 50.) 24 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 243. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” p. 49.) 25 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 243. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” p. 50.) 26 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 244. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” pp. 50–1.) 27 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 247. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” p. 53.) Levinas also referred to Kierkegaard in the course of an in-depth discussion of Descartes’ presentation of God as the idea of the Infinite placed in the human being. Near the end of “Outside of Experience: The Cartesian Idea of the Infinite,” a lecture delivered late in his career at the Sorbonne, Levinas wrote: “The rupture is a passivity more passive than any passivity; it is like a trauma by which the idea of God would have been placed in me. And this ‘placed in him’ is a scandal in the Socratic world! This idea of ‘placed in me’

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“experience in the sole radical sense of the term: a relationship with the exterior, with the other, without this exteriority being able to be integrated into the same.”28 Such resistance is not merely an impassive presentation in the mode of ordinary experience but is charged with height, with “ethical resistance,” with the supremacy of the Other over my own private preferences and interests. The “epiphany” of the Other opposes me and “all my powers,” and is “not simply the apparition of a form in the light, sensible or intelligible, but already this no cast to powers; its logos is: ‘You shall not kill.’ ”29 As such, the Other cannot be my “object,” “theme,” “property,” “booty,” “prey,” or “victim.”30 Paradigmatically, this sort of epiphany, which “opens the very dimension of infinity, of what puts a stop to the irresistible imperialism of the same and the I,”31 is signified in the face of the Other. The face is, of course, not just the front of a human being’s skull but is the very mode of presence of the Other that is uniquely “present in its refusal to be contained. In this sense it cannot be comprehended, that is, encompassed. It is neither seen nor touched.”32 Though in a way “still a thing among things,” the face “breaks through the form that nevertheless delimits it”33 and opens a new dimension of language, the medium of ethical accountability,34 by “arousing my goodness”35 and provoking a special sort of what Levinas will call metaphysical desire, a desire for the Other that is not born of need or acquisitiveness.

abjures all its Socratic honoraria.” In a footnote to that passage Levinas wrote, “This ‘Socratic scandal’ is likewise that upon which Kierkegaard meditates, at least in the second chapter of Philosophical Fragments” (translation modified). Emmanuel Levinas, “Hors l’expérience: l’idée cartésienne de l’infini,” in Dieu, la mort et le temps, Paris: Grasset 1993, p. 247. (“Outside of Experience: The Cartesian Idea of the Infinite,” in God, Death, and Time, trans. by Bettina Bergo, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2000, p. 217, p. 289, note 8.) 28 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 247 (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, p. 54.) 29 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 248. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, p. 55.) This investiture of the Other with an ethical height that imposes itself upon the subject is the nub of Levinas’ objection to Martin Buber’s dialogic model of the “I-Thou” relationship. The encounter with the Other is not a reciprocal relationship as Levinas perceives Buber to be advocating, a meeting of equals, but of the one who dispossesses me in an asymmetrical encounter. See Emmanuel Levinas, “Martin Buber et la théorie de la connaissance,” in Noms propres, Montpellier: Fata Morgana 1976, pp. 39–40. (English translation: “Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge,” in his Proper Names, trans. by Michael B. Smith, London: Athlone Press 1996, p. 32.) See also Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. 48. (Totality and Infinity, p. 75.) 30 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 248. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, p. 55.) 31 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 248. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, p. 55.) 32 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. 168. (Totality and Infinity, p. 194.) 33 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. 172. (Totality and Infinity, p. 198.) 34 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. 169. (Totality and Infinity, p. 195.) See also Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 248. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” p. 55.) 35 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. 175. (Totality and Infinity, p. 200.)

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As immeasurable, the infinite signified by the face cannot be the object of knowledge and remains disproportionate to the thinking that aspires to it. It can then only be the object of a desire: “A thought that thinks more than it thinks is a desire. Desire ‘measures’ the infinity of the infinite.”36 This desire is, by definition, limitless because it cannot be satisfied and indeed does not want to be satisfied. Ordinary desires are quenched when their object is incorporated into the same, but because the Other cannot be subject to assimilation the desire for the Other does not bespeak a lack or absence in the subject or a nostalgic hunger for what has been lost but opens to an authentically new adventure for what has never been and never can be a part of a narcissistic quest to recover myself and my own. “The true desire,” Levinas wrote, “is that which the desired does not satisfy, but hollows out. It is goodness.”37 This goodness is indicative of the subject that has broken with its typical egotism. The encounter with the Other does not dethrone the subject but in fact makes the subject fully itself. “To be in oneself,” Levinas wrote, “is to express oneself, that is, already to serve the Other. The ground of expression is goodness. To be καθ᾽ αὑτό is to be good.”38 Only an I can be “from itself.” “Only an I can respond to the injunction of a face,”39 because truly to be an I is to be an I in the face-to-face relation. “To posit being as Desire and as goodness is not to first isolate an I which would then tend toward a beyond. It is to affirm that to apprehend oneself from within—to produce oneself as I—is to apprehend oneself with the same gesture that already turns towards the exterior to extra-vert and to manifest—to respond for what it apprehends—to express.”40 As metaphysical desire is disproportionate to its object, so metaphysics as the thinking of the Other must transform the traditional concepts of Western philosophy, reshaping them away from their egotist and atheist origins to serve the purpose of a philosophical language based in the encounter with the Other. Of special importance to what is to come is the concept of truth. As we have seen, truth traditionally understood is, according to Levinas, like the prize of conquest, the reward for the Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 249. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” p. 56.) 37 Levinas, “La philosophie et l’idee de l’infini,” p. 250. (“Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” p. 57.) See also Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. 3. (Totality and Infinity, p. 33): “The term of this movement, the elsewhere or the other, is called other in an eminent sense. No journey, no change of climate or of scenery could satisfy the desire bent toward it. The other metaphysically desired is not ‘other’ like the bread I eat, the land in which I dwell, the landscape I contemplate, like, sometimes, myself for myself, this ‘I,’ that ‘other.’ I can ‘feed’ on these realities and to a very great extent satisfy myself, as though I had simply been lacking them. Their alterity is thereby reabsorbed into my own identity as a thinker or a possessor. The metaphysical tends toward something else entirely, toward the absolutely other….As commonly interpreted need would be at the basis of desire; desire would characterize a being indigent and incomplete or fallen from its past grandeur. It would coincide with the consciousness of what has been lost; it would be essentially a nostalgia, a longing for return. But thus it would not even suspect what the veritably other is.” 38 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. 158. (Totality and Infinity, p. 183.) 39 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. 282. (Totality and Infinity, p. 305.) 40 Ibid. 36

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assimilation of the other to the same. At the very beginning of Totality and Infinity he wrote: “the mind’s openness upon the true consist[s] in catching sight of the permanent possibility of war…[which is] the very patency, or the truth, of the real.”41 By contrast, the idea of infinity is “pre-eminently non-adequation,”42 and non-adequation in turn denotes the “inordinateness of Desire. Desire is desire for the absolutely other.”43 The theory of metaphysical desire institutes a new understanding of the truth that is characteristic of thinking animated by the Other: “The aspiration to radical exteriority, thus called metaphysical, the respect for this metaphysical exteriority which, above all, we must ‘let be,’ constitutes truth.”44 Truth as traditionally understood, then, as adequation or disclosure, is insufficient to describe the truth born of encounter with the Other. Disclosure or adequation are agents of the same, means by which the subject is merely reconfirmed in her own complacency. By contrast, “The welcoming of the face and the work of justice—which condition the birth of truth itself—are not interpretable in terms of disclosure.”45 Truth, instead, consists in “a relation with the absolutely other” and ethics is its “royal road.”46 II. Levinas’ References to Kierkegaard Levinas’ exposure to Kierkegaard came primarily thanks to Jean Wahl,47 Lev Shestov, and Franz Rosenzweig, and the general interwar enthusiasm in the French intellectual scene for Kierkegaard’s thought, an interest for Levinas’ purposes that intersected with the questions of subjectivity, system, truth, and of religion and its relationship to philosophy in general. The earliest reference to Kierkegaard by Levinas occurs in his review of Shestov’s Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle,48 which appeared in the Revue des études juives and made mention of Kierkegaard’s influence on French and German thinkers, including of special import in Levinas’ mind, Rosenzweig. He wrote: The thought of Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher who died in 1855, has experienced for several years now a rare fortune. Jaspers and Heidegger in Germany and Jean Wahl and Gabriel Marcel in France—these are a few of the names that allow one to measure the extent of an influence that also exercised itself, in a very obvious manner, on the only modern Jewish philosopher worthy of the name: Franz Rosenzweig.49 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. ix. (Totality and Infinity, p. 21.) Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. xv. (Totality and Infinity, p. 27.) 43 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. 4. (Totality and Infinity, p. 34.) 44 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. xvii. (Totality and Infinity, p. 29.) 45 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. xvi. (Totality and Infinity, p. 28.) 46 Levinas, Totalité et Infini, p. xvii. (Totality and Infinity, p. 29.) 47 Wahl’s influence on him is testified to by the fact that Levinas dedicated Totality and Infinity to Marcelle and Jean Wahl. 48 This discussion of Levinas’ first article is greatly indebted to Moyn, Origins of the Other. The translations from Levinas are his. 49 Emmanuel Levinas, [Review of “Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle (Vox clamantis in deserto)” by Lev Shestov], Revue des études juives, vol. 52, no. 2, 1937, p. 139; cited in Moyn, Origins of the Other, p. 165. 41 42

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As Moyn notes, this review not only hails Kierkegaard as an influential force in contemporary thinking but also signals Levinas’ approval of Rosenzweig’s transformation of Kierkegaard’s thinking as opposed to Shestov’s version of Kierkegaard,50 a preference borne out in the many mentions of Kierkegaard and Rosenzweig together in Levinas’ published writings. Despite his obvious preference even quite early in his career for a certain kind of Kierkegaardianism, in this article Levinas nevertheless conceded that “Kierkegaard’s fortunes are by no means a fad.”51 Explicit and detailed discussions of Kierkegaard in Levinas’ corpus are few, though references in passing, generally consisting in abbreviated repetitions of Levinas’ basic concerns with Kierkegaard, abound. The key engagements are in two essays devoted to the Dane: the first, published originally in German as “Existenz und Ethik” in 1963 was later republished by Levinas in French in his collection Noms propres;52 the second was originally presented in the form of remarks at the UNESCO-sponsored conference “Kierkegaard vivant” and likewise republished in Noms propres in a form more satisfactory to the author. The former is, by Levinas’ own admission, a development of the thoughts expressed as part of a roundtable discussion in the latter,53 and so it will command the bulk of the attention in this survey of Levinas’ explicit references to Kierkegaard. In “Existence and Ethics” Levinas begins by attributing to Kierkegaard a “strong notion of existence”54 that, in his view, maintained itself paradoxically (though Levinas does not necessarily use this term in an approving manner) between the subject conceived in Kierkegaard’s fashion and the idealistic tradition. According to Levinas, for Kierkegaard the subject is “absolute, separated, standing on the hither side of objective Being.”55 To sustain the “irreducible position of the subject against idealism,” which in Levinas’ reading originally gave the subject its properly philosophical status, Kierkegaard (he asserts) had recourse to “pre-philosophical

Moyn, Origins of the Other, p. 165. Ibid., p. 175. Levinas continues in this article to praise the subtlety of Kierkegaard’s thinking and clearly distinguishes between what he takes to be Kierkegaard’s own thought and Shestov’s gloss, to which he raises his own objections. 52 In the original German edition of the article, Levinas provides a footnote that was not reprinted in the French Noms propres edition. Jacques Colette has noticed its absence and remarks that it is quite telling with respect to Levinas’ approach to reading Kierkegaard. See Jacques Colette, “Levinas et Kierkegaard: Emphase et paradoxe,” Revue philosophique de Louvain, vol. 100, 2002, p. 9, note 16. The footnote is a reference to the final section entitled “Conclusions, Questions” of Jean Wahl’s Études kierkegaardiennes and reads: “Ce qui fait la grandeur du christianisme...ne doit-il pas finalement disparaître?” See Emmanuel Levinas, “Existenz und Ethik,” Schweizer Monatshefte, vol. 43, May 1963: p. 177. The full quotation, without the ellipsis, reads: “Dès lors, ce qui fait la grandeur du christianisme pour Kierkegaard n’est-il pas lié à notre proper faiblessse et ne doit-il pas finalement disparaître?” See Jean Wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, 3rd ed., Paris: Vrin 1967, p. 436. 53 Emmanuel Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” in Noms propres p. 88. (English translation: “Existence and Ethics,” in Proper Names, p. 75.) 54 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 77. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 66.) 55 Ibid. 50 51

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experience.”56 Contrary to the tendency of idealism to “reduce man to a disembodied and impassible point”57 and contrary to Hegel, for whom the subject is “absorbed by the Being that this subject uncovered,”58 Kierkegaard denied that the movement by which subjectivity was grasped by idealism could make the claim to being originary thinking. The thematic and thus generalizable movement of idealism culminating in the system, according to Levinas’ understanding of Kierkegaard, does not amount for the latter to a “power that simultaneously places all being on a par with the thinker and expresses the thinker in the beings he or she fashions in thinking.”59 In effect then, Kierkegaard “denied that Being was the correlate of thought.”60 To construct his own account of subjectivity, Kierkegaard does not resort to the “particularity of feeling and enjoyment”61 since, for him, these experiences conclude themselves only in the despair of the aesthetic. Neither, however, can the ethical, which Levinas calls “a stage at which the inner life is translated in terms of legal order, carried out in a society, in loyalty to institutions and principles and in communication with mankind,”62 express the subject. For Kierkegaard, he argues, “Exteriority cannot match human interiority. The subject has a secret for ever [sic] inexpressible, which determines his or her very subjectivity. A secret that is not simply knowledge about which one refrains from speaking, but one that, identified especially with the burn of sin, remains of itself inexpressible.”63 It is for this reason Levinas asserts that Kierkegaard foregoes any notion of “truth triumphant, i.e. rational or universal.”64 Instead, the “incommunicable burn”65 bespeaks a subjectivity as “tensing on oneself ”66 that tokens not just a philosophical notion of the subject but a Christian one and one dependent even on “pagan sources.” For this account of subjectivity, “existence [is] tensed over itself, open to the outside in an attitude of impatience and of waiting—an impatience that the outer world (of people and things), wrapped in a relaxed, impassive thought, cannot satisfy.”67 The kernel of this account of subjectivity, which Levinas claims is common to both “the philosophy of existence and speculative philosophy,” is “the fact of being’s attachment to its being,” the identification of A as A and thus as the object of anxiety.68 “The subjectivity of the subject is an identification of the Same in its care of the Same. It is egotism. Subjectivity is a Me.”69 Ibid. Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 78. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 67.) 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 79. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 67.) 68 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 79. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 68.) 69 Ibid. 56 57

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The value that Levinas explicitly identifies in Kierkegaard’s response to this primitive egotism consists in its resistance to the incipient violence and totalization of Hegelianism: But to discern in that discourse—in that possibility of speaking, attained as a prolongation of totalizing thought—a distant impossibility of discourse, the shadow of evening in the midday sun…to sense—through that philosophy of totality that relaxes subjective egotism (though it be sublime as the thirst for salvation)—the end of philosophy, ending in a political totalitarianism in which human beings are no longer the source of their language, but reflections of the impersonal logos, or roles played by figures: all this constitutes the value of the Kierkegaardian notion of existence and its deeply Protestant protest against systems.70

Immediately after ascribing this praise to Kierkegaard, as a thinker who was suspicious of the tyranny of speculative reason and resistant to the totality of the system, Levinas submits the basic tenet of his repeated objection to Kierkegaardian thinking.71 “But, we might ask ourselves whether the return to a subjectivity that turns away from thought, i.e. that refuses ever-triumphant truth, the thought suspected of lying and distraction when it claims to calm our anxieties, does not lead us to other forms of violence.”72 Levinas’ concern over Kierkegaard, it becomes immediately apparent, is that the latter lapses back into another form of subjective egotism,73 and Levinas questions instead “whether the subjectivity that is irreducible to objective being could not be understood in virtue of a different principle than its egotism, and whether the true ethical stage is correctly described by Kierkegaard as generality and equivalence of the inner and the outer.”74 Levinas pursues this possibility to which his own thinking is responsive (more so than Kierkegaard’s in his own view) in the second section of the essay, entitled Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” pp. 79–80. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 68.) Possibly the pithiest formula Levinas uses to express his reservation with Kierkegaard occurs early in Totality and Infinity: “The same is essentially identification within the diverse, or history, or system. It is not I who resist the system, as Kierkegaard thought; it is the other,” p. 40. Totalite et infini, p. 10. 72 Ibid. 73 The desire for salvation, as suggested in the long quotation above, is another form of egotism according to Levinas. The ethical subject must be free of the desire for happiness or satisfaction, something he does not think is true of the Kierkegaardian subject. For an additional remark to this effect see the only other reference to Kierkegaard in Totality and Infinity, from the final section of the work, p. 305: “The I is conserved then in goodness, without its resistance to system manifesting itself as the egoist cry of the subjectivity, still concerned for happiness or salvation, as in Kierkegaard.” Totalite et infini, p. 282. See also p. 25: “Finally, the eschatological vision does not oppose to the experience of totality the protestation of a person in the name of his personal egoism or even of his salvation.” Totalite et infini, p. xiv. For a rejoinder to Levinas’ critique of Kierkegaard on the issue of egotism and the desire for salvation, see Christopher Arroyo, “Unselfish Salvation: Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the Place of Self-Fulfillment in Ethics,” Faith and Philosophy, vol. 22, no. 2, 2005, pp. 160–72. 74 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 80. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 68.) 70 71

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by way of contrast to the first section (“Truth Triumphant”) “Truth Persecuted.” In the opening sentence Levinas claims that to the traditional notion of truth triumphant “Kierkegaard opposes belief that is authentic because [it is] reflective of the incomparable status of subjectivity.”75 He proceeds to argue that, for Kierkegaard, belief is not an imperfect sort of knowledge, because if it were, subjectivity itself would be only “an opaque area running through the sunlit field of exteriority before fading away.”76 Because belief is the translation of a condition that is inexpressible in any “outside,” it is, by contrast to the triumphant, “needy and indigent, poor with that radical poverty, that irremediable poverty, that absolute hunger that is, in the final analysis, what sin is.”77 In Kierkegaard’s understanding of truth persecuted, “Belief is linked to a truth that suffers. The truth that suffers and is persecuted is very different from a truth improperly approached. It is so different that in Kierkegaard’s eyes it is through suffering truth that one can describe the very manifestation of the divine.”78 So incommensurable is this manifestation, so irreconcilable the simultaneity and tension between “All and Nothingness, Relation to a Person both present and absent—to a humiliated God who suffers, dies and leaves those whom he saves in despair… certainty that coexists with an absolute uncertainty”79 that Levinas wonders “whether that Revelation itself is not contrary to the essence of that crucified truth, whether God’s suffering and the lack of recognition of the truth would not reach their highest degree in a total incognito.”80 This suffering truth in Levinas’ account refuses by its nature synthesis and is not subject to an external misfortune that precludes its resolution, but bleeds from within in a state of continual uncertainty and lack of assurance: Possession is never certain. If the synthesis were to be realized, the tête-à-tête would be broken off. It could then be said. Subjectivity would lose its tension upon itself, its contraction, its underlying egotism; it would enter exteriority and generality….In belief, existence seeks recognition….It struggles for that recognition by begging for forgiveness and salvation. But that recognition is granted by a truth that is itself held up to ridicule, not recognized and ever to be recognized.81

Consequent upon this scandalous notion of truth, and again Levinas here seems disapproving, is the transformation of the quest for truth into an “inner drama”82 that in the eyes of the world can appear only as “indiscretion, scandal”83 and whose Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 80. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 69.) Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 81. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 69.) 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. It is a curiosity that Levinas does not speak about the role of the incognito in Philosophical Fragments, wherein the term appears explicitly, especially since he did seem to have some familiarity with that text. See footnote 27 above. 81 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” pp. 81–2. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 70.) 82 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 82. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 70.) 83 Ibid. 75 76

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only proper vocabulary is “anger and invective.”84 “The truth that suffers,” Levinas writes, “does not open man to other men but to God, in solitude.”85 It is on the basis of this assertion that Levinas associates Kierkegaard with “the violence of the modern world and its cult of Ardor and Passion.”86 The form of subjective existence Kierkegaard celebrates, he submits, “carries within it an irresponsibility, a ferment of disintegration.”87 Therefore, we might ask ourselves whether the exaltation of pure faith, the correlate of truth crucified (the “phenomenology” which no one has developed with greater rigor than Kierkegaard), is not itself the ultimate consequence of that still natural tension of being on itself that I have alluded to above as egotism,88

and Levinas reminds his reader that for his philosophical critique, egotism is not merely an ethical vice but is inscribed in the West’s ontology of the subject, a history with which it would seem Kierkegaard is in the final analysis complicit. In what remains of the essay, Levinas advances his sharpest language yet. Despite his apparent compliment to the effect that “Kierkegaard’s philosophy has marked contemporary thought so deeply that the reservations and even the refusal that it elicits attest to its very influence,”89 Levinas nevertheless writes: “After one hundred years of Kierkegaardian protest, one would like to get beyond that pathos. The idle distraction that Kierkegaard, borrowing Pascal’s notion of vain recreation denounces in the systems, has gradually been replaced by an obvious immodesty.”90 Kierkegaard’s passion is not condemned as merely tiresome, however, but as in tone (featuring “virile and ruthless accents…harshness and aggressivity in thought”91) and substance of a piece with “the amoralism of the most recent philosophers.”92 “Violence emerges in Kierkegaard at the precise moment when, moving beyond the esthetic stage, existence can no longer limit itself to what it takes to be an ethical stage and enters the religious one, the domain of belief.”93 This final claim is the most serious and substantial objection Levinas lodges against Kierkegaard both here and elsewhere in his writings. His response in “Existence and Ethics” is one that should be familiar with anyone even minimally acquainted with the contours of Levinas’ thought as a whole. Proceeding on the basis of his premise that “The ethical means the general to Kierkegaard”94 and that generality would, for him, necessarily suppress the

Ibid. Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” pp. 82–3. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 71.) 90 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 83. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 71.) 91 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 84. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 72.) 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 84 85

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singularity of the I,”95 Levinas questions whether the “relation to the Other”96 is the same as the entry into the general and clarifies himself to be asking this question not only to Kierkegaard but to Hegel as well. It is not, he argues, the secrecy of the subject that shatters the totality, but “the exteriority in which human beings show us their faces.”97 As opposed to what he takes to be Kierkegaard’s view, Levinas argues that “Subjectivity is in that responsibility [for the Other] and only irreducible subjectivity can assume a responsibility. That is what constitutes the ethical. To be myself means, then, to be unable to escape responsibility.”98 The tension generated by the encounter with the Other is not a tension in oneself that destroys the subject but “binds it to the Other in an incomparable, unique manner,”99 a bond that “rids the I of its imperialism and egotism (be it the egotism of salvation) [and] does not transform it into a moment of the universal order.”100 On the basis of his own alternative understanding of ethical responsibility and the constitution of the subject in its encounter with the Other, Levinas concludes by proposing to re-read the story of the binding of Isaac: Kierkegaard has a predilection for the biblical story of the sacrificing of Isaac. Thus, he describes the encounter with God as a subjectivity rising to the religious level: God above the ethical order! His interpretation of this story can doubtless be given a different orientation. Perhaps Abraham’s ear for hearing the voice that brought him back to the ethical order was the highest moment in this drama.101

This reading, which emphasizes Abraham’s attentiveness to the divine command to draw back from sacrificing his son at the last moment, is repeated in the second major engagement with Kierkegaard performed by Levinas. The original context for this engagement was spoken remarks made at the “Kierkegaard vivant” conference.102 They are in two parts, the first a response to a prompt from Jean Hyppolite, the second in response to Gabriel Marcel. They originally appeared in the conference volume with what the author claimed were distortions derived from a defective recording and were republished in corrected form in Noms propres. The published piece still embodies the directness and economy of the spoken word in its original context; Levinas announces straightaway his twofold disturbance at Kierkegaard’s work. First, he said, “Kierkegaard rehabilitated subjectivity—the unique, the singular—with incomparable strength. But in protesting against the absorption of subjectivity by Hegel’s universality, he bequeathed to the history of philosophy an

Ibid. Ibid. 97 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 85. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 72.) 98 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 85. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 73.) 99 Ibid. 100 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 86. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 73.) 101 Levinas, “Existence et éthique,” p. 86. (“Existence and Ethics,” p. 74.) 102 The proceedings were published as Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’Unesco à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, ed. by René Maheu, Paris: Gallimard 1966. 95 96

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exhibitionistic, immodest subjectivity.”103 Second, Levinas went on to say, “It is Kierkegaard’s violence that shocks me,” and he went so far as to suggest that the tone of Kierkegaard’s (and Nietzsche’s) writing anticipated the verbal violence of National Socialism and the thinking that Nazism exalted.104 Again, Levinas specifically objects to what he takes to be Kierkegaard’s ostensible move to “transcend ethics”105 (a phrase that appears in scare quotes in the text), and again he characterizes Kierkegaard’s view as consisting in the contention that “The ethical means the general, for Kierkegaard. The singularity of the I would be lost, in his view, under a rule valid for all.”106 And once more he asserts his own position, that “it is not at all certain that ethics is where he sees it. Ethics as consciousness of a responsibility toward others…far from losing you in generality, singularizes you, poses you as a unique individual, as I.”107 Finally, Levinas also advances his proposed alternate reading of the sacrifice of Isaac: In his evocation of Abraham, he describes the encounter with God at the point where subjectivity rises to the level of the religious, that is to say, above ethics. But one could think the opposite: Abraham’s attentiveness to the voice that led him back to the ethical order, in forbidding him to perform a human sacrifice, is the highest point in the drama.108

In the second set of remarks Levinas again advances comments familiar for their reworking in “Existence and Ethics.” “I think,” he reflected, “that Kierkegaard’s philosophical novelty is in his idea of belief.”109 Levinas once more specifies that, in his understanding of Kierkegaard, belief is not a degraded knowledge, and he further asserts that in his notion of a persecuted truth humility itself becomes a modality of the true, an achievement Levinas calls “something completely new.”110 Again, he asks whether the proper mode of revelation is not then for Kierkegaard the incognito: “The idea that the transcendence of the transcendent resides in its extreme humility allows us to glimpse a truth that is not a disclosure.”111 As explained above, the idea of a new notion of truth that would not consist in disclosure or adequation is one that Levinas himself was at pains to articulate, and this is as clear a statement as we find from him that Kierkegaard was the originator of just such a redefined theory of truth. Levinas, “A Propos de ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 89. (“A Propos of ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 76.) 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 Levinas, “A Propos de ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” pp. 89–90. (“A Propos of ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 76.) 107 Levinas, “A Propos de ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 90. (“A Propos of ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 76.) 108 Levinas, “A Propos de ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 90. (“A Propos of ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 77.) 109 Levinas, “A Propos de ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 91. (“A Propos of ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 77.) 110 Levinas, “A Propos de ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 91. (“A Propos of ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 78.) 111 Ibid. 103

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This “new philosophical idea contributed by Kierkegaard”112 in his attribution amounts to a rendering equivocal of the appearance of truth. Because the true is not triumphant it is ever resistant to immanence and assimilation to totality, and it thus remains forever elusive as well: “Now, here with Kierkegaard something is manifested, yet one may wonder whether there was any manifestation….Truth is played out on a double register: at the same time the essential has been said, and, if you like, nothing has been said.”113 This evasive form of truth is not merely, he claims, the invention of a philosopher but is an expression of the age, and, in particular, Levinas argues, an expression of a time wherein the historical authenticity of the Scriptures is very much in question but wherein their essential message can still be heard.114 He concludes his thoughts with these words: “The Scriptures— perhaps there is nothing to them. Since the historical criticism of the Bible, they can be explained by a great many contingencies. Yet there was a message. It is in this sense that there is, in the Kierkegaardian manner of truth, a new modality of the True.”115 Remaining references to Kierkegaard in the Levinasian corpus are far less developed, and almost all that rise above the level of passing referral present the same mix of tempered praise and criticism. One theme that emerges decisively and that could explain the often ambivalent tone of Levinas toward Kierkegaard is the former’s judgment that Kierkegaard is not a philosopher in the robust sense but a theologian or religious thinker, and one at that (as is frequently seen in the passages about to be discussed) who is not necessarily a positive resource for specifically Jewish religiosity. In his “Letter Concerning Jean Wahl” published in Unforeseen History, Levinas mentions that, for Wahl, “existential philosophy does in fact include some notions of theological origin. Kierkegaard presents them as such; Heidegger and Jaspers attempt to secularize them,”116 and on this basis he states plainly that “Under these conditions we must say that Kierkegaard remains a theologian, not because he identified the transcendent with God rather than nature or the devil, but because he interpreted transcendence as contact with a ‘being.’ ”117 Levinas goes on to seemingly endorse Heidegger’s verdict against Kierkegaard that his analyses remained at the level of the existentiell understanding and lacked full existential,

Iibid. Levinas, “A Propos de ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 92. (“A Propos of ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 78.) 114 Levinas, “A Propos de ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 92. (“A Propos of ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” pp. 77–8.) 115 Levinas, “A Propos de ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 92. (“A Propos of ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” p. 79.) 116 Emmanuel Levinas, “Lettre à propos de Jean Wahl,” Bulletin de la Societé française de Philosophie, vol. 37, no. 5, 1937, pp. 194–5. (English translation: “Letter Concerning Jean Wahl,” in Unforeseen History, trans. by Nidra Poller, Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2004, p. 65.) 117 Levinas, “Lettre à propos de Jean Wahl,” p. 195. (“Letter Concerning Jean Wahl,” p. 66.) 112 113

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ontological development.118 He makes a similar argument in his “Contribution to Jean Wahl’s Petite histoire de l’existentialisme” reprinted in Unforeseen History: It may be true that there is some Kierkegaard behind every sentence of Heidegger, but it is Heidegger who gave a philosophical sound to Kierkegaard’s propositions….I mean that Kierkegaard, before Heidegger, belonged to the order of essays, psychology, aesthetics, theology, or literature; after Heidegger he belonged to the order of philosophy.119

Even more straightforwardly in an interview with Jean Wahl, Levinas claims that his own project is distinct from what he takes to be Kierkegaard’s theology. Wahl asked in “Transcendence and Height” available in Basic Philosophical Writings: You employed the expression “wholly Other.” This naturally evokes the name of Kierkegaard, and perhaps others. And the “wholly Other” for him is God. Is he wrong? Is the “wholly Other” found in experience, or is it rather only in and through the call of God that the “wholly Other” is revealed?120

At first Levinas demurs, but he uses the opportunity to nuance his own position by contrast to the one he thinks Kierkegaard occupies and to emphasize his perception of violence in Kierkegaard’s thought. Levinas answers: It is difficult to say. I agree that these notions are connected, but ultimately my point of departure is absolutely nontheological. I insist upon this. It is not theology that I am doing, but philosophy….Philosophy is one of the essential adventures of reason, without which the philosophy of the absolutely dissimilar I would also present dangers, but which if left to itself would intensify the violence that it wants to combat, wherever it arises.121

Another reference to perceived violence in Kierkegaard, this time perhaps more to do with tone than content, occurs in a reminiscence Levinas published in “The Strings and the Wood” from Outside the Subject: A meeting of a high intellectual level, called to discuss some fundamental concepts of our Western spirituality, was held in a room in which we began to hear the shouts of protest of a crowd of students who were probably demonstrating against something 118 Ibid.: “And he [Heidegger] considers that what remained foreign to Kierkegaard is the position of the problem of existence as an existential (as opposed to existentiell) problem—in other words, the very perspective of ontology.” 119 Emmanuel Levinas, “Intervention: Jean Wahl, Petite histoire de ‘l’existentialisme’: suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard,” Paris: Club Maintenant 1947, pp. 81–9; p. 83. (“Contribution to Jean Wahl’s Petite histoire de ‘l’existentialisme,’ ” pp. 67–8.) 120 See Emmanuel Levinas, “Transcendence et hauteur,” Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie, vol. 56, 1962, pp. 89–113, see p. 110 (English translation: “Transcendence and Height,” in Basic Philosophical Writings, p. 29.) In his extended remarks Levinas used the phrase “wholly Other” in connection with Kierkegaard at p. 94 (“Transcendence and Height,” p. 15). He also mentions Kierkegaard in his denial that he thinks of the State in a Kierkegaardian fashion at p. 102 (“Transcendence and Height,” p. 23). 121 Levinas, “Transcendence et hauteur,” pp. 110–11. (“Transcendence and Height,” in Basic Philosophical Writings, pp. 29–30.)

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If Levinas indeed seems to take Heidegger’s side in his relegation of Kierkegaard to the status of theologian or religious thinker as opposed to true philosopher and advances his own thinking as resolutely nontheological by contrast to Kierkegaard’s, then some of Levinas’ repeated reservations about Kierkegaard come more sharply into focus. At times in his corpus he desires to protect philosophy from the extravagances of Kierkegaardian protest and to rehabilitate the position of ethics as properly first philosophy and thus adequate to the task that (as Levinas understands him) Kierkegaard needs the religious to accomplish. Hence, in parts of the corpus, Levinas repeats his perception that Kierkegaard attempts to “overcome” ethics in the name of the religious. In “Glory of the Infinite and Witnessing,” a lecture published in God, Death, and Time, Levinas wrote: Contrary to what Kierkegaard thought, the “ethical stage” is not universal; rather, it is the stage in which the “me” forgets its concept and no longer knows the limits of its obligation. One would prefer, on the contrary, to take refuge in one’s concept in which the limits of obligation are found.123

As in the longer engagements treated above, Levinas reinterprets what he takes to be the universal and conceptual character of the Kierkegaardian ethical stage as, instead, an insurmountable and unavoidable call to responsibility. Likewise, in “Demanding Judaism” from Beyond the Verse, Levinas asserts: “Certainly, no religion excludes the ethical. Each one invokes it, but tends also to place what is specifically religious above it, and does not hesitate to ‘liberate’ the religious from moral obligations. Think of Kierkegaard.”124 In opposition to this view he associates with Kierkegaard, Levinas argues instead for a closer connection between the ethical and the religious: “the very proximity of God is inseparable from the ethical transformation of the social,”125 such that the real task and aim of religion is the fulfillment of the ethical mandate to free the oppressed, a connection he cements by reference to the prophetic words of Isaiah 58:6. 122 Emmanuel Levinas, “Les cordes et le bois. Sur la lecture juive de la Bible,” Axes, vol. 4, 1972, pp. 20–7, see pp. 25–6. (English translation: “The Strings and the Wood,” in Outside the Subject, trans. by Michael B. Smith, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1994, p. 132.) 123 Emmanuel Levinas, “Gloire de l’Infini et témoignage,” in Dieu, la mort et le temps, pp. 224–5. (English translation: “Glory of the Infinite and Witnessing,” in God, Death, and Time, p. 196.) 124 Emmanuel Levinas, “Exigeant Judaïsme,” Débat, vol. 5, 1979, pp. 11–19, see p. 13. (English translation: “Demanding Judaism,” in Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures, trans. by Gary D. Mole, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1994, p. 5.) 125 Levinas, “Exigeant Judaïsme,” p. 14. (“Demanding Judaism,” p. 5.)

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Particularly when his attention turns to questions of Jewish spirituality and practice, Levinas critiques Kierkegaard as of little use to the Judaic tradition, and to the principles of Levinas’ own philosophy, in their understanding of the religious mandate as precisely an ethical one that cannot be surpassed. In “Have You Reread Baruch?” from Difficult Freedom Levinas argues that “[t]hrough historical criticism of the Bible, Spinoza teaches us its ethical interiorization. ‘Judaism is a revealed Law and not a theology’: this opinion from Mendelssohn came, then, from Spinoza.”126 He goes on to ask, apparently rhetorically: “Can the present-day Jewish religious consciousness deny this teaching of interiorization, when it is capable of giving such teaching a new meaning and new perspectives? Does it want to side with a Kierkegaard in regarding the ethical stage of existence as surpassable?”127 In another essay from the same collection, “Ethics and Spirit,” Levinas asks a different rhetorical question about Kierkegaard in a similar spirit: From this moment on, is it possible for a Jewish revival to operate under the sign of the Irrational, the Numinous, or the Sacramental? Here, in fact, are the religious categories we are looking for. We need a Saint Teresa of our own! Can one still be a Jew without Kierkegaard? Thankfully, we had Hassidism and the Kabbalah. Let us rest assured that one can be a Jew without having saints.128

Judaism has its own saints and perhaps does not need the air of “the Irrational, the Numinous, or the Sacramental” that Levinas detects in Kierkegaard. In keeping with his generalized mistrust of the mystical and his insistence on the concrete expression of religious life as ethical responsibility to the Other, Levinas continued in the same vein to distinguish his understanding of the religious from that of Kierkegaard. In “Loving the Torah More than God,” a radio address, the transcript of which is in Difficult Freedom, he said: The God Who hides His face and is recognized as being present and intimate…is this really possible? Does it involve a metaphysical construction, a paradoxical salto mortale in the manner of Kierkegaard? Here I believe we see the specific face of Judaism: the link between God and man is not an emotional communion that takes place within the love of a God incarnate, but a spiritual or intellectual relationship which takes place Emmanuel Levinas, “Avez-vous relu Baruch?” Les Nouveaux Cahiers, vol. 7, 1966, pp. 22–6, see p. 26. (English translation: “Have You Reread Baruch?” in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. by Seán Hand, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1990, p. 117.) 127 Levinas, “Avez-vous relu Baruch?” p. 26. (“Have You Reread Baruch?” p. 118.) 128 Levinas, “Éthique et esprit,” Evidences, vol. 27, 1952, pp. 1–4, continued p. 39, pp. 3–10; see p. 2. (“Ethics and Spirit,” in Difficult Freedom, pp. 3–10; see p. 6.) Translation modified. The French seems to have been revised by Levinas for the reprint of this article in Difficile Liberté but not in such a way as to render a positively phrased sentence into a negative one, as the English translator has rendered it. The article from Evidences reads: “Qu’on se rassure: on peut être Juifs sans les saints.” The reprint from Difficile Liberté reads: “Qu’on se rassure: on peut être Juif sans les saints” (Paris: Albin Michel 1963), p. 17. The English translation in Difficult Freedom reads: “Let us rest assured that one cannot be a Jew without saints.” 126

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Enthusiasm for Kierkegaard was high in the Jewish intellectual life of France between the wars. While, clearly, Levinas thought philosophers could learn from Kierkegaard, he may have been less convinced that Kierkegaard was a resource for Judaism per se. Finally, there remain a few passages of thematic importance that touch on diverse topics, some already covered. First, Levinas returned to his reading of Kierkegaard’s theory of “persecuted truth” discussed above on other occasions. In “Enigma and Phenomenon” found in Basic Philosophical Writings, Levinas again praises Kierkegaard’s theory of truth and again concedes that he at least caught sight of a renewed understanding of the subject: Apart from the salvation drama whose play in existence Kierkegaard, a Christian thinker, fixed and described, his properly philosophical work seems to us to lie in the formal idea of a truth persecuted in the name of a universally evident truth, a meaning paling in a meaning, a meaning thus already past and driven out, breaking up the undephasable simultaneity of phenomena. The God “remaining with the contrite and humble” (Isaiah 57:15), on the margin, a “persecuted truth,” is not only a religious “consolation” but the original form of “transcendence.”130

And, once more in the same essay, he makes reference as well to the incognito in close association with Kierkegaard’s name: The infinite is a withdrawal like a farewell which is signified not by opening oneself to the gaze to inundate it with light but in being extinguished in the incognito in the face that faces. For this, as we have said, there must be someone who is no longer agglutinated in being, who, at his own risk, responds to the enigma and grasps the allusion. Such is the subjectivity, alone, unique, secret, which Kierkegaard caught sight of.131

Similarly, in “Roger Laporte and the Still Small Voice,” he refers to “the passage from the Same to the absolutely Other (which is no less thought-provoking than the being of beings!) of which Kierkegaard speaks so insistently, and Jankélévitch Levinas, “Aimer la Thora plus que Dieu,” in Difficile Liberté, p. 174. (“Loving the Torah More than God,” p. 144.) 130 Levinas, “Enigme et phénomène,” Esprit, p. 1135. (English translation: “Enigma and Phenomenon,” in Basic Philosophical Writings, p. 70.) 131 Levinas, “Enigme et phénomène,” p. 1141. (“Enigma and Phenomenon,” p. 76.) In a related passage, Levinas associates Kierkegaard with a tradition in contemporary philosophy that seeks to free subjectivity from being limited to itself, though from this passage there is no reason to think that Levinas’ disagreements with the precise way in which Kierkegaard pursued this agenda are attenuated by this comment. “The exodus from that limitation of the I to itself, which is revealed in a whole series of reflections of contemporary philosophy on the meeting with the Other—from Feuerbach and Kierkegaard to Buber and Gabriel Marcel—is also worthy of the adjective infinite.” See Emmanuel Levinas, Altérité et Transcendance, Montpellier: Fata Morgana 1995, p. 72. (English translation: Alterity and Transcendence, trans. by Michael B. Smith, New York: Columbia University Press 1999, pp. 56–7.) 129

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without touching it. The absolute Other is the discovery no sooner discovered than put in question—truth persecuted.”132 Mention might also be made of the one reference to Kierkegaard’s theory of anxiety, against which Levinas had his own early theory of the oppressiveness of the self explained in On Escape and Existence and Existents. Speaking of anxiety in an interview with Francois Poirié, Levinas said of his own thinking of the il y a: It is not the anguish of nothing, it is the horror of the there is, of existence. It is not the fear of death; it is the “too much” of oneself. It’s true, since Heidegger and even since Kierkegaard, anguish is analyzed as the emotion of not being, as the anguish before [the] nothing, whereas the horror of the there is is close to disgust for oneself, close to the weariness of oneself.133

Also, in Time and the Other, Levinas associates Kierkegaard with Pascal, Nietzsche, and Heidegger as thinkers in a certain tradition of anxiety.134 Finally, there are a host of associations of Kierkegaard’s name with other figures who receive Levinas’ attention in a number of places, especially Rosenzweig, Wahl, and Buber.135 132 Levinas, “Roger Laporte et la voix de fin silence,” in Noms propres, p. 107. (“Roger Laporte and the Still Small Voice” in Proper Names, p. 92.) Levinas makes a similar point about the instability of the Kierkegaardian conception of truth in “Reflections on Phenomenological ‘Technique,’ ” where he wrote: “Soon the doubts that traversed and shattered Kierkegaardian faith will be taken to authenticate this faith; the god who is hidden will be precisely, in his dissimulation, the god who is revealed.” See Emmanuel Levinas, “Réflexions sur la ‘technique’ phénoménologique,” in Cahiers de Royaumont. Husserl, no. 3, Paris: Minuit 1959, pp. 95– 107, see p. 98. (English translation: “Reflections on Phenomenological ‘Technique,’ ” in his Discovering Existence with Husserl, trans. by Richard A. Cohen and Michael B. Smith, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 1998, p. 94.) 133 See Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, ed. by Jill Robbins, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2001, p. 46. 134 Emmanuel Levinas, “Le Temps et l’autre,” in Le Choix–le Monde–L’Existence. Cahiers du Collège Philosophique, ed. by Jean Wahl et al., Paris: Arthaud 1947, p. 150. (English translation: Time and the Other, trans. by Richard A. Cohen, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press 1987, p. 59.) 135 References to Kierkegaard in connection with Rosenzweig include Emmanuel Levinas, “Entre deux mondes. Biographie spirituelle de Franz Rosenzweig,” in his La conscience juive. Données et débats, ed. by E. Amado-Lévy and J. Halpérin, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1963, pp. 121–37, see p. 125. (English translation: “Between Two Worlds (The Way of Franz Rosenzweig),” in Difficult Freedom, p. 186): “But he [Rosenzweig] also knows that the simple protestation of the individual consciousness, what he calls ‘the individual all the same,’ cannot escape purely and simply from philosophy. A simple spontaneity is no longer possible after so much knowledge, and the anarchy of the individual protestations of subjective thinkers, as he calls them, such as Kierkegaard or Nietzsche, threatens us with every kind of Schwärmerei and every kind of cruelty in the world.” See also Emmanuel Levinas, “La philosophie de Franz Rosenzweig,” in his Système et révélation, ed. by Stéphane Mosès, Paris: Seuil 1982, pp. 7–16, see p. 10. (English translation: “The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig,” in his In the Time of the Nations, trans. by Michael B. Smith, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 1994, p. 153): “It is interesting to note that,

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One last provocative discussion of some length remains. Jacques Colette has noticed that this passage from “Hermeneutics and the Beyond,” available in both The God Who Comes to Mind and Entre Nous, is the rare occasion on which Levinas actually quotes (without citation) from four texts by Kierkegaard, all of which are not part of the pseudonymous authorship.136 The passage is also the only association of Kierkegaard with the theme of metaphysical desire. Levinas wrote: But when Kierkegaard recognizes in dissatisfaction an access to the supreme, despite Hegel’s warnings, he does not relapse into romanticism. His point of departure is no longer experience, but transcendence. He is the first philosopher who thinks God without thinking Him in terms of the world….Desire here is not pure deprivation; the social relationship is worth more than the enjoyment of self. And the proximity of God that has fallen to the lot of mankind is, perhaps a more divine fate than that of a God enjoying His divinity.137 without having been influenced by Husserl’s phenomenology, with which he appears to be unfamiliar, Rosenzweig, setting out from the religious horizon of the Creation, the Revelation and the Redemption, and having read Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, heralds the philosophy of the literature of existence such as was to flower again in the prolongation of Heidegger, who rejected it.” Emmanuel Levinas, “Sur le philosophie juive. Entretien avec Françoise Armengaud,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 90, no. 3, 1985, pp. 296–310, see p. 303. (English translation: “On Jewish Philosophy,” in his In the Time of the Nations, p. 175); and Emmanuel Levinas, “Franz Rosenzweig: une pensée juive moderne,” Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, vol. 4, 1965, pp. 208–21, see p. 211; p. 213; p. 215; p. 216. (English translation: “Franz Rosenzweig: A Modern Jewish Thinker,” in his Outside the Subject, p. 53; pp. 55–6; pp. 58–9; p. 63). For references to Kierkegaard in connection with Wahl see Emmanuel Levinas, “Jean Wahl. Sans avoir ni être,” in Jean Wahl et Gabriel Marcel, ed. by J. Hersch, Paris: Beauchesne 1976, pp. 13–31, see p. 16; p. 18. (English translation: “Jean Wahl: Neither Having Nor Being,” in Outside the Subject, p. 70; p. 72). Final passing remarks can be found in Levinas, “Transcendance et hauteur,” p. 94. (“Transcendence and Height,” p. 15), and the discussion of that essay with Wahl, see Levinas, “Transcendance et hauteur,” p. 102. (“Transcendence and Height,” p. 23). For references to Kierkegaard in connection with Buber see Levinas, “Martin Buber et la theorie de la connaissance,” p. 35; p. 40. (“Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge,” p. 28; p. 33). Kierkegaard is mentioned once in connection with Rosenzweig and Buber and Wahl in “The Same and the Other,” where Levinas groups these thinkers together among others as explorers of a possible form of meaning that would precede theoretical knowing. Levinas wrote: “In contemporary thought in Europe, this significance of a meaning before knowledge is beginning to be formulated in philosophy. There are no doubt conceptual potentialities to be found in Heidegger. But this possibility began to be articulated before him: since Kierkegaard, since Feuerbach in a certain sense, in Buber, Rosenzweig, Gabriel Marcel, or Jean Wahl.” Levinas, “The Same and the Other,” in God, Death, and Time, p. 142. 136 Jacques Colette, “Levinas et Kierkegaard: Emphase et paradoxe,” p. 6, note 6; p. 31. 137 See Emmanuel Levinas, “Herméneutique et Au-delà,” in L’herméneutique de la philosophie de la religion, ed. by Enrico Castelli, Paris: Aubier-Montaigne 1977, pp. 11– 20, see p. 19. (English translation: “Hermeneutics and the Beyond,” in his Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav, New York: Columbia University Press 1998, p. 74; also in his Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. by Bettina Bergo, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1998, p. 109.)

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The quotations that follow do indeed suggest that Levinas’ at least minimal familiarity with Kierkegaard’s writings extended beyond the pseudonymous authorship. He quotes from four texts in turn, again all without citation and with no hint that the quotations even come from different sources. The first is from “To Need God Is a Human Being’s Highest Perfection,” and reads: With respect to the earthly, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is. A pagan who knew how to speak only of the earthly has said that the deity is blessed because he needs nothing, and next to him the wise man, because he needs little. In a human being’s relationship with God, it is inverted: the more he needs God, the more deeply he comprehends that he is in need of God, and then the more he in his need presses forward to God, the more perfect he is.138

There then follow two short paraphrases from Christian Discourses, reading “One must love God not because He is the most perfect, but because one needs Him,” and “A need to love—supreme Good and supreme bliss.”139 Levinas then quotes from the journals, reading: I cannot get an immediate certainty about whether I have faith, for to have faith is this very dialectical suspension which is continually in fear and trembling and yet never despairs; faith is precisely this infinite self-concern which keeps one awake in risking everything, this self-concern about whether one really has faith—and precisely this selfconcern is faith.140

Levinas remarks on this passage that again Kierkegaard is able to construct a form of transcendence that depends on uncertainty, a supreme presence that appears to be absence. “In the same spirit,” he observed, “a break with the ‘triumphalism’ of common sense. In that which is a failure in relation to the world, a triumph is celebrated.”141 The authentic triumph that looks like failure is illustrated by a final quotation from the Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits: “When we say this, we are not saying that the good person is eventually victorious in another world, or that his cause will eventually be victorious in this world. No, he is victorious while he is living; suffering, he is victorious while he is still alive—he is victorious on the day of SKS 5, 297 / EUD, 303. Levinas, Entre Nous, p. 74; Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, p. 109. There seems to be no exactly matching passage from the text, though we find approximations in the statements: “If a person in the most solemn and strongest terms asserted that he loved God, that God, God alone, was his love, his only, his first love, and this person, when asked why, answered, ‘Because God is the highest, the holiest, the most perfect being’ ”; and “The simple and humble way is to love God because one needs him”; and again, “Admittedly it seems very elevated to love God because he is so perfect; it seems very selfish to love God because one needs him—yet the latter is the only way in which a person can truly love God.” SKS 10, 198 / CD, 188. 140 SKS 20, 382, NB5:30 / JP 1, 255. 141 Levinas, “Herméneutique et Au-delà,” p. 19. (Entre Nous, p. 75 and Of God Who Comes to Mind, p. 109.) 138 139

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suffering.”142 We have seen that Levinas is frequently critical of Kierkegaard and what he perceived as an egotism and adherence to an isolated form of subjectivity. Here though, much later in his career, Levinas seems to acknowledge that Kierkegaard was in his own way a thinker of metaphysical desire, though this surely does not mean that Levinas had retracted his concerns. Nevertheless, the tone of this passage is almost uniquely unqualifiedly positive, and it testifies to an ongoing interest on Levinas’ part in Kierkegaard’s thought.

142 SKS 8, 422 / UD, 331. The English translations make no effort to identify any of these Kierkegaard quotations or to square them with any existing translation of Kierkegaard into English. I have quoted the relevant passages from the Hong editions. Jacques Colette has provided the citations to the French translations by Paul-Henri Tisseau and Else-Marie Jacquet-Tisseau. See Colette, “Levinas et Kierkegaard: Emphase et paradoxe,” p. 31, note 67.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Levinas’ Corpus “Lettre à propos de Jean Wahl,” Bulletin de la Societé française de Philosophie, vol. 37, no. 5, 1937, pp. 194–5. (English translation: “Letter Concerning Jean Wahl,” in his Unforeseen History, trans. by Nidra Poller, Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2004, pp. 65–6.) Review of “Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle (Vox clamantis in deserto)” by Lev Shestov, Revue des études juives, vol. 52, no. 2, 1937, pp. 139–41. “Réflexions sur la ‘technique’ phénoménologique,” in Cahiers de Royaumont. Husserl, no. 3, Paris: Minuit 1959, pp. 95–107. (English translation: “Reflections on Phenomenological ‘Technique,’ ” in his Discovering Existence with Husserl, trans. by Richard A. Cohen and Michael B. Smith, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1998, pp. 91–110.) Totalité et Infini. Essai sur l’extériorité, The Hague: Nijhoff 1961, p. 10; p. 282. (English translation: Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. by Alphonso Lingis, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press 1969, p. 40; p. 305.) “Transcendance et hauteur,” Bulletin de la Societé française de Philosophie, vol. 56, no. 3, 1962, pp. 89–101. (English translation: “Transcendence and Height,” in his Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. by Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1996, pp. 11–31.) “Aimer la Thora plus que Dieu,” in his Difficile liberté. Essais sur le judaïsme, Paris: Albin Michel 1963, pp. 171–6. (English translation: “Loving the Torah More Than God,” in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. by Seán Hand, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1990, pp. 142–5). “Entre deux mondes. Biographie spirituelle de Franz Rosenzweig,” in his La conscience juive. Données et débats, ed. by E. Amado-Lévy and J. Halpérin, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1963, pp. 121–37. (English translation: “ ‘Between Two Worlds’ (The Way of Franz Rosenzweig),” in his Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. by Seán Hand, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1990, pp. 181–201.) “Existenz und Ethik,” Schweizer Monatshefte, vol. 43, 1963, pp. 170‑7. “Énigme et phénomène,” Esprit, vol. 6, 1965, pp. 1128–42. (English translation: “Enigma and Phenomenon,” in his Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. by Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 1996, pp. 65–77.) “Franz Rosenzweig: une pensée juive moderne,” Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, vol. 4, 1965, pp. 208–21. (English translation: “Franz Rosenzweig:

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A Modern Jewish Thinker,” in his Outside the Subject, trans. by Michael B. Smith, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1994, pp. 49–66.) “Avez-vous relu Baruch?” Les Nouveaux Cahiers, vol. 7, 1966, pp. 22–6. (English translation: “Have You Reread Baruch?,” in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. by Seán Hand, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1990, pp. 111–18.) “Les cordes et le bois. Sur la lecture juive de la Bible,” Axes, vol. 4, 1972, pp. 20–7. (English translation: “The Strings and the Wood,” in his Outside the Subject, trans. by Michael B. Smith, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1994, pp. 126– 34.) “Existence et éthique” and “À propos de ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” in his Noms propres: Agnon, Buber, Celan, Delhomme, Derrida, Jabès, Kierkegaard, Lacroix, Laporte, Picard, Proust, Van Breda, Wahl, Montpellier: Fata Morgana 1976, pp. 77–92. (English translation: “Kierkegaard: Existence and Ethics” and “A Propos of ‘Kierkegaard vivant,’ ” in his Proper Names, trans. by Michael B. Smith, London: Athlone Press 1996, pp. 66–74 and pp. 75–9.) “Jean Wahl. Sans avoir ni être,” in Jean Wahl et Gabriel Marcel, ed. by J. Hersch, Paris: Beauchesne 1976, pp. 13–31. (English translation: “Jean Wahl: Neither Having Nor Being,” in his Outside the Subject, trans. by Michael B. Smith, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1994, pp. 67–83.) “Martin Buber et la théorie de la connaissance,” in his Noms propres, Montpellier: Fata Morgana 1976, pp. 29–49. (English translation: “Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge,” in his Proper Names, trans. by Michael B. Smith, London: Athlone Press 1996, pp. 17–35.) “Roger Laporte et la voix de fin silence,” in his Noms propres, Montpellier: Fata Morgana 1976, pp. 133–7. (English translation: “Roger Laporte and the Still Small Voice,” in his Proper Names, trans. by Michael B. Smith, London: Athlone Press 1996, pp. 90–3.) “Le mystère Søren Kierkegaard” [video], produced by Denis Huisman and MarieAgnès Malfray, Les idées et les hommes, TF1, November 23, 1977. “Exigeant Judaïsme,” Débat, vol. 5, 1979, pp. 11–19. (English translation: “Demanding Judaism,” in his Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures, trans. by Gary D. Mole, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1994, pp. 3–10.) “Le Temps et l’autre,” in Le Choix–le Monde–L’Existence. Cahiers du Collège Philosophique, ed. by Jean Wahl et al., Paris: Arthaud 1947, p. 150. (English translation: Time and the Other, trans. by Richard A. Cohen, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press 1987, p. 59.) “La philosophie de Franz Rosenzweig,” in his Système et révélation, ed. by Stéphane Mosès, Paris: Seuil 1982, pp. 7–16. (English translation: “The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig,” in his In the Time of the Nations, trans. by Michael B. Smith, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1994, pp. 15–160.) “Sur le philosophie juive. Entretien avec Françoise Armengaud,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 90, no. 3, 1985, pp. 296–310. (English translation: “On Jewish Philosophy,” in his In the Time of the Nations, trans. by Michael B. Smith, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1994, pp. 167–83.)

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Emmanuel Levinas. Qui êtes vous?, Lyon: La Manufacture 1987. (English translation: “Interview with Francois Poirié,” in Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, ed. by Jill Robbins, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2001, pp. 23–83.) Dieu, la mort et le temps, Paris: Grasset 1993, p. 9; p. 224; p. 247. (English translation: God, Death, and Time, trans. by Bettina Bergo, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2000, p. 142; p. 196; p. 289, note 8.) Altérité et Transcendance, Montpellier: Fata Morgana 1995, p. 72. (English translation: Alterity and Transcendence, trans. by Michael B. Smith, New York: Columbia University Press 1999, pp. 56–7.) “Herméneutique et Au-delà,” in L’herméneutique de la philosophie de la religion, Paris: Aubier-Montaigne 1997, pp. 11–20. (English translation: “Hermeneutics and the Beyond,” in his Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav, New York: Columbia University Press 1998, pp. 65–75, and “Hermeneutics and Beyond,” in his Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. by Bettina Bergo, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1998, pp. 100–10.) II. Sources of Levinas’ Knowledge of Kierkegaard Rosenzweig, Franz. Der Stern der Erlösung, Frankfurt: Kauffmann 1921, p. 12. Shestov, Lev (Chestov, Léon), Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle (Vox clamantis in deserto), trans. by Tatiana Rageot and Boris de Schloezer, Paris: Vrin 1936. Wahl, Jean, Études kierkegaardiennes, Paris: Aubier-Montaigne 1938. — Petite histoire de “l’existantialisme.” Suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard commentaries, Paris: Editions Club Maintenant 1947, see pp. 81–9. III. Secondary Literature on Levinas’ Relation to Kierkegaard Acker, Juliaan van, De menselijke mens, Utrecht: SWP 1994, pp. 85–92. Arroyo, Christopher, “Unselfish Salvation. Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the Place of Self-Fulfillment in Ethics,” Faith and Philosophy, vol. 22, no. 2, 2005, pp. 160–72. Bergo, Bettina, “Anxious Responsibility and Responsible Anxiety: Kierkegaard and Levinas on Ethics and Religion,” in Rethinking Philosophy of Religion: Approaches from Continental Philosophy, ed. by Philip Goodchild, New York: Fordham University Press 2002, pp. 94–122. Beyrich, Tilmann, “Kann ein Jude Trost finden in Kierkegaards Abraham? Jüdische Kierkegaard Lektüren: Buber, Fackenheim, Levinas,” Judaica, vol. 57, 2001, pp. 20–40. Binetti, María José, “Una ética de la identidad personal en la diferencia absoluta: de S. Kierkegaard a E. Levinas,” in América y la idea de la Nueva Humanidad, ed. by Alejandro Korn, Córdoba: Sociedad Argentina de Filosofía 2003, pp. 273–83.

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Boldt, Joachim, Sein und Sollen. Philosophische Fragen zu Erkenntnis und Verantwortlichkeit. Studien zur Phänomenologie und praktischen Philosophie, Würzburg: Ergon 2008, pp. 195–225. Boring, Michael Devon, Kierkegaard, Levinas, and Derrida: Religious Subjectivity in Postmodernity, Ph.D. Thesis, Fordham University, New York 2007. Brezis, David, “L’intériorité en question. Regards croisés sur Kierkegaard et Levinas,” Rue Descartes, vol. 43, no. 1, 2004, pp. 16–28. Brothers, Robyn, “ ‘Ethics of Ethics, Law of Laws.’ Kierkegaard, Levinas and the Aporia of Substantive Identity,” Sophia, vol. 38, no. 2, 1999, pp. 54–68. Brown, Jeffrey Wayne, Offensive Ethics: Alterity and Alternative Modes of Philosophical Discourse, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario 2006. Butin, Gitte Wernaa, “Encounter with the Other: A Matter of Im-Mediacy. Levinas and Kierkegaard on the Other and Mediation,” Kerygma und Dogma, vol. 45, no. 4, 1999, pp. 307–16. Caputo, John D., “Instants, Secrets, and Singularities: Dealing Death in Kierkegaard and Derrida,” in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, ed. by Martin Matuštík and Merold Westphal, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1995, pp. 216–38. Carballada, Ricardo de Luis, “Subjetividad y tiempo en S. Kierkegaard y E. Levinas. Una aproximación comparativa,” Estudios Filosoficos, vol. 55, no. 158, 2006, pp. 49–66. Colette, Jacques, “Levinas et Kierkegaard. Emphase et paradoxe,” Revue Philosophique de Louvain, vol. 100, 2002, pp. 4–31. Davenport, John, “What Kierkegaardian Faith Adds to Alterity Ethics: How Levinas and Derrida Miss the Eschatological Dimension,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 169–96. Demirhan, Ahmet (ed.), Kierkegaard ve Din: Jacques Derrida, Søren Kierkegaard, Emmanuel Levinas, John Milbank, Dorota Golwacka, Hent de Vries [Kierkegaard and Religion: Jacques Derrida, Søren Kierkegaard, Emmanuel Levinas, John Milbank, Dorota Golwacka, Hent de Vries], Istanbul: Gelenek Publications 2003. Direk, Zeynep, “Levinas and Kierkegaard: Ethics and Politics,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 211–28. Dooley, Mark, “The Politics of Exodus: Derrida, Kierkegaard, and Levinas on ‘Hospitality,’ ” in Works of Love, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1999 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 16), pp. 167–92. — “The Politics of Statehood vs. A Politics of Exodus. A Critique of Levinas’s Reading of Kierkegaard,” Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter, vol. 40, 2000, pp. 11–17. Dudiak, Jeffrey. “The Greatest Commandment? Religion and/or Ethics in Kierkegaard and Levinas,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 99–121.

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Ferreira, M. Jamie, “Asymmetry and Self-Love: The Challenge to Reciprocity and Equality,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1997, pp. 41–59. — “Kierkegaard and Levinas on Four Elements of the Biblical Love Commandment,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 82–98. Foster, Gary, “The Representative Other. Confronting Otherness in Kierkegaard, Levinas and Ricoeur,” Philosophical Writings, vol. 25, 2004, pp. 19–29. Gregor, Brian, Anthropologia crucis: A Philosophical Anthropology of the Cross, Ph.D. Thesis, Boston College, Boston 2009. Guibal, Francis, “Entre Kant et Kierkegaard: Le sens de la subjectivité selon E. Levinas,” in Phénomenologie: Un siècle de philosophie, ed. by Pascal Dupond and Laurent Cournarie, Paris: Ellipses 2002, pp. 75–97. Harding, Brian, “Dialectics of Desire and the Psychopathology of Alterity: From Levinas to Kierkegaard via Lacan,” Heythrop Journal, vol. 48, no. 3, 2007, pp. 406–22. Hurst, Andrea, “Kierkegaard, Levinas and the Question of Escaping Metaphysics,” South African Journal of Philosophy, vol. 19, no. 3, 2000, pp. 169–87. Iwata, Yasuo, 神なき時代の神—キルケゴールとレヴィナス [God in an Age Devoid of God—Kierkegaard and Levinas], Tokyo: Iwanami-shoten 2001. Janiaud, Joël, “ ‘Me voici!’ Kierkegaard et Levinas. Les tensions de la responsabilité,” Archives de Philosophie, vol. 60, 1997, pp. 87–108. — Singularité et responsabilité: Sur le statut éthique de l’exceptionnel: S. Kierkegaard, S. Weil, E. Levinas, Ph.D. Thesis, Université de Rennes, Rennes 2000. — Singularité et responsabilité: Kierkegaard, Simone Weil, Levinas, Paris: Honoré Champion 2006. Kaneko, Atsuhito, “キルケゴールとレヴィナス—他者論としての実存思想” [Kierkegaard and Levinas—The Existential Thought as the Theory of the Other], 哲学世界 [World of Philosophy (The Students’ Society of Philosophy, Waseda University)], vol. 26, 2003, pp. 21–38. Kangas, David and Kavka, Martin, “Hearing, Patiently: Time and Salvation in Kierkegaard and Levinas,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 125–52. Kawakami, Shoushuu, “実存から他者へ—レヴィナス、デリダのキルケゴ ール読解” [From Existence to the Other—Kierkegaard Read by Levinas and Derrida], 哲学･思想論集 [Studies in Philosophy (University of Tsukuba)], vol. 21, 2001, pp. 1–17. Kemp, Peter, “Ethique et langage: de Levinas à Kierkegaard,” Cahiers de Philosophie, vol. 8–9, 1989, pp. 187–210. — “Un autre langage pour l’autre. De Kierkegaard à Levinas,” Testimonianza religiosa e forma espressiva, vol. 1, 1989, pp. 107–34. — “Sprogets etik: fra Levinas til Kierkegaard,” in Denne slyngelagtige eftertid. Tekster om Søren Kierkegaard, vols. 1–3, ed. by Finn Frandsen and Ole Morsing, Århus: Slagmark 1995, vol. 2, pp. 315–47.

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— “Another Language for the Other: From Kierkegaard to Levinas,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 23, no. 6, 1997, pp. 5–28. — Lévinas, Frederiksberg: ANIS 1992, p. 11; pp. 18–19; p. 27; p. 35; p. 45; p. 55; pp. 66–68; pp. 70–74; p. 88. — “Kierkegaard au-delà de Søren, in Le Singulier. Pensées kierkegaardiennes sur l’individu, ed. by Peter Kemp and Karl Verstrynge, Brussels: VUBPRESS 2008, pp. 63–70. Kuypers, Etienne, “Impromptu’s—Ideënimprovisaties in twee fragmenten. I: Fenomenologie van de verborgen zin; II: Traktaat van de liefde,” in Op weg met Levinas, ed. by Etienne Kuypers and R. Burggraeve, Leuven/Apeldoorn: Garant 1998, pp. 197–341. Liebsch, Burkhard, “Das bezeugte Selbst: Kierkegaard nach Hegel—und danach,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, vol. 53, no. 3, 2006, pp. 681–716. Llewelyn, John, “Who or What or Whot?,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 69–81. Matuštík, Martin, “ ‘More Than All the Others’: Meditation on Responsibility,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 244–56. Mazeikis, Gintautas, “Kūrybinio bendruomeniškumo prieštaringumas: nuo E. Levino ir J. Vanier iki kūrybinių klasių” [“The Ambiguity of Creative Community: From E. Levinas and J. Vanier to the Creative Classes”] [in Lithuanian], Athena: Filosofijos studijos, vol. 2, 2006, pp. 215–29. Minister, Stephen, “Is There a Teleological Suspension of the Philosophical? Kierkegaard, Levinas, and the End of Philosophy,” Philosophy Today, vol. 47, no. 2, 2003, pp. 115–25. — “Works of Justice, Works of Love: Kierkegaard, Levinas, and an Ethics Beyond Difference,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 229–43. Mjaaland, Marius, “The Autopsy of One Still Living. On Death: Kierkegaard vs. Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida,” in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Prefaces and Writing Sampler and Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon: Mercer University Press 2006, pp. 359–86. — Autopsia: Self, Death, and God after Kierkegaard and Derrida, trans. by Brian McNeil, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2008, pp. 2–3; p. 83; pp. 89–91; p. 93; p. 99; p. 103; pp. 105–12; pp. 125–31; pp. 215–16; p. 308. Moyn, Samuel, Selfhood and Transcendence: Emmanuel Levinas and the Origins of Intersubjective Moral Theory, 1928–1961, Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Berkeley 2000. — “Transcendence, Morality, and History. Emmanuel Levinas and the Discovery of Søren Kierkegaard in France,” Yale French Studies, vol. 104, 2004, pp. 22–54.

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— Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2005, p. 12; pp. 72–4; p. 121; p. 138; pp. 164–94; pp. 175–6, pp. 202–5; pp. 221–2; pp. 228–9; pp. 230–2; p. 242; pp. 251–2. Murphy, Daniel, “Levinas and Kierkegaard on Divine Transcendence and Ethical Life: Response to Donald L. Turner and Ford Turrell’s ‘The Non-Existent God,’” Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel, vol. 35, nos. 3–4, 2007, pp. 383– 5. Oppenheim, Michael, “Four Narratives on the Interhuman: Kierkegaard, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas,” in Works of Love, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1999 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 16), pp. 249–78. Paradiso-Michau, Michael, “Ethical Alterity and Asymmetrical Reciprocity: A Levinasian Reading of Works of Love,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 40, no. 3, 2007, pp. 331–47. — The Face of the Neighbor: Ethics in Kierkegaard and Levinas, Ph.D. Thesis, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 2008. Politis, Hélène, Kierkegaard en France au XXe Siècle: Archéologie d’une reception, Paris: Editions Kimé 2005, p. 111; p. 245. Prosser, Brian T., “Conscientious Subjectivity in Kierkegaard and Levinas,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 35, no. 4, 2002, pp. 397–422. Robbins, Jill, Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1999. Roberts-Cady, Sarah Elizabeth, Rethinking Justice with Kierkegaard, Levinas, and Derrida, Ph.D. Thesis, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 2000. Sheil, Patrick, Kierkegaard and Levinas: The Subjunctive Mood, Aldershot: Ashgate 2010. Sikka, Sonia, “The Delightful Other: Portraits of the Feminine in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Levinas,” in Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. by Tina Chanter, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press 2001, pp. 96–118. — Violence and Singularity: Thinking Politics Otherwise with Rorty, Kierkegaard, and Levinas, Ph.D. Thesis, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 2006. — “What about Isaac?: Rereading Fear and Trembling and Rethinking Kierkegaardian Ethics,” Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 35, no. 2, 2007, pp. 319–45. — “Existential Appropriations: The Influence of Jean Wahl on Levinas’s Reading of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 41–66. Simmons, J. Aaron and Wood, David (eds.), Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2008. Søltoft, Pia, Svimmelhedens Etik. Om forholdet mellem den enkelte og den anden hos Buber, Levinas og især Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag 2000. — “ ‘A Literary Review’: The Ethical and the Social,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1999, pp. 110–29. Stolle, Jeffrey, “Levinas and the ‘Akedah’: An Alternative to Kierkegaard,” Philosophy Today, vol. 45, no. 2, 2001, pp. 132–43.

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Treanor, Brian, “God and the Other Person: Levinas’s Appropriation of Kierkegaard’s Encounter with Otherness,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. 75, 2001, pp. 313–24. Verhack, Ignace, “De louteringsgang van Eros,” Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, vol. 66, no. 1, 2004, pp. 119–42. Wahl, Jean, Petite histoire de “l’existentialisme.” Suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard commentaries, Paris: Editions Club Maintenant 1947, p. 44; pp. 89–91. Welz, Claudia, “The Presence of the Transcendent–Transcending the Present? Kierkegaard and Levinas on Subjectivity and the Ambiguity of God’s Transcendence,” in Subjectivity and Transcendence, ed. by Arne Grøn, Iben Damgaard, and Søren Overgaard, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2007, pp. 149–76. — “Present within or without Appearances? Kierkegaard’s Phenomenology of the Invisible: Between Hegel and Levinas,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2007, pp. 470–513. — “Reasons for Having No Reason to Defend God–Kant, Kierkegaard, Levinas and Their Alternatives to Theodicy” in Wrestling with God and with Evil: Philosophical Reflections, ed. by H. M. Vroom, Amsterdam: Rodopi Press 2007, pp. 167–86. — Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2008, pp. 13–18; p. 68; p. 71; p. 74; pp. 77–8; p. 87; p. 113; p. 149; p. 160; p. 166; pp. 182–3; p. 219; p. 243; pp. 277–8; pp. 311–17; p. 319; p. 324; pp. 326–7; p. 329; p. 339; p. 343; pp. 364–7; pp. 376–8. Weston, Michael, Kierkegaard and Modern Continental Philosophy, London: Routledge 1994, pp. 156–74 and passim. — “Kierkegaard, Levinas, and ‘Absolute Alterity,’ ” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 153–68. Westphal, Merold, “Levinas, Kierkegaard and the Theological Task,” Modern Theology, vol. 8, no. 3, 1992, pp. 241–61. — “The Transparent Shadow: Kierkegaard and Levinas in Dialogue,” in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, ed. by Martin Matuštík and Merold Westphal, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1995, pp. 265–81. — “Commanded Love and Divine Transcendence in Levinas and Kierkegaard,” in The Face of the Other and the Trace of God: Essays on Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. by Jeffrey Bloechl, New York: Fordham University Press 2000, pp. 200–23. — Levinas and Kierkegaard in Dialogue, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2008. — “The Many Faces of Levinas as a Reader of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 21–40. Wivel, Klaus, Næsten intet. En jødisk kritik af Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1999, pp. 9–23; pp. 33–42 and passim. Wirzba, Norman, “Teaching as Propaedeutic to Religion: The Contribution of Levinas and Kierkegaard,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 39, no. 2, 1996, pp. 77–94.

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Wyschogrod, Edith, “The Challenge of Justice: The Ethics of ‘Upbuilding,’ ” in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. by J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 199–210.

Jean-Luc Marion: The Paradoxical Givenness of Love Leo Stan

Born in the proximity of Paris, with a father trained in engineering and a mother dedicated to teaching, Jean-Luc Marion (b. 1946) is one of today’s leading phenomenologists. His Christian Catholic background has brought refreshing themes and novel challenges to postmodern philosophy and theology alike. A graduate of the famous and elitist École Normale Supérieure, he obtained his Doctorat d’État in 1980 with a dissertation on the early thought of Descartes. He is a selftaught theologian and a profuse contributor to the Révue catholique internationale Communio, a neo-conservative periodical with a distinct appreciation for the official theology of the Catholic Church.1 Besides his imposing Cartesian corpus2 and his Christian philosophical triptych,3 Marion’s strong phenomenological streak has so

My gratitude is extended to The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a generous grant that made possible the present article. 1 Marion’s theological debut happened in the pages of Résurrection which later became part of Communio. For more details on Marion’s intellectual biography, see Robyn Horner, Jean-Luc Marion: A Theo-logical Introduction, Aldershot: Ashgate 2005, pp. 3–12. 2 See Jean-Luc Marion, Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes, Paris: Vrin 1975 (English translation: Descartes’ Grey Ontology, trans. by S. Donohue, South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press 2004); Jean-Luc Marion, Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1991; Jean-Luc Marion, Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1986 (English translation: On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism, trans. by Jeffrey L. Kosky, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1999). In addition, Marion has edited the Index des ‘Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii’ de René Descartes, ed. by Jean-Luc Marion and J.-R. Armogathe, Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo 1976. He also offered a new annotated translation of Descartes, Règles utiles et claires pour la direction de l’esprit en la recherché de la vérité, ed. by Jean-Luc Marion and Pierre Costabel, La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff 1977. 3 See Jean-Luc Marion, Dieu sans l’être, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1991 (English translation: God without Being, trans. by Thomas Carlson, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1991); Jean-Luc Marion, L’idole et la distance: cinq études, Paris: Grasset 1977 (English translation: The Idol and Distance: Five Studies, trans. by Thomas Carlson, New York: Fordham University Press 2001); and Jean-Luc Marion, Prolégomènes à la charité, Paris: La Différence 1986 (English translation: Prolegomena to Charity, trans. by Stephen Lewis, New York: Fordham University Press 2002).

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far concretized in four broadly acclaimed volumes.4 His lecturing activity covered a massive academic space, ranging from South America to Japan. Currently, he teaches the philosophy of religion and theology at Divinity School, University of Chicago, and holds a separate professorship at the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). In 2008, in view of his formidable achievements, he has been granted the highest rank in the French republic of letters, member of the Académie française. Marion has continually struggled to keep his phenomenological work separate from his theologically imbued deliberations. Whether he succeeded or not is still a matter of (fervent) debate,5 especially because his phenomenology partly draws its substance on such tropes as the Christ event, the icon, and revelation. Obversely, in the writings with an explicit religious content he finds ever new ways to apply the phenomenological terminology and method. Noteworthy for the aims of this article is Marion’s indebtedness to the theology of the Church Fathers,6 to Henri de Lubac (1896–1991), and Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88), but also to the historian of Christianity, Jean Daniélou (1905–74). Of momentous significance for his oeuvre are also Emmanuel Levinas’ (1906–95) ethicism and Jacques Derrida’s deconstructionism, two schools of thought which more or less critically interacted with Kierkegaard’s oeuvre. One of Marion’s key aims is to thematize in a non-metaphysical manner the variegated ways in which the divine can be conceived outside the purview of objectivity, epistemological subjectivity, and ontological conceptuality.7 Praiseworthy in this regard are Marion’s epochal analyses of the idol and the icon, his bold attempt to think the divine truth outside the ontological framework of being, his waking calls on the relevance of revelation for phenomenology, but also his provocative reflections on the Eucharist and charity as appropriate ways of addressing otherness (be it human or godly). Within the restricted field of phenomenology, Marion is the proponent of a particular theory See Jean-Luc Marion, Réduction et donation: recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1989 (English translation: Reduction and Givenness, trans. by Thomas Carlson, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1998); Jean-Luc Marion, Étant donné. Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1997 (English translation: Being Given, trans. by Jeffrey Kosky, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2002); Jean-Luc Marion, De surcroît. Études sur les phénomènes saturés, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2001 (English translation: In Excess, trans. by Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud, New York: Fordham University Press 2002); Jean-Luc Marion, Le phénomène érotique. Six méditations, Paris: Grasset 2003 (English translation: The Erotic Phenomenon, trans. by Stephen Lewis, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2007). 5 See, in this regard, Dominique Janicaud, Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française, Combas: Editions de l’éclat 1991; John Milbank, “The Soul of Reciprocity. Part One: Reciprocity Refused,” Modern Theology, vol. 17, no. 3, 2001, pp. 335–91; and John Milbank, “Can a Gift Be Given? Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian Metaphysic,” Modern Theology, vol. 11, no. 1, 1995, pp. 119–61. 6 See, for instance, Marion, De surcroît, pp. 179–90 (In Excess, pp. 148–58) and Marion L’idole et la distance, pp. 183–250 (The Idol and Distance, pp. 139–95). 7 That being the case, Kierkegaard may be a forerunner of Marion inasmuch as he intended to dismantle his contemporary Danish-Hegelian metaphysics through a reappropriation of the personal-existential dimension of Christianity. 4

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on givenness. More specifically, while cherishing the invaluable legacy of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Michel Henry, he shifts the whole discussion in the unexplored direction of the gift and saturated phenomena. The fact that so far there exists only one explicit reference to Kierkegaard in Marion’s entire corpus is not very encouraging, indeed.8 However, the thematic commonalities are abundant enough to give the (future) researcher sufficient reasons for delving deeper into Marion’s relationship to what I would dare call the protophenomenologist of Copenhagen. In the following I shall chart only a limited portion of this unfamiliar territory. After a brief introduction to Marion’s particular voice in the phenomenological movement, I proceed to a critical comparative discussion of paradox, given selfhood, erotic love, and agape. The article will close with possible explanations of some impasses to all Marion–Kierkegaard parallelisms. However, equal attention will be paid to what brings the two thinkers together. So, even if Marion’s dialogue with Kierkegaard is only at its earliest stage, the present essay aims to reveal its promising and robust potential. I. Paradoxical Saturation Like Michel Henry (1922–2002), Emmanuel Levinas, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–61) before him, Jean-Luc Marion makes his way into phenomenology through a critical appropriation of its multifaceted history. With classical phenomenology he shares the view that contemporary philosophical thought must avoid at all costs the avenue of traditional metaphysics because of the latter’s specious reliance on the categories of transcendent being, absolute ground, or self-subsistent substance. As a result, Marion agrees with Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) that philosophers should elude “the natural attitude,” that is to say, the amalgam of socio-cultural assumptions, psychological clichés, and all other opinions received through the dim channel of convention. With that in mind, Marion will consistently try to forgo every religious-metaphysical prejudice on the status of subjectivity. As to Martin Heidegger, he helps Marion come to terms with the necessity of a “destructive” rereading of Western philosophy with a view to an unprecedented comprehension of the truth of phenomena. Husserl expected that the innovative thinking he established would rely on the content-giving intuition and the receptive intentionality, inherent to human consciousness. In his turn, (the early) Heidegger hoped to overcome metaphysics (or what he called, onto-theology) via a phenomenological, world- and timeoriented, ontology of Dasein. However, contra Husserl and Heidegger, Marion claims that phenomenology will succeed in fulfilling its revisionist mission only when it addresses the phenomenon “neither as an object, that is to say, not within the 8 More exactly, Marion refers to the Pauline expression, “fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12; 2 Cor 7:15) and mentions Kierkegaard only en passant. The context is a discussion of the link between affection (suffering, pain, love) and the uttermost immanence of the flesh. See Marion, Étant donné, p. 322. (Being Given, p. 231.) Another marginal reference, mediated, however, by Karl Jaspers, can be found in Jean-Luc Marion, Au lieu de soi. L’approche de Saint Augustin, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2008, pp. 73–4, note 2.

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horizon of objectness…nor as a being, that is to say, within the horizon of Being.”9 Consequently, Marion impels phenomenologists to “learn to see what shows itself simply and strictly inasmuch as it shows itself, in the absolute freedom of its apparition.”10 Yet, for Marion, the “apparition of phenomena becomes unconditional only from the moment when they are admitted as what they give themselves— givens, purely.”11 Therefore, the principle which should be the primus motor for a true phenomenology states: “what shows itself does so only to the extent that it gives itself.”12 Hence Marion’s call for a thorough “reduction of the appearing to the given.”13 This renewed discussion of givenness as such—which will later become commensurable with the notion of the gift14—has ensured Marion a perennial place in the history of the phenomenological school. His entire philosophical authorship is thus a vast and punctilious attempt to think through “the unconditional given”15 in the purest phenomenological manner. For Marion, only in this way can one do justice to “what is essential in our world (the idol, event, flesh, and face), indeed [to] what passes beyond it.”16 At its most basic, the given can be defined as an “incessantly lost and repeated happening.”17 Furthermore, Marion divides the terrain of given phenomenality into three segments. First, we have phenomena mediated by a poor intuitive content, and the best example here would be the formal categories used in mathematics and logic.18 They are followed by the “common-law phenomena”19 such as those occasioned in consciousness by technological products or by any object studied in the natural sciences. Marion remarks that both these types are marked by a “deficit of givenness”20 and by “the primacy of the concept over intuition.”21 The third and most important class contains phenomena which have been so far ignored by classical phenomenology and which Marion calls saturated phenomena. His overall goal will be, therefore, “to think the common-law phenomenon, and through it the poor phenomenon, on the basis of the paradigm of the saturated phenomenon, of

Marion, Étant donné, p. 439. (Being Given, p. 320.) Marion, Étant donné, p. 440. (Being Given, p. 321.) 11 Marion, Étant donné, p. 439. (Being Given, p. 320.) 12 Marion, Étant donné, p. 310. (Being Given, p. 221.) 13 Marion, De surcroît, p. 54. (In Excess, p. 46.) 14 Marion, Étant donné, pp. 103–68. (Being Given, pp. 71–118.) See also Jean-Luc Marion, “Esquisse d’un concept phénoménologique du don,” Archivo di Filosofia, vol. 62, nos. 1–3, 1994, pp. 75–94. (English translation: “Sketch of a Phenomenological Concept of the Gift,” trans. by John Conley and Danielle Poe, in Jean-Luc Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, New York: Fordham University Press 2008, pp. 80–100.) 15 Marion, Étant donné, p. 440. (Being Given, p. 321.) 16 Marion, Étant donné, p. 441. (Being Given, p. 321.) 17 Marion, Étant donné, p. 440. (Being Given, p. 321.) 18 Marion, Étant donné, pp. 310–11. (Being Given, p. 222.) 19 Marion, Étant donné, pp. 310–14. (Being Given, pp. 222–5.) 20 Marion, Étant donné, p. 314. (Being Given, p. 225.) 21 Ibid. 9

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which the former two offer only weakened variants, and from which they derive by progressive extenuation.”22 Marion discusses the distinctiveness of saturated phenomenality in terms of quantity, quality, relation, and modality.23 Moreover, he describes saturated phenomena via negationis24 but always with their (sometimes palpable) self-giving plenitude in mind.25 Thus, according to the modality, the saturated phenomenon shows itself as exceptionally “irregardable”26 or “irreducible to the I”27 since “it imposes itself on sight with…an excess of intuition,”28 and since the givenness it brings forward surmounts manifestation.29 In terms of quantity it is unforeseeable,30 while from a qualitative standpoint, it proves “unbearable.”31 Moreover, the phenomenal saturation leaves the individual speechless, coming upon one as a fait accompli, that is, “without a choice to refuse it or even to accept it voluntarily.”32 When he enquires into the relationality of saturated phenomena, “unconditioned”33 is the attribute Marion qualifies them by. Finally, for exemplification, Marion will unearth and expand on four types of saturated phenomena—the (historical) event,34 the idol,35 the flesh,36 and the icon37—whose secondary relevance determines me to set them aside. Marion, Étant donné, p. 316. (Being Given, p. 227.) These are the rubrics deployed by Kant in developing the principles of the understanding. See Marion, Étant donné, pp. 303–4. (Being Given, p. 218.) 24 However, the saturated phenomenon does not entail an unfathomable irrationality. On the contrary, Marion affirms that such phenomenality brings to completion “the coherent and rational development of the most operative definition of the phenomenon.” Marion, Étant donné, p. 304. (Being Given, p. 219.) 25 For the inner profusion of saturated phenomena, see, for instance, Marion, Étant donné, p. 301; p. 429 (Being Given, p. 215; p. 313) and Marion, De surcroît, pp. 52–3; p. 61 (In Excess, p. 44; p. 51). 26 Marion, Étant donné, p. 300. (Being Given, p. 215.) 27 Marion, Étant donné, p. 303. (Being Given, p. 218.) 28 Marion, Étant donné, p. 300. (Being Given, p. 215.) 29 Marion, Étant donné, p. 314. (Being Given, p. 225.) 30 Marion, Étant donné, p. 303. (Being Given, p. 218.) 31 Ibid. 32 Marion, De surcroît, p. 53. (In Excess, p. 44.) 33 Marion, Étant donné, p. 303. (Being Given, p. 218). Hence the saturated phenomenon is “outside all relation and all analogy.” See Marion, Étant donné, p. 317. (Being Given, p. 227.) 34 Marion, Étant donné, pp. 225–44. (Being Given, pp. 159–73.) 35 See Marion, L’idole et la distance, pp. 17–60 (The Idol and Distance, pp. 1–36) and Marion, Dieu sans l’être, pp. 15–58 (God without Being, pp. 7–37). 36 See Marion, Étant donné, pp. 321–3; p. 363 (Being Given, pp. 231–2; p. 264) and Marion, Le phénomène érotique, pp. 191–204 (The Erotic Phenomenon, pp. 112–20). 37 See Marion, Étant donné, pp. 323–5 (Being Given, pp. 232–3) and Marion, Dieu sans l’être, pp. 15–18; pp. 28–30; pp. 35–7 (God without Being, pp. 7–9; pp. 17–8; pp. 22–4). See also Jean-Luc Marion, La croisée du visible, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1996, pp. 122–54. (English translation: The Crossing of the Visible, trans. by James K.A. Smith, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2004, pp. 68–87.) 22 23

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Yet, particular attention should be paid to the fact that Marion uses the category of paradox as an alternative designation for saturated phenomena.38 His motive for doing so is that, as it envisages a “knowledge of another type,”39 the paradox goes beyond the ordinary conditions of possibility for the appearance of phenomena.40 Thus, in and through the paradox “intuition sets forth a surplus that the concept cannot organize, therefore that the intention cannot foresee.”41 To put it differently, the paradoxical is “what happens counter to (para-) received opinion, as well as to appearance [doxa],”42 and by way of consequence, to the expectations of representational thought.43 Marion’s version of paradoxicality indicates a “phenomenological extremity where the coming forward exceeds what comes forward.”44 Therefore, the paradox “not only suspends the phenomenon’s subjection to the I; it inverts it. For, far from being able to constitute this phenomenon, the I experiences itself as constituted by it.”45 In other words, for Marion, the I’s identity emerges only by dint of “the precedence of such unconstitutable [or saturated] phenomenon”46 as the paradox. When faced with the paradox, the “I loses its anteriority as egoic pole,”47 being turned from an autarkic, transcendentally constituting ego (as in Kant or Husserl) into a “constituted witness”48 or an adonné (the gifted).49 Here the first striking difference between Marion and Kierkegaard comes to the fore. Whereas the former assigns paradoxicality to an exceptional and excessive phenomenality within the realm of immanence, the latter always tackles the paradox in connection with a truth that is utterly heterogeneous and therefore, transcendent to this world. When arguing that absurdity is the primary qualification of some events recounted in the Christian Bible,50 Kierkegaard implies that these phenomena bring reason to a halt and point to the fallen imperfection of humankind in contrast to God’s absolute transcendence and freedom. In Kierkegaard’s reading, the Christian paradoxes indicate not just an insurmountable obstacle on the way of an imperialist

See Marion, Étant donné, pp. 314–17. (Being Given, pp. 225–8.) Marion, De surcroît, p. 186. (In Excess, p. 154.) 40 Marion, Étant donné, pp. 303–4. (Being Given, p. 218.) 41 Marion, Étant donné, p. 314. (Being Given, p. 225.) 42 Marion, Étant donné, p. 430. (Being Given, p. 314.) 43 Marion, Étant donné, p. 339 (Being Given, pp. 244–5): “Doesn’t it belong essentially to the paradox and its apparition to contradict the course of apparition in general…?” 44 Marion, Étant donné, p. 302. (Being Given, p. 216.) 45 Ibid. 46 Marion, Étant donné, p. 303. (Being Given, p. 217.). 47 Ibid. 48 Marion, Étant donné, p. 302. (Being Given, p. 216.) This point is developed in connection with the saturated phenomenon of the icon. See Marion, Étant donné, pp. 323–5. (Being Given, pp. 232–3.) 49 See Marion, Étant donné, pp. 442–3 (Being Given, p. 323) and Marion, De surcroît, p. 52 (In Excess, p. 44). 50 Mainly, Kierkegaard relegates the qualification absurd or paradoxical to the biblical narratives of Job and Abraham, to God’s embodiment in Christ, to Jesus’ affliction and ignominious death, and to the divine agape for sinners. 38 39

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reason.51 They can also be understood as part of the divine’s redemptive strategy, whose excessive givenness should be received with a deliberate self-sacrifice of reason in and through faith. Thus, although for both thinkers the paradox is closely related to individuation, Kierkegaard conceives it less in the direction of antirepresentational cognition or of dissent from accepted opinion, as Marion partly views it.52 Rather, Kierkegaard clarifies the paradox within a strictly Christological mindset. More to the point, paradoxicality, for him, presupposes the existence of two ontological orders or realms which live by fundamentally different world-views. In this respect, Kierkegaard’s category of the “infinite qualitative difference” is crucial. For it is by virtue of such radical dissimilarity that the penetration of one order by the other cannot be otherwise than irreparably paradoxical.53 To give just one example, Kierkegaard notes in his journal that “As spirit God relates paradoxically to appearance (phenomenon), but paradoxically he can also come so close to actuality that he stands right in the middle of it, right on the street in Jerusalem.”54 Still, one might make the case that there is a sense of the Kierkegaardian paradox, which coheres to some degree with Marion’s perspective. As Ronald Hall has already noticed, the Kierkegaardian paradox implies “a peculiar kind of dialectical relation in which a positive reality is taken to include within itself what it, by its very nature, excludes.”55 When projected onto Marion’s paradoxical phenomenology of saturated phenomena, this view has the advantage of situating the discussion within the domain of immanence. That is to say, similarly to Marion, Kierkegaard may endorse the possibility that the God who walks the streets of Jerusalem56 is conceivable as an iconic, though invisible, phenomenal saturation with a definite individualizing potential. However, the difficulty we come across here is that on Marion’s evaluation, the difference between poor or common-law phenomena and saturated phenomena is one of degree or intensification rather than quality as Kierkegaard would see it. Marion explicitly admits that the former phenomena are “only weakened variants”57 of the latter, “from which they derive by progressive extenuation.”58 In this regard, it becomes difficult to view Marion’s paradox in a Kierkegaardian fashion since 51 Whereas for Marion, saturated phenomena are commensurable with rationality. See also note 24 above. 52 Nevertheless, Marion’s definition of paradox seems to be at work in Kierkegaard’s (pseudonymous) comments on Abraham’s suspension of universalist ethics from Fear and Trembling. 53 The paradox is thus the ineradicable end result of reason’s confrontation with the highest truth. See Jeffrey Hanson, “Michel Henry and Søren Kierkegaard on Paradox and the Phenomenality of Christ,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 17, no. 3, 2009, pp. 435–54, see p. 436. 54 SKS 26, 221, NB32:132 / JP 3, 3099; quoted by Hanson, “Michel Henry and Søren Kierkegaard,” p. 444. 55 Ronald L. Hall, “Kierkegaard and the Paradoxical Logic of Worldly Faith,” Faith and Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 1, 1995, pp. 40–53; p. 40 (quoted by Hanson, “Michel Henry and Søren Kierkegaard,” p. 446). 56 See SKS 26, NB32:132 / JP 3, 3099. 57 See Marion, Étant donné, p. 316. (Being Given, p. 227; emphasis added.) 58 Ibid.

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saturated phenomena cannot be said to include a kind of phenomenality which they exclude by their very nature. Another possible disagreement can be discerned from a Christological perspective. For reasons already touched upon, Marion refuses to assign paradoxicality a theological connotation. At the same time, he is adamant in considering Jesus paramount for all revelatory phenomena and then characterizes revelation in terms of the paradox. In Christ, says Marion, we have the highest saturated phenomenon inasmuch as what gives itself through him is given unconditionally, without reserve. Implicitly, for Marion (as for Kierkegaard), Christ is incommensurable with the need for evidence and conceptualization. Instead, Christ represents (for both Marion and Kierkegaard) an unforeseeable event, a phenomenal apotheosis that exceeds the boundaries of mere visibility; an absolute phenomenon which, albeit not of this world, fills every horizon with meaning; and finally, the supreme icon that constitutes or individualizes those who adore him. Both thinkers agree that language itself fails upon encountering the luminous, excessive, impenetrable appearing of the God-man, and that the designation of Christ necessitates either a plurality of titles or sacred silence. These real similarities notwithstanding, a significant parting of ways unfolds before our eyes. The implicit disagreement stems from the fact that Christ appears to Marion as the climactic saturation of the flesh, which is periodically remembered, affirmed, celebrated, and re-enacted in the Eucharist. By way of contrast, despite his tremendous emphasis on God becoming flesh in Christ, suffering unspeakably, and dying an atrocious death, Kierkegaard disregards, most probably due to his Moravian-Pietistic-Protestant temperament, the reality of the transfigured corporeality and mystical ascent comprised in the Christian liturgy. II. In the Midst of a Gift-Giving Givenness A different parallelism should be analyzed at this point. We said that, according to Marion, the saturated phenomenon “strikes, as an event, an ego that becomes under this blow an adonné.”59 We also implied that through the notion of adonné, Marion wishes to surmount once and for all the type of subjectivity, by virtue of which phenomenality manifests itself only in accord with objectness.60 Instead, Marion will work his way through to a phenomenology of the subject, wherein individuality is attained only upon encountering the “self” (or pure givenness) of the phenomenon.61 Thus, “if the phenomenon gives itself truly, it then obligatorily confiscates the function and the role of the self.”62 By implication, “At the center stands no ‘subject,’ but a gifted (adonné), he whose function consists in receiving what is immeasurably

Marion, De surcroît, p. 52. (In Excess, p. 44.) Marion, Étant donné, p. 354. (Being Given, p. 256.) 61 Marion, Étant donné, p. 325. (Being Given, p. 233.) 62 Marion, De surcroît, pp. 53–4. (In Excess, p. 45.) It is important to remember that Marion envisions not a radical de-subjectivization, but rather the eradication of the ego’s “transcendentalizing dignity.” See Marion, De surcroît, p. 54. (In Excess, p. 45.) 59 60

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given to him, and whose privilege is confined to the fact that he is himself received from what he receives.”63 To Marion, receiving one’s self from the “immeasurably given”64 seems unavoidable. That is to say, givenness harbors a definit(iv)e imperativeness that Marion terms the call.65 What one needs to keep in mind is that, while siding with Levinas against Heidegger and Husserl, Marion claims that being (Sein) and intentionality are preceded by a summons coming from an otherness which explodes the ego’s potentiality for self-determination. This call can be neither anticipated nor explained. It takes me by surprise and disrupts the closed circle of my egotism. The call does not annihilate me as subject, but rather institutes me as the unsubstitutable respondent to something or someone other than myself. However, in contrast to both Heidegger and Levinas—who identified Being and the (face of the) Other as the source of the I’s responsibility and therefore, of its singularity—the French phenomenologist brackets the particular uses of the call and retains imperativeness in its coevally formal and factual anonymity.66 To recapitulate: (i) The gifted (l’adonné) is exposed not only to what shows itself insofar as it gives itself (the phenomenon in general), but more essentially to a paradox (the saturated phenomenon), from which he receives a call and an undeniable call. (ii) The gifted, thus letting the given arise unreservedly, receives it so radically (receiver) that in addition, he frees givenness as such…(iii) Fully offering himself to givenness, to the point that he delivers it as such, the gifted finally attains his ultimate determination—to receive himself by receiving the given unfolded by him according to givenness.67

Interestingly enough, not unlike Kierkegaard, who was the proponent of a monotheistic-creationist anthropology, Marion argues that the self attains singularity in and through a nameless summons. However, Marion somewhat removes himself from Kierkegaard when he adds that the origin of this summons is quite banal,68 and, especially, when he claims that the subject’s “identification escapes him straightaway since he receives it without necessarily knowing it.”69 The discrepancy becomes even more obvious when Marion writes that by “[receiving] himself from the call that summons him, the gifted is therefore open to an alterity, from which the Other Marion, Étant donné, p. 442. (Being Given, p. 322.) Ibid. 65 Marion, Étant donné, pp. 366–9. (Being Given, pp. 266–7.) 66 Marion, Étant donné, p. 405 (Being Given, p. 293): “Responsibility cannot be restricted to just one of the paradoxes—the icon, however privileged it might be—nor confined to just one horizon, be this the ethical. Responsibility belongs officially to all phenomenality that is deployed according to givenness….” On the anonymity of the call, see also Robyn Horner, Rethinking God as Gift: Marion, Derrida, and the Limits of Phenomenology, New York: Fordham University Press 2001, p. 150. See also Marion, Étant donné, p. 371; pp. 400–1. (Being Given, p. 269; pp. 290–1.) 67 Marion, Étant donné, p. 390. (Being Given, p. 282.) 68 Jean-Luc Marion, Le visible et le révélé, Paris: Les éditions du Cerf 2005, pp. 143–82. (English translation: The Visible and the Revealed, trans. by Christina M. Gschwandtner et al., New York: Fordham University Press 2008, pp. 119–44.) 69 Marion, Étant donné, p. 370. (Being Given, p. 268.) 63 64

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can be lacking, but who thus appears all the more.”70 On this topic, my tentative thesis is that Kierkegaard identifies the redemptory God of Judeo-Christianity with the giver and sustainer of selfhood, whereas Marion, owing to his phenomenological commitment, insists that givenness remain anonymous and inextricably tied to immediacy. For Kierkegaard, the self / God / Christ / human other relationality is governed by the rigorous imperatives of Christianity. Of these we note the duty to uncompromisingly struggle for the sake of faith; the duty to become a single individual before God by earnestly assuming one’s sins and imperfections, and by refusing to be offended at Christ’s paradoxical constitution and atoning mission; the duty of kenotic self-sacrifice meant to recognize the divine Other as the sole source of salvation; and, most importantly, the duty to love the neighbor as an unrepeatable person created and loved by God. Contrastingly enough, Marion attributes to the faceless,71 indeterminate, albeit primordial,72 call of givenness the individualizing authority73 that Kierkegaard identifies only with the heterogeneous—that is, Christian-soteriological—“power that established [the self].”74 Therefore, when Marion states that the arrangement wherein a “transcendent, indeed self-grounding, principle would sustain a subjectivity that is derived, but nevertheless privileged”75 sounds “quasi-metaphysical,”76 he implicitly deems Kierkegaard’s Christian personalist creationism as inconsistent with an authentic phenomenology of givenness. That is why an important difference between our thinkers stems from the fact that whenever he speaks of human tasks or imperatives, Kierkegaard constantly inscribes them (expressly or covertly, it matters little here) in a Christian fideistic framework. In Kierkegaard’s thought, the self is summoned to adopt the appropriate stance towards its radically different Institutor and, most importantly, to joyfully take part in a mimetic and worldly Christ-centered scenario. Consequently, Kierkegaard’s conception of the call has clearly defined contours. Divine revelation bears the indelible imprint of the Judeo-Christian transcendence, while salvation is unthinkable outside the particular historical context of Christ’s earthly life. By contrast, Marion argues that “every phenomenon of revelation (as possibility) and especially a Revelation (as actuality) would imply the radical anonymity of what calls.”77 For, Marion explains further, “a call that would say its name would no longer call, but would put the caller at center stage, Marion, Étant donné, p. 371. (Being Given, p. 269.) Marion, Étant donné, pp. 401–4; pp. 409–10. (Being Given, pp. 291–3; p. 297.) 72 Marion, Étant donné, p. 399 (Being Given, p. 290): “not only am I born as if from a call, but this call even precedes my birth…” 73 Marion, Étant donné, p. 373 (Being Given, p. 270): “the I is only insofar as the call has always already claimed and therefore given to itself something like a myself/me.” See also Étant donné, pp. 368–9; p. 389 (Being Given, p. 267; p. 282). 74 SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 14. 75 Marion, Étant donné, p. 409. (Being Given, p. 296.) 76 Ibid. 77 Marion, Étant donné, p. 410. (Being Given, p. 297; emphasis added.) The gift itself “arises without a known, identified, or named giver.” See Marion, Étant donné, p. 410. (Being Given, p. 298). Further analyses on the special phenomenality of revelation can be found in Marion, De surcroît, p. 62 (In Excess, p. 52); Marion, Étant donné, pp. 325–42 (Being Given, 70 71

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reconduct him to the visibility of an occupant of the world, smother the voice with the evidence of a spectacle.”78 In Kierkegaard’s case, we said, the caller is none other than the concrete, that is, the historical and suffering Christ.79 The Savior summons the I to a lofty discipleship which is replete with inner turmoil, ineffable ordeals, and even persecution. Even neighbor love which, as previously stated, remains in Kierkegaard’s eyes an irrefragable duty, puts the fellow one sees at center stage,80 to paraphrase Marion. That said, we can safely conclude that whereas Marion stresses the trans- or pre-subjective side of givenness, Kierkegaard insists that in order to avoid the trap of impersonal objectivity, the given should be anchored in the realm of religious subjectivity. In his own way, Kierkegaard does accept that the attainment of singularity is a matter of accepting a gift but this gift is fundamentally transcendent and salvific. On this very ground Kierkegaard holds that self-becoming always hinges upon a divine Other who becomes flesh and dies on the cross for the sake of atonement, instituting an exemplariness to be followed by all future disciples. Thus, if there exists a phenomenology of given subjectivity in Kierkegaard’s thought, it could be conceived as complementary to Marion’s phenomenology of gifted pp. 234–47); Marion, De surcroît, pp. 58–63 (In Excess, pp. 49–53); and Marion, Le visible et le révélé, pp. 13–34 (The Visible and the Revealed, pp. 1–17). 78 Marion, Étant donné, p. 413. (Being Given, pp. 299–300.) 79 Kierkegaard adopts the Christian perspective on revelation which is centered on God’s redemptive, expiatory embodiment. Moreover, the recognition and proper receipt of revelation depends on the conscious decision to believe or not to be offended at Christ as the God-man. Furthermore, for Kierkegaard, the historicity of Christ and divine grace are the other determinations of divine revelation. These elements are rather absent from Marion. Nonetheless, two points of convergence would be worth mentioning here: the elegant religious aesthetics proposed by Kierkegaard in his upbuilding meditations on the lily in the field and the birds of the air, in parallel with the intricate dialectic underlying the incognito revelation of God through Christ’s earthly tribulations. Both issues meet Marion’s criterion of being directly related to immediacy and to the living corporeality (la chair) of the subject. The leading premises for this comparison can be found in Marion, L’idole et la distance, see especially pp. 38–46; pp. 139–49; pp. 198–227; pp. 266–74; pp. 294–315. (The Idol and Distance, pp. 19–26; pp. 103–14; pp. 153–80; pp. 208–15; pp. 233–53.) 80 SKS 9, 155–74 / WL, 154–74. The relationship between the visible and the invisible is too complicated to be addressed in this study. Suffice to recall that, whereas Kierkegaard tends to abide by the inextricable connection between religiosity and invisibility, Marion, by considering manifestation necessary, seems to underscore what shows itself, though this should not be limited only to the realm of visibility. Apart from downplaying the liturgical and ecclesiastical community of Christians, Kierkegaard censures the pictorial representations of the God-man. See Kierkegaard’s critique of imagination in view of the true Christian’s actual sufferings from SKS 11, 146–8 / SUD, 30–3 and SKS 12, 186–97 / PC, 186–99. His rationale is that the self’s actuality (and therefore, Christ’s real sufferings) is of another qualitative order than imagery in general. Compare to La croisée du visible, pp. 122–54 (The Crossing of the Visible, pp. 68–87). However, in many respects, Kierkegaard would not disagree with Marion’s insistence on the fact that saturated phenomena surge into visibility from an invisible which gives itself by excess and which converts the representational-transcendental I into a passive witness.

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selfhood. Moreover, as I read them, Kierkegaard should assist Marion in realizing that, if phenomenology is favorable to the saturated phenomenality of Revelation, Christ, and the icon, then givenness should also include the highly antagonistic phenomenon of sin, which Marion treats only marginally.81 In other words, what is the phenomenological status of a revelation that would show us the startling reality of sin in our lives?82 Further, how does givenness appear to an I whose dual attributes are creatureliness and nihilistic sinfulness? Put differently, to what extent does evil affect what is given to us if we are to heed Vigilius Haufniensis’ allusion to the presence of an “objective [and sin-laden] anxiety”83 beyond the bounds of humanness? From another perspective, within the limits of Marion’s phenomenology it would be worthwhile to inquire into the phenomenological conditions of an historical I called to become part of the unbearable event of the earthly Christ. In this sense, Marion could equip us with the proper methodology to explore anew Kierkegaard’s view of the incognito revelation of the persecuted Christ, the ensuing soteriological imperatives of the self, and especially, the status of the neighbor, all in light of what is immediately given to us. As importantly, Marion should also help us bring to the surface a few limitations of Kierkegaard’s Christology, particularly its downplaying of liturgical materiality,84 of sacred imagery, and of the mystical community within the church. III. Chaste Amour and Erotic Agape The excellence of love is another shared topic, but also a point of contention, between Kierkegaard and Marion. A few preliminary observations are in order. To begin with, Marion’s phenomenology of love unfolds on two separate, yet closely related, planes. In Prolegomena to Charity, whose theological (Christian) overtones are indisputable, Marion discusses the meaning of agape as part of a larger project to restore the dignity of affectivity after the damage perpetrated by metaphysics. In The Erotic Phenomenon the anti-metaphysical contestation is carried through a phenomenologically rigorous elaboration of what Marion calls the erotic reduction. He suggests that in our militantly secularized world and despite the sustained attacks of classical metaphysics, only love85 is able to recover the traditional function of See Marion, De surcroît, pp. 113–14 (In Excess, p. 94). Prolégomènes à la charité, pp. 21–3 (Prolegomena to Charity, pp. 8–11). 82 SKS 4, 223–6 / PF, 15–17. 83 SKS 4, 361–5 / CA, 56–60. 84 However, one should not disregard the existence in Kierkegaard’s authorship of a religious aesthetics, the teleology and limits of which I have tried to delineate in Leo Stan, “The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air: An Endless Liturgy in Kierkegaard’s Authorship,” in Kierkegaard and the Bible, Tome II, The New Testament, ed. by Lee C. Barrett and Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2010 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 1), pp. 55–78. 85 Throughout The Erotic Phenomenon the term “love” is taken in its most commonsensical sense of erotic attachment. 81

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charity,86 which is to “[open] up knowledge of the other as such.”87 The second observation is that against a venerable philosophical tradition, Marion claims that eroticism is dominated by a distinctive rationality which deserves a more charitable treatment and which drives his entire investigation.88 Thirdly, despite the clear impact of Levinasian thought on his authorship, Marion sets out “to pass beyond ethics through love,”89 and we shall soon see how. Finally, the suggestion that subjectivity be understood as an “originally loving ego”90 is propounded by Marion through another contestation of Heidegger’s ontology91 and of the domain of “orderable and measurable objects.”92 After performing the erotic reduction, Marion conceives subjectivity or ipseity as “a given (and gifted) phenomenon”93 which is confronted first and foremost with the question: “Does anybody love me?”94 The most important aspect, given the theme of this article, is Marion’s thesis that the division between eros and agape—firmly advocated by Kierkegaard in his Works of Love—is essentially aporetic and should therefore be avoided.95 With that in mind, he hopes “to unite…love to charity”96 by unearthing the continuum between sexual and chaste love.97 Because Marion’s phenomenological exploration is too complex to be summarized in just a few lines, I limit myself to recalling that in The Erotic Phenomenon the revelation of the possibility of love arises when the self faces its utter pointlessness. Upon searching for a reliable assurance against its innermost futility, the ego inevitably encounters an exterior reality that enters its existence and assures it that

86 Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” Communio, vol. 19, no. 6, 1994, pp. 27–42, see p. 34. (English translation: “What Love Knows,” in Prolegomena to Charity, pp. 153–69, see p. 160.) 87 Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” p. 34. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 160.) 88 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 16. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 5.) 89 Marion, Prolégomènes à la charité, p. 117. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 97.) 90 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 20. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 8.) 91 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 17; p. 42. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 6; p. 21.) 92 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 17. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 6.) 93 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 43. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 22.) 94 Ibid. 95 Marion warns that “every concept of love is weakened and compromised as soon as one allows oneself to distinguish competing divergent, or indeed irreconcilable, meanings— for example, by opposing from the outset, as if it were an unquestionable evidence, love and charity (ἔρως and ἀγάπη), supposedly possessive desire and supposedly gratuitous benevolence, rational love (of the moral law) and irrational passion.” See Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 15. (The Erotic Phenomenon, pp. 4–5.) Moreover, Marion makes an exceptionally non-Kierkegaardian claim when observing that “One must have a great deal of naïveté or blindness, or rather know nothing of the lover and of erotic logic, not to see that ἀγάπη possesses and consumes as much as ἔρως gives up and abandons.” See Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 367. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 221.) 96 Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” p. 34. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 160.) In the same vein, “A serious concept of love distinguishes itself by its unity…” See Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 15. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 5.) 97 Horner, Jean-Luc Marion, p. 140.

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it does not live in vain.98 Here we should keep in mind that, similarly to the call of givenness, Marion insists on the anonymous character of this alterity. He writes: “it does not matter if this elsewhere identifies itself as a neutral other (life, nature, the world), or as the other in general (such and such a group or society), or even as such and such an other (man or woman, the divine, or even God).”99 Nevertheless, as the discussion goes forward, this otherness acquires the unmistakable contour of the human other, more exactly, of the one with whom I fall in love. Regarding the fundamentals of erotic love, Marion emphasizes amongst others the annihilation entailed by the latter. This annihilation becomes manifest through the lover’s loss of spatiality, temporality, and sense of identity. Specifically, the loving ego’s spatiality is voided inasmuch as it is the beloved who now occupies the center of its world. Time vanishes through the expectation of the other’s assurances of his or her love, which never come or come too late, and even when they come in time, they must be regularly reiterated. With respect to identity, it is decisively undermined as the true lover does not know any longer who he or she is. Two things should be noted here. This picture of eros is not very far from Kierkegaard’s astute musings on the preferential character of erotic relationships (Elskov). On the other hand, there is a sense in which Marion infuses the language of kenosis (selfemptying) into the realm of eros, whereas Kierkegaard employs it solely apropos of the proper God-relation.100 This goes hand in hand with Marion’s purpose to blur the clear-cut distinction between love and charity. Since he obeys the pivotal rule of phenomenology, which states that the phenomenon should be understood as what shows itself starting from itself only, Marion claims that the other is phenomenalized before me only in his or her living corporeality. While appropriating the crux of Michel Henry’s monumental phenomenology of embodied life, Marion starts from the premise that the erotic phenomenon can emerge only between two agents who are primarily flesh. Subsequently, he voices the important proviso that only an eroticized flesh is capable of rendering both the loved other and the loving self as unsubstitutable individuals.101 To quote Marion himself:

Marion, Le phénomène érotique, pp. 44–5. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 23.) Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 46. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 24.) 100 Marion states that the receptive or gifted subject is to “renounce the autarchy of self-positing and self-actualizing.” See Marion, Étant donné, p. 369. (Being Given, p. 268.) Kierkegaard makes the same point but only when positing kenosis as the fundamental task of true believers. See Stan, Either Nothingness or Love, chapter 4, sections IV.b. and VI.d. 101 See Marion, De surcroît, p. 116 (In Excess, p. 96) and Marion, Le phénomène érotique, pp. 181–215 (The Erotic Phenomenon, pp. 106–27). If for Kierkegaard, the other’s actuality remains foreign to me due to his or her personal-existential, ethical, and religious autonomy, for Marion, I cannot access the other’s actuality because of his or her flesh-laden singularity. See Marion, Le phénomène érotique, pp. 227–41. (The Erotic Phenomenon, pp. 135–43.) Equally significant is that Marion conceives individuation in relation to the idol in Étant donné, p. 321 (Being Given, p. 230) and the icon in Étant donné, pp. 323–5 (Being Given, pp. 232–3), and thus not exclusively to the Judeo-Christian fideism as Kierkegaard does. 98 99

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love (l’amour) in the end would be defined, still within the field of phenomenology, as the act of a gaze that renders itself back to another gaze in a common unsubstitutability. To render oneself back to a gaze means, for another gaze, to return there, as to a place for a rendezvous, but above all to render oneself there in an unconditional surrender: to render oneself to the unsubstitutable other, as to a summons to my own unsubstitutability—no other than me will be able to play the other that the other requires, no other gaze than my own must respond to the ecstasy of this particular other exposed in his gaze.102

Concisely phrased, l’amour individualizes the eroticized other and renders him or her transcendent or truly other. Love is therefore able to let the other’s haecceitas appear before me as “unsubstitutable and strictly irreplaceable.”103 Thus understood, the erotically mediated haecceity leads Marion to speak of an absolute separation between the lovers.104 In Kierkegaard, this beneficial distance between me and the other arises only by dint of the Christian agape. Furthermore, even if he concurred with Marion that the order of love surmounts the language of essence and being,105 Kierkegaard would have serious objections against Marion’s view that love is allergic to any interference with universality.106 I have already implied that the loving individual, according to Marion, can never be sure of the other’s response to his or her affection. Therefore, when in love, both persons must vow to willfully continue loving regardless of the response. However, provided that lies and (self-)delusive promises are still possible, the oath of love achieves the safest, most solid ground when taking God as witness.107 Here the supreme deity constitutes, for Marion, the most reliable witness not solely because he never leaves his beloved, nor adopts a mendacious or deceptive attitude towards them, but rather because his most intimate attribute is love. The ultimate guarantee of love is and can never be anybody else than the one who loves absolutely, flawlessly, and before anyone else does. Ergo, God is in the most literal sense the first lover. Or, what amounts to the same thing, when in love, one is always already loved.108 This explicitly theological point is reinforced by Marion in some of his meditations on charity. Here we should note that Marion’s intention is to irreparably undermine any manicheistic opposition between eros and agape, an objective which is not without risks as I shall suggest below. Tantamount to erotic love which lets the other appear before me in his or her genuine alterity, charity makes sure that the other will never “become for me an available and constitutable object.”109 Rather, charity “in effect becomes a means of knowledge when our concern is with the other, and no longer with objects.”110 Besides, Marion acknowledges the Christological implications of charity. The latter, he states, is inseparable and always oriented Marion, Prolégomènes à la charité, p. 120. (Prolegomena to Charity, pp. 100–1.). Marion, Prolégomènes à la charité, p. 115. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 95.) 104 Marion, Prolégomènes à la charité, p. 115. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 96.) 105 Marion, Prolégomènes à la charité, p. 115. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 95.) 106 Ibid. 107 Horner, Jean-Luc Marion, p. 141. 108 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, pp. 368–9. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 222.) 109 Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” pp. 37–8. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 164.) 110 Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” p. 38. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 164.)

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towards Christ’s unique charity.111 Marion goes even further and, on the basis of John 12:47–48, affirms that since we will be judged by the love we had for Christ, that is to say, by how charitable we were to charity itself, Christ is “interior intimo meo,”112 “our nearest neighbor.”113 There is also an eschatological side of love which Marion is careful to pinpoint. In this sense, he writes that the Last Judgment hinges “not on faith—the righteous being the faithful believers, the unjust the miscreants—nor on hope—the righteous hoping for the restoration in fine of the Kingdom of Israel, the others having given up on it—but on charity.”114 On my evaluation, these are the main coordinates for the Kierkegaard–Marion debate on love. The common ground is that Marion is as aware as Kierkegaard of both the individualizing capacity of love115 and its possible egotism or selfcenteredness.116 Secondly, I hold that Marion implicitly agrees with Kierkegaard when noting that even in the case of erotic attachments, the true lover consistently loves “without guarantee of return”117 or “without knowing oneself loved.”118 So, although love may lead to (self-)loss, there is something the true lover could never lose, and that is love itself.119 For the “more [love] loses (disperses, gives, and thus loves), the more it gains (because it still loves).”120 By means of a perfectly Kierkegaardian paradox, Marion realizes that when subjected to the erotic reduction, the amorous self “who loses himself gains himself all the more as lover.”121 The third shared characteristic is that, as Kierkegaard long before him, Marion realizes that while in love, one believes everything “with the sovereign power of he who loves before knowing himself loved, or worrying about it.”122 The fourth and, I claim, most significant similarity is that neither Kierkegaard nor Marion refrain from calling God the highest lover.123 111 Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” p. 42. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 168.) Here Marion relies on Eph 3:19. 112 Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” p. 29. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 155.) 113 Ibid. 114 Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” pp. 28–9. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 154.) 115 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, pp. 22–3. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 9.) 116 See Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 85 (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 47); Marion, Prolégomènes à la charité, pp. 96–7 and “La connaissance de la charité,” pp. 29–31 (Prolegomena to Charity, pp. 76–7; pp. 155–7). 117 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 190. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 111.) 118 Ibid. 119 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, pp. 123–5; p. 126; pp. 148–9. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 71; p. 73; pp. 86–7.) SKS 9, 73 / WL, 66. However, later in the book Marion claims that, since the loving one is intimately related to love itself, jealousy is justifiable for “[defending] the honor of love and the truthfulness of the other.” See Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 291. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 175.) For the opposite view in Kierkegaard, see SKS 9, 42–3 / WL, 35–6. 120 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 126. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 73.) 121 Ibid. 122 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 148. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 86.) SKS 9, 227–45 / WL, 225–45. 123 See, for instance, SKS 10, 138 / CD, 127.

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However, our thinkers drift from one another when exploring the relationship between and limits of eros and agape. To begin with, in distinguishing between “Thou shall not kill!” and the erotic version of “Thou shall love me!,” Marion writes, the difference lies above all in that the first requirement applies unconditionally for every face, because it does not depend on an individual, his or her qualities or intention, but rests upon a negation of the particular person and upon the absence of his or her individuality; while the second requirement demands that I love such and such face, such and such person individualized by his or her singularities, just such and none other…. Once within the erotic reduction, the face thus can no longer demand unconditionally, universally, in silence—it is necessary that it speak in person in the oath; it is also necessary that it pay with its flesh individualized in eroticization.124

In this context, Kierkegaard’s understanding of the duty-bound neighbor love is closer to (Levinas’) “Thou shall not kill!” than to Marion’s “Love me!” On the other side, against Kierkegaard, Marion implicitly embraces the view that the other is particularized to the highest degree via eros. Most importantly, after reckoning as naïve all those who draw a sharp line between eros and agape, thereby blinding themselves to the similar possessiveness and dedication that the two types of love equally require, Marion gives voice to the following proviso: God practices the logic of the erotic reduction as we do, with us, according to the same rite and following the same rhythm as us, to the point where we can even ask ourselves if we do not learn it from him, and no one else. God loves in the same way as we do. Except for an infinite difference. When God loves (and indeed he never ceases to love), he simply loves infinitely better than do we. He loves to perfection, without a fault, without an error, from beginning to end.125

In the previous pages we have said that Marion endeavors to subvert the ontotheological fallacies of metaphysics by putting forward a novel understanding of human identity through a unified theory of love. To this we should add that with regard to human otherness, Marion is heavily influenced by the Levinasian heterology wherein the ethical demand, besides giving birth to the I’s singularity, “establishes the other in an absolute transcendence.”126 By transferring this singularizing power from the unconditional ethical injunctions to the realm of love,127 Marion comes to see in the beloved’s eroticized face “the accomplished transcendence of the other,

Marion, Le phénomène érotique, pp. 279–80. (The Erotic Phenomenon, pp. 167–8.) Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 368. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 222.) See also Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” pp. 41–2. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 168.) 126 Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 212. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 125; emphasis added.) 127 On love’s capacity to irrefutably evince the “unsubstitutable particularity” of human alterity, see Marion, Étant donné, p. 443. (Being Given, p. 324.) See also Prolégomènes à la charité, p. 95; p. 115. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 75; p. 95.) 124 125

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through which she differs forever and always from me—her flesh in glory.”128 Tellingly enough, the same capacity is attributed to charity itself.129 In Kierkegaard, albeit not rigidly opposed to one another, eros and agape are treated hierarchically and sometimes even as exclusionary. As I read it, Kierkegaard’s chief reason is that divine love is not only infinitely but also qualitatively different from human affectivity, in general. The acute awareness of human sin or spiritual imperfection, which can never be completely eradicated in this life, prompts Kierkegaard to conceive of agape not as radically antagonistic towards erotic relationality and yet, as spiritually superior and sometimes even as opposed to eroticism. However, when compared to the erotic phenomenon (friendship included), Kierkegaard attributes to neighbor love a wholly different nature. And he does so because he traces agape back to the absolute love of a wholly other deity, and because he thinks that after the advent of sin, the spirit and body, or faith and the psychical-physical are at variance with each other. For Kierkegaard, the beloved attains individuality solely when loved as neighbor, that is, as a self before God and in need of that salvation which has already been given out of an incommensurable love in Christ.130 Thus, as far as Kierkegaard is concerned, agape’s continuity with eros remains open to criticism. Seen from this perspective, Marion appears significantly dissimilar from Kierkegaard by virtue of an ultimately indistinguishable understanding of charity and eroticism. By that I mean that, consistent with his phenomenological allegiance, Marion deliberately subverts the distinction between amour (or eros) and charité. However, as already suggested, this seems problematic because the continuum between love and charity does not account, at least at first sight, for the destructiveness of sin.131 If the latter is given its full due (as Kierkegaard advises us, relying as much as Marion on the Christian doctrine), one comes against a difference between the human eros and the divine agape that goes beyond the infinite and yet gradual dissimilarity endorsed by Marion. One might still reply that Marion’s (phenomenologically correct) refrain from any theological judgment forbids him to project charity within the salvific horizon of Christianity as Kierkegaard incessantly does. Against this objection, however, we could say that the very same phenomenological restrictions did not keep Marion from detecting in erotic love a certain openness towards an understanding of God as absolute lover. The other ambiguity or tension detectable here is that, on the one Marion, Le phénomène érotique, p. 215. (The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 127.) See Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” pp. 39–40. (Prolegomena to Charity, pp. 166–7.) 130 For a fuller development of this reasoning see Leo Stan, Either Nothingness or Love: On Alterity in Søren Kierkegaard’s Writings, Saarbrücken: VDM Dr. Müller Verlag 2009, chapters 3–6. 131 This is all the more puzzling since the “seeds” of a possible discussion of evil are actually present in Marion’s texts. See Marion, Prolégomènes à la charité, pp. 13–42 (Prolegomena to Charity, pp. 1–30); Marion, Étant donné, pp. 434–8 (Being Given, pp. 316– 19); and Marion, Le phénomène érotique, pp. 94–103; pp. 292–8 (The Erotic Phenomenon, pp. 53–8; pp. 175–9). 128 129

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hand, Marion thinks charité to be non-natural and willed.132 At the same time, he envisions charity as a continuation of erotic emotions which are unequivocally spontaneous—that is, not liable to volitional control—and which thus intimate a certain naturalness. To summarize my hypothesis, what separates our thinkers is the placement of Kjerlighed within a transcendent-Christian and simultaneously axiological horizon (Kierkegaard), in contradistinction to the phenomenological rejection of any qualitatively heterogeneous transcendence, which runs the danger of confusing all boundaries between love and charity (Marion). IV. Possible Openings Regardless of all the differences delineated so far, the encounter between Kierkegaard’s Christian thought and Marion’s theology-friendly phenomenology remains fertile and surpasses the topology I have sketched above.133 To give a few brief examples, a legitimate approach would be to read Marion as a continuator of Kierkegaard granted his critical stance vis-à-vis contemporary Christianity. Particularly, Marion deplores the crass misunderstanding of charity through modern Christianity’s overemphasis on faith and timorous reliance on hope.134 The same goes for traditional metaphysics which has brutally devaluated erotic love and reduced it to sexuality, and charity to philanthropy. In this way, states Marion, Western metaphysical thought objectified, and thereby degraded, two of the most eminent qualities of the human condition.135 Following the same call of true Christianity but with a different pathos, Kierkegaard (heroically some say) reminded us that contemporary Christianity was a long way from Commenting on John 13:34, Marion remarks that “the love of neighbor no longer has anything natural, normal or spontaneous about it: to love others is commanded, and obedience here does not go without saying, precisely because it is being commanded.” See Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” p. 40. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 167.) Kierkegaard, on the contrary, would say that precisely because it is a divine commandment, neighbor love remains an unconditional task. Yet, he would concede to Marion the non-natural trait and the dutifulness of agape. SKS 9, 24–50 / WL, 17–43. 133 As topics for future research I would suggest the equal emphasis on volition in Marion, Étant donné, pp. 419–23 (Being Given, pp. 304–8). Both authors stress the temporal finitude of selfhood; see Marion, Étant donné, pp. 405–8; pp. 417–8; pp. 434–8 (Being Given, pp. 294–6; pp. 302–4; pp. 316–19). Possible affinities can be unearthed between Marion’s “ungrateful person” and the demonic in Kierkegaard. The Visible and the Revealed, pp. 96–7. The fact that God should be the third party in erotic love’s oath to fidelity is recognized by both authors. See Marion, Le phénomène érotique, pp. 344–52 (The Erotic Phenomenon, pp. 206–12) and SKS 5, 419–41 / TD, 41–68. The seduction practiced by Don Juan is another common subject in Kierkegaard and Marion, which further illumines the idiosyncrasies of their discourse on eros. See Marion, Le phénomène érotique, pp. 138–53 (The Erotic Phenomenon, pp. 80–89) and SKS 2, 64ff. / EO1, 57ff. On God as giver of good gifts one could compare SKS 5, 39–56 / EUD, 31–48 and Marion, L’idole et la distance, pp. 196–227 (The Idol and Distance, pp. 151–80). 134 Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” pp. 27–8; pp. 41–2. (Prolegomena to Charity, pp. 153–4; pp. 168–9.) 135 Marion, “La connaissance de la charité,” p. 41. (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 168.) 132

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what it should always be. Yet, in comparison to Marion, the target of Kierkegaard’s remonstrations is more clearly contoured. To be precise, Kierkegaard rebuked (almost in the spirit of Old Testament prophets) the total institutionalization of the church, which went hand in hand with the hedonistic and comfort-driven ideology of modernity, with the ridiculing abuses of the press, and with the collectivist threats of democracy. In their own way, both thinkers seem to call for a return to an earlier and more originary appropriation of religiosity. Namely, whereas Kierkegaard wishes to retrieve the spiritual Weltanschauung of New Testament Christianity, Marion makes unexpected uses of the Johnnine doctrine of divine charity and constantly appeals to the philosophical theology of the founding fathers of the church. Keeping with the theological horizon, we should not forget that Marion’s and Kierkegaard’s understanding of God and subjectivity are not wholly dissimilar either. For instance, Marion is not necessarily resistant to an understanding of human selfhood in the horizon of divine gift.136 Next, like Kierkegaard, Marion is comparably impermeable to any conceptual speculation on the divine, his reason being that “a God that could be conceptually comprehended would no longer bear the title ‘God.’ ”137 With that in mind, Marion’s judgment on the apophatic tradition of Christian theology should be extended to Kierkegaard’s religious thought as a whole. Specifically, Marion contends that apophatic theology “does not consist in naming God properly, but well and truly in knowing God precisely as what cannot be known properly.”138 By the same token, Kierkegaard argues that human comprehension possesses an almost natural predisposition to discover “something that thought itself cannot think.”139 Moreover, continues Kierkegaard, since “the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall,”140 we can safely presume that “the ultimate passion of the understanding [is] to will the collision,141 although in one way or another the collision must become its downfall.”142 Quite similarly, Marion warns us that “In the case of God, knowledge cannot rise up to itself except by transgressing itself until it becomes an unknowing, or rather until it becomes one that is capable of acknowledging the incomprehensible….”143 In this respect, Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous critiques of the arguments for the existence of God may correspond to Marion’s sustained efforts to detach theological language from any interference with essence or predication. Within a slightly different perspective, Marion’s intention to introduce “a radically new praxis (pragmatique),”144 wherein the self becomes an adonné summoned either through the gift hidden in givenness or through such saturated phenomena as the Christ event and the iconic gaze of the A veiled hint at this possibility can be found in Jean-Luc Marion, “A Final Appeal of the Subject,” in Deconstructing Subjectivities, ed. by Simon Critchley and Peter Dews, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press 1996, pp. 85–104, see p. 104. 137 Marion, De surcroît, p. 181. (In Excess, p. 150.) 138 Marion, De surcroît, p. 183. (In Excess, p. 152.) 139 SKS 4, 243 / PF, 37. 140 Ibid. 141 That is, the collision with the unknown or with what thought is unable to think. 142 SKS 4, 243 / PF, 37. 143 Marion, De surcroît, p. 187. (In Excess, p. 155.) 144 Marion, De surcroît, p. 189. (In Excess, p. 157.) 136

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human other, can easily find its analogy in Kierkegaard’s apophatic religiosity.145 To sum up, one can find multiple and convincing illustrations in Kierkegaard’s thought to support Marion’s apothegm that God’s Name “has to be dwelt in without saying it, but by letting it say, name, and call us.”146 V. However… It is now time to venture some explanations as to the ultimate ground for the differences between Kierkegaard and Marion. My provisional hypothesis is that the dissimilarities elaborated throughout the previous sections ultimately stem from the way in which Kierkegaard and Marion understand how to open their thought to various religious tropes. Thus, Kierkegaard seems to arrive at God via an explicit appropriation of the Christian doctrine of salvation filtered through the existential lens of the individual’s rational limitations, melancholy, despair, anxiety, and inexpugnable guilt. By contrast, Marion must reduce everything to immediate givenness and therefore abrogate any rapprochement to metaphysical transcendence. At the same time, Marion maintains that “the unique Jewish and Christian Revelation…must be read and be treated as rightfully phenomena, obeying the same operations as those that result from givens of the world.”147 As a consequence, the relation between phenomenology and theology should be, when rightly understood, mutually enriching. Theology, says Marion, is able to “shed some light on [phenomenology] without destroying it or being destroyed”148 on the condition that we take revelation to be a manifestation within immanent phenomenality, and so, within the limits of givenness. Phenomenology cannot afford to shirk or condescendingly reject as metaphysical the “particular figure of phenomenality”149 implied by revelation. Conversely, insofar as “it is based on facts, which are given positively as figures, appearances, and manifestations,”150 theology has to deal with “the natural field of phenomenality and is therefore dependent on the competence of phenomenology.”151

On the use of apophasis in Kierkegaard, see David R. Law, Kierkegaard as Negative Theologian, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1993. 146 Marion, De surcroît, p. 195. (In Excess, p. 162.) 147 Marion, De surcroît, p. 63. (In Excess, p. 53.) Marion’s basal claim is that “no revelation would take place without a manner of phenomenality.” Marion, De surcroît, p. 33. (In Excess, p. 28.) However, in Étant donné, p. 339 (Being Given, p. 242), he cautions that the phenomenon of revelation should be analyzed only along the lines of possibility and not as a factual reality. This tension may be explicated by the fact that the phenomenological method compels Marion to lay aside the (transcendent) Judeo-Christian Revelation and orbit around the immanent conditions of its possible manifestation. See Marion, Étant donné, pp. 325ff. (Being Given, pp. 234ff.; p. 367, note 90). See also notes 77 and 80 above. 148 Marion, De surcroît, p. 32. (In Excess, p. 28.) 149 Marion, De surcroît, p. 34. (In Excess, p. 29.) 150 Marion, De surcroît, p. 33. (In Excess, p. 28.) 151 Ibid. 145

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Overall, the phenomenological necessity to bracket any sense of transcendence, including that of God,152 remains an obstruction in Marion’s dialogue with Kierkegaard. I have already defended this thesis in regard to the dialectic between eros and agape. Here it would be appropriate to add that in distinguishing between a metaphysical theology and a revealed theology,153 Marion attacks the former for having grasped the absolute deity as “transcendence, causality, substantiality, and actuality.”154 Despite the affinities which allow Marion and Kierkegaard to approach God “insofar as unknown,”155 it remains a fact that Kierkegaard coevally speaks of God in terms of transcendence,156 creative ground,157 and actuality,158 which means that he is not fully innocent of the charge of perpetuating onto-theology. Unfortunately, often Marion’s own theo-logical picture seems fuzzy or insufficiently developed. For instance, he insists that, since phenomenology remains incommensurable with “a non-immanent foundation”159 of reality, the JudeoChristian God should be thought of along the lines of “radical immanence.”160 But at the same time, he wants us to avoid the mistake of equating God with the world.161 So, how could God be “reduced” to immanence and remain heterogeneous from worldliness? Marion’s answer would be that God fulfills these conditions because he first and foremost inhabits human inwardness. But then, how and why is our invisible selfhood foreign to the world, especially if it is first and foremost summoned and individualized by immediate givenness, saturated or not? However, what interests us here is yet another aspect. While detailing Derrida’s deconstruction of the notion of gift, Marion asserts that to comprehend the gift in terms of the giving of the truth and of its condition fulfills “a typical metaphysical function, that of foundation,”162 and should be dismissed accordingly. The Kierkegaard student Marion explicitly admits that his description of the given phenomenon “never, as regards the giver, has recourse to an efficient cause and, at the same time, a transcendent givee; the characteristics of the coming forward [i.e., of the phenomenal manifestation] must always remain immanent to the consciousness that we have of the phenomenon.” See Marion, Étant donné, p. 170. (Being Given, pp. 119–20.) See also Marion, De surcroît, p. 27. (In Excess, pp. 23–4.) 153 Marion, De surcroît, pp. 32–3. (In Excess, p. 28.) 154 Marion, De surcroît, p. 33. (In Excess, p. 28.) 155 Marion, De surcroît, p. 27. (In Excess, p. 23.) 156 SKS 11, 233 / SUD, 122. 157 SKS 5, 233–49 / EUD, 233–51. 158 SKS 26, 270, NB33:29 / M, Supplement, p. 468. 159 Marion, De surcroît, p. 33. (In Excess, p. 28.) 160 Marion, De surcroît, p. 27. (In Excess, p. 24.) Confusingly enough, a few pages further Marion acknowledges that “the question of God is played out as much in the dimension of immanence as in that of transcendence…” Marion, De surcroît, p. 31. (In Excess, p. 27.). 161 Marion explicitly states that God “is not of the world.” Marion, De surcroît, p. 181. (In Excess, p. 150.) On Kierkegaard’s eschatology-oriented judgment, God and the world “are so inimical that the slightest leaning to one side is regarded from the other side as the unconditional opposite.” SKS 11, 38 / WA, 34. See also SKS 13, 330 / M, 271. SKS 13, 332–3 / M, 274. 162 Marion, “Esquisse d’un concept phénoménologique du don,” p. 81. (The Visible and the Revealed, p. 86.) 152

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cannot help noticing that this critique applies also to Johannes Climacus’ heuristics from Philosophical Fragments. In this book, Climacus reasons that, if proving the existence of God is bound to fail, regardless of the rational finesse involved in one’s argumentative efforts, then God, had he existed, must reveal himself. Furthermore, if it does occur, divine revelation must give both the truth163 and the condition for recognizing the truth as true with a view to its passionate appropriation.164 As already suggested, in Marion’s eyes, Climacus would be guilty of proposing a foundational and therefore phenomenologically unacceptable, understanding of revelation. My tentative contention here is, again, that this divergence proceeds from Kierkegaard’s inflexible affirmation of an “infinite qualitative difference” between the human and the divine, in contrast with Marion’s tireless effort to think the notion of (divine) gift in harmony with the immanent givenness and thus to abolish any radical qualitative heterogeneity. This clash can be partly inferred from Marion’s Christology, too. Though he admits that Christ’s acts “exceed the horizon of this world,”165 Marion views the Christian savior exclusively within an immanent-phenomenal frame. To illustrate this, he equates Christ with an entirely unforeseeable event166 which brings to fulfillment the ek-static character of time,167 and whose unbearable advent gives rise to terror.168 Christ is also an absolute phenomenon,169 an iconic—that is, “irregardable”— appearance that turns me into an adonné or a witness.170 Irrespective of the not so insignificant congruities regarding the God-man’s nature in Kierkegaard,171 Marion would disagree with the latter’s picture of Christ as an absolute or eternally offensive paradox that fuses (ontologically, one might say) an immanence prone to sin and a redemptive transcendence. In addition, one should not ignore Kierkegaard’s accentuation of Christ’s historicity and earthly drama,172 two elements that are not as prominent in Marion’s phenomenology. Here the difference might emerge from Marion’s loyalty to the Catholic doctrine as opposed to Kierkegaard’s Protestant For Climacus, the truth is Christ, while the giving of the truth emerges through divine embodiment. 164 That is the particular way in which Climacus comes to terms with the need for grace in the individual’s appropriation of faith. 165 Marion, Étant donné, p. 333. (Being Given, p. 239.) 166 Marion, Étant donné, p. 329. (Being Given, p. 236.) 167 Marion, Étant donné, p. 330. (Being Given, p. 237.) 168 Marion, Étant donné, pp. 331–2. (Being Given, p. 238.) 169 Marion, Étant donné, p. 332. (Being Given, p. 238.) 170 Marion, Étant donné, pp. 334–5. (Being Given, pp. 240–1.) 171 I will simply state here that for Kierkegaard, as well, Christ represents the fulfillment of time, a perpetual source of awe, and the sole authority that turns the disciple into the witness to the truth. 172 As Jeffrey Hanson aptly puts it, “the very fact that the god is in Jerusalem as opposed to anywhere (or everywhere) else means that the particularities of the god’s appearance are not irrelevant, that we are not dealing with a cosmic Christ who dwells only in invisible immanence but instead that ‘in such and such a year the god appeared in the humble form of a servant, lived and taught among us, and then died.’ ” Hanson, “Michel Henry and Søren Kierkegaard,” p. 444. SKS 4, 300 / PF, 104. 163

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origins. If that is true, then Marion would have enough reasons to argue contra Kierkegaard that Christ reveals and gives himself not only in his loving descent, expiatory suffering, and salvific death, but also through the Eucharist graciously administered by the church. And indeed, the eucharistic temporality, as well as the sacred corporeal givenness engaged in it, are of a different nature than Kierkegaard’s refined (and phenomenologically sound) dialectic between the self’s historicity, the imitation of the suffering exemplar (Christ), and the endless battle against sin.173

I have tried to develop this point in Leo Stan, “Kierkegaard on Temporality and God Incarnate,” in Philosophical Concepts and Religious Metaphors: New Perspectives on Phenomenology and Theology, ed. by Cristian Ciocan, Bucharest: Zetabooks 2009, pp. 237–54. 173

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Marion’s Corpus Étant donné. Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1997, p. 322. (English translation: Being Given, trans. by Jeffrey Kosky, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2002, p. 231.) Au lieu de soi. L’approche de Saint Augustin, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2008, pp. 73–4, note 2. II. Sources of Marion’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Kierkegaard, Søren, Crainte et Tremblement. Lyrique-dialectique, par Johannes de Silentio, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, Paris: Fernand Aubier; Éditions Montaigne 1935. — Crainte et tremblement, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, Paris: Aubier 1952. — Crainte et tremblement, in Oeuvres Complètes, trans. and ed. by Paul-Henri Tisseau and Else-Marie Jacquet-Tisseau, vols. 1–20, Paris: Éditions de l’Orante 1966–86; vol. 5, 1972. — Crainte et tremblement. Lyrique dialectique de Johannès de Silentio, trans. by Charles Le Blanc, Paris: Payot & Rivages 1999. III. Secondary Literature on Marion’s Relation to Kierkegaard Gregor, Brian, “Thinking through Kierkegaard’s Anti-Climacus: Art, Imagination, and Imitation,” Heythrop Journal, vol. 50, no. 3, 2009, pp. 448–65.

Paul Ricoeur: On Kierkegaard, the Limits of Philosophy, and the Consolation of Hope Joel D.S. Rasmussen

When Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) died, readers familiar with his extensive body of work regarded him as one of the contemporary era’s most significant and wideranging thinkers. “We lose today more than a philosopher,” then-current French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said in an official statement. “The entire European humanist tradition is mourning one of its most talented spokesmen.”1 Deeply conversant with the works of Kant and Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, Freud and Jaspers, among many others, Ricoeur influenced and transformed discussions ranging from phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and the social sciences to hermeneutics, moral philosophy, and Christian theology. What is sometimes acknowledged but not frequently addressed in the now-burgeoning scholarship on Ricoeur is the depth of his engagement with the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. On one hand, this is understandable. Viewed proportionally with respect to his entire authorship, Ricoeur’s explicit reflections on Kierkegaard’s writings might seem rather meager. On the other hand, a simple word count hardly passes for careful reading, and it is surely telling that when Ricoeur in specific essays does set Kierkegaard in express conversation with more obviously influential figures like Kant and Hegel, it is Kierkegaard who generally gets the last word. In a way (if the attribution of a “last word” is not too misleading in connection with a thinker for whom ongoing dialogue was so important), it is tempting to say that Ricoeur gave Kierkegaard the last word more generally. Perhaps this sounds hyperbolic, but by it I really only mean to indicate the notable appearance of Kierkegaard on the final page of the epilogue to Ricoeur’s last great work, Memory, History, Forgetting.2 Arguably, Ricoeur’s decision to conclude this magnum opus with a gesture towards Kierkegaard’s reflection on discourses about “the lilies in the field and the birds of Reported in Ricoeur’s obituary in the University of Chicago Chronicle, vol. 24, no. 189, June 2005. Ricoeur held the John Nuveen Chair in Chicago’s Divinity School for 20 years, as well as having held posts in Strasbourg, at the Sorbonne, and as the Dean of the Faculty of Letters in Nanterre, just west of Paris. 2 Paul Ricoeur, La Mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, Paris: Seuil 2000. (English translation: Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2004.) 1

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the air” attests to the depth of his engagement with Kierkegaard across a lifetime of reading. One task of this article will be to make the case that this might be so. Having made this suggestion, it should also be admitted that Ricoeur’s parting reference to Kierkegaard comes as some surprise since he had not commented at any length on Kierkegaard for a couple of decades prior to this publication. It is primarily in two 1963 articles marking the 150th anniversary of Kierkegaard’s birth—“Kierkegaard and Evil”3 and “Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard”4—and then in less concentrated ways in his work on the problem of evil and the philosophy of religion continuing through the 1970s, that Ricoeur reflects explicitly upon Kierkegaard’s significance for his own thinking. Through the 1980s and 1990s, by contrast, during which time Ricoeur was developing his major projects on temporality, narrative, and identity in Time and Narrative5 and Oneself as Another,6 references to Kierkegaard are hardly to be found. Is it the case that during this period Ricoeur has simply worked Kierkegaard out of his system, so to speak? Or is it rather that even in Ricoeur’s later decades Kierkegaard’s influence is discernible just under the surface? Certainly the title of Oneself as Another, at least, echoes the discussion of becoming a self in Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death, which Ricoeur knew very well indeed. “The human self,” writes Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author, is “a derived, established relation, a relation that relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another.”7 Regarding this question of the depth of Kierkegaard’s general influence on Ricoeur, I am inclined to agree with Iben Damgaard who, in the most outstanding study to date of Ricoeur’s relations to Kierkegaard, argues that Ricoeur’s reading of The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death indicates fundamental themes in his own anthropology. On Damgaard’s reading, in Fallible Man8 Ricoeur explores the Kierkegaardian theme of “human being’s character as a synthesis of finitude and infinitude,” and finds in

Paul Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” Revue de théologie et de philosophie, vol. 4, 1963, pp. 292–302. (English translation: “Kierkegaard and Evil,” Part I of “Two Encounters with Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s Truth: The Disclosure of the Self, ed. by Joseph H. Smith, New Haven: Yale University Press 1981 (Psychiatry and the Humanities, vol. 5), pp. 313–25.) 4 Paul Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” Revue de théologie et de philosophie, vol. 4, 1963, pp. 303–16. (English translation: “Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” Part II of “Two Encounters with Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s Truth: The Disclosure of the Self, ed. by Joseph H. Smith, New Haven: Yale University Press 1981 (Psychiatry and the Humanities, vol. 5), pp. 325–42.) 5 Paul Ricoeur, Temps et Récit, vols. 1–3, Paris: Seuil 1983–85. (English translation: Time and Narrative, vols. 1–3, trans. by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1984–88.) 6 Paul Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre, Paris: Seuil 1990. (English translation: Oneself as Another, trans. by Kathleen Blamey, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1992.) 7 SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 13–14. Ricoeur comments explicitly on this passage in “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 299. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 321.) 8 Paul Ricoeur, Finitude et Culpabilité I: L’homme faillible, Paris: Aubier 1960. (English translation: Fallible Man, trans. by Charles A. Kelbley, New York: Fordham University Press 1986.) 3

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the frailty of this synthesis the roots of human fallibility.9 In The Symbolism of Evil10 he draws upon Kierkegaard’s notion of “the dizziness of anxiety as the interpretive key to the Fall.”11 And in Oneself as Another he “unfolds a hermeneutic of the self that takes its starting point in the play between subjectivity and otherness.”12 Thus, although Ricoeur refers expressly to Kierkegaard only a few times in The Symbolism of Evil, just once in Fallible Man, and not at all in Oneself as Another, Damgaard plausibly suggests that these themes first developed by Kierkegaard find their way into Ricoeur’s thinking through the latter’s careful reading and appropriation. Damgaard’s study, however, aims to be neither reception history nor source criticism, and, consequently, she does not so much map and analyze Kierkegaard’s influence on Ricoeur as offer a systematic exposition of both Kierkegaard and Ricoeur with respect to three overlapping areas of focus: possibility and the self, narrative and self-relation, and hermeneutics and possibility.13 The present study is considerably less ambitious, but perhaps compensates somewhat for this by its specific focus on Ricoeur’s overt remarks on Kierkegaard. Granted, the full depth and extent of Ricoeur’s appropriation of Kierkegaardian themes and concepts is ultimately unknowable to us. (As Ricoeur once remarked of Kierkegaard’s own subjectivity, the inner consciousness of such a life cannot “be repeated or even correctly understood. But what existence can?”14) Yet what we can get clear on Iben Damgaard, Mulighedens Spejl. Forestilling, fortælling og selvforhold hos Kierkegaard og Ricœur, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen 2005, p. 165. 10 Paul Ricoeur, Finitude et Culpabilité II: La Symbolique du mal, Paris: Aubier 1960. (English translation: The Symbolism of Evil, trans. by Emerson Buchanan, New York: Harper and Row 1967.) 11 Damgaard, Mulighedens Spejl, p. 165. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., pp. 3–13; see also the English summary, pp. 300–3. For Damgaard’s focused comparative reading of Kierkegaard and Ricoeur on the theme of “the Fall,” see her essay entitled “Frihedens Svimlende Skrøbelighed: En sammenlignende læsning af Kierkegaards og Ricœurs udlægning af fortællingen om syndefaldet i Genesis 3,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 23, 2004, pp. 26–40. Alongside Damgaard, a handful of other readers have also published articles and book sections that set Ricoeur and Kierkegaard into conversation, although none explicates Ricoeur’s reading of Kierkegaard. Rather, these works tend either to use hermeneutical categories offered by Ricoeur to interpret some Kierkegaardian text or another, or they read Kierkegaard and Ricoeur together with some specific question or issue in view. For examples of the former approach, see François Bousquet, “Texte, Mimèsis, Répétition. De Ricoeur à Kierkegaard et retour,” Le texte comme objet philosophique, Paris: Beauchesne 1987 (Philosophie, vol. 12), pp. 185–204; and Rafael Larrañeta Olleta, “Hermenéutica del mito de la pena. Una lectura ricoeuriana de Hegel y Kierkegaard,” Contrastes, vol. 4, 1999, pp. 273–83. For instances of the latter approach, see Gary Foster, “The Representative Other: Confronting Otherness in Kierkegaard, Levinas and Ricoeur,” Philosophical Writings, vol. 25, 2005, pp. 19–29; Vanessa Rumble, “Narrative and Finitude in Kierkegaard and Ricoeur,” in Søren Kierkegaard and the Word(s): Essays on Hermeneutics and Communication, ed. by Poul Houe and Gordon D. Marino, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 2003, pp. 259–72; and William Schweiker, Mimetic Reflections, New York: Fordham University Press 1990. 14 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 306. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 329.) 9

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is the manner in which Ricoeur reads Kierkegaard in the context of his explicit engagements with him. What I wish to accomplish here, therefore, is to offer a close reading of the way Ricoeur explicitly and constructively elucidates Kierkegaard regarding (1) the experience of evil in human life as that which philosophy can neither explain nor reconcile, (2) the possibility of philosophy reconceived as the construction and critique of categories of existence, and (3) the development of a poetics of hope as a fragile but fitting response to the absurdity of evil in human experience. I. Philosophy with our Gaze Fixed on the Exception Born in Valence, France in 1913, Ricoeur came of age in an era when the European intellectual tradition beyond Denmark’s borders was just beginning to come to terms with the writings of Kierkegaard. Following somewhat earlier translations of Kierkegaard into German, the translations of Kierkegaard into French by Paul-Henri Tisseau, and then the early studies by Jean Wahl in Études Kierkegaardiennes, there emerged in France (following Germany) what Ricoeur calls a “Kierkegaard craze” in which Kierkegaard was perceived as a “protesting” thinker, on the one hand, and as a “rousing” thinker, on the other.15 With respect to the former, he was supposed to protest against German idealism, and most especially against Hegelianism. With respect to the latter, he is said to rouse readers about “existentialism.” But what is that? Generally, existentialism gets characterized at least in part by the insistence that the life task of a thinker is to understand himself or herself subjectively in life’s concrete, contingent, and ultimately absurd specificity, rather than seeking the always-elusive universal knowledge of a totalizing objective metaphysical system. Moreover, the key to whether or not one is living subjectively is that one experiences the “anxiety” of freedom over one’s existential possibilities and decisions. Kierkegaard—largely on the basis of his “celebrated” work The Concept of Anxiety16—was generally reckoned to be the father of this existentialism, a distinctively modern philosophical tradition in which Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) were all supposed to be cousins. Marcel, for example, wrote of Kierkegaard as “the true initiator of the philosophy of existence,” and regarded it of the greatest significance that this

Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 303. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 325.) On the transmission and reception of Kierkegaard in France in the first half of the twentieth century, see Jon Stewart’s essay entitled “France: Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of Existentialism and Poststructuralism,” In Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), see pp. 428–50. 16 Ricoeur characterizes this work en passant as “celebrated” in his essay “Vrai et fausse angoisse,” in Histoire et vérité, Paris: Seuil 1955, pp. 317–35, see p. 260. (English translation: “True and False Anguish,” in History and Truth, trans. by Charles A. Kelbley, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 1965, pp. 287–304, see p. 298.) 15

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philosophy emerges “from the outset under the sign of anguish [angoisse, angest, anxiety].”17 Although Ricoeur eventually dismisses as “nothing more than a trompe l’oeil”18 the very notion of an identifiable and cohesive form of philosophy known as “existentialism,” in his early work he engaged this discourse fully. He knew Marcel personally from his time as a student at the Sorbonne, and he kept up a correspondence with his former teacher when during World War II Ricoeur was captured by German soldiers and held as a prisoner of war from 1940 to 1945. Additionally, during his internment Ricoeur spent much of his time reading the complete works of Karl Jaspers, and just after the war he published his first book, Karl Jaspers and the Philosophy of Existence, coauthored with a fellow prisoner of war Mikel Dufrenne (1910–95).19 Here the authors explicate how Jaspers’ 1935 work Reason and Existence20 develops a philosophy of existence in the wake of the final impossibility of universal knowledge, on one side, and on the other side, in face of the impossibility of repeating the “exceptional” articulations of Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche (alongside Kierkegaard, many regarded Nietzsche as another key influence upon “existentialism”). In the work, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are characterized as thinkers who through their central themes (“the embrace with fear and trembling of the absurd paradox of the God-man, of eternity in time, of absolute contingency,” in the case of Kierkegaard; the courage to endure solitary existence in view of “the death of God,” in the case of Nietzsche21) announce the end of the speculative tradition of great totalizing systems of universal knowledge beginning with the pre-Socratic philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides and culminating in the modern German idealism of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). One cannot simply continue philosophy after Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as though they meant to found a new philosophical tradition, however, for they were “neither poets, nor prophets, nor geniuses, nor saints, nor philosophers, they are irreducible to any human type, they are alone and inaccessible,” one reads; they are “the exception.”22 The “question” and “task” for a philosopher of existence in the wake of their work, Gabriel Marcel, L’Homme problématique, Paris: Aubier 1955, p. 131. (English translation: Problematic Man, trans. by Brian Thompson, New York: Herder and Herder 1967, p. 104; cited in Stewart, “France: Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of Existentialism and Poststructuralism,” p. 432.) The French term angoisse translates the Danish angest, but can be rendered in English as “anguish.” See the French translation of Kierkegaard’s Begrebet Angest: Le Concept d’angoisse. Simple méditation psychologique pour servir d’introduction au problème dogmatique du péché originel, par Vigilius Haufniensis, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, introduced by Jean Wahl, Paris: Félix Alcan 1935. 18 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 303. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 326.) 19 Mikel Dufrenne and Paul Ricoeur, Karl Jaspers et la philosophie de l’existence, preface by Karl Jaspers. Paris: Seuil 1947. See also Charles E. Reagan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and Works, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1996, p. 9; p. 15. 20 Karl Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz. Fünf Vorlesungen gehalten auf Einladung der Universität Groningen, Groningen: J.B. Wolters 1935. 21 Ibid., p. 22. 22 Ibid., p. 24. 17

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as Ricoeur and Dufrenne explicate Jaspers, is to elucidate how “we who are not the exception,” should nonetheless think “with our gaze fixed on the exception.”23 Notably, Ricoeur returns to this exact formulation about 15 years after the Jaspers publication when he takes up the question of whether and how it is possible to think philosophically after the ostensive collapse of the speculative tradition. “Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard” is the title Ricoeur gives the second of two careful exegetical essays he presented in 1963 under the auspices of the Theology Faculty at the University of Geneva and the Marie Gretler Foundation to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Kierkegaard’s birth. Here Ricoeur carefully assesses the complex relations between Kierkegaard’s thought, the history of German idealism “from Kant to Hegel,” and the emergence of subsequent “existentialisms” in Germany and France. As Jon Stewart has pointed out, this essay marks one of the first instances in which the general habit of associating Kierkegaard with “existentialism” conceived as a “homogenous and unified school of thought” is called into question, or rather, flatly denied.24 Simply put, Ricoeur’s claim is that “existentialism conceived as a form of philosophy common to [Jaspers, Heidegger, Marcel, and Sartre] does not exist, be it in its principal theses, its method, or even its fundamental problems.”25 For this reason, in order to recognize how Kierkegaard articulates a new mode of philosophizing, Ricoeur maintains that it becomes necessary to liberate his thought from its various twentieth-century appropriations and to study his works on their own terms. This is perhaps one sense in which Ricoeur reads Kierkegaard with his “gaze fixed on the exception.”26 One needs to view Kierkegaard not simply as the exception to the speculative metaphysical tradition, but as the exception to the fiction of “existentialism” to which he is said to have given rise. But the explicit sense in which Ricoeur adopts Jaspers’ formulation for doing philosophy with his “gaze fixed on the exception” is the respect in which he wishes to set aside the “properly irrational aspects of Kierkegaard,” namely, his “incommunicable existence,” and concern himself instead with the philosophical categories Kierkegaard develops and the arguments he makes.27 Clearly, this should not be read as yet another general characterization of Kierkegaard as an irrationalist, for, as he qualifies this position, “we should not say that Kierkegaard delights in the irrational.”28 Rather, the point is that this figure who frequently characterized himself Ibid., p. 94; Cited in Dufrenne and Ricoeur, Karl Jaspers et la philosophie de l’existence, p. 25. 24 Stewart, “France: Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of Existentialism and Poststructuralism,” p. 450. 25 “Gabriel Marcel preferred to be called Neosocratic. Jaspers emphasized his solidarity with classical philosophy. Heidegger’s fundamental ontology broke away toward a meditative, archaizing, and poetic thinking. As for Sartre, he considers his own existentialism to be an ideology that needs to be reinterpreted within the framework of Marxism.” See Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” pp. 303–4. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 326.) 26 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 308. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 331.) 27 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 305. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 328.) 28 Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 295. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 317.) 23

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as a “poet of the religious” and whose own “poetic existence is no more situated within the framework or the landscape of ordinary communication than is that of a character in a novel, or…a Shakespearean tragedy,”29 nonetheless also developed concepts and rational arguments that engaged and problematized “both philosophy and Christian dogmatics.”30 The reader’s task then becomes that of ascertaining just how “the exception” stands in relation to philosophy. This is a complicated matter, for while Kierkegaard himself is said to stand “outside philosophy,” Ricoeur at the same time calls a number of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms “philosophical authors” (Constantine Constantius, Johannes de silentio, Vigilius Haufniensis, and Johannes Climacus, among others).31 For this reason, according to Ricoeur, if we simplistically assume that philosophy culminates and ends with Hegel, and that in Hegel’s wake Kierkegaard inaugurates a new “era of postphilosophy,” then we have not seen the dynamic between them clearly.32 Kierkegaard “embarrasses us,” he says, because he “is not—or not only—the non-philosopher.”33 Rather, he is said to stand in a complicated and problematic relation to philosophy that is “both outside and inside at the same time.”34 While one might wish to accuse Ricoeur of equivocating here, I think his point is to affirm that Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms participate in philosophical discourse—they construct and critique concepts for understanding oneself in the world—but they stand outside of (and polemicize against) the specific notion of philosophy conceived as a comprehensive system or totalizing discourse. But this is just to deny that the Hegelian conception of philosophy is proper philosophy, and to insist instead that the very parameters of what it means to participate in philosophical discourse are in question. Moreover, the construction of these parameters is always under reconstruction, and it seems a mystification of philosophy to think otherwise. As a result, what one can hope to rediscover in philosophy after Kierkegaard, Ricoeur wants to say, is that philosophy can no longer be conceived as an all-in-one package including sources, starting point, method, and conclusion. “Philosophy has its starting point before it,” Ricoeur writes. He continues: But, if it looks for its starting point, it receives its sources. It lays out its starting point. It does not lay out its sources, namely, what replenishes and instructs it from below (en sous-oeuvre). This is how I understand Karl Jaspers’s saying, “We are not the exception. We have to do philosophy with our gaze fixed on the exception.”35 Ricoeur, “Philosopher Kierkegaard,” p. 329.) 30 Ricoeur, “Philosopher Kierkegaard,” p. 331.) 31 Ricoeur, “Philosopher Kierkegaard,” p. 332.) 32 Ricoeur, “Philosopher Kierkegaard,” p. 327.) 33 Ricoeur, “Philosopher Kierkegaard,” p. 331.) 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 29

après Kierkegaard,” p. 306. (“Doing Philosophy after après Kierkegaard,” p. 308. (“Doing Philosophy after après Kierkegaard,” p. 308. (“Doing Philosophy after après Kierkegaard,” p. 304. (“Doing Philosophy after après Kierkegaard,” p. 308. (“Doing Philosophy after

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Philosophy has frontiers: the reality that gives rise to thought, at the same time exceeds what we think about it. Radical evil cannot be explained; one’s concrete existence cannot be fully narrated; the referent of the term “God” or “the Absolute” does not fit inside a system; and hope remains a possibility despite every reason to despair. Thus, on Ricoeur’s reading, philosophy after Kierkegaard must attend more closely to the respects in which philosophy always has its source in nonphilosophy, in something that gives rise to philosophy and yet ultimately escapes total comprehension. II. Anxiety, Despair, and Paradox In “Kierkegaard and Evil,” the first of the two 1963 essays on Kierkegaard, Ricoeur takes evil as the paradigmatic case of a feature of reality that escapes total comprehension, and yet nonetheless gives rise to thought. He undertakes here a detailed analysis of just two texts—The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death—and seeks to elicit from them Kierkegaard’s own thinking on the matter of evil. We should note here that although both of these works were published under different pseudonyms, Ricoeur himself is not concerned with the specific issue of the pseudonymous authorship of these texts. He claims that in these works a reader finds “no trace” of the various biographical elements that frequently occupy interpreters of Kierkegaard, and this apparently justifies the assumption that one can here discover “how Kierkegaard thought in the face of the irrational, the absurd.”36 While it might seem that Ricoeur here contradicts his avowed intention to set aside Kierkegaard’s own existence and concentrate instead on the arguments, perhaps the best way to read this is simply to regard him as using the name “Kierkegaard” to stand for the specific claims of the texts under interpretation. Apart from their distance from the specifics of Kierkegaard’s biography, what these two texts have in common is the fact that they both have their sources not in any determinate concepts, but in underlying moods—anxiety and despair, respectively— and these moods both have an indeterminate object. The approach to evil in both texts is thus “psychological.”37 Psychological reflection upon the source of these moods is supposed to allow a certain insight into a dimension of evil that one misses when Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 293. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 314.) Ricoeur mentions in particular that we would be “wasting our time” if we look to these texts for traces of “the terrible confession his father made to him about that day in his youth when, shepherding his sheep on the Jutland heath, he climbed up on a rock and cursed God. Or anything about the precipitous marriage of the widower father to his servant mistress, or of all the deaths that struck the paternal home…or of Søren’s melancholy, or of the splinter in his flesh.” 37 The subtitle of The Concept of Anxiety reads: “a simple psychologically orienting deliberation on the dogmatic issue of hereditary sin.” The subtitle of The Sickness unto Death reads: “a Christian psychological exposition for upbuilding and awakening.” The psychological approach is important, for to approach sin ethically casts sin too much in terms of human effort, to the exclusion of the experience of human suffering that comes upon humanity from outside. To approach sin metaphysically is to approach it in too disinterested and comprehensive a fashion. And to explain sin dogmatically explains it simply by presupposing it. 36

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one begins more specifically with determinate, known evils. “To begin from known evil is to begin from a purely moral definition of guilt, as the transgressing of a law or as an infraction,” Ricoeur writes.38 But such a transgression would not be absurd, for it already operates within a discourse of prohibition and prescription. The task here is to discover something deeper, a quality of evil in human experience—and thus a dimension of “sin”—that is only accessible through these emotions, each with an ultimately unfathomable source. Moreover, as Ricoeur points out, because the experiences of these moods are themselves different, the “concepts” of evil elicited from each text are also different. In the first treatise, “the analysis of anxiety leads to a concept of sin as event or upheaval. Anxiety is a sort of slipping, of fascination wherein evil is circumscribed, approached from back and front.”39 In the second treatise, the analysis of despair “takes place in the midst of sin, no longer as a leap, but as a state: despair is…the evil of evil, the sin of sin.”40 The insight with which Ricoeur characterizes this key difference between the texts is admirable. But what truly distinguishes Ricoeur’s analysis is not simply the rigor and care with which he exegetes Kierkegaard’s texts individually, but also the manner in which he analyzes the relation—or “disrelation”—between the two, and the implications this disrelation has for how we conceive the task of philosophy and the limits of philosophy. Here Ricoeur invokes paradox, or rather a set of three related paradoxes. “The paradox” in the case of The Concept of Anxiety, Ricoeur says, “is that of a beginning.”41 Evil is an upheaval. Sin marks a radical discontinuity from innocence, and this conception of the Fall (each individual’s Fall) as both an “event” of upheaval and the “advent” of evil is paradoxical because the preceding state cannot be experienced as such: “when it is annulled, and as a result of being annulled, it [innocence] for the first time comes into existence as that which it was before being annulled.”42 By contrast, The Sickness unto Death—which Ricoeur sometimes refers to as Kierkegaard’s “treatise on despair”—treats evil in human experience not in terms of its advent but in terms of its continuity. Whereas anxiety “ex-ists,” despair “in-sists.”43 The question in the second treatise is not how sin entered the world in the first place (through anxiety), but rather how on earth not to despair over the apparent impossibility of ever escaping sin. For sin, once it has entered, is “no longer a leap,” but rather becomes “a stagnant stage, a persisting mode of being.”44 One way to attempt a philosophical solution to this problem is to envision sin as a momentary and merely apparent problem. So, for example, on Hegel’s understanding philosophy is supposed to be able to resolve this problem by comprehending evil as just a necessary feature of a higher synthesis:

Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 294. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 315.) Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 294. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 316.) 42 SKS 4, 343 / CA, 36–7. 43 Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 296. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 318.) 44 Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 297. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 319.) 38 39

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Joel D.S. Rasmussen To comprehend evil philosophically is to reduce it to a pure negation: weakness as a lack of force, sensuality as a lack of spirituality, ignorance as a lack of knowledge, finitude as a lack of totality. Hegel identified comprehension with negation or, better, with the negation of negation….If to comprehend is to overcome, that is, to pass beyond negation, then sin is one negation among others and repentance one mediation among others. In this way, negation and the negation of negation both become purely logical processes.45

Over against this dialectic process, Ricoeur’s “structural analysis” of the “heavy and laborious construction” of Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death discloses it as a “grimacing simulacre of Hegelian discourse,”46 and one through which Kierkegaard registers his “most vigorous protest” against the mediations of Hegelian philosophy.47 Initially, Ricoeur suggests the “strange structure” of the treatise is “didactic because it cannot be dialectic.”48 But what he really means is that it cannot resolve into a “threeterm dialectic” of mediation in the fashion Hegel’s logic articulates. Instead, in place of a triadic dialectic of mediation Kierkegaard substitutes “a cut-off dialectic,” or rather, “an unresolved two-term dialectic” that denies any higher comprehension.49 So here we encounter the second paradox: A dialectic without mediation—this is the Kierkegaardian paradox. Either too much possibility or too much actuality. Either too much finitude or too much infinitude. Either one wants to be oneself or one does not want to be oneself. What is more, since each pair of contrary terms offers no resolution, it is not possible to construct the following paradox on the one that precedes it. The chain of paradoxes is itself a broken chain— hence the didactic framework, which is substituted for the immanent structure of a true dialectic.50

Thus, whereas in The Concept of Anxiety we saw Kierkegaard analyze rationality’s inability to incorporate the absurd, non-rational origin of evil in human experience (the first paradox of the beginning), here in The Sickness unto Death we encounter a discussion wherein reason is powerless to escape the persisting evil of sin by mediating the “antinomies of despair” into a higher reconciliation (the second paradox of a dialectic without mediation). What now is the relationship between these two paradoxes? Ricoeur’s concluding discussion in this essay sets the two approaches—namely, the representation of evil as an “advent” in human experience in The Concept of Anxiety, and the approach that represents evil in human experience as a permanent condition in The Sickness unto Death—over against each other in order to explore the possibility of finding some way of correlating them. What do we learn from this comparison? In the first instance, Ricoeur points out that the treatises agree at least on one point: although the evil of sin clearly has moral implications, fundamentally “sin is not an ethical Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” pp. 301–2. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 324.) Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 298. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 320.) 47 Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 301. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 324.) 48 Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 298. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 320.) 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 45 46

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reality but a religious one”51—sin is “before God.” At least as important, however, are the differences in perspective between the two treatises Ricoeur wishes to underscore. First, anxiety is represented as a movement toward sin; despair is sin: “That sin is a state is revealed by despair itself. We cannot say that anxiety is sin, we can say that despair is.”52 And this initial substantive difference indicates a second methodological one: while the two treatises both begin with a “psychological” approach, only The Concept of Anxiety remains “purely psychological,” whereas The Sickness unto Death, by moving more fully into the theological register here, “is no longer psychology.”53 The latter treatise goes beyond psychology to adumbrate what Kierkegaard calls a “poet-existence verging on the religious.”54 By contrast to the psychologist as such, the “poet of the religious” has a “profound religious longing, and the conception of God is taken up into his despair” (although, notably, the relation of the poet of the religious to the divine is “not in the strictest sense that of a believer; he has only the first element of faith—despair—and within it an intense longing for the religious”).55 It is this poet-existence of The Sickness unto Death that Ricoeur wishes to contrast with the psychological dialectic of The Concept of Anxiety: “psychology designates sin through the experience of vertigo as a fall, then it designates it as a lack, consequently as ‘nothing.’ For poetic existence, sin is a state, a condition, a mode of being; further it is a position.”56 And this difference between sin as a “nothing” and sin as a “position” comprises the final difference between the two treatises and, indeed, comprises the third paradox: “I steadfastly hold to the Christian teaching that sin is a position—yet not as if it could be comprehended, but as a paradox that must be believed.”57 The poet of the religious endorses the thesis of what he takes to be orthodox dogmatics here. But whether one is a poet of the religious or a psychologist or even a speculative philosopher, the Kierkegaardian view is that no one could ever demonstrate and comprehend the reality of sin as an enduring condition in which human beings dwell. Such a demonstration would entail a demonstration of God’s reality as well, for “that it is before God is the definitively positive element in it.”58 The very possibility of an indubitable philosophical demonstration of God’s reality, however, is what Kierkegaard consistently denies across his entire authorship. In part, it is Ricoeur’s ability to read “across” the authorship that makes him a good reader of Kierkegaard. As Ricoeur might say, he reads Kierkegaard “intertextually.” Of course, a reader can approach The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death independently of each other and gain much from either one. Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 300. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 323.) Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 301; emphasis in original. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 324.) 53 Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 301. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 323.) 54 SKS 11, 191 / SUD, 77. 55 SKS 11, 191–2 / SUD, 77–8. 56 Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 301; emphasis in original. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 324.) See also SKS 4, 425 / CA, 124 and SKS 11, 212 / SUD, 100. 57 SKS 11, 210 / SUD, 98; cf. Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” p. 302. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” pp. 324–5.) 58 SKS 11, 212 / SUD, 100; emphasis in original. 51 52

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In the light of Ricoeur’s interpretation, however, one discovers that these are not simply two different treatises on the experience of evil in human life, but also a two-pronged polemic directed against “all speculative philosophy,” and most proximately against “Hegelian philosophy.”59 Where The Concept of Anxiety approaches sin as an upheaval and not an immanent transition, The Sickness unto Death insists that sin is an unfathomable and intellectually irreconcilable condition. The first treatise indicates the impossibility of giving a comprehensive philosophical explanation of the emergence of evil in human experience, and the second indicates the impossibility of giving a comprehensive philosophical account of how one could escape the continuance of evil in human experience. Thus, as Ricoeur outlines it, Kierkegaard indicates a paradox of the beginning on the one side, and a paradox of belief on the other, with the paradox of the broken-off dialectic troubling the middle, for unless we are able to subsume each representation of evil under a higher concept, the relationship between the representations must also be paradoxical. What does all of this mean for the task of philosophy and the limits of philosophy? Let us return briefly to the essay entitled “Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard” before exploring more generally and constructively how and what Ricoeur draws from Kierkegaard in his own thinking. III. Philosophy’s Ultimate Requirement and its Unattainable Goal As we have seen, the question of what it means to do philosophy after Kierkegaard entails first and foremost the question of what one thinks one is doing when one is doing philosophy. Within the speculative tradition running from Heraclitus and Parmenides to the modern Absolute Idealism of Hegel, Ricoeur tells us, philosophy is conceived as the discourse of total rationality, universal knowledge, a comprehensive system without limits. And since this tradition is supposed to have culminated and reached its true end in the “absolute knowing” of Hegel’s system, Kierkegaard’s rejoinder to this system on behalf of “the individual” sometimes gets labeled “postphilosophy.” Were this accurate, such “postphilosophy” would be a genre of writing trading in empty contradictions and thus in the eyes of its critics disqualified from being regarded as properly philosophical. But Ricoeur recognizes Kierkegaard’s construction of unresolved oppositions as a legitimate form of doing philosophy. “A paradox is still a logical structure,” he maintains, and is “the one that is suitable for the type of demonstration required by the problematic of the existing individual, the individual before God.”60 Moreover, given that this is a mode of philosophical thinking that recognizes the limits of philosophy, it is also a kind of resuscitation of an older form of philosophy that Hegel had ostensibly incorporated and overcome. Ricoeur’s gambit here is to argue that we can best renew our reading of Kierkegaard as a philosophical thinker by seeing in him not simply a reaction Ricoeur, “Kierkegaard et le mal,” pp. 301–2. (“Kierkegaard and Evil,” p. 324.) “If Kierkegaard stands outside of philosophy, Constantine Constantius, Johannes de Silentio, and Vigilius Haufniensis—alleged names of Søren Kierkegaard—are philosophical authors.” See Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 308. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 332.) 59 60

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to Hegel, but also a “return to Kant.” He is surely correct that the Kierkegaardian insistence upon approaching Christian teaching “not as if it could be comprehended, but as a paradox that must be believed”61 will remind many readers of Immanuel Kant’s well-known claim that he “had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.”62 More than this, however, Ricoeur proposes that the concept of paradox in Kierkegaard’s writings has a philosophical function parallel to Kant’s conception of “limit,” and he further ventures to suggest an affinity between Kierkegaard’s “broken-off dialectic” and Kant’s conception of dialectic conceived as a “critique of illusion.”63 Yet, despite this intellectual kinship, Ricoeur acknowledges that important differences between Kant and Kierkegaard stand out as well: In the last analysis, Kierkegaard is not a critical thinker in the Kantian sense of the term. Questions about conditions of possibility do not interest him, at least as an epistemological problem. But may we not say that his categories of existence constitute a new genre of critique, that of a critique of existence, and that they concern the possibility of speaking about existence?64

By implication, and by the way he develops the remainder of his essay, Ricoeur’s answer to this question is yes. He allows that this new “critique of existence” implicitly deconstructs Kant’s formal distinction between a priori thinking and a posteriori thinking which (although arguably appropriate with respect to the theoretical cognition of physical objects) had led to Kant’s “failure” in the sphere of practical philosophy when transposed to practical experience. But Kierkegaard’s “categories of existence” offer a way around Kant’s impasse, Ricoeur suggests, because such categories—inwardness, the absurd, passion, repetition, the moment, etc.—are “the conditions of possibility of an experience, not physical experience or an experience parallel to physical experience but a fundamental experience that is the realization of our desire and our effort to be.”65 If I read Ricoeur correctly here, then Kierkegaard’s return to Kant is also a rejoinder to Kant. While recovering the logic of limit—what in Philosophical Fragments gets named “the paradoxical passion of the understanding” in its continual collision with “the absolutely different”66— Kierkegaard at the same time opens up a field of discourse that has been prematurely and problematically closed by Kant. Of course, it is not primarily his concern to frame a rejoinder to Kant’s critical philosophy that motivates Kierkegaard’s development of this “critique” of existential SKS 11, 210 / SUD, 98. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. by Raymund Schmidt. Hamburg: Felix Meiner 1956, p. 28 (B XXX). (English translation: Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, p. 117.) 63 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 309. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 333.) 64 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” pp. 309–10; emphasis in original. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 333.) 65 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 310; emphasis in original. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 334.) 66 SKS 4, 249 / PF, 44. 61 62

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possibilities. Rather, the main point is that this new field of discourse is precisely that which enables him to envision a form of philosophy that preserves the significance of “the individual” over against “the system.” As Ricoeur puts it in a 1967 essay entitled “Existential Phenomenology,” for Kierkegaard “it was a matter of framing the charter of the antisystem and thus little by little of rendering the opposition to the System coherent.”67 Insofar as Kierkegaard accomplishes this, he does so “by elaborating actual ‘categories’ of the individual over against those of logic: the instant in place of the eternity of logic, the individual in place of the whole, paradox in place of mediation, and existence in place of the System.”68 Clearly, then, this return and rejoinder to Kant is at the same time what enables Kierkegaard’s polemic against Hegelian philosophy. It is at this point that Ricoeur’s conception of what it looks like to do “philosophy after Kierkegaard” becomes interesting as constructive philosophy in its own right. Too often in histories of philosophy, this dustup between “the individual” and “the system” gets narrated simply in terms of two opposing alternatives. Ricoeur’s great contribution, by contrast, is to guard against “the disastrous alternative” posed by any requirement to choose between either “rationalism” or “existentialism”: Beyond science, there is still thinking. The question of existence does not signify the death of language and of logic. To the contrary, it requires an increase in lucidity and rigor. The question, What is existence? cannot be separated from the other question, What is thinking? Philosophy lives on the unity of these two questions and dies of their separation.69

Ricoeur’s alternative to this particular either/or is a proposal to read the opposition between Kierkegaard’s individual and Hegel’s system not as an alternative between which we are “condemned” to choose, but as a productive dialectic. After Kierkegaard, we find ourselves in a “new philosophical situation,” a situation in which we can reread Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion “in the light of the Kierkegaardian dialectic,” on the one hand, and on the other hand, “situate Kierkegaard’s paradoxes within the field of the Hegelian philosophy.”70 Some readers might ask whether situating Kierkegaard’s writings “within the field” of Hegel’s discourse gives the game away already, and perhaps it would be better to say “in connection with” or some other phrase that does not so obviously locate Kierkegaard within Hegel’s systematic philosophy. But I take this simply to mean that Kierkegaard’s thought cannot even be understood apart from Hegel’s thought. Any “Hegelian” already knows this, Ricoeur says, and can Paul Ricoeur, “Phénoménologie existentielle,” Encyclopédie Française, Tome 19, Philosophie—Religion, ed. by Gaston Berger, Paris: Larousse 1957, p. 10. (English translation: “Existential Phenomenology,” trans. by Edward G. Ballard and Lester E. Embree, in Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1967, p. 207.) 68 Ricoeur, “Phénoménologie existentielle,” p. 10. (“Existential Phenomenology,” p. 207.) 69 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 316. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 341.) 70 Ibid. 67

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even assign Kierkegaard’s thought its specific place within the logical development of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. In Hegelian terms, Kierkegaard’s discourse is that of the “unhappy consciousness” because it has lost the ability to represent the authentic dialectic through the movements of mediation, and ends instead with an aborted “rhetoric of pathos” cast in terms of a laborious but apparently unproductive “broken-off dialectic.”71 However—and this is decisive—the supposed incorporation of Kierkegaard’s discourse as a partial discourse of “unhappy consciousness” within a larger system makes the leap of presupposing that the system itself is a reality. But the reality of “the system” is precisely what cannot ever be demonstrated. Indeed, on Ricoeur’s reading, the possible reality of the system is both “a presupposition and a question for Hegel himself.”72 In this regard, Kierkegaard’s polemic against the system should read as a reminder that “Kierkegaard is neither included nor excluded by a system that remains a question for itself.”73 On the other hand, claims about Kierkegaard inaugurating “the era of postphilosophy” hardly make sense when the question of what constitutes philosophy remains open. And what is more, so long as this question remains open, one inevitably envisions the possibility of the “unknown” which transcends philosophy, and which philosophy does not yet, and arguably cannot ever, incorporate. Hegelian philosophy powerfully makes the case that simply by thinking this idea of some “transcendent unknown” one has also in the same moment thought the relation that incorporates oneself and that idea of the transcendent. Ricoeur agrees with the deconstructive element of Hegel’s claim here, and writes, “the idea of transcendence suppresses itself, and Hegel will always be correct in resisting every pretension to think about the infinite distance between the wholly other and man.”74 And yet, no matter how many times one’s relative point of view gets aufgehoben, it remains true that it is not itself universal knowledge. “The point of view without a point of view from whence one could view the profound identity of the real and the rational,” Ricoeur maintains, “is nowhere given. With Kierkegaard, we must always return to this confession: I am not absolute discourse.”75 Thus, as modeled by Ricoeur, doing philosophy after Kierkegaard entails a philosophy more speculative than Kierkegaard’s, but a chastened form of speculation that acknowledges its limits. The “proper task” of philosophy, he maintains, “remains to seek the principle or ground, the order of coherence, the signification of truth and reality,”76 but the ultimate truth it seeks remains always beyond philosophy’s compass. Philosophy seeks more than it can ever find, is drawn ineluctably to that which it cannot think, and collides with the unknown at the limits of thought. As we Ricoeur, “Philosopher Kierkegaard,” p. 336.) 72 Ricoeur, “Philosopher Kierkegaard,” p. 337.) 73 Ricoeur, “Philosopher Kierkegaard,” p. 337.) 74 Ricoeur, “Philosopher Kierkegaard,” p. 339.) 75 Ibid. 76 Ricoeur, “Philosopher Kierkegaard,” p. 331.) 71

après Kierkegaard,” p. 312. (“Doing Philosophy after après Kierkegaard,” p. 312. (“Doing Philosophy after après Kierkegaard,” p. 313. (“Doing Philosophy after après Kierkegaard,” p. 314. (“Doing Philosophy after après Kierkegaard,” p. 308. (“Doing Philosophy after

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read in Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments, this collision is at once the “torment” and the “incentive” of philosophy.77 And this, according to Ricoeur, means that the relationship between Hegel and Kierkegaard has itself become paradoxical: the clarification of and by Kierkegaard of and by Hegel. “Perhaps we have discovered or rediscovered” he says, “that the system is both philosophy’s ultimate requirement and its unattainable goal.”78 IV. The Consolation of Hope In one of the more memorable passages of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author pens the words, “A system of existence [Tilværelsens System] cannot be given. Is there, then, not such a system? That is not at all the case. Neither is this implied in what has been said. Existence itself is a system—for God, but it cannot be a system for any existing [existerende] spirit.”79 A claim such as this one, by the very act of transgressing the limits it indicates, can hardly be called straightforward philosophical discourse. What kind of discourse is it, then? Arguably, it is the sort of discourse that seeks to gesture to that which transcends all one could ever know and be. But precisely because properly philosophical discourse cannot comprehend the identity of rationality and existence, according to Ricoeur’s reading of Kierkegaard, “another discourse is required, one that takes this into account and speaks of it.”80 Ricoeur identifies this other discourse as the form signified by religious faith, and he finds Kierkegaard’s characterization of religious language as “poetic” language generative of the possibility for hope in the face of the human experience of evil. “I am the poet of the religious,” Ricoeur rightly reports Kierkegaard as saying, and he thinks we should “take him at his word.”81 But, according to Ricoeur, the signification of Kierkegaard’s religious poetics should not be regarded as “nonphilosophy” but as “hyperphilosophy,”82 for the religious faith it seeks to evoke is not simply other than philosophy but also higher than philosophy: “For Hegel, religion is only an introduction to philosophy, conceived of as absolute knowledge. For Kierkegaard, there is nothing beyond faith, since it is God’s gracious response to evil, for which there is no science.”83 And just as sin cannot be comprehended but only believed, so, too, faith’s hope in “the

SKS 4, 249 / PF, 44. Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 340.) 79 SKS 7, 114 / CUP1, 118. 80 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 339.) 81 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 330.) 82 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 332.) 83 Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 339.) 77 78

Kierkegaard,” p. 315. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 314. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 306. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 309. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 315. (“Doing Philosophy after

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forgiveness of sins is a paradox,” insofar as it entails a leap into a possibility that is discontinuous with the immanent logic of philosophy.84 Arguably, although Ricoeur hardly advertised his own Reformed Christianity, his personal conception of the consolation of hope in the face of the various forms of human anguish harmonizes rather consonantly with Kierkegaard’s own. As early as his 1955 essay entitled “True and False Anguish,” Ricoeur identified religious hope as “the true contrary of anguish” and there, too, contrasted “the leap” entailed in “the act of hope”85 with the philosophical reconciliation of “our dreadful history” ostensibly achieved through the “ruse of reason.”86 Here Ricoeur constructs and analyzes the various forms of “anguish” in modernity from the “vital anguish” of death, through the “psychic anguish” of alienation and the “historical anguish” of nonsense, to the existential anguish of “choice” and “guilt” which he identifies with Kierkegaard.87 It is clear that the heart of this essay is profoundly Kierkegaardian. Although he ostensibly refers to Kierkegaard only to exemplify one type of a broader phenomenon, we need simply cite Ricoeur’s unattributed “general definition” between fear and anguish to recognize how significant Kierkegaard’s role here is: “Fear has a determined object or, in any case, one that is determinable,” he maintains, whereas “anguish on the other hand, has an indetermined object and one which is all the more indeterminable as reflection attempts to coin its aim into fears with precise contours.”88 Or, as Kierkegaard puts it, the concept of anxiety is “altogether different from fear and similar concepts that refer to something definite, whereas anxiety is freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility.”89 In 1969, more than a decade later, Ricoeur remarked that in order to express “freedom in the light of hope” he found it “necessary to speak, with Kierkegaard again, of the passion for the possible, which retains in its formulation the mark of the future which the promise puts on freedom.”90 And in 1970, again in an expressly theological vein, Ricoeur develops his conception of hope in terms of what he identifies as the “absurd logic” of Kierkegaard. “Shall we take this path?” he asks. “And if we take it, must we not renounce the project of an intellectus fidei et spei? I do not think so. On the contrary, the authentic rationality of hope can be grasped nowhere else than at the end of this ‘absurd logic.’ ”91 Here Ricoeur clearly echoes SKS 7, 204 / CUP1, 224. Ricoeur, “Vrai et fausse angoisse,” p. 266. (“True and False Anguish,” p. 303.) 86 Ricoeur, “Vrai et fausse angoisse,” p. 255. (“True and False Anguish,” p. 294.) 87 Ricoeur, “Vrai et fausse angoisse,” pp. 251–60. (“True and False Anguish,” pp. 289– 98.) 88 Ricoeur, “Vrai et fausse angoisse,” pp. 244–5. (“True and False Anguish,” p. 287.) 89 SKS 4, 348 / CA, 42. 90 Paul Ricoeur, “La liberté selon l’espérance,” Le Conflit des Interprétations, Paris: Seuil 1969, p. 398. (English translation: “Freedom in the Light of Hope,” trans. by Robert Sweeney, in The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. by Don Ihde, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 1974, pp. 402–24, see p. 407.) 91 Paul Ricoeur, “Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems,” trans. by David Pellauer, in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1995, p. 205; originally published in the Proceedings of the American Catholic Association 1970, pp. 55–69. 84 85

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his earlier claim (seen above) that a poetics of paradox, while breaking with the immanent logic of speculative philosophy, nonetheless “is still a logical structure, the one that is suitable for the type of demonstration required by the problematic of the existing individual, the individual before God.”92 And, while crediting Kierkegaard as the thinker who first characterizes such hope in explicit terms as an “absurd logic,” Ricoeur sees (as Kierkegaard does) the theological roots of this paradoxical discourse in the Christological witness of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans regarding the two central events of the cross and the resurrection. Paul coordinates these antinomic events typologically in terms of the parallel between Adam and Jesus Christ, and gives that typology an existential interpretation by seeing in Adam’s sin the death of the old human being, and seeing in the resurrection of Christ the new creation. This new creation is “the eschatological in existential terms,” a paradox that cannot be expressed in terms of the logic of identity. Ricoeur sees in Paul’s parallelism between Adam and Christ the absurd logic of new hope breaking through the old logic of sin: But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many…. If because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who received abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign through the one man Jesus Christ. (Rom. 5:16–17)

Paul’s simple grammatical device here—“much more…. much more” —is the key to recognizing this absurd logic of hope, but the existential meaning of this logic is anything but simple: The existential meaning of this law of superabundance is rich and complex. There are many ways of living according to this eschatological event of the new creation. Many ways: personal and collective, ethical and political. All these ways are irreducible to a mere wisdom of the eternal present: they bear the mark of the future—of the “not yet” and of the “much more”: in the terms of Kierkegaard, hope makes of freedom the passion for the possible against the sad meditation on the irrevocable. The passion implies no illusion; it knows that all resurrection is resurrection from among the dead, that creation is in spite of death. As the Reformed used to say, the resurrection is hidden under its contrary, the cross.93

In this passage we seem to find Ricoeur speaking from what he elsewhere calls “the Kierkegaardian part of myself.”94 And this part, clearly, is one that sees in Kierkegaard deep resources for rethinking the relationship between the representation of hope and the language of faith. As Damgaard has shown, in Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of Ricoeur, “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” p. 309. (“Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” p. 332.) 93 Ricoeur, “Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems,” p. 206. 94 Paul Ricoeur, “The Language of Faith,” trans. by R. Bradley DeFord, in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of his Work, ed. by Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart, Boston: Beacon Press 1978, p. 237. (Originally published in Union Seminary Quarterly Review, vol. 28, 1973, pp. 213–24.) 92

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the relationship between representation and concept he refuses to follow Hegel’s Aufhebung of religious representations into philosophical concepts, but speaks instead of a Kantian boundary concept, which is inconclusive and thus has more affinity with a theology of hope, for the surplus of hope opens that which the system wants to close.95 This is surely correct. I would want simply to supplement it by suggesting that in his religious thinking, Ricoeur’s affinities are even closer to Kierkegaard than they are to Kant. After all, even while denying knowledge to make room for faith, Kant nonetheless sought to articulate his conception of moral faith within the boundaries of mere reason, whereas Ricoeur, by contrast, is at times emboldened to speak out of what he calls “the grace of imagination, the surging up of the possible.”96 On my reading, in some of his own theological overtures on hope Ricoeur appears to adumbrate a religious poetics that positively gestures towards a discourse beyond mere reason. “At the most,” he writes in 1969, a philosopher “is what Kierkegaard called himself, ‘the poet of the religious’ ”: He dreams of a prophet who would realize today the message of Exodus that exists prior to all law: “I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” He dreams of the prophet who would speak only of freedom but would never utter a word of prohibition or condemnation, who would preach the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ as the beginning of a creative life, and who would elaborate the contemporary significance of the Pauline antinomy between the Gospel and the Law. In terms of this antinomy sin itself would appear less as the transgression of a prohibition than as the opposite of a life ruled by grace.97

Importantly, Ricoeur is quick to add that there are a number of reasons the philosopher is not this prophetic preacher. And yet, also significantly, Kierkegaard’s poet of the religious is not this prophetic preacher either. Kierkegaard is frequently at pains to underscore his view that as a poet of the religious he is not yet one who with his entire existence “witnesses to the truth.” The parallel is clearly there to be drawn, and when in the same essay Ricoeur affirms Hölderlin’s line, “poetically, dwells man on this earth” and glosses “dwelling” as another name for Kierkegaard’s “repetition,” he seems to be asking us to draw it.98 Granted, the very suggestion that Ricoeur might be regarded as a kind of “poet of the religious” seems rather counterintuitive. I hardly wish to overtax this interpretation by insisting upon it. All I wish to propose is that when Ricoeur robustly claims a philosopher is “at the most” a poet of the religious, he attests that the “Kierkegaardian part of himself” runs stronger and deeper than one might first have imagined, and that this manifests most clearly in his poetics of hope as the contrary of anxiety and despair. For Ricoeur, poiesis—“creation in the largest sense Damgaard, Mulighedens Spejl, p. 298. Ricoeur, “The Language of Faith,” p. 237. 97 Paul Ricoeur, “Religion, athéisme, foi,” in Le Conflit des Interprétations, Paris: Seuil 1969, p. 438. (English translation: “Religion, Atheism, and Faith,” trans. by Charles Freilich, in The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. by Don Ihde, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 1974, p. 448.) 98 Ricoeur, “Religion, athéisme, foi,” p. 456. (“Religion, Atheism, and Faith,” p. 466.) 95 96

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of the word”99—is what allows the poet to see “the sacred” where a philosopher qua philosopher sees only “Being.”100 Before the sacred, one can experience language not simply as a capacity but as a “gift,” and one can experience reflective thought not simply as a philosophical task but as the mode of “recognition of this gift.”101 In expressing thanks for the gift, one can also experience the birth of “consolation,” a form of hope that, like “dwelling,” Ricoeur affiliates with Kierkegaard’s “repetition.”102 And it is this consoling, paradoxical, hope with its “absurd logic” that enables one to embrace the world, to affirm it and dwell in it despite a dreadful personal and collective history, and despite no philosophical assurance that all things tend toward any final reconciliation. “Unlike absolute knowledge,” Ricoeur elsewhere writes, this “primary affirmation, secretly armed with hope, brings about no reassuring Aufhebung; it does not ‘surmount,’ but ‘affronts’: it does not ‘reconcile’ but ‘consoles’: this is why anguish will accompany hope until the last day.”103 If not prophetic in the strict sense, what Ricoeur here avows is nonetheless prescient. For anguish and hope appear together as “distress” and “forgiveness” in his last days, in the concluding lines of his final book, and again in overt connection with Kierkegaard. While Ricoeur’s engagement with Kierkegaard is implicit rather than explicit in his major works of the 1980s and 1990s—Time and Narrative, and Oneself as Another—his Memory, History, Forgetting published in 2000 confirms in a powerful way the suspicion that the strength and depth of Kierkegaard’s influence was always present, not always obvious, but often only barely under the surface. “How could we not mention,” he concludes, “Kierkegaard’s praise of forgetting as the liberation of care?”104 The reference is to Kierkegaard’s collection of three discourses published together in 1847 under the title What We Learn from the Lilies in the Field and the Birds of the Air, and once more the discussion is theopoetically inflected. For the Gospel exhortation to “consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air” is configured by Kierkegaard (and Ricoeur) as a “godly diversion” through which one might forget the worldly cares that cause such deep anguish in human existence; in contemplating the lilies and the birds who do not toil, one can forget the worries of “ordinary distractions” and experience consolation in the primary affirmation that it is in fact “glorious” to be a human being.105 And Ricoeur’s closing witness that “love is as strong as death” affirms a hope, like Kierkegaard’s, that echoes the biblical affirmation of the “ultimate incognito of forgiveness.”106 That this final consolation remains ever a mystery to philosophical comprehension indicates that the benevolence of God must be articulated as a possibility beyond knowledge, but still within the horizon of hope. Ibid. Ricoeur, “Religion, athéisme, foi,” p. 454. (“Religion, Atheism, and Faith,” p. 464.) 101 Ricoeur, “Religion, athéisme, foi,” p. 454. (“Religion, Atheism, and Faith,” p. 465.) 102 Ibid. 103 Ricoeur, “Vrai et fausse angoisse,” p. 267. (“True and False Anguish,” p. 304.) 104 Ricoeur, La Mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, p. 656. (Memory, History, Forgetting, p. 505.) 105 Ibid. See also SKS 8, 281–296 / UD, 183–200. 106 Ricoeur, La Mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, p. 656; emphasis in original. (Memory, History, Forgetting, p. 506.) 99

100

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Ricoeur’s Corpus Karl Jaspers et la philosophie de l’existence, co-authored with Mikel Dufrenne, preface by Karl Jaspers, Paris: Seuil 1947. “Vrai et fausse angoisse,” Histoire et vérité, Paris: Seuil 1955, pp. 244–67. (English translation: “True and False Anguish,” in Ricoeur’s History and Truth, trans. by Charles A. Kelbley, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1965, pp. 287– 304.) “Phénoménologie existentielle,” Encyclopédie Française, Tome 19, Philosophie— Religion, ed. by Gaston Berger, Paris: Larousse 1957, pp. 10.8–10.12. (English translation: “Existential Phenomenology,” trans. by Edward G. Ballard and Lester E. Embree, in Ricoeur’s Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1967, pp. 202–12; reprinted in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of his Work, ed. by Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart, Boston: Beacon Press 1978, pp. 75–85.) “Kierkegaard et le mal,” Revue de théologie et de philosophie, no. 4, 1963, pp. 292–302 (reprinted in Les Cahiers de philosophie, nos. 8–9, 1989, special issue, Kierkegaard, Vingt-cinq études, pp. 271–83). (English translation: “Kierkegaard and Evil,” Part I of “Two Encounters with Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s Truth: The Disclosure of the Self, ed. by Joseph H. Smith, New Haven: Yale University Press 1981 (Psychiatry and the Humanities, vol. 5), pp. 313–25; reprinted in Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea House Publishers 1989, pp. 49–58.) “Philosopher après Kierkegaard,” Revue de théologie et de philosophie, no. 4, 1963, pp. 303–16 (reprinted in Les Cahiers de philosophie, nos. 8–9, 1989, special issue, Kierkegaard, Vingt-cinq études, pp. 285–300). (English translation: “Doing Philosophy after Kierkegaard,” Part II of “Two Encounters with Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s Truth: The Disclosure of the Self, ed. by Joseph H. Smith, New Haven: Yale University Press 1981 (Psychiatry and the Humanities, vol. 5), pp. 325–42; reprinted in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, ed. by Jonathan Rée and Jane Chamberlain, Oxford: Blackwell 1998, pp. 9–25, and Søren Kierkegaard: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, ed. by Daniel W. Conway and K.E. Gover, vols. 1–4, London: Routledge 2002, vol. 1, pp. 206–20.) “La liberté selon l’espérance,” in his Le Conflit des Interprétations, Paris: Seuil 1969, pp. 393–415. (English translation: “Freedom in the Light of Hope,” trans. by Robert Sweeney, in The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. by Don Ihde, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 1974, pp. 402–24.)

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“Religion, athéisme, foi,” in his Le Conflit des Interprétations, Paris: Seuil 1969, pp. 431–57. (English translation: “Religion, Atheism, and Faith,” trans. by Charles Freilich, in The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. by Don Ihde, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 1974, pp. 440–67.) “Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. 44, 1970, pp. 55–69. (Reprinted in Ricoeur’s Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, trans. by David Pellauer, Minneapolis: Fortress 1995, pp. 203–16.) “The Language of Faith,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review, vol. 28, 1973, pp. 213–24. (Reprinted in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of his Work, ed. by Charles E. Regan and David Stewart, Boston: Beacon Press 1978, pp. 223–38.) La Mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, Paris: Seuil 2000, p. 656. (English translation: Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2004, pp. 505–6.) Paul Ricoeur and Mikel Dufrenne, Karl Jaspers et la philosophie de l’existence, Paris: Seuil 1947, pp. 22–6; pp. 48–9; p. 52; p. 88; p. 111; pp. 117–18; p. 133, note; p. 145; p. 153, note; p. 167; p. 179, note; p. 180; p. 182; p. 191; p. 196, note; p. 197, note; p. 217; p. 232, note; p. 244; p. 247, note; p. 248, note; p. 249, note; p. 250; p. 251, note; p. 254; note; p. 257, note; p. 259; p. 267; p. 285, note; p. 293, note; p. 298, note; p. 310; p. 320, note; pp. 333–4; p. 338; p. 349; p. 390. II. Sources of Ricoeur’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Barth, Karl, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., Munich: Kaiser 1922, pp. v–vi; p. xii; pp. 15–16; p. 71; p. 75; p. 77; pp. 85–9; p. 93; p. 96; pp. 98–9; p. 114; p. 141; p. 145; p. 236; p. 261; p. 264; p. 267; p. 319; p. 325; p. 381; p. 400; pp. 426–7; p. 455; p. 481; pp. 483–4. Bultmann, Rudolf, Das Evangelium des Johannes, 10th ed., Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1962 [1941] (Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament, vol. 2), pp. 46–7, note; p. 94, note; p. 148; p. 161; p. 233; p. 275; p. 331; p. 339; p. 405; p. 431; pp. 449–50, note; p. 469. Heidegger, Martin, Sein und Zeit, Halle: Niemeyer 1927, pp. 175–96, see also p. 190, note 1; p. 235, note 1; and p. 338, note 1. Jaspers, Karl, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, Berlin: Springer 1919, p. 12; p. 61; p. 90; pp. 94–6; p. 99; pp. 217–18; pp. 238–9; pp. 245–7; pp. 255–6; pp. 238–9; p. 329; p. 332–5; p. 339; p. 341; pp. 348–9; p. 351; pp. 354–5; p. 357; p. 359; pp. 370–81. — Vernunft und Existenz. Fünf Vorlesungen gehalten auf Einladung der Universität Groningen, Groningen: J.B. Wolters 1935, pp. 1–27. Marcel, Gabriel, L’Homme problématique, Paris: Aubier 1955, pp. 126–34. Sartre, Jean-Paul, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, Paris: Gallimard 1943 (Bibliothèque des Idées), pp. 58–84; pp. 94–111; pp. 115–49; pp. 150–74; pp. 291–300; pp. 508–16; pp. 529–60; pp. 639–42; pp. 643–63; pp. 669–70; pp. 720–2. Wahl, Jean, Études kierkegaardiennes, Paris: Aubier 1938.

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III. Secondary Literature on Ricoeur’s Relation to Kierkegaard Bousquet, François, “Texte, Mimésis, Répétition: De Ricoeur à Kierkegaard et retour,” Le texte comme objet philosophique, Paris: Beauchesne 1987, (Philosophie, vol. 12), pp. 185–204. — “Kierkegaard dans la tradition théologique francophone,” in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference “Kierkegaard and the Meaning of Meaning It” Copenhagen, May 5–9, 1996, ed., by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon Stewart, Berlin: De Gruyter 1997 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), pp. 339–66. Damgaard, Iben, “Frihedens svimlende skrøbelighed. En sammenlignende læsning af Kierkegaards og Ricoeurs udlægning af fortællingen om syndefaldet i Genesis 3,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 23, 2004, pp. 26–40. — Mulighedens spejl. Forestilling, fortælling og selvforhold hos Kierkegaard og Paul Ricœur, Ph.D. Thesis, Theology Faculty of the University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen 2005. — “Forestilling, fortælling og selvforhold hos Kierkegaard og Ricœur,” Teolinformation, vol. 34, 2006, pp. 29–32. Foster, Gary, “The Representative Other: Confronting Otherness in Kierkegaard, Levinas and Ricoeur,” Philosophical Writings, vol. 25, 2004, pp. 19–29. Larrañeta Olleta, Rafael, “Hermenéutica del mito de la pena. Una lectura ricoeuriana de Hegel y Kierkegaard,” Contrastes, vol. 4, 1999, pp. 273–83. Rumble, Vanessa, “Narrative and Finitude in Kierkegaard and Ricoeur,” in Kierkegaard and the Word(s): Essays on Hermeneutics and Communication, ed. by Poul Houe and Gordon D. Marino, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 2003, pp. 259–72. Schweiker, William, Mimetic Reflections, New York: Fordham University Press 1990, pp. 127–77. Stewart, Jon, “France: Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of Existentialism and Poststructuralism,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 421–74. Webb, Eugene (ed.), Philosophers of Consciousness: Polanyi, Lonergan, Voegelin, Ricoeur, Girard, Kierkegaard, Seattle: University of Washington Press 1988.

Index of Persons

Abraham, 4, 10, 14–19, 33, 36–9, 40, 59, 72–4, 78, 100, 116, 118–21, 131, 144, 186, 187. Adam, 250. Adorno, Theodor W. (1903–69), German philosopher, 44. Agacinski, Sylviane (b. 1945), French philosopher, 1–21. Agamemnon, 72, 100. Agnes, 94. Alcibiades, 160, 161. Alquié, Ferdinand (1906–85), French philosopher, 83. Andersen, Hans Christian (1805–75), Danish poet, novelist and writer of fairy tales, 70. Antigone, 1, 11–14. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), church father, 74. Artaud, Antonin (1896–1948), French playwright, 90, 96. Austin, John Langshaw (1911–60), British philosopher, 6. Babelon, André, 48. Balthasar, Hans Urs von (1905–88), Swiss Catholic theologian, 208. Barth, Karl (1886–1968), Swiss Protestant theologian, 139, 141. Barthes, Roland (1915–80), French philosopher, 23–42. “The Death of the Author” (1968), 23. Bataille, Georges (1897–1962), French writer, 43–61. Baudelaire, Charles-Pierre (1821–67), French poet, 13.

Benjamin, Walter (1892–1940), German philosopher, 13, 44. Bergman, Ingmar (1918–2007), Swedish director, 2. Bespaloff, Rachel (1895–1949), Ukrainian born French philosopher, 49. Blanchot, Maurice (1907–2003), French philosopher, 3, 4, 8, 44, 63–81, 174. Bresson, Robert (1901–99), French film director, 97, 103. Breton, André (1896–1966), French writer and poet, 44. Buber, Martin (1878–1965), Austrian-born Jewish philosopher, 193. Buddha, 36, 37, 39. Buñuel, Luis (1900–83), Spanish-born Mexican film director, 100, 101. Callois, Roger (1913–78), French sociologist, 44. Camus, Albert (1913–60), French author, 3, 26–9, 32, 33, 40. Canguilhem, Georges (1904–95), French philosopher, 83. Caputo, John D., 123. Carlier, Jeannie, 158. Chateaubriand, François-René (1768–1848), French writer and politician, 38. Christ, 58, 143, 144, 147, 150, 165, 208, 214, 216–18, 222, 224, 226, 229, 230, 250, 251. Clendenin, Daniel B., 149, 152. Colette, Jacques, 194. Comte, Auguste (1798–1857), French philosopher, 54. Creon, 12.

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Crito, 168. Damgaard, Iben, 234, 235, 250. Daniélu, Jean (1905–74), French historian of Christianity, 56–8. Davidson, Arnold I., 158, 16. Davy, Marie-Magdeleine (1903–99), French philosopher, 83. Deleuze, Gilles (1925–95), French philosopher, 1, 39, 43, 44, 83–110. Derrida, Jacques (1930–2004), French philosopher, 1, 43, 59, 111–38, 208. Descartes, René (1596–1650), French philosopher, 11, 71, 104, 132, 133, 158, 177, 207. Diogenes of Sinope, 159. Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich (1821– 81), Russian author, 104. Dreyer, Carl Theodor (1889–1968), Danish film director, 97, 99, 103. Dufrenne, Mikel (1910–95), French philosopher, 237, 238. Duras, Marguerite (1914–96), French author, 43. Durkheim, Emil (1858–1917), French sociologist, 44. Eliezer, 40. Eller, Vernard, 139, 149–51. Ellul, Jacques (1912–94), French philosopher, 139–56. Epictetus, 158. Euripides, 72. Ferlov, Knud (1881–1977), Danish translator, 48. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762–1814), German philosopher, 102. Flynn, Thomas, 164. Foucault, Michel (1926–84), French philosopher, 43, 44, 132. Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), Austrian psychologist, 34, 130, 233.

Gandillac, Maurice de (1906–2006), French academic, 83. Gateau, Jean-Jacques (1887–1967), French translator of Kierkegaard, 48. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832), German poet, author, scientist and diplomat, 158. Guattari, Félix (1930–92), French political activist, 84, 91–3, 95, 96, 104. Hadot, Pierre (1922–2010), French philosopher, 157–71. Haemon, 13. Hall, Ronald, 213. Hamann, Johann Georg (1730–88), German philosopher, 86. Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm (1770– 1831), German philosopher, 4, 8, 9, 11, 15, 37, 49–52, 58, 63–5, 68, 69, 71, 74, 77, 83, 88, 111–13, 116, 117, 122, 123, 126–9, 131, 140, 141, 174, 182, 183, 186, 194, 233, 237–50 passim. Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), 50, 65, 66, 77, 246, 247. Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976), German philosopher, 57, 64, 71, 111, 118, 130, 173, 175, 180, 188–90, 193, 209, 215, 219, 233, 236, 238. Henry, Michel (1922–2002), French philosopher, 209, 220. Heraclitus, 86, 237, 244. Hölderlin, Friedrich (1770–1843), German poet, 13, 34, 251. Horkheimer, Max (1895–1973), GermanJewish philosopher, 44. Hume, David (1711–76), Scottish philosopher, 102. Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938), German philosopher, 111, 173, 175, 209, 212, 215, 233. Hyppolite, Jean (1907–68), French philosopher, 55, 83, 128, 186.

Index of Persons Ibsen, Henrik (1828–1906), Norwegian playwright, 2. Iphigenia, 100. Isaac, 16–19, 38, 40, 73, 78, 118, 126, 186, 187. Ismene, 12. James, Henry (1843–1916), American author, 91, 92. Jankélévitch, Vladimir (1903–85), French philosopher, 192. Jaspers, Karl (1883–1969), German philosopher, 54, 57, 180, 188, 233, 236–9. Job, 104. Jocasta, 12, 13. Kafka, Franz (1883–1924), Czech-Austrian novelist, 27, 28, 30–2, 39, 63, 71–4, 79. Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), German philosopher, 14, 18, 64, 65, 68, 71, 102, 118, 121, 158, 166, 212, 233, 238, 245, 246, 251. Kearney, Richard, 123. Kierkegaard, Michael Pedersen (1756– 1838), Søren Kierkegaard’s father, 3, 4, 8, 10, 14. Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye (1813–55) The Concept of Irony (1841), 7, 8, 161. Either/Or (1843), 5, 6, 8, 11–13, 32, 98, 143. Repetition (1843), 8, 9, 48, 84, 85, 105. Fear and Trembling (1843), 8, 14–16, 18, 33, 36, 37, 48, 53, 59, 72, 73, 78, 92, 94, 112, 116, 119–21, 173. Prefaces (1844), 8. Upbuilding Discourses (1843–1844), 195. Philosophical Fragments (1844), 8, 32, 48, 132, 229, 245, 248. The Concept of Anxiety (1844), 3, 8, 11, 28, 29, 48, 57, 93, 234, 236, 240–4. Stages on Life’s Way (1845), 8, 48, 105.

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Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), 8, 32, 126, 147, 148, 248. Works of Love (1847), 18, 59, 219. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), 152, 195. Christian Discourses (1848), 195. The Point of View for My Work as an Author (ca. 1848), 8, 161, 169. The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Devotional Discourses (1849), 252. The Sickness unto Death (1849), 75, 76, 123, 126, 130, 132, 148, 152, 234, 240–4. Two Ethical-Religious Essays (1849), 8, 70. Practice in Christianity (1850), 8. The Moment (1855), 8, 145, 165. Journals, Notebooks, Nachlaß, 3, 4, 8, 35, 55, 68, 69, 77, 142, 163, 195. Kleist, Heinrich von (1777–1811), German poet and dramatist, 96, 106. Klossowski, Pierre (1905–2001), French writer, 39, 44, 55, 58. Kojève, Alexandre (1902–68), RussianFrench philosopher, 50. Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe (1940–2007), French philosopher, 1. Lefebvre, Henri (1901–91), French sociologist, 25. Leibniz, Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von (1646–1716), German philosopher and mathematician, 71. Leiris, Michel (1901–90), French writer, 44. Lequier, Jules (1814–62), French philosopher, 102. Levinas, Emmanuel (1906–95), French philosopher, 54, 67, 70, 111–18 passim, 122, 125, 133, 173–205, 208, 209, 215, 219, 223. Lovekin, David, 149, 153. Loyola, Ignatius of (1491–1556), Spanish Jesuit, 26, 27.

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Lubac, Henri de (1896–1991), French philosopher, 208. Lund, Cécile, 48. Luther, Martin (1483–1546), German Protestant theologian, 121. Lyotard, Jean- François (1924–98), French philosopher, 44. Mallarmé, Stéphane, i.e., Étienne Mallarmé (1842–98), French author, 76. Marcel, Gabriel (1889–1973), French philosopher, 180, 186, 236, 238. Marcus Aurelius, i.e., Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (121–180), Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, 158. Marion, Jean-Luc (b. 1946), French philosopher, 207–31. Marx, Karl (1818–83), German philosopher and economist, 49, 71, 139, 141, 146. Massignon, Louis (1883–1962), French Orientalist, 55. Mauss, Marcel (1872–1950), French sociologist, 44, 45. Melville, Herman (1819–91), Amerikan author, 106. Mendelssohn, Moses (1729–86), German philosopher, 191. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908–61), French philosopher, 167, 209. Montaigne, Michel de (1533–92), French essayist and philosopher, 158. Moré, Marcel, 83. Moyn, Samuel, 181. Nancy, Jean-Luc (b. 1940), French philosopher, 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900), German philosopher, 38–40, 43, 47, 48, 50, 56, 70, 84–9, 96, 98–102, 105, 106, 111, 118, 158, 167, 168, 187, 193, 237. Novalis, Baron Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801), German lyric poet, 76.

Oedipus, 12–14. Olsen, Regine (1822–1904), 3–5, 8, 10, 15, 16, 18, 69, 105, 139. Parmenides, 237, 244. Pascal, Blaise (1623–62), French mathematician, physicist and philosopher, 97–9, 101, 102, 106, 185, 193. Pasolini, Pier Paolo (1922–75), Italian film director, 102. Patočka, Jan, 117, 118. Péguy, Charles (1873–1914), French poet, 84, 85. Plato, 7, 77, 79, 114, 117, 165–7, 177. Plutarch, 167. Politis, Hélène, 84. Polyneices, 12. Poirié, Francois, 193. Proust, Marcel (1871–1922), French author, 106. Racine, Jean (1639–99), French playwright, 28, 29, 33, 34. Raffarin, Jean-Pierre, 233. Renoir, Jean (1894–1979), French film director 102. Renouvier, Charles Bernhard (1815–1903), French philosopher, 102. Ricoeur, Paul (1913–2005), French philosopher, 233–55. Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875–1926), German poet, 63, 71, 74–7, 78, 79. Robert, Marthe (1914–96), French essayist, 29–31, 32. Rognon, Frédéric, 149–52. Rohmer, Éric, 99, 103. Rosenzweig, Franz (1886–1929), German Jewish philosopher and theologian, 180, 181, 193. Rougemont, Dennis de (1906–1985), Swiss writer, 49. Sade, Marquis de (1740–1814), French writer, 55.

Index of Persons Sarah, 40. Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–80), French philosopher, 24, 27, 29, 30, 43, 53, 55, 98, 99, 128, 236, 238. Scheler, Max (1874–1928), German philosopher, 106. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von (1775–1854), German philosopher, 71. Schmitt, Carl (1888–1985), German jurist and philosopher, 122. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860), German philosopher, 158. Shestov, Lev (1866–1938), Russian-French philosopher, 49, 70, 96, 104, 105, 180, 181. Socrates, ix, 7, 104, 106, 126, 159–70 passim. Sontag, Susan (1933–2004), 23–5. Sollers, Philippe (b. 1936), French writer and critic, 34, 35. Sophocles, 12, 13, 33, 34. Spinoza, Baruch (1632–77), Dutch philosopher, 166, 191. Sternberg, Josef von (1894–1969), AustrianAmerican film director, 97.

261

Stewart, Jon, 238. Strindberg, August (1849–1912), Swedish playwright and novelist, 2. Stroheim, Erich von (1885–1957), AustrianAmerican film director, 100. Taylor, Mark C., 123. Terlizzese, Lawrence, 149, 153. Tisseau, Paul-Henri (1894–1964), French translator of Kierkegaard, 48, 236. Tournier, Michel (b. 1924), 83. Troude-Chastenet, Patrick, 139, 150, 151. Viallaneix, Nelly, 140. Wahl, Jean (1888–1974), French philosopher, 48, 50, 51, 54, 70, 83, 84, 175, 180, 188, 189, 193, 236. Wasserman, George, 24. Welles, Orson (1915–85), American actor and film director, 102. Whitehead, Alfred North (1861–1947), English philosopher, 83. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889–1951), Austrian philosopher, 158.

Index of Subjects

absolute and relative, 4, 14–16, 18, 19, 119, 123. absolute knowing, 52, 122, 244, 248, 252. absurd, the, 26–8, 101, 104, 212, 236, 237, 240–2, 245, 249, 250, 252. actuality, 5, 6, 9, 87, 99, 213, 216, 228, 242, 249. aesthetic, the, 9, 30, 32, 58, 59, 66, 79, 86, 97, 103, 105, 116, 143, 149, 152, 162, 182, 185, 189. akedah, 119. alienation, 71, 74, 163, 249. alterity, 112. ambiguity, 27, 66, 113, 117. anguish, see “anxiety.” anthropology, 44, 46, 215, 234. anxiety, 48, 65, 67, 93, 182, 193, 218, 227, 235–7, 240–3, 249, 251, 252. aparté, 8–10. appropriation, 149, 226, 227, 229. art, 1, 30, 31, 35, 75, 79, 105. atheism, 26, 27, 71, 107, 177. atonement, 93, 217. authenticity, 27, 29, 98, 160. authorial intention, 23, 34, 113, 114, 131. authority, 7, 31, 69, 131, 132, 160, 216. autonomy, 121, 152, 177, 220. beginning of philosophy, 241, 242, 244. belief, 184, 187, Berlin, 9, 72, 78. Bible, 8, 106, 142, 144, 146, 150, 152, 153, 188, 191, 212. Isaiah, 190, 192. Ecclesiastes, 146, 147. John, 222. Romans, 250. James, 147.

boredom, 153. caesura, 13, 121, 127. care, 252. Catholicism, 207, 229. charity, 208, 219–22, 224–6. choice, 79, 85, 97–100, 103, 125, 249. Christendom, 58, 144–6, 163. Christianity, 11, 30, 48, 52, 56, 58, 59, 67, 71, 77, 118, 126, 142, 143, 145, 146, 150, 152, 153, 162, 165, 216, 224–6, 249. New Testament, 226. Christology, 213, 214, 218, 221, 229, 250. cinema, 94, 99, 101, 102. cogito, 130, 132, 133. communication, 56–8, 66, 70, 105, 142, 146, 170, 239. indirect, 4, 6, 64, 77, 147, 150, 159, 160, 163, 164. community, 55, 64, 72, 218. conscience, 122. creation, 145, 250, 251. crowd, 152. Cynics, 167. death, 26, 28, 29, 33–5, 74–8, 111, 117–120, 128, 129, 131, 246, 249, 250, 252. death of the author, 23, 24, 33. death of God, 48, 71, 90, 237. decision (see also “choice”), 103, 112, 118, 120, 121, 131, 132, 142, 160. deconstruction, 129–31, 208. defiance, 12. demonic, the, 66, 67, 72, 74, 117, 225. desire, 76, 178–80, 194, 196. despair, 18, 27, 75, 76, 126–8, 131, 132, 182, 184, 227, 240, 241–3, 251.

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difference, 92, 113, 114, 130. infinite qualitative, 229. dizziness, see “vertigo.” double movement, 71, 116, 117. double-reflection, 111, 126. doubt, 132, 144. duty, 100, 119–21, 131, 216, 217. earnestness, 147, 148. economics, 6, 43, 44, 45, 55. either-or, 97. Eleatics, 86, 159. erotic, 46, 47, 59, 160, 161, 209, 218–225. eternal return, 47, 100, 101. eternity (see also “temporality and eternity”), 88. ethics, the ethical, 24, 30–2, 38, 48, 58, 59, 67, 72, 73, 85, 86, 103, 111, 115–17, 119, 120, 122, 126, 131–3, 143, 162, 173–205, 219, 223, 250. suspension of, 59, 86, 132, 174, 213. evil, 56, 57, 59, 86, 89, 98, 100, 106, 117, 132, 218, 234, 236, 240–4, 248. exception, 10, 70, 121, 236–9. existence, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 26, 47, 49–54, 59, 70, 97, 111, 112, 128, 150, 153, 169, 170, 181–3, 185, 193, 236, 238, 240, 245, 246, 248. existentialism, 3, 8, 26–9, 31, 50, 52–4, 58, 112, 150, 236, 237, 238, 246. expressionism, 97, 98. faith, 4, 6, 9, 14–18, 27, 32, 39, 56, 70, 72, 89, 95, 97, 99, 101, 102, 106, 118, 125, 132, 142–4, 145, 147, 153, 185, 195, 213, 216, 222, 224, 225, 243, 245, 248, 250, 251. Fall, the, 235, 241. fascism, 55. fear, 193, 249. fear and trembling, 116, 144, 195, 209, 237, feminism, 2. finitude, 14, 18, 30. and infinite, 15, 17, 76, 88, 89, 92–5, 116, 127, 148, 177, 179, 192, 234, 242.

Frankfurt School, 44. freedom, 17, 27, 74, 85, 86, 127, 142–4, 148, 151–3, 159, 210, 212, 236, 249–51. and necessity, 127. gift, 19, 68, 101, 112, 117–19, 127, 131–3, 209, 210, 214, 215, 217, 226, 228, 229, 250, 252. God, 10, 14–17, 27, 36, 48, 51–3, 59, 71–9 passim, 88, 100, 107, 112, 119–33 passim, 141–53 passim, 177, 184–95 passim, 212–14, 216, 220–9 passim, 237, 240, 243, 244, 250, 252. God is dead, see “death of God.” God-man, 128, 147, 214, 229, 237. grace, 52, 57, 58, 79, 93, 142, 217, 229, 250, 251. guilt, 120, 132, 227, 229, 241, 249. Hegelianism, 49, 116, 183, 236. hermeneutics, 233. history, 5, 10, 11–14, 71, 96, 104, 117, 118, 141, 148, 252. Holocaust, 119, 122, 175. hope, 26, 27, 48, 127, 142, 143, 151, 153, 222, 225, 236, 240, 248–52. humor, 83, 89, 116. idealism, 122, 141, 181, 182. German, 236–8. speculative, 122, 244. imitation, 125, 230. immanence, see “transcendence.” immediacy, 65, 75, 76, 216, 217, 228. immortality, 19. incarnation, 191, 192. incognito, 4, 160, 184, 187, 192, 217, 218, 252. indirect communication, see “communication.” individual, the (see also “single individual”), 9, 16, 28, 38, 51, 54, 70, 144, 145, 151, 152, 166, 170, 187, 216, 224, 246, 250.

Index of Subjects individualism, individuality, 18, 37, 51, 57, 64, 74, 90, 152, 169, 223. infinite, 88, 94. innocence, 56, 241. instant, 246, intentionality, 113, 114, 130, 132, 215. interesting, the, 59, 141, 152. inwardness, 38, 228, 245. irrationalism, irrationality, 27, 32, 50, 211, 238. irony, 83, 120, 126, 160. Socratic, 160–3, 170. isolation, 72. jest, 147, 148. joy, 67. Judaism, 174, 190–2. kenosis, 220. kinesis, 86. knight of faith, 4, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95, 106. Königstädter Theater in Berlin, 9. language, 4, 6, 7, 17, 26, 33, 35–9, 63, 64, 66, 67, 73, 78, 79, 89, 113–16, 120, 131, 145, 160, 214, 248, 252. Last Judgment, 222. leap, the, 26, 27, 33, 71, 89, 90, 93, 100, 106, 133, 241, 247, 249. leveling, 125. liberalism, 55. literature, 24, 26, 27, 29–32, 35, 38–40, 44, 46, 63, 67, 68, 70, 71–3, 75, 189. logos, 86, 96, 124, 127, 178, 183. love, 18, 19, 94, 118, 160, 218, 221, 222, 225, 252. agape, 209, 218, 221, 223, 224, 228. eros, 219–21, 223, 224, 228. erotic, 209, 220, 221, 225. of neighbor, 216, 217, 223, 224. Marxism, 53, 55. meaninglessness, 27, 28.

265

mediation, 9, 64, 69, 74, 77, 86, 88, 94, 95, 123, 128, 131, 242, 246, 247. melancholy, 163, 227. memory, 87. metaphysics, 71, 88, 114, 117, 124, 129, 130, 158, 179, 180, 209, 218, 223, 225, 236, 238. midwifery, 160, 164, 166. modernity, 2, 11–14, 34, 226. moment, the, 245. moral philosophy, 233. moralism, 99. morality, 56. movement, 71, 86, 88–90, 93–5, 116–18, 126, 132, 159, 182. mysticism, mystics, 48. Nazism, 187. negativity, negation, 4, 49, 52, 65, 74, 77, 242. nominalism, 114. noology, 96. obedience, 17. offense, 120, 123, 125, 145, 147. ontology, 115, 130, 133, 176, 177, 185, 209, 219. outer and inner, 113, 183. paradox, 16, 17, 27, 31, 32, 64, 66, 69, 71, 120, 128, 131, 145, 209, 212–15, 229, 237, 241, 242, 244–6, 249, 250. passion, 71, 150, 185, 226, 245, 249. phenomenology, 114, 115, 130, 173, 175, 185, 207–10, 213, 214, 216–18, 220, 221, 225, 227, 228, 229, 233. politics, 2, 151, 152. possibility and necessity, 152, 153, postmodernism, 3, 31, 84, 124, 207. post-structuralism, 31, 43. prayer, 142, 143, 153. press, the, 226. pseudonymity, pseudonyms, 39, 105, 111, 113, 114, 116, 146, 147, 162, 163.

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psychoanalysis, 5, 6, 8, 233. psychology, 9, 102, 128, 240, 243. rationalism, rationality, reason, 246. recognition, 184. recollection, 9. redemption, 93. repetition, 13, 14, 47, 71, 85, 86, 87, 88, 98, 100, 101, 114, 116, 245, 251, 252. responsibility, 112, 114, 117–22, 130–2, 170, 191, 215. resurrection, 250, 251. revelation, 52, 53, 58, 118, 141, 145, 184, 208, 214, 216, 218, 227, 229. sacrifice, 4, 15, 16, 18, 26, 27, 36, 38, 47, 48, 54, 72, 73, 78, 98, 99, 100, 116–21, 126, 132, 168, 186, 187, 213, 216. salvation, 48, 52, 58, 67, 73, 100, 184, 186, 192, 216, 224, 227. scandal, see “offense.” secret, 7, 9–19 passim, 67, 70, 115, 117–20, 122, 123, 128, 130–2, 182, 192. self, 9, 25, 35, 114, 115, 123, 125–7, 130, 132, 133, 148, 216, 234. selfhood, 209, 216, 218, 228. sexes, 2. sickness unto death, 127, 128. sign, 5–7, 28, 30, 31, 39, 88, 92, 113, 128, 129, 131. signified and signifier, 113. silence, 26, 33, 35, 36, 38, 118–20. sin, 48, 50, 54–8, 92, 123, 182, 184, 216, 218, 224, 229, 230, 241–3, 248–51. original, 3, 10, 11, 93, 132. single individual, the, 16, 75, 119, 121, 144, 170, 216. solitude, 63, 64, 66–8, 70, 71, 78, 79, 118, 170. speculation, 122, 126, 174, 183, 226, 237, 238, 247. speculative idealism, 122. speculative philosophy, 145, 182, 243, 244, 250.

speculative theology, 128. stages, 32, 103, 162. the aesthetic, 103, 152, 162, 185. the ethical, 103, 122, 162, 185. the religious, 103, 122, 162, 185. Stoics, 167. structuralism, 31. subjectivism, 112. subjectivity, 11, 12, 51, 53, 54, 57, 67–70, 74, 77, 111–16, 121–3, 125, 128, 130, 132, 174, 180, 182–4, 186, 187, 192, 196, 208, 209, 214, 216, 217, 219, 226, 235. sublation/Aufhebung, 116, 126, 128, 129, 251, 252. sublimity, sublime, 14–16, 18, 66, 183. suffering, 143, 144, 147, 184, 195, 196, 230. suicide, 27, 75, 76. symbol, 30–2, 92, 100. symbolism, 30, 76. synthesis, 64, 105, 126, 152, 153, 184, 234, 235, 241. system, 45, 47, 50–2, 58, 68, 88, 93, 100, 111, 113, 128, 129, 131, 141, 142, 145, 146, 150, 158, 174, 180, 182, 183, 185, 236, 237, 239, 240, 244, 246–8, 251. technology, 2, 142, 152, 153, 210. temporality and eternity, 127. theater, 33, 88–90, 101. totalitarianism, 183. tragic, 12. transcendence and immanence, 77, 106, 107, 166, 177, 187, 188, 192, 194, 195, 209, 212, 216, 217, 221, 223, 225, 227–9, 247. unhappy consciousness, 247. vertigo, 243. witness, 123.