Selfhood and the three R's: Reference, repetition, and refiguration

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion

Volumn 58, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 63-94

  Brian, Gregor ^a  

^a BOSTON COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 77951933442     PISSN: 00207047     EISSN: 15728684     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s11153-005-1594-1     Document Type: Article

References (131)

1. Ricoeur, Paul. Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blarney. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 4, 21.
2. One author expresses this conclusion as follows: "Both Augustine and Aris-totle reiterate the impassability attained when signification comes up against its limits in trying to designate the nonexistent referent implicated in the unity of the concept and the word time. Time is the tension and torsion effecting a discourse that lacks reference. Such a discourse describes the vulnerability of discourse to aporia, for time represents the failing of referentiality." Bige-low, Pat. Kierkegaard and the Problem of Writing (Tallahassee, FL: The Flor-ida State University Press, 1987), p. 143. It is interesting that Ricoeur chooses precisely these two authors to deal with the challenges of time in the first book of Time and Narrative, where we find a quite different treatment of reference.
3. Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, vol.3, trans. Kathleen Blarney and David Pellauer. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 241.
4. Ricoeur, Paul, 'The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation,' in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II. trans. Kathleen Blarney and John B. Thompson (London: The Athlone Press, 1991), p. 85.
5. Ricoeur, Paul, 'The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation,' in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, (1991), Ibid., 86.
6. Ricoeur, Paul, 'The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation,' in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, (1991), Ibid., 86.
7. Ricoeur, Paul, 'The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation,' in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, (1991), Ibid., 85.
8. 'Imagination in Discourse and Action,' in From Text to Action, 174-175. Also see Ricoeur's comment: 'Everyday reality is thereby metamorphosed by what could be called the imaginative variations that literature carries out on the real' ('The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation,' p. 86).
9. 'Imagination in Discourse and Action,' p. 175.
10. Imagination in Discourse and Action, Ibid., 169.
11. Imagination in Discourse and Action, Ibid., 171.
12. Imagination in Discourse and Action, Ibid.
13. Imagination in Discourse and Action, Ibid.
14. Imagination in Discourse and Action, Ibid., 173.
15. Imagination in Discourse and Action, Ibid., 173.
16. Ricoeur, Paul, Time and Narrative, vol.1. trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. ix.
17. Ricoeur, Paul, Time and Narrative, vol.1, 1984, Ibid., 80.
18. Ricoeur, Paul, 'Philosophy After Kierkegaard.' Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader. Jonathan Rée and Jane Chamberlain, eds. and trans. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), p. 16.
19. Ricoeur P., Philosophy after kierkegaard, Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, 1998, Ibid., 23.
20. All references to Seren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers Volume I-V. trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1967-1978), will note the entry number, in this case, JP 657.
21. It may seem that this conflicts with Ricoeur's claim that Kierkegaard is a reflective thinker, but as we proceed we will see that action presupposes rather than precludes thought. Kierkegaard does not advocate an unreflective volun-tarism. His criticisms regarding reflection pertain to the tendency to remain in thought and its possibilities rather than in the actuality of action.
22. Kierkegaard, Seren, The Point of View. Howard V. Hong and Edna Hong ed. and trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 50.
23. On authorial intent: 'It might seem that a simple declaration by the author himself in this regard is more than adequate; after all, he must know best what is what. I do not, however, think much of declarations in connection with literary productions and am accustomed to take a completely objective attitude of my own. ... it does not help very much that I qua human being declare that I have intended this and that' (The Point of View, 33).
24. '"Direct communication' is: to communicate the truth directly; 'communication in reflection' is: to deceive into the truth"
25. Kierkegaard S., The Point of View, 1998, Ibid., 7).
26. Mackey, Louis, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet. (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), p. 247.
27. "It is quite right - a pseudonym had to be used. When the claims of ideality are set at the maximum one should above all take care not to be mistaken for them, as though one were oneself the ideality." Kierkegaard, Seren, Papers and Journals: A Selection trans, and ed. (Alastair Hannay London: Penguin Books, 1996), p. 399.
28. Webb, Eugene, Philosophers of Consciousness : Polanyi, Lonergan, Voegelin, Ricoeur, Girard, Kierkegaard. (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1988), p. 227.
29. Time and Narrative, vol.I, p. xi.
30. Pseudonymity transgresses the supposition that an author must always say what he means. This opens the door to a discussion of irony, which, despite its importance in Kierkegaard's oeuvre, lies beyond our discussion here.
31. Time and Narrative, vol.I, p. 36.
32. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Richard Janko (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1987), pp. 47a10-47a11.
33. Time and Narrative, vol.I, p. ix.
34. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., x.
35. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 38.
36. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., xi, 33.
37. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 34.
38. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid, 45.
39. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 40.
40. Kierkegaard, Søren, Armed Neutrality and An Open Letter, trans, and ed. Howard V. and Edna Hong (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 87.
41. '"Without authority' to make aware of the religious, the essentially Christian, is the category for my whole work as an author regarded as a totality. From the very beginning I have enjoined and repeated unchanged that I was 'without authority' I regard myself rather as a reader of the books, not as the author" (The Point of View, 12).
42. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method, Rev. ed. trans, and rev. Joel Weins-heimer and Donald G. Marshall (2d. ed). (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1989), p. 296.
43. Cf, Merold Westphal's 'Kierkegaard and the Anxiety of Authorship,' International Philosophical Quarterly Vol.XXXIV, No.1 Issue No. 133 (March 1994), p. 9. Westphal relates Kierkegaard to Gadamer on this very point, and his discussion provides helpful insights regarding several other issues that we consider in the present paper.
44. Time and Narrative, vol.I, p. 3.
45. Jonathan Rée, 'Narrative and Philosophical Experience,' On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, ed. David Wood. (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 81-82.
46. Rée J., Narrative and philosophical experience, On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, 1991, Ibid., 78.
47. Rée J., Narrative and philosophical experience, On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, 1991, Ibid., 76.
48. Time and Narrative, vol.I, 54.
49. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 55.
50. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 57.
51. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 64.
52. The Diary of Søren Kierkegaard, Peter Rohde (ed.) (New York: Philosophical Library, 1960), pt. 5, set. 4, no.136, 1843 entry.
53. For a compelling case for this point, see Richard Kearney's book, On Stories (New York: Routledge, 2002).
54. The Journals of Seren Kierkegaard: A Selection, ed. and trans, by Alexander Dru, (Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 115.
55. 'Philosophy after Kierkegaard,' p. 14.
56. Time and Narrative, vol.I, 65.
57. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 65-66.
58. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 66.
59. See the fifth study in Oneself as Another, 'Personal Identity and Narrative Identity.'
60. Mackey, 251.
61. Norris, Christopher. The Deconstructive Turn: Essays in The Rhetoric of Philosophy (New York: Methuen, 1983), p. 94.
62. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 95.
63. MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue (2d ed). (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 218.
64. 'Imagination in Discourse and in Action,' p. 176.
65. 'The category: that I myself am the one who has been educated, that it all is my own education, is decisive enough' (JP VI, 6530). Similarly: "It must above all be pointed out that I am not a teacher who originally envisioned every-thing and now, self-confident on all points, uses indirect communication, but that I myself have developed during the writing. This explains why my indi-rect communication is on a lower level than the direct, for the indirectness was due also to my not being clear myself at the beginning and therefore did not dare speak directly at the beginning. Therefore I myself am the one who has been formed and developed by and through the indirect communication" (JP VI 6700).
66. Kearney, Richard, Debates in Continental Philosophy: Conversations with Contemporary Thinkers (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), p. 104.
67. Mackey, 289-290.
68. Time and Narrative, vol.I, 71.
69. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 70-71.
70. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 72.
71. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid., 49.
72. Time and Narrative, vol.3, 247.
73. Time and Narrative, 1, Ibid.
74. Ricoeur: "narrative is a procedure of redescription, in which the heuristic func-tion proceeds from the narrative structure and redescription has action itself as its referent" ('Imagination in Discourse and in Action,' 177).
75. Time and Narrative, vol.I, 59.
76. 'Imagination in Discourse and in Action,' p. 174.
77. Imagination in Discourse and in Action, Ibid., 177.
78. "... it is in the realm of the imaginary that I try out my power to act, that I measure the scope of 'I can',"
79. Imagination in Discourse and in Action, Ibid., 178.
80. Also see Oneself as Another, p. 330.
81. Ricoeur uses the term "heuristic patterns" in his essay "Imagination in Discourse and in Action" (176), a phrase that corresponds to Sylvia Walsh's suggestion that Kierkegaard's existence spheres comprise "patterns for living poetically." See Walsh, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard's Existential Aesthetics. (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1994), p. 63.
82. Kierkegaard addresses this problem as early as his MA thesis: "If we ask what poetry is, we may say in general that it is victory over the world; it is through a negation of the imperfect actuality that poetry opens up a higher actuality, expands and transfigures the imperfect into the perfect and thereby assuages the deep pain that wants to make everything dark. To that extent, poetry is a kind of reconciliation, but it is not the true reconciliation, for it does not reconcile me with the actuality in which I am living; no transubstantiation of the given actuality takes place by virtue of this reconciliation, but it reconciles me with the given actuality by giving me another, a higher and more perfect actuality. The greater the contrast, the less perfect the actual reconciliation, so that when all is said and done there is often no reconciliation but rather an enmity. Therefore, only the religious is able to bring about the true reconcili-ation, because it infinitizes actuality for me. Therefore, the poetic is a kind of victory over actuality, but the infinitizing is more of an emigration from actu-ality than a continuance in it. To live poetically, then, is to live infinitely." The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates. Trans. Howard V Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 297.
83. Anti-Climacus alters the Hegelian thesis that the union of possibility and actu-ality is necessity. In The Sickness Unto Death, Anti-Climacus claims that actu-ality is in fact the union of possibility and necessity. The self is subject to necessities that limit who one is and who one might become. At the same time, the self is charged with possibility, and "the task of becoming itself." It is not yet what it is. The Sickness Unto Death. Trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 35-36.
84. Imagination in Discourse and in Action, Ibid., 37.
85. Imagination in Discourse and in Action, Ibid., 36.
86. Time and Narrative, vol.3, 249.
87. "Imagination in Discourse and in Action," 177.
88. JP, II, 1832.
89. Richard Kearney's book The Wake of Imagination discusses Kierkegaard's fear that imagination will not lead to action, outlining the reasons why Kierkegaard's take on imagination can seem negative. Kearney does not see Kierkegaard's account of imagination as entirely negative, but it remains to be determined the extent to which imagination is redeemed in the actuality of religious commitment. Kierkegaard often seems to pit the imaginative and the aesthetic against the ethical and religious; given our discussion above, we can see why. A charitable reading of Kierkegaard would suggest that imagina-tion continues to operate in the religious, since the religious existence is one of becoming. One never reaches a point of stasis in which decision and action are no longer required, and so imagination will continue to sensitize one to possibility and the need for further decision and action. Moreover, imagina-tion is required for hope. We need imagination to be open to the possibility of goodness, that with God all things are possible, to think beyond that which is presently actual. See Kearney, Richard, The Wake of Imagination: Toward a Postmodern Culture (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), pp. 201-211.
90. Also see the chapter "Love Hopes All Things" in Works of Love,
91. as well as M. Jamie Ferreira's discussion in her book, Love's Grateful Striving: A Commentary on Kierkegaard's Works of Love (Oxford: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 2001), pp. 147-148.
92. Kierkegaard, Seren. The Point of View, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 50.
93. "The fact that many of Plato's dialogues end without a result has a far deeper basis than I had thought earlier. They are a reproduction of Socrates maieu-tic skill which makes the reader or hearer himself active, and therefore they do not end in a result but in a sting. This is an excellent parody of the modern rote-method which says everything the sooner the better and all at one time, which awakens no self-action but only leads the reader to rattle it off like a parrot." JP, IV, 4266.
94. Westphal, "Kierkegaard and the Anxiety of Authorship," 21.
95. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 298.
96. See also Mackey, 275: "The trick of Either/Or was to leave conspicuously undone what no book can possibly do - the concrete universal is a person, never a persona - in the hope that the reader might notice the omission and act accordingly."
97. "Logos, whether spoken or written, serves only to provoke recollection in the soul of the one who hears. Mere logos, whether written or spoken, lacks a soul as long as it does not accomplish the deed of provoking recollection in the soul of the one who hears or reads it." In this regard, Plato's dialogues imitate Socratic activity. Sallis, John. Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues (3rd ed.) (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 20.
98. Kierkegaard, Seren, Fear and Trembling/ Repetition, trans, and eds. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 131.
99. Imagination in Discourse and in Action, Ibid., 132.
100. Imagination in Discourse and in Action, Ibid., 137.
101. Another pseudonym, Frater Taciturnus, suggests in Stages on Life's Way that Constantin Constantius was unsuccessful in his experiment with repetition "because he remained within the aesthetic." Kierkegaard, Seren. Stages on Life's Way (New York: Schocken Books, 1967), pp. 366-367.
102. Kierkegaard S., Stages on Life's Way, 1967, Ibid., 184-185.
103. Walsh, 135. Also see Repetition, xx.
104. Kierkegaard, Seren, Johannes Climacus, or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est: A Narrative, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. (eds. and trans.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 172.
105. Repetition, 199.
106. Repetition also parallels Aristotle's principle of kinesis, which causes the movement from possibility to actuality. Repetition is the point at which the Eleatic and Heraclitean meet (Repetition, 148), on which stasis and flux con-verge to make movement possible. Kierkegaard draws the comparison to kine-sis in order to point out the difference between his concept and Aristotelian metaphysics, though, for repetition is strictly a matter of transcendence rather than immanence (i.e. nature) (Repetition, Ibid., 149).
107. He also takes great efforts to avoid conflating repetition with Hegelian mediation, that movement which "tries in vain to say 1, 2, 3" (Repetition, Ibid., 226). By "1, 2, 3" Kierkegaard refers to the triadic structure of Hegelian dialectical logic, which mediates oppositions into higher unities. Kierkegaard wants to distinguish repetition from mediation, for as he writes in his papers: "mediation is within immanence and therefore can never have before it the transcendence of a religious movement... That I had this in mind is clear from my characterizations of repetition... that it is transcendent, religious, the movement by virtue of the absurd that commences when one has reached the border of the wondrous"
108. Repetition, Ibid., 313.
109. Repetition, Ibid., 317.
110. Mooney, Edward F, 'Repetition: Getting the World Back,' in (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard. Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 287.
111. Repetition, 324.
112. Pace the silence of Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling. Despite his attempts to understand Abraham by re-telling the narrative, Johannes concludes that he must remain silent. There is no hope of understanding Abraham, whose actions cannot be mediated via the uni-versal. Perhaps we should simply forget Abraham, "for what is the value of going to the trouble of remembering that past which cannot become a pres-ent" (Fear and Trembling, 30)? Yet de Silentio's inability to "think (him)self into Abraham"
113. (Repetition, Ibid., 33) and comprehend his actions does not spell the final futility of narration. It certainly might reveal the shortcomings of Roman-tic hermeneutics; indeed, one cannot grasp Abraham's individuality by placing oneself into the inner, psychological origin of Abraham's action, or in Schle-iermacher's words, by 'transforming oneself into the other' and thinking Abra-ham's thoughts after him
114. (see Truth and Method, 189). But although the Abra-ham narrative points us to the very limits of thought and understanding, the text we know as Fear and Trembling also indicates the need for second-order discourse to discuss such philosophically problematic possibilities as the teleo-logical suspension of the ethical, the movements of faith, and repetition.
115. Walter Lowrie's words in his introduction to Stages on Life's Way, p.7.
116. This is not to imply that one must understand the phenomenon of repeti-tion as "repetition," or have any notion of Kierkegaard's discussion. What it requires is an understanding of the phenomenon of redemption, of atone-ment, of receiving the world of possibility back. For additional discussion of this point, see my paper, "Repetition and the Task of Mourning: Three Narratives," in The Review of Existential Psychology & Psychiatry (forthcom-ing). For a discussion of the hermeneutical nature of religious experience, see Richard Kearney's work, particularly Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpret-ing Otherness (New York: Routledge, 2003),
117. and The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001).
118. Oneself as Another, 118.
119. Oneself As Another, Ibid., 119.
120. Oneself As Another, Ibid., 121.
121. Oneself As Another, Ibid., 118.
122. Oneself As Another, Ibid., 123.
123. Oneself As Another, Ibid.
124. Van Den Hengel, John, 'Paul Ricoeur's Oneself as Another and Practical Theology,' Theological Studies 55(3) (1994): 463.
125. Ricoeur, 335.
126. The Sickness Unto Death, 131.
127. JP, V, 5796.
128. This is, of course, no small order. Like faith, repetition is not an event one experiences and then surpasses, but the work of a lifetime. In fact, it is no work, no ergon, at all. If we keep stressing the fact that repetition is not achieved through sheer willpower, it is because the possibility of repetition depends on this. Consequently, John D. Caputo's reading of repetition in his book Radical Hermeneutics is misleading. While recognizing the importance of repetition in selfhood, he writes: "Repetition is the power of the individual to forge his personality out of the chaos of events, in the midst of the flux, the power to create an identity in the face of the incessant 'dispersal' of the self, of the dissipating effects of the flux... Repetition is the exacting task of constituting the self as a self."
129. Caputo, John D. Radical Hermeneutics: Repe-tition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 21. Caputo cites a journal entry in which Kierkeg-aard identifies repetition as "a task for freedom," of "saving one's personality from being volatilized and, so to speak, a pawn of events," but he overlooks the crucial point: repetition is only possible with God. This seems to be at the root of Caputo's later remark to the following effect: "Genuine religious repe-tition keeps deferring itself. It is nowhere to be found in this book, or in any book... The experiment undertaken in Repetition ends in failure, but this is meant, not to fill us with despair about the possibility of repetition, but rather to sharpen our sense of its illusive and self-deferring quality, of the demands it makes. It is meant to persuade us that repetition is not to be found within the margins of a book"
130. (Caputo John D., Radical Hermeneutics: Repe-tition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project, 1987, Ibid., 26, 27). Caputo is correct insofar as repetition does not occur within the margins of a book. But is repetition illusive? If God is not involved, it is impossible, even illusive. If God is involved, however, it may be elusive, but it is possible. Like-wise, repetition has a self-deferring quality insofar as it does not establish a plateau of pure presence. Nor does it rapture the self out of time. But it does occur within time, in the moment, making meaning within time possible.
131. JP, I, 657.