Customer Reviews

Fear and Trembling, and Repetition (International Kierkegaard Commentary)

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The main purpose of this review is simply to provide a table of contents for anyone who is trying to figure out whether there are any essays in this book they want to read. This book is, obviously, a companion to Kierkegaards: Fear and Trembling/Repetition : Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol. 6. I have not read any of the essays on Fear and Trembling and I have only read a selection of the essays on Repetition. I will have a few things to say about the essays on Repetition but first I will provide the table of contents:

Fear and Trembling:

"Faith as the Telos of Morality: A Reading of Fear and Trembling" by C. Stephen Evans

"The Silencing of Philosophy" by Olivia Blanchette

"Art, Deed, and System" by Edward F. Mooney

"The Antithesis between the Religious View of Ethics and the Rationalistic View of Ethics in Fear and Trembling" by Seung-Goo Lee

"The Parables of Problem III in Kierkegaard's Fear and Tremblig" by Louis Carroll Keeley

"Abraham's Silence Aesthetically Conceived" by Robert L. Perkins

"Whose 'Fear and Trembling'"? by Gene Fendt

Repetition:

"Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the Foundering of Metaphysics" by John D. Caputo

"The Blissful Security of the Moment" Recollection, Repetition, and Eternal Recurrence" by Stephen Crites

"Repetition - A Story of Suffering" by Andrew J. Burgess

"Repetition's Repetitions" by Vincent McCarthy

"Understanding, Imagination, and Irony in Kierkegaard's Repetition" by David J. Gouwens

"Constantin Constantius's Search for an Acceptable Way of Life" by T.F. Morris

"Notes on a Coach Horn: 'Going Further,' 'Revocation,' and Repetition" by David Cain

"The Magic of Theater: Drama and Existence in Kierkegaard's Repetition and Hesse's Steppenwolf" by George Pattison

I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed in the essays I read on Repetition. I have to qualify that statement by saying first that I did not read all the essays. I did not read, for example, David Gouwens or George Pattison's articles who are both well respected Kierkegaard scholars (and David Gouwen's book Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker is quite good).

I also have to qualify my statement by saying a great deal of my disappointment had less to do with the quality of the essays and more to do with the fact that they were mostly irrelevant to what I was looking for. I was looking for articles that discussed the concept of repetition itself, which is not only a concept that is central to understanding Kierkegaard's philosophy as a whole, but has had an excellent subsequent career by finding its way into the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Gilles Deleuze in slightly different forms.

The essays in this collection were not primarily about the concept of repetition but were focused instead on the book Repetition, which admittedly makes sense since this is supposed to be a companion volume to the book, but I was disappointed nonetheless. The one essay that really was relevant to my topic, the essay by John Caputo was really just a shortened version of the first chapter of his book Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy). I thought the first chapter of that book was superior to the essay included in this book.

I did get some important insights from the essays I read but I had to wade through a fair amount that was not really relevant to what I was doing. I would recommend the interested reader check this one out from the library before buying it (which is what I did) to see if it is a book you want to own or not. Ultimately I think Clare Carlisle's article "Kierkegaard's Repetition: The Possibility of Motion" which appeared in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, is worth more than all the essays in this book put together (it is a really fantastic essay). Clare Carlisle also has a chapter on repetition in her book Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Becoming: Movements And Positions (Suny Series in Theology and Continental Thought) which is similar to her essay and is quite good as well (the whole book is good and worth reading). There is also a book, which I have only read selections from, that is just about the category of repetition: Kierkegaard's Category of Repetition: A Reconstruction (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, 5) by Niels Eriksen. It is pretty good as well, but not as good as Clare Carlisle's work in my opinion. I would recommend all of those works over this particular set of essays, assuming, of course you are primarily interested in the book Repetition (like I said I have not read any of the essays on Fear and Trembling yet).

Admittedly my reaction to this book had a lot to do with my interests. I am interested in the metaphysical and ontological implications of Kierkegaard's concept of repetition and in trying to tease out what Kierkegaard meant when he said the category of repetition is "the interest and the foundering of metaphysics". I am also interested in Heidegger's and Deleuze's appropriations of the concept of repetition (Deleuze in particular). In regard to my preoccupations this particular volume had limited value (though it was not entirely without value). For someone with different interests than mine this volume might be excellent. I do, however recommend reading some of the essays before purchasing.