LRO 321: “From Kierkegaard to Lacan: Repetition?”

From Kierkegaard to Lacan: Repetition?
Maro Bellou | Athens, Greece

Kierkegaard, who, according to Lacan, was “the most acute of the questioners of the soul”[1] before Freud, was beset, as he himself testifies, by a problem: “whether repetition is possible, and what it means, whether a thing wins or loses by being repeated”[2]. He says that he is “almost paralyzed” in the face of this question; in order to answer it, he resorts to an experiment: he decides to leave for Berlin, which he had visited earlier, to retrace his steps in order to relive the identical moment of the past and thus find happiness again. Kierkegaard’s project appears here as a philosophy of action, precisely because he responds with an action (the transition to Berlin) that enlists himself in the theoretical problem that concerns him so intensely. This is why Repetition will not be a theoretical essay but rather the author’s recording of an experimental travelogue…... [Read full article]