Repetition in Action: Søren Kierkegaard and the Problem of Human Agency in the Anthropocene

Abstract

One of the most perplexing aspects of life on a climate-changed planet concerns the status of human action. As Donna Haraway observes, we appear to be stuck between a rock and a hard place: On the one hand, there is the “position that the game is over, it’s too late, there’s no sense trying to make anything any better,” and on the other side, we encounter “the comic faith in technofixes.” In this paper, my goal is to investigate how we might overcome this persistent stalemate and recover a type of action that is properly adjusted to the exigencies of the climate emergency. Building on Sharon Krause’s re-conceptualization of nonsovereign, normatively inflected agency, I shall demonstrate that a critical turn to Søren Kierkegaard’s discussion of repetition provides valuable resources for precisely such an endeavor. “Repetition” here means, surprisingly, the complete opposite of business as usual. Rather, Kierkegaard’s thoughts reveal a mode of acting that allows us to get the world back at the very moment when all seems lost. Paradoxically, this only becomes an option once an agent forsakes the pretense of control and mastery over their environment. The paper suggests that this complex notion of agency, and the attendant conception of existential attunement (via faith, resignation, hope, and anxiety), is best suited for navigating the disconcerting reality of the Anthropocene.

The Anthropocene is an age of bewildering complexity. Social scientists and scholars in the humanities have tried to come to terms with it by developing distinctive research agendas, from an investigation into the Gaia figure ¹ to detailed interpretations of climate fiction. ² Political scientists, too, have begun to pay close attention, scanning a wide range of interrelated topics, such as global governance, ³ the contentious role of the state, ⁴ and the reconfiguration of power relations. ⁵

A critical issue in these debates concerns the status of human agency, the capacity of our species to not only inhabit this novel geological epoch but transform it in positive or negative ways. In principle, it remains an open question whether the Anthropocene should be perceived as an overwhelming threat, due to steadily rising temperatures, the massive decline in biodiversity, and increasing levels of marine pollution, or whether it ought to be embraced as a welcome opportunity to reassert human dominion over the Earth system. The juxtaposition of these standpoints is reflected in Donna Haraway’s observation that we are today stuck between a rock and a hard place: on the one hand, there is the “position that the game is over, it’s too late, there’s no sense trying to make anything any better,” and on the other side, we often encounter a “comic faith in technofixes.” ⁶

In this paper, I use Haraway’s diagnosis as a launch pad for reflecting on the ways in which we could regain an appropriate sense of human agency in the Anthropocene. The underlying problem seems straightforward: while the “game over” position renders it difficult to begin acting together in the pursuit of emancipatory goals, ⁷ the endemic belief in the redeeming power of science and technology overestimates the degree to which our species can simply innovate itself out of this current crisis. ⁸ Put in stark terms: no space for action on the one side, too much space for action on the other.

In what follows, I build on related projects and interrogate this binary opposition. ⁹ In contradistinction with existing approaches, my strategy is to home in on an unlikely candidate for casting the status of human agency in a new light: “repetition,” not in the sense of “business as usual”—a pathway into the future fraught with extreme risks ¹⁰ —but rather along the lines drawn by Søren Kierkegaard in his often-overlooked book Repetition. I shall claim that Kierkegaard’s ideas contain powerful lessons for theorizing politics in the Anthropocene. Repetition, in conjunction with other writings, affords an ethico-political framework for “getting the world back” ¹¹ —that is, for working through the ongoing loss of a world and yet becoming receptive to the possibility of its renewed bestowal. It is through this dual function—of acknowledging the grounding in reality of painful emotions as well as the indispensable horizon of a novel reconstitution of the world—that repetition’s benefits for reconstructing human agency come to the fore. ¹²

In the context of the Anthropocene, such a change of perspective is of paramount importance for how we conduct politics. A major stumbling block for a responsible politics today lies in the misguided conception of human agency as mastery of a climate-changed world that undergirds many (reactionary as well as progressive) responses to the climate emergency. By contrast, Kierkegaard’s writings teach us that agency can be conceived differently, without reference to ideas such as choice, control, and self-determination. A crucial proviso must be immediately added to this observation: neither passivity nor fatalism follows from this. One of the most significant insights from Kierkegaard’s philosophy is that resignation and faith, despair and hope are reliant on each other; a thought that will shape the expectations we can reasonably harbor for politics in our climate-changed world.

To vindicate these assertions, the paper moves through four stages. In the next section, I discuss Sharon Krause’s recent attempt to conceptualize agency in such a manner as to render it conducive to what she calls “eco-emancipation.” ¹³ Although her project of decentering sovereignty is crucial in today’s climate emergency, I show that what is furthermore needed is an examination of the ways in which agency depends on an existential attunement that has the potential to transform the acting subject. ¹⁴ By “existential attunement,” I mean an open-ended form of relating to the world that pays close attention to the complex overlapping of affect and cognition in the face of an uncertain future. In times of conflicting visions of the (end of the) world, it becomes ever more urgent to better comprehend how faith, resignation, hope, and anxiety interact with one another. That is the main purpose of existential attunement.

The following step unravels the core argument of this paper, through a recovery of Kierkegaard’s philosophy. The value of these thoughts reveals itself in the paradox of repetition—that it becomes achievable in practice only when one manages to renounce fantasies of world-production and construction. The concept of repetition is so productive, I posit, because it brings together various interrelated themes in Kierkegaard’s thinking that are all relevant for the discussion around human agency on a climate-changed planet.

The penultimate section introduces a distinction between two ways of interpreting repetition: either in terms of ongoing learning processes that seek to progressively improve on the status quo or as a form of receptivity that upends the idea of sovereignty in human action, yet still allows for a hopeful orientation toward the future. This second reading, inspired by Kierkegaard, foregoes ideals of progress and is thus better aligned with the momentous challenges we are presently facing.

The paper ends by engaging with potential objections. I hold that Kierkegaard’s approach can be defended against the charges of fatalism, individualism, and anthropocentrism. This argument hinges on an interpretive method that conceives of Kierkegaard’s thought, and existentialism more generally, as susceptible to creative reappropriation in light of ecological considerations.

Before proceeding, a clarification and a caveat seem apposite. The clarification relates to the motivation for turning to Kierkegaard at this juncture. Somewhat surprisingly, given the vituperative treatment by thinkers like Theodor W. Adorno ¹⁵ and György Lukács, ¹⁶ it is a host of Marxist thinkers who have done the most to recuperate Kierkegaard’s philosophy for the contemporary debate. While its reception by the first generation of the Frankfurt School (and other left-wing interpreters) typically remained ambivalent at best, ¹⁷ authors such as Slavoj Žižek ¹⁸ and Alenka Zupančič ¹⁹ have recently suggested that Kierkegaard’s thought harbors untapped resources for reformulating foundational terms of our political vocabulary.

Others have sought to engage with Kierkegaard for the sake of illuminating the Anthropocene, focusing on hope and mood as vital categories. The crux here is akin to the argumentative strategy pursued in this paper: in the case of hope, it is to draw on Kierkegaard so as to develop “an account of cautious, active hope, which is not grounded in blind faith in technology, the whims of politicians, or ecologically indifferent economic markets, nor in the complacent positing of an interventionist God who works in the world apart from human action.” ²⁰ Regarding mood, the objective is to mine Kierkegaard’s philosophy for “the concept of noir optimism as a shorthand for the double movement of faith, [. . .] viewed as Kierkegaard’s endeavour to describe a way of relating trustingly to a world that gives us few grounds for trust.” ²¹

Interpretations such as these highlight that, even though his “contribution to political theory remains an unsolved puzzle,” ²² a turn to Kierkegaard may still yield surprising results. Rather than being exclusively geared toward textual analysis, these readings foreground the continuing salience of Kierkegaard for our times. This move obliges one to adopt a posture of hermeneutic flexibility whereby the implications of notions such as hope, mood, and repetition are teased out in contexts other than the ones Kierkegaard originally envisaged. It is this spirit that sustains the following reflections.

Secondly, a caveat on the paper’s scope. Despite my interest in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, this essay does not intervene in disputes about the wider import of theological reflections for political theory. Even though prominent commentators, from Antonio Negri ²³ to Terry Eagleton, ²⁴ have endorsed precisely this kind of relevance, the argument put forth in this paper should manage to stand on its own—that is, independently from larger questions regarding the compatibility (or not) of theological reflections with issues arising in political theory.

As Robyn Marasco puts it, “The point is not an uncritical embrace of the ‘return of religion’ in contemporary political and intellectual life—as if religion had disappeared, as if the new forms of religious life are premodern residues and not themselves the result of present conditions and conflicts. The point is that critical theory finds its footing in the forces that circulate at the outer limit of reason.” ²⁵ Repetition locates itself precisely at these outer limits and hence demands our critical attention.

Rethinking Agency in Nonsovereign Terms

That human agency poses a problem in the Anthropocene seems beyond doubt. It is, after all, a core insight of the debate around Earth as a “human planet” that our species has itself turned into a force of epochal geological change. This observation raises further questions about freedom, conflict, and governance insofar as humankind’s destructive tendencies are held causally responsible for the escalating ecological crisis. ²⁶ If it is humanity itself—or at least a particularly powerful segment thereof, as Indigenous thinkers ²⁷ and other critics ²⁸ maintain—that has been exacerbating the climate emergency, then its agency needs to be checked.

In this section, my objective is to read Sharon Krause’s contribution to this controversy as emblematic of an interpretation of human agency that is prominent across a range of theoretical positions, from new materialism ²⁹ to speculative realism. ³⁰ According to her stance, human agency must be fundamentally reconsidered in light of competing and intersecting types of agency, by other species, whole ecosystems, the planet itself, or indeed inanimate objects that have hitherto been relegated to the background of history and of politics. What is distinctive about Krause’s approach is that it seeks to connect these debates to key concepts in political theory and thereby revalue the normative content of agency. It is this emphasis on the centrality of normativity that sets Krause’s views apart from cognate projects.

In Eco-Emancipation, Krause delineates an account of what is characteristic about human agency in the Anthropocene and investigates potential remedies to patterns of unchecked power that have triggered the ecological crisis. The argumentative strategy of Eco-Emancipation is to probe how crucial ideas of the Western canon of political thought can be creatively reworked so as to deal with the challenges of a climate-changed world. In particular, Krause grapples with ideas that matter for contentious politics in the Anthropocene, from domination to respect and responsibility. In each of these cases, the suggestion is that traditional patterns of thinking about these concepts are inadequate for the age we are living through. The current moment is characterized, according to Krause, by the exercise of unfettered power over nonhuman nature. If we are to come up with a viable alternative to this unjust and unsustainable status quo, we must begin by radically reconceiving the terms with which we describe ourselves as well as other Earth dwellers.

A chief building block of this project concerns the notions of agency and action. The dominant understanding is one in which humans are distinctive insofar as they are capable of exercising “intentional choice, rational control over action, and self-determination. Agency so conceived is a kind of personal sovereignty in which the meaning and impact of one’s action is determined by the content of one’s will rather than by instinct, circumstance, or the wills of others.” ³¹ Note here that agential sovereignty is primarily associated with properties that somehow relate to conscious ratiocination.

The issue with this view is that it is factually incorrect and hence obstructs a reckoning with humanity’s real power in the Anthropocene. Krause maintains that the aforementioned sovereignty model presupposes a separation of humans from their environment. She calls this the “old exceptionalism,” which justifies human domination over nature by reference to our species’ unique set of agential capabilities, grounded in consciousness and reflexivity.

Yet, such a separation is simply not warranted by a sound theory of ecology for two interrelated reasons. Krause asserts, first, that we need to abandon the sovereignty model and replace it with one that recognizes “[a]gency as a socially distributed phenomenon.” ³² This means that the capacity of humans to act should be seen through an intersubjective and interactional lens, whereby agency emerges from the interplay between individual choice, control, and self-determination, on the one hand, and the “interpretations and responses of other people,” ³³ on the other. This ineradicably social dimension runs counter to views that unduly accentuate the absolute power of the individual to claim authority over their actions. Without the correct “uptake” by others, agency would simply not count as effective.

The second regard in which Krause breaks with the sovereignty model is by conceiving “agency as a materially distributed phenomenon.” ³⁴ At this stage, the affinities between her views and new materialist and speculative realist positions become apparent. The basic insight that Krause derives from these positions is that “agency is an assemblage and that the Earth provides some of its most important bearers.” ³⁵ Therefore, the sovereignty model also fails to acknowledge the multiple respects in which agency remains encumbered by material factors beyond the individual’s choice, control, and self-determination.

So, if the social and material distribution of agency attests to the shortcomings of the “old exceptionalism,” what should take its place? Is “the human” not a meaningful category anymore within a flat ontology of intersecting agencies? At this point, Krause departs from the routes normally taken by advocates of new materialism and speculative realism. She argues in favor of a novel type of exceptionalism, whose foundation lies in our species’ ability to become responsive to norms: “Agents are sources of activity that can be responsive to notions of what ought to be—to principles of justice and conceptions of the good, to the needs of others, to their own dreams and aspirations.” ³⁶ While Krause declares that other species, too, exhibit qualities that correspond to some level of norm responsiveness, humans hold responsibility for the domination of nature and are therefore subject to especially demanding norms, such as respect and responsibility. This constitutes the chief feature of the “new exceptionalism.”

Even though the sovereignty model does not withstand scrutiny, the idea that humans are unique thus contains a grain of truth. It is just that our species’ exceptionality resides in the possession of nonsovereign agency that “points us to communities of interdependence marked by respect and responsibility toward nonhuman nature, rather than mastery and exploitation.” ³⁷ Only a recognition of this type of bounded, yet efficacious agency enables us to overcome the harmful separation of humans from their environment.

The rest of Eco-Emancipation is dedicated to exploring how nonsovereign agency can be mobilized in the pursuit of combating environmental domination. What interests me here is Krause’s analysis of the inadequacies of the “old exceptionalism.” Insofar as agency always remains rooted in various forms of being and becoming with others, it would be misguided to subscribe to a notion of human distinctiveness that centers on practices of ratiocination alone: agential capabilities such as choice, control, and self-determination create the deceptive impression of a sovereign individual, standing somehow in hierarchical isolation above nature. The entire purpose of Krause’s project is to shift from a prevailing notion of agency as a set of internal abilities to one in which external circumstances play a much more pronounced role in shaping and enabling the self.

While this critique of the sovereignty model is convincing, it risks losing sight of the central role that a certain kind of existential attunement continues to play in the exercise of human agency in the Anthropocene. Krause is right to reject the controlling image of an autonomous individual based on unique features, but the move toward a socially and materially distributed conception forecloses the option of viewing the self differently: not in sovereign terms, associated with choice, control, and self-determination, but in such a manner as to take proper account of how one has to position oneself vis-à-vis an uncertain future, in the shadow of the climate emergency. This dimension of human agency, which includes both cognitive and affective aspects, is as relevant for theorizing politics in the Anthropocene as is the focus on the self’s external constraints.

The issue with Krause’s approach, in short, is that it leaves too little space for rethinking agency in nonsovereign terms, derived from a different understanding of human existence. To be sure, a distributional account of agency grounded in sociality and materiality is critical, for it unsettles the “old exceptionalism” that Krause rightly calls into question. Yet, my contention is that the revised interpretation of human agency as socially and materially embedded could be rendered even more appealing if it were complemented (not replaced) by an alternative approach that forsakes sovereignty and instead examines the existential attunement necessary for coping with the ecological crisis. The most promising source for such an interpretation can be found, I contend, in Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy. ³⁸

“Only a Thunderstorm Can Loosen It”

Kierkegaard’s short book Repetition is perhaps his most enigmatic work. In this section, my initial objective is to deliver a concise synopsis of Repetition. This will permit us, in a subsequent step, to elucidate why this concept appears particularly suitable for a reconceptualization of human agency in the age of the climate emergency. An advantage of concentrating on the particular term “repetition” is that it serves as a lens for bundling together several of Kierkegaard’s persistent preoccupations: faith, resignation, hope, and anxiety all make appearances in this difficult text. That said, even though I will focus mostly on works from Kierkegaard’s early, “aesthetic” phase, ³⁹ later texts will be consulted, too. This is necessary because the meaning of repetition “cannot be grasped in isolation from Kierkegaard's other writings.” ⁴⁰

Like many of his books, Repetition was published under a pseudonym in 1843, the same year as Fear and Trembling. ⁴¹ On this occasion, Kierkegaard chose the name Constantin Constantius—a typically ironic twist for an essay probing personal transformation—to investigate a seemingly straightforward proposition: “whether repetition was possible and what it meant, whether a thing wins or loses by being repeated.” ⁴² The answer turns out to be anything but straightforward, though. This has partly to do with the book’s narrative structure, which switches between a first part, where Constantin Constantius takes a (nameless) “young man” under his wing, who is embroiled a complicated love life that might or might not culminate in marriage; and a second part, which consists of the young man’s letters, deploring the deeply disconcerting circumstances he finds himself in ever since he had called off the relationship to his fiancée. ⁴³

In the preliminary exchange with the young man, Constantin Constantius devises a scheme to help his melancholy friend escape the dilemma posed by the prospect of marriage. The young man is supposed to become a “contemptible person whose only pleasure is in tricking and deceiving,” ⁴⁴ in the expectation that this ruse would trigger a break-up, which might in turn facilitate a happy repetition of the relationship. While originally agreeing to the plan, Constantin Constantius’s interlocutor suddenly absconds from Copenhagen, without separating from his lover. In the process of advising the young man, the narrator then embarks on a practical experiment himself, trying to replicate a joyful trip to Berlin, but failing miserably in this attempt at repetition: “My home had become dismal to me precisely because it was the wrong sort of repetition. My thoughts were barren, my anxious imagination constantly conjured up tantalizing memories of how the thoughts had presented themselves the last time, and the weeds of these recollections strangled every other thought.” ⁴⁵

The letters that Constantin Constantius receives upon his homecoming to Copenhagen make up the book’s second part and detail the young man’s battle with his own fragility and disappointment. In these messages, the Biblical figure of Job, to whom the young man turns in his tormented quest for fulfilment, appears as the key exemplar of successful repetition. What is to be learnt from Job, judging from the standpoint of someone who has suffered loss? Constantin Constantius’s interlocutor aspires to emulate the fate that had befallen Job, achieving a repetition of his love at precisely the moment when it had become unattainable:

So repetition is possible. But when? No human language can say. When did it happen for Job? When, from a human perspective, the impossibility was conceived as probable, even certain. Job gradually loses everything, and thus hope also gradually disappears in that actuality, rather than mitigating the accusations, makes increasingly harsh claims against him. Viewed immediately, everything appears to be lost. His friends, especially Bildad, know of only one escape: he must submit to the punishment, daring to hope for a repetition to the point of excess. But Job does not want to do this. Thus the knot, the tangle, is tightened. Only a thunderstorm can loosen it. ⁴⁶

The drawback for the young man is that no such thunderstorm arrives, and hence the knot cannot become untangled. Where Job succeeds, both Constantin Constantius and his friend fall short. In fact, their inability to realize the ideal of repetition illustrates the futility of approaching repetition in abstract terms, as an intellectual puzzle to be solved. That is what renders Clare Carlisle’s observation that existentialism historically originates in Kierkegaard’s reflections on repetition so persuasive. ⁴⁷ Since the pursuit of a return to life and love cannot be enforced by a sovereign agent, repetition points to Kierkegaard’s peculiar understanding of human freedom as self-actualization. ⁴⁸

The book ends without a clear resolution, reinforcing the impression that Repetition is a work “full of puzzles and twists of fate.” ⁴⁹ For the interpreter, the enigmatic character of the text creates obstacles insofar as the key term of repetition remains elusive. If repetition qua mere replication of what has happened before is not what Kierkegaard is aiming for, what is the semantic core of this term, and how could it be applied to address the problem of human agency in the Anthropocene?

Given the circumscribed ambitions of this article, I will now concentrate on two features of Kierkegaard’s reflections that demonstrate how repetition may helpfully reframe the issue of sovereignty and normativity in human agency. The first characteristic concerns the tenuous status of the person seeking it. Despite the emphasis on the young man’s trials and tribulations, it is evident that Kierkegaard remains skeptical about an individual’s capacity to autonomously initiate repetition of the desired variety. This point is further substantiated through the invocation of the two religious figures who actually benefit from the gift of repetition: Abraham and Job.

Turning to the former will necessitate a side-look at another of Kierkegaard’s early books: in Fear and Trembling, which, recall, came out in print the same year as Repetition, Johannes de silentio (Kierkegaard’s pseudonym) remarks that on the way to Mount Moriah, where God ordered him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham took the decision to obey this command. Crucially, the divine order itself is implicated in the structure of repetition, for “a command is comprehensible as a command only to the extent that it can be followed, and that means: repeated.” ⁵⁰ At the same time, Johannes de silentio is adamant about the alternative choices that were at Abraham’s disposal: either to slaughter a ram that God might accept in exchange for his son’s life, or to despair at God’s command and thereby undermine Isaac’s trust in him. ⁵¹

Why, then, is Abraham able to receive Isaac back? Instead of giving in to desolation, he affirms his faith in God. This is the reason Abraham, for Johannes de silentio, represents the “knight of faith” in purest incarnation. ⁵² Abraham’s real choice in the face of an impossible order does not mean that he is in full control over his fate, however. On the contrary, the silent approach of Mount Moriah “provides a concrete illustration of Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition, since each step forward marks a repetition of faith. In this way faith gains a constancy through time: not by standing still, but by a movement of becoming” ⁵³ . The central term here is “becoming”: repetition is a temporally structured process that sets in motion a novel actualization of the self. ⁵⁴

The Book of Job possesses a similar set-up, for Job himself represents a “teacher and guide of humankind.” ⁵⁵ What makes him such a paradigmatic figure is the eventual acquiring of what Edward Mooney calls a “frame-shift.” ⁵⁶ The very basis of Job’s existence is called into question as he first loses all his possessions, then protests his innocence, and finally gets his riches back, but doubly so, with the notable exception of his children, “because a human life does not allow itself to be doubled in this way.” ⁵⁷

The profound calamity that befalls Job stems from his being guilty and innocent at the same time. ⁵⁸ The assurances of faith are wrestled away from him, causing a profound crisis that eventually reveals his true individuality. For Job, repetition happens as the outcome of a test, meticulously reconstructed by the young man in his letters to Constantin Constantius. Job refuses to accept that he is being punished for unknown sins, as his friends keep on suspecting. The fact that his suffering has no ground at all, that he is simultaneously guilty and innocent, marks the crux of the ordeal to which Job is subjected. ⁵⁹

And yet, his freedom perseveres under the pressure of doubt, as the young man admiringly writes: “Job continues to maintain that he is in the right. He does this in such a way that he demonstrates noble human boldness, which knows what a person is, that he, though delicate and quickly withered like the life of a flower, from the perspective of freedom is something great, has a consciousness that not even God, though He gave it, can wrest from him.” ⁶⁰

Importantly, Job does not ask for his possessions to be returned but beseeches God to share the underlying reasons for the ostensible punishment meted out to him. Since God cannot be made to comply with such a petition, the “world’s return is not dependent on his [Job’s] resources for world-production or -construction, but on his openness to world-reception: its return is transcendentally bestowed.” ⁶¹

Before proceeding, a note on the differences between Abraham and Job (and between Fear and Trembling and Repetition) will be helpful. At first sight, it would appear as if their respective situations were rather unique, for God tested them both, but through singular trials. ⁶² Consider that Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice Isaac is simultaneously premised on resignation and faith, so much so that his steadfast belief that he will ultimately retain his son functions as an antidote to despair and leads to Abraham experiencing no loss at all. By contrast, Job’s groundless ordeal means that he does in fact lose everything in the course of the divine test. Only after he undergoes the forfeiture of everything that he holds dear is the world returned to him. ⁶³

Notwithstanding these differences, which Kierkegaard dramatized through the use of varying pseudonyms, narrative techniques, and stylistic flourishes, ⁶⁴ it still seems possible to pinpoint a shared concern between the two Biblical figures, making them both archetypes of an existential attunement that weaves together self-actualization and freedom. ⁶⁵ Abraham and Job should be considered archetypal models insofar as they each succeed in achieving repetition through a procedure that upends their being. Neither Constantin Constantius nor the young man is willing to endure the same ordeal, which seals their fate.

Abraham’s and Job’s faith in God is deepened in the dynamic experience of loss and the renewed bestowal of life and love. Whereas the narrator of Repetition as well as his interlocutor fail to accomplish the goal of repetition, these Biblical figures receive the world again in the very moment they are ready to let go of it. In other words, renouncing the world is understood as a prerequisite for ultimately getting it back. And yet, neither Abraham nor Job fall into despair while experiencing the test that God had set them. It is through their “faithful trust in a fulfilling restoration” ⁶⁶ that they eventually become exemplars of repetition.

The second feature that is of special interest to our topic relates to the manner in which the person seeking repetition manages to achieve it. In Repetition, one of the conclusions that Constantin Constantius draws from his pointless attempt to manufacture a return of the world consists in his “abandon[ing] of all theorizing.” ⁶⁷ This suggests that the ambition to delineate abstract criteria for repetition would be ill-advised. The objective of philosophy, then, is not to discover necessary and sufficient conditions under which repetition might become an option. Rather, it is fundamental to the radical potential of repetition that it cannot be subsumed under any normative theory at all. This insight may be extended to Kierkegaard’s thinking in general. Repetition, on this account, “can be read as laying out an itinerary that seeks to challenge and transform its reader. In this manner, the text is not simply directed toward the formulation of ideas, but it is engaged in complex activities that test the reader in a variety of manners.” ⁶⁸

When Abraham and Job, in their unique ways, receive the world again, they do so without following rules that specify the required steps to reach the goal of repetition. Their actions are peculiarly free insofar as they do not rely on a set of principles that would guide them according to an “explicit all-inclusive theory.” ⁶⁹ The decisions that finally bring repetition on its way can hence only be made sense of if they are taken in the absence of an overarching system of predefined norms. ⁷⁰ From this, we can infer that, for Kierkegaard, repetition stands in stark contrast to rule-following. Instead, true repetition amounts to an expression of freedom as the quest for self-actualization. ⁷¹

Double Movement, Double Constraint

We now have the broad contours of Kierkegaard’s notion at hand, which should allow us to revisit the problem of human agency in the Anthropocene and elucidate it against the conceptual backdrop explored previously. Recall how I maintained that Krause’s understanding of nonsovereign agency, while insightful in its critical thrust against the “old exceptionalism,” precludes the possibility of thinking otherwise about selfhood in its relation to an uncertain future. This is relevant for our grasp of the Anthropocene insofar as the emotional experiences and passionate commitments of those affected by climate change matter for the political responses to the ecological crisis. Practices like respect and responsibility need to be honed with the support of an affective and cognitive infrastructure that is existentially attuned to the ongoing ecological crisis.

We therefore require a conception of human agency that not only pays attention to the material and social sources of the self but also to the emotional registers and passionate attachments through which normatively inflected agency is shaped and enabled. It is this part of the story that Krause’s theorization disregards—a consequential omission, precisely because so many today seem stuck between deeply troubling reactions, like the debilitating pessimism and exuberant optimism that Haraway deplores. Becoming unstuck, then, depends on a specific orientation toward the future that moves beyond these dominant rejoinders to the climate emergency. Kierkegaard’s philosophy, which is consistently geared toward psychological as much as religious questions, can help in this regard. ⁷²

So, what are the lessons that Kierkegaard’s interpretation of repetition holds for our analysis? To answer that question, I want to distinguish between two broad strategies for teasing out the meaning of repetition in the context of the Anthropocene: The first interpretation is promoted by those who exhibit great trust in human inventiveness and ingenuity when faced with enormous challenges, such as the ones generated by climate change. The underlying thought, reminiscent of, but not wholly identical with, the technological solutionism of global elites, states that it is an outstanding quality of our species that it constantly manages to embark on processes of trial and error so as to adjust to changing circumstances. Along these lines, Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the cli-fi bestseller The Ministry for the Future, ⁷³ has insisted on the need for exploring several avenues of progressive experimentalism, including the use of financial instruments to fund climate mitigation and adaptation measures. In a similar vein, Darrell Moellendorf ⁷⁴ has examined how existing measures of poverty alleviation might be redesigned to support the struggle against anthropogenic climate change.

Repetition here denotes the opposite of business as usual. It speaks to the historical fact that human agency is highly malleable and resourceful. In other words, it describes our species’ capacity to learn from past failure and come up with improved, more effective forms of interaction. While it is tempting to associate this process with slow and grinding incrementalism, we could also conceive it in a more accelerated, radical fashion. Proposals for a revolutionary rupture with the Anthropocene fall under this rubric. ⁷⁵

Note that, although such proposals are mounting vigorous critiques of an unjust and unsustainable status quo and are thus hostile to the “business as usual” mantra, they remain at their core wedded to a prescriptive model of world production and construction that is foundational to the self as sovereign. The very purpose of these interventions is to remind us that the range of incremental or revolutionary actions in the Anthropocene is much greater than mainstream discourse would have it. Otherwise put, these authors want to alert us to the fact that we underestimate our freedom as agents if we give in to climate doomism and conclude that all we can and should do right now is “learn how to die in the Anthropocene.” ⁷⁶

In this affirmation of humankind’s propensity for malleability and inventiveness, for the freedom to act differently, these commentators keep on adhering to what Krause rebukes as the “old exceptionalism”—a conception of our species as uniquely gifted with choice, control, and self-determination. Their responses to widespread fatalism thus risk erecting once again a hierarchy between homo sapiens and nonhuman nature, by reveling in our unique capabilities to take impactful decisions that are based on long-ranging processes of trial and error.

Contrast this account of repetition with an alternative one, more openly inspired by Kierkegaard. A chief insight from this body of work is that, only if the model of world production and construction is dismantled from the ground up, true repetition can occur. The animating paradox is best articulated through the “double movement” of resignation and faith that sustains repetition: As both Job’s and Abraham’s lives exemplify, to achieve repetition, one first needs to renounce everything. ⁷⁷ The hope that emerges from this notion of repetition therefore embodies a “reaction to the catastrophe, the terrible task that must be done in fear and trembling—it is a clairvoyant response (not concealment or evasion) to the situation in which one finds oneself.” ⁷⁸

In this double movement, no reference to historical progress is made, no learning from failure takes place. Rather, in the moment of becoming a new self, the structuring ideals of choice, control, and self-determination are relinquished. This revision of agency in a nonsovereign manner diverges from Krause’s argumentative route: not because of the social and material distribution of selfhood, but due to a different account of how a “frame-shift” may alter the individual in moments of crisis—through an “openness to world-reception,” to invoke Mooney’s phrasing once again. On this view, “repetition must instead take the form of an ongoing process of self-transformation in which one’s whole ethical context is rediscovered and rendered anew.” ⁷⁹

Kierkegaard’s notion of repetition brings out an aspect of human agency that cannot be captured solely by underscoring external constraints, such as sociality and materiality. Neither is the reference to our species’ inherent capacity for norm responsiveness, our ability to show respect and take responsibility for nature, apt to apprehend what is going on when repetition occurs. Only a corresponding analysis of the existential attunement that shapes and enables the acting subject facilitates an understanding of human agency that is fit for the Anthropocene. ⁸⁰

Repetition, in this second sense, permits one to perceive action as doubly constrained: externally, owing to the effects that the social sphere and the material world have on the exercise of agency, and existentially, owing to the realization that choice, control, and self-determination on a climate-changed planet are, in an important sense, beyond the self’s reach. Both constraints must be recognized in parallel with one another.

It is important to note, then, that the existential attunement I have been advocating for in this essay possesses two dimensions that are closely linked but can still come into conflict with each other: on the one hand, it stresses the need for the self to undergo a process of nonsovereign transformation such that control and mastery become dislodged from their usual pride of place in the theorizing of human agency. This can only work to the extent that, on the other hand, the affective and cognitive aspects of inhabiting the Anthropocene are given their due so as to highlight the interplay between resignation and faith in moments of crisis.

My argument so far has been that Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition supports a specific stance vis-à-vis an uncertain future that embraces the painful emotions triggered by (actual or imminent) loss, while simultaneously putting trust in the prospect of a novel reconstitution of the world. The resultant view of human agency is preferable to the old exceptionalism of the sovereign self and thus better suited to tackling the challenges of our climate-changed world.

Crucially, though, I do not want to suggest that the “frame-shift” associated with repetition could somehow be autonomously engineered by the individual. For Kierkegaard, there is no linear movement from the original experience of fulfilment to its renewed bestowal, no progressive striving for a return to life and love. As David Kangas summarizes, “The movement of a return to self cannot be thought as a project. If there is return, it can be thought only vis-à-vis an enablement, a power, not identical to the spontaneity of the will—a power upon which one can only wait with an essential patience.” ⁸¹

Such an interpretation has the advantage not only of supplementing Krause’s distributional account with a more intricate notion of selfhood, but also of easing the stalemate between the “position that the game is over, it’s too late, there’s no sense trying to make anything any better” and, on the other side, “the comic faith in technofixes.” ⁸² This is the case because Kierkegaard shows that resignation and faith must go hand in hand; that freedom in the Anthropocene can be exercised in the absence of the sovereign pretense of choice, control, and self-determination.

Let us consider, then, how the binary opposition between doomism and wishful thinking might be overcome. The ethico-political framework of repetition does not deny or downplay the widespread anxiety that the climate emergency has triggered in many people around the globe. On the contrary, acknowledging agonizing experiences of loss turns into a precondition for grappling with the exhaustion that has taken hold globally. ⁸³ In the contemporary conjuncture, it is therefore indispensable to valorize painful emotions, such as shame, fear, and sorrow, as expressions of a psychologically fitting engagement with the climate emergency. ⁸⁴

At the same time, repetition involves the imperative of not falling into nihilism and hopelessness. Abandoning the structuring ideals of choice, control, and self-determination does not lead to a closure of the “horizon of expectation” ⁸⁵ ; neither does it condemn us to a melancholic acceptance of presentism, “the sense that only the present exists, a present characterized at once by the tyranny of the instant and by the treadmill of an unending now.” ⁸⁶ Instead, the emergent conception of human agency as doubly constrained creates much-needed room for establishing, once again, a new set of relationships with the world. The future is open, from this perspective, even though its concrete shape escapes efforts at control and mastery. An upshot of this picture is that hope and despair are not at loggerheads but rather continuously imbricated with one another. ⁸⁷

This matters for the political implications of the kind of existential attunement I have been embracing throughout this essay: One of the foremost hurdles for politics in the Anthropocene is the relentless investment in optimistic visions of the future that affirm the freedom of humans to act in uniquely masterful ways. Once we come to see that human agency remains, in fact, doubly constrained, these visions will surrender some of their ideological grip such that space is freed up for negotiating the challenges of our climate-changed world anew. Essential to this process is a moment of sober reckoning—an ordeal, we might say in a Kierkegaardian spirit—whereby we “face our various despairing strategies by which we try to cope (or rather, evade) the climate crisis. This could lead to even deeper despair, but in the end, it is a chance to be cleansed of inadequate imagery of ourselves.” ⁸⁸

Beyond Fatalism, Individualism, and Anthropocentrism

The thoughts outlined in the prior section might give rise to a number of concerns among those invested in the struggle against climate change, whether through activism or their intellectual labor in the academy and beyond. Since I consider myself an ally in this struggle, I want to end by clarifying the positions defended in this paper.

The first, and perhaps most trenchant, criticism concerns the status of resignation in the achievement of repetition. Since repetition depends on the realization that, to some degree, our existence is incompatible with the “old exceptionalism” (characterized by choice, control, and self-determination), does this not mean that repetition, as an ethico-political framework, feeds into the doomist visions that Haraway, amongst others, is so skeptical about? Are we not destined to capitulate to powers beyond our grasp if we take Kierkegaard’s philosophy seriously?

The answer is no, because Repetition, in the narration of the young man’s life and of Constantin Constantius’s fate, relies on a notion of freedom that is exceptionally appropriate for situations in which the established rules of the game do not apply anymore and where new possibilities for acting must be envisioned. ⁸⁹ While the Greeks focused on the act of recollection, “the modern view, however, must be to express freedom forwards, and herein lies repetition” ⁹⁰ .

The difficulty in grasping this point stems from the fact that we habitually collapse freedom into the very qualities that Krause ascribes to the “old exceptionalism” of sovereign agency. Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition, conversely, paves the way for another notion of freedom qua repetition that not only passively admits but actively affirms the constraints on human action. As such, it opens up a perspective for envisaging our species’ place in the Anthropocene that is neither confounded by debilitating pessimism nor by exuberant optimism.

If it is under present circumstances simultaneously impossible to tackle a problem by appealing to general principles (which Kierkegaard subsumes under the category of the “ethical”) and to take a decision on the basis of sovereign agency, repetition furnishes us with a third option, an unorthodox worldview, “which is crucial for understanding that to acknowledge a situation or struggle for what it is—hopeless, impossible—and to see ourselves for what we are—powerless, incapable—need not lead to pessimism, or to arranging ourselves with the given; not even where we lack a firm conviction or ideal to guide our actions, but rather relate to our undertakings in a probing and self-reflective manner.” ⁹¹ Consequently, a commitment to repetition in Kierkegaard’s sense is not the same as giving in to passivity and fatalism.

Another worry might relate to the subject striving for repetition. It is true that Kierkegaard does not examine the political ramifications of his observations in Repetition. The focus lies squarely on the individual’s striving to get the world back, in this text and in the rest of his oeuvre. Is there potential for collectives to benefit from these insights as well? Can Kierkegaard’s ethico-political framework be extended to also cover agents operating beyond the individual level, in the realm of politics?

One thing to emphasize in response to these questions is that, although it is correct that Kierkegaard displayed scant interest in politics, his work has nevertheless exerted considerable influence on a number of political thinkers, from Carl Schmitt ⁹² to Walter Benjamin, ⁹³ not to speak of the previously mentioned Adorno and Lukács. ⁹⁴ So, purely in terms of reception, it seems unquestionable that even an apolitical writer, like Kierkegaard, can produce ideas and concepts that are salient, and perhaps even indispensable, to the study of politics. ⁹⁵

Still, this comment fails to tackle the specific concern with collectives and politics. While one could maintain that “Kierkegaard’s individualism [. . .] expresses a radical politics and is anything but a form of apolitical or antisocial indifference or withdrawal,” ⁹⁶ such a clarification does not go far enough. The challenges posed by the climate emergency evidently call for coordinated, joined-up responses that cannot be articulated and implemented on the individual level alone.

The best way to cope with this worry about Kierkegaard’s individualism, then, is to envisage the claims put forth here as conditional upon a corresponding theorization of sociality and materiality, like the one delivered by Krause (and many others, to be sure). In this paper, I have sought to show how repetition can become the cornerstone of an ethico-political framework for human agency that sheds light on the existential attunement individuals need to hone in their quest to cope with a conjuncture riven by debilitating pessimism and exuberant optimism. Inasmuch as Kierkegaard discloses a novel perspective for thinking about selfhood, a comprehensive picture of human agency in the Anthropocene would require additional clarification on the agency of groups and collectives. ⁹⁷ While such a task goes beyond the scope of this article, there is no reason to suspect that these two ambitions—unpacking the existential attunement of the individual as well as the agency of groups and collectives—should be antithetical to each other.

Hence, what is ultimately needed is a holistic approach that combines attention to sociality and materiality with a concern for the affective and passionate receptivity that serves as a scaffold for norm responsiveness. Such an approach is feasible precisely because the emotions that are at play in the climate emergency are not only experienced on an individual level but also, and crucially, shared with others—an insight that has received sustained consideration in the recent literature on political affects. ⁹⁸

So, the idea behind recovering Kierkegaard for the debate around the climate emergency is not to sideline or denigrate rival approaches that focus on the complexity of coordinated, joined-up responses. Rather, the crux of my argument is that attending to what I have called “existential attunement” elucidates an important, yet frequently ignored, background condition for politics in the Anthropocene. Kierkegaard’s conceptual apparatus enables us to appreciate that the answers we are looking for when confronting human agency today cannot be found in the realm of collective action alone. Understanding the interplay between resignation and faith, and between despair and hope, affords a more fine-grained theorizing of the individual’s standing vis-à-vis an uncertain future.

Finally, one might express doubts about the suitability of a precursor of existentialism—a philosophy closely related to the long tradition of humanism ⁹⁹ —to inform the current debate around the climate emergency. If a certain type of anthropocentrism can be identified as a key driver of the ecological crisis, why turn to a philosopher like Kierkegaard for inspiration? Is there not a performative contradiction in mining an author of the Western canon for concepts and ideas, when it is from within this very canon that destructive notions and practices have arisen?

The suspicion that “the existentialist concept of world [. . .] fails to acknowledge the unique value and existence of our world that is captured in the environmentalists’ concept of Earth” ¹⁰⁰ seems prima facie right. One way of alleviating this worry would hence be to gesture at the susceptibility of existentialism to ecological considerations, along the lines investigated by Guyatt ¹⁰¹ and Holm ¹⁰² . Dovetailing with Krause’s views, it has therefore been maintained that “the explorations by existentialism of our embeddedness in a situation and our connections to the material world [. . .] may help us to address the challenges of contemporary subjecthood in an ecologically precarious world.” ¹⁰³

Summing up, my objective in this paper has been to demonstrate that a satisfactory account of human agency needs to succeed in capturing the existential attunement necessary for responding to the ongoing climate emergency. Kierkegaard’s thoughts on repetition offer a rich reservoir of conceptual insights in this regard. In conjunction with the analysis of sociality and materiality, repetition thus allows us to grasp how emotional experiences and passionate commitments underpin human agency in the Anthropocene. In an age of climate emergency, such a more nuanced account is urgently required for acting differently, today and in the future.