Syllabus
I. Opakování, čas a existence
S. Kierkegaard
F. Nietzsche
II. Opakování, tradice, citování
W. Benjamin
H. Arendtová
III. Opakování, (společenský a osobní) zvyk a performance
Judith Butlerová
Annotation
Repetition aims at the very core of humanities. Here, novelties and originality are rare, one may even wonder if they are welcome. If we reflect on human life, rarely anything new occurs. All of us repeat the same journey of birth, maturation, decay and death. The questions the human being poses are often very similar throughout centuries, even millennia. Despite this, repetition leads a shadowy existence in philosophy. More than that: repetition is considered a failure. Somehow, we do not want to repeat ourselves, and yet do it, nonetheless, constantly.
In this course, we will follow the thought of those philosophers who have taken up the category of repetition creatively and positively. We will focus on Kierkegaard’s repetition in relation to time and existence, on Arendt’s concept of tradition as a social form of repetition and on Judith Butler’s conception of repetition as an essential dimension of performance and thus of subjectivity.