Repetition as Resurrection–Kierkegaard’s Christological Dialectic of Human Agency

This paper argues that Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Repetition together disclose a structure of human agency grounded in the resurrectional logic of faith. In Fear and Trembling, Abraham reveals faith as a paradoxical activity that suspends the ethical and transcends the limits of reason through a dialectic of loss and restoration. Repetition, Kierkegaard’s companion text, extends this dialectic into the existential sphere, reimagining repetition as the lived form of this same resurrectional logic: the death and renewal of the self through freedom/choice and memory. The first part of the paper argues that Fear and Trembling presents Abraham as an ideal model of human agency to be esteemed but not emulated. In the second part of the paper, I will argue that Repetition provides a model for emulation. What is lost and recovered in repetition is the subject itself. Through a dialectic of freedom and memory.