As far as I know, Kierkegaard uses "remember" just in an ordinary sense, it's something you used to know that you can call back to mind, and he does superficially seem to use "recollection" in this same, ordinary way. In 1843, Kierkegaard published Repetition, a book about—surprise!—repetition. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Well, if recollection, in the end, does not bring Gatsby happiness, then what will? From this, we acknowledge that repetition, and its opposite, is a form of movement, an action occurring within time; a repeatable moment is one that has a “where” and “when,” a context. If I take a step forward, then I can repeat that action by taking yet another step forward. Nostalgia is a universal human feeling. Please try again. He wanted to figure out whether it was possible to repeat something. Not at all. In fact, knowing the Danish term for “repetition,” and its meaning can be a significant help, I believe, in understanding Kierkegaard’s concept of it. Considering the soul is reincarnated, it means that life hasalready occurred before; existence, “which is, has been,” as Kierkegaard put it. How to golf evaluation of math expression in MySQL? But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever” (160-1). Like with repetition, we know what recollection is: Memory. Anamnesis is a Greek word meaning—ta da!—recollection. Thanks for contributing an answer to Philosophy Stack Exchange! AN “EXPERIMENT IN PSYCHOLOGY”---OR KIEKEGAARD’S TORTURED MUSINGS ON HIS FORMER FIANCÉE? So had Gatsby ended up with Daisy, and had they gone through with a marriage, Gatsby would be uneasy because, at any moment, she could be taken away, and he would lose her forever; he would be in a precipitous position, where what is dearest to him could be deprived unexpectedly. In my last blog, where I discussed Gatsby’s lost love through Plato, I insisted that the main current that runs through both of them is longing—longing for the past. It is for this reason that Plato is the champion of recollection, that backward-looking movement by which we fail to move forward, reversing our progress, and therefore stuck in the past; to recollect is to. I also looked for it on google and I didn't find any article that shed light on these doubts. It is the “pain of returning.” Think back to a time when you were happy—in the very act of remembering, that happiness is blotted out by its being in the past, the way the sun’s warmth and brightness are blotted out by a passing cloud. This constitutes the paradox of repetition, as we shall see, and it is why Kierkegaard devoted an entire book to the topic. As we all know, to repeat something is to do it again. In, —recollection. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. The novel, instead of offering a comforting solution, seems bleakly to confirm what we already know to be true: That the past is, and always will be, in the past, so while we can long for it to return, this longing will get us nowhere. Repetition is a key concept for Kierkegaard, and he often uses it to depict a (generally vain) attempt to recapture an previous experience, typically one of aesthetic transcendence. SQL Server - Benefits of splitting databases across different logical drives, Microservice that fetches data from REST repository endpoints on Github. Gatsby convinces himself that he is happy, his being in love with (his memory of) Daisy, yet the very moment he does this, he destroys his happiness. So we are wrong to think Gatsby is happy—what we have known all along—thus bringing us back to square one. I'm supplementing it with some external resources where needed, but for the most part I'm doing well without those, by the way, I'm reading Hong's translation, that not only is unabridged but brings a handful of very useful footnotes where needed (unlike Alastair Hannay's translation). Living in the present, Gatsby stubbornly believes he can relive the past, bringing it into the Now, without realizing that it is “lost… forever.” His attempt “to save” this “fragment” of the past is evidence: In saving it, the way a child might “save” a ladybug, for example, Gatsby is trying to preserve the memory, to keep it within himself, protected from the passing of time as in a citadel, his mind a sanctuary in which Daisy, who is no more, who is not so much a “fragment” but a figment, can live on. The Danish term for “repetition” is gentagelsen (or Gjentagelsen in 19th-century Danish). by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And so I too return to this work. rev 2020.11.24.38066, The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Philosophy Stack Exchange works best with JavaScript enabled, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site, Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, Learn more about hiring developers or posting ads with us. But there is an added complexity here: When I take that second step, I am not repeating, , but the step itself. ( Log Out / After one of his parties, which Daisy attended, Gatsby tells Nick how much he misses his youth with Daisy, to which Nick responds, ‘I wouldn’t ask too much of her… You can’t repeat the past.’. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Repetition is a difficult thing to comprehend, but “if it is possible, [it] makes a person happy, whereas recollection makes him unhappy.”. It is happy because it reminds us of what we love, sad because it reminds us that what we love is what we loved—it is no more. There still are a bunch of articles on Repetition, but they didn't quite clarify my doubts either. If he remains. But recollection is a philosophical term with origins (as virmaior mentioned) in the work of Plato (see this article), who described it in the Meno as a recovery of knowledge from before your own birth, a reaching back to the fundamental source of all knowledge. repeat the past and what that means, we turn to the Danish Existentialist Søren Kierkegaard, who might be able to shed some light on our seemingly Absurd, paradoxical condition. In a visual novel game with optional sidequests, how to encourage the sidequests without requiring them? Or only on aggregate from the individual holdings? Immediately, we are already struck by the peculiarity of the idea of repetition. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. [3] Id., p. 49 Kierkegaard and the Tripartite Theory of Man. Paradoxically, if we are thinking from Gatsby’s point of view, this—the loss, rather than the gain, of Daisy—is the better of the two alternatives since it means he can. It is a sentiment that oozes nostalgia. What does Kierkegaard mean by “qualification of the psychical”? Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2015, Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic, and religious author, who was the first existentialist philosopher. Gatsby has to part ways with Daisy, and this leaves him with a memory of her. This is not what happened. 3 0 obj [36], Constantin has renounced all theorizing but still thinks about the Young Man and the girl. He wrote many other books, including, Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2008. ‘Why of course you can!… I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before’ (116-7). Ironic, huh? [5] Kierkegaard, op. It makes sense, but not a whole lot. Did the Genesis device create planet Genesis? Please try again. Please try again. that memory is essentially nonphysical, so its repetition need not be physical in character, but mental. Indeed, the statement “Recollection’s love is the only happy love” is self-deprecating, full of self-doubt, incurring a “deep depression” masked by contentment. Do ETFs move on their own? Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Ironic, huh? But there is an added complexity here: When I take that second step, I am not repeating my first step, but the step itself. To connect this, Nick Carraway, at the end of The Great Gatsby, ponders how Gatsby “had come a long way… and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it”; vitally, though, he adds, “He did not know that it was already behind him” (189). Repetition is a key concept for Kierkegaard, and he often uses it to depict a (generally vain) attempt to recapture an previous experience, typically one of aesthetic transcendence. This seems to go against everything that has been said so far, for if he is doubting the very integrity of repetition, then how can he make such confident statements about it? Considering the soul is, occurred before; existence, “which is, has been,” as Kierkegaard put it.
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