Love in the smooth flow of becoming

on the history of the event and the event as history

Authors

  • Avron Kulak York University

Keywords:

Event, Christianity, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Derrida

Abstract

Beginning with Badiou’s insistence that Christianity deploys all of the parameters of the event, I examine how Nietzsche, Derrida, and Kierkegaard help us understand the relationship between the event and biblical principles. Nietzsche aligns the event with the command of conscience to recreate our values from nothing prior, also insisting that such a conscience is created by Christianity. For Derrida only the event as the irruption of the absolutely new makes possible the just decision that must come into existence as if nothing of the law previously existed. While Nietzsche and Derrida implicitly invoke (presuppose) the doctrine of creation from nothing, Kierkegaard shows creation to be the ontological expression of the biblical command to love that, itself created from nothing prior – from neither immediate self- nor immediate preferential love – provides the critical point of view from which to appropriate and espouse the smooth flow of becoming.

Author Biography

Avron Kulak, York University

Avron Kulak is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities at York University, Toronto. Along with teaching in the Humanities undergraduate and graduate programs, he teaches in the graduate program in Social and Political Thought. He has published studies on, among others, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Derrida.

References

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Derrida, Jacques. The Gift of Death. Translated by David Wills. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Derrida, Jacques. “The almost nothing of the unpresentable.” In Points, edited by Elisabeth Weber, 78-88. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. Routledge: New York and London, 1994.

Derrida, Jacques. “The force of law”. In Acts of Religion, edited by Gil Anidjar. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Hegel, G. W. F. The Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree. New York: Dover Publications, 1956.

Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Volume III. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling. Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Philosophical Fragments. Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Kierkegaard, Søren. The Concept of Irony. Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Works of Love. Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Random House, 1967.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 1974.

Published

2022-01-15

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2022): Being and event

Section

Academic Articles

Copyright (c) 2022 Avron Kulak

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