Mathias Thaler turns to Kierkegaard to rethink action amid ecological crisis, between resignation to disaster and excessive confidence in technological solutions. His central claim is that acknowledging our inability to master the world can transform our capacity to act. This contemporary reinterpretation does not present Kierkegaard as a climate thinker; it draws on his concept of repetition to examine how we relate to an uncertain future. [1]
Reading Repetition alongside Fear and Trembling, Thaler connects the ordeals of Job and Abraham. Repetition means neither recreating a past happiness nor improving a method through successive experiments. It involves a transformation of the self that makes receiving the world anew possible, without making that renewal something we can manufacture at will. Resignation and faith thus form a double movement: acknowledging loss and relinquishing mastery while remaining receptive to new possibilities.
This demanding essay earns its reading time by clarifying the difference between hope and confidence in success within Thaler’s reading of Kierkegaard. Its limitation, which Thaler acknowledges, concerns the passage from individuals to collectives: this existential disposition complements an account of political action, but cannot by itself supply institutions or a climate strategy.