History and Eternity: Rosenzweig and Kierkegaard on Repetition

This paper explores Franz Rosenzweig's theory of repetition in The Star of Redemption and its revolutionary insight into the logic of time and eternity. The argument focuses on the role of the cycles of the weeks and the years in the temporal orientation of the Jewish people. Against previous attempts to read Rosenzweig's theory of repetition according to the mythical return of the same, I suggest that repetition constituted dialectical relations of the Jewish people with time: repetition alienated the Jewish people from history, while presenting the dynamic nature of time. I discuss Rosenzweig's radical vision of time in the context of modern philosophical works on repetition, especially Søren Kierkegaard's Repetition, to show how Rosenzweig's view of the world of becoming informs his understanding of repetition. The paper demonstrates how Rosenzweig's theory of history, in focusing on the social and liturgical dimensions of repetition, adds valuable insight into modern philosophy of repetition.