Deleuze, Kierkegaard and the Ethics of Selfhood

Abstract

The first synoptic consideration of the relationship between Gilles Deleuze’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophies, with a focus on the intersection between their shared ideas of ethics “beyond” morality, and the self. Moving beyond narrow disagreements regarding theology, the book argues that common emphases on metaphysical premises, and specially a focus on concepts like “repetition,” “becoming” and “singularity,” underlie both philosophers’ views of ethics. On this view, the ethical responsibilities of the individual center around a project of realizing the immanent features of one’s identity, rather than “living up to” some set of transcendent moral rules or principles. This account, discoverable in both philosophers’ work, brings together an “immanent” conception of ethics with a metaphysics of the self as ultimately fluid and in a perpetual process of becoming. From here, the book goes on to argue that such a view of the self ultimately lends itself to a possible political uptake of these philosophers’ ethical views–one in which projects of individual growth carry immediately political stakes within them.