Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 137.
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        Date: 2026-08-27 21:57:48+00:00
        From: James Rovira <jamesrovira@gmail.com>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 40.133: repetition's point

Tim -

Yes, "sameness" is taken for granted in any discussion of repetition,
including Kierkegaard's. There's no use of the word "repetition" without
the concept of "sameness." It's not about what counts as a repetition. It's
about what is being repeated. So the "first" experience of anything cannot
be repeated both in a material and existential sense. In other words,
there's only one first time that we physically attend an opera, and there's
only one internalized first experience of an opera -- where we don't really
know what to expect, how to interpret it, what we're going to feel, or why.
In other words, an experience unaccompanied by memory of a previous,
similar experience. Kierkegaard was primarily concerned with the subjective
experience of a repeated event (like going to an opera, which he did
frequently), but that goes along with -- is inseparable from -- the first
material event.

Your leaf question is about a repetition of the same physical act, but
you're repeating the act in two different spots in the river. Even if you
kept pace with the river and stepped into the same group of water molecules
(somehow, but very doubtful given turbulence), it would be at a different
point in the river's path. There really is no stepping into the same river
twice.

Jim R

On Thu, Aug 27, 2026 at 2:13 AM Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote

>
> So, for all three of you, what counts as a repetition matters
> in any repetition.  Thus, a question about repetition becomes
> a question about sameness, no?  Did Kierkegaard have something
> to say about samenesses?  (I'm keen to mark out how text from
> real writing is not the same as text from an automatic text
> generator.)
>
> -- Tim
>
> PS: None of the text here was automatically generated.
>


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