Subject to suffering: economies of suffering in Kierkegaard and Levinas

This thesis examines and compares the respective economies of suffering in the work of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) and Emmanuel Levinas (1906-95). The term economy is employed to describe the interconnection between suffering and subjectivity: inherent to the way in which suffering is delineated is a conception of the human subject. The point of departure for this understanding of suffering and subjectivity is Levinas's essay "Useless Suffering" (1982), in which he provides a phenomenological analysis of what he coins "useless suffering" and sets this analysis in service of his ethical philosophy. This thesis builds upon Levinas's essay to develop a critique of what is argued is Kierkegaard's economy of usefull suffering. Accordingly, part one takes Johannes Climacus's deliberations on religious suffering in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript as the basis for an investigation of a range of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous works. Read in conjunction with other key concepts or figures in his authorship such as the existential stages, irony, "the moment" [Øieblikket], faith, and the upbuilding, it is demonstrated that suffering is in Kierkegaard's account teleological and transformational. Suffering is an inherent dimension of the individual, existing subject's relationship to the absolute telos, and the subject transforms itself and is transformed in suffering. In this way, Kierkegaard's economy of suffering is governed by a logic of utility and concomitantly positions the suffering subject as an active individual. Part two is anchored by a close reading of "Useless Suffering" and other important texts from Levinas's corpus, including Time and the Other, Totality and Infinity, and Otherwise than Being. Drawing on the concepts of infinity, passivity, sensibility, and substitution in these other works, it is argued that useless suffering is transcendent in the Levinasian sense. As such, Levinas's economy of suffering is grounded on the absence of utility, positions the subject as radically passive, and, as a consequence, serves as a critique of the Kierkegaardian economy. In other words, the economies of suffering in Kierkegaard and Levinas are fundamentally opposed.