The Present Age

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Summary: Nihilism, Forfeited Individuality & The Passionless Age
Review: .
Soren Kierkegaard was a contemporary and unique thinker. In "The Present Age" one finds many thoughts that are both subsequently echoed in parallel thoughts and/or have directly influenced other great thinkers. For instance Kierkegaard speaks of the danger of loosing individuality to the abstract form of public opinion. Many of his thoughts can be found in later writings of Alex de Tocqueville, Nietzsche and Heidegger. In Kierkegaard's case, true individualism is based on the Christian religion (apart from Christendom). Written over almost two hundred years ago and yet so contemporary are Kierkegaard's words to our present age of nihilism and rule of public opinion.

On Nihilism and relativism, Kierkegaard writes:

"A passionate tumultuous age will overthrow everything, pull everything down; but a revolutionary age, that is at the same time reflective and passionless, transforms that expression of strength into a feat of dialectics; it leaves everything standing but cunningly empties it of significance. Instead of culminating in a rebellion it reduces the inward reality of all relationships to a reflective tension which leaves everything standing but makes the whole of life ambiguous; so that everything continues to exist factually whilst by a dialectical deceit, privatissime, it supplies a secret interpretation - that it does not exist: p. 42

On individualism and public opinion, Kierkegaard writes:

"The abstract principle of leveling . . has no personal relation to any individual but has only an abstract relationship which is the same for every one. There, no hero suffers for others, or helps them; the taskmaster of all alike is the leveling and himself becomes greatest does not become an outstanding man or a hero - that would only impede the leveling process, which is rigidly consistent to the end - he himself prevents that from happening because he has understood the meaning of leveling; he becomes a man and nothing else, in the complete equalitarian sense. That is the idea of religion. But, under those conditions, the equalitarian order is sever and the profit is seemingly very small; seemingly, for unless the individual learns in the reality of religion and before God to be content with himself, and learns, instead of dominating others, to dominate himself, content as priest to be his own audience, and as author his own reader, if he will not learn to be satisfied with that as the highest, because it is the expression of the equality of all men before God and of our likeness to others, then he will not escape from reflection. " p.57

"The public is a concept which could not have occurred in antiquity because the people en masse, in corpore, took part in any situation which arose, and were responsible for the actions of the individual, and, moreover, the individual was personally present and had to submit at once to applause or disapproval for his decision. Only when the sense of association in society is no longer strong enough to give life to concrete realties is the Press able to create that abstraction 'the public', consisting of unreal individuals who never are and never can be united in an actual situation or organization - and yet are held together as a whole." p. 60

"The man who has no opinion of an event at the actual moment accepts the opinion of the majority, or, if he is quarrelsome, of the minority. But it must be remembered that the majority and minority are real people, and that is why the individual is assisted by adhering to them. A public, on the contrary, is an abstraction. To adopt the opinion of this or that man means that one knows that they will be subjected to the same dangers as oneself, that they will be led astray with one if the opinion leads astray. But to adopt the same opinion as the public is a deceptive consolation because the public is only there in abstracto. p.61

Rating:
Summary: Kierkegaard's most accessible
Review: This version of "The Present Age" also includes "On the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle." These two treatises are two of the most intelligible and actually enjoyable of Kierkegaard's works. "The Present Age" is remarkable because, although it was written in the Nineteenth Century, it has a great deal to say about modern society. Kierkegaard's central thesis is that the modern age (that is It is important to understand, however, that K. does not mean passion as defined by the mob mentality, hate or lust. This is what Marcel, a later Existentialist, meant by "passion." Rather, he is refering to a powerful sense of inward spirituality.
Kierkegaard was a Christian (despite what philosophy professors might tell you) and the second essay in this volume is, essentially, a theological treatise on apostolic and divine authority. K. argues that Christianity is at its core an authoritatian religion. Authoritarian, that is, in the sense that the word and teachings of God have ultimate authority over man and human institutions.
This book isn't a bad place to start if one wants to read a bit of Kierkegaard. The two essays are really pretty easy to read and will surprise you with how appropriate they are to the modern and even post-modern era.

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Summary: It could describe today
Review: Written over 150 years ago, it remarkably seems to describe our age, for example "A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. Nothing ever happens but there is immediate publicity everywhere". And those in government may appreciate "In the end a whole age becomes a committee". Perhaps the Internet is both a great leveler that Kierkegaard warned of, but also a perpetrator of the anonymous. I think Kierkegaard might laugh at some of the pseudonyms floating around the net, far less creative than his many including Johannes Climacus. Perhaps this anonymous net means no risk, but we need to "Come on, leap cheerfully, even if it means a light-hearted leap, so long as it is decisive".

This book provides a good, short intro to Kierkegaard, and the humor keeps this moving without masking the personal challenges.