Ole Wadt, von Jumping-Jack, and Willibald want to give the learned soci-
ety an entirely new name, they only succeed in deciding to name the Pryta-
neum the “Prytaneum.” In a moment of daring, von Jumping-Jack suggests
that they solve the problem by simply deleting the original inscription,
“Prytaneum,” and then inscribing “Prytaneum” in its place, but this will
not work after all, because in doing so, von Jumping-Jack reasons, we
merely “return to the immediate, where the dialectical oppositions have
not yet developed themselves and penetrated one another speculatively.”
The matter was tabled, of course, and pursuant to a suggestion by Ole Wadt
a monument is erected in commemoration of this unforgettable day, to
the accompaniment of “many enthusiastic toasts, especially by Willibald.”
Thereafter the manuscript reports: “The End.”
The soap-cellars satire was and remains a bagatelle, which with its inter-
minable Latinate monologues and its obscure allusions would scarcely suc-
ceed on the stage, perhaps just barely even induce a quiet little smile from
the more academic reader. Nonetheless the satire is a noteworthy document
because it demonstrates how Kierkegaard, with his talent for teasing and
foolishness, was able quite early to make use of satire as a philosophical
rejoinder, responding with genuine laughter where others resorted to arti-
ficial intellectualism. Thus ten years later, in hisPostscript, Kierkegaard ex-
plained that in order to get past Hegel “all that is needed is healthy human
understanding and a pithy comic sense.”
The question of whether Kierkegaard carefully studied Hegel’s own writ-
ings or was acquainted with the great German thinker secondhand, from
Danish Hegelian sources, has long been the subject of speculation. In any
event, the soap-cellar satire demonstrates that if Kierkegaard ever had been
a Hegelian, he had been an unusually irreverent one—which is to say he
was not really a Hegelian!
Poul Martin Møller
Luckily there was Poul Martin Møller, a man of flesh and blood with a
heart that was in the right place; he wasn’t one of those inexperienced
straight-A students who merely wanted to show off their intelligence at the
dro pof a hat. Møller, too, had been a visitor at the Heibergs’, but after a
while he had had his fill and had gone his own way. Heiberg called him
“the deserter” because he harbored a growing skepticism about Hegel, who
increasingly became the target of his sabotage. So when a young theology
student by the name of Rasmus Nielsen turned to Møller to attain greater
clarity in his understanding of Hegelian concepts, to his amazement he