Soren Kierkegaard

began to grin and to carry on with all the impudence that is de rigueur here
in this provincial town. What happens? When I had come close enough to
make eye contact with them and I discovered that they all smoked cigars,
I turned to one of them and asked him for a light for my cigar. Then all
three of them hurriedly removed their hats and it was as if I had done them
a service by lighting my cigar with them. Ergo: The same people who
would delightedly cry ‘bravo’ for me if I merely let slip a friendly word,
much less a flattering one, now cry ‘pereat’ [Latin: ‘put him to death’] and
menace me. What Goldschmidt and P. L. Møller practice on a grand scale
every individual here does on a lesser scale....AndI,whohavealways
been the very soul of politeness, especially to the humbler class of people!
Now the whole business is a comedy. But it is inestimably interesting to
have one’s knowledge of human nature enriched in this way.”
The enriched knowledge of human nature consisted, among other things,
of the social-psychological insight that popularity is not only the positive
counterpart of exclusion, but it is also its prerequisite: Outside the city gate
that day, when he experienced the rapid reversal from “bravo” to “pereat,”
Kierkegaard understood the relationship between idol and scapegoat, be-
tween hero and outcast. In modern society violence is no less effective than
in earlier times, but it has been transformed and has taken on a more sym-
bolic character by which it has been civilized, so to speak. People are no
longer crucified, they are made fun of. “In ancient times it was an entertain-
ment to have human beings do battle with wild animals. The villainy of
our times is more refined,” Kierkegaard writes, letting the violence express
itself in his metaphors, which mime or imitate situations from the days when
violence really was violence:The Corsairhad made him into an “object for
the assaults of ridicule” and had exposed him to “abuse by ridicule and to
persecution by foolishness” as well as “scornful vulgarities.” Indeed, in a
journal entry from 1854 he was capable of describing his situation simply
as an “analogy to the gladiatorial animal combat of pagan times.” Nor did
he shrink from arguing that if “Christ now [returned] to the world he would
perhaps not be put to death, but would be ridiculed. This is martyrdom in
the age of reason. In the age of feeling and passion, people were put to
death.” In brief: “A martyrdom of ridicule is what I have really suffered.”
If Kierkegaard had garnered psychological insight, he had certainly not
had the last laugh. Being a permanent object of ridicule certainly is the
modern form of martyrdom, but for Kierkegaard it was also worse than
death: “In the age of reason, ‘ridicule’ is the most feared danger of all; in
our times a person can more easily bear everything else but being made a
laughingstock, not to mention being exposed to daily ridicule—people
shrink more from this danger than from the most torture-filled death.” The