Hegel roll over in his grave: “In the end, all of world history becomes
nonsense. Action is completely abolished....Thecastle in Paris is stormed
by an indeterminate number of people, who do not know what they want,
with no definite ideas. Then the king flees. And then there is a republic.
Nonsense.”
One evening Kierkegaard spoke with one of the leaders of the liberal
movement, A. F. Tscherning, and told him that the French Republic
had come into being entirely by accident, “like a betrothal entered into at
a ball during a giddy moment when people didn’t know what they were
doing.” Tscherning indicated that he “very well” understood what Kier-
kegaard said, but the very next day he in fact became a member of the
National Constitutional Convention in exactly the same accidental way,
while simultaneously becoming Minister of War, with his own offices on
Amaliegade! It gave Kierkegaard a loathing for politicians. The entire situa-
tion reminded him most of all of a chaotic family: “It is like the situation
in a family when the parents have been unable to get the children to obey.
So the parents say, well, now you will be in charge and have us obey, and
things will go better. And since the parents have some respect for what it
means to obey, things actually do go better for a little while.” But only for
a little while, then the rumpus spreads in every direction. “No. Upbringing,
upbringing is what the world needs. This is what I have always spoken of.
This is what I said to Christian VIII. And this is what people regard as the
most superfluous of things.”
“Perhaps the Alarm Will Be Sounded in the Camp
and IWill Be the Manhandled Victim”During these turbulent times Kierkegaard sat reading the proofs ofChristian
Discourses. He had delivered the manuscript to the press on March 6, 1848,
when all had still been well, but soon afterward there was complete political
chaos, and under the date March 27 we read the following in his journal:
“Once again for a moment I have anxiously considered my responsibility
in letting theChristian Discourses, especially the third part, appear at this
time. What was written there had been written under quite different cir-
cumstances; to let them be read under the present circumstances is actually
dangerous for me. But I cannot do otherwise. It is Governance that has
arranged it this way for me.”Christian Discoursescame out on April 26. In
November, when Kierkegaard put the finishing touches onThe Point of
View for My Work as an Author, he looked back on the “the world-historical