Soren Kierkegaard

tem of thought “in which all concepts are produced out of nothing by
means of an immanent development.” And later in the essay, when he pro-
claims that “symmetry in philosophical systems is affectation,” there can
scarcely be any doubt that this salvo is directed at the Hegelian epigones
who fool themselves and others into thinking that their experientially im-
poverished philosophical system reflects a coherent and balanced world.
In general Møller had a good eye for the way in which social circles
provide a perfect environment for affectation, and it is difficult to avoid
suspecting that his sense for the nature of affectation and for the vacuousness
of affected persons had been awakened at evening social gatherings at the
Heibergs’ home. And we also get the feeling that not a few of these
“sketches of moral nature” are set in the salons of the illustrious, where
Møller had succeeded in transforming himself, as it were, into a phenome-
nological fly on the wall, listening, taking readings, paying special attention
to the discrepancy between what one sees and what canalsobe seen: “It is
a very innocent sort of affectation to set your muscles in the position they
assume when you laugh or smile while you are listening to an anecdote
which is not amusing, but which has pretensions of being amusing.” The
sense for affectation is clearly situated in the eye, in the sense of sight, and
Møller is a first-rate observer, a vigilant Copenhagener: “Affectation can
express itself when a person half-intentionally imitates the peculiarities of
other people’s involuntary idiosyncrasies because they seem a good fit.”
A considerable part of affected behavior is to be found precisely in this
imitative element, in the posturing of mimicry, and in the copying gestures
that can lead to the externalization of the individual or to the dissimulation
that is the unconscious by-product of focusing one’s attention on the ex-
pected reactions of others. Thus affectation is intense in the individual who
“imagines himself to have certain opinions, interests, or inclinations because
for one reason or another he wishes to have them,” as is the case, for exam-
ple, when out of sheer vanity a person “deceives himself into believing that
he loves one or another sort of art for which he has no sense.” Here affecta-
tion is connected with snobbism, prejudice, and arbitrary judgments of taste,
but hypocrisy and moral slipperiness lurk just under the surface: “It is not
unlikely that the person who judges a piece of literary work to be bad
because it was written by his opponent would find it to be very good if he
learned that it had been written by his friend.”
In his essay Møller tries his hand at a tripartite treatment of the forms of
affectation: the momentary, the permanent, and the changeable. The first
is rather harmless; at times it can simply be the helpful wish to adopt some-
one else’s point of view or to allow oneself to empathize with someone
else’s emotional state. This generally facilitates social life. Permanent affecta-