Soren Kierkegaard

ing order, because as a member of an economic and intellectual upper crust
Kierkegaard had all he needed in his religious inwardness .If this were all
that concerned us, we could cite Climacus, who at one point inConcluding
Unscientific Postscriptpraises the freedoms of a well-ordered state and con-
cludes: “Of all forms of government, the monarchical is the best; more
than any other form, it favors and protects the tranquil imaginings and the
innocent follies of private individuals .Only democracy, the most tyrannical
form of government, obligates everyone to active participation, something
one is reminded of frequently enough by the associations and general assem-
blies of our time .Is it tyranny when one person wants to rule, leaving the
rest of us others out? No, but it is tyranny when all want to rule.” A journal
entry from 1848 makes it clear that Kierkegaard was in complete agreement
with Climacus: “Of all tyrannies, a people’s government is the most excru-
ciating, the most spiritless, the absolute ruin of everything great and lofty.
A tyrant, after all, is only a single human being .Ordinarily he does have an
idea, even if it is most unreasonable... .But in a people’s government one’s
‘equal’ is the ruler .He concerns himself with such things as whether my
beard is like his, whether I go to the Deer Park at the same times he does,
whether I am just like him and the others.... A people’s government is
the true image of Hell.”
Kierkegaard’s critique of the dawning age of popular government is un-
mistakable, but this does not mean that he simply preferred the old to the
new, the authoritarian to the democratic, or regimentation to self-determi-
nation .Antitheses of this sort are all too simple and do not at all capture the
radicality of the alternative beginning to take shape in him.
His evolving thoughts on the subject found particular expression inA
Literary Review, published on March 30, 1846 .Its fifty pages take the form
of a very positive review of Mrs .Gyllembourg’s novellaTwo Ages, which
included a retrospective consideration of herStories from Everyday Life .But
Kierkegaard went further and also reviewed hisownage .And things did not
look so rosy .True, he assures us that his interpretation of Mrs .Gyllem-
bourg’s novella does not bring “anything out of it that is not in it,” but it
is clear to everyone that the review contains quite lengthy passages in which
he reads his own views into Mrs .Gyllembourg’s text .When she expressed
her thanks for the copy ofA Literary Reviewthat Kierkegaard had sent her,
she too makes this clear, noting that when she “compares it with this book,
which is so lavishly furnished with such profound, apt, and witty observa-
tions, my novella seems to me a simple romance from which a poet has
taken the motif for a fully formed drama.”
Mrs .Gyllembourg’s modesty was charming but was also quite in order,
for the truth is that her novella was no masterpiece, nor was Kierkegaard’s