edge.. .and then turn back .Among the skaters there would be someone
or other who was exceptionally talented; he would even manage the tour
de force of going to the extreme edge, making yet another attempt, replete
with the deceptive appearance of danger, so that the spectators shout ‘Ye
gads, he’s crazy, he’s risking his life!’ But see, he was so remarkably skilled
that in fact he was able to turn away at the extreme outermost edge, that
is, where the ice is still quite safe and the mortal peril has not yet begun.
Just as in a theater, the crowd would shout ‘Bravo!’ and salute him with
acclaim; they would return home, bringing with them the great heroic
artist, and they would honor him with a sumptuous banquet .Reasonable-
ness had become so predominant that it had transformed the challenge itself
into an unreal stunt, and reality into theater.”
While the passionate hero had been honored because he alone ventured
where none of the others dared go, the hero of reasonableness was cele-
brated because he understood how to simulate the seriousness of the dan-
ger—that is, how to “transforman inspired feat of daringinto astunt.”A
twisted transformation of this sort is greeted with approval because, first of
all, collective self-deception is easier to endure than envy of that single
individual, and second, leveling has broken down the representative func-
tion formerly exercised by the hero in the days when he could “exalt the
idea of what it is to be a human being.”
“This Is the Idea of the Religious”
In his analyses of the condition of his times, Kierkegaard did not permit
himself the least scintilla of naı ̈vete ́ .He acknowledged the reality of leveling
and had no illusions that what was past could be reconstituted .Thus it is all
the more surprising to see that, to a certain extent, he approved of leveling.
It was of course true that in itself the dissolution of tangible powers and
authorities was a catastrophe because their absence set in motion a strange
societal free-for-all .But it was also true that this dissolution made it possible
for the individual, now freed from all institutional—and especially ecclesias-
tical—baggage, to relate himself to God firsthand .Displaying his typical
zigzag between social-psychological pessimism and visionary religious
thinking, Kierkegaard writes: “No age can halt the skepticism of leveling,
nor can the present age... .It can only be halted if the individual, in the
separateness of his individuality, acquires the fearlessness of religion.”
This was at once Kierkegaard’s nightmare and his paradoxical hope.
Alienation has the task of promoting the individual’s separation from society
and of leaving the person thus separated to look after his own religious