Soren Kierkegaard

Heiberg’s insistence upon the necessity ofBildungwas first and foremost
a programmatic declaration of a philosophy of which the ultimate guarantor
was the spirit of the age itself, and this spirit, of course, was something with
which one could not argue.Bildungwas thus not merely etiquette, proper
form, good manners, animated conversation, and general decorum—
though these things did constitute nine points of the law. Beginning with
the first issue ofFlyveposten, Heiberg had written a series of articles on the
importance ofBildungto individual and social life, and significantly, when
these articles were subsequently collected and reprinted in hisProse Writings,
he called them “Contributions to an Aesthetic Morality.” The first of these
pieces was from 1828 and was titled “On the Prevailing Tone in Public
Life.” Heiberg wrote it under the aptly chosen pseudonym “Urbanus,” and
his mission was to impart to his amorphous times a well-defined concept
of polite conduct as something more than conventional norms dictated by
the fashion of the day: “Gallantry and social graces are viewed as outward
forms that must be observed because they are in style; very few people
understand that the person who does not truly possess them in his heart is
like a man who wears a decorative cloak over dirty linen.”
In comparison to Heiberg, the host of advisers on etiquette who emerged
in later generations resemble a crowd of modern-day bag ladies. He seemed
to be making a calculated attempt to cultivate the art of restraint that obeyed
the Hegelian prescription by mediating between opposites, tempering the
passions so that they are forced down to the level of a certain lack of affect.
From there it is not very far to the point at which good manners become
mannerisms and lack of affect becomes affectation and denatured snobbism.
The point, however, was thatBildungcan and must be learned by rote,
memorized by the individual, and this could only be accomplished by
applying oneself to the study of cultivated behavior. In fact, this sort of prac-
tice was cultivatingin itself, and consequently it endowed the individual with
moral qualities. Indeed, Heiberg directly asserted that “morality andBildung
are inseparable, and the one increases in direct proportion to the other.”
Behavioral norms were not limited to higher social life, but were also to
be adhered to in public affairs and in social spaces, for example, when vis-
iting reading rooms, tearooms, and restaurants (where Heiberg had fre-
quently encountered noisy individuals), and also, of course, at the theater,
where as time had passed, the corruption of taste had become so widespread
that the theater of the future would probably come to consist of such bar-
baric events as “tightrope dancers and cockfights, at best spectacles in which
cavalry battles, cannon salvos, and deer or rabbit hunting are the focus of
all attention.” Here Heiberg exhibited a clear parallel to Goethe’s horror at