Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review

A book review that outgrew its journal and became an attack on the press, the public and an age without passion.

Danish, the original language

Original title: En literair Anmeldelse
First published: 1846(aged 33)
Original language: Danish

Overview

A short novel called Two Ages came out in Copenhagen in the autumn of 1845. It was credited only to the anonymous author of A Story of Everyday Life, and J. L. Heiberg, the city's leading critic, was named as its editor; the author was his mother, Thomasine Gyllembourg. Søren Kierkegaard set out to review it for a literary journal, but the review outgrew the journal. He wrote it in the weeks when the satirical weekly The Corsair had just begun to mock him, and it appeared as a small book on 30 March 1846. The novel is set in two periods, the revolutionary 1790s and the 1840s, and Kierkegaard reads the contrast as a diagnosis of his own time. The age of revolution, he argues, had passion: people acted, and answered for what they did. The present age has reflection instead. Everyone discusses, nothing is decided, and envy works as a leveller, wearing down whatever stands out until no one can be distinguished from anyone else. The instrument of levelling is the press, which produces the public — a crowd that never gathers in one place, belongs to no one and answers for nothing. Against the public he sets only the single individual. Heiberg read the book at once and praised it warmly, and Gyllembourg wrote in April that she was pleased. A year and a half later, 131 of the 525 copies had sold. Its central section later circulated on its own in English as The Present Age. Heidegger's das Man, the faceless everyone of daily life, develops its account of levelling, and in 1999 the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus turned its argument on the internet.

Key concepts

What is Two Ages, the novel under review?

A short novel published in Copenhagen in the autumn of 1845, credited only to the anonymous author of A Story of Everyday Life, with J. L. Heiberg named as editor; its real author was his mother, Thomasine Gyllembourg. It is set in two periods, the revolutionary 1790s and the 1840s, and that contrast is what Kierkegaard turns into a diagnosis of his time.

What does Kierkegaard mean by levelling?

The process by which envy, in a reflective age, wears down whatever stands out until no one can be told apart from anyone else. It is not a revolt against the great but a slow erosion, carried out by no one in particular. Its instrument, on his account, is the press.

What is the public, in this book?

Not the people of a town but an abstraction produced by the press: a crowd that never gathers in one place, belongs to no one and answers for nothing. Anyone can belong to it without ever acting as themselves. Kierkegaard sets it against the single individual, the one figure who can still be held to account.

What is the present age?

The review's name for the 1840s, and later the title under which its central section circulated on its own in English. Where the age of revolution had passion, the present age has reflection: everyone discusses, nothing is decided, and whatever might demand a decision is talked into a possibility.

Who is the single individual?

Kierkegaard's name for a person who stands and answers for themselves rather than as part of a crowd. In this review it is the only counterweight he offers to levelling: not a movement or a reform, but each person becoming someone who can be held to what they say and do.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

An Age of Reflection, Without Passion

Gyllembourg's novel sets the revolutionary 1790s beside the 1840s. Kierkegaard reads the contrast as a diagnosis: the age of revolution acted and answered for its acts, while the present age discusses everything and decides nothing.

The review begins as literary criticism and turns into a portrait of his own time. In the revolutionary age people were carried by passion; they acted, and so could be held to what they did. The present age has reflection instead, which is not the same as thinking: it is the endless weighing of possibilities that makes every decision premature and every commitment look naive. Nothing is forbidden and nothing is done. The target is not intelligence but the way reflection can become a place to hide from having to act.

reflection
passion
action
decision
historical change
modernity
historical consciousness
character
characterization
literary criticism
literature
aesthetics
ideality
fidelity

Enter a dialogue

Levelling, the Public and the Single Individual

When envy wears down whatever stands out, who is left to answer for anything? Kierkegaard names the press's creation, the public, and sets against it only the single individual.

In a reflective age envy works as a leveller: not violently but steadily, wearing down anything distinguished until no one differs from anyone else. Its instrument is the press, which produces the public, a crowd that never gathers in one place, belongs to no one and answers for nothing. Everyone can belong to it without ever acting as themselves. Against it Kierkegaard sets no movement and no reform, only the single individual, who must learn to stand alone before standing with anyone. He wrote it in the weeks when The Corsair had just begun to mock him.

leveling
social leveling
envy
equality
individuality
selfhood
social criticism
self-deception
inwardness
religion
authorship
ethics

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 245
distinct concepts: 356
by passages held, corpus-wide: #305

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “individuality” and “religion”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 22 pairings. 86 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
individuality	religion	13
action	reflection	10
passion	reflection	7
individuality	reflection	6
inwardness	passion	6
inwardness	reflection	6
inwardness	love	5
individuality	love	4
individuality	literary criticism	3
inwardness	literary criticism	3
literary criticism	religion	3
love	reflection	3
reflection	religion	3
action	passion	2
individuality	passion	2
literary criticism	passion	2
love	religion	2
action	individuality	1
literary criticism	love	1
literary criticism	reflection	1
love	passion	1
passion	religion	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1841 The Concept of Irony (Om Begrebet Ironi)
Defended in September 1841 — after he had returned Regine Olsen's engagement ring, before the final break with her — this academic dissertation is the last book he signed himself before the pseudonymous books began with Either/Or.
DA
1843 Either/Or (Enten – Eller)
The first of the pseudonymous books: an invented editor presenting two invented authors, whose argument Stages on Life's Way would reopen two years later.
DA
1843 Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven)
Twin of Repetition, published the same October day: both books take up a man who must give up what he loves, one through Abraham and Isaac, the other through an engagement broken off.
DA
1843 Repetition (Gjentagelsen)
A short fiction, subtitled a venture in experimenting psychology: one man's account of a journey back to Berlin, and another man's letters about a love he has fled.
DA
1844 Philosophical Fragments (Philosophiske Smuler)
Johannes Climacus signs his first book here and returns in the far longer Postscript; in its author's lifetime this short thought experiment was little read outside Denmark.
DA
1844 The Concept of Anxiety (Begrebet Angest)
Philosophical Fragments had appeared four days earlier under another pseudonym; this is its companion, and it takes a point of church doctrine, inherited sin, and treats it as a problem in psychology.
DA
1845 Stages on Life's Way (Stadier paa Livets Vei)
Characters from Either/Or and Repetition return here, and the argument moves past the ethical into the religious.
DA
1846 Concluding Unscientific Postscript to "Philosophical Fragments" (Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift)
He meant it to close his authorship and later called it the authorship's turning point; after it, the openly religious writing takes over.
DA
1846 Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review (En literair Anmeldelse) you are here DA
1847 Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand)
Begun in the spring of 1846, while the satirical weekly The Corsair was still caricaturing him, it opens the run of signed religious books that fills the years after the Postscript.
DA
1847 Works of Love (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger)
Two series of deliberations, a form he set apart from the discourse because it is meant to unsettle a reader rather than console one, published six months after the Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits.
DA
1848 Christian Discourses (Christelige Taler)
The first book of 1848, the year he later called the richest of his authorship and the year he wrote The Sickness unto Death.
DA
1849 The Sickness unto Death (Sygdommen til Døden)
The first of two books signed by Anti-Climacus, with Practice in Christianity following in 1850; Kierkegaard later ranked the pair among the most important things he wrote.
DA
1849 Two Ethical-Religious Essays (Tvende ethisk-religieuse Smaa-Afhandlinger)
A slim pamphlet, the only book under the initials H.H., salvaged from a planned cycle of ethical-religious essays that he gave up in the spring of 1849.
DA
1850 Practice in Christianity (Indøvelse i Christendom)
Kierkegaard judged it the truest of all his books; with The Sickness unto Death it makes up the pair signed by Anti-Climacus.
DA
1851 For Self-Examination (Til Selvprøvelse, Samtiden anbefalet)
The last new title he published before three years of public silence, and the book whose planned second series became Judge for Yourselves!
DA
1855 The Moment (Øieblikket Nr. 1–10)
The open, signed form of the criticism that Practice in Christianity had made under a pseudonym, carried in a periodical of his own through the last months of his life.
DA
1876 Judge for Yourselves! (Dømmer selv! Til Selvprøvelse Samtiden anbefalet)
Of the books on this shelf, the only one he finished and then chose not to publish; it stands between the signed discourses of 1851 and the open attack on the church of 1854–55.
DA

— or open another of their works