Kierkergaard\'s Present Age the Age

Kierkergaard's Present Age

The age of reason is devoid of any revolutionary passion. This is the age which "flies into enthusiasm for a moment only to decline back into indolence" (p.21). Even the suicidal person deliberately reflects and finally completes his act with impassionate certitude, that one can, Kierkergaard quips, barely call it suicide since it is thinking rather than impetuosity that takes his life. The Revolutionary Age, on the other hand, bursts with enthusiasm and unmitigated, unpremeditated fervor.

The Revolutionary Age runs out of control, but the Age of Reason hardly runs at all. Kierkergaard gives a memorable instance of a precious jewel on an ice-covered lake. In the Age of Passion, bystanders would cheer the hero who would attempt to grab that jewel. Their hearts would be with him, and their emotions anchored in his every move. In the age of reason, however, each of his stratagems, as, too, each of the stratagems of the bystanders, would be carefully calculated to please and excel. The age of passion is one of revolution. The age of reason is one of mendacity and placidity where fervor and ideas are considered eccentric and misplaced and ambitions impel towards accumulation of economic and worldly goods. The media plays the formative role, and even though the media spikes each incident with dramatic intent so that an alien to our present society would expect drama to occur on a regular schedule, in reality indolence and inertia are the characteristics of this age.

Weapons were the instrument of the Revolutionary age; in the age of reason, calculators and computers act as mediator between man and the world.

The Revolutionary Age is the Age of action; the Age of Reason, on the other hand, is the age of hype where action is said to happen, but, in reality, all that occurs is publicity around inaction that masquerades as action. It is as though, Kiekergaard says, the present age wishes to gift itself a vacation leaving the trial of responsibility to the next generation. But even its partying is conducted in a serious manner. "Men, then, only desire money, and money is an abstraction, a form of reflection" (p.25).

Our age, here in America, at least, is almost definitely that of the Age of reason. The closest we came to the Age of revolution was in the 1960s but with the start of the '70s and particularly the '80s, materialism become the grounding force, the media took over and ran out of control, and capitalism and greed became the order of the day.

Indolence is the record of the century. Introductory pages to Yahoo, for instance, minutely discuss an individual's fashion as groundbreaking news (the individual, incidentally, can be one 'star' amongst many), various ways to loose weight, or the latest toys on the market. Instruments devised to further communication from reality become increasingly more complex. Whilst supposedly linking us to people, Facebook, Twitter and ilk create a 'virtual space' reality, and virtual space has become the order of the day. TV, itself, is an undistinguished conglomeration of surreal images, which, although allegedly based on reality, are, with the inclusion of news documentaries, quite distinct. It is for this reason that this age has been called the post modernistic era with the term 'modernism' being insufficient. Ours is a collage of impressions, with concepts such as Truth, Fulfillment, and Meaning, being, as Foucault, Derrida, and Habermas amongst a host of other deconstructionists, post modernist and nihilist thinkers have styled it, relativistic, dated, anachronistic, and actually non-existent.

The representative monument of our times -- in the same way as man's step on the moon signaled the '60s -- is Michael Graves' Disney building in Burbank, California the atlantes who support the mausoleum depict Snow White's Seven dwarfs with pride of place being given to Dopey.