Abstract
Excerpt: In 1846, Søren Kierkegaard introduced his scathing indictment of the present age, describing the modern self as a gregarious conformist, obsessed with public gossip, and constantly looking for novel distractions. “If I tried to imagine [such a person],” says a sarcastic Kierkegaard, “I should think of . . . a large well-fed figure, suffering from boredom, looking only for the sensual intoxication of laughter.” (1973, 267) Kierkegaard identifies what he sees as the “leveling” quality of mass democratic societies, where people are secure only insofar as they are equal, where they are like anyone else and “everyone is reduced to a common denominator.” (p. 269) The consequence, for Kierkegaard, is a tendency to conform to expectations of loquacious sociability, where being an assertive “people person” is praised and those solitary, introspective, and awkward types are stigmatized as abnormal, even criminal.
