ABSTRACT
The monumental Dictionary of the Danish Language connects the word nivellere and its cognates with an agency that smooths out and therefore subverts all differences. Nivelleringen is that which equalizes, brings to a lower level, and even trivializes the exceptional, the heteronymous, the “other,” as it were.1 Kierkegaard makes a lot out of this particular feature, whose summit, both in terms of amplitude and nefariousness, he detects in post-1848 Danish society in conjunction with the modern dictatorship of the public, the advent of the mass man, and the consequent moral degradation of the press. However, Kierkegaard goes beyond the “heterophobic” dimension and phenomenologically describes the perilous consequences of the abstract equality and even hubristic evil of leveling. His judgments in this sense are not just incredibly insightful and quite prophetic for what was about to happen politically in twentiethcentury Europe; they also unfold in a superb literary prose.
