ABSTRACT
Bruce H. Kirmmse’s main thesis is that Kierkegaard’s works, unlike those of the majority of his Golden Age contemporaries, “reflect the real tension of his society a society emerging from elite rule and poised on the edge of the democratic unknown.” Kirmmse positions his argument as a refutation of those who argue that Kierkegaard had “no politics at all, or, what amounts to the same thing, as having embraced a nostalgic, traditionalist, and irrational authoritarianism.” Though Kirmmse attempts to situate Kierkegaard’s texts in relation to the social, economic, and religious realities of the Golden Age, his methodology tends to undermine his goal. Any number of productive comparisons between Kierkegaard’s writings and specific Golden Age texts are passed over in favor of generalizations. Kirmmse’s study illustrates how important is it to read Kierkegaard’s texts in light of the specific social, political, and cultural conditions of their emergence.
