When Kierkegaard Got Cancelled

The year was 1845. At the time, the country of Denmark was experiencing a cultural renaissance of sorts. This “golden age” swelled with nationalistic fervor, artistic innovation, and intense political debate. Among its many rising cultural voices was Peder Ludvig Møller, a romantic poet and critic who often clashed with the rigid Hegelian orthodoxy seeping into the academy. He fancied himself a public figure in the mold of Lord Byron – sophisticated, worldly, and drawn to art and scandal.Rising alongside him was Søren Kierkegaard.The two men shared surface-level similarities. They were close in age and both studied at the University of Copenhagen. Each also saw himself as a rebel against the rote conventions of the day, yet their defiance took strikingly different forms. Møller’s public notoriety stood in sharp contrast to Kierkegaard’s introspective methods, defense of fidelity, and relentless pursuit of religious truth.A confrontation between these two would ignite one of the most notorious clashes in Danish literary history.Bad PressThe controversy began on December 22, 1845.Around this time, Kierkegaard completed his Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, which he regarded as the capstone of his work to date. With the tome finished, he intended to step back from public drama. He even toyed with the idea of pursuing the quiet life of a rural pastor. But the peaceful transition he envisioned never arrived.The trouble began when Møller published an uncharitable review of one of Kierkegaard’s books in his well-regarded Gaea Aesthetic Yearbook.Møller’s took aim at Kierkegaard’s philosophical novel Stages on Life’s Way, particularly the section featuring the character Johannes the Seducer. As the unsavory name suggests, this Don Juan figure offers a brazen defense of refined hedonism. Møller insinuated that many of his more vulgar antics were thinly veiled reflections of Kierkegaard himself, especially in light of the philosopher’s famously turbulent broken engagement to Regine Olsen.Worse still, Møller seemed to miss the point of the book entirely. Taking Kierkegaard’s irony at face value, he ended up celebrating the libertine worldview of Johannes.

In doing so, Møller did more than scorn the author – he mangled the work as an endorsement of the very message Kierkegaard sought to oppose.Usually, a poor review could be ignored. But Kierkegaard knew what others did not. Møller – despite cultivating a façade of intellectual prestige – held undisclosed ties to The Corsair, Copenhagen’s most notorious satirical magazine and scandal sheet.The Corsair True to its name, The Corsair cultivated a reputation for mischief. The magazine thrived on the polarization of its day, taking equal pleasure in mocking the political extremism of radicals and of conservatives.Under the editorship of Meïr Goldschmidt, the magazine’s fortunes soared by exploiting the public’s appetite for outrage. Articles frequently relied on exaggerated – and at times outright false – stories about Denmark’s most prominent figures. Accuracy and integrity were secondary to the relentless churn of opinions. The formula worked. For all its disrepute, The Corsair became a national sensation.The situation was further complicated by a past friendship. As it happened, Kierkegaard and Goldschmidt, the magazine’s gifted young editor, were once on friendly terms. Goldschmidt even sought Kierkegaard’s counsel upon assuming control of the paper. Kierkegaard advised him to pursue “the comic” in its higher sense – a form of satire aimed at self-reflection and moral insight. Goldschmidt, however, took this advice as license for provocation and contrarianism for its own sake. As The Corsair’s tone grew more caustic, Kierkegaard became increasingly dismayed. He felt a mounting desire to separate Goldschmidt from Møller, to “snatch, if possible, a talented man from being an instrument of rabble-barbarism.”1The stage was set for Kierkegaard’s next provocative move.Suffering AloneIn public columns responding to the review, Kierkegaard cleared up the misunderstanding regarding his work’s intent. Along the way, he took a sly swipe at The Corsair’s disinterest in his private life – after all, he was evidently sophisticated enough to earn Møller’s attention: “Would that I might only get into The Corsair soon,” he wrote. “It is really hard for a poor author to be so singled out in Danish literature that he is the only one not abused there.

”2 By inviting the magazine’s attention in this manner, Kierkegaard wagered, the public might finally glimpse the unprincipled rot beneath the magazine’s indiscriminate attacks.To guarantee a response, Kierkegaard went further.Kierkegaard publicly identified Møller – the figure so esteemed in Copenhagen’s cultural and political circles – as the man anonymously pulling the strings behind The Corsair. Up until this point, Møller had tried to conceal his involvement to safeguard both his elite reputation and his career path. By exposing the business connection, Kierkegaard not only laid bare the truth but also dealt a decisive blow to Møller’s social standing and academic ambitions.The gambit worked.Beginning in early 1846, Meïr Goldschmidt led The Corsair to unleash a torrent of conspiratorial gossip and ridicule against Kierkegaard. Its pages gradually featured caricatured cartoons exaggerating Kierkegaard’s crooked spine, mockery of his eccentric outfits, and lurid tales spun around his former fiancée. Subscriptions soared as the public tuned in to watch the feud unfold.The mockery spilled through the city’s cafés and street corners. Kierkegaard’s ritual walks and interactions with strangers were jeopardized as people would recognize his appearance in the streets and mock him openly. His book title Either/Or morphed into a catchphrase for being indecisive, and the name “Søren” itself became slang. Local university students staged a comedy whose chief buffoon bore the name “Søren Kirk.”Kierkegaard and Goldschmidt in The Corsair. Illustration from Corsair no. 279, 1846. Public domain.The episode proved far more devastating than Kierkegaard had anticipated. He expected that his criticisms would provoke some controversy and perhaps irritate a few people, but he did not foresee the intensity or the personal nature of the backlash he would face. He was subjected to prolonged and deeply personal attacks that continued for months. The season of humiliation weighed heavily on his spirit. In his journals he would remember this entire experience simply as the “Corsair Affair.”What pained him most, though, was not the ridicule but the silence of those he had counted as friends and allies.