Present age
philosophical concept
The "present age" is a concept in the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard. A formulation of the modern age can be found in Kierkegaard's work Two Ages: A Literary Review:
Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm, and shrewdly relapsing into repose. ... There is no more action or decision in our day than there is perilous delight in swimming in shallow waters.
Overview
Kierkegaard argues the present age drains the meaning out of ethical concepts through passionless indolence. The concepts are still used, but are drained of all meaning by virtue of their detachment from a life view which is passion-generated and produces consistent action.
Kierkegaard published this book in 1846 just after the Corsair Affair in which he was attacked by the press. He attacks not only the Press but the Public it serves in this book. He is against abstract moments in time or public opinion as a basis for forming relationships. He wrote about the single individual in his Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses and kept to that category here.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Present age” as philosophical concept. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as philosophical concept. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7240938. The first chronological checks are 1846.
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This entry incorporates text from “Present age” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.