Leveling is a social process in which the uniqueness of the individual is rendered non-existent by assigning equal value to all aspects of human endeavors, thus missing all the intricacies and subtle complexities of human identity.
[ Dreyfus, Hubert. ''Kierkegaard on the Internet: Anonymity Vrs. Commitment in the Present Age'']
Berkeley.edu
/ref> Leveling is highly associated with existential philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on ...
.
Overview
For Kierkegaard, leveling was the process of suppressing individuality to a point where the individual's uniqueness becomes non-existent and nothing meaningful in his existence can be affirmed:
However, Kierkegaard's idea of leveling wasn't one of making life meaningless but of making life equal because every single individual has equal access to the grace and gifts of God. He wasn't concerned with earthly and material goods.
German philosopher Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
wrote of leveling: "by averageness and leveling down, everything gets obscured, and what has thus been covered up gets passed off as something familiar and accessible to everyone. ...by virtue of an insensitivity to all distinctions in level and genuineness, and in providing average intelligibility, opens up a standard world in which all distinctions between the unique and the general, the superior and the average, the important and the trivial have been leveled".
See also
* Existentialism
* Nihilism
Nihilism (; ) is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning. The term was popularized by Ivan ...
* Present age
References
External links
* Gregory B. Sadler
''Existentialism: Soren Kierkegaard, "The Present Age"''
June 5, 2012. YouTube.
* Robert Shut
Soren Kierkegaard "The Present Age" (Part 1)
* Robert Shut
Soren Kierkegaard "The Present Age" (Part 2)
{{Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
Continental philosophy
Self
Value (ethics)