Media, Authenticity, and Religion Søren Kierkegaard as Media Critic.

AbstractIn this paper Søren Kierkegaard's "Two ages" is analysed as an example of early modern media criticism. Existentialist thinkers like Nietzsche, Jaspers, Heidegger and Sartre have dealt with the authenticity of the self, and the ideal of staying true to the uniqueness of one's own being in spite of societal or cultural obstacles. Sartre, for example, noted that his time and culture was too artificial to allow for authenticity of the self. Media has often been seen as a part of the increasingly artificial landscape of modern society. For Kierkegaard, however, the criticism of media had a clearly religious dimension. From a different angle than John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville - who both considered the problem of the public sphere and the press in the 19th century as tyranny of the masses - Kierkegaard disliked the press because it offered a shortcut to forming own opinions by presenting ready-made thoughts and shallow entertainment instead of helping people in facing reality. The media offered escape from reality into fiction, from your own experiences into someone else's and as a consequence, was a threat to religious life. He saw media as an intervening agency, blocking people's way to true experiences, authenticity and, ultimately, God. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]