argument for seriousness

Further to the last post:

The reader should not mistake this for a conservative lament. Kierkegaard does not praise the past. He does not claim that earlier generations were noble or that older institutions were pure. His concern is simpler and more demanding. He asks whether the individual can recover a sense of interior responsibility that does not depend on the approval or the attention of the age. He urges the reader to confront the truth that each person must begin by governing himself before he imagines that he can contribute to the governance of the world. This is not an argument for withdrawal. It is an argument for seriousness.

Translator’s Preface (S.R. Travers) in The Present Age: On the Death of Rebellion