The question concerns the texture of daily life. Does the individual live with the assurance, conscious or unconscious, that We are absolute—or with … - Merold Westphal

Kierkegaard seeks to un-socialize the individual in order to un-deify society.

For the amoral herd that fears boredom above all else, everything becomes entertainment. Sex and sport, politics and the arts are transformed into entertainment… Nothing is immune from the demand that boredom be relieved (but without personal involvement, for mass society is a spectator society).

Hegel’s lack of charity toward the instrument metaphor is not arbitrary. It represents his disenchantment with the assumption that knowledge is power and that method is the means to this end… Descartes’ conception of method, like Bacon’s, is linked to this idea of knowledge as an instrument of power… The same could be said of Locke. Hegel can rightly claim that the instrument metaphor pervades the epistemological tradition he is seeking to transcend.