In December 1845, poet and critic Peder Ludvig Møller published an uncharitable review of Søren Kierkegaard's novel Stages on Life's Way in his Gaea Aesthetic Yearbook, misreading the Johannes the Seducer character as a thinly veiled self-portrait tied to Kierkegaard's broken engagement to Regine Olsen. Møller missed the irony entirely, celebrating the libertine worldview Kierkegaard meant to oppose. The clash that followed became one of Danish literary history's most notorious episodes.

Kierkegaard exposed Møller's undisclosed ties to The Corsair, Copenhagen's notorious satirical magazine edited by Meïr Goldschmidt. Goldschmidt had once sought Kierkegaard's advice but turned toward provocation. In retaliation, The Corsair unleashed months of personal ridicule — cartoons mocking Kierkegaard's appearance, gossip about Regine Olsen, and street-level mockery that turned "Søren" into slang for indecisiveness.

What struck Kierkegaard most was not the mockery but the silence of his friends. No allies came forward. Writing Two Ages amid the assault, he framed the scandal as a cultural symptom rather than personal grievance, diagnosing Denmark's "age of advertisement and publicity" where nothing happens but outrage spreads everywhere. The Corsair Affair remains his starkest proof that the crowd devours the individual it claims to celebrate.