Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 10:35:11 -0400
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.org>
Subject: SLOTERDIJK VS. HABERMAS


Following up on a question raised a couple of months ago: I just discovered
an article inthe April/May 2000 issue of PHILOSOPHY NOW (#26) that reports
on a major controversy surrounding Peter Sloterdijk, which now involves a
public row with Habermas.  As we discussed before, Sloterdijk was accused
in the press of promoting fascistic ideas concerning eugenics.  In
retaliation for this alleged misrepresentation of his ideas, Sloterdijk
publicly accused Habermas of secretly influencing the press, and accusing
criticial thory of being dead in the process.  Habermas responded publicly,
and according to the article the debate in Germany is hot and heavy.

Judging from this two-page report (admittedly, all the information I have
to go on), I am far more disturbed by other remarks attributed to
Sloterdijk than I am by any eugenics talk.  Sloterdijk is supposed to have
said that humanism was nothing more than an attempt to tame people thorugh
literature, and now that the media rules and people can no longer be krpt
under control, other means are necessary.  Sloterdijk also presewnts
himself as a victim of the culture of hypermoralism and left-fascist
agitation.  Is it possible that Sloterdijk has indeed succumbed to
crypto-fascist thinking, or at the very least, to cynical reason?  I daily
regret that the USA is an intellectually vacuous country, but if this is
what public intellectual life is like in Europe, who needs it?




--------------------------------------------------
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"Nature has no outline but imagination has."  
                          -- William Blake