From: "Wouter Kusters" <wkusters-AT-rullet.leidenuniv.nl>
Subject: Re: Sloterdijk and Adorno
Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 00:38:10 +0200


 Ralph Dumain wrote

>This may not be so helpful as far as the professional/academic
>appropriation of Sloterdijk is concerned, but you might be interested in
>knowing a little about the dissemination of Sloterdijk's ideas among the
>general public.

Yes, thanks.

> When CRITIQUE OF CYNICAL REASON came out in English, I
>spotted it in a local bookstore, and just seeing the title, I concluded,
>now this is the book I've looking for.  About the same time I came across a
>book review in a magazine about the media, it may have been PROPAGANDA
>REVIEW.  Several of my friends read parts of this book and it showed up in
>reading circles, though I'm not certain that any of them finished it, and
>come to think of it, I don't believe I did either.  It seems that what
>captivated us all was not so much the detailed presentation of Sloterdijk's
>ideas, but his general conception of cynical reason as enlightened false
>consciousness, a peculiar state of culture in which all the dirt is out in
>the open, people think they see through everything but still manage to be
>fooled all the time and complicit in society's crimes.  Hence the
>traditional enlightener's conception of exposing illusions and revealing
>hidden truths needs to be revised in light of this changed situation.  This
>powerful conception has influenced many people here who may not have
>appropriated Sloterdijk in detail.

Yes, that is one of the main thoughts in that book. Another important one is the elaboration on the cynism/kynism distinction. Cynism is what you have described here above, a state of mind and disposition to act, or rather non-act in a specific state of western culture in the eighties. Kynical is called the original impulse, practiced by Diogenes, and later by others like, Uylenspiegel, Nietzsche and the young Marx -before The German Ideology. Kynism is full of mock, without ressentiment, with affirmation, and never defensive neither in a discourse style or mood imitated or copied from the oppressor.
To me and others here in the Netherlands, that book meant a lot. After developing and studying thoughts and thinking from politics from a leftist engaged point of view, many became tired with theoretical analyses in the margins, which never came out of the saloon, while others who were in activism always felt the breath of the nihilist 'realists' in their necks. For me, oscillating between a view on society from the left and a philosophical engagement mainly in the analytical sphere, it meant a bridge between individual thinking and a critical view on society, by means of using joy as a weapon. Since then, my hunger to philosophy has grown and has remained on the continental side, in Sloterdijk's other writings, other German philosophy, and in all post-Saussurean French thinking. However, only in my 'freetime', since in my profession I am a PhD student in linguistics.

>This might be a lesson in the cross-cultural propagation of ideas.  Perhaps
>Americans whose specialty is German philosophy and/or history of ideas know
>what role Sloterdijk plays in his own country, or how he fits into the
>history and flow of Germanic intellectual life. But many Americans have no
>real context for Sloterdijk other than to incorporate him into their own
>agendas and interests, which may have little to do with whatever role he
>plays in his home intellectual environment.  I suspect this is, so because
>I recently came across some news article, in a journal or on the Internet,
>which revealed to my surprise that Sloterdijk now plays the role of a very
>controversial gadfly much reviled by progressive thinkers, I think for some
>remarks on eugenics ro genetic engineering.


Oops, I know what you are referring to. But to know what is actually going on in Germany, you should understand that Germany is unlike the Netherlands or the USA, in being historically very conscious and sensitive to what happened in the last century. After the second world war, slowly a cultural sphere has grown, in which all moral standards directly or indirectly refer back to WW2. For that reason many themes are declared to lie in no-go areas, for instance the heritage of Nietzsche and the societal consequences of Heidegger's thinking. Now, Sloterdijk played with some of the notions of Nietzsche, Heidegger, but also Plato, on a conference on 'Letter on Humanism' of Heidegger, with as main thread that humanism should go back to the classroom to think again about what human being is, should be and can be. In this context he mentioned the possibility that the humanist tradition of education through writings and books would be replaced by writing directly into nature, that is in DNA. Well, have one German journalist in the room, and use the word 'anthropotechnics', and the reflex is: "Here I smell a scandal, here is a fascist." You can imagine what followed; letters and reactions in the press, and the formation of two extreme camps. However, most of this was on the level of journalism, where rethorics and commercial considerations play a large role.
Therefore, do not judge too quickly. If anyone would like to read the original text by Sloterdijk, it is on the web, in German, somewhere in the archives of Die Zeit, I lost unfortunately the actual web-site.

>There is an additional factor which this group here may not appreciate
>given their own investment, but I think there is something quite different
>in how European intellectuals operate and most people with an intellectual
>bent here outside of specialists making their careers in intellectual
>history.  It seems that Europeans cannot just espouse ideas and apply them
>to current conditions; no, they have to ingest and excrete huge quantities
>of cultural capital in the process, so that they can distinguish themselves
>in the crowded intellectual field by digesting and positioning themselves
>in relation to their entire history of abstract ideas.  Hence I suspect
>that Sloterdijk's own agenda differs from the much simpler position of many
>of his American admirers who are just interested, as I am, in exploiting
>the idea of cynical reason and applying it directly to our own
>circumstances.  (I've also read THINKER ON STAGE, in case you are curious.)

Hmm, unmasking the will to knowledge as a will to power. Maybe you are right in some respects. Mybe the cultural field in America demands more pragmaticism and "what can I buy for it"-mentality, while Europeans can more easily refrain from direct applications, not sensing a frontier to the wild next door, but only sensing a source of historically layered wisdoms. However, if your suggestion is that Sloterdijk's engagement in philosophical thinking is sincere in its Critic, but only driven by cultural capital reasons when exploring early medieval thoughts, or Nietzsche, then you are taking large steps to come home earlier.

>However, since I know little of the position Sloterdijk occupies in his
>home territory, so I hope you will inform us about it in some detail.


I hope I did a little. I must admit however that I am not a professional philosopher, neither am I from Germany. So, the actual status of Sloterdijk in German Academia I donot know. I know that Sloterdijk can get along with Safranski rather well, and that he has declared Habermas as his opponent. How serious the debate on humanism, Heidegger, Critical Theory, and so on, is in Germanic academia, I do not know. If anyone knows more, I'd like to hear it, also the reception of other works of Sloterdijk in academic or non-academic circles in Germany or elsewhere I am interested in.
To say a few things more on Sloterdijk's interests: Before Critique of the cynical reason, he wrote his dissertation on autobiographies and life histories, after which he was into the Baghwan for a while, which he -in opposition to many 'remorseful communists'- never made apologies for. After the Critic he wrote Eurotaoism, on mobility, automobility, mobilization etc. Then he took some interest in early medieval texts of mystical thinkers. Recently he wrote two parts of a trilogy about the history of the metaphor of the globus, from the Greeks until recent globalization. Well, maybe I should say no more on Sloterdijk's later works, 'cause I have the impression that it is not exactly supporting his popularity on this list....

Wouter Kusters