File spoon-archives/frankfurt-school.archive/frankfurt-school_2000/frankfurt-school.0008, message 12


Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 23:11:53 -0400
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.org>
Subject: Re: [Sloterdijk] Fw: Sv: SLOTERDIJK REVISITED


I find all these other works of Sloterdijk you mention highly unappealing.
I guess I can't trust anybody these days.  I read Sloterdijk's "The
Operable Man: On the Ethical State of the Gene Technology", which I pulled
from the web.  I have some blistering remarks about this Heideggerian
drivel to make on the Sloterdijk list.

At 10:54 AM 08/10/2000 +0200, Wouter Kusters wrote:
>His major other works are
>
>Eurotaoismus, according to the back cover "In Eurotaoismus Sloterdijk
tries to find an answer how it comes that what we do not want, still
happens. He tries to come to a new critical theory, which is more
penetrating than the the critical theories of Marx and the Frankfurter
Schule. On his own imaginative and sometimes ironic manner he analyses our
time and tries to formulate an adequate attitude to dynamics and
catastrophe." In which he finally failed, I remember my conclusion was. He
elaborates in this book much on the (Heidegger-stylish?) connections
between motion, mobility, movements, auto-mobility and so on, but does not
come much further than a call for "slow down". (though that may be enough).
>
>Weltfremdheit; which is a quite heterogeneous bundle of essays on quite
diverging themes, however all revolving around the theme of man who is
thrown into the world, and for whom there is no obvious escape or
hiding-place. Here the thinking is more heideggerian, I guess, but
conretized in actual situations, like "what does drugs use mean? What can
we do when we have completely finished our psychoanalysis, and only the
death-drive has left? In what sense does philosophy incorporate the
sleep/wake-rhythms? Recommended
>
>Selbstversuch -also translated in French BTW-; this is a book-long
interview with Carlos Oliveira, and is focused on modern man in the
nineties. It is about consumerism, mass media, "what will we *do* when the
revolution has finished?", modern religion, and so on. Recommended,
especially to get a quick insight into the various themes of Sloterdijk.
Here his style is most loose, satirical and grasping.
>
>
>Zur Welt kommen, zur Sprache kommen; an essay on Heidegger's
"Being-thrown" into the world, but dramatised and temporalized in the
actual "coming-into-existence" of children. It is about the both
ontogenetic and phylogenetic insufficiency of memory; it elaborates on
Cioran, and it stresses language as the constitution of any community.
>
>Sphären 1 und Sphären 2, two large works on the historical development of
community, with as general lead the fate of the Globus-metaphor, from the
Greeks, through the Medieval times, to modern times. 
>
>In addition to the books you mentioned these are his most important works.
Furthermore he has written some smaller essays, e.g., this modern essay on
the fate of humanism through the eyes of Plato, Nietzsche and Heidegger,
for which he was severely attacked in the German public opinion. For a full
list of his works, take a look at www.amazon.de
>
>BTW, if you read no German, follow the links on the website
http://www.egroups.com/links/Sloterdijk where I put also some links to
English translations of Sloterdijkialia.
>
>Wouter Kusters


---------------------------------------------------------------
Check out Ralph Dumain's "The Autodidact Project":
  <http://home.thirdage.com/education/ralphdavid>
Regular visitors can see what's new on the site at: 
  <http://home.thirdage.com/education/ralphdavid/whatnew.html>

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


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005