Erschienen in Ausgabe: No. 20 (2/2003) | Letzte Änderung: 27.01.09 |
An Introduction to Peter Sloterdijk’s “Critique of Cynical Reason”
von Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
In this essay I wish to
give an introduction to the first main work of a major German
contemporary philosopher - Peter Sloterdijk. He was born in Karlsruhe
in 1947. 36 years later, in 1983, he became the shooting star of
German philosophy with the publication of his early main work ‘The
Critique of Cynical Reason’ with which I will be concerned in
this paper.
In later publications he
has dealt with topics as diverse as the flight from the world
(Weltflucht) of monks, to the cultural history of drugs, the location
when we listen to music [Sloterdijk (1993a)], and even a Taoism for
Europe [Sloterdijk (1996)]. In addition, it should be mentioned that
the philosoüphy of his latest main works which are called
“Spheres” {“Sphären 1” [Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1998b] & “Sphären 2”
[Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1999]} differs significantly
from the ‘Critique of Cynical Reason’. Yet, he is not
only a philosopher and cultural critic, but he has also published a
novel called ‘the magic tree’ (Der Zauberbaum)
[Sloterdijk (1985)] which deals with the birth of psychoanalysis. His
fame in German philosophical circles is only being matched by
Habermas, Marquard, and Gadamer.
There are, however, also
quite a few people, who would object to me calling Sloterdijk a
philosopher, because, according to them, Sloterdijk lacks academic
rigour, and deals with topics not normally discussed in Academic
philosophy. Still, Habermas takes him seriously [J. Habermas, in:
Pflasterstrand: Nr.: 159 / 1983], internationally renowned Professors
of philosophy have written articles about him [ed. Suhrkamp (1987)],
and there are already lecture series being organised on some of his
writings in Germany, so it seem as if one should not dismiss him that
easily, even if the initial impression one might get about him is
that he is just a cultural critic.
Let
us consider the philosopher’s educational background. Peter
Slotterdijk went through the German educational system. He studied
German literature, history, and philosophy in Munich and Hamburg,
where he received his Dr. phil. in German Literature. After he had
finished his studies, he was working as a free lance writer in Munich
for some time. Then he was producing his “Critique of Cynical
Reason”. Nowadays, he is a Professor at the Karlsruher
Hochschule für Gestaltung, and the Wiener Akademie der Bildenden
Künste.
Although,
he now is a professional academic, his inventive style of writing has
not changed, and the titles, as well as the content of his works are
still as innovative and idiosyncratic as they used to be in his early
publications. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has even
compared him to such high class writers as Schopenhauer, and Spengler
[J. Busche, in FAZ: 7.4.1983]. Besides Sloterdijk’s rather dull
discussion of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy in his “Thinker
on Stage” [Sloterdijk (1989)], wherein one gets to know
Sloterdijk, but not Nietzsche; I regard this to be a fair estimation.
After briefly having
introduced Sloterdijk as a person, and a writer, I wish to turn to
his main work – ‘The Critique of Cynical Reason’.
This 1000 page long giant was published in Germany in 1983, and
translated into English in 1987. It contains some of the most
refreshing German prose written after 1945. As the title already
suggests it is a Critique, which criticises cynical reason. This
sounds interesting, but where can we place him as a philosopher, one
might wonder.
Peter Sloterdijk is not
someone, who would translate philosophy as ‘love of the truth’,
because he is not concerned with the great metaphysical, ontological,
and epistemological problems:
The great themes, they
were evasions and half truths. Those futile, beautiful, soaring
flights - God, Universe, Theory, Praxis, Subject, Object, Body,
Spirit, Meaning , Nothingness - all that is nothing. They are nouns
for young people, for outsiders, clerics, sociologists. [Sloterdijk
(1987b): P. xxvi]
His philosophy is about
all the seemingly insignificant, apparently lower aspects of life.
The Zeitgeist has left its
mark on us, and whoever wants to decipher it is faced with the task
of working on the psychosomatics of Cynicism. This is what an
integrating philosophy demands of itself. It is called integrating
because it does not let itself be seduced by the attraction of the
‘great problems’, but instead initially finds its themes
in the trivial, in everyday life, in the so-called unimportant, in
those things that otherwise are not worth speaking about, in petty
details. Whoever wants to can, in such a perspective, already
recognise the kynical impulse for which the ‘low-brow themes’
are not too low. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 140 – 141]
He is still concerned with
the questions of life, and of values, if we take values not only to
refer to general principles, but include attitudes towards life as
well. So, one could say that Sloterdijk understands philosophy as the
‘love of wisdom’. Thereby, he is one of Nietzsche’s
philosopher’s of the future, who are the inventors of new
values, and do not believe in the truth anymore. In other words, he
is a post-modernist. I take the term ‘post-modernist’ to
refer to someone who regards the possibility of human beings to get
to know the truth, in respect to metaphysics as well as in respect to
ethics, as impossible. This implies that for him there is also no set
of values, or principles, which is absolutely valid. A couple of
problems in respect to ones own life arise out of this attitude
because each of us has to find answers to the following questions:
How am I supposed to live? What are the values, and principles, I
intend to stick to? What could be a possible basis for my actions?
Sloterdijk does not provide direct answers to these questions.
If we took the notion
‘value’ to refer to general principles concerning the
good life only, then Sloterdijk would not be a philosopher in the
above mentioned sense because, in contrast to Marx, and Nietzsche, he
is not building up a new immanent system of virtues and values to
give answers to the aforementioned questions {“New values? No
thanks!” [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 6]}, but he accepts that
currently our Western societies are mainly based on nihilism, and
puts forward an altered attitude towards it. The present attitude
human beings take in respect to life, if they believe in nihilism, is
Cynicism, according to him. This he contrasts with Kynicism, and
while doing so he describes Kynicism in such a way that this state of
consciousness is much more appealing than the cynical one. Therefore,
one can say that he is putting forward Kynicism as a better reaction
to nihilism than Cynicism. Cynicism as well as Kynicism are states of
consciousness, according to Sloterdijk, and they also agree insofar
as they both are far beyond the belief in idealism, and stable,
absolute values. Whenever Sloterdijk employs the term “idealism”,
he does not mean typical idealism a la Hegel, but he refers to all
types of belief in absolutes. The loss of the belief in stable
values, idealism et cetera, e.g. nihilism, was brought about by the
Enlightenment movement. This movement was accompanied by the cynical
attitude, which he criticises in this work. His work is not primarily
a critique of the Enlightenment, as Andreas Huyssen pointed out
[Sloterdijk (1987b): Foreword], but rather a critique of the attitude
of Cynicism, which accompanied the Enlightenment movement. It is not
a critique of the Enlightenment at all, but only a critique of the
state of consciousness, which is usually brought about by any form of
enlightenment, e.g. Cynicism, or as he calls it: Cynical reason.
After having pointed out,
where Peter Sloterdijk is to be found on the philosophical map, I now
give a brief overview over the structure of the ‘Critique of
Cynical Reason’. In the first part of his Critique, he provides
us with the concepts of “Cynicism” and “Kynicism”,
and states examples of the loss of absolutes from the Enlightenment
period, which have brought about cynical reason in human beings. In
the second main part, which is nearly three times longer than the
first, he goes through masses of examples of Cynicism in the world
process. These examples are divided up into four main categories. The
first one deals with physionomy, the second with phenomenology, the
third with logic, and the last with a historical example, e.g. the
Weimar Republic. He does so to provide us with an understanding of
the various variations and complexities of Cynicism. One should also
bear in mind that the four headings, just mentioned, have rather
idiosyncratic meanings within his work, which are however easily
grasped, if one reads the parts itself. Space here is too limited to
deal with all the problematic notions in question, but a brief
introduction to the key notions of the ‘Critique of Cynical
Reason’ can be given.
I begin with an
interpretation of what took place during the Enlightenment period,
according to Sloterdijk, this leads me to an analysis of the notion
of ‘Cynicism’, which as an attitude towards life is
supposed to be prevalent in the present, and finally I put forward my
analysis of Sloterdijk’s notion ‘Kynicism’, which
he defends as an alternative to ‘Cynicism’.
The Enlightenment brought
about the end of the Christian domination of the Western world, a
destruction of any ideals, absolutes, or truths, whether in respect
to ontology, or morality. The various destruction’s, of course,
did not happen from one moment to the other, but took place over a
long period of time. In the history of philosophy the enlightenment
began with Descartes “Meditations”. Kants critiques are
further central works concerning the enlightenment movement. The more
the Enlightenment progressed, the more the importance of nihilism
increased, as more and more ideals were destroyed. However, within
the enlithenment one still has had the reasonable unified subject on
which one could rely and on which all critiques but also all
positive, non nihilistic conceptions, like Kantian ethics, were
based. So within the enlightenment there was still a small stronghold
against nihilism – the reasonable unified subject.
Before the enlightenment,
one used to believe that the Christian metaphysics is true, that the
bible was revealed to us and represents the actual word of God, that
human beings can get to know the metaphysic of the whole world by
using their faculty of reason, that if we live a moral life we will
gain an eternal blissful afterlife, that any form of absolutes exists
ontologically in some separate realm, that the earth is at the centre
of the universe, that God is the creator of everything and many other
things from the support we get from Angels to the existence of the
devil. However, in the Enlightenment period all these beliefs and
various others more were attacked by critiques. A critique is a
theory or a set of beliefs which attacks or sheds doubt upon an
absolute truth, an indubitable belief. Human beings use their faculty
of reason to undertake these critiques. Sloterdijk explains the
dynamic of these critiques as follows, and counterposes his own
critique to the other ones:
It
is the a-priori pain - it makes even the simplest things in life
difficult for a person - that opens his eyes critically. There is no
significant critique without significant defects. It is the
critically wounded in a culture who, with great effort, find
something healing, who continue to turn the wheel of critique...
Among the great critical achievements in modern times, sores open up
everywhere... Out of the self healing of deep sores come critiques
that serve epochs as rallying points for self knowledge. Every
critique is pioneering work on the pain of the times (Zeitschmerz)
and a piece of exemplary healing.
It is not my ambition to
enlarge this honourable infirmary of critical theories. It is time
for a new critique of temperaments. Where enlightenment appears as a
‘melancholy science’ (Adorno, Transl.), it
unintentionally furthers melancholic stagnation. Thus, the critique
of cynical reason hopes to achieve more from a work that cheers us
up, whereby it is understood from the beginning that it is not so
much a matter of work but rather of relaxation. [Sloterdijk (1987b):
P. xxxvi – xxxvii]
So
Sloterdijk’s critique is supposed to be a gay science,
as opposed to the critiques of the enlightenment which were sad
sciences because they merely destroyed all the ideals in which
people used to believe in, which people employed for structuring
their lives, and which provided a meaning to the lives of people. Of
course, his critique aims to destroy or attack something as well.
Yet, what it goes against is an attitude towards life which makes
people miserable and depressed, whereas the ideals the Enlightenment
critiques attacked brought at least an apparent fulfilment and joy
into the lives of the people, like a blissful afterlife. This can be
seen at the critiques which came up during the Enlightenment period:
There is the Critique of
Revelation, Religious Illusion, Metaphysical Illusion, the Idealistic
Superstructure, Moral Illusion, Transparency, Natural Illusion, and
Illusion of Privacy. I do not wish to go into too much detail here,
although Sloterdijk does. He sets out the different critiques in a
fairly detailed manner. I will cite only three examples from two
categories. I have taken the first one from Sltoterdijk’s
critique of religious illusion. It is the theory of priests’
deception, as it came up in the 18th century:
It
is known as the theory of priests’ deception. Here
enlightenment approaches religion through an instrumentalist
perspective by asking, Whom does religion serve, and what function
does it serve in the life of society? The enlighteners were not at a
loss for the - apparently simple - answer. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P.
28]
All
religions are erected on the ground of fear. Gales, thunder,
storms... are the cause of this fear. Human beings who felt impotent
in the face of such natural events, sought refuge in beings who were
stronger than themselves. Only later did ambitious men, artful
politicians and philosophers begin to take advantage of the
people’s gullibility. For this purpose they invented a
multitude of equally fantastic and cruel gods, who serve no other
purpose than to consolidate and maintain their power over people..
[Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 28]
Here the Christian
metaphysics was being attacked by a philosopher. However, this sort
of critique was not only practised by politicians, or philosophers,
but also of artists, as one can see at the next example taken from
Heinrich Heine’s work. It goes against the morals of the
servants of God on earth:
I know the style, I know
the text
And also their lordships,
the authors:
I know they secretly drank
wine
And publicly preached
water. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 33]
The last example I wish to
give is contained in Sloterdijk’s critique of illusion of
privacy. It deals with the place of the self in relation to nature
and society. It tells us that:
In
that which is ‘given in nature’ there is always something
‘given in addition’ by human beings. [Sloterdijk
(1987b): P. 59]
The
aristocratic programming of a heightened self-consciousness, however,
comprises more than just what is too hastily called vanity or
arrogance. It provides at the same time a high level of character
formation and education that works to form opinions, etiquette,
emotionality, and cultural taste... With the ascendancy of the
bourgeoisie, the place of the ‘best’ is awarded
anew... The bourgeoisie found its own way of being better than
the others, better than the corrupt nobility and the uncultivated
mob. At first its class ego raised itself on the feeling of having
the better, purer, more rational, and more useful morality in
all areas of life, from sexuality to management... From a historical
perspective, the bourgeoisie is the first class that has learned to
say I and at the same time has the experience of labour...
When the bourgeois says ‘I’ the idea of the pride of
labour, of productive accomplishment can also be heard for the first
time... In the workers’ movement... a new
political ego took the floor once more. It was no longer a bourgeois
ego, but initially and for a long time, it spoke a bourgeois
language... Its ideology was: freedom, equality, solidarity... The
labourer ego... possesses no primary narcissistic will to power.
[Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 62 - 66]
i.e. it does not claim to
be the best form of life as the others do.
At these excerps it
becomes clear that Sloterdijk does not put forward arguments but
merely states claims. As he thinks that there is no truth, and that
anything can possibly be argued given the respective premisses, he
turns to the premisses themselves, and tells a tempting story with
which he tries to convince the readers of the plausibility of his
premisses, and his story. Here he tries to convey that if one
understands that the aristocratic morality or the middle class
morality were only regarded as the one and only natural morality
because it suited the character of the inventors and usually the
subscribers of the respective morality, then it is tempting to start
to believe in the relativity of morality. Every social group develops
a morality suitable for its own good. Members of the different
groups, once they are aware of the fact that they have the morality
they have because they are who they are, and not because it is the
one and only true morality, and who still have to stick to the
morality accepted in their social group, tend to become cynics, which
means that the enlightenment about the non universal validity of a
strong morality makes them miserable. Enlightenment thinkers realised
that any strong account of the Good cannot claim universal validity,
and so they tried to establish a universal morality based on reason.
This, however, did not provide them with a strong conceptions of the
Good life, but only with an account of what should not be done. From
then on it was allowed to do what one whises to do, as long as one
did not limit the freedom of other individuals, because all
individuals have the right to be free, as they all are reasonable
creatures.
No matter whether it is
morality or religion, as it is the case in our two examples, or
whether we take other cases of Enlightenment critiques into
consideration, what is important is that traditional absolutes were
destroyed by putting forward different explanations which suggest
that the absolutes in questions are no absolutes, but are rather
regarded as truth or absolutely valid due to who one is, yet they are
metaphysically non existent. The whole tradition of critiques can be
subsumed under the heading of critiques of ideologies.
The
‘philosophical’ ideology critique is truly the heir if a
great satirical tradition, in which the motif of unmasking,
exposing, baring has served for aeons now as a weapon. But modern
ideology critique - according to our thesis has ominously cut itself
away from the powerful traditions of laughter in satirical knowledge,
which have their roots in ancient Kynicism. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P.
16]
So although the history of
critiques of ideologies was linked to laughter and the satiric
tradition, it has dissolved from this and has altered into one which
leads to misery, depression, and pessimism. Sloterdijk calls this
attitude towards life Cynicism. It came into existence parallel to
the progression of the enlightenment period, and has now reached a
very influential position in our society.
What is Cynicism?
Cynicism
is enlightened false consciousness [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 5]
Sloterdijks understands
Cynicism as enlightened false consciousness. I have already alluded
to what this means. A cynic is someone, who is part of an
institution, or group, whose existence and values he himself can no
longer see as absolute, necessary and unconditional, and who is
miserable, due to this enlightenment, because he sticks to principles
he does not believe in. The only knowledge left for a cynic is his
trust in reason, which, however, cannot provide him with a firm basis
for action, and this again is another reason for being miserable.
According to Sloterdijk
Cynicism, nowadays, is a common problem. He even says that Cynicism
is universal. I do not think that he says this to refer to the whole
world because the form of Cynicism he describes is clearly linked to
the Enlightenment, and this also implies that he is mainly justified
in referring to the history of the Western industrial countries, or
at most all the educated people all over the world, although even
this seems to go a bit far because I think that the educated people
especially in Asian countries still are very involved in the
traditional religions of their countries. This means that the
Cynicism we are concerned with is mainly a phenomenon of the Western
Industrial countries.
The discontent in our
culture has assumed a new quality: it appears as a universal, diffuse
Cynicism. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 3]
According to Sloterdijk,
the corner stone for this development can already be found in the
education we get at schools and universities.
The universities and
schools practice a schizoid role playing in which an unmotivated,
prospectless but intelligent youth learns to keep up with the general
standards of enlightened meaninglessness. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 83
- 84]
We get already educated in
such a way that we are bound to end up as cynics. Why is this the
case? It is due to the schizoid role playing we are supposedly taught
at school and universities. This means that in our education we come
in contact with a huge amount of lifestyles, and we are also being
told that most of them are justified by reference to a metaphysics or
a religion, but we also learn that religions or metaphysics can no
longer be upheld. Such an education puts us into the schizoid
situation that we have got the chance to lead many lifestyles, but
without any one of them being justified. So one is forced to act
without being convinced of what one does. The higher one gets within
our educational system, the more contingencies we get to learn, and
the more uncertain our lives become.
This short explanation of
what schizoid role playing means should have already made it clear
that the cynical type of human being can be seen as a mass phenomena
among the people of the upper and the upper middle class nowadays.
Today the cynic appears as
a mass figure: an average social character in the upper echelons of
the elevated superstructure. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 4]
It can only be people from
the higher classes, who are cynical, because Cynicism implies that
one has to be in the positions of authority, and not believe in it or
rather reject their purposefulness. In the position of authority are
priests, atheists, metaphysical philosophers, Marxists, fascists,
scientists, or anyone else who sticks to some abstract ideology and
is part of / a representative of an absolute system. The problem all
these representatives face nowadays is that all these ideologies have
been severely and convincingly attacked and destroyed via all the
critiques published in the Enlightenment period, according to
Sloterdijk. So many of the representatives of the respective
ideologies themselves do not believe in what they are doing anymore,
or do not regard their position to be the one and only truth - like
members of the church who do not believe in God, or economists who
would like to be farmers. Still, they have to act and talk as if they
were completely convinced of what they are doing, which is what makes
them miserable. It is the contingency of the value of all life styles
which was brought about by the critiques, and which has lead to a
schizoid state of mind, and to misery, as publicly everybody still
has to represent the path chosen. As the result of this the
representatives of the ideologies are often engaged in empty
discourse, which progresses in the following manner.
Each
side has developed certain, almost rigged, moves of critique; the
religious criticise the areligious and vice versa, whereby each side
has in its repertoire a metacritique of the ideology critique used by
the opposing side: the moves in the dialogue between the Marxists and
liberals are to a large extent fixed, likewise those of between
Marxists and anarchists as well as those between anarchists and
liberals... One knows pretty well what natural scientists and
representatives of the humanities will accuse each other of. Even the
ideology critique used by militarists and pacifists on each other
threatens to stagnate, at least as far as creative moves are
concerned. For ideology critique, the Sartrean film title, The
Game Is Over, itself almost half a century old, thus seems
apposite. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 90]
This sort of engagement in
one’s daily tasks results in pessimism, depression, and
indifference. The cynics are living without any passion for life are
miserable, and regard the world to be futile and as something which
has to be rejected.
We
live from day to day, from vacation to vacation, from news show to
news show, from problem to problem, from orgasm to orgasm, in private
turbulances and medium-term affairs, tense, relaxed. With some things
we feel dismay but with most things we can’t really give a
damn... We would still like to see a lot of the world and in general
‘to live a whole lot more.’ We ask ourselves what
to do next and what will happen next. In the Feuilleton of the
Zeit, the culture critics argue about the right way to be
pessimistic.” [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 98 - 99]
Of course, they do not
have any long term goals anymore, or any great aims. Yet, they do not
take pleasure in what they have either. None of the ideals are worth
striving for any more, and what they have reached, millions of other
people have achieved as well. Nothing is special, everything is
permanently the same, the cynics think that they just strive and
inflict pain upon themselves to achieve a position of respect and
authority, although the position for which they are respected is not
regarded to be worthwhile anymore because many critiques have already
attacked it convincingly. There are catholic priests who praise God,
tell their community all the nice little comforting stories about
Jesus Christ, and explain how one is able to reach the blissful
afterlife, but themselves do not believe that there is such an
after-life and get involved in rather dubious activities in their
private lives. This is a prime example for what Sloterdijk regards as
a cynic. The bitterness, life denying attitude, the pessimism and the
double standarts which are essential to being a cynic is partly
understandable, even according to Sloterdijk:
However, since the
technological atrocities of the twentieth century, from Verdun to the
Gulag, from Auschwitz to Hiroshima, experience scorns all optimism.
Historical consciousness and pessimism seem to amount to the same
thing. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 11 - 12]
One the other hand, one
might also wish to point out the benefits we have gained during the
enlightenment, like social welfare, human rights, and an incredible
medical progress. Although these aspects indeed provide us with many
goods, we are lacking something which gives meaning to our lives, and
we do not have a world view through which we can justify our lives,
and both of the last mentioned elements provides human beings with
more life fulfilment than does a huge selection of technological
products. Therefore there are good reasons for being a cynic, and for
being miserable.
However, Sloterdijk does
not regard it as necessary to react in such a way to the nihilism of
our times or as he calls it to having an enlightened consciousness,
but he regards it only as a contingent response. He does not think
that the awareness of the enlightenment critiques or the enlightened
consciousness is the problem, but the response towards this knowledge
should not be Cynicism, but rather Kynicism, which I will introduce
in the next section. He says:
In order to survive, one
must be schooled in reality. Of course. Those who mean well call it
growing up, and there is a grain of truth to that. But that is not it
all. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 6 - 7]
We can get an initial
grasp of the difference between Cynicism and Kynicism, in an example
Sloterdijk gives us. It involves a kynical critique of the great
cynic Adorno. He
was just about to begin
his lecture when a group of demonstraters prevented him from mounting
the podium... Among the dirupters were some female students who, in
protest, attracted attention to themselves by exposing their breast
to the thinker. Here, on the one side, stood naked flesh, exercising
‘critique’; there, on the other side, stood the bitterly
disappointed man without whom scarcely any of those present would
have known what critique meant... It was not naked force that reduced
the philosopher to muteness, but the force of the naked. [Sloterdijk
(1987b): P. xxxvii]
Sloterdijk introduces the
notion ‘Kynicism’ by dealing with its Greek origin. Once
we have grasped what Greek-Kynicism is all about, it should be easy
for us to apply the concept to our times. So firstly I will cite what
Sloterdijk tells us about Kynicism:
Greek Philosophy of
Cheekiness: Kynicism
Ancient Kynicism, at least
in its Greek origins, is in principle cheeky... In kynismos a kind of
argumentation was discovered that, to the present day, respectable
thinking does not know how to deal with. Is not crude and grotesque
to pick one’s nose while Socrates exorcises his demon and
speaks of the divine soul? Can it be called anything other than
vulgar when Diogenes lets a fart fly against the Platonic theory of
ideas - or is fartiness itself one of the ideas God discharged from
his meditation on the genesis of the cosmos? And what is it supposed
to mean when this philosophising town bum answers Plato’s
subtle theory of Eros by masturbating in public?
To
understand these apparently irrelevantly provocative gestures, it is
worth reflecting on a principle that called into being the doctrines
of wisdom and that was regarded by the ancient world as a truism,
before modern developments eradicated it. For the philosopher, the
human being who exemplifies the love of truth and conscious
living, life and doctrine must be in harmony... The appearance of
Diogenes marks the most dramatic moment in the process of truth of
early European philosophy... With Diogenes, the resistance against
the rigged game of ‘discourse’ begins in European
philosophy. Desperately funny, he resists the ‘linguistification’
of the cosmic universalism that called the philosopher to this
occupation. Whether monologic or dialogic ‘theory’, in
both, Diogenes smells the swindle of ldealistic abstractions and the
schizoid staleness of a thinking limited to the satirical resistance,
an uncivil enlightenment. He starts the non-platonic dialogue.
[Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 101 - 102]
It is this cheerful
cheekiness which one can find in all of the kynics action, and which
distinguishes the kynics attitude from the cynics. The kynics argue
with the whole of their bodies, especially with its lower part, which
has been neglected through out the history of philosophy. The kynic
is similar to the cynic only in so far as they both have an
enlightened consciousness. Yet, the enlightened consciousness of the
cynics is called false by Sloterdijk, because their consciousness
makes them miserable. Whereas the enlightened consciousness of the
cynics can be called correct, because they are cheerful,
life-affirming, full of vitality and therefore also cheeky.
Cheekiness has, in
principle, two positions, namely, above and below, hegemonic power
and oppositional power, expressed on the language of the Middle Ages:
master and serf. Ancient Kynicism begins the process of ‘naked
arguments’ from the opposition, carried by the power that comes
from below. The kynic farts, shits, pisses, masturbates on the
street, before the eyes of the Athenian market. He shows contempt for
fame, ridicules the architecture, refuses respect, parodies the
stories of gods and heroes, eats raw meat an vegetables, lies in the
sun, fools around with the whores and says to Alexander the Great
that he should get out of the sun. What is this supposed to mean?
Kynicism is a first reply
to Athenian hegemonic idealism that goes beyond theoretical
repudiation. It does not speak against idealism, it lives against it.
[Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 103 - 104]
Farting is something one
does not do. Like masturbating, pissing and picking ones noses, it is
an activity one only does behind closed doors, but one does not do it
in public and one never talks about it as well. It is regarded as
cheeky if one breaks these conventions, and cheekiness nowadays
rather has some negative connotations. However this has not always
been the case, as Sloterdijk tells us:
By
the way, only in the last few centuries has the word ‘cheeky’
(frech) gained a negative connotation. Initially, as for
example in Old High German, it meant a productive aggressivity,
letting fly at the enemy: ‘brave, bold, lively, plucky,
untamed, ardent.’ The devitalization of a culture mirrored in
the history of this word. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 102 - 103]
Vitality, life
affirmation, living, laughing, celebrating is all linked to Kynicism.
As I have already said Kynicism as well as Cynicism reject any form
of belief in absolutes. It is the life affirming attitude of Kynicism
which distinguishes it from Cynicism.
In idealism... the ideas
stand at the top and gleam in the light of attentiveness; matter is
below, a mere reflection of the idea, a shadow, an impurity... [How
does Kynicism react?] The excluded lower element goes to the
marketplace and demonstratively challenges the higher element. Feces,
urine, sperm! ‘Vegetate’ like a dog, but live, laugh and
take care to give the impression that behind all this lies not
confusion but clear reflection.” [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 104]
The reflection which must
be apparently implicit in ones actions, expresses itself not verbally
but within the bodily arguments typical for the kynic. That it is
difficult to respond to these sort of arguments became obvious in the
way Plato related to Diogenes:
However,
neither Socrates nor Plato can deal with Digenes - for he talks with
them ‘differently too’, in a dialogue of flesh and blood.
Thus, for Plato there remained no alternative but to slander his
weird and unwieldy opponent. He called him a “Socrates gone
mad” (Socrates mainoumenos). The phrase is intended as
an annihilation, but it is the highest recognition. [Sloterdijk
(1987b): P. 104]
Yet, it is not only the
divine Plato who implicitly showed the greatest respect for Diogenes,
but authorities or great people in general have this or a similar
related sort of attitude towards him.
Those who rule lose their
real self-confidence to the fools, clowns, and kynics: for this
reason, an anecdote has Alexander the Great say that he would like to
be Diogenes if he were not Alexander. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 102]
It is only the kynical
attitude which is able to put forward effective reasons against
idealism, because of the following reasons.
In
the dog philosophy of the kynic (kyon, dog in Greek:- Trans.),
a materialist position appears that is clearly a match for the
idealist dialectic. It possesses the wisdom of original philosophy,
the realism of a fundamental materialist stance, and the serenity of
an ironic religiosity. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 104]
When Diogenes urinates and
masturbates in the marketplace, he does both because he does them
publicly - in a model situation... The philosopher thus gives the
small man in the market the same rights to an unashamed experience of
the corporeal that does well to defy all discrimination. Ethical
living may be good, but naturalness is good too. That is all kynical
scandal says. Because the teaching explicates life, the kynic had to
take oppressed sensuality out into the market. Look how this wise
man, before whom Alexander the Great stood in admiration, enjoys
himself with his own organ. And he shits in front of everybody. So
that can’t be all that bad. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 106]
Like Cynicism Kynicism is
a realist position, which rejects idealism, absolutes, and
unconditional truths, however, in contrast to Cynicism, which makes
people miserable because cynics are still part of higher orders in
which they themselves do not believe any longer, the kynics are
happy, cheerful, and cheeky and kynics do not belong to
hierarchically ordered systems or normal social institutions.
One might be tempted to
reply to Sloterdijk that his defence of neo-Kynicism is a very
immature conception because his kynics just fail to take any
practical human tasks into consideration, e.g. one simply needs to
earn money to have something to eat, to drink and a place to live in.
However, to earn money one has to belong to a social system, but
social systems are always ordered hierarchically, therefore it is
impossible to live like a kynik and to secure ones own existence. A
kynical lifestyle can be seen as just a dream young immature people
usually have. Yet, Sloterdijk is not so simple minded not to have a
response to that objection. In that respect he mentions three
institutions in which this kynical cheekiness can be found and where
it can be practised.
Apart
from the city, three social dies of serene refractoriness have
played an essential role in the history of cheekiness: the carnival,
the universities, and the Bohemians. All three function
as safety valves through which needs that otherwise are not given
their due in social life can achieve a limited release. Here,
cheekiness has had a space in which it has been tolerated, even if
the tolerance has lasted only a short time and can be rescinded.”
[Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 117]
So it is the carnival, the
universities, and the boheme, which allow one to be a true kynic.
Although one should also keep something from this light kynical
spirit for the rest of the time, these are the social institutions in
which a kynical lifestyle is possible and one is justified to express
it in an extreme manner.
The old carnival was a
substitute revolution for the poor. A kingly fool was elected who
reigned over a thoroughly inverted world for a day and a night. In
this inverted world, the poor and the decent brought their dreams to
life, as costumed oafs and bacchanals, forgetting themselves to the
point of truth, cheeky, lewd, turbulent, and disgraceful. One was
allowed to lie and to tell the truth, to be obscene and honest,
drunken and irrational... Class societies can scarcely survive
without the institution of the inverted world and the crazy day - as
the Indian and Brazilian carnivals demonstrate.
Likewise since the Middle
Ages, universities have become important in the social economy of
cheekiness and kynical intelligence. They were by no means simply
places of teaching and research. In them, there romped also a
vagrant, extravagant, youthful intelligence that was clever enough to
know something better than just cramming.
The Bohemians, a
relatively recent phenomenon, played a prominent role in the
regulation of the tensions between art and bourgeois society.
Bohemianism was the space in which the transition from art into the
art of living was tried out... Research has established that there
were only a few long-term Bohemians, the milieu remained a transit
station, a space for testing out life and departing from the norms.
There they used their freedom to work out their rejection of
bourgeois society until a (perhaps) more grown-up ‘yes, but’
took its place. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 117 - 118]
However, Sloterdijk does
not think that these three neo-kynical institutions fulfil their
roles properly anymore.
For a long time now
carnival has meant not “inverted world” but flight into
safe world, of anaesthesia from a permanently inverted world full of
daily absurdities. We know that, at least since Hitler, Bohemianism
is dead, and in its offshoots in the subcultures cheeky moods are to
be found less than the cheerless attitude of withdrawal. And as far
as the universities are concerned - oh, let’s not talk about
that!
These mutilations of
cheeky impulses indicate that society has entered a stage of
organised seriousness in which the playgrounds of lived enlightenment
are becoming increasingly clogged. This is what dampens the climate
of this country so much. We live on in a morose realism, not wanting
to be noticed, and play the respectable games. Cynicism prickles
beneath the monotony. A clear-sighted academia and elsewhere. The
provocations seem to be exhausted, all bizarre twists of modern
existence seem to be already tried out. A state of public,
respectable torpor has been entered. A tired, schizoidly demoralised
intelligentsia plays at realism by contemplatively walling itself up
in harsh circumstances. [Sloterdijk (1987b): P. 118]
The fact that these
traditional kynical institutions do not fulfil their role anymore in
a proper way is exactly what Sloterdijk is criticising. By doing so,
he is trying to reintroduce cheekiness and kynikal life-style
elements into our society to make our lives more colourful, cheerful
and cheeky. It is not that he portrays Kynicism as a new God, but he
solely wishes to increase its importance.
It has to be pointed out
that although Sloterdijk regards kynicism as a better reaction to the
state the enlightenment has left us with, and therefore to a position
within the enlightenment, I doubt that this is actually the case. As
with the introduction of “kynicism” the notions of
“truth” and “the reasonable unified subject”
also get attacked. These, however, represent the basis of the
enlightenment project. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to say
that by introducing “kynicism” Sloterdijk goes beyond the
enlightenment. As enlightenment and modernity are closely related
concepts, and by going beyond the enlightenment, he also goes beyong
modernity, one should call the kynical position defended in the
‘Critique of Cynical Reason’ a postmodern.
Within Sloterdijks recent
work, he becomes doubtful of his earlier position, as he seems to
have realised that the kynical position is not one which solves the
problem of cynicism properly. It might bring about a temporary
relief, but that is all. Therefore, he has been working towards a
stronger conception of the Good within his latest main works.
Although, Sloterdijk himself has gone beyong his early works, the
kynical position defended in the “Critique of Cynical Reason”
nevertheless has to be regarded as a suitable developmental step
between cynicism and a stronger position of the good, and so is a
position worth to be taken lightly.
Sloterdijk,
Peter “Kritik der zynischen Vernunft” [Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp Verlag, 1983]
Sloterdijk,
Peter “Der Zauberbaum” [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1985]
Sloterdijk,
Peter “Kopernikanische Mobilmachung und ptolomäische
Abrüstung” [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1987a]
Sloterdijk, Peter
“Critique of Cynical Reason” [Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1987b]
Edition
Suhrkamp “Peter Sloterdijks ‘Kritik der zynischen
Vernunft’” [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1987c]
Sloterdijk,
Peter “Zur Welt kommen - Zur Sprache kommen: Frankfurter
Vorlesungen” [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1988]
Sloterdijk, Peter
“Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche’s Materialism”
[Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989]
Sloterdijk,
Peter “Versprechen auf Deutsch: Rede über das eigene
Land” [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1990]
Sloterdijk,
Peter “Weltfremdheit” [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1993a]
Sloterdijk,
Peter “Im selben Boot: Versuch über die Hyperpolitik”
[Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1993b]
Sloterdijk,
Peter “Eurotaoismus: Zur Kritik der politischen Kinetik”
[Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1996]
Sloterdijk,
Peter “Der starke Grund zusammen zu sein” [Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1998a]
Sloterdijk,
Peter “Sphären 1” [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1998b]
Sloterdijk,
Peter “Sphären 2” [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1999]
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