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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
In this short book Peter Sloterdijk clarifies his views on religion and its role in pre-modern and modern societies. He begins by returning to the Mount Sinai episode in the Book of Exodus, where he identifies the emergence of what he calls the Sinai Schema . At the core of monotheism is the logic of belonging to a community of confession, of being a true believer - this is what Sloterdijk calls the Sinai Schema. To be a member of a people means that you submit to the beliefs of the community just as you submit to its language. Monotheism is predicated on the logic of one God who demands your utmost loyalty. Hence at the core of monotheism is also the fear of apotheosis, of heresy, of heterodoxy. So monotheism is associated first and foremost with a certain kind of internal violence ? namely, a violence against those who violate their membership through a break in loyalty and trust. On the basis of this analysis of the inner logic of monotheism, Sloterdijk retraces its historical legacy and shows how this account enables us to understand why we react so nervously today to all forms of fundamentalism - whether that of radical Islamists, the Catholic Pius Brotherhood or evangelical sects in the USA
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
1 Narrowing the Battle Zone
Notes
2 On the Genesis of Peoples in General
Notes
3 The Sinai Schema: Integral Swearing-In
Notes
4 Phobocracy: On the Proliferation of the Principle of Total Membership
Notes
5 Metamorphoses of Membership
Notes
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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In the Shadow of Mount Sinai
A Footnote on the Origins and Changing Forms of Total Membership
Peter Sloterdijk
Translated by Wieland Hoban
polity
First published in German as Im Schatten des Sinai: Fußnote über Ursprünge und Wandlungen totaler Mitgliedschaft, © Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 2013This English edition © Polity Press, 2016
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 IUR, UK
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-9927-1
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sloterdijk, Peter, 1947-[Im Schatten des Sinai. English]In the shadow of Mount Sinai / Peter Sloterdijk. -- English edition.pages cmIncludes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-7456-9923-3 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7456-9924-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Religious fundamentalism--Political aspects.2. Religious fundamentalism--Social aspects. 3. Anger--Religious aspects.4. Philosophical anthropology. I. Title.BL238.S56813 2015 201’.4--dc232015007555
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1Narrowing the Battle Zone
Anyone planning to say something about a controversial matter such as the violent implications of what we call ‘monotheism’, both those proven and those merely asserted, would be well advised to follow a few rules of caution. Theology is demonic terrain. What Thomas Mann noted about music in his big Washington speech of 1945 about ‘Germany and the Germans’ applies no less to speaking about divine matters and about this-worldly and other-worldly things. The observation made in the same speech that music is ‘the most remote from reality of all the arts and, at the same time, the most passionate’ can be transferred without any noteworthy changes to the nature of many theological lessons. They often deal with the most distant and evasive factors, such as God, omnipotence, salvation and damnation, with a vehemence that only the most intimate motifs of passion can ignite. What music and theology have in common is that, when things get serious, they can both be closer to the affected person than the person themselves – as expressed by Saint Augustine in his confessional phrase interior intimo meo (‘more inward than the most inward place in my heart’).1
With this warning in mind, I would like in the following to jot down some reflections that can be read as footnotes to two of my religio-theoretical publications from recent years: God’s Zeal2 and You Must Change Your Life.3 Nonetheless, the deliberations below should also be comprehensible without reference to these books. Some of the theologians’ reactions to God’s Zeal reminded me that one evidently cannot raise certain topics without bringing them to life through such a discussion. It seems that, by speaking of religious zeal systems in the monotheisms, I had aroused an inclination towards zealous rebuttal, or even the warding-off of demons, among certain readers, namely those from Christian theological circles. These ‘rebuttals’ generally proceeded from the allegation that I had indiscriminately ascribed to the monotheistic ‘scriptural religions’, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam, an ‘intrinsic’ (thus the established debating term) or, differently put, an irremovable violent component, thus confusing the timelessly benign essence of these religions with their sometimes unappealing historical manifestations. The most determined opponents of this thesis they themselves had posited countered it with the claim that the aforementioned religions, Christianity in particular, wanted to be understood both in their nature and in their self-image as liberating and peacemaking movements. They had, however, been temporarily distracted from their authentic mission by heretical distortions and political instrumentalizations in the course of their respective histories.
In the light of the discussion’s development, which was characterized largely by projections, misreading and apologetic interests – and augmented by the numerous, usually very interesting reactions to Jan Assmann’s theses on the ‘Mosaic distinction’ published slightly earlier – I began to doubt that it would be productive to continue the debate as an argument over the correct use of the term ‘monotheism’. Above all, the opposition cited ad nauseam between a purportedly violence-inclined monotheism and a purportedly violence-averse polytheism constituted a caricature that is best met with silence. In the following remarks, then, I will avoid the term ‘monotheism’ as far as possible4 and focus instead on discussing the phenomenon of zealous and potentially violently manifested motivation with reference to certain religious norms without addressing once again the logical construction of the one-God faith.5 I will also put aside my reservations about the term ‘religion’, which were explained in You Must Change Your Life (I consider it a pseudo-term or, more precisely, a false abstraction with a high potential to mislead) and use the term conventionally and without irony here and on the following pages, as I do not wish to complicate the already sufficiently controversial topic by opening a second front. I therefore cannot engage with the accusation that the latter work of mine is ‘the most fundamental attack on religion since Feuerbach’6 – which would be an ambiguous complement in the best case, but in reality constitutes a polemical warning call to the rest of the theological world. For the moment, I shall make do with noting that the practicetheoretical reflections in You Must Change Your Life are precisely not an attack on religion but rather a sympathetic attempt to explore the facts of the religious field through a second description that stays close to its object – in the language of a general practice theory, albeit combined with the aim of contributing to a clarification of the misunderstanding of religions consolidated on all sides.7
In the present essay, I operate on the assumption that it is not the single or plural nature of conceptions of God among collectives or individuals that plays the decisive part in releasing acts of violence. Rather, what determines a disposition towards the use of violence is the form and intensity of the absorption of faith practisers by the system of norms to which they subordinate their existence. If the term ‘monotheism’ still crops up occasionally in the following reflections, then, it refers not so much to a group of theological or metaphysical conceptions. To the extent that it cannot be entirely avoided, I use it for the time being simply as a historically successful complex of heightened psycho-religious motivation.
Notes
1.
Augustine,
Confessions
