Selected Exaggerations E-Book

Peter Sloterdijk

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 710

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Peter Sloterdijk's reputation as one of the most original thinkers of our time has grown steadily since the early 1980s. This volume of over thirty conversations and interviews spanning two decades illuminates the multiple interconnections of his life and work. In these wide-ranging dialogues Sloterdijk gives his views on a variety of topics, from doping to doxa, design to dogma, media to mobility and the financial crisis to football. Here we encounter Sloterdijk from every angle: as he expounds his ideas on the philosophical tradition and the latest strands of contemporary thought, as he analyses the problems of our age and as he provides a new and startling perspective on everyday events. Through exaggeration, Sloterdijk draws our attention to crucial issues and controversies and makes us aware of their implications for society and the individual. Always eager to share his knowledge and erudition, he reveals himself equally at home in ancient Babylon, in the channels of the mass media and on the ethical and moral terrain of religion, education or genetic engineering. Appealing both to the seasoned reader of Sloterdijk and to the curious newcomer, these dialogues offer fresh insight into the intellectual and political events of recent decades. They also give us glimpses of Sloterdijk's own life story, from his early passionate love of reading and writing to his journeys in East and West, his commitment to Europe and his acceptance and enjoyment of the role of a public intellectual and philosopher in the twenty-first century.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

In Place of a Preface

Karlsruhe, 17 December 2012

1 The Half-Moon Man

2 Why Are People Media?

3 World Estrangement and Diagnosis of Our Times

4 Uterus on Wheels

5 Fire Your Shrink!

6 Philosophical Retuning

7 We’re Always Riding Down Maternity Drive

8 Tackling the Unspoken Things in Culture

9 On Wealth and Self-Respect

10 Learning Is Joyful Anticipation of Oneself

11 Postmen and Fallen Towers

12 Raising Our Heads: Pampering Spaces and Time Drifts

13 Good Theory Doesn’t Complain

14 There Are No Individuals

15 Confused People Spread Confusion

16 Germans Want To Be Compelled: Theory for the Year’s End

17 Comparatists of Happiness

18 Image and Perspective: An Experiment in Atmospheric Seeing

19 On Progress: The Holy Fire of Dissatisfaction

20 A Team of Hermaphrodites

21 Under a Brighter Sky

22 Making the Effort: The Reader

23 Thus Spoke Sloterdijk

24 Fathers Should Be Kept Out of Brothels and Pubs

25 The Athletics of Dying

26 Do Your Duty To Enjoy!

27 Even a God Can’t Save Us

28 A Plug for Higher Energies

29 Mortgaging the Air: The Financial Crisis

30 Is There a Way Out of the Crisis of Western Culture?

31 Questions of Fate: A Novel About Thought

I. Karlsruhe Conversation

II. Marbach Conversation

32 Humans in Repetition: The Twenty-first Century Will Be Acrobatic

33 With the Babble of Babylon in the Background

Bernhard Klein: Editorial Note

Appendix

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Peter Sloterdijk

Selected Exaggerations

Conversations and Interviews 1993–2012

Edited by Bernhard Klein

Translated by Karen Margolis

polity

First published in German as Ausgewählte Übertreibungen. Gespräche und Interviews1993-2012 © Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 2013This English edition © Polity Press, 2016

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA

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: 978-0-7456-9169-5

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sloterdijk, Peter, 1947- author.

Title: Selected exaggerations : conversations and interviews, 1993-2012/Peter Sloterdijk.

Description: English edition. | Malden : Polity, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015024410| ISBN 9780745691657 (hardback) | ISBN 9780745691664 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Sloterdijk, Peter, 1947---Interviews. | Philosophers--Germany--Interviews. | Philosophy, German--21st century.

Classification: LCC B3332.S254 A5 2016 | DDC 193--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015024410

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website:politybooks.com

IN PLACE OF A PREFACE1

Bernhard Klein in conversation with Peter Sloterdijk

Karlsruhe, 17 December 2012

KLEIN: Mr Sloterdijk, after extensive research I have compiled a selection of your interviews over the past two decades, a very compact selection from an enormous wealth of material, but still a weighty volume. I am aware that interviews are only a small part of your publishing activity – the phrase ‘tip of the iceberg’ is very apt here. You have more than forty books to your name, and have also written a large number of essays for a wide range of newspapers, periodicals and anthologies. You have held professorships in Karlsruhe and Vienna for the past twenty years, and you only resigned from the position in Austria quite recently. Aside from this you have had a full timetable as a speaker at all kinds of events, and you have participated in numerous conferences, conventions and symposia. You have given readings from your latest books, and held seminars, ceremonial addresses and after-dinner speeches. You have done interviews in many media and for over ten years you moderated your own TV programme.

According to the general wisdom, ‘less is more’. Why, in your case, is more more? Does your almost frantic creative energy express something of the powerlessness every writer feels when faced with the silence of the library?

SLOTERDIJK: I think the real answer to the question of the main impetus for my work is connected more to an inner state rather than an actual motive. Looking back over the years these interviews cover, my first impression of myself is defencelessness, or the ability to be enticed. The cliché of the born writer’s endogenous, ebullient productivity certainly doesn’t apply to me, and nor does the model of committed literature. What people see as productivity in my case is usually only my inability to defend myself against suggestions from other people. It starts from a degree of over-compliance. This is ultimately responsible for the constant transition from passivity to production. But this state would not be sustainable without some cockiness. If I took on an additional task, it meant I was prepared to say I could manage that. In the process I sometimes got exhausted, of course, but that was superseded by an incredibly reckless trust in my powers of regeneration. That, incidentally, is the only difference worth mentioning between my earlier life and the present: for a while now, I have noticed that regeneration demands its own time.

KLEIN: Take us into your creative workshop. Can you describe your working technique and explain how you organize your library? How do you remember things?

SLOTERDIJK: Nobody can really know how his memory works. I only know I must have a well-organized internal archive even if it might seem chaotic to other people. My inner archivist finds access to the important files fairly regularly. He is one collaborator who has never disappointed me. He fortuitously retrieves documents I didn’t even know had been filed ready for reference. Sometimes he unwittingly discovers nearly finished pieces of writing that I only have to copy up.

KLEIN: To what extent does your relation to language enhance your zest for writing and publishing?

SLOTERDIJK: Language is generally seen as a medium for understanding – an assumption that writers shouldn’t accept unquestioningly. A critical minority sees language as the starting point of all misunderstandings. Wittgenstein even thought that philosophical problems arose when language goes on holiday – although he didn’t reveal to us what he meant by ‘going on holiday’. Does it mean being nonsensical? Or poring over pseudo-problems, firing excessive volleys into the air? Anyway, he toyed with the idea that one could just as well do without language; the deflationary tendency is clearly evident. Reading that, I can imagine a wrinkled janitor entering the scene who wants to put an end to the silliness of youth. Statements like that seem narrow to me. You really don’t know what might happen if you get involved in going on holiday. I prefer the opinion of Wittgenstein’s fellow Austrian, Egon Friedell, who said: ‘Culture is a wealth of problems.’ We can try to economise on everything, but not on problems.