Sloterdijk Now E-Book

Stuart Elden

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Polity Theory Now
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 395

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Peter Sloterdijk is one of the most challenging and contentious thinkers currently working within the European tradition. This is the first collection devoted to his work for English-language audiences and will act as an introduction to his work, set an agenda for engagement with his ideas, and relate his writings to a range of political, theoretical and practical contexts.

Since his philosophical bestseller Critique of Cynical Reason (1983), Sloterdijk has exercised an important influence over German and other European thought and recently interest in his diverse oeuvre has grown considerably. The past few years have seen a number of his books translated into English, with many more to come. The book seeks to do justice to the breadth of Sloterdijk’s work throughout his career, orientated around the central topics of cynicism, ressentiment, the posthuman, space and world, art and literature, language, social science and his role as a public intellectual. Contributors include Babette Babich, Sjoerd van Tuinen, Eduardo Mendieta, Marie-Eve Morin, Efrain Kristol, Wieland Hoban, Nigel Thrift, Jean-Pierre Couture, and Sloterdijk himself.

An explicitly interdisciplinary project, Sloterdijk Now is a crucial introduction to the work of this central thinker, in its complexity, variety and notoriety. It is set to spark debate amongst students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.

Leseprobe

Sloterdijk Now

Theory Now

Series Editor: Ryan Bishop

Virilio Now, John Armitage

Baudrillard Now, Ryan Bishop

Sloterdijk Now, Stuart Elden

Sloterdijk Now

EDITED BY

STUART ELDEN

polity

Individual chapters © their authors 2012, this collection © Polity Press 2012

First published in 2012 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5676-2

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Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Contributors

List of Abbreviations

1

Worlds, Engagements, Temperaments

Stuart Elden

2

Sloterdijk’s Cynicism: Diogenes in the Marketplace

Babette Babich

3

From Psychopolitics to Cosmopolitics: The Problem of Ressentiment

Sjoerd van Tuinen

4

A Letter on Überhumanismus: Beyond Posthumanism and Transhumanism

Eduardo Mendieta

5

The Coming-to-the-World of the Human Animal

Marie-Eve Morin

6

A Public Intellectual

Jean-Pierre Couture

7

The Language of Give and Take: Sloterdijk’s Stylistic Methods

Wieland Hoban

8

Peter Sloterdijk and the Philosopher’s Stone

Nigel Thrift

9

Literature in Sloterdijk’s Philosophy

Efraín Kristal

10

The Time of the Crime of the Monstrous: On the Philosophical Justification of the Artificial

Peter Sloterdijk (translated by Wieland Hoban)

Notes

Index

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the contributors for their work in this volume and their advice at various stages, especially Eduardo Mendieta for his incisive and generous comments on the introduction. I am also grateful to Michael Eldred, Eliott Jarbe, Francisco Klauser, Sylvère Lotringer and Mario Wenning for their interest in Sloterdijk’s work; Ryan Bishop as series editor; Keith-Ansell Pearson for his encouragement of the project at initial review stage; and the two anonymous reviewers of the full manuscript. I am grateful to Wieland Hoban for his translation of Sloterdijk’s work for this volume, and advice on translation more generally. On behalf of all the contributors I also want to thank Emma Hutchinson and David Winters from Polity Press for their support, advice and interest in this project and to Clare Ansell and Susan Beer for their work on the production of the book.

Contributors

Babette Babich is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, and editor of the journal New Nietzsche Studies. Her books include Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger (SUNY Press, 2006);Eines Gottes Glück voller Macht und Liebe: Beiträge zu Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Heidegger (Verlag der Bauhaus Universität Weimar, 2009) and Nietzsches Wissenschaftsphilosophie: ‘Die Wissenschaft unter der Optik des Künstlers zu sehn, die Kunst aber unter der des Lebens’ (Peter Lang, 2010).

Jean-Pierre Couture is Assistant Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. He received his PhD in 2009 from the Université du Québec à Montréal on the political philosophy of Peter Sloterdijk. He is the author of several pieces on Sloterdijk’s work, including articles in Horizons Philosophiques, Society and Space, and Revue canadienne de science politique/Canadian Journal of Political Science.

Stuart Elden is Professor of Political Geography at Durham University, and editor of the journal Society and Space. He is the author and editor of several books, including Speaking Against Number: Heidegger, Language and the Politics of Calculation (Edinburgh University Press, 2006) and Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). The Birth of Territory is forthcoming in 2012. He is currently beginning work on a book entitled The Space of the World.

Wieland Hoban is a British composer and translator resident in Germany. He has published essays on contemporary music in German and English in various academic journals and collections. He is the English translator of Sloterdijk’s God’s Zeal and Derrida, an Egyptian (both Polity Press, 2009), and is currently working on the translation of the Sphären trilogy for Semiotext(e). He has also translated work by Theodor Adorno, including his Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction and volumes of his Correspondence.

Efraín Kristal is Professor and Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at UCLA. He is author of several books including Invisible Work: Borges and Translation (Vanderbilt University Press 2002), and of the essay on Aesthetics and Literature for the Blackwell Companion to Comparative Literature. He is also editor of the Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel (2005) and associate editor of the Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Novel (2011).

Eduardo Mendieta is Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University. He has published translations of and interviews with Enrique Dussel, Angela Y. Davis, Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty and Karl-Otto Apel. His most recent book is entitled Global Fragments: Globalizations, Latin Americanisms, and Critical Theory (SUNY Press, 2007). He is currently working on a book entitled Philosophy’s War: Nomos, Topos, Polemos.

Marie-Eve Morin is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta. She is the author of Jenseits der brüderlichen Gemeinschaft: Das Gespräch zwischen Jacques Derrida und Jean-Luc Nancy (Ergon Press, 2006) and co-editor of Jean-Luc Nancy and Plural Thinking: Expositions of World, Politics, Art, and Sense (SUNY Press, forthcoming, with Peter Gratton). She is currently working on the Key Contemporary Thinkers volume on Nancy for Polity Press.

Peter Sloterdijk is Rektor and Professor of Philosophy and Media Theory at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe. He currently co-hosts the German television show Im Glashaus: Das Philosophische Quartett. He is the author of over thirty books, including Critique of Cynical Reason (Suhrkamp 1983; University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Sphären (Suhrkamp, three volumes 1998–2004) and Du mußt dein Leben ändern (Suhrkamp, 2009).

Nigel Thrift is Vice Chancellor of the University of Warwick. He is the author, co-author and editor of numerous books, including Cities: Reimaging the Urban (Polity, 2002, with Ash Amin); Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect (Routledge, 2007) and Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales 1300–1800 (Oxford University Press, 2009, with Paul Glennie).

Sjoerd van Tuinen is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is the author of Peter Sloterdijk: Ein Profil (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2006); andco-editor of Die Vermessung des Ungeheuren: Philosophie nach Peter Sloterdijk (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2009, with Marc Jongen and Koenraad Hemelsoet) and Deleuze and The Fold: A Critical Reader (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, with Niamh McDonnell).

Abbreviations

Sloterdijk’s Work

References to Sloterdijk’s major works are made by the following abbreviations in parentheses in the text. So, for example, (LB 7; TA 9) refers to Luftbeben, p. 7; and Terror from the Air, p. 9. All of Sloterdijk’s German works are published by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, unless otherwise noted. In large part these abbreviations are the same as those used by Sjoerd van Tuinen in Peter Sloterdijk: Ein Profil. The chapter authors have occasionally modified existing English translations. In the chapters, Sloterdijk’s works are referred to by English titles where translations exist; to German titles where they do not. For the latter, English translations of the titles are provided in this reference list.

KZV

Kritik der zynischen Vernunft

, 1983. English translation CCR.

ZB

Der Zauberbaum. Die Entstehung der Psychoanalyse im Jahr 1785

, 1985. [The Magic Tree: The Emergence of Psychoanalysis in 1785]

DB

Der Denker auf der Bühne. Nietzsches Materialismus

, 1986. English translation TS.

KMPA

Kopernikanische Mobilmachung und ptolmäische Abrüstung: Ästhetischer Versuch

, 1986. [Copernican Mobilization and Ptolemaic Disarmament: Aesthetic Essays]

ZWK

Zur Welt kommen – Zur Sprache kommen. Frankfurter Vorlesungen

, 1988. [To Come to World, to Come to Language]

ET

Eurotaoismus. Zur Kritik der politischen Kinetik

, 1989. [Eurotaoism: Towards a Critique of Political Kinetics]

VD

Versprechen auf Deutsch. Rede über das eigene Land

, 1990. [Promises in German: Speeches about the Own Land]

WF

Weltfremdheit

, 1993. [Unworldliness]

SB

Im selben Boot. Versuch über die Hyperpolitik

, 1993. [In the Same Boat: Essays on Hyperpolitics]

FEE

Falls Europa erwacht. Gedanken zum Programm einer Weltmacht am Ende des Zeitalters seiner politischen Absence

, 1994. [If Europe Awakes: Thoughts on the Programme of a World Power at the End of its Era of Political Absence]

SV

Selbstversuch, Ein Gespräch mit Carlos Oliveira

, 1996. [Self-Experiments: A Conversation with Carlos Oliviera]

SG

Der starke Grund zusammen zu sein. Erinnerungen an die Erfindung des Volkes

, 1998. [The Strong Reason to be Together: Reminders of the Invention of the People]

S I

Sphären I – Blasen, Mikrosphärologie

, 1998. [Spheres I – Bubbles, Microspherology]

S II

Sphären II – Globen, Makrosphärologie

, 1999. [Spheres II – Globes, Macrospherology]

RMP

Regeln für den Menschenpark. Ein Antwortschreiben zu Heideggers Brief über den Humanismus

, 1999. English translation RHZ.

VM

Die Verachtung der Massen. Versuch über Kulturkämpfe in der modernen Gesellschaft

, 2000. [Contempt of the Masses: Essays on the Culture-wars in Modern Society]

VGN

Über die Verbesserung der guten Nachricht. Nietzsches fünftes Evangelium. Rede zum 100. Todestag von Friedrich Nietzsche

, 2000. [On the Improvement of the Good News: Nietzsche’s Fifth Gospel: A Speech on the 100th Anniversary of the Death of Friedrich Nietzsche]

MT

Das Menschentreibhaus: Stichworte zur historischen und prophetischen Anthropologie. Vier große Vorlesungen

, 2001. [The Human Greenhouse: Keywords of Historical and Prophetic Anthropology: Four Major Lectures]

NG

Nicht gerettet. Versuche nach Heidegger

, 2001. [Not Saved: Essays on Heidegger]

ST

Die Sonne und der Tod

:

Dialogische Untersuchungen

with Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, 2001. English translation NSND.

TB

Tau von den Bermudas. Über einige Regime der Einbildungskraft

, 2001. [The Tau of Bermuda: On Some Regimes of the Imagination]

LB

Luftbeben. An den Wurzeln des Terrors

, 2002. English translation TA.

S III

Sphären III – Schäume, Plurale Sphärologie

, 2004. [Spheres III – Foam, Plural Spherology]

WK

Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals: Für eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung

, 2005.

ZZ

Zorn und Zeit. Politisch-psychologischer Versuch

, 2006. English translation RT.

AI

Der ästhetische Imperativ: Schriften zur Kunst

, edited by Peter Weibel, Hamburg: Philo and Philo Fine Arts, 2007. [The Aesthetic Imperative: Writings on Art]

DA

Derrida Ein Ägypter: Über das Problem der jüdischen Pyramide

, 2007. English translation DA.

GE

Gottes Eifer: Vom Kampf der drei Monotheismen

, Verlag Der Weltreligionen, 2007. English translation GZ.

TNKZ

Theorie der Nachkriegszeiten: Bemerkungen zu den deutsch-französischen Beziehungen seit 1945

, 2008. English translation TPWP.

MLA

Du mußt dein Leben ändern: Über Anthropotechnik

, 2009. [You Must Change Your Life: On Anthropotechnics]

PT

Philosophische Temperamente: Von Platon bis Foucault

, München: Diedrichs, 2009. [Philosophical Temperaments: From Plato to Foucault]

SD

Scheintod im Denken: Von Philosophie und Wissenschaft als Übung

, 2010. [Suspended Animation in Thought: Philosophy and Science as Exercises]

WSH

Der Welt über die Straße helfen

, with Sven Völker, München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2010. [Seeing the World Across the Road]

NHGS

Die nehmende Hand und die gebende Seite: Beiträge zu einer Debatte über die demokratische Neubegründung von Steuern

, 2011. [The Taking Hand and the Giving Side: Contributions to a Debate on the Democratic Refounding of Taxation]

English Translations

CCR

Critique of Cynical Reason

, translated by Michael Eldred, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.

TS

Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche’s Materialism

, translated by Jamie Owen Daniel, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

LHTC

‘Living Hot, Thinking Coldly: An Interview with Peter Sloterdijk’, with Éric Alliez, translated by Chris Turner,

Cultural Politics

, Vol. 3 No. 3, 2007, pp. 307–26.

RHZ

‘Rules for the Human Zoo’, translated by Mary Varney Rorty,

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

, Vol. 27 No. 1, 2009, pp. 12–28.

TPWP

Theory of the Post-War Periods: Observations on Franco-German Relations since 1945

, translated by Robert Pain, Wien: Springer, 2009.

GZ

God’s Zeal: The Battle of the Three Monotheisms

, Cambridge: Polity, 2009, translated by Wieland Hoban.

DE

Derrida, the Egyptian: On the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid

, Cambridge: Polity, 2009, translated by Wieland Hoban.

TA

Terror from the Air

, translated by Amy Patton and Steve Corcoran, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009.

RT

Rage and Time: A Psychopolitical Investigation

, translated by Mario Wenning, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

NSND

Neither Sun nor Death

, translated by Steve Corcoran, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2011.

There are also forthcoming English translations of VGN, S I, S II, S III, MLA, and WK.

Works by Friedrich Nietzsche

KSA

Samtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe

, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin and München: W. de Gruyter and Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Fifteen Volumes, 1980 (cited by volume and page).

Individual works within it are cited by section to allow reference to the multiple English editions.

HH

Human, All-too-Human

GS

The Gay Science

TSZ

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

GM

On the Genealogy of Morality

TI

Twilight of the Idols

AC

The Anti-Christ

EH

Ecce Homo

Works by Martin Heidegger

SZ

Sein und Zeit,

Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, Eleventh edition, 1967. Page references refer to the first edition of this text, which appear in the margins of subsequent German editions, and in the various English translations as

Being and Time

.

W

Wegmarken

, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976. Page references refer to the first edition of this text, which appear in the margins of subsequent German editions, and in brackets in the text of the translation as

Pathmarks

, edited by William McNeill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. This text includes Heidegger’s ‘Letter on “Humanism”’.

1

Worlds, Engagements, Temperaments

Stuart Elden

Peter Sloterdijk is one of the most interesting, prolific and controversial thinkers currently working within European philosophy. Trained in philosophy, history and literature he was initially a freelance writer, but in the last decade has been Rektor of the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung (State College of Design) in Karlsruhe, Germany where he has held a chair in philosophy and media theory since 1992. He first came to prominence with the philosophical bestseller Kritik der zynischen Vernunft in 1983, which was translated as Critique of Cynical Reason in 1988.1 Since this time he has exercised a considerable influence over German and other European thought, especially French and Spanish. In Germany he is a well-known media figure, co-hosting the television show ‘In the Glasshouse: Philosophical Quartet’, on the German ZDF channel, with Rüdiger Safranski since 2002. He is a regular newspaper columnist.

Yet in the English-speaking world his stature has been considerably less, in large part down to the lack of translations of his work. While the majority of his works are in Spanish and French translations, in English only Critique of Cynical Reason, Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche’s Materialism and some shorter pieces were translated in the 1980s and 1990s. The lack of translations of some of his most important works has made it difficult to get a handle on Sloterdijk’s overall project and specific books. He is in danger of becoming more talked about than read. Yet even his critics recognize that he has something to say. In , for example, Žžek described him as ‘definitely not one of our side, but also not a complete idiot’; and in as ‘the liberal-conservative of contemporary German thought’. Žžek has sought fit to attend to his writings in a number of places, also devoting pages to him in and .