One can rightly say of Peter Sloterdijk that each of his essays and lectures is also an unwritten book. That is why the texts presented here, which sketch a philosophical physiognomy of Martin Heidegger, should also be characterized as a collected renunciation of exhaustiveness.
In order to situate Heidegger’s thought in the history of ideas and problems, Peter Sloterdijk approaches Heidegger’s work with questions such as: If Western philosophy emerged from the spirit of the polis, what are we to make of the philosophical suitability of a man who never made a secret of his stubborn attachment to rural life? Is there a provincial truth of which the cosmopolitan city knows nothing? Is there a truth in country roads and cabins that would be able to undermine the universities with their standardized languages and globally influential discourses? From where does this odd professor speak, when from his professorial chair in Freiburg he claims to inquire into what lies beyond the history of Western metaphysics?
Sloterdijk also considers several other crucial twentieth-century thinkers who provide some needed contrast for the philosophical physiognomy of Martin Heidegger. A consideration of Niklas Luhmann as a kind of contemporary version of the Devil’s Advocate, a provocative critical interpretation of Theodor Adorno’s philosophy that focuses on its theological underpinnings and which also includes reflections on the philosophical significance of hyperbole, and a short sketch of the pessimistic thought of Emil Cioran all round out and deepen Sloterdijk’s attempts to think with, against, and beyond Heidegger. Finally, in essays such as ‘Domestication of Being’ and the ‘Rules for the Human Park, ‘ which incited an international controversy around the time of its publication and has been translated afresh for this volume, Sloterdijk develops some of his most intriguing and important ideas on anthropogenesis, humanism, technology, and genetic engineering.
Table of Content
Translators’ Introduction vii
Preface x
1. The Plunge and the Turn 1
Speech on Heidegger’s Thinking in Motion
2. Luhmann, Devil’s Advocate 49
Of Original Sin, the Egotism of Systems, and the New Ironies
3. The Domestication of Being 89
The Clarification of the Clearing
4. What Is Solidarity with Metaphysics at the Moment of Its Fall? 149
Note on Critical and Exaggerated Theory
5. Aletheia or the Fuse of Truth 175
Toward the Concept of a History of Unconcealment
6. Rules for the Human Park 193
A Response to Heidegger’s ‘Letter on ‘Humanism”
7. Wounded by Machines 217
Toward the Epochal Significance of the Most Recent Medical Technology
8. The Time of the Crime of the Monstrous 237
On the Philosophical Justification of the Artificial
9. The Selfless Revanchist 251
A Note on Cioran
10. ‘An Essential Tendency toward Nearness Lies in Dasein’ 257
Marginalia to Heidegger’s Doctrine of Existential Place
Notes 263
About the author
Peter Sloterdijk is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at the Karlsruhe School of Design.
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