This
procedure
is not exactly modest, but its immodesty is excused with a reference to the principle of the unity of truth.
Sloterdijk -Critique of Cynical Reason
Questions of self-preservation must be approached in the same language as those of self- destruction (Selbstvernichtung).
The same logic in the repudiation of morality seems to operate in them.
I call it the logic of the "cynical structure," that is, of the self-repudiation of refined ethics.
Elucidating this structure will clarify what it would mean to opt for life.
CYNICISM: THE TWILIGHT OF FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS ? 9
Notes
1. [This alludes to the work by Freud. -Trans. ]
2. The first movement (Aufhebung) of this definition takes place in chapter 5, the second in Part II. 3. [This refers to a subchapter in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. --Trans. ]
4. See the six cardinal cynicisms, chapter 8.
5. [A cynicism deriving from social status (Positionszynismus). --Trans. ]
6. See the second critique of religion, chapter 3.
Chapter 2
Enlightenment as Dialogue: Critique of Ideology as Continuation of the Miscarried Dialogue through
Other Means
Those who speak of cynicism will recall the limits of enlightenment. In this re- spect, focusing on the salient features of Weimar cynicism, apart from the advan- tage of making things clearer, also promises to be fruitful for the philosophy of history. The Weimar Republic represents in the course of German history not only a product of delayed development to nation-state-heavily burdened by the Wilhelminian legacy, the spirit of a cynically illiberal political system--but also a paradigm for "enlightenment miscarried. "
It has often been shown how and why the early champions of republican en- lightenment at that time could not have been anything else but a desperately well intentioned minority of representatives of reason against almost insurmountable odds: massive currents of antienlightenment and hatred for the intelligentsia; an array of antidemocratic and authoritarian ideologies that knew how to effectively organize the public sphere; an aggressive nationalism with a desire for revenge; an unenlightenable confusion of stubborn conservatisms, displaced petty bour- geois, messianic religious sects, apocalyptic political views, and equally realistic and psychopathological rejections of the demands of a disagreeable modernity. The wounds of the war kept getting infected in the smoldering crisis; Nietz- scheanism continued to be rampant--as the most prominent style of thinking for the German-narcissistic sulkiness and for the moody, arrogant, "protestant" rela- tionship to a "bad reality. " The climate of crisislike agitation produced a penetrat- ing psychopolitical oscillation between fear of the future and resentment, unstable pseudorealisms and psychic makeshifts. If ever an epoch called for a historical
10
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 11
psychopathology, it is the decade and a half between the fall of the empire and the establishment of national socialism. The first impression turns out to be right here: Those who sought to promote enlightenment in such a society fought a
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
losing battle. The powers of enlighten- ment were too weak for a precise number of reasons. Enlightenment was never able to ally itself effectively with the mass media, and individual self- determination was never an ideal for industrial monopolies and their organiza- tions. How could it have been?
Obviously enlightenment is fragmented through the resistance of powers op- posed to it. It would be wrong, however, to regard this only as a question of power arithmetic. For enlightenment is fragmented equally by a qualitative resis- tance in the opponent's consciousness. The latter fiercely resists the invitation to discussion and the undermining talk about truth; even talking itself is resented be- cause through it conventional views, values, and forms of self-assertion are brought into question. The interpretation of this resistance as a basic principle of ideology has become one of the main motifs of enlightenment.
It is not only in modern times that enlightenment has had to deal with an op- posed consciousness that has increasingly entrenched itself in impregnable posi- tions. In principle, the front can be traced back to the days of the Inquisition. If it is true that knowledge is power, as taught by the workers' movement, it is also true that not all knowledge is welcomed with open arms. Because there are no truths that can be taken possession of without a struggle, and because all knowl- edge must choose a place in the configuration of hegemonic and oppositional forces, the means of establishing knowledge seem to be almost more important than the knowledge itself. In modern times, enlightenment shows itself to be a tactical complex. The demand to universalize the rational draws it into the vortex of politics, pedagogy, and propaganda. With this, enlightenment consciously represses the harsh realism of older precepts of wisdom, for which there was no question that the masses are foolish and that reason is to be found only among the few. Modern elitism has to encode itself democratically.
It is not our task to give a historical account of the waning of enlightenment. We know that, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in spite of considerable resistance and many contradictions, it succeeded for the most part, with its sights set on its own achievements and plans, in dealing productively and progressively with the ferment of self-doubt. In spite of all hardships and setbacks to its de- velopment, it could still believe it had the law of progress on its side. Great names of that time bring to mind great achievements: Watt, Pasteur, Koch, Siemens. One can reject their achievements with disgruntlement, but that would be a ges-
t u r e of mood, not of fairness. The press, the railroads, social welfare, penicillin--who could deny that these are remarkable innovations in the "garden of humanity"? However, since the technological atrocities of the twentieth cen- tury, from Verdun to the Gulag, from Auschwitz to Hiroshima, experience
12 Q ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
? Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Discussion, 1926.
scorns all optimism. Historical consciousness and pessimism seem to amount to the same thing. And the catastrophes that have not yet happened, which are wait- ing in the wings, nurture the ever-present doubt about civilization. The late twen- tieth century rides on a wave of negative futurism. "The worst was already ex- pected," it just has "not yet" happened.
First, I want to restrict the theme of dissatisfied enlightenment to one point: the question concerning the means of power available to enlightenment con- fronted by an opposed consciousness. To inquire about "means of power" is al- ready in a certain way incorrect, since enlightenment is essentially a matter of free consent. It is that "doctrine" that does not want to attribute its success to any pressure other than reason. One of its axes is reason; the other is the free dialogue of those striving for reason. Its methodological core and its moral ideal at one and the same time are voluntary consensus. By this is meant that the opposed con- sciousness does not change its position under any influence other than that of con- vincing argumentation.
It is a matter of a sublimely peaceful event, where, under the impact of plausi- ble reasons, old, now untenable opinions are given up. Enlightenment thus con-
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 13
tains within itself, so to speak, a Utopian archaic scene--an epistemological idyll of peace, a beautiful and academic vision: that of the free dialogue of those who, under no external compulsion, are interested in knowledge. Here, dispassionate individuals, not enslaved to their own consciousness and not repressed by social ties, come together for a dialogue directed at truth under the laws of reason. The truth enlighteners want to disseminate arises through a noncoerced, but compel- ling, ' acceptance of stronger arguments. The protagonist or discoverer of an en- lightened thought has taken this step only a short time earlier, usually by surren- dering an earlier opinion.
The procedure of enlightenment accordingly has two aspects: the acceptance of the better position and the discarding of the previous opinion. This gives rise to an ambivalence of feelings: a gain and a pain. The Utopia of a gentle, critical dialogue foresees this difficulty. The pain becomes bearable in consciousness so that it can be voluntarily accepted among colleagues as the price of commonality. The "losers" can view themselves as the real winners. Thus, the dialogue
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
of en- lightenment is essentially nothing other than a laborious wrestling with opinions and an exploratory dialogue among persons who submit a priori to rules of peace because they emerge from the confrontation only as winners, winners in knowl- edge and solidarity. For this reason, it is assumed that parting from previous opin- ions can be overcome.
An academic idyll, as I have said --at the same time the regulative idea of any enlightenment that does not want to give up its hope for reconciliation. That things proceed differently in reality will surprise no one. In the confrontations of enlightenment with preceding stances of consciousness, everything but truth is at stake: hegemonic positions, class interests, established doctrines, desires, pas- sions, and the defense of "identities. " These impediments so strongly remold the dialogue of enlightenment that it would be more appropriate to talk of a war of consciousness than a dialogue of peace. The opponents do not submit themselves to a previously agreed upon peace treaty; rather they confront each other in a competition directed at banishment and annihilation; and they are not free in rela- tion to the powers that force their consciousness to speak just so, and in no other way.
Faced with these sober facts, the discourse model reacts in a consciously un- realistic way. It allows the archpragmatic statement primum vivere, deinde philosophari to hold only conditionally; for it knows at least this much: Situations will recur repeatedly where "philosophizing" is the only thing that can help life along.
It is tempting to poke fun at the "methodological antirealism" of the dialogue 'dea, and part of this book indeed tries to help the derisive laughter about every torm of foolish idealism get its due. However, when all contradictions have been taken into account, one will return here to the beginning, of course with a con-
14 ? ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
sciousness that has gone through all the hells of realism. To preserve the healing fiction of a free dialogue is one of the last tasks of philosophy.
Of course, enlightenment itself is the first to notice that it will not "pull
through" with rational and verbal dialogue alone. No one can feel the faltering,
the distorted assumptions about life, the ruptures, the miscarriage of the dialogue
more keenly than it. At the beginning of ideology critique there is also astonish-
ment because the opponent is so hard of hearing --an astonishment that quickly
gives way to a realistic awakening. Whoever does not want to hear, lets others
come to feel. Enlightenment is reminded how easily speaking openly can lead to
2camps and prisons. Hegemonic powers cannot be addressed so easily; they do
not come voluntarily to the negotiating table with their opponents, whom they would prefer to have behind bars. But even tradition, if one is allowed to speak allegorically about it, initially has no interest in granting equal rights of speech to enlighteners. From the dawn of time, human sentiment has regarded the old as the true, the new always as something questionable. This "archaic" feeling for truth had to be subdued by enlightenment, before we could see the new as the true. Earlier, one took for granted that political and spiritual hegemonic powers were allied in a conservative front, disinclined to all innovations. Wherever spiritual reforms took place (I have in mind, above all, the monastic movements of the Middle Ages and the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century), they saw them- selves as "conservative revolutions" obeying a call for a return to the roots. Fi- nally, in addition to hegemonic powers and traditions, people's minds, already too full, constitute a third authority that does not really care to listen to the spirit of enlightened innovation. They counter enlightenment with the resistance of in- grained habits and established attitudes that firmly occupy the space of conscious- ness and that can be brought to listen to a reason other than conventional wisdom only in exceptional circumstances. However, the vessel of knowledge cannot be filled twice. Enlightenment as critique recognizes in everything that is "already there" in people's minds its inner archenemy; it gives this enemy a contemptuous name: prejudices.
The threefold polemic in a critique of power, in the struggle against tradition, and in a war against prejudices is part of the traditional image of enlightenment. All three imply a struggle with opponents disinclined to dialogue. Enlightenment wants to talk to them about things that hegemonic powers and traditions prefer to keep quiet about: reason, justice, equality, freedom, truth, research. Through silence, the status quo is more likely to remain secure. Through talk, one is pursu- ing an uncertain future. Enlightenment enters this dialogue virtually empty- handed; it has only the fragile offer of free consent to the better argument. If it could gain acceptance by force, it would be not enlightenment but a variation of a free consciousness. Thus, it is true: As a rule, people stick to their positions for anything but "rational" reasons. What can be done?
Enlightenment has tried to make the best of this situation. Since nothing was
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE D 15
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
freely given to it, it developed almost from the beginning --besides the friendly invitation to a conversation-a second, combative stance. It receives blows, so it returns them. Some exchanges are so old that it would be senseless to ask who started them. The history of ideology critique comprises to a large extent the his- tory of this second, polemical gesture, the history of a great counteroffensive. Such critique, as theory of struggle, serves enlightenment in a twofold way: as a weapon against a hardened, conservative-complacent consciousness, and as an instrument for practice and gaining inner strength. The refusal of the opponents to engage in dialogue for enlightenment is of such enormous significance that it becomes a theoretical issue. Those who do not want to participate in enlighten- ment must have their reasons, and they are probably not the alleged reasons. Re- sistance itself becomes a topic in enlightenment. The opponents thus necessarily become "cases," their consciousness an object. Because they do not want to talk with us, we have to talk about them. But as in every combative attitude, the oppo- nents are from then on thought of not as egos but as apparatuses in which, partly openly, partly secretly, a mechanism of resistance is at work that renders them unfree and leads them to errors and illusions.
Ideology critique means the polemical continuation of the miscarried dialogue through other means. It declares a war on consciousness, even when it pretends to be so serious and "nonpolemical. " The rules for peace are in substance res- cinded. At this point it becomes clear that there is no intersubjectivity that could not equally well be interobjectivity. In hitting and being hit, both parties become subjective objects for each other. Strictly speaking, ideology critique wants not merely to "hit," but to operate with precision, in the surgical and military sense: to outflank and expose opponents, to reveal the opponents' intentions. Exposing implies laying out the mechanism of false and unfree consciousness.
In principle, enlightenment knows only two grounds for falsity: error and /// will. At best, only the latter can possess the dignity of a subject, for only when opponents consciously lie does the "wrong opinion" possess an ego. If one as- sumes error, the wrong opinion rests not on an ego but on a mechanism that fal- sifies the right opinion. Only a lie bears responsibility for itself, whereas an error, because it is mechanical, remains in relative "innocence. " Error, however, quickly splits into two different phenomena: the simple error (which is based on logical or perceptual delusion and can be corrected relatively easily) and the per- sistent, systematic error (which clings to its own conditions of existence and is called ideology). Thus arise the classic series of forms of false consciousness: lie, error, ideology.
bvery struggle leads necessarily to a reciprocal reification of subjects. Because -niightenment cannot give up its claim of imposing better insights against a self- structing consciousness, it must basically "operate" behind the opponent's con- - lousness. Thus, ideology critique acquires a cruel aspect that, if it ever really mits to being cruel, claims to be nothing more than a reaction to the cruelties
16 ? ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
? Matthias Greutzer, Model of Vanity (the second picture shows the view with raised skirt), 1596.
of "ideology. " Here it becomes clearer than anywhere else that "philosophical" ideology critique is truly the heir of a great satirical tradition, in which the motif of unmasking, exposing, baring has served for aeons now as a weapon. But mod- ern ideology critique--according to our thesis has ominously cut itself off from the powerful traditions of laughter in satirical knowledge, which have their roots in ancient kynicism. Recent ideology critique already appears in respectable garb, and in Marxism and especially in psychoanalysis it has even put on suit and tie so as to completely assume an air of bourgeois respectability. It has given up its life as satire, in order to win its position in books as "theory. " From the lively form of heated polemic it has retreated to those positions taken in a cold war of consciousness. Heinrich Heine was one of the last authors of classical enlighten- ment who literarily defended, in open satire, the rights of ideology critique to "just atrocities'; here, the public has not followed him. The bourgeois transforma- tion of satire into ideology critique was as inevitable as the bourgeois transforma- tion of society, in general, together with its oppositional forces.
Ideology critique, having become respectable, imitates surgical procedure: Cut open the patient with the critical scalpel and operate under impeccably sterile conditions. The opponent is cut open in front of everyone, until the mechanism of his error is laid bare. The outer skin of delusion and the nerve endings of "ac- tual" motives are hygienically separated and prepared. From then on, enlighten- ment is not satisfied, of course, but it is better armed in its insistence on its own claims for the distant future. Ideology critique is now interested not in winning over the vivisected opponent but in focusing on the "corpse," the critical extract
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE D 17
Graffitti on the Berlin Wall. "We are born to be free. " Ideology critique as inscrip- tion on the other's defense.
of its ideas, which lie in the libraries of enlighteners and in which one can easily read about their grave falsity. Obviously one does not get any closer to the oppo- nent in this way. Those who previously did not want to engage in enlightenment will want to do so even less now that they have been dissected and exposed by the opponent. Of course, according to the logic of the game, the enlightener will at least be victorious: Sooner or later, the opponent will be
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
forced to respond apologetically.
Irritated by the attacks and "unmaskings," the counterenlighteners will one day begin to conduct their own "enlightenment" on the enlighteners, in order to de- nounce them as human beings and to associate them socially with criminals. They are then usually called "elements. " The word is unintentionally well chosen, since wanting to fight the elements does not sound very promising. Eventually, it can- not be avoided; the hegemonic powers begin to talk indiscreetly. Then, increas- ingly irritated, they reveal something of their secrets; universally acknowledged cultural ideals are thereby cunningly retracted. In the compulsion of the weakened hegemonic powers to confess, as remains to be shown, lies one of the roots of the modern cynical structure.
Without wanting to, "dissatisfied enlightenment" has, in turn, entrenched itself on this front. Threatened by its own fatigue and undermined by the need for seri- ousness, it often remains content with having wrung involuntary confessions from its opponent. In fact, in time, the experienced eye will see "confessions" every- where, and even when the hegemonic power shoots instead of negotiating, it will not be difficult to interpret bullets as the revelations of a fundamental weakness- that is how those powers express themselves that have no imagination and that'
? 18 D" ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
in order to save themselves, cling to nothing more than their strong nerves and executive organs.
Arguing behind the back and through the head of the opponent has become common practice in modern critique. The gesture of exposure characterizes the style of argumentation of ideology critique, from the critique of religion in the eighteenth century to the critique of fascism in the twentieth. Everywhere, one discovers extrarational mechanisms of opinion: interests, passions, fixations, il- lusions. That helps a bit to mitigate the scandalous contradiction between the postulated unity of truth and the factual plurality of opinions--since it cannot be eliminated. Under these assumptions, a true theory would be one that not only grounds its own theses best, but also knows how to defuse all significant and per- sistent counterpositions through ideology critique. In this point, as one can easily see, official Marxism has the greatest ambition, since the major part of its theoret- ical energy is dedicated to outdoing all non-Marxist theories and exposing them as "bourgeois ideologies. " Only by continually outdoing the others, can ideolo- gists succeed in "living" with the plurality of ideologies. De facto, the critique of ideology implies the attempt to construct a hierarchy between unmasking and un- masked theory. In the war of consciousness, getting on top, that is, achieving a synthesis of claims to power and better insights, is crucial.
Since, in the business of critique, contrary to academic custom, ad hominem arguments are used unhesitatingly, universities have, probably deliberately, moved cautiously toward the procedures of ideology critique. For the attack from the flank, the argumentum ad personam, is strongly disapproved of in the "aca- demic community. " Respectable critique meets its opponent in its best form; cri- tique honors itself when it overwhelms its rival in the full armor of its rationality. For as long as possible, the learned collegium has tried to defend its integrity against the close combat of ideologico-critical exposures. Do not unmask, lest you yourself be unmasked could be the unspoken rule. It is no accident that the great representatives of critique--the French moralists, the Encyclopedists, the socialists, and especially Heine, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud--remain outsiders to the scholarly domain. In all of them there is a satirical, polemical component that can scarcely be hidden under the mask of scholarly respectability. These sig- nals of a holy nonseriousness, which remains one of the sure indexes of truth, can be employed as signposts to the critique of cynical reason. We will find a reliably unreliable traveling companion in Heinrich Heine, who displayed a knack, unsurpassed to the present day, for combining theory and satire, cognition and entertainment. Here, following in his tracks, we want to try to reunite the capacities for truth in literature, satire, and art with those of "scholarly dis- course. "
The right of ideology critique to use ad hominem arguments was indirectly ac- knowledged even by the strictest absolutist of reason, J. G. Fichte, whom Heine aptly compared to Napoleon when he said that the kind of philosophy one chooses
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 19
depends on the kind of person one is. This critique intrudes into the conditions under which human beings form opinions with either compassionate serenity or cruel seriousness. It seizes error from behind and tears at its roots in practical life.
This procedure is not exactly modest, but its immodesty is excused with a reference to the principle of the unity of truth. What is brought to light by the vivisecting approach is the everlasting embarrassment of ideas confronted by the interests underlying them: human, all too human; egoisms, class privileges, resentments, steadfastness of hegemonic powers. Under such illumination, the opposing subject appears not only psychologically but also sociologically and po- litically undermined. Accordingly, its standpoint can be understood only if one adds to its self- portrayals what is, in fact, hidden behind and below them. In this way, ideology critique raises a claim that it shares with hermeneutics, namely, the claim to understand an "author" better than he understands himself. What at first sounds arrogant about this claim can be methodologically justified. Others often really do perceive things about me that escape
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
my attention--and con- versely. They possess the advantage of distance, which I can profit from only retrospectively through dialogic mirroring. This, of course, would presuppose a functioning dialogue, which is precisely what does not take place in the process of ideology critique.
An ideology critique that does not clearly accept its identity as satire can, how- ever, easily be transformed from an instrument in the search for truth into one of dogmatism. All too often, it interferes with the capacity for dialogue instead of opening up new paths for it. This explains, leaving general antischolastic and antiintellectual feelings aside, a part of the current dissatisfaction with the critique of ideology.
Thus it happens that an ideology critique that presents itself as science, because it is not allowed to be satire, gets more and more entangled in serious radical solu- tions. One of these is its striking tendency to seek refuge in psychopathology. False consciousness appears first of all as sick consciousness. Almost all impor- tant works of the twentieth century on the phenomenon of ideology do the same thing-from Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich to R. D. Laing and David Cooper, not to mention Joseph Gabel, who has pushed the analogy between ideol- ogy and schizophrenia furthest. Those stances are suspected of being sick that loudly proclaim themselves to be the healthiest, most normal, and natural. The reliance of critique on psychopathology, although probably well justified, risks alienating the opponent more and more deeply; it reifies and diminishes the other's reality. In the end, the critic of ideology stands before the opposing con- sciousness like one of those modern, highly specialized pathologists who can, of course, say precisely what kind of pathological disturbance the patient is suffering
rom but knows nothing about appropriate therapies because that is not his spe- cialty. Such critics, like some medicos corrupted by their profession, are in- terested in the diseases, not in the patients.
20 ? ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
The most humorless reification of every opposing consciousness has grown out of the ideology critique that bases itself on Marx (I will not go into whether this is proper use or misuse of Marx). The radical reification of the opponent is in any case of factual consequence of the politico-economic realism characteristic of Marxian theory. However, here an additional motif comes into play: If all other exposures trace false consciousness back to seamy features of the human totality (lies, nastiness, egoism, repression, split consciousness, illusion, wishful thinking, etc. ), the Marxian exposure runs up against the nonsubjective, the laws of the politico-economic process as a whole. When ideologies are criticized from a politico-economic perspective, one never really gets down to "human weak- nesses. " Rather, one hits on an abstract social mechanism in which individual per- sons, as members of classes, have distinct functions: as capitalist, as proletarian, as intermediate functionary, as theoretical hack for the system. However, neither in the head nor in the components of the system is there any clarity about the na- ture of the whole. Each of its members is mystified in a way corresponding to its position. Even the capitalist, in spite of practical experience with capital, finds no true image of the total structure, but remains a necessarily deceived epiphenomenon of the process of capital.
It is here that a second offshoot of modern cynicism grows. As soon as I as- sume, in Marx's formulation, a "necessarily false consciousness," the spiral of reification is turned even further. There would then be in the minds of human be- ings precisely those errors that have to be in them so that the system can function--toward its collapse. In the gaze of the Marxist system-critic, there glit- ters an irony that is a priori condemned to cynicism. For the critic admits that ideologies, which from an external point of view are false consciousness, are, seen from the inside, precisely the right consciousness. Ideologies appear simply as the appropriate errors in the corresponding minds: the "correct false conscious- ness. " This echoes the definition of cynicism given in the first preliminary reflec- tion (chapter 1). The difference is that the Marxist critic gives "correct false con- sciousness" the chance to enlighten itself or to be enlightened --through Marxism. Then, in the critic's opinion, it would have become true consciousness, not "en- lightened false consciousness," as the formula for cynicism says. Theoretically, the perspective of emancipation is kept open.
Any sociological system theory that treats "truth" functionalistically-I say this in advance --carries an immense potential for cynicism. And since every contem- porary intellect is caught up in the process of such sociological theories, it inevita- bly is implicated in the latent or overt master cynicism of these forms of thinking. Marxism, in its origins, at least maintained an ambivalence between reifying and emancipative perspectives. Non-Marxist system theories of society drop even the last trace of sensitivity. In alliance with neoconservative currents, they proclaim that useful members of human society have to internalize certain "correct illu- sions" once and for all, because without them nothing functions properly. The
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 21
3naivete of the others should be planned, "capital fix being man himself. " It is al-
ways a good investment to mobilize the naive will to work, for whatever reason. System theoreticians and maintenance
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
strategists are from the start beyond naive belief. But for those who should believe in it, the aphorism holds: Stop reflecting and maintain values.
Those who make the means of liberating reflection available and invite others to use them appear to conservatives as unscrupulous and power-hungry good-for- nothings who are reproached with "Others do the work. " Very well, but for whom?
Notes
1. [This is a variation of Habermas's formulation of the "zwanglose Zwang des besseren Argu- ments. "-Trans. ]
2. In this book I designate consistently any power that dominates as hegemonic power to indicate that this power never is or has power by itself, but always "rides," so to speak, on the back of an op- positional power. In a realistic theory of power, omnipotence and impotence occur only as quasi- "mathematical" ideas of power, as the infinitely great and the infinitely small in power. Omnipotence and impotence cannot confront each other, but hegemonic power and oppositional power can. What "exists" possesses power, a positive quantum of energy, that is centered in conscious bodies and ex- tends itself to appropriate tools and weapons. For this reason, the logic of all-or-nothing is dangerous, indeed fatal, in politics. In Si^yes's statement-"What is the Third Estate? Nothing. What does it want to become? Everything"--a disastrous self-characterization of the oppositional power comes into be- ing, a false logical treatment (Logisierung) of political struggle through which the part wants to make itself into the whole. In substance, this false all- or-nothing logic is repeated in Marxism, which wanted to make the proletariat "everything. " Is this inverted concept of power a universal legacy of leftist opposition? Even the French New Philosophy, straying into old ways of thinking, comes to grief on this concept by confusing omnipotence with hegemonic power and imposing a Manichaean ontology of an evil state power.
3. [This phrase is taken from Marx, who in turn quotes the French term for fixed capital. -- Trans. ]
Chapter 3
Eight Unmaskings:
A Review of Critiques
In the following I sketch eight cases of the enlightenment critique of ideology and critique-through-unmasking whose polemical modes of procedure have become paradigmatic. We will be concerned with the historically most successful figures of demasking --successful, however, not in the sense that the critique had really "finished off' what it criticized. The effects of critique are generally different from those that were intended. Social hegemonic powers intent on sustaining them- selves prove capable of learning when they are on the defensive and all else fails. A social history of enlightenment must devote attention to the learning processes of defensive hegemonic powers. A cardinal problem in the history of ideology is the backlog of "false consciousnesses" that first learn from their critics what suspicion and exposure, cynicism and "finesse" are.
Our review of critique will show enlightenment en marche in an imperturbable and relentless drive against illusions, old and new. That the critique, in its strug- gle with its opponents, cannot "clean up" (with them) remains to be shown. We want to see how, here and there, in the critique itself, the germs of new dog- matisms are formed. Enlightenment does not penetrate into social consciousness simply as an unproblematic bringer of light. Where it has an effect, a twilight arises, a deep ambivalence. We will characterize this ambivalence as the at- mosphere in which, in the middle of a snarl of factual self-preservation with moral self-denial, cynicism crystallizes.
22
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 23
? Heinrich Hoerle, Masks, 1929. (Reproduced by permission of the Museum Lud- wig, Cologne. )
Critique of Revelation
What? The miracle merely an error of interpretation? A lack of philology?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
For Christian civilization, Holy Scripture has paramount value by virtue of the idea that it is a work of divine dictation. Human understanding should submit to it, just as the senses should yield to the sight of a "miracle" that happens before one's very eyes. Dressed in the various mother tongues, the "voice" of the divine (theologically, the Holy Spirit) speaks out of the holy text.
The Bible appears "holy" as a text rooted in the Absolute. Accordingly, no in- terpretation would be adequate enough to exhaust its overabundance of meaning that renews itself through the epochs of humanity. Exegesis can be nothing other than the vain but necessary attempt to fill the tiny spoon of our understanding with this ocean of meaning. However, all interpretations and applications must remain m the last instance merely human and useless without the assumption that the text Uself is divinely inspired. Only this belief raises scripture to its unique position. ^ a word, it is the belief in the revelatory nature of the Bible that makes it the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
? ly Book pure and simple. This belief manifests itself in a very naive and radical
Wa
y in the doctrine of "verbal inspiration," according to which the Holy Spirit stated directly into the pen of the human scribes, without taking a detour
24 ? EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
through their finite consciousness. Theology begins with automatic writing. The "private" religious opinions of a Matthew or a Paul would be at best interesting, but not binding; they would remain exhaustible and limited human stances of con- sciousness. Only theological hypostasis, the elevation to the voice of the Holy Spirit dictating to Matthew or Paul, places the text at the source of unlimited meaning.
Enlightenment inquires precisely into this claim. It asks, innocently and sub- versively, for proofs, sources, and evidence. At the beginning it solemnly avers that it would willingly believe everything, if only it could find someone to con- vince it. Here it becomes clear that the biblical texts, taken philologically, remain themselves their only witness. Their revelatory character is their own claim, and it can be believed or not; the church, which elevates this revelatory character to the status of a grand dogma, itself plays only the role of an interpreter.
With his radical biblicism, Luther rejected the church's claim to authority. This repudiation then repeats itself on the higher level through biblicism itself. For text remains text, and every assertion that it is divinely inspired can, in turn, be only a human, fallible assertion. With every attempt to grasp the absolute source, critique comes up against relative, historical sources that only ever assert the Absolute. The miracles spoken about in the Bible to legitimate God's power are only reports of miracles for which there are no longer any means of verifica- tion. The revelatory claim is stuck in a philological circle.
In his defense of the Reimarus writings in 1777 (On the Proof of the Spirit and of the Power), Lessing unmasked in a classic manner the revelatory claim as a mere assertion. The main thesis reads: "Accidental historical truths can never be- come the proof of necessary truths of reason. " His argumentation:
Consequently, if I do not have anything historical to counter the claim that Christ awakened a dead person, must I therefore accept as true that God has a son who is of the same essence? What is the connection be- tween my incapacity to counter anything substantial against the evidence of the former and my commitment to believe something my reason resists?
If I do not have anything historical to counter the claim that Christ himself rose from the dead, must I therefore accept as true that pre- cisely this resurrected Christ was the son of God?
That Christ, against whose resurrection I have nothing of importance historically to counter, presented himself as the son of God so that his followers for this reason held him to be so; all that I believe with my whole heart. For these truths, as truths of one and the same class, fol- low quite naturally from one another.
But now to jump with this historical truth over into a completely different class of truths and demand of me that I should restructure all my metaphysical and moral concepts accordingly, to expect of me, be-
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 25
cause I cannot counter the resurrection of Christ with credible evidence, that I alter all my basic ideas about the essence of divinity accordingly; if that is not a transition to another logical category (metdbasis eis alio genos), then I do not know what Aristotle understood by this desig- nation.
One says, of course: But precisely that Christ, about whom you must historically allow to be true that he raised the dead, that he himself rose from the dead, has himself said that God has a son of the same essence and that he is this son.
That would be quite good. If only it were historically certain also that Christ in fact said this.
If one wanted to pursue me and say: "But indeed! That is more than historically certain; for inspired chronologists, who cannot err, assure us of it": But again it is unfortunately only historically certain that these chronologists were inspired and could not err.
That, that is the terrifyingly wide gap over which I cannot come, no matter how often and how earnestly I have attempted to leap over it. If someone can help me over it, then do so! I ask him, I beg him. He would earn a divine reward through me.
Human knowledge is forced to retreat into the limits of historiography, philol- ogy, and logic. Something of this painful retreat appears in Lessing, who does not disingenuously aver that his heart would willingly remain more credulous than his reason allows. With the question "How can one know that? ", enlighten- ment severs the roots of revelatory knowledge quite elegantly, without being par- ticularly aggressive. With the best will, human reason cannot find anything in the sacred text but historical, human-made assumptions. With a simple philological query, the claim of absoluteness made by tradition is annihilated.
No matter how convincing the historical-philological critique of the Bible may be, the confessional absolutism of
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
organized religion does not want to ac- knowledge that according to the rules of the art, it is suspended. Its absolutism simply continues to "exist," not, to be sure, as if this suspension and this exposure had never happened, but as if there were no consequences to be drawn from them, except one; namely that one must study and excommunicate the critics. Only after the fundamental critique of modern times does theology completely board the ship of fools of so-called belief and drift farther and farther from the banks of literal critique. In the nineteenth century, the churches gave the signal for merg- mg postcritical irrationalism with political reaction. Like all institutions imbued with the will to survive, they knew how to weather the "dissolution" of their foun-
ations. From now on, the concept of 'existence' stinks of the cadaveric poison ? t Christianity, of the rotting after-life, of what, in spite of critique, has been criti- -ized. Since then, theologians have had an additional trait in common with ynics: the sense for naked self-preservation. They have made themselves com-
26 D EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
fortably at home in the tub of a dogmatics riddled with holes until the Day of Judgment. Critique of Religious Illusion
Deception always goes further than suspicion.
La Rochefoucauld
In a strategically clever move, enlightenment's critique of the religious phenome- non concentrates on God's attributes; only secondarily does it tackle the sticky "question of existence. " Whether God "exists" is not the basic problem; what is essential is what people mean when they maintain that he exists and that his will is thus and thus.
Initially, then, it is important to find out what they pretend to know of God besides his existence. Religious traditions provide the material for this. Because God is not "empirically" observable, the assignment of divine attributes to human experience plays the decisive role in the critique. Religious doctrine can, under no circumstances, evade this point, except by opting for a radical cult theology or, more consistently, for the mystical thesis of an unnameable God. This logi- cally consistent consequence for a philosophy of religion would offer adequate protection against enlightenment's detectivelike inquiries into human fantasies about God that shine through in the attributes. However, with mystical renuncia- tion, religion cannot become a social institution; it lives from the fact that it presents established narratives (myths) and standardized attributes (names and images), as well as stereotyped ways of behaving toward the holy (rituals), in reliably recurring forms.
One thus has only to examine these presentations more closely to track down the secret of their fabrication. The Bible provides the critic of religion with the decisive reference. Genesis 1:27: "And God created Man according to His image, in the image of God created He him. " Without doubt, this "image" relation can also be interpreted the other way around. From then on it is no mystery where the images come from; humans and their experiences are the material from which the official dreams about God are made. The religious eye projects earthly images into heaven.
One of these primary projections (how could it be otherwise? ) comes from the realm of images related to family and procreation. In polytheistic religions one finds intricate, often downright frivolous family sagas and affairs involving the procreation of deities --which one can readily study in Greek, Egyptian, and Hindu gods. That the human power of imagination proceeded too discreetly in picturing the heavenly populations will be maintained by no one. Even the sub- lime and theologically ambitious Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not free of family and procreation fantasies. Its particular refinement, however, has Mary
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 27
getting pregnant by the Holy Ghost. Satire has recognized this challenge. The doctrine is intended to avoid the idea that a sexually constituted bond exists be- tween father and son. The Christian God may well "procreate," but he does not copulate; for this reason the Creed says, with true subtlety: genitum, non factum.
Closely related to the idea of procreation is that of authorship, of Creation, which is attributed particularly to the superior and monotheistic gods. Here, hu- man experience is mixed in with production, rooted in agrarian and artisanal ac- tivity. In their labor, human beings experienced themselves prototypically as cre- ators, as authors of a new, previously nonexisting effect. The more the world became mechanized, the more the idea of God was transferred from the biological conception of procreation to that of production. Accordingly, the procreating God became increasingly a world manufacturer, the original producer.
The third primary projection is that of succor, among the constitutive images of religious life perhaps the most important. The greater part of religious pleas are addressed to God as helper in the distress of life and death. Because, however, God's succor presupposes his power over worldly events, the fantasy of the helper is blended with human experiences in protecting, caring, and ruling. The popular image of Christ shows him as the Good Shepherd. In the course of the history of religion, the gods have been assigned jurisdictions and responsibilities, whether in the form of sectoral sovereignty over a natural element such as sea, river, wind, forest, and grain, or in the form of general rule over
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
the created world. Political experiences obviously permeate these projections. The power of God is analogous to the functions of chiefs and kings. The religion of feudal soci- ety is the most open with its political projection of God in that it unhesitatingly institutes God as the highest feudal lord and addresses him with the feudal title of "Lord. " In English, one still says "My Lord. " Anthropomorphism or sociomor- phism is revealed most naively where pictorial representations of the gods were attempted. For this reason, religions and theologies that have reflected on this have promulgated a strict prohibition of images: They recognized the danger of reification. Judaism, Islam, and also certain "iconoclastic" factions of Christianity have, on this point, exercised an intelligent continence. Enlightenment satire amused itself over African deities, for whom a black skin was just as self-evident as were slanted eyes for Asiatic idols. It entertained itself with the thought of how ? ions, camels, and penguins would probably imagine their dear God: as
lion, camel, and penguin.
CYNICISM: THE TWILIGHT OF FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS ? 9
Notes
1. [This alludes to the work by Freud. -Trans. ]
2. The first movement (Aufhebung) of this definition takes place in chapter 5, the second in Part II. 3. [This refers to a subchapter in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. --Trans. ]
4. See the six cardinal cynicisms, chapter 8.
5. [A cynicism deriving from social status (Positionszynismus). --Trans. ]
6. See the second critique of religion, chapter 3.
Chapter 2
Enlightenment as Dialogue: Critique of Ideology as Continuation of the Miscarried Dialogue through
Other Means
Those who speak of cynicism will recall the limits of enlightenment. In this re- spect, focusing on the salient features of Weimar cynicism, apart from the advan- tage of making things clearer, also promises to be fruitful for the philosophy of history. The Weimar Republic represents in the course of German history not only a product of delayed development to nation-state-heavily burdened by the Wilhelminian legacy, the spirit of a cynically illiberal political system--but also a paradigm for "enlightenment miscarried. "
It has often been shown how and why the early champions of republican en- lightenment at that time could not have been anything else but a desperately well intentioned minority of representatives of reason against almost insurmountable odds: massive currents of antienlightenment and hatred for the intelligentsia; an array of antidemocratic and authoritarian ideologies that knew how to effectively organize the public sphere; an aggressive nationalism with a desire for revenge; an unenlightenable confusion of stubborn conservatisms, displaced petty bour- geois, messianic religious sects, apocalyptic political views, and equally realistic and psychopathological rejections of the demands of a disagreeable modernity. The wounds of the war kept getting infected in the smoldering crisis; Nietz- scheanism continued to be rampant--as the most prominent style of thinking for the German-narcissistic sulkiness and for the moody, arrogant, "protestant" rela- tionship to a "bad reality. " The climate of crisislike agitation produced a penetrat- ing psychopolitical oscillation between fear of the future and resentment, unstable pseudorealisms and psychic makeshifts. If ever an epoch called for a historical
10
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 11
psychopathology, it is the decade and a half between the fall of the empire and the establishment of national socialism. The first impression turns out to be right here: Those who sought to promote enlightenment in such a society fought a
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
losing battle. The powers of enlighten- ment were too weak for a precise number of reasons. Enlightenment was never able to ally itself effectively with the mass media, and individual self- determination was never an ideal for industrial monopolies and their organiza- tions. How could it have been?
Obviously enlightenment is fragmented through the resistance of powers op- posed to it. It would be wrong, however, to regard this only as a question of power arithmetic. For enlightenment is fragmented equally by a qualitative resis- tance in the opponent's consciousness. The latter fiercely resists the invitation to discussion and the undermining talk about truth; even talking itself is resented be- cause through it conventional views, values, and forms of self-assertion are brought into question. The interpretation of this resistance as a basic principle of ideology has become one of the main motifs of enlightenment.
It is not only in modern times that enlightenment has had to deal with an op- posed consciousness that has increasingly entrenched itself in impregnable posi- tions. In principle, the front can be traced back to the days of the Inquisition. If it is true that knowledge is power, as taught by the workers' movement, it is also true that not all knowledge is welcomed with open arms. Because there are no truths that can be taken possession of without a struggle, and because all knowl- edge must choose a place in the configuration of hegemonic and oppositional forces, the means of establishing knowledge seem to be almost more important than the knowledge itself. In modern times, enlightenment shows itself to be a tactical complex. The demand to universalize the rational draws it into the vortex of politics, pedagogy, and propaganda. With this, enlightenment consciously represses the harsh realism of older precepts of wisdom, for which there was no question that the masses are foolish and that reason is to be found only among the few. Modern elitism has to encode itself democratically.
It is not our task to give a historical account of the waning of enlightenment. We know that, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in spite of considerable resistance and many contradictions, it succeeded for the most part, with its sights set on its own achievements and plans, in dealing productively and progressively with the ferment of self-doubt. In spite of all hardships and setbacks to its de- velopment, it could still believe it had the law of progress on its side. Great names of that time bring to mind great achievements: Watt, Pasteur, Koch, Siemens. One can reject their achievements with disgruntlement, but that would be a ges-
t u r e of mood, not of fairness. The press, the railroads, social welfare, penicillin--who could deny that these are remarkable innovations in the "garden of humanity"? However, since the technological atrocities of the twentieth cen- tury, from Verdun to the Gulag, from Auschwitz to Hiroshima, experience
12 Q ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
? Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Discussion, 1926.
scorns all optimism. Historical consciousness and pessimism seem to amount to the same thing. And the catastrophes that have not yet happened, which are wait- ing in the wings, nurture the ever-present doubt about civilization. The late twen- tieth century rides on a wave of negative futurism. "The worst was already ex- pected," it just has "not yet" happened.
First, I want to restrict the theme of dissatisfied enlightenment to one point: the question concerning the means of power available to enlightenment con- fronted by an opposed consciousness. To inquire about "means of power" is al- ready in a certain way incorrect, since enlightenment is essentially a matter of free consent. It is that "doctrine" that does not want to attribute its success to any pressure other than reason. One of its axes is reason; the other is the free dialogue of those striving for reason. Its methodological core and its moral ideal at one and the same time are voluntary consensus. By this is meant that the opposed con- sciousness does not change its position under any influence other than that of con- vincing argumentation.
It is a matter of a sublimely peaceful event, where, under the impact of plausi- ble reasons, old, now untenable opinions are given up. Enlightenment thus con-
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 13
tains within itself, so to speak, a Utopian archaic scene--an epistemological idyll of peace, a beautiful and academic vision: that of the free dialogue of those who, under no external compulsion, are interested in knowledge. Here, dispassionate individuals, not enslaved to their own consciousness and not repressed by social ties, come together for a dialogue directed at truth under the laws of reason. The truth enlighteners want to disseminate arises through a noncoerced, but compel- ling, ' acceptance of stronger arguments. The protagonist or discoverer of an en- lightened thought has taken this step only a short time earlier, usually by surren- dering an earlier opinion.
The procedure of enlightenment accordingly has two aspects: the acceptance of the better position and the discarding of the previous opinion. This gives rise to an ambivalence of feelings: a gain and a pain. The Utopia of a gentle, critical dialogue foresees this difficulty. The pain becomes bearable in consciousness so that it can be voluntarily accepted among colleagues as the price of commonality. The "losers" can view themselves as the real winners. Thus, the dialogue
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
of en- lightenment is essentially nothing other than a laborious wrestling with opinions and an exploratory dialogue among persons who submit a priori to rules of peace because they emerge from the confrontation only as winners, winners in knowl- edge and solidarity. For this reason, it is assumed that parting from previous opin- ions can be overcome.
An academic idyll, as I have said --at the same time the regulative idea of any enlightenment that does not want to give up its hope for reconciliation. That things proceed differently in reality will surprise no one. In the confrontations of enlightenment with preceding stances of consciousness, everything but truth is at stake: hegemonic positions, class interests, established doctrines, desires, pas- sions, and the defense of "identities. " These impediments so strongly remold the dialogue of enlightenment that it would be more appropriate to talk of a war of consciousness than a dialogue of peace. The opponents do not submit themselves to a previously agreed upon peace treaty; rather they confront each other in a competition directed at banishment and annihilation; and they are not free in rela- tion to the powers that force their consciousness to speak just so, and in no other way.
Faced with these sober facts, the discourse model reacts in a consciously un- realistic way. It allows the archpragmatic statement primum vivere, deinde philosophari to hold only conditionally; for it knows at least this much: Situations will recur repeatedly where "philosophizing" is the only thing that can help life along.
It is tempting to poke fun at the "methodological antirealism" of the dialogue 'dea, and part of this book indeed tries to help the derisive laughter about every torm of foolish idealism get its due. However, when all contradictions have been taken into account, one will return here to the beginning, of course with a con-
14 ? ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
sciousness that has gone through all the hells of realism. To preserve the healing fiction of a free dialogue is one of the last tasks of philosophy.
Of course, enlightenment itself is the first to notice that it will not "pull
through" with rational and verbal dialogue alone. No one can feel the faltering,
the distorted assumptions about life, the ruptures, the miscarriage of the dialogue
more keenly than it. At the beginning of ideology critique there is also astonish-
ment because the opponent is so hard of hearing --an astonishment that quickly
gives way to a realistic awakening. Whoever does not want to hear, lets others
come to feel. Enlightenment is reminded how easily speaking openly can lead to
2camps and prisons. Hegemonic powers cannot be addressed so easily; they do
not come voluntarily to the negotiating table with their opponents, whom they would prefer to have behind bars. But even tradition, if one is allowed to speak allegorically about it, initially has no interest in granting equal rights of speech to enlighteners. From the dawn of time, human sentiment has regarded the old as the true, the new always as something questionable. This "archaic" feeling for truth had to be subdued by enlightenment, before we could see the new as the true. Earlier, one took for granted that political and spiritual hegemonic powers were allied in a conservative front, disinclined to all innovations. Wherever spiritual reforms took place (I have in mind, above all, the monastic movements of the Middle Ages and the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century), they saw them- selves as "conservative revolutions" obeying a call for a return to the roots. Fi- nally, in addition to hegemonic powers and traditions, people's minds, already too full, constitute a third authority that does not really care to listen to the spirit of enlightened innovation. They counter enlightenment with the resistance of in- grained habits and established attitudes that firmly occupy the space of conscious- ness and that can be brought to listen to a reason other than conventional wisdom only in exceptional circumstances. However, the vessel of knowledge cannot be filled twice. Enlightenment as critique recognizes in everything that is "already there" in people's minds its inner archenemy; it gives this enemy a contemptuous name: prejudices.
The threefold polemic in a critique of power, in the struggle against tradition, and in a war against prejudices is part of the traditional image of enlightenment. All three imply a struggle with opponents disinclined to dialogue. Enlightenment wants to talk to them about things that hegemonic powers and traditions prefer to keep quiet about: reason, justice, equality, freedom, truth, research. Through silence, the status quo is more likely to remain secure. Through talk, one is pursu- ing an uncertain future. Enlightenment enters this dialogue virtually empty- handed; it has only the fragile offer of free consent to the better argument. If it could gain acceptance by force, it would be not enlightenment but a variation of a free consciousness. Thus, it is true: As a rule, people stick to their positions for anything but "rational" reasons. What can be done?
Enlightenment has tried to make the best of this situation. Since nothing was
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE D 15
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
freely given to it, it developed almost from the beginning --besides the friendly invitation to a conversation-a second, combative stance. It receives blows, so it returns them. Some exchanges are so old that it would be senseless to ask who started them. The history of ideology critique comprises to a large extent the his- tory of this second, polemical gesture, the history of a great counteroffensive. Such critique, as theory of struggle, serves enlightenment in a twofold way: as a weapon against a hardened, conservative-complacent consciousness, and as an instrument for practice and gaining inner strength. The refusal of the opponents to engage in dialogue for enlightenment is of such enormous significance that it becomes a theoretical issue. Those who do not want to participate in enlighten- ment must have their reasons, and they are probably not the alleged reasons. Re- sistance itself becomes a topic in enlightenment. The opponents thus necessarily become "cases," their consciousness an object. Because they do not want to talk with us, we have to talk about them. But as in every combative attitude, the oppo- nents are from then on thought of not as egos but as apparatuses in which, partly openly, partly secretly, a mechanism of resistance is at work that renders them unfree and leads them to errors and illusions.
Ideology critique means the polemical continuation of the miscarried dialogue through other means. It declares a war on consciousness, even when it pretends to be so serious and "nonpolemical. " The rules for peace are in substance res- cinded. At this point it becomes clear that there is no intersubjectivity that could not equally well be interobjectivity. In hitting and being hit, both parties become subjective objects for each other. Strictly speaking, ideology critique wants not merely to "hit," but to operate with precision, in the surgical and military sense: to outflank and expose opponents, to reveal the opponents' intentions. Exposing implies laying out the mechanism of false and unfree consciousness.
In principle, enlightenment knows only two grounds for falsity: error and /// will. At best, only the latter can possess the dignity of a subject, for only when opponents consciously lie does the "wrong opinion" possess an ego. If one as- sumes error, the wrong opinion rests not on an ego but on a mechanism that fal- sifies the right opinion. Only a lie bears responsibility for itself, whereas an error, because it is mechanical, remains in relative "innocence. " Error, however, quickly splits into two different phenomena: the simple error (which is based on logical or perceptual delusion and can be corrected relatively easily) and the per- sistent, systematic error (which clings to its own conditions of existence and is called ideology). Thus arise the classic series of forms of false consciousness: lie, error, ideology.
bvery struggle leads necessarily to a reciprocal reification of subjects. Because -niightenment cannot give up its claim of imposing better insights against a self- structing consciousness, it must basically "operate" behind the opponent's con- - lousness. Thus, ideology critique acquires a cruel aspect that, if it ever really mits to being cruel, claims to be nothing more than a reaction to the cruelties
16 ? ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
? Matthias Greutzer, Model of Vanity (the second picture shows the view with raised skirt), 1596.
of "ideology. " Here it becomes clearer than anywhere else that "philosophical" ideology critique is truly the heir of a great satirical tradition, in which the motif of unmasking, exposing, baring has served for aeons now as a weapon. But mod- ern ideology critique--according to our thesis has ominously cut itself off from the powerful traditions of laughter in satirical knowledge, which have their roots in ancient kynicism. Recent ideology critique already appears in respectable garb, and in Marxism and especially in psychoanalysis it has even put on suit and tie so as to completely assume an air of bourgeois respectability. It has given up its life as satire, in order to win its position in books as "theory. " From the lively form of heated polemic it has retreated to those positions taken in a cold war of consciousness. Heinrich Heine was one of the last authors of classical enlighten- ment who literarily defended, in open satire, the rights of ideology critique to "just atrocities'; here, the public has not followed him. The bourgeois transforma- tion of satire into ideology critique was as inevitable as the bourgeois transforma- tion of society, in general, together with its oppositional forces.
Ideology critique, having become respectable, imitates surgical procedure: Cut open the patient with the critical scalpel and operate under impeccably sterile conditions. The opponent is cut open in front of everyone, until the mechanism of his error is laid bare. The outer skin of delusion and the nerve endings of "ac- tual" motives are hygienically separated and prepared. From then on, enlighten- ment is not satisfied, of course, but it is better armed in its insistence on its own claims for the distant future. Ideology critique is now interested not in winning over the vivisected opponent but in focusing on the "corpse," the critical extract
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE D 17
Graffitti on the Berlin Wall. "We are born to be free. " Ideology critique as inscrip- tion on the other's defense.
of its ideas, which lie in the libraries of enlighteners and in which one can easily read about their grave falsity. Obviously one does not get any closer to the oppo- nent in this way. Those who previously did not want to engage in enlightenment will want to do so even less now that they have been dissected and exposed by the opponent. Of course, according to the logic of the game, the enlightener will at least be victorious: Sooner or later, the opponent will be
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
forced to respond apologetically.
Irritated by the attacks and "unmaskings," the counterenlighteners will one day begin to conduct their own "enlightenment" on the enlighteners, in order to de- nounce them as human beings and to associate them socially with criminals. They are then usually called "elements. " The word is unintentionally well chosen, since wanting to fight the elements does not sound very promising. Eventually, it can- not be avoided; the hegemonic powers begin to talk indiscreetly. Then, increas- ingly irritated, they reveal something of their secrets; universally acknowledged cultural ideals are thereby cunningly retracted. In the compulsion of the weakened hegemonic powers to confess, as remains to be shown, lies one of the roots of the modern cynical structure.
Without wanting to, "dissatisfied enlightenment" has, in turn, entrenched itself on this front. Threatened by its own fatigue and undermined by the need for seri- ousness, it often remains content with having wrung involuntary confessions from its opponent. In fact, in time, the experienced eye will see "confessions" every- where, and even when the hegemonic power shoots instead of negotiating, it will not be difficult to interpret bullets as the revelations of a fundamental weakness- that is how those powers express themselves that have no imagination and that'
? 18 D" ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
in order to save themselves, cling to nothing more than their strong nerves and executive organs.
Arguing behind the back and through the head of the opponent has become common practice in modern critique. The gesture of exposure characterizes the style of argumentation of ideology critique, from the critique of religion in the eighteenth century to the critique of fascism in the twentieth. Everywhere, one discovers extrarational mechanisms of opinion: interests, passions, fixations, il- lusions. That helps a bit to mitigate the scandalous contradiction between the postulated unity of truth and the factual plurality of opinions--since it cannot be eliminated. Under these assumptions, a true theory would be one that not only grounds its own theses best, but also knows how to defuse all significant and per- sistent counterpositions through ideology critique. In this point, as one can easily see, official Marxism has the greatest ambition, since the major part of its theoret- ical energy is dedicated to outdoing all non-Marxist theories and exposing them as "bourgeois ideologies. " Only by continually outdoing the others, can ideolo- gists succeed in "living" with the plurality of ideologies. De facto, the critique of ideology implies the attempt to construct a hierarchy between unmasking and un- masked theory. In the war of consciousness, getting on top, that is, achieving a synthesis of claims to power and better insights, is crucial.
Since, in the business of critique, contrary to academic custom, ad hominem arguments are used unhesitatingly, universities have, probably deliberately, moved cautiously toward the procedures of ideology critique. For the attack from the flank, the argumentum ad personam, is strongly disapproved of in the "aca- demic community. " Respectable critique meets its opponent in its best form; cri- tique honors itself when it overwhelms its rival in the full armor of its rationality. For as long as possible, the learned collegium has tried to defend its integrity against the close combat of ideologico-critical exposures. Do not unmask, lest you yourself be unmasked could be the unspoken rule. It is no accident that the great representatives of critique--the French moralists, the Encyclopedists, the socialists, and especially Heine, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud--remain outsiders to the scholarly domain. In all of them there is a satirical, polemical component that can scarcely be hidden under the mask of scholarly respectability. These sig- nals of a holy nonseriousness, which remains one of the sure indexes of truth, can be employed as signposts to the critique of cynical reason. We will find a reliably unreliable traveling companion in Heinrich Heine, who displayed a knack, unsurpassed to the present day, for combining theory and satire, cognition and entertainment. Here, following in his tracks, we want to try to reunite the capacities for truth in literature, satire, and art with those of "scholarly dis- course. "
The right of ideology critique to use ad hominem arguments was indirectly ac- knowledged even by the strictest absolutist of reason, J. G. Fichte, whom Heine aptly compared to Napoleon when he said that the kind of philosophy one chooses
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 19
depends on the kind of person one is. This critique intrudes into the conditions under which human beings form opinions with either compassionate serenity or cruel seriousness. It seizes error from behind and tears at its roots in practical life.
This procedure is not exactly modest, but its immodesty is excused with a reference to the principle of the unity of truth. What is brought to light by the vivisecting approach is the everlasting embarrassment of ideas confronted by the interests underlying them: human, all too human; egoisms, class privileges, resentments, steadfastness of hegemonic powers. Under such illumination, the opposing subject appears not only psychologically but also sociologically and po- litically undermined. Accordingly, its standpoint can be understood only if one adds to its self- portrayals what is, in fact, hidden behind and below them. In this way, ideology critique raises a claim that it shares with hermeneutics, namely, the claim to understand an "author" better than he understands himself. What at first sounds arrogant about this claim can be methodologically justified. Others often really do perceive things about me that escape
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
my attention--and con- versely. They possess the advantage of distance, which I can profit from only retrospectively through dialogic mirroring. This, of course, would presuppose a functioning dialogue, which is precisely what does not take place in the process of ideology critique.
An ideology critique that does not clearly accept its identity as satire can, how- ever, easily be transformed from an instrument in the search for truth into one of dogmatism. All too often, it interferes with the capacity for dialogue instead of opening up new paths for it. This explains, leaving general antischolastic and antiintellectual feelings aside, a part of the current dissatisfaction with the critique of ideology.
Thus it happens that an ideology critique that presents itself as science, because it is not allowed to be satire, gets more and more entangled in serious radical solu- tions. One of these is its striking tendency to seek refuge in psychopathology. False consciousness appears first of all as sick consciousness. Almost all impor- tant works of the twentieth century on the phenomenon of ideology do the same thing-from Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich to R. D. Laing and David Cooper, not to mention Joseph Gabel, who has pushed the analogy between ideol- ogy and schizophrenia furthest. Those stances are suspected of being sick that loudly proclaim themselves to be the healthiest, most normal, and natural. The reliance of critique on psychopathology, although probably well justified, risks alienating the opponent more and more deeply; it reifies and diminishes the other's reality. In the end, the critic of ideology stands before the opposing con- sciousness like one of those modern, highly specialized pathologists who can, of course, say precisely what kind of pathological disturbance the patient is suffering
rom but knows nothing about appropriate therapies because that is not his spe- cialty. Such critics, like some medicos corrupted by their profession, are in- terested in the diseases, not in the patients.
20 ? ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
The most humorless reification of every opposing consciousness has grown out of the ideology critique that bases itself on Marx (I will not go into whether this is proper use or misuse of Marx). The radical reification of the opponent is in any case of factual consequence of the politico-economic realism characteristic of Marxian theory. However, here an additional motif comes into play: If all other exposures trace false consciousness back to seamy features of the human totality (lies, nastiness, egoism, repression, split consciousness, illusion, wishful thinking, etc. ), the Marxian exposure runs up against the nonsubjective, the laws of the politico-economic process as a whole. When ideologies are criticized from a politico-economic perspective, one never really gets down to "human weak- nesses. " Rather, one hits on an abstract social mechanism in which individual per- sons, as members of classes, have distinct functions: as capitalist, as proletarian, as intermediate functionary, as theoretical hack for the system. However, neither in the head nor in the components of the system is there any clarity about the na- ture of the whole. Each of its members is mystified in a way corresponding to its position. Even the capitalist, in spite of practical experience with capital, finds no true image of the total structure, but remains a necessarily deceived epiphenomenon of the process of capital.
It is here that a second offshoot of modern cynicism grows. As soon as I as- sume, in Marx's formulation, a "necessarily false consciousness," the spiral of reification is turned even further. There would then be in the minds of human be- ings precisely those errors that have to be in them so that the system can function--toward its collapse. In the gaze of the Marxist system-critic, there glit- ters an irony that is a priori condemned to cynicism. For the critic admits that ideologies, which from an external point of view are false consciousness, are, seen from the inside, precisely the right consciousness. Ideologies appear simply as the appropriate errors in the corresponding minds: the "correct false conscious- ness. " This echoes the definition of cynicism given in the first preliminary reflec- tion (chapter 1). The difference is that the Marxist critic gives "correct false con- sciousness" the chance to enlighten itself or to be enlightened --through Marxism. Then, in the critic's opinion, it would have become true consciousness, not "en- lightened false consciousness," as the formula for cynicism says. Theoretically, the perspective of emancipation is kept open.
Any sociological system theory that treats "truth" functionalistically-I say this in advance --carries an immense potential for cynicism. And since every contem- porary intellect is caught up in the process of such sociological theories, it inevita- bly is implicated in the latent or overt master cynicism of these forms of thinking. Marxism, in its origins, at least maintained an ambivalence between reifying and emancipative perspectives. Non-Marxist system theories of society drop even the last trace of sensitivity. In alliance with neoconservative currents, they proclaim that useful members of human society have to internalize certain "correct illu- sions" once and for all, because without them nothing functions properly. The
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 21
3naivete of the others should be planned, "capital fix being man himself. " It is al-
ways a good investment to mobilize the naive will to work, for whatever reason. System theoreticians and maintenance
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
strategists are from the start beyond naive belief. But for those who should believe in it, the aphorism holds: Stop reflecting and maintain values.
Those who make the means of liberating reflection available and invite others to use them appear to conservatives as unscrupulous and power-hungry good-for- nothings who are reproached with "Others do the work. " Very well, but for whom?
Notes
1. [This is a variation of Habermas's formulation of the "zwanglose Zwang des besseren Argu- ments. "-Trans. ]
2. In this book I designate consistently any power that dominates as hegemonic power to indicate that this power never is or has power by itself, but always "rides," so to speak, on the back of an op- positional power. In a realistic theory of power, omnipotence and impotence occur only as quasi- "mathematical" ideas of power, as the infinitely great and the infinitely small in power. Omnipotence and impotence cannot confront each other, but hegemonic power and oppositional power can. What "exists" possesses power, a positive quantum of energy, that is centered in conscious bodies and ex- tends itself to appropriate tools and weapons. For this reason, the logic of all-or-nothing is dangerous, indeed fatal, in politics. In Si^yes's statement-"What is the Third Estate? Nothing. What does it want to become? Everything"--a disastrous self-characterization of the oppositional power comes into be- ing, a false logical treatment (Logisierung) of political struggle through which the part wants to make itself into the whole. In substance, this false all- or-nothing logic is repeated in Marxism, which wanted to make the proletariat "everything. " Is this inverted concept of power a universal legacy of leftist opposition? Even the French New Philosophy, straying into old ways of thinking, comes to grief on this concept by confusing omnipotence with hegemonic power and imposing a Manichaean ontology of an evil state power.
3. [This phrase is taken from Marx, who in turn quotes the French term for fixed capital. -- Trans. ]
Chapter 3
Eight Unmaskings:
A Review of Critiques
In the following I sketch eight cases of the enlightenment critique of ideology and critique-through-unmasking whose polemical modes of procedure have become paradigmatic. We will be concerned with the historically most successful figures of demasking --successful, however, not in the sense that the critique had really "finished off' what it criticized. The effects of critique are generally different from those that were intended. Social hegemonic powers intent on sustaining them- selves prove capable of learning when they are on the defensive and all else fails. A social history of enlightenment must devote attention to the learning processes of defensive hegemonic powers. A cardinal problem in the history of ideology is the backlog of "false consciousnesses" that first learn from their critics what suspicion and exposure, cynicism and "finesse" are.
Our review of critique will show enlightenment en marche in an imperturbable and relentless drive against illusions, old and new. That the critique, in its strug- gle with its opponents, cannot "clean up" (with them) remains to be shown. We want to see how, here and there, in the critique itself, the germs of new dog- matisms are formed. Enlightenment does not penetrate into social consciousness simply as an unproblematic bringer of light. Where it has an effect, a twilight arises, a deep ambivalence. We will characterize this ambivalence as the at- mosphere in which, in the middle of a snarl of factual self-preservation with moral self-denial, cynicism crystallizes.
22
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 23
? Heinrich Hoerle, Masks, 1929. (Reproduced by permission of the Museum Lud- wig, Cologne. )
Critique of Revelation
What? The miracle merely an error of interpretation? A lack of philology?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
For Christian civilization, Holy Scripture has paramount value by virtue of the idea that it is a work of divine dictation. Human understanding should submit to it, just as the senses should yield to the sight of a "miracle" that happens before one's very eyes. Dressed in the various mother tongues, the "voice" of the divine (theologically, the Holy Spirit) speaks out of the holy text.
The Bible appears "holy" as a text rooted in the Absolute. Accordingly, no in- terpretation would be adequate enough to exhaust its overabundance of meaning that renews itself through the epochs of humanity. Exegesis can be nothing other than the vain but necessary attempt to fill the tiny spoon of our understanding with this ocean of meaning. However, all interpretations and applications must remain m the last instance merely human and useless without the assumption that the text Uself is divinely inspired. Only this belief raises scripture to its unique position. ^ a word, it is the belief in the revelatory nature of the Bible that makes it the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
? ly Book pure and simple. This belief manifests itself in a very naive and radical
Wa
y in the doctrine of "verbal inspiration," according to which the Holy Spirit stated directly into the pen of the human scribes, without taking a detour
24 ? EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
through their finite consciousness. Theology begins with automatic writing. The "private" religious opinions of a Matthew or a Paul would be at best interesting, but not binding; they would remain exhaustible and limited human stances of con- sciousness. Only theological hypostasis, the elevation to the voice of the Holy Spirit dictating to Matthew or Paul, places the text at the source of unlimited meaning.
Enlightenment inquires precisely into this claim. It asks, innocently and sub- versively, for proofs, sources, and evidence. At the beginning it solemnly avers that it would willingly believe everything, if only it could find someone to con- vince it. Here it becomes clear that the biblical texts, taken philologically, remain themselves their only witness. Their revelatory character is their own claim, and it can be believed or not; the church, which elevates this revelatory character to the status of a grand dogma, itself plays only the role of an interpreter.
With his radical biblicism, Luther rejected the church's claim to authority. This repudiation then repeats itself on the higher level through biblicism itself. For text remains text, and every assertion that it is divinely inspired can, in turn, be only a human, fallible assertion. With every attempt to grasp the absolute source, critique comes up against relative, historical sources that only ever assert the Absolute. The miracles spoken about in the Bible to legitimate God's power are only reports of miracles for which there are no longer any means of verifica- tion. The revelatory claim is stuck in a philological circle.
In his defense of the Reimarus writings in 1777 (On the Proof of the Spirit and of the Power), Lessing unmasked in a classic manner the revelatory claim as a mere assertion. The main thesis reads: "Accidental historical truths can never be- come the proof of necessary truths of reason. " His argumentation:
Consequently, if I do not have anything historical to counter the claim that Christ awakened a dead person, must I therefore accept as true that God has a son who is of the same essence? What is the connection be- tween my incapacity to counter anything substantial against the evidence of the former and my commitment to believe something my reason resists?
If I do not have anything historical to counter the claim that Christ himself rose from the dead, must I therefore accept as true that pre- cisely this resurrected Christ was the son of God?
That Christ, against whose resurrection I have nothing of importance historically to counter, presented himself as the son of God so that his followers for this reason held him to be so; all that I believe with my whole heart. For these truths, as truths of one and the same class, fol- low quite naturally from one another.
But now to jump with this historical truth over into a completely different class of truths and demand of me that I should restructure all my metaphysical and moral concepts accordingly, to expect of me, be-
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 25
cause I cannot counter the resurrection of Christ with credible evidence, that I alter all my basic ideas about the essence of divinity accordingly; if that is not a transition to another logical category (metdbasis eis alio genos), then I do not know what Aristotle understood by this desig- nation.
One says, of course: But precisely that Christ, about whom you must historically allow to be true that he raised the dead, that he himself rose from the dead, has himself said that God has a son of the same essence and that he is this son.
That would be quite good. If only it were historically certain also that Christ in fact said this.
If one wanted to pursue me and say: "But indeed! That is more than historically certain; for inspired chronologists, who cannot err, assure us of it": But again it is unfortunately only historically certain that these chronologists were inspired and could not err.
That, that is the terrifyingly wide gap over which I cannot come, no matter how often and how earnestly I have attempted to leap over it. If someone can help me over it, then do so! I ask him, I beg him. He would earn a divine reward through me.
Human knowledge is forced to retreat into the limits of historiography, philol- ogy, and logic. Something of this painful retreat appears in Lessing, who does not disingenuously aver that his heart would willingly remain more credulous than his reason allows. With the question "How can one know that? ", enlighten- ment severs the roots of revelatory knowledge quite elegantly, without being par- ticularly aggressive. With the best will, human reason cannot find anything in the sacred text but historical, human-made assumptions. With a simple philological query, the claim of absoluteness made by tradition is annihilated.
No matter how convincing the historical-philological critique of the Bible may be, the confessional absolutism of
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
organized religion does not want to ac- knowledge that according to the rules of the art, it is suspended. Its absolutism simply continues to "exist," not, to be sure, as if this suspension and this exposure had never happened, but as if there were no consequences to be drawn from them, except one; namely that one must study and excommunicate the critics. Only after the fundamental critique of modern times does theology completely board the ship of fools of so-called belief and drift farther and farther from the banks of literal critique. In the nineteenth century, the churches gave the signal for merg- mg postcritical irrationalism with political reaction. Like all institutions imbued with the will to survive, they knew how to weather the "dissolution" of their foun-
ations. From now on, the concept of 'existence' stinks of the cadaveric poison ? t Christianity, of the rotting after-life, of what, in spite of critique, has been criti- -ized. Since then, theologians have had an additional trait in common with ynics: the sense for naked self-preservation. They have made themselves com-
26 D EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
fortably at home in the tub of a dogmatics riddled with holes until the Day of Judgment. Critique of Religious Illusion
Deception always goes further than suspicion.
La Rochefoucauld
In a strategically clever move, enlightenment's critique of the religious phenome- non concentrates on God's attributes; only secondarily does it tackle the sticky "question of existence. " Whether God "exists" is not the basic problem; what is essential is what people mean when they maintain that he exists and that his will is thus and thus.
Initially, then, it is important to find out what they pretend to know of God besides his existence. Religious traditions provide the material for this. Because God is not "empirically" observable, the assignment of divine attributes to human experience plays the decisive role in the critique. Religious doctrine can, under no circumstances, evade this point, except by opting for a radical cult theology or, more consistently, for the mystical thesis of an unnameable God. This logi- cally consistent consequence for a philosophy of religion would offer adequate protection against enlightenment's detectivelike inquiries into human fantasies about God that shine through in the attributes. However, with mystical renuncia- tion, religion cannot become a social institution; it lives from the fact that it presents established narratives (myths) and standardized attributes (names and images), as well as stereotyped ways of behaving toward the holy (rituals), in reliably recurring forms.
One thus has only to examine these presentations more closely to track down the secret of their fabrication. The Bible provides the critic of religion with the decisive reference. Genesis 1:27: "And God created Man according to His image, in the image of God created He him. " Without doubt, this "image" relation can also be interpreted the other way around. From then on it is no mystery where the images come from; humans and their experiences are the material from which the official dreams about God are made. The religious eye projects earthly images into heaven.
One of these primary projections (how could it be otherwise? ) comes from the realm of images related to family and procreation. In polytheistic religions one finds intricate, often downright frivolous family sagas and affairs involving the procreation of deities --which one can readily study in Greek, Egyptian, and Hindu gods. That the human power of imagination proceeded too discreetly in picturing the heavenly populations will be maintained by no one. Even the sub- lime and theologically ambitious Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not free of family and procreation fantasies. Its particular refinement, however, has Mary
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 27
getting pregnant by the Holy Ghost. Satire has recognized this challenge. The doctrine is intended to avoid the idea that a sexually constituted bond exists be- tween father and son. The Christian God may well "procreate," but he does not copulate; for this reason the Creed says, with true subtlety: genitum, non factum.
Closely related to the idea of procreation is that of authorship, of Creation, which is attributed particularly to the superior and monotheistic gods. Here, hu- man experience is mixed in with production, rooted in agrarian and artisanal ac- tivity. In their labor, human beings experienced themselves prototypically as cre- ators, as authors of a new, previously nonexisting effect. The more the world became mechanized, the more the idea of God was transferred from the biological conception of procreation to that of production. Accordingly, the procreating God became increasingly a world manufacturer, the original producer.
The third primary projection is that of succor, among the constitutive images of religious life perhaps the most important. The greater part of religious pleas are addressed to God as helper in the distress of life and death. Because, however, God's succor presupposes his power over worldly events, the fantasy of the helper is blended with human experiences in protecting, caring, and ruling. The popular image of Christ shows him as the Good Shepherd. In the course of the history of religion, the gods have been assigned jurisdictions and responsibilities, whether in the form of sectoral sovereignty over a natural element such as sea, river, wind, forest, and grain, or in the form of general rule over
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
the created world. Political experiences obviously permeate these projections. The power of God is analogous to the functions of chiefs and kings. The religion of feudal soci- ety is the most open with its political projection of God in that it unhesitatingly institutes God as the highest feudal lord and addresses him with the feudal title of "Lord. " In English, one still says "My Lord. " Anthropomorphism or sociomor- phism is revealed most naively where pictorial representations of the gods were attempted. For this reason, religions and theologies that have reflected on this have promulgated a strict prohibition of images: They recognized the danger of reification. Judaism, Islam, and also certain "iconoclastic" factions of Christianity have, on this point, exercised an intelligent continence. Enlightenment satire amused itself over African deities, for whom a black skin was just as self-evident as were slanted eyes for Asiatic idols. It entertained itself with the thought of how ? ions, camels, and penguins would probably imagine their dear God: as
lion, camel, and penguin.
