Their garrulous cynicism thus remains an absolutely in-
dispensable
factor for the process of truth.
Sloterdijk -Critique of Cynical Reason
.
According to my lamentable, earthly, Euclidean un- derstanding, I know only that suffering exists but no one is guilty, that everything follows immediately and simply one from the other, that everything flows and evens itself out-- but that is only Euclidean nonsense .
.
.
.
What do I gain by the fact that there are no guilty ones, that everything follows immedi- ately and simply one from the other and that I know that--I need retribution, otherwise I will annihilate myself .
.
.
Lis- ten: If all have to suffer and with their suffering procure eter- nal harmony, what do children have to do with that?
--Why have they too been caught up in the material and have to serve as the manure for someone's future harmony?
Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoyevsky's gloomy Grand Inquisitor, too, is only apparently a figure of the Christian Middle Ages, just as Goethe's Mephistopheles is only apparently still a Christian devil. In reality, both belong to the modernity of the nineteenth cen- tury, the one as aesthetician and evolutionist, the other as representative of a new, cynical political conservatism. Like Faust, the Grand Inquisitor is a retrospective projection of advanced ideological tensions from the nineteenth into the sixteenth century. Intellectually as well as chronologically, he stands closer to figures like Hitler and Goebbels, Stalin and Lunacharsky than to the historical Spanish Inqui- sition. But is it not frivolous to place an honorable Christian cardinal in such com- pany? The defamation weighs heavily and must be justified by strong evidence. This is provided by the Grand Inquisitor's story, as Ivan Karamazov tells it.
The cardinal and Grand Inquisitor of Seville, an ascetic old man of ninety years within whom all life seems to be extinguished except in his eyes a dark em- ber still glows, one day became --as Ivan says in his "fantastic poem"--a witness to the return of Christ. Before the cathedral, Jesus had repeated his miracle of long ago and, with a soft word, had brought a dead child to life. It seems as it the old man had immediately comprehended the significance of this act, but his
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 183
reaction is paradoxical. Instead of paying homage to the returned Lord, he points his bony finger at him and orders the watchman to arrest the man and lock him up in the vault of the Holy Tribunal. In the night, the old man descends the stairs to Jesus in the dungeon and says:
" 'Is it you? You? '
"But receiving no answer, he adds quickly: 'Do not answer, be si-
lent. And, indeed, what can you say? I know too well what you would say. Besides, you have no right to add anything to what you have said already in the days of old. Why, then, did you come to disrupt us? For you have come to disrupt and you know it. But do you know what is going to happen tomorrow? I know not who you are and I don't want to know: whether it is you or only someone who looks like him, I do not know, but tomorrow I shall condemn you and burn you at the stake as the vilest of heretics, and the same people who today kissed your feet, will at the first sign from me rush to rake up the coals at your stake tomorrow. Do you know that? Yes, perhaps you do know it . . . ' " (Trans. David Magarshack [Harmondsworth, 1958], p. 293, modified)
Those who find the Grand Inquisitor's behavior strange will be even more curi- ous about the meaning of the event when they have understood the decisive point with the greatest possible sharpness: In the thinking and action of the old man there is not a trace of dimness or blindness, no error and no misunderstanding. What Jesus had assumed about his crucifiers as grounds for forgiveness --"for they know not what they do"--can in no way be applied to the churchman. He knows what he is doing and he knows it with a downright shocking clarity, regarding which the only remaining question is whether it should be called tragic or cynical. If the Grand Inquisitor knows what he is doing, then he must be acting for reasons of overpowering gravity, reasons that are strong enough to dislodge the religious faith he outwardly represents. The old man does in fact give Jesus his reasons. To be concise, his speech is the reply of a politician to the founder of a religion. Seen somewhat more deeply, it is a settling of accounts of anthropol- ogy with theology, of administration with emancipation, of the institution with the individual.
We have just heard the main accusation against the returned one: He has come
to disrupt. " In what? The Inquisitor blames his Savior for returning precisely at
that moment when the Catholic Church, through the terror of the Inquisition, was
about to stamp out the last sparks of Christian freedom and was almost able to
delude itself into believing that it had completed its work: establishing domination
"rough the "true religion. " Having become completely unfree (in the religious-
Political sense), the people of this time are more than ever convinced that they
a
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
Wl
H make us free? The Grand Inquisitor, however, can see through this decep-
re free. Did they not possess the truth? Had not Christ promised that the truth
184 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
tion. He is proud of his realism; as representative of the victorious church, he claims not only to have completed Jesus' work but still more, to have improved it! For Jesus, so he says, did not know how to think politically and had not com- prehended what human nature in a political respect required: namely, domina- tion. In the speech of Dostoyevsky's cardinal to his silent prisoner, we discover one of the origins of modern institutionalism, which, in this passage, and perhaps only in this passage, admits in a remarkably open way its cynical basis in con- scious deception that appeals to necessity. The powerful, according to Dostoyevsky's profound and vertiginous reflections, make the following calcu- lations:
Only a few possess the courage to be free, as Jesus demonstrated when he an- swered the question of the tempter in the desert (concerning why he did not, al- though he was hungry, transform stones into bread): "Man does not live by bread alone. " Only a few have the power to overcome hunger. The many, in all ages, will reject the offer of freedom in the name of bread. In other words, people in general are in search of disburdenment, ease, comfort, routine, security. Those invested with power can, in all ages, confidently assume that the great majority have a horror of freedom and know no deeper urge than to surrender their free- dom, to erect prisons around themselves, and to subjugate themselves to idols old and new. What can the master Christians, the representatives of a religion of free- dom, do in such a situation? The Grand Inquisitor understands his assuming power as a kind of self-sacrifice.
"But we shall tell them that we do your bidding and rule in your name. We shall deceive them again, for we shall not let you come near us again. That deception will be our suffering, for we shall be forced to lie. " (Ibid. , p. 297)
We are witnesses here of a unique, strangely convoluted thought experiment in which the paradoxes of modern conservatism are hatched. The churchman raises an anthropological protest against the unreasonable demand of freedom that the founder of the religion has left behind. For human life, frail as it is, needs first of all an ordered framework of habit, certainty, law, and tradition --in a word, social institutions. With breathtaking cynicism the Grand Inquisitor ac- cuses Jesus not of having abolished the discomfort of freedom but of having ag- gravated it. He has not accepted human beings as they are but has overstrained them with his love. To this extent, the later masters of the church have superseded Christ in their sort of love of humanity-which is thoroughly pervaded by con- tempt and realism. For they take human beings as they are: childlike and childish, indolent and weak. The system of a ruling church, however, can only be erected on the shoulders of people who take the moral burden of conscious deception on themselves, that is, priests who consciously preach the opposite of the actual teachings of Christ, which they have understood precisely. To be sure, they speak
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 185
the Christian language of freedom, but they serve the system of needs --bread, order, power, law --that makes people submissive. The concept of freedom, as the Grand Inquisitor knows, is the fulcrum in the system of oppression: The more repressive it is (Inquisition, etc. ), the more violently must the rhetoric of freedom be hammered into people's heads. Precisely this is the ideological stamp of all modern conservatisms in the East as well as in the West. They are all based on pessimistic anthropologies according to which the striving for freedom is nothing more than a dangerous illusion, a mere basically insubstantial urge that glosses over the necessary and ineluctable institutional ("bound") character of human life. Wherever in the world today theories of freedom and emancipation make them- selves heard, they are repudiated with words like the following from the Grand Inquisitor.
"But here, too, your judgement of people was too high, for they are slaves, though rebels by nature. Look around you and judge: fifteen centuries have passed, go and have a look at them: whom have you raised up to yourself? I swear, human beings have been created weaker and baser creatures than you thought them to be! . . . I n respecting them so greatly, you acted as though you ceased to feel any compassion for them. " (Ibid. , p. 300 modified)
This is, still formulated in moral clauses, the Magna Charta of a theoretical conservatism on an "anthropological" foundation. Arnold Gehlen probably would have undersigned it without hesitation. Even the rebellious element in human be- ings is included as a natural constant in the calculations of this detached pessi- mism. Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor speaks as conservative politician and ideo- logue of the nineteenth century, looking back on the storms of European history since 1789.
"They will tear down the temples and drench the earth with blood. But they will realize at last, the foolish children, that although they are re- bels, they are impotent rebels who cannot bear their own rebel-
lion. . . . unrest, confusion, and unhappiness --that is the lot of people 34
today. " (Ibid. , pp. 300-1, modified)
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
But that is not enough. The final ascent to the "yawning heights" (Sinoviev) of a cynically conceived conservative politics still lies before us: when the Grand Inquisitor reaches his most extreme confession; when power tells its trade secrets m the most shameless and audacious way. That is a moment of that higher shame- 'essness through which inbred disingenuousness finds its way back to truth. In the mouth of the Grand Inquisitor, Dostoyevsky's reflections cross the cynical thresh- old beyond which there is no way back for the no longer naive consciousness. He admits that the church long ago consciously sealed a pact with the Devil, that tempter in the desert, whose offer of worldly domination Jesus himself had re-
186 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
? The Hamburg Faust Ensemble on tour in Moscow. Mephistophiles, Gustav Grund- gens, meets Boris Pasternak.
jected at that time. According to the cardinal's admission, the church has, with open eyes, gone over to the Devil's camp --at that time it decided to take the sword of worldly power into its own hands (in the time of Charlemagne). It paid for it with an unhappy consciousness and a chronically split conscience. But that it had to do it, is, in spite of everything, beyond question for the church politician. He speaks like someone who knows that he has sacrificed a great deal, and as it could not be otherwise, it is a sacrifice on the altar of the future, nourished by the "spirit of Utopia. " This is a sign that allows us to date this thought with certainty in the nineteenth century, which made every form of evil thinkable if only it served a "good purpose. " The Grand Inquisitor is enraptured with the vision of a humanity united by Christianity, welded together by power and inquisition. This vision alone gives him something to hold on to and hides his cynicism from himself, or better, ennobles it to a sacrifice. Millions upon millions of people will happily enjoy their existence, free from all guilt, and only the powerful, who make the sacrifice of exercising cynical domination will be the last unhappy ones.
"For we alone, we who guard the mystery, we alone shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy infants and one hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of knowl- edge of good and evil. " (Ibid. , p. 304)
Perplexing analogies between Goethe and Dostoyevsky now become visible: Both talk of a pact with the Devil; both conceive of evil as immanence; both re- habilitate Satan and acknowledge his necessity. Dostoyevsky's devil, too -- stated concisely, the principle of power, world dominion --is conceived as a part of a
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 187
power that wills evil but brings forth "good"; for good is also supposed to arise finally from the Grand Inquisitor's gloomy labor as his concluding Utopia shows. In both cases, to conclude a pact with the Devil means nothing more than to be- come a realist, that is, to take the world and people as they are. And in both cases it is a matter of the power that must be dealt with by all those who let themselves in for this kind of realism. With Faust, this is the power of knowledge; with the Grand Inquisitor, the knowledge of power.
Knowledge and power are the two modes by which one reaches the modern
state beyond good and evil, and in that moment when our consciousness takes the
step into this beyond, cynicism is unavoidably on the scene--with Goethe, aes-
thetically; with Dostoyevsky, morally and politically; with Marx, embodied in
a philosophy of history; with Nietzsche, psychologically and vitalistically; with
Freud, sexually and psychologically. Here we have zeroed in on the point where
cynicism and enlightenment touch. For enlightenment furthers the empirical-
realistic disposition, and where this advances without obstruction it inevitably
leaves the limits of morality behind. "Realistic" thinking must constantly use an
amoral freedom in order to attain clarity. A science of reality becomes possible
only where metaphysical dualism has been ruptured, where the inquiring spirit
has constructed a consciousness beyond good and evil, where, without
metaphysical and moral prejudice, neutral and tedious, it searches for what is the
35 case.
Would the Grand Inquisitor then be a cofounder of positivistic political science that takes humankind empirically and from its circumstances determines the kind of political institutions that are necessary for its survival? For Dostoyevsky, the institution of church is only representative of those coercive institutions that regu- late social life, their apex being occupied by the state and the army. It is the spirit of these institutions that is abhorred by any recollection of the magnificent primi- tive Christian freedom. It is not religion as religion that has to burn the returned Christ, but religion as Church, as analogue of the state, as institution; it is the state that fears the civil disobedience the religious are capable of; it is the army that condemns the spirit of Christian pacifism; it is the masters of the world of work who have a horror of people who place love, celebration of life, and creativity higher than slaving for the state, the rich, the army, etc.
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
Accordingly, must the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky's narrative burn Jesus, the meddler, as he intended? To be perfectly consistent, yes. But let us hear how the story ends as Ivan Karamazov tells it.
"I intended to end it as follows: When the Inquisitor has finished speak- ing, he waits for some time for the prisoner's reply. His silence dis- tresses him. He sees that the prisoner has been listening intently to him all the time, looking gently into his face and evidently not wishing to say anything in reply. The old man would like him to say something, 188 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
however bitter and terrible. But he suddenly approaches the old man and kisses him gently on his bloodless, aged lips. That is his entire an- swer. The old man gives a start. There is an imperceptible movement at the corners of his mouth; he goes to the door, opens it and says to him: 'Go, and come no more--don't come at all --never, never! ' And he lets him out into 'the dark streets and lanes of the city. ' The prisoner goes away. " (Ibid. , p. 308, modified)
Dostoyevsky obviously guards against giving an unambiguous solution, prob- ably because he saw that, one way or the other, the game is not over. For a mo- ment, nevertheless, the church politician must admit defeat; for one second he sees the "Other," the infinite affirmation that includes even him and that neither judges nor condemns. Dostoyevsky's Jesus loves not only his enemy but, what
36
is considerably more complicated, also him who betrays and perverts him. However one may interpret the open end of the drama, it in any case demonstrates that Dostoyevsky recognizes a conflict between two principles or forces that bal- ance each other; indeed, even more, they neutralize each other. By suspending any decision, he puts himself de facto in the region beyond good and evil, that is, in that area where we can do nothing more than take facts and reality "posi- tively," as they are. Institutions follow their own logic, religion follows another, and the realist is well advised to seriously take both into account, without forcing a decision for one side or the other. The actual result of the Grand Inquisitor's cynical reasoning is not so much the self-exposure of the church politician, but the discovery that good and evil, end and means can be interchanged. This result cannot be overemphasized. With it, we slide inevitably into the area of cynicism. For it means nothing less than that religion can just as easily be made an instru- ment of politics as politics can be made an instrument of religion. Because this is so, everything that was held to be absolute now comes into a relative light. Everything becomes a question of the lighting, the viewing angle, the projection, the purpose intended. All absolute anchoring is gone; the age of moral teetering begins. Beyond good and evil we by no means find, as Nietzsche assumed, a radi- antly vital amoralism but rather an infinite twilight and a fundamental ambiva- lence. Evil becomes so-called evil as soon as it is thought of as a means to good; good becomes so-called good as soon as it appears to be something disruptive (Je- sus as disrupter), destructive in the sense given to it by the institutions. Good and evil, viewed in a metaphysical light, transmute unflinchingly into each other, and those who have come so far as to see things this way gain a tragic view that, as
37
we show here, is really a cynical view.
For as soon as the metaphysical distinction between good and evil becomes
outmoded and everything that exists appears neutral in a metaphysical sense, only then does modernity, as we refer to it, really begin: It is the age that can no longer conceive of any transcendental morality and that, consequently, finds it impossi-
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 189
ble to distinguish neatly between means and ends. From then on, all statements about ends (and especially about final ends) appear as "ideologies," and what earlier were ideals and moral doctrines are now transparent and useful "intellec- tual" apparatuses. Morals and consciousnesses of values consequently can be
38
studied like things, namely, as subjective entities.
nology will use the concept "subjective factor") is thus no longer the wholly Other, the opposed principle, in relation to external being, but is itself a part of being, a part of reality. One can study it, describe it historically, pull it apart ana- lytically, and--the decisive point--use it politically and economically. From this moment on, a new hierarchy arises: on the one hand, the naive, the believers in values, the ideologized, the deceived, the victims of their "own" imaginations, in a word, the people with "false consciousness," the manipulated and the manipula- t e . This is the mass, the "spiritual realm of animals" [Hegel; --Trans. ]. The re- gion of false and unfree consciousness. All those have succumbed to it who do not possess the great, free "correct consciousness. " But who has the "correct con- sciousness"? Its bearers are to be found in a reflecting elite of nonnaive people who no longer believe in values, who have overcome ideology, and have dis- solved the deception. They are the ones who are no longer manipulable, who think beyond good and evil. Everything now depends on whether this intellectual hierarchy is also a political hierarchy, thus on whether the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
nonnaive people are, in relation to the naive, the rulers. With the Grand Inquisitor the answer would be a clear-cut yes. However, are all enlightened people, all realists, all nonnaive people essentially Grand Inquisitors, that is, ideological manipulators and moral deceivers who use their knowledge about things to rule others, even if for their purported good? Well, it is in our own interest not to demand a quick answer to this question.
The Grand Inquisitor, as we said, is a prototype of modern (political) cynics. His bitter anthropology prompts him to believe that human beings must be and want to be deceived. Human beings require order, which in turn requires domina- tion, and domination requires lies. Those who want to rule must accordingly make conscious use of religion, ideals, seduction, and (if necessary) violence. For them, everything, even the sphere of ends, becomes a means; modern grand
39
Nevertheless, in spite of all this, one cannot say that they are obscurantists. In the framework of Dostoyevsky's story, the role of realist falls to those who sur- render their insights.
Their garrulous cynicism thus remains an absolutely in- dispensable factor for the process of truth. If they were really just deceivers, they would keep silent. However, in the final analysis, they too think that they are do- wig the right thing even if they employ crooked means to this end. Their maxims resemble Claudel's motto: God writes straight even on crooked lines. "In the last
^stance," they have not given up the tendency toward "good. " Made to speak,
me
politicians are total "instrumentalists" and disposers of values.
y give an account of their motives, and their confessions, although giddying,
Consciousness (a later termi-
190 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
are invaluable contributions to the search for truth. In a roundabout way, cynics contribute what they can toward enlightenment; indeed, without their spectacu- lar, amoral, and evilly clever self-exposures, this entire area would remain im- penetrable. Precisely because an impression of "naked" reality can only be gained from a standpoint beyond good and evil, we must rely in the search for truth on the "amoral," self-reflective statements of those who have assumed such stand- points. From Rousseau to Freud, existentially crucial knowledge has been ex-
40
pressed in the form of confessions .
what is really the case. Cynicism speaks of what is behind the facade; that be- comes possible when the feeling of shame ceases. Only when individuals have taken the step beyond good and evil for themselves can they make a productive confession. But when they each say, "/am thus," they mean basically, "/? is thus. " My "sins" fall not on me but on it within me; they are only sinful illusions. In reality, my evil is only a part of universal reality, where good and evil disappear in a grand neutrality. Because truth means more than morality, amoralists justifia- bly do not necessarily feel themselves to be bad; they serve a higher authority than morality.
From this perspective, the Grand Inquisitor becomes a figure typical of the ep- och. His thinking is dominated by two antagonistic motives that simultaneously conflict with and condition each other. As realist (positivist), he has left the dual-
41
ism of good and evil behind.
more grimly. Half of him is an amoralist, the other a hypermoralist; on the one hand cynic, on the other dreamer; here freed from all scruples, there bound to the idea of an ultimate good. In praxis, he does not recoil from any cruelty, in- famy, or deception; in theory, the highest ideals rule him. Reality has taught him to be a cynic, pragmatist, and strategist; however, because of his intentions, he feels himself to be goodness incarnate. In this fragmentation and double- tonguedness we recognize the basic structure of "realistic" grand theories of the nineteenth century. They obey a compulsion to compensate for every gain in real- ism (amoralism) with an assault on Utopia and substitute morality, as if it were unbearable to accumulate so much power of knowledge and knowledge of power if "extremely good" ends did not justify this accumulation. The Grand Inquisitor's speech reveals to us at the same time where these extremely good ends --which
justify everything--come from: from the historical future. At the end of "history," "thousands of millions of happy infants" will populate the world--coerced into their happiness and enticed into paradise by the few who rule them. However, until then we have a long way to go, a way that will be lined by countless pyres. But since the end is considered absolutely right, no price seems too high to reach it. If the end is absolutely good, its goodness must rub off even on the most horri- ble means that have to be employed along the way. Here total instrumentalism, there Utopia: That is the form of a new, cynical theodicy. Human suffering thereby is attributed an overarching historical tendency:
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
Suffering becomes,
One has to go behind the facade to recognize
As a man of Utopia, he holds on to realism all the
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 191
frankly put, an unavoidable function of progress; suffering is strategy-- mind you, suffering in the form of causing to suffer (Inquisition). The strategist suffers only insofar as he knows that he consciously deceives.
The reason for presenting the Grand Inquisitor here now becomes clear: He is really a bourgeois philosopher of history with a Russian Orthodox profile, a tragically vilified crypto-Hegelian. If one wants to imagine the worst conse- quence, one must imagine what would happen if a Russian politician like the Grand Inquisitor came face to face with the most powerful and most "realistic" philosophy of history in the nineteenth century: Marxism. But it is not necessary to imagine this because the encounter between the Great Inquisition and Marxism has in fact taken place; we need only to page through the East European history of this century to come across at least two larger-than-life hybrid figures of the type Marxist-Grand Inquisitor, utopian-grand cynic. Whether this encounter was necessary or was based on a misunderstanding is beside the point. From a histori- cal perspective, the coalescence of Marxist ideology and Grand Inquisition can- not be retracted, even if good reasons could be given to show why the russification of Marxism actually represents a curiosity, namely, the reckless, illegitimate per- version of a theory of liberation into an instrument of the most rigorous oppres- sion. This process can only become understandable from the cynically inverted optics of Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor. Only such optics gives a logically ex- plicit model for interpreting the phenomenon: Those who want to rule use the truth in order to lie. Those who deceive the masses in the name of truth --and Marxism undeniably possesses strong elements of truth--risk, at least in theory, no repudiation. However, like the Grand Inquisitor, modern rulers must say to a returned Marx: We will no longer let you come into our midst; we will cite you as our authority, but only on the irrevocable condition that you "never, never" come again! For no matter who came-- "HE" himself or only his "image"--he would inevitably be a troublemaker and we know all too well what happens with such people.
Is the reasoning of the Grand Inquisitor supposed to have revealed a basic con- tradiction between the spirit of "truth" and the spirit of "institutions"? Is it sup- posed to be a universal "law" that in the attempt to make the "truth" into a "state religion," truth must turn itself into its complete opposite? Does not everything speak for the view that the Grand Inquisitor's logic has triumphed, according to which a returned Jesus would be burned on the pyre of the Holy Inquisition, a returned Nietzsche perish in the gas chambers, a returned Marx rot alive in a Siberian labor camp? Is there a law that regulates such cynically tragic in- versions?
The nineteenth century, we have said, is the epoch of the great, realistic the- ories that fix a "down-to-earth" gaze, unconcerned about good and evil, on that Part of the world that is relevant for human beings: history, the state, power, class struggles, ideologies, natural forces, sexuality, the family. All these bodies of
192 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
knowledge are now ordered into a great theoretical arsenal, into the tool em rium of practical interests. "Knowledge is power," says the workers' moverne But to the extent that, on the one side, the instruments are stacked up, on the oth the plans grow. Here the tools, there the designs; here the matter-of-fact, neutr I ized means, there the grandiose, Utopian good ends. Here the facts, there th values. This, in outline, is the self-understanding of modern instrumentalism n pragmatism. With one foot in the area beyond good and evil, one feels around with the other foot for a firm stand in (utopian) morality. Concisely stated: The nineteenth century develops a first form of modern cynical consciousness that links a rigorous cynicism of means with an equally rigid moralism of ends. For as far as the ends were concerned, scarcely anyone risked imagining a real region beyond good and evil-for that would be "nihilism. " Resisting nihilism is the real ideological war of modernity. If fascism and communism struggle somewhere on a common front, it is on the front against "nihilism," which with one voice is at-
tributed to "bourgeois decadence. " Common to both is the resoluteness to oppose
the "nihilistic" trend with an absolute value: Here the people's Utopia, there the
42
communist Utopia. Both guarantee a final end that sanctifies every means and
that promises to give meaning to existence. However, where radical cynicism of means comes together with a resolute moralism of ends, there, the last residue of moral feeling for the means dies out. Modern, heavily armed moralism works itself up into an unheard-of destructive whirlwind and drives the hell of good in- tentions to an extreme.
This must not be understood as theoretical deduction. To be sure, we have
tried to sketch a logic of modern political catastrophes, but this attempt is
preceded by the real catastrophes. No thinking on its own could summon up
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
enough frivolity and despair to come to such conclusions merely out of a "striving for truth. " In fact, basically no human being would be able to imagine devasta- tions of the magnitude of those experienced if they had not actually happened.
In retrospect, attention is just now being drawn to the intellectual preconditions
of the political calamity. Looking back, one can ask what conditions made the self-made hell possible. This hell really must have come about before thinking could overcome its timidity and inertia and begin to investigate the grammar ot
the catastrophes. The only ones to anticipate the logic of large-scale catastrophes, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, basically did not yet know the extent to which they spoke of politics as they carried out their tortuous thought experiments. For this reason, they spoke almost exclusively in moral-psychological concepts and un- derstood themselves as the last in a centuries-old religious tradition. What they wrote was incubated in a religiously stamped, psychologically exposed inward- ness. Both understood themselves as explosions in the Christian tradition, as co- mets at the end of the history of religion to that point--leading over to a bleaK modernity. But the political transposition of their visions in both cases occurred
e within two generations. Thought out beforehand in inwardness, the structures d ~ THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 193
? ribed by Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky gained fulfillment in the most brutal manifestations. The Russian Grand Inquisitor of the twentieth century really ex- isted as did the German populist Ubermensch, both instrumentalists in the grand style, cynical to the extreme as far as the means are concerned, pseudonaively
? moral" with regard to the ends.
In the meantime, we have come so far from our starting point that it might
seem as if no connection at all existed any longer between Diogenes, the Pro- tokynic, and the Grand Inquisitor, the modern cynic. Only through an inexplica- ble quirk in the history of concepts, so it seems, does modern cynicism hark back to an ancient school of philosophy. However, in this apparent quirk, a bit of method can be made clear, a link connecting dissimilar phenomena over millen- nia. This link, so we believe, consists in two formal, common points between kynicism and cynicism: The first is the motif of self-preservation in crisis-ridden times, the second a kind of shameless, "dirty" realism that, without regard for conventional moral inhibitions, declares itself to be for how "things really are. " Compared with the existential realism of ancient kynicism, however, modern cynicism is only the "half of a whole. " For its sense of facts, as shown, is directed only toward an unscrupulous, matter-of-fact way of dealing with means to an end, not toward the ends themselves. Modern, theoretically reflecting grand cynics like the Grand Inquisitor are anything but descendants of Diogenes. In them rather gnaws the ambition of Alexander, whom Diogenes had rebuffed; it is, of
43
course, a displaced kind of ambition.
"Stop blocking my sun," those skilled at modern cynicism strive for "a place in the sun. " They think of nothing else than to cynically --in the sense of openly ruthless--scramble for earthly goods, which Diogenes had rejected with disdain. And for them, literally any means is justified, to the point of genocide, plundering of the earth, devastation of land and sea, and the decimation of fauna, showing that with regard to the instrumental, they have really put themselves beyond good and evil. But where is the kynical impulse to be found? If cynicism has already become an unavoidable aspect of modern realism, why does this realism not also encompass the ends? The cynicism of the means that characterizes our "in- strumental reason" (Horkheimer) can be compensated for only by a return to a kynicism of the ends. This means taking leave of the spirit of long-term goals, in- sight into the original purposelessness of life, limiting the wish for power and the power of wishing --in a word, comprehending the legacy of Diogenes. This is nei-
ther a romanticism of rubbish bins nor a gushy enthusiasm for the "simple life. " The essence of kynicism consists in a critical, ironical philosophy of so-called needs, in the elucidation of their fundamental excess and absurdity. The kynical impulse not only was alive from Diogenes to the Stoa, but also had its effect on ? Jesus himself, the troublemaker par excellence and in all real disciples of the mas- ter who, like him, were illuminated by the insight into the purposelessness of exis- tence. This is the basis for the puzzling influence of old Asian teachings of wis-
Where Diogenes expressed the "wish"
194 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
dom that fascinate the West because they coolly turn their backs on its ideology of purposes and all its rationalizations of greed. On earth, existence has "nothing to search for" except itself, but where cynicism rules, we search for
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
everything, but not for existence (Dasein). Before we "really live," we always have just one more matter to attend to, just one more precondition to fulfill, just one more tem- porarily more important wish to satisfy, just one more account to settle. And with this just one more and one more and one more arises that structure of postpone- ment and indirect living that keeps the system of excessive production going. The latter, of course, always knows how to present itself as an unconditionally "good end" that deludes us with its light as though it were a real goal but that whenever we approach it recedes once more into the distance.
Kynical reason culminates in the knowledge--decried as nihilism--that we must snub the grand goals. In this regard, we cannot be nihilistic enough. Those who reject all so-called goals and values in a kynical sense break through the cir- cle of instrumental reason, in which "good" goals are pursued with "bad" means. The means lie in our hands, and they are means with such enormous significance (in every respect: production, organization, as well as destruction) that we must begin to ask ourselves whether there can still be any ends that are served by the means. For what good then could such immeasurable means be necessary? In that moment when our consciousness becomes ripe to let go of the idea of good as a goal and to devote itself to what is already there, a release is possible in which the piling up of means for imaginary, always receding goals automatically be- comes superfluous. Cynicism can only be stemmed by kynicism, not by morality. Only a joyful kynicism of ends is never tempted to forget that life has nothing to lose except itself.
Since in this chapter we have spoken a lot about great spirits who have
returned, it would be appropriate finally for us to imagine a returned Diogenes.
The philosopher climbs out of his Athenian tub and enters the twentieth century,
gets caught up in two world wars, strolls through the principal cities of capitalism
and communism, reads up on the East-West conflict, listens to lectures on nuclear
strategy, the theory of surplus value, and value-added tax, visits television sta-
tions, gets caught in the vacation traffic on the freeways, sits rolling his eyes in
a Hegel seminar . . . Has Diogenes come to disrupt? It seems more likely that
he himself is rather disturbed. He had taught: Be ready for anything, but what
he now sees goes too far even for him. He had found even the Athenians to be
pretty crazy, but what he finds in the present defies classification. Stalingrad,
Auschwitz, Hiroshima--he longs to go back to the Persian Wars. Out of fear ot
psychiatric institutions, Diogenes refrains from going through the streets by day
44
with a lantern.
to talk to these people. He has noticed that they have been drilled to understand what is complicated, not what is simple. He has fathomed that for them, what is perverse appears normal. What to do? Suddenly he gets a feeling he never had
If philosophical pantomime fails, even he would not know how
THE CABINET OF CYNICS D 195
back then in Athens: to have something important to say. At that time, everything had been almost like a game; now, however, it seems to him that something seri- ous should be made of it. With a sigh, Diogenes agrees to play along with the game. From now on he will try to be respectable; as far as he can; he will also learn modern philosophical jargon and play with words until people become giddy. And gingerly, subversively, with a deadly earnest air, he will try to spread his ridiculously simple message among his contemporaries. He knows that think- ing in the sense of the cynicism of means has made his potential pupils artful, and their critical understanding functions superbly. The philosopher who teaches the kynicism of ends must be a match for this understanding. That is Diogenes' con- cession to modernity. Two paths present themselves for undermining the modern use of understanding in the sciences and technologies: the ontological and the di- alectical. Diogenes has tried both incognito. It is up to us to decipher his traces.
Anyone, or: The Most Real Subject of Modern Diffuse Cynicism
With respect to this /everyday way of being;--Au. ] it may not be superfluous to say that interpretation has a purely ontological intention and is far from being a moralizing critique of every- day existence or from having "cultural- philosophical" aspi- rations.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (p. 167) "Life" is a "business" regardless of whether it covers its costs
or not.
Sein und Zeit (p. 289) Why live when for as little as ten dollars you can be buried?
Advertising slogan in the United States
Anyone, the nonperson in our cabinet of cynics, reminds one, in its meager form,
of jointed figures used by graphic artists for position studies and anatomical
sketches. However, the position that Heidegger had his eye on is an indefinite
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
one. He eavesdrops on the "subject" in the banality of the everyday mode of being. * he existential ontology, which treats Anyone and its existence in every day ness, attempts something that would not have occurred even in a dream to earlier phi- losophy: to transform triviality into an object of "higher" theory. This of itself is
a? f the Heideggerian existential ontology have cited as its "mistake" is perhaps its Cf
ucial point. It elevates the art of platitudes into the heights of the explicit con- cept. One could read his ontology as an inverted satire that does not drag down
wgesture that inevitably leads us to suspect Heidegger of kynicism. What critics
>>at is high, but raises what is low. It tries to say what is self-evident so explicitly
196 D THE CABINET OF CYNICS
and thoroughly that even intellectuals, by rights, would have to understand it. In a certain regard, a logical Eulenspiegel game on a grand scale is hidden in Heidegger's discourse, with its scurrilous refinements in conceptual nuances--the attempt to translate mystically simple knowledge about simple life "as it is" into the most advanced tradition of European thinking. Heidegger's posture of a Black Forest peasant who, withdrawn from the world, likes to sit and brood in his hut, cap on his head, is no mere external detail. It belongs to the essence of this kind of philosophizing. It contains the same ambitious plainness. It shows just how much mischievousness it really takes under modern conditions to say something so simple and "primitive," that it can be accepted in the face of the complex convo- lutions of "enlightened" consciousness. We read Heidegger's statements about Anyone, existence (Daseiri) in everydayness, about talk, ambiguity, fallenness, and thrownness (Geworfenheit), etc. , against the background of the preceding portraits of Mephisto and the Grand Inquisitor: as a series of etudes in higher ba- nality with which philosophy feels its way into that "which is really the case. " It is precisely by doing away with the myth of objectivity that Heidegger's existential- hermeneutical analysis produces the hardest "depth positivism. " A philosophy thus appears that participates ambivalently in a disillusioned, secula- rized, and technicized Zeitgeist. It thinks from beyond good and evil and from this side of metaphysics. It can move only along this thin line.
The theoretical neokynicism of our century --existentialist philosophy - demonstrates in its form of thinking the adventure of banality. What it presents is the fireworks of meaninglessness that begins to understand itself. We have to clarify for ourselves the contemptuous phrase with which Heidegger, in the motto cited earlier, strongly distances his work from any "moralizing critique," as if he wanted to emphasize that contemporary thinking has left the swamps of moralism behind once and for all and no longer has anything in common with "cultural phi- losophy. " The latter can be nothing more than "aspiration": vain pretension, gran- diose thinking, and Weltanschauung in the style of the nineteenth century, which never wanted to come to an end. By contrast, in the "purely ontological intention," the burning coolness of real modernity is at work, which no longer needs any mere enlightenment and which has already "been through" every possible analytic critique. Laying bare the structure of existence by thinking ontologically, by speaking positively: To this end Heidegger, in order to avoid the subject-object terminology, throws himself with commendable linguistic mischievousness into an alternative jargon that, viewed from a distance, is certainly no more felicitous than what he wanted to avoid, in whose innovativeness, however, something of the adventure of modern primitiveness shines through: a linking of the archaic with modern times, a reflection of the earliest in the latest. The "explicitness" of Heideggerian speech expresses what philosophy otherwise does not find worth speaking about. Precisely in that moment when thinking--explicitly "nihilistic"--recognizes meaninglessness as the foil of every possible statement
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 197
or attribution of meaning, the highest unfolding of hermeneutics (i. e. , the art of understanding meaning) becomes necessary in order to articulate philosophically the meaning of meaninglessness. That, according to the reader's background, can be as stimulating as it is frustrating, a circling around in conceptualized empti- ness, a shadow play of reason.
What is this rare being that Heidegger introduces under the name of Anyone? At first glance, it resembles modern sculptures that do not represent any definite object and whose polished surfaces do not admit of any "particular" meaning. Still, they are immediately real and firm to the touch. In this sense Heidegger em- phasizes that Anyone is no abstraction--roughly, a general concept that com- prises "all egos"; instead, he wants to relate it, as ens realissimum, to something that is present in every one of us. But it disappoints the expectation of personal - ness, individual purport, and existentially decisive meaning. It exists, but there is "nothing behind" it. It is there like modern, nonfigure sculptures: real, every- day, concrete part of a world but not referring at any time to an actual person, a "real" meaning. Anyone is
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
the neutrum of our ego: everyday ego, but not "I my- self. " It represents in a certain way my public side, my mediocrity. I have Anyone in common with everyone else; it is my public ego, and in relation to it, average- ness is always in the right. As inauthentic ego, Anyone disposes of any highly personalized decisiveness (Entschiedenheii) of its own. By nature, it wants to make everything easy for itself, to take everything from the outside and to abide by conventional appearances. In a certain respect, it also behaves in this way to- ward itself, for what it is if'self" it also accepts, just like something it finds among other things that are simply givens. This Anyone can thus only be understood as something nonautonomous, which has nothing of itself or solely for itself. What it is is said and given by others; that explains its essential distractedness (Zer- streutheit).
Dostoyevsky's gloomy Grand Inquisitor, too, is only apparently a figure of the Christian Middle Ages, just as Goethe's Mephistopheles is only apparently still a Christian devil. In reality, both belong to the modernity of the nineteenth cen- tury, the one as aesthetician and evolutionist, the other as representative of a new, cynical political conservatism. Like Faust, the Grand Inquisitor is a retrospective projection of advanced ideological tensions from the nineteenth into the sixteenth century. Intellectually as well as chronologically, he stands closer to figures like Hitler and Goebbels, Stalin and Lunacharsky than to the historical Spanish Inqui- sition. But is it not frivolous to place an honorable Christian cardinal in such com- pany? The defamation weighs heavily and must be justified by strong evidence. This is provided by the Grand Inquisitor's story, as Ivan Karamazov tells it.
The cardinal and Grand Inquisitor of Seville, an ascetic old man of ninety years within whom all life seems to be extinguished except in his eyes a dark em- ber still glows, one day became --as Ivan says in his "fantastic poem"--a witness to the return of Christ. Before the cathedral, Jesus had repeated his miracle of long ago and, with a soft word, had brought a dead child to life. It seems as it the old man had immediately comprehended the significance of this act, but his
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 183
reaction is paradoxical. Instead of paying homage to the returned Lord, he points his bony finger at him and orders the watchman to arrest the man and lock him up in the vault of the Holy Tribunal. In the night, the old man descends the stairs to Jesus in the dungeon and says:
" 'Is it you? You? '
"But receiving no answer, he adds quickly: 'Do not answer, be si-
lent. And, indeed, what can you say? I know too well what you would say. Besides, you have no right to add anything to what you have said already in the days of old. Why, then, did you come to disrupt us? For you have come to disrupt and you know it. But do you know what is going to happen tomorrow? I know not who you are and I don't want to know: whether it is you or only someone who looks like him, I do not know, but tomorrow I shall condemn you and burn you at the stake as the vilest of heretics, and the same people who today kissed your feet, will at the first sign from me rush to rake up the coals at your stake tomorrow. Do you know that? Yes, perhaps you do know it . . . ' " (Trans. David Magarshack [Harmondsworth, 1958], p. 293, modified)
Those who find the Grand Inquisitor's behavior strange will be even more curi- ous about the meaning of the event when they have understood the decisive point with the greatest possible sharpness: In the thinking and action of the old man there is not a trace of dimness or blindness, no error and no misunderstanding. What Jesus had assumed about his crucifiers as grounds for forgiveness --"for they know not what they do"--can in no way be applied to the churchman. He knows what he is doing and he knows it with a downright shocking clarity, regarding which the only remaining question is whether it should be called tragic or cynical. If the Grand Inquisitor knows what he is doing, then he must be acting for reasons of overpowering gravity, reasons that are strong enough to dislodge the religious faith he outwardly represents. The old man does in fact give Jesus his reasons. To be concise, his speech is the reply of a politician to the founder of a religion. Seen somewhat more deeply, it is a settling of accounts of anthropol- ogy with theology, of administration with emancipation, of the institution with the individual.
We have just heard the main accusation against the returned one: He has come
to disrupt. " In what? The Inquisitor blames his Savior for returning precisely at
that moment when the Catholic Church, through the terror of the Inquisition, was
about to stamp out the last sparks of Christian freedom and was almost able to
delude itself into believing that it had completed its work: establishing domination
"rough the "true religion. " Having become completely unfree (in the religious-
Political sense), the people of this time are more than ever convinced that they
a
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
Wl
H make us free? The Grand Inquisitor, however, can see through this decep-
re free. Did they not possess the truth? Had not Christ promised that the truth
184 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
tion. He is proud of his realism; as representative of the victorious church, he claims not only to have completed Jesus' work but still more, to have improved it! For Jesus, so he says, did not know how to think politically and had not com- prehended what human nature in a political respect required: namely, domina- tion. In the speech of Dostoyevsky's cardinal to his silent prisoner, we discover one of the origins of modern institutionalism, which, in this passage, and perhaps only in this passage, admits in a remarkably open way its cynical basis in con- scious deception that appeals to necessity. The powerful, according to Dostoyevsky's profound and vertiginous reflections, make the following calcu- lations:
Only a few possess the courage to be free, as Jesus demonstrated when he an- swered the question of the tempter in the desert (concerning why he did not, al- though he was hungry, transform stones into bread): "Man does not live by bread alone. " Only a few have the power to overcome hunger. The many, in all ages, will reject the offer of freedom in the name of bread. In other words, people in general are in search of disburdenment, ease, comfort, routine, security. Those invested with power can, in all ages, confidently assume that the great majority have a horror of freedom and know no deeper urge than to surrender their free- dom, to erect prisons around themselves, and to subjugate themselves to idols old and new. What can the master Christians, the representatives of a religion of free- dom, do in such a situation? The Grand Inquisitor understands his assuming power as a kind of self-sacrifice.
"But we shall tell them that we do your bidding and rule in your name. We shall deceive them again, for we shall not let you come near us again. That deception will be our suffering, for we shall be forced to lie. " (Ibid. , p. 297)
We are witnesses here of a unique, strangely convoluted thought experiment in which the paradoxes of modern conservatism are hatched. The churchman raises an anthropological protest against the unreasonable demand of freedom that the founder of the religion has left behind. For human life, frail as it is, needs first of all an ordered framework of habit, certainty, law, and tradition --in a word, social institutions. With breathtaking cynicism the Grand Inquisitor ac- cuses Jesus not of having abolished the discomfort of freedom but of having ag- gravated it. He has not accepted human beings as they are but has overstrained them with his love. To this extent, the later masters of the church have superseded Christ in their sort of love of humanity-which is thoroughly pervaded by con- tempt and realism. For they take human beings as they are: childlike and childish, indolent and weak. The system of a ruling church, however, can only be erected on the shoulders of people who take the moral burden of conscious deception on themselves, that is, priests who consciously preach the opposite of the actual teachings of Christ, which they have understood precisely. To be sure, they speak
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 185
the Christian language of freedom, but they serve the system of needs --bread, order, power, law --that makes people submissive. The concept of freedom, as the Grand Inquisitor knows, is the fulcrum in the system of oppression: The more repressive it is (Inquisition, etc. ), the more violently must the rhetoric of freedom be hammered into people's heads. Precisely this is the ideological stamp of all modern conservatisms in the East as well as in the West. They are all based on pessimistic anthropologies according to which the striving for freedom is nothing more than a dangerous illusion, a mere basically insubstantial urge that glosses over the necessary and ineluctable institutional ("bound") character of human life. Wherever in the world today theories of freedom and emancipation make them- selves heard, they are repudiated with words like the following from the Grand Inquisitor.
"But here, too, your judgement of people was too high, for they are slaves, though rebels by nature. Look around you and judge: fifteen centuries have passed, go and have a look at them: whom have you raised up to yourself? I swear, human beings have been created weaker and baser creatures than you thought them to be! . . . I n respecting them so greatly, you acted as though you ceased to feel any compassion for them. " (Ibid. , p. 300 modified)
This is, still formulated in moral clauses, the Magna Charta of a theoretical conservatism on an "anthropological" foundation. Arnold Gehlen probably would have undersigned it without hesitation. Even the rebellious element in human be- ings is included as a natural constant in the calculations of this detached pessi- mism. Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor speaks as conservative politician and ideo- logue of the nineteenth century, looking back on the storms of European history since 1789.
"They will tear down the temples and drench the earth with blood. But they will realize at last, the foolish children, that although they are re- bels, they are impotent rebels who cannot bear their own rebel-
lion. . . . unrest, confusion, and unhappiness --that is the lot of people 34
today. " (Ibid. , pp. 300-1, modified)
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
But that is not enough. The final ascent to the "yawning heights" (Sinoviev) of a cynically conceived conservative politics still lies before us: when the Grand Inquisitor reaches his most extreme confession; when power tells its trade secrets m the most shameless and audacious way. That is a moment of that higher shame- 'essness through which inbred disingenuousness finds its way back to truth. In the mouth of the Grand Inquisitor, Dostoyevsky's reflections cross the cynical thresh- old beyond which there is no way back for the no longer naive consciousness. He admits that the church long ago consciously sealed a pact with the Devil, that tempter in the desert, whose offer of worldly domination Jesus himself had re-
186 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
? The Hamburg Faust Ensemble on tour in Moscow. Mephistophiles, Gustav Grund- gens, meets Boris Pasternak.
jected at that time. According to the cardinal's admission, the church has, with open eyes, gone over to the Devil's camp --at that time it decided to take the sword of worldly power into its own hands (in the time of Charlemagne). It paid for it with an unhappy consciousness and a chronically split conscience. But that it had to do it, is, in spite of everything, beyond question for the church politician. He speaks like someone who knows that he has sacrificed a great deal, and as it could not be otherwise, it is a sacrifice on the altar of the future, nourished by the "spirit of Utopia. " This is a sign that allows us to date this thought with certainty in the nineteenth century, which made every form of evil thinkable if only it served a "good purpose. " The Grand Inquisitor is enraptured with the vision of a humanity united by Christianity, welded together by power and inquisition. This vision alone gives him something to hold on to and hides his cynicism from himself, or better, ennobles it to a sacrifice. Millions upon millions of people will happily enjoy their existence, free from all guilt, and only the powerful, who make the sacrifice of exercising cynical domination will be the last unhappy ones.
"For we alone, we who guard the mystery, we alone shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy infants and one hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of knowl- edge of good and evil. " (Ibid. , p. 304)
Perplexing analogies between Goethe and Dostoyevsky now become visible: Both talk of a pact with the Devil; both conceive of evil as immanence; both re- habilitate Satan and acknowledge his necessity. Dostoyevsky's devil, too -- stated concisely, the principle of power, world dominion --is conceived as a part of a
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 187
power that wills evil but brings forth "good"; for good is also supposed to arise finally from the Grand Inquisitor's gloomy labor as his concluding Utopia shows. In both cases, to conclude a pact with the Devil means nothing more than to be- come a realist, that is, to take the world and people as they are. And in both cases it is a matter of the power that must be dealt with by all those who let themselves in for this kind of realism. With Faust, this is the power of knowledge; with the Grand Inquisitor, the knowledge of power.
Knowledge and power are the two modes by which one reaches the modern
state beyond good and evil, and in that moment when our consciousness takes the
step into this beyond, cynicism is unavoidably on the scene--with Goethe, aes-
thetically; with Dostoyevsky, morally and politically; with Marx, embodied in
a philosophy of history; with Nietzsche, psychologically and vitalistically; with
Freud, sexually and psychologically. Here we have zeroed in on the point where
cynicism and enlightenment touch. For enlightenment furthers the empirical-
realistic disposition, and where this advances without obstruction it inevitably
leaves the limits of morality behind. "Realistic" thinking must constantly use an
amoral freedom in order to attain clarity. A science of reality becomes possible
only where metaphysical dualism has been ruptured, where the inquiring spirit
has constructed a consciousness beyond good and evil, where, without
metaphysical and moral prejudice, neutral and tedious, it searches for what is the
35 case.
Would the Grand Inquisitor then be a cofounder of positivistic political science that takes humankind empirically and from its circumstances determines the kind of political institutions that are necessary for its survival? For Dostoyevsky, the institution of church is only representative of those coercive institutions that regu- late social life, their apex being occupied by the state and the army. It is the spirit of these institutions that is abhorred by any recollection of the magnificent primi- tive Christian freedom. It is not religion as religion that has to burn the returned Christ, but religion as Church, as analogue of the state, as institution; it is the state that fears the civil disobedience the religious are capable of; it is the army that condemns the spirit of Christian pacifism; it is the masters of the world of work who have a horror of people who place love, celebration of life, and creativity higher than slaving for the state, the rich, the army, etc.
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
Accordingly, must the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky's narrative burn Jesus, the meddler, as he intended? To be perfectly consistent, yes. But let us hear how the story ends as Ivan Karamazov tells it.
"I intended to end it as follows: When the Inquisitor has finished speak- ing, he waits for some time for the prisoner's reply. His silence dis- tresses him. He sees that the prisoner has been listening intently to him all the time, looking gently into his face and evidently not wishing to say anything in reply. The old man would like him to say something, 188 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
however bitter and terrible. But he suddenly approaches the old man and kisses him gently on his bloodless, aged lips. That is his entire an- swer. The old man gives a start. There is an imperceptible movement at the corners of his mouth; he goes to the door, opens it and says to him: 'Go, and come no more--don't come at all --never, never! ' And he lets him out into 'the dark streets and lanes of the city. ' The prisoner goes away. " (Ibid. , p. 308, modified)
Dostoyevsky obviously guards against giving an unambiguous solution, prob- ably because he saw that, one way or the other, the game is not over. For a mo- ment, nevertheless, the church politician must admit defeat; for one second he sees the "Other," the infinite affirmation that includes even him and that neither judges nor condemns. Dostoyevsky's Jesus loves not only his enemy but, what
36
is considerably more complicated, also him who betrays and perverts him. However one may interpret the open end of the drama, it in any case demonstrates that Dostoyevsky recognizes a conflict between two principles or forces that bal- ance each other; indeed, even more, they neutralize each other. By suspending any decision, he puts himself de facto in the region beyond good and evil, that is, in that area where we can do nothing more than take facts and reality "posi- tively," as they are. Institutions follow their own logic, religion follows another, and the realist is well advised to seriously take both into account, without forcing a decision for one side or the other. The actual result of the Grand Inquisitor's cynical reasoning is not so much the self-exposure of the church politician, but the discovery that good and evil, end and means can be interchanged. This result cannot be overemphasized. With it, we slide inevitably into the area of cynicism. For it means nothing less than that religion can just as easily be made an instru- ment of politics as politics can be made an instrument of religion. Because this is so, everything that was held to be absolute now comes into a relative light. Everything becomes a question of the lighting, the viewing angle, the projection, the purpose intended. All absolute anchoring is gone; the age of moral teetering begins. Beyond good and evil we by no means find, as Nietzsche assumed, a radi- antly vital amoralism but rather an infinite twilight and a fundamental ambiva- lence. Evil becomes so-called evil as soon as it is thought of as a means to good; good becomes so-called good as soon as it appears to be something disruptive (Je- sus as disrupter), destructive in the sense given to it by the institutions. Good and evil, viewed in a metaphysical light, transmute unflinchingly into each other, and those who have come so far as to see things this way gain a tragic view that, as
37
we show here, is really a cynical view.
For as soon as the metaphysical distinction between good and evil becomes
outmoded and everything that exists appears neutral in a metaphysical sense, only then does modernity, as we refer to it, really begin: It is the age that can no longer conceive of any transcendental morality and that, consequently, finds it impossi-
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 189
ble to distinguish neatly between means and ends. From then on, all statements about ends (and especially about final ends) appear as "ideologies," and what earlier were ideals and moral doctrines are now transparent and useful "intellec- tual" apparatuses. Morals and consciousnesses of values consequently can be
38
studied like things, namely, as subjective entities.
nology will use the concept "subjective factor") is thus no longer the wholly Other, the opposed principle, in relation to external being, but is itself a part of being, a part of reality. One can study it, describe it historically, pull it apart ana- lytically, and--the decisive point--use it politically and economically. From this moment on, a new hierarchy arises: on the one hand, the naive, the believers in values, the ideologized, the deceived, the victims of their "own" imaginations, in a word, the people with "false consciousness," the manipulated and the manipula- t e . This is the mass, the "spiritual realm of animals" [Hegel; --Trans. ]. The re- gion of false and unfree consciousness. All those have succumbed to it who do not possess the great, free "correct consciousness. " But who has the "correct con- sciousness"? Its bearers are to be found in a reflecting elite of nonnaive people who no longer believe in values, who have overcome ideology, and have dis- solved the deception. They are the ones who are no longer manipulable, who think beyond good and evil. Everything now depends on whether this intellectual hierarchy is also a political hierarchy, thus on whether the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
nonnaive people are, in relation to the naive, the rulers. With the Grand Inquisitor the answer would be a clear-cut yes. However, are all enlightened people, all realists, all nonnaive people essentially Grand Inquisitors, that is, ideological manipulators and moral deceivers who use their knowledge about things to rule others, even if for their purported good? Well, it is in our own interest not to demand a quick answer to this question.
The Grand Inquisitor, as we said, is a prototype of modern (political) cynics. His bitter anthropology prompts him to believe that human beings must be and want to be deceived. Human beings require order, which in turn requires domina- tion, and domination requires lies. Those who want to rule must accordingly make conscious use of religion, ideals, seduction, and (if necessary) violence. For them, everything, even the sphere of ends, becomes a means; modern grand
39
Nevertheless, in spite of all this, one cannot say that they are obscurantists. In the framework of Dostoyevsky's story, the role of realist falls to those who sur- render their insights.
Their garrulous cynicism thus remains an absolutely in- dispensable factor for the process of truth. If they were really just deceivers, they would keep silent. However, in the final analysis, they too think that they are do- wig the right thing even if they employ crooked means to this end. Their maxims resemble Claudel's motto: God writes straight even on crooked lines. "In the last
^stance," they have not given up the tendency toward "good. " Made to speak,
me
politicians are total "instrumentalists" and disposers of values.
y give an account of their motives, and their confessions, although giddying,
Consciousness (a later termi-
190 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
are invaluable contributions to the search for truth. In a roundabout way, cynics contribute what they can toward enlightenment; indeed, without their spectacu- lar, amoral, and evilly clever self-exposures, this entire area would remain im- penetrable. Precisely because an impression of "naked" reality can only be gained from a standpoint beyond good and evil, we must rely in the search for truth on the "amoral," self-reflective statements of those who have assumed such stand- points. From Rousseau to Freud, existentially crucial knowledge has been ex-
40
pressed in the form of confessions .
what is really the case. Cynicism speaks of what is behind the facade; that be- comes possible when the feeling of shame ceases. Only when individuals have taken the step beyond good and evil for themselves can they make a productive confession. But when they each say, "/am thus," they mean basically, "/? is thus. " My "sins" fall not on me but on it within me; they are only sinful illusions. In reality, my evil is only a part of universal reality, where good and evil disappear in a grand neutrality. Because truth means more than morality, amoralists justifia- bly do not necessarily feel themselves to be bad; they serve a higher authority than morality.
From this perspective, the Grand Inquisitor becomes a figure typical of the ep- och. His thinking is dominated by two antagonistic motives that simultaneously conflict with and condition each other. As realist (positivist), he has left the dual-
41
ism of good and evil behind.
more grimly. Half of him is an amoralist, the other a hypermoralist; on the one hand cynic, on the other dreamer; here freed from all scruples, there bound to the idea of an ultimate good. In praxis, he does not recoil from any cruelty, in- famy, or deception; in theory, the highest ideals rule him. Reality has taught him to be a cynic, pragmatist, and strategist; however, because of his intentions, he feels himself to be goodness incarnate. In this fragmentation and double- tonguedness we recognize the basic structure of "realistic" grand theories of the nineteenth century. They obey a compulsion to compensate for every gain in real- ism (amoralism) with an assault on Utopia and substitute morality, as if it were unbearable to accumulate so much power of knowledge and knowledge of power if "extremely good" ends did not justify this accumulation. The Grand Inquisitor's speech reveals to us at the same time where these extremely good ends --which
justify everything--come from: from the historical future. At the end of "history," "thousands of millions of happy infants" will populate the world--coerced into their happiness and enticed into paradise by the few who rule them. However, until then we have a long way to go, a way that will be lined by countless pyres. But since the end is considered absolutely right, no price seems too high to reach it. If the end is absolutely good, its goodness must rub off even on the most horri- ble means that have to be employed along the way. Here total instrumentalism, there Utopia: That is the form of a new, cynical theodicy. Human suffering thereby is attributed an overarching historical tendency:
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
Suffering becomes,
One has to go behind the facade to recognize
As a man of Utopia, he holds on to realism all the
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 191
frankly put, an unavoidable function of progress; suffering is strategy-- mind you, suffering in the form of causing to suffer (Inquisition). The strategist suffers only insofar as he knows that he consciously deceives.
The reason for presenting the Grand Inquisitor here now becomes clear: He is really a bourgeois philosopher of history with a Russian Orthodox profile, a tragically vilified crypto-Hegelian. If one wants to imagine the worst conse- quence, one must imagine what would happen if a Russian politician like the Grand Inquisitor came face to face with the most powerful and most "realistic" philosophy of history in the nineteenth century: Marxism. But it is not necessary to imagine this because the encounter between the Great Inquisition and Marxism has in fact taken place; we need only to page through the East European history of this century to come across at least two larger-than-life hybrid figures of the type Marxist-Grand Inquisitor, utopian-grand cynic. Whether this encounter was necessary or was based on a misunderstanding is beside the point. From a histori- cal perspective, the coalescence of Marxist ideology and Grand Inquisition can- not be retracted, even if good reasons could be given to show why the russification of Marxism actually represents a curiosity, namely, the reckless, illegitimate per- version of a theory of liberation into an instrument of the most rigorous oppres- sion. This process can only become understandable from the cynically inverted optics of Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor. Only such optics gives a logically ex- plicit model for interpreting the phenomenon: Those who want to rule use the truth in order to lie. Those who deceive the masses in the name of truth --and Marxism undeniably possesses strong elements of truth--risk, at least in theory, no repudiation. However, like the Grand Inquisitor, modern rulers must say to a returned Marx: We will no longer let you come into our midst; we will cite you as our authority, but only on the irrevocable condition that you "never, never" come again! For no matter who came-- "HE" himself or only his "image"--he would inevitably be a troublemaker and we know all too well what happens with such people.
Is the reasoning of the Grand Inquisitor supposed to have revealed a basic con- tradiction between the spirit of "truth" and the spirit of "institutions"? Is it sup- posed to be a universal "law" that in the attempt to make the "truth" into a "state religion," truth must turn itself into its complete opposite? Does not everything speak for the view that the Grand Inquisitor's logic has triumphed, according to which a returned Jesus would be burned on the pyre of the Holy Inquisition, a returned Nietzsche perish in the gas chambers, a returned Marx rot alive in a Siberian labor camp? Is there a law that regulates such cynically tragic in- versions?
The nineteenth century, we have said, is the epoch of the great, realistic the- ories that fix a "down-to-earth" gaze, unconcerned about good and evil, on that Part of the world that is relevant for human beings: history, the state, power, class struggles, ideologies, natural forces, sexuality, the family. All these bodies of
192 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
knowledge are now ordered into a great theoretical arsenal, into the tool em rium of practical interests. "Knowledge is power," says the workers' moverne But to the extent that, on the one side, the instruments are stacked up, on the oth the plans grow. Here the tools, there the designs; here the matter-of-fact, neutr I ized means, there the grandiose, Utopian good ends. Here the facts, there th values. This, in outline, is the self-understanding of modern instrumentalism n pragmatism. With one foot in the area beyond good and evil, one feels around with the other foot for a firm stand in (utopian) morality. Concisely stated: The nineteenth century develops a first form of modern cynical consciousness that links a rigorous cynicism of means with an equally rigid moralism of ends. For as far as the ends were concerned, scarcely anyone risked imagining a real region beyond good and evil-for that would be "nihilism. " Resisting nihilism is the real ideological war of modernity. If fascism and communism struggle somewhere on a common front, it is on the front against "nihilism," which with one voice is at-
tributed to "bourgeois decadence. " Common to both is the resoluteness to oppose
the "nihilistic" trend with an absolute value: Here the people's Utopia, there the
42
communist Utopia. Both guarantee a final end that sanctifies every means and
that promises to give meaning to existence. However, where radical cynicism of means comes together with a resolute moralism of ends, there, the last residue of moral feeling for the means dies out. Modern, heavily armed moralism works itself up into an unheard-of destructive whirlwind and drives the hell of good in- tentions to an extreme.
This must not be understood as theoretical deduction. To be sure, we have
tried to sketch a logic of modern political catastrophes, but this attempt is
preceded by the real catastrophes. No thinking on its own could summon up
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
enough frivolity and despair to come to such conclusions merely out of a "striving for truth. " In fact, basically no human being would be able to imagine devasta- tions of the magnitude of those experienced if they had not actually happened.
In retrospect, attention is just now being drawn to the intellectual preconditions
of the political calamity. Looking back, one can ask what conditions made the self-made hell possible. This hell really must have come about before thinking could overcome its timidity and inertia and begin to investigate the grammar ot
the catastrophes. The only ones to anticipate the logic of large-scale catastrophes, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, basically did not yet know the extent to which they spoke of politics as they carried out their tortuous thought experiments. For this reason, they spoke almost exclusively in moral-psychological concepts and un- derstood themselves as the last in a centuries-old religious tradition. What they wrote was incubated in a religiously stamped, psychologically exposed inward- ness. Both understood themselves as explosions in the Christian tradition, as co- mets at the end of the history of religion to that point--leading over to a bleaK modernity. But the political transposition of their visions in both cases occurred
e within two generations. Thought out beforehand in inwardness, the structures d ~ THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 193
? ribed by Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky gained fulfillment in the most brutal manifestations. The Russian Grand Inquisitor of the twentieth century really ex- isted as did the German populist Ubermensch, both instrumentalists in the grand style, cynical to the extreme as far as the means are concerned, pseudonaively
? moral" with regard to the ends.
In the meantime, we have come so far from our starting point that it might
seem as if no connection at all existed any longer between Diogenes, the Pro- tokynic, and the Grand Inquisitor, the modern cynic. Only through an inexplica- ble quirk in the history of concepts, so it seems, does modern cynicism hark back to an ancient school of philosophy. However, in this apparent quirk, a bit of method can be made clear, a link connecting dissimilar phenomena over millen- nia. This link, so we believe, consists in two formal, common points between kynicism and cynicism: The first is the motif of self-preservation in crisis-ridden times, the second a kind of shameless, "dirty" realism that, without regard for conventional moral inhibitions, declares itself to be for how "things really are. " Compared with the existential realism of ancient kynicism, however, modern cynicism is only the "half of a whole. " For its sense of facts, as shown, is directed only toward an unscrupulous, matter-of-fact way of dealing with means to an end, not toward the ends themselves. Modern, theoretically reflecting grand cynics like the Grand Inquisitor are anything but descendants of Diogenes. In them rather gnaws the ambition of Alexander, whom Diogenes had rebuffed; it is, of
43
course, a displaced kind of ambition.
"Stop blocking my sun," those skilled at modern cynicism strive for "a place in the sun. " They think of nothing else than to cynically --in the sense of openly ruthless--scramble for earthly goods, which Diogenes had rejected with disdain. And for them, literally any means is justified, to the point of genocide, plundering of the earth, devastation of land and sea, and the decimation of fauna, showing that with regard to the instrumental, they have really put themselves beyond good and evil. But where is the kynical impulse to be found? If cynicism has already become an unavoidable aspect of modern realism, why does this realism not also encompass the ends? The cynicism of the means that characterizes our "in- strumental reason" (Horkheimer) can be compensated for only by a return to a kynicism of the ends. This means taking leave of the spirit of long-term goals, in- sight into the original purposelessness of life, limiting the wish for power and the power of wishing --in a word, comprehending the legacy of Diogenes. This is nei-
ther a romanticism of rubbish bins nor a gushy enthusiasm for the "simple life. " The essence of kynicism consists in a critical, ironical philosophy of so-called needs, in the elucidation of their fundamental excess and absurdity. The kynical impulse not only was alive from Diogenes to the Stoa, but also had its effect on ? Jesus himself, the troublemaker par excellence and in all real disciples of the mas- ter who, like him, were illuminated by the insight into the purposelessness of exis- tence. This is the basis for the puzzling influence of old Asian teachings of wis-
Where Diogenes expressed the "wish"
194 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
dom that fascinate the West because they coolly turn their backs on its ideology of purposes and all its rationalizations of greed. On earth, existence has "nothing to search for" except itself, but where cynicism rules, we search for
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
everything, but not for existence (Dasein). Before we "really live," we always have just one more matter to attend to, just one more precondition to fulfill, just one more tem- porarily more important wish to satisfy, just one more account to settle. And with this just one more and one more and one more arises that structure of postpone- ment and indirect living that keeps the system of excessive production going. The latter, of course, always knows how to present itself as an unconditionally "good end" that deludes us with its light as though it were a real goal but that whenever we approach it recedes once more into the distance.
Kynical reason culminates in the knowledge--decried as nihilism--that we must snub the grand goals. In this regard, we cannot be nihilistic enough. Those who reject all so-called goals and values in a kynical sense break through the cir- cle of instrumental reason, in which "good" goals are pursued with "bad" means. The means lie in our hands, and they are means with such enormous significance (in every respect: production, organization, as well as destruction) that we must begin to ask ourselves whether there can still be any ends that are served by the means. For what good then could such immeasurable means be necessary? In that moment when our consciousness becomes ripe to let go of the idea of good as a goal and to devote itself to what is already there, a release is possible in which the piling up of means for imaginary, always receding goals automatically be- comes superfluous. Cynicism can only be stemmed by kynicism, not by morality. Only a joyful kynicism of ends is never tempted to forget that life has nothing to lose except itself.
Since in this chapter we have spoken a lot about great spirits who have
returned, it would be appropriate finally for us to imagine a returned Diogenes.
The philosopher climbs out of his Athenian tub and enters the twentieth century,
gets caught up in two world wars, strolls through the principal cities of capitalism
and communism, reads up on the East-West conflict, listens to lectures on nuclear
strategy, the theory of surplus value, and value-added tax, visits television sta-
tions, gets caught in the vacation traffic on the freeways, sits rolling his eyes in
a Hegel seminar . . . Has Diogenes come to disrupt? It seems more likely that
he himself is rather disturbed. He had taught: Be ready for anything, but what
he now sees goes too far even for him. He had found even the Athenians to be
pretty crazy, but what he finds in the present defies classification. Stalingrad,
Auschwitz, Hiroshima--he longs to go back to the Persian Wars. Out of fear ot
psychiatric institutions, Diogenes refrains from going through the streets by day
44
with a lantern.
to talk to these people. He has noticed that they have been drilled to understand what is complicated, not what is simple. He has fathomed that for them, what is perverse appears normal. What to do? Suddenly he gets a feeling he never had
If philosophical pantomime fails, even he would not know how
THE CABINET OF CYNICS D 195
back then in Athens: to have something important to say. At that time, everything had been almost like a game; now, however, it seems to him that something seri- ous should be made of it. With a sigh, Diogenes agrees to play along with the game. From now on he will try to be respectable; as far as he can; he will also learn modern philosophical jargon and play with words until people become giddy. And gingerly, subversively, with a deadly earnest air, he will try to spread his ridiculously simple message among his contemporaries. He knows that think- ing in the sense of the cynicism of means has made his potential pupils artful, and their critical understanding functions superbly. The philosopher who teaches the kynicism of ends must be a match for this understanding. That is Diogenes' con- cession to modernity. Two paths present themselves for undermining the modern use of understanding in the sciences and technologies: the ontological and the di- alectical. Diogenes has tried both incognito. It is up to us to decipher his traces.
Anyone, or: The Most Real Subject of Modern Diffuse Cynicism
With respect to this /everyday way of being;--Au. ] it may not be superfluous to say that interpretation has a purely ontological intention and is far from being a moralizing critique of every- day existence or from having "cultural- philosophical" aspi- rations.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (p. 167) "Life" is a "business" regardless of whether it covers its costs
or not.
Sein und Zeit (p. 289) Why live when for as little as ten dollars you can be buried?
Advertising slogan in the United States
Anyone, the nonperson in our cabinet of cynics, reminds one, in its meager form,
of jointed figures used by graphic artists for position studies and anatomical
sketches. However, the position that Heidegger had his eye on is an indefinite
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
one. He eavesdrops on the "subject" in the banality of the everyday mode of being. * he existential ontology, which treats Anyone and its existence in every day ness, attempts something that would not have occurred even in a dream to earlier phi- losophy: to transform triviality into an object of "higher" theory. This of itself is
a? f the Heideggerian existential ontology have cited as its "mistake" is perhaps its Cf
ucial point. It elevates the art of platitudes into the heights of the explicit con- cept. One could read his ontology as an inverted satire that does not drag down
wgesture that inevitably leads us to suspect Heidegger of kynicism. What critics
>>at is high, but raises what is low. It tries to say what is self-evident so explicitly
196 D THE CABINET OF CYNICS
and thoroughly that even intellectuals, by rights, would have to understand it. In a certain regard, a logical Eulenspiegel game on a grand scale is hidden in Heidegger's discourse, with its scurrilous refinements in conceptual nuances--the attempt to translate mystically simple knowledge about simple life "as it is" into the most advanced tradition of European thinking. Heidegger's posture of a Black Forest peasant who, withdrawn from the world, likes to sit and brood in his hut, cap on his head, is no mere external detail. It belongs to the essence of this kind of philosophizing. It contains the same ambitious plainness. It shows just how much mischievousness it really takes under modern conditions to say something so simple and "primitive," that it can be accepted in the face of the complex convo- lutions of "enlightened" consciousness. We read Heidegger's statements about Anyone, existence (Daseiri) in everydayness, about talk, ambiguity, fallenness, and thrownness (Geworfenheit), etc. , against the background of the preceding portraits of Mephisto and the Grand Inquisitor: as a series of etudes in higher ba- nality with which philosophy feels its way into that "which is really the case. " It is precisely by doing away with the myth of objectivity that Heidegger's existential- hermeneutical analysis produces the hardest "depth positivism. " A philosophy thus appears that participates ambivalently in a disillusioned, secula- rized, and technicized Zeitgeist. It thinks from beyond good and evil and from this side of metaphysics. It can move only along this thin line.
The theoretical neokynicism of our century --existentialist philosophy - demonstrates in its form of thinking the adventure of banality. What it presents is the fireworks of meaninglessness that begins to understand itself. We have to clarify for ourselves the contemptuous phrase with which Heidegger, in the motto cited earlier, strongly distances his work from any "moralizing critique," as if he wanted to emphasize that contemporary thinking has left the swamps of moralism behind once and for all and no longer has anything in common with "cultural phi- losophy. " The latter can be nothing more than "aspiration": vain pretension, gran- diose thinking, and Weltanschauung in the style of the nineteenth century, which never wanted to come to an end. By contrast, in the "purely ontological intention," the burning coolness of real modernity is at work, which no longer needs any mere enlightenment and which has already "been through" every possible analytic critique. Laying bare the structure of existence by thinking ontologically, by speaking positively: To this end Heidegger, in order to avoid the subject-object terminology, throws himself with commendable linguistic mischievousness into an alternative jargon that, viewed from a distance, is certainly no more felicitous than what he wanted to avoid, in whose innovativeness, however, something of the adventure of modern primitiveness shines through: a linking of the archaic with modern times, a reflection of the earliest in the latest. The "explicitness" of Heideggerian speech expresses what philosophy otherwise does not find worth speaking about. Precisely in that moment when thinking--explicitly "nihilistic"--recognizes meaninglessness as the foil of every possible statement
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 197
or attribution of meaning, the highest unfolding of hermeneutics (i. e. , the art of understanding meaning) becomes necessary in order to articulate philosophically the meaning of meaninglessness. That, according to the reader's background, can be as stimulating as it is frustrating, a circling around in conceptualized empti- ness, a shadow play of reason.
What is this rare being that Heidegger introduces under the name of Anyone? At first glance, it resembles modern sculptures that do not represent any definite object and whose polished surfaces do not admit of any "particular" meaning. Still, they are immediately real and firm to the touch. In this sense Heidegger em- phasizes that Anyone is no abstraction--roughly, a general concept that com- prises "all egos"; instead, he wants to relate it, as ens realissimum, to something that is present in every one of us. But it disappoints the expectation of personal - ness, individual purport, and existentially decisive meaning. It exists, but there is "nothing behind" it. It is there like modern, nonfigure sculptures: real, every- day, concrete part of a world but not referring at any time to an actual person, a "real" meaning. Anyone is
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
the neutrum of our ego: everyday ego, but not "I my- self. " It represents in a certain way my public side, my mediocrity. I have Anyone in common with everyone else; it is my public ego, and in relation to it, average- ness is always in the right. As inauthentic ego, Anyone disposes of any highly personalized decisiveness (Entschiedenheii) of its own. By nature, it wants to make everything easy for itself, to take everything from the outside and to abide by conventional appearances. In a certain respect, it also behaves in this way to- ward itself, for what it is if'self" it also accepts, just like something it finds among other things that are simply givens. This Anyone can thus only be understood as something nonautonomous, which has nothing of itself or solely for itself. What it is is said and given by others; that explains its essential distractedness (Zer- streutheit).
