It looks at them as if they already
belonged
to the past.
Sloterdijk -Critique of Cynical Reason
Autobi- ographien der 20er Jahre (Munich, 1978).
6. See Klaus Heinrich's fine book, Versuch Uber die Schwierigkeit Nein zu sagen. Heinrich has also discussed the explosiveness of ancient kynicism in Parmenides und Jona (Frankfurt, 1966).
7. I initially avoid the psychology of cynicism in order to develop it primarily in a social- philosophical way. Subjective cynicism and its psychodynamics are treated in part V.
8. Erich Kastner, Fabian. Geschichte eines Moralisten (1931; reprint 1976), pp. 64-65.
9. [The Gottinger Nachrichten, the Gottingen university student newspaper, published an article in its 25 April 1977 edition entitled "Buback-An Obituary. " The author used the nom de plume "Mes- calero" to identity himself as "metropolitan Indian. " Buback was federal attorney general at the time of his murder. -Trans. ]
10. Iring Fetscher, Reflexionen uber den Zynismus als Krankheit unsererZeit, in Denken im Schat- ten des Nihilismus,
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
ed. A. Schwan (Darmstadt, 1975), has also remarked that in the intellectual's at- tempt to avoid cynicism, moralistically loaded tensions are manifest.
11. Walter Benjamin, Einbahnstrasse (Frankfurt, 1969), p. 59.
12. I take up the problem of amoralism systematically in chapter 7, where Mephistopheles, the Grand Inquisitor, and Heidegger's Anyone are discussed.
13. This arm-and-negotiate strategy is a source of political demoralization that pervades the youth in the West-insofar as they still resist the enticements of schizoid realism. Hence their resistance against "double decisions" and double thinking.
14. This thought was made clear a quarter of a century ago by Gunther Anders, Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. Uber die Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution (Munich, 1956).
Part Two Cynicism in World Process
I. Physiognomic Main Text
Chapter 6
Concerning the Psychosomatics of the Zeitgeist Your body speaks its mind.
Stanley Keleman
A philosophical physiognomy follows the idea of a second, speechless language. This notion of a speechless language is as old as human communication, indeed, even older, its roots going back into the prehuman and the prerational, into the sphere of animal sensing and orientation. Not only verbal language has something to say to us; things too talk to those who know how to use their senses. The world is full of shapes, mimicry, faces; from all around us the hints of forms, colors, and atmospheres are received by our senses. In this physiognomic field, all the senses are tightly interwoven. Those who have been able to maintain their percep- tual competence undamaged possess an effective antidote to the atrophy of the senses with which we pay for progress in civilization. Our culture, which floods us with signs, educates us in the area of physiognomic knowledge to a state of dyslexia. Nevertheless, there exists an undercurrent in our cultural life in which a mentally alert and self-evident capacity to enter into the language of shapes has reproduced itself--partly in the arts, partly in scattered traditions of knowledge about human nature in which, under various names (morals, the sorting of spirits, psychology, or the study of expressions) that other kind of perception of people and things is practiced.
Whereas the process of civilization, whose core is constituted by the sciences, teaches us to distance ourselves from people and things so that we experience them as objects, physiognomic sense provides a key to all that which reveals our proximity to the environment. Its secret is intimacy, not distance; it dispenses not
1has form and that every form talks to us in multiple ways. The skin can hear, the a matter-of-fact but a convivial knowledge of things.
It knows that everything
139
140 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
ears have the capacity to see, and the eyes can distinguish warm from cold. Phys- iognomic sense pays attention to the tensions in the forms and, as the neighbor of things, eavesdrops on their expressive whispering.
Enlightenment, which strives for the reification and objectification (Kmach- lichung) of knowledge, reduces the world of the physiognomic to silence. The price of objectivity is the loss of closeness. Scientists lose the capacity to behave as neighbors of the world; they think in concepts of distance, not of friendship; they seek overviews, not neighborly involvement. Over the centuries, modern science excluded everything that was incompatible with the a priori of objectify- ing distance and intellectual domination over the object: intuition, empathy, es-
pirit de finesse, aesthetics, erotics. Out of all this, however, a strong current has remained effective in genuine philosophy for ages; in it, to the present day, flows the warm current of a convivial intellectuality and a libidinous closeness to the world that compensates for the objectifying drive toward the domination of things.
Something of the "love of wisdom" necessarily tinges the objects of this wis- dom and moderates the coldness of purely objective knowledge. Only a science that obliterates the last residues of philosophy in itself under the pretense of objec- tification cuts through even the last threads of neighborly and intimate sense that had bound it to things. It loosens the bonds to the physiognomic and eradicates the traces of the esprit de finesse that necessarily remain "subjective" and incalcul- able. What is repressed cannot, of course, fail to return, and the irony of enlight- enment tries to make such a return look like irrationalism, against which sworn enlighteners struggle with a vengeance. In the century-long dispute between ra- tionalism and irrationalism, two complementary but one-sided views are putting each other on trial.
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As far as cynicism is concerned, our knowledge of it can initially be no other than one of intimacy. It was spoken about as though it were something at- mospheric, a moral-psychological pulsation permeating our civilization. I have not yet met anyone who did not show signs of intuitive connivance as soon as this phenomenon was brought into the conversation. With this word, memories of sit- uations, moods, experiences are evoked. It is as if a definite feeling toward life looked in the mirror as soon as the concept is placed insistently enough, as means of reflection, before our consciousness. Cynicism is one of the categories in which modern unhappy consciousness looks itself in the eyes. We have the cyni- cal Zeitgeist and that specific taste of a fragmented, overcomplicated, demoraliz- ing world situation in our bones, our nerves, our eyes, and in the corners of our mouths. In everything that is really contemporary, the kynical and the cynical ele- ments become noticeable as part of our bodily-psychical and intellectual physiog- nomy. The Zeitgeist has left its mark on us, and whoever wants to decipher it is faced with the task of working on the psychosomatics of cynicism. This is what an integrating philosophy demands of itself. It is called integrating because it does
CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMAT1CS OF THE ZEITGEIST
not let itself be seduced by the attraction of the "great problems," but instead ini- tially finds its themes in the trivial, in everyday life, in the so-called unimportant, in those things that otherwise are not worth speaking about, in petty details. Who- ever wants to can, in such a change of perspective, already recognize the kynical impulse for which the "low-brow themes" are not too low.
Tongue, Stuck Out
For well-bred people it is difficult to say no. A no would be willfulness and the more well bred we are, the more willfulness is exorcised. Obedience is the first duty of children, and it later becomes the duty of a citizen. In quarrels among chil- dren, however, it does not yet play a role, and here saying no and asserting one- self are not so difficult. When we quarrel passionately, we often come to the point
? 142 D CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
where words alone are not enough. The body then knows how to help: We stick out our tongues and make a noise that makes it clear what we think of the other person. We put all our energy into it, and apart from all its other advantages, it is also unequivocal. Sometimes when we do this, our eyes squint maliciously to- gether and the eyelids quiver from the energy being emitted. At other times when we stick out our tongues, we open our eyes wide, like funny mirrors. Those who can stick out their tongues are not in danger of nodding when they want to shake their head. Generally, as far as gestures of the head are concerned, saying no is not firmly fixed in the body; there are cultures in which head shaking and nod- ding, no and yes, are learned the opposite way.
Sticking the tongue out says no with many undertones: There can be aggres- sion in it, obstinacy, or mockery, and it tells the addressee that we consider him or her an idiot or a bore. This no may be nasty or cheerful, or both: joy at another's misfortune. In doing so, we can easily make a sound that sounds like "neaah," which goes well with malicious joy --with greater agitation even a "beaah" or an "eeyeah," whereby the expression of disrespect predominates. We are, of course, especially interested in the maliciously joyful no that belongs to kynical satire; it is sticking the tongue out like Eulenspiegel did, the attacking fool who can well mock the stupid misfortune of others. Eulenspiegel is the modern model of the kynic, an enlightener of the crude sort who is not intimidated even by thrashings. He does not hide his malicious joy behind good manners as the more refined enlighteners of the bourgeois epoch do, and he has fun exposing and embarrassing stupid people. Because he is a pantomimic enlightener, he does not experience the inhibitions that force subtler people to hide their "nasty" emotions. He embodies a robust intelligence that does not censor its impulses. He stands, like all kynics, halfway between the impudent and the spontaneous, between the naive and the artful, and because he oscillates so ambivalently between honesty and nastiness with his vulgar assent, conventional morality does not have an easy time with him. He proves that often we bring the truth to light only at the cost of rude impertinence. With this we are in the middle of cultural ambivalences. The truth often speaks against all conventions, and the kynic plays the role of a moralist who makes it clear that one has to violate morality in order to save it. That is the sign of complicated times. Things have become so tangled that moral- ity and amorality change abruptly into one another. The one side declares Eulen- spiegel, who sticks his tongue out at them, to be crazy, while he insists that it is his fellow beings who are nuts and require treatment.
Mouth, Smiling Maliciously, Crooked
The knowledge of the master cynic is based on a crooked superiority. The power- ful man sees to his advantage, even when he knows that he thereby comes into a morally dubious position. A crooked smile, an evilly clever gesture, easily CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 143
arises out of crooked superiority. This smile defends a bad status quo, an in- justice. The rights of others? Where would we end up? Hunger? What's that? One corner of the mouth, often the left corner, is drawn upward. On the mouth of the
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master, the split in his consciousness becomes visible; the other half knows that there is really nothing to laugh about. One half of the mouth turns knowingly up- ward, so that the other half involuntarily falls contemptuously downward. The worldy realism of the master cynic comes from the wish to save face while getting his hands dirty. This face thus often goes together with polished manners. The cynical smile appears, true to form, embedded in a brazen politeness that restrains itself and reveals that it wants to keep others at a distance as surely as it controls itself.
This is the smile of the heights of power and its melancholy, as it can be seen on high officials, politicians, editors. Best of all, however, one can imagine courtly personages of the rococo with this smile--as, say, the unhappy, unctious man- in-waiting of Louis XV, LeBel, in the film Fanfan the Hussar, whose smile was as crooked as the comma between yes and but.
Mouth, Bitter, Tight
The life experiences of victims are revealed in their bitterness. On their lips, a bitter silence forms. They cannot be tricked anymore. They know how things work. The emphatically disappointed may even gain a small advantage over fate, a space for the play of self-assertion and pride. Lips that are pressed tightly to- gether and narrowed to thin lines because of hardship betray the worldly, ex- perienced side of those who have been duped. Even some children whom life has treated badly have these bitter, tight mouths from which it is so difficult to wangle some sort of consent to anything good. Mistrust is the intelligence of the disad- vantaged. However, the mistrustful can easily make stupid mistakes once more when their bitterness causes them to also pass over what, after all those painful things, would do them good. Happiness will always look like fraud and will seem much too cheap to be worth reaching for. Bound to past experience, the cynically bitter lips know only one thing: that ultimately everything is deception and that no one will ever again bring them to be soft and, blushing, surrender themselves to any temptation of the world's swindle.
Mouth, Laughing Loudly, Big-Mouthed
"hen the cynic smiles melancholically-contemptuously, from the illusionless heights of power, it is characteristic for the kynic to laugh so loudly and un- abashedly that refined people shake their heads. Kynical laughter comes from the mtestines; it is grounded at the animal level and lets itself go without restraint. Those who claim to be realists should, strictly speaking, be able to laugh this
144 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
Detail from Raphael, The School of Athens, Diogenes on the Steps.
way-this total, uncramping laughter that wipes away illusions and postures. We have to imagine the laugh of the great satirist Diogenes as just such a laugh, and Diogenes is related to the wandering Asiatic monks who presented their pious trickery in the villages and, roaring with laughter, disappeared from the scene when the villagers discovered that the holiness of these holy men was not quite as they had imagined. In the expression of some laughing Buddhas, too, there is something of this animal and, at the same time, ecstatic and realistic belly laugh- ter that frolics about so unselfconsciouslessly in its springs and thrusts that no ego is left in the laughing, only a serene energy that celebrates itself. Those who are too civilized and timid easily get the impression that there could be something demonic, devilish, unserious, and destructive in such laughter. Here is the place to listen carefully. The Devil's laughter has the energy of destruction within it, with crashing crockery and collapsing walls, an evil laughter above the debris. In positive ecstatic laughter, by contrast, the energy of a perplexed affirmation is at play; in spite of its wildness, it sounds contemplative, celebratory. It is also no accident that women rather than men tend to laugh in this way, and the drunken rather than the sober. The devil's energy is the energy that laughs until the others fall silent. In the laughter of Diogenes and Buddha, the ego itself, which had taken things so seriously, laughs itself to death. Of course, that takes a big mouth that can be opened wide without hindrance, not for fine phrases but for a strong vital- ity in which there is more astonishment than pretentiousness. The kind of big'
? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 145
mouthedness that interests the philosopher is not an active but a passive one, the saying of aaah when we watch fireworks or look at a mountain, or in flashes of genius in which Aha! passes through us. With great insights we want to shout, and what are great insights other than a release from false complicatedness?
Mouth, Serene, Still
In a satisfied face, the lips rest on each other, imperceptibly vibrating. Everything is as it is. There is nothing to say. Diogenes sits mute in the sun and contemplates the stone steps of the market pavilion. Not the shadow of a thought passes through his head. His eyes are immersed in the cosmic flickering of the Greek light. He watches the people going about their business. If it occurred to one of them to sit down in front of him and closely observe his face with an open heart, it could easily happen that that person would suddenly, disconcertedly begin to cry or to laugh for no reason at all. Eye Gazes, Eye Blinkers
The eyes are the organic prototype of philosophy. Their enigma is that they not only can see but are also able to see
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themselves seeing. This gives them a promi- nence among the body's cognitive organs. A good part of philosophical thinking is actually only eye reflex, eye dialectic, seeing-oneself-see. For this, reflecting media, mirrors, water surfaces, metals, and other eyes are necessary, through which the seeing of seeing becomes visible.
The kynical gaze understands itself as looking through a laughable and hollow
show. It would like to put society before a natural mirror in which people recog- nize themselves unveiled and without masks. Diogenes sees through the puffed- up idealism and cultural arrogance of the Athenians. What interests him is not masquerades and idealistic poses, justifications and palliations. He rivets his eyes on the naked facts of nature. In a sense, if he possessed theoretical ambition, he could rate as the first critical positivist. The kynical gaze is always directed at what is naked; it wants to acknowledge the "raw," animal, and simple facts above which the lovers of higher things like to place themselves. Indeed, the original kynic can take pleasure in what is naked and elementary because he experiences m them truth as unconcealedness. For him the usual divisions are invalid; there
! s neither above nor below, neither dirty nor pure. This gaze is open, realistic,
and generous, and it is not embarrassed to look at what is naked; it does not matter whether it is beautiful or ugly, as long as it is natural. The gaze of the master
cynic, by contrast, is unhappily broken, reflectively bent. With this gaze, the hegemonic powers look at their own strategy, recognizing that behind everything mat presents itself as law, a large portion of force and arrogance is hidden. Who should take closer notice of that than those who exercise power and arrogance
146 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
? Rene Magritte, The False Mirror, 1928. ((C)S. P. A. D. E. M. , Paris/V. A. G. A. , New York, 1987. )
half-heartedly and half-awake? In the melancholy reflection of a master cynic, therefore, there is often a tendency to be cross-eyed. The eyes of marked cynics betray themselves through a touch of cross-eyedness, a slight inward or outward turning of one of the organs. Those who are born cross-eyed and choose the path to science, philosophy, or political practice already appear to be somatically predisposed toward a double vision of things, of essence and illusion, of the con- cealed and the naked. The organ dialectic of their eyes drives them on in this, whereas other thinkers, bound by the myth of normality, like to ignore that they, too, see from two different perspectives and that nobody has two identical eyes. A part of our thinking structure is located in the eyes, particularly the dialectic of right and left, of the masculine and the feminine, of the straight and the crooked.
With intellectuals, an astounding dullness in the eyes is often evident that comes not least of all from the continual violence done to the eyes by having to read things the eyes would not accept if they had their own way. They must serve merely as tools for reading; and it is no wonder when the perspective of such peo- ple, being used to black lines, glides right off from reality. Master cynical knowl- edge, as it collects in intellectual heads, betrays itself through the rigid eye blinkers and a cloudiness and coldness of the gaze. It transfixes things it does not penetrate and to which it does not really grant existence. In such eyes there is an expression that can be compared with the crooked smile. The cynical gaze lets things know that they do not exist as real objects for it, but only as phenomena and information.
It looks at them as if they already belonged to the past. It takes them in, registers them, and ponders its self-preservation. Of course it is offended that the things return this gaze; they look back as coldly as they are looked at.
tnw
cannot become warm before the ice melts in the eyes of those who believe were called on to valorize, to administer the world, and to ravage it.
Breasts
CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 147
l the modern civilization of media and fashion, an atmospheric concoction of osmetics, pornography, consumerism, illusion, addiction, and prostitution reigns for which the baring and depiction of breasts is typical. In the commodity world, it seems that nothing functions without them anymore. Everyone specu- lates cynically on the addictive reflexes of others. With everything that is sup- posed to look lifelike and arouse desires, they are present, as the universal orna- ments of capitalism. Everything that is dead, superfluous, alienated draws attention to itself with laughing forms. Sexism? If only it were so simple. Adver- tising and pornography are special cases of modern cynicism, which knows that power must make its way through ideals and that the dreams and addictions of others can be simultaneously stimulated and frustrated in order to achieve one's own ends. Politics is not only the art of the possible, as has been said, but just as much the art of seduction. It is the chocolate side of power that assumes first,
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that order must prevail and, second, that the world wants to be deceived. These modern business breasts exist, philosophically speaking, only in them- selves (an sich), as things, not for themselves (fur sick), as conscious bodies. They merely signify a power, an attraction. But what would breasts be for them- selves, independent of their cynical baring on the commodity market? What is their relation to the power and energy emanating from them? Many would prefer to have nothing at all to do anymore with this play of power, attraction, and de- sire. Others embody consciously and frivolously their appeal to the other sex. Something of their consciousness of power is still present in the hackneyed phrase about the "weapons of a woman. " Some are also unhappy because they do not look like the ideal breasts in advertising. They do not feel very good being naked when they do not have the prevailing aesthetic on their side. Some, on the other hand, have the sweetness of ripe pears that have become so heavy and friendly toward themselves that, on an appropriate occasion, they fall from the tree into a hand
they feel recognizes them.
Arses
he arse seems doomed to spend its life in the dark, as the beggar among body Parts. It is the real idiot of the family. However, it would be a wonder if this black
sn
People in the upper strata. If the head were to enter into conversation just once
Wlt
eep of the body did not have its own opinion about everything that takes place
higher regions, similar to the declassed who often cast the most sober gaze on
h its antipode, the latter would first stick out its tongue, if it had one. As in
148 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
2the enlightenment film of the Rote Grtitze, Was heisst hier Liebe (What do you
mean by love? ), the arse would say to the higher spheres: I find that our relation- ship is shitty. The arse is the plebeian, the grass-roots democrat, and the cosmopolitan
among the parts of the body-- in a word, the elementary kynical organ. It provides
the solid materialist basis. It is at home on toilets all over the world. The Interna-
tional of Arses is the only worldwide organization that has no statutes, ideology,
or dues. Its solidarity cannot be shaken. The arse crosses all borders playfully,
unlike the head, to which borders and possessions mean a lot. Without any objec-
tion, it squats on this or that chair. To an unspoiled arse, the difference between
3athrone andakitchenstool,abenchandaHolyChairisnotparticularlyimpres-
sive. Now and again, it can also sit on the ground; the only thing it dislikes is standing when it is tired. This proclivity for the elementary and the fundamental predisposes the arse especially to philosophy. It probably registers the nuances, but it would not think of making a fuss like vain heads do when they knock them- selves bloody over the occupation of seats. It never loses sight of what really un- derlies it: the firm ground. In an erotic sense, too, the arse often shows itself to be both sensitive and superior. It does not pretend to be choosier than is neces- sary. Even then, it is the one that easily raises itself above imagined borders and exclusivities. When the famous Arletty was accused of having had sexual rela- tions with members of the German occupation forces, her answer is said to have been: "My heart is French, but my backside is international. " As representative of the kynical principle per se (able to survive anywhere, reduction to the essen- tials), the arse can hardly be brought under government control, although it can- not be denied that many an arsehole has given off nationalistic tones.
Often beaten, kicked, and pinched, the arse has a worldview from below: ple- beian, popular, realistic. Millennia of bad treatment have not passed over it with- out leaving a mark. They have trained it to be a materialist, albeit one with a di- alectical tendency, which assumes that things are shitty but not hopeless. Nothing can cause as much bitterness as the feeling of not being welcome. Only the under- tone of fascination that can be heard through so much maltreatment gives the op- pressed a secret feeling of power. Something about which silence is so stubbornly maintained, even though it cannot be evaded, must have a great power over the spirits. The best energies are often hidden behind the strongest swear words. It is as if all the maltreated backsides are waiting for their hour of revenge in the
rnear future, when everything will again be falling flat on its arse. The feeling f? time is generally one of the special strengths of arses, for very early on they de- velop a feeling for what has to be done immediately, for what can be postponed,
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
at
is really a political art that today is called timing and that has its roots in a praxis
e even children's arses learn, namely, to perform what has to be at the right tim >
not too early and not too late.
and for what a well-padded behind can wait out patiently until doomsday. Th
CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 149
. . . howEulenspiegelshatinabathroominHannoverandclaimeditwasahouse of purity. Woodcut illustration from a popular book, 1515.
The arse triumphs secretly, conscious that without it nothing works. Being there precedes being such and such; first existence, then qualities; first reality, then good and evil, above and below. Thus arses are, in addition to their dialectical-materialist inclinations, also the first existentialists. They practice the existential dialectic in advance: Should one decide in favor of what has to be in any case, or does one choose to revolt against the unavoidable? Even those who decide to let things take their course have decided, as Sartre says, not to decide. Freedom surrenders to necessity. One can, however, also decide against it --not, of course, against the fact that one must, but against the fact that the must can do anything at all with one. One can struggle against it and hold back what has to be; then one becomes, following Camus, the person in revolt. Nobody must must, says Lessing's Nathan, and the popular saying adds: Dying and shitting are the only things one must do. That remains the kynical a priori. The arse is thus, of all bodily organs, the one closest to the dialectical relation of freedom and necessity. It is no accident that psychoanalysis--a thoroughly kynically inspired discipline--devotes subtle investigations to it and names a fundamental anthropo- logical stage, the anal phase, after the experiences and vicissitudes of the arse. Its themes are Can and Cannot, Must and Must not, Have and Hold Back. The Principle of achievement is contained in it. To understand the arse would be there- fore the best preparatory study for philosophy, the somatic propaedeutic. How
? ? 150 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
many constipated theories we would be spared! Again we meet up with Diogenes He was the first European philosopher who, instead of employing a lot of words in the Athenian market, performed his urgent business. Naturalia non sunt turpia In nature, he says, we find nothing about which we would have to be ashamed Real bestiality and perverted spirits are found where the arrogance of morality and the imbroglio of culture begin. The heads, however, did not want to recog- nize that this was an early climax of reason, a moment in which philosophy had found a balance with the principle of nature. For a moment, it was beyond good and evil and beyond turning up its nose. Respectable thinkers, on the other hand insist on their view; according to them, it can only have been a joke or a provoca- tive dirty trick. They refuse to conjecture that there could be a truth-producing meaning in such a manifestation.
Fart
The theme cannot be excused; indeed, it will get worse. I regret this for all sensi- tive readers, but the fart, even if not emitted, cannot be omitted. Those who do not want to talk about it would also have to have kept silent about the arse. The subject matter demands it, and after we have spoken about oral matters, our presentation, for better or for worse, must go through its anal phase before we come to the genitals. To speak of the fart is not difficult insofar as it represents a sound that always means something in social situations. Witnesses of a fart in- evitably interpret the sound. All in all, the semantics of the fart is a rather compli- cated problem, a problem that is seriously neglected by linguistics and communi- cation research. The scale of meaning stretches from awkwardness to contempt, from humorous intentions to lack of respect. Teachers, professors, speakers, and conference participants all know the torture of having to stifle a fart because such a sound expresses something that, in reality, one does not want to say. Could it aid our empathy with politicians if, in listening to their speeches, we were to think more often that they are possibly at that very moment concentrating on subduing a fart that has been wanting to interrupt their talk? The art of the vague statement is related to the art of unobtrusive flatulence: Both are diplomacy.
Semiotically, we assign the fart to the group of signals, that is, of signs, which neither symbolize nor depict something but rather point to a situation. When the locomotive whistles, it warns about its approach and possible danger. The fan conceived as a signal shows that the lower body is in full action, and in situations where any reference to such regions is absolutely undesirable, this can have ta consequences. Ernst Jiinger noted in his Paris Diary about his reading ot tn historian Flavius Josephus's Jewish War:
Here I again came upon a passage in which the beginning of unrest in Jerusalem under Cumanus is described (II, 12). While the Jews
CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 151
gathered for the festival of unleavened bread, the Romans positioned a cohort above the hall of columns in the temple to keep an eye on the crowd. One of the soldiers in the cohort pulled up his coat, and with a mocking bow turned his
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behind to the Jews and "let forth an indecent sound corresponding to his position. " That triggered a clash that cost ten thousand lives, so that one can speak of the most fateful fart in world history. (Strahlungen, vol. II, pp. 188-89)
The cynicism of the Roman soldier, whose fart was a political provocation and
4a"blasphemy"inthetemple, findsacounterpartinJiinger'scommentary,which
5Here we come to the whole of the matter. As children of an anal culture, we all have a more or less disturbed relation to our own shit. The splitting off of our consciousness from our own shit is the deepest training in order; it tells us what must happen privately and under wraps. The relation that is drummed into people with regard to their own excretions provides the model for their behavior with
all sorts of refuse in their lives. Hitherto, refuse was systematically ignored. Only under the sign of modern ecological thinking do we find ourselves forced to be- come conscious again of our refuse. High theory discovers the category "shit";
a new stage of the philosophy of nature thereby comes due, a critique of the hu- man being as a hyperproductive shit-accumulating industry-animal. Diogenes is the only Western philosopher who we know consciously and publicly performed his animal business, and there are reasons to interpret this as a component of a pantomimic theory. It hints at a consciousness of nature that assigns positive values to the animal side of human beings and does not allow any dissociation of what is low or embarrassing. Those who do not want to admit that they produce refuse and that they cannot choose to do anything else risk suffocating one day
in their own shit. Everything suggests that Diogenes of Sinope should be admitted to the Ancestral Gallery of Ecological Consciousness. The grand act of ecology
lr
> the history of ideas that will have an impact as far as philosophy, ethics, and Politics are concerned will be to transform the phenomenon of refuse into a "high" heme. From now on it is no longer an onerous secondary phenomenon but is recognized as a basic principle. With this, the last hidden positions of idealism and dualism are really broken down. Shit has to be encountered in another way.
]s now necessary to rethink the usefulness of the unuseful, the productivity of
le
te and to recognize our responsibility also for what is unintended. Kynical phil- 6 sophersarethosewhodonotgetnauseated. Inthistheyarerelatedtochildren, crosses over into the area of theoretical cynicism.
Shit, Refuse
unproductive, philosophically speaking: to unlock the positivity of the nega-
0do not yet know anything about the negativity of their excrement.
152 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
? ? ? The Scepter. What we conjecture where we don't see anything, that rules the world.
Genitals
These are the geniuses among the organs of the lower half of the body. When they have collected enough experience, they can tell fine stories about how things really are in the big and the small world. They are like the wire pullers in the dark the shark song in the Threepenny Opera says cannot be seen. But in their hands all threads finally come together. In the beginning, Freudian psychoanalysis was accused, among other things, of cynicism because it taught that everything human beings do can be reduced in the final analysis to sexual impulses and their detor mations. This is, of course, a malicious misunderstanding even though it has grain of truth. In fact, psychoanalysis does adopt something of the kynical im pulse in its theoretical procedure, namely, a resoluteness not to let the naked tru that hides behind cultural disguises elude it. As long as it was customary to se
CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 153
omething low and dirty in sexuality, it was also only a small step to confusing the kynical drive in psychoanalysis toward truth with cynicism, which tries to re- duce everything "higher" to the lowest denominator. Then cynicism would
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be just
variant of nihilism, and Freud would have preached a materialism that unduly
7emphasizes the animal in human beings. However, insofar as psychoanalysis
constitutes a theory supportive of life and humanity, it is not at all cynical but tries, in the spirit of Diogenes (and even more, of Epicure), to heal those fissures that idealistic taboos have opened up in carnal pleasures. If today the figure of Freud is virtually overgrown with objections and doubts about his theory and his person, it should nevertheless not be forgotten how great the liberation is that has emanated from him.
However, after the "sexual revolution" things have not gotten any simpler, and it is precisely enlightened genitals that often have an unhappy consciousness. They now live in the twilight of freedom and have learned that sexual adventures and the art of loving are not the same thing. After the "mutual use of the sexual organs"-as Immanuel Kant, in good enlightened fashion, described the marriage contract-the question often remains: Is that all? And if that is everything, why make such a fuss about it?
Out of liberal sexual roaming, a cynicism easily results for which everything is a matter of indifference. The longer the game lasts, the stronger the impression becomes that what we are really looking for does not exist in this world. In their own way, the genitals know, once they have gone through the school of capa- ciousness, about the modern "frosts of freedom. " They begin to get scared of ex- aggerations. The suspicion grows that they too are on the best path toward becom- ing respectable, if respectability means a mixture of reasonableness, cynicism, and resignation.
Enlightenment disillusions, and where disillusionment becomes widespread,
self-experience in the ecstasy that shows us in clear moments who we can really
be dies. This is the most sensitive point in advanced civilization. The more ideals
disintegrate and the positing of meaning from "above" fails, the more we will be
forced to listen to the life energies that bear us along. Whether they can carry us,
'hat is the question, for they can only do so when they flow without obstruction.
0-eling" described by Romain Rolland as the basis of religious consciousness and they flow? Does life live? Are orgasms really our signposts to that "oceanic
that our great theoretician of the libido, Sigmund Freud, refused to acknowledge e cause he had not directly experienced it? Notes
? borrow this concept from Ivan Illich and transfer it to the area of epistemology.
? [A progressive children's theater group in Berlin-Trans. ]
? Napoleon Bonaparte, who was admired by many because of his realistic cynicism (see chapter
aed
' * 'n his sarcastic New Year's Day speech in 1814: "What is a throne anyway? Four pieces
154 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
of gilded timber and a shred of velvet? -No, the throne is a man, and I am this man. " The langua? of a cynic, who behaves like an upstart, i. e. , awkwardly matter-of-fact, toward ceremony ("fuss"i and legitimacy ("paper").
4. Later (see chapter 8) I explain blasphemy as a phenomenon related to religious cynicism 5. See on this point the sixth cardinal cynicism (chapter 8).
6. Here we see that cynicism arises from a reversal of kynicism. The cynic feels nauseated in prjn
ciple: for him, everything is shit; his overdisappointed superego does not see the good in the shit Hence his nausee.
7. The connections between psychoanalysis and cynicism will be touched on in three places it this book; in chapter 8 ("Sexual Cynicism" and "The Cynicism of Knowledge") and in chapter 13 Excursus 2 ("The Ice Dogs: On the Psychoanalysis of the Cynic").
Chapter 7
The Cabinet of Cynics
In the cabinet of cynics, there are no individualized personalities but rather types, that is, social characters and characters of a period. When we examine them, it does no harm to imagine them as dolls in a cabinet of wax figures where promi- nent historical personages meet. On our tour we also encounter literary figures who can be used to demonstrate archetypal features of cynical consciousness. Only the first two we find exhibited here--both figures of antiquity--actually lived: Diogenes of Sinope, the ancestral father of the species, and Lucian of Samosata on the Euphrates. The two modern figures, Goethe's Mephistopheles and Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, are by contrast figures created by poets out of the material of cynical experience. In plasticity, they have everything the historical personalities have. As pure types there is something impersonal, im- mortal, about them, and in this they resemble
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Diogenes and Lucian, of whom we likewise possess only silhouettes with none of the details that distinguish real in- dividuals from their types. At the end of this series, we find, as representative of the present, a quite faceless figure that resembles everybody and nobody. It is called Anyone (das Man); Martin Heidegger has polished and abstracted it. It reminds one a little of the figures of the painter De Chirico, mannequins with empty, round heads and artificial limbs, geometrically shaped, which look like human beings, but only "look like" because they lack "authenticity.
6. See Klaus Heinrich's fine book, Versuch Uber die Schwierigkeit Nein zu sagen. Heinrich has also discussed the explosiveness of ancient kynicism in Parmenides und Jona (Frankfurt, 1966).
7. I initially avoid the psychology of cynicism in order to develop it primarily in a social- philosophical way. Subjective cynicism and its psychodynamics are treated in part V.
8. Erich Kastner, Fabian. Geschichte eines Moralisten (1931; reprint 1976), pp. 64-65.
9. [The Gottinger Nachrichten, the Gottingen university student newspaper, published an article in its 25 April 1977 edition entitled "Buback-An Obituary. " The author used the nom de plume "Mes- calero" to identity himself as "metropolitan Indian. " Buback was federal attorney general at the time of his murder. -Trans. ]
10. Iring Fetscher, Reflexionen uber den Zynismus als Krankheit unsererZeit, in Denken im Schat- ten des Nihilismus,
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
ed. A. Schwan (Darmstadt, 1975), has also remarked that in the intellectual's at- tempt to avoid cynicism, moralistically loaded tensions are manifest.
11. Walter Benjamin, Einbahnstrasse (Frankfurt, 1969), p. 59.
12. I take up the problem of amoralism systematically in chapter 7, where Mephistopheles, the Grand Inquisitor, and Heidegger's Anyone are discussed.
13. This arm-and-negotiate strategy is a source of political demoralization that pervades the youth in the West-insofar as they still resist the enticements of schizoid realism. Hence their resistance against "double decisions" and double thinking.
14. This thought was made clear a quarter of a century ago by Gunther Anders, Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. Uber die Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution (Munich, 1956).
Part Two Cynicism in World Process
I. Physiognomic Main Text
Chapter 6
Concerning the Psychosomatics of the Zeitgeist Your body speaks its mind.
Stanley Keleman
A philosophical physiognomy follows the idea of a second, speechless language. This notion of a speechless language is as old as human communication, indeed, even older, its roots going back into the prehuman and the prerational, into the sphere of animal sensing and orientation. Not only verbal language has something to say to us; things too talk to those who know how to use their senses. The world is full of shapes, mimicry, faces; from all around us the hints of forms, colors, and atmospheres are received by our senses. In this physiognomic field, all the senses are tightly interwoven. Those who have been able to maintain their percep- tual competence undamaged possess an effective antidote to the atrophy of the senses with which we pay for progress in civilization. Our culture, which floods us with signs, educates us in the area of physiognomic knowledge to a state of dyslexia. Nevertheless, there exists an undercurrent in our cultural life in which a mentally alert and self-evident capacity to enter into the language of shapes has reproduced itself--partly in the arts, partly in scattered traditions of knowledge about human nature in which, under various names (morals, the sorting of spirits, psychology, or the study of expressions) that other kind of perception of people and things is practiced.
Whereas the process of civilization, whose core is constituted by the sciences, teaches us to distance ourselves from people and things so that we experience them as objects, physiognomic sense provides a key to all that which reveals our proximity to the environment. Its secret is intimacy, not distance; it dispenses not
1has form and that every form talks to us in multiple ways. The skin can hear, the a matter-of-fact but a convivial knowledge of things.
It knows that everything
139
140 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
ears have the capacity to see, and the eyes can distinguish warm from cold. Phys- iognomic sense pays attention to the tensions in the forms and, as the neighbor of things, eavesdrops on their expressive whispering.
Enlightenment, which strives for the reification and objectification (Kmach- lichung) of knowledge, reduces the world of the physiognomic to silence. The price of objectivity is the loss of closeness. Scientists lose the capacity to behave as neighbors of the world; they think in concepts of distance, not of friendship; they seek overviews, not neighborly involvement. Over the centuries, modern science excluded everything that was incompatible with the a priori of objectify- ing distance and intellectual domination over the object: intuition, empathy, es-
pirit de finesse, aesthetics, erotics. Out of all this, however, a strong current has remained effective in genuine philosophy for ages; in it, to the present day, flows the warm current of a convivial intellectuality and a libidinous closeness to the world that compensates for the objectifying drive toward the domination of things.
Something of the "love of wisdom" necessarily tinges the objects of this wis- dom and moderates the coldness of purely objective knowledge. Only a science that obliterates the last residues of philosophy in itself under the pretense of objec- tification cuts through even the last threads of neighborly and intimate sense that had bound it to things. It loosens the bonds to the physiognomic and eradicates the traces of the esprit de finesse that necessarily remain "subjective" and incalcul- able. What is repressed cannot, of course, fail to return, and the irony of enlight- enment tries to make such a return look like irrationalism, against which sworn enlighteners struggle with a vengeance. In the century-long dispute between ra- tionalism and irrationalism, two complementary but one-sided views are putting each other on trial.
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As far as cynicism is concerned, our knowledge of it can initially be no other than one of intimacy. It was spoken about as though it were something at- mospheric, a moral-psychological pulsation permeating our civilization. I have not yet met anyone who did not show signs of intuitive connivance as soon as this phenomenon was brought into the conversation. With this word, memories of sit- uations, moods, experiences are evoked. It is as if a definite feeling toward life looked in the mirror as soon as the concept is placed insistently enough, as means of reflection, before our consciousness. Cynicism is one of the categories in which modern unhappy consciousness looks itself in the eyes. We have the cyni- cal Zeitgeist and that specific taste of a fragmented, overcomplicated, demoraliz- ing world situation in our bones, our nerves, our eyes, and in the corners of our mouths. In everything that is really contemporary, the kynical and the cynical ele- ments become noticeable as part of our bodily-psychical and intellectual physiog- nomy. The Zeitgeist has left its mark on us, and whoever wants to decipher it is faced with the task of working on the psychosomatics of cynicism. This is what an integrating philosophy demands of itself. It is called integrating because it does
CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMAT1CS OF THE ZEITGEIST
not let itself be seduced by the attraction of the "great problems," but instead ini- tially finds its themes in the trivial, in everyday life, in the so-called unimportant, in those things that otherwise are not worth speaking about, in petty details. Who- ever wants to can, in such a change of perspective, already recognize the kynical impulse for which the "low-brow themes" are not too low.
Tongue, Stuck Out
For well-bred people it is difficult to say no. A no would be willfulness and the more well bred we are, the more willfulness is exorcised. Obedience is the first duty of children, and it later becomes the duty of a citizen. In quarrels among chil- dren, however, it does not yet play a role, and here saying no and asserting one- self are not so difficult. When we quarrel passionately, we often come to the point
? 142 D CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
where words alone are not enough. The body then knows how to help: We stick out our tongues and make a noise that makes it clear what we think of the other person. We put all our energy into it, and apart from all its other advantages, it is also unequivocal. Sometimes when we do this, our eyes squint maliciously to- gether and the eyelids quiver from the energy being emitted. At other times when we stick out our tongues, we open our eyes wide, like funny mirrors. Those who can stick out their tongues are not in danger of nodding when they want to shake their head. Generally, as far as gestures of the head are concerned, saying no is not firmly fixed in the body; there are cultures in which head shaking and nod- ding, no and yes, are learned the opposite way.
Sticking the tongue out says no with many undertones: There can be aggres- sion in it, obstinacy, or mockery, and it tells the addressee that we consider him or her an idiot or a bore. This no may be nasty or cheerful, or both: joy at another's misfortune. In doing so, we can easily make a sound that sounds like "neaah," which goes well with malicious joy --with greater agitation even a "beaah" or an "eeyeah," whereby the expression of disrespect predominates. We are, of course, especially interested in the maliciously joyful no that belongs to kynical satire; it is sticking the tongue out like Eulenspiegel did, the attacking fool who can well mock the stupid misfortune of others. Eulenspiegel is the modern model of the kynic, an enlightener of the crude sort who is not intimidated even by thrashings. He does not hide his malicious joy behind good manners as the more refined enlighteners of the bourgeois epoch do, and he has fun exposing and embarrassing stupid people. Because he is a pantomimic enlightener, he does not experience the inhibitions that force subtler people to hide their "nasty" emotions. He embodies a robust intelligence that does not censor its impulses. He stands, like all kynics, halfway between the impudent and the spontaneous, between the naive and the artful, and because he oscillates so ambivalently between honesty and nastiness with his vulgar assent, conventional morality does not have an easy time with him. He proves that often we bring the truth to light only at the cost of rude impertinence. With this we are in the middle of cultural ambivalences. The truth often speaks against all conventions, and the kynic plays the role of a moralist who makes it clear that one has to violate morality in order to save it. That is the sign of complicated times. Things have become so tangled that moral- ity and amorality change abruptly into one another. The one side declares Eulen- spiegel, who sticks his tongue out at them, to be crazy, while he insists that it is his fellow beings who are nuts and require treatment.
Mouth, Smiling Maliciously, Crooked
The knowledge of the master cynic is based on a crooked superiority. The power- ful man sees to his advantage, even when he knows that he thereby comes into a morally dubious position. A crooked smile, an evilly clever gesture, easily CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 143
arises out of crooked superiority. This smile defends a bad status quo, an in- justice. The rights of others? Where would we end up? Hunger? What's that? One corner of the mouth, often the left corner, is drawn upward. On the mouth of the
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master, the split in his consciousness becomes visible; the other half knows that there is really nothing to laugh about. One half of the mouth turns knowingly up- ward, so that the other half involuntarily falls contemptuously downward. The worldy realism of the master cynic comes from the wish to save face while getting his hands dirty. This face thus often goes together with polished manners. The cynical smile appears, true to form, embedded in a brazen politeness that restrains itself and reveals that it wants to keep others at a distance as surely as it controls itself.
This is the smile of the heights of power and its melancholy, as it can be seen on high officials, politicians, editors. Best of all, however, one can imagine courtly personages of the rococo with this smile--as, say, the unhappy, unctious man- in-waiting of Louis XV, LeBel, in the film Fanfan the Hussar, whose smile was as crooked as the comma between yes and but.
Mouth, Bitter, Tight
The life experiences of victims are revealed in their bitterness. On their lips, a bitter silence forms. They cannot be tricked anymore. They know how things work. The emphatically disappointed may even gain a small advantage over fate, a space for the play of self-assertion and pride. Lips that are pressed tightly to- gether and narrowed to thin lines because of hardship betray the worldly, ex- perienced side of those who have been duped. Even some children whom life has treated badly have these bitter, tight mouths from which it is so difficult to wangle some sort of consent to anything good. Mistrust is the intelligence of the disad- vantaged. However, the mistrustful can easily make stupid mistakes once more when their bitterness causes them to also pass over what, after all those painful things, would do them good. Happiness will always look like fraud and will seem much too cheap to be worth reaching for. Bound to past experience, the cynically bitter lips know only one thing: that ultimately everything is deception and that no one will ever again bring them to be soft and, blushing, surrender themselves to any temptation of the world's swindle.
Mouth, Laughing Loudly, Big-Mouthed
"hen the cynic smiles melancholically-contemptuously, from the illusionless heights of power, it is characteristic for the kynic to laugh so loudly and un- abashedly that refined people shake their heads. Kynical laughter comes from the mtestines; it is grounded at the animal level and lets itself go without restraint. Those who claim to be realists should, strictly speaking, be able to laugh this
144 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
Detail from Raphael, The School of Athens, Diogenes on the Steps.
way-this total, uncramping laughter that wipes away illusions and postures. We have to imagine the laugh of the great satirist Diogenes as just such a laugh, and Diogenes is related to the wandering Asiatic monks who presented their pious trickery in the villages and, roaring with laughter, disappeared from the scene when the villagers discovered that the holiness of these holy men was not quite as they had imagined. In the expression of some laughing Buddhas, too, there is something of this animal and, at the same time, ecstatic and realistic belly laugh- ter that frolics about so unselfconsciouslessly in its springs and thrusts that no ego is left in the laughing, only a serene energy that celebrates itself. Those who are too civilized and timid easily get the impression that there could be something demonic, devilish, unserious, and destructive in such laughter. Here is the place to listen carefully. The Devil's laughter has the energy of destruction within it, with crashing crockery and collapsing walls, an evil laughter above the debris. In positive ecstatic laughter, by contrast, the energy of a perplexed affirmation is at play; in spite of its wildness, it sounds contemplative, celebratory. It is also no accident that women rather than men tend to laugh in this way, and the drunken rather than the sober. The devil's energy is the energy that laughs until the others fall silent. In the laughter of Diogenes and Buddha, the ego itself, which had taken things so seriously, laughs itself to death. Of course, that takes a big mouth that can be opened wide without hindrance, not for fine phrases but for a strong vital- ity in which there is more astonishment than pretentiousness. The kind of big'
? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 145
mouthedness that interests the philosopher is not an active but a passive one, the saying of aaah when we watch fireworks or look at a mountain, or in flashes of genius in which Aha! passes through us. With great insights we want to shout, and what are great insights other than a release from false complicatedness?
Mouth, Serene, Still
In a satisfied face, the lips rest on each other, imperceptibly vibrating. Everything is as it is. There is nothing to say. Diogenes sits mute in the sun and contemplates the stone steps of the market pavilion. Not the shadow of a thought passes through his head. His eyes are immersed in the cosmic flickering of the Greek light. He watches the people going about their business. If it occurred to one of them to sit down in front of him and closely observe his face with an open heart, it could easily happen that that person would suddenly, disconcertedly begin to cry or to laugh for no reason at all. Eye Gazes, Eye Blinkers
The eyes are the organic prototype of philosophy. Their enigma is that they not only can see but are also able to see
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themselves seeing. This gives them a promi- nence among the body's cognitive organs. A good part of philosophical thinking is actually only eye reflex, eye dialectic, seeing-oneself-see. For this, reflecting media, mirrors, water surfaces, metals, and other eyes are necessary, through which the seeing of seeing becomes visible.
The kynical gaze understands itself as looking through a laughable and hollow
show. It would like to put society before a natural mirror in which people recog- nize themselves unveiled and without masks. Diogenes sees through the puffed- up idealism and cultural arrogance of the Athenians. What interests him is not masquerades and idealistic poses, justifications and palliations. He rivets his eyes on the naked facts of nature. In a sense, if he possessed theoretical ambition, he could rate as the first critical positivist. The kynical gaze is always directed at what is naked; it wants to acknowledge the "raw," animal, and simple facts above which the lovers of higher things like to place themselves. Indeed, the original kynic can take pleasure in what is naked and elementary because he experiences m them truth as unconcealedness. For him the usual divisions are invalid; there
! s neither above nor below, neither dirty nor pure. This gaze is open, realistic,
and generous, and it is not embarrassed to look at what is naked; it does not matter whether it is beautiful or ugly, as long as it is natural. The gaze of the master
cynic, by contrast, is unhappily broken, reflectively bent. With this gaze, the hegemonic powers look at their own strategy, recognizing that behind everything mat presents itself as law, a large portion of force and arrogance is hidden. Who should take closer notice of that than those who exercise power and arrogance
146 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
? Rene Magritte, The False Mirror, 1928. ((C)S. P. A. D. E. M. , Paris/V. A. G. A. , New York, 1987. )
half-heartedly and half-awake? In the melancholy reflection of a master cynic, therefore, there is often a tendency to be cross-eyed. The eyes of marked cynics betray themselves through a touch of cross-eyedness, a slight inward or outward turning of one of the organs. Those who are born cross-eyed and choose the path to science, philosophy, or political practice already appear to be somatically predisposed toward a double vision of things, of essence and illusion, of the con- cealed and the naked. The organ dialectic of their eyes drives them on in this, whereas other thinkers, bound by the myth of normality, like to ignore that they, too, see from two different perspectives and that nobody has two identical eyes. A part of our thinking structure is located in the eyes, particularly the dialectic of right and left, of the masculine and the feminine, of the straight and the crooked.
With intellectuals, an astounding dullness in the eyes is often evident that comes not least of all from the continual violence done to the eyes by having to read things the eyes would not accept if they had their own way. They must serve merely as tools for reading; and it is no wonder when the perspective of such peo- ple, being used to black lines, glides right off from reality. Master cynical knowl- edge, as it collects in intellectual heads, betrays itself through the rigid eye blinkers and a cloudiness and coldness of the gaze. It transfixes things it does not penetrate and to which it does not really grant existence. In such eyes there is an expression that can be compared with the crooked smile. The cynical gaze lets things know that they do not exist as real objects for it, but only as phenomena and information.
It looks at them as if they already belonged to the past. It takes them in, registers them, and ponders its self-preservation. Of course it is offended that the things return this gaze; they look back as coldly as they are looked at.
tnw
cannot become warm before the ice melts in the eyes of those who believe were called on to valorize, to administer the world, and to ravage it.
Breasts
CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 147
l the modern civilization of media and fashion, an atmospheric concoction of osmetics, pornography, consumerism, illusion, addiction, and prostitution reigns for which the baring and depiction of breasts is typical. In the commodity world, it seems that nothing functions without them anymore. Everyone specu- lates cynically on the addictive reflexes of others. With everything that is sup- posed to look lifelike and arouse desires, they are present, as the universal orna- ments of capitalism. Everything that is dead, superfluous, alienated draws attention to itself with laughing forms. Sexism? If only it were so simple. Adver- tising and pornography are special cases of modern cynicism, which knows that power must make its way through ideals and that the dreams and addictions of others can be simultaneously stimulated and frustrated in order to achieve one's own ends. Politics is not only the art of the possible, as has been said, but just as much the art of seduction. It is the chocolate side of power that assumes first,
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that order must prevail and, second, that the world wants to be deceived. These modern business breasts exist, philosophically speaking, only in them- selves (an sich), as things, not for themselves (fur sick), as conscious bodies. They merely signify a power, an attraction. But what would breasts be for them- selves, independent of their cynical baring on the commodity market? What is their relation to the power and energy emanating from them? Many would prefer to have nothing at all to do anymore with this play of power, attraction, and de- sire. Others embody consciously and frivolously their appeal to the other sex. Something of their consciousness of power is still present in the hackneyed phrase about the "weapons of a woman. " Some are also unhappy because they do not look like the ideal breasts in advertising. They do not feel very good being naked when they do not have the prevailing aesthetic on their side. Some, on the other hand, have the sweetness of ripe pears that have become so heavy and friendly toward themselves that, on an appropriate occasion, they fall from the tree into a hand
they feel recognizes them.
Arses
he arse seems doomed to spend its life in the dark, as the beggar among body Parts. It is the real idiot of the family. However, it would be a wonder if this black
sn
People in the upper strata. If the head were to enter into conversation just once
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eep of the body did not have its own opinion about everything that takes place
higher regions, similar to the declassed who often cast the most sober gaze on
h its antipode, the latter would first stick out its tongue, if it had one. As in
148 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
2the enlightenment film of the Rote Grtitze, Was heisst hier Liebe (What do you
mean by love? ), the arse would say to the higher spheres: I find that our relation- ship is shitty. The arse is the plebeian, the grass-roots democrat, and the cosmopolitan
among the parts of the body-- in a word, the elementary kynical organ. It provides
the solid materialist basis. It is at home on toilets all over the world. The Interna-
tional of Arses is the only worldwide organization that has no statutes, ideology,
or dues. Its solidarity cannot be shaken. The arse crosses all borders playfully,
unlike the head, to which borders and possessions mean a lot. Without any objec-
tion, it squats on this or that chair. To an unspoiled arse, the difference between
3athrone andakitchenstool,abenchandaHolyChairisnotparticularlyimpres-
sive. Now and again, it can also sit on the ground; the only thing it dislikes is standing when it is tired. This proclivity for the elementary and the fundamental predisposes the arse especially to philosophy. It probably registers the nuances, but it would not think of making a fuss like vain heads do when they knock them- selves bloody over the occupation of seats. It never loses sight of what really un- derlies it: the firm ground. In an erotic sense, too, the arse often shows itself to be both sensitive and superior. It does not pretend to be choosier than is neces- sary. Even then, it is the one that easily raises itself above imagined borders and exclusivities. When the famous Arletty was accused of having had sexual rela- tions with members of the German occupation forces, her answer is said to have been: "My heart is French, but my backside is international. " As representative of the kynical principle per se (able to survive anywhere, reduction to the essen- tials), the arse can hardly be brought under government control, although it can- not be denied that many an arsehole has given off nationalistic tones.
Often beaten, kicked, and pinched, the arse has a worldview from below: ple- beian, popular, realistic. Millennia of bad treatment have not passed over it with- out leaving a mark. They have trained it to be a materialist, albeit one with a di- alectical tendency, which assumes that things are shitty but not hopeless. Nothing can cause as much bitterness as the feeling of not being welcome. Only the under- tone of fascination that can be heard through so much maltreatment gives the op- pressed a secret feeling of power. Something about which silence is so stubbornly maintained, even though it cannot be evaded, must have a great power over the spirits. The best energies are often hidden behind the strongest swear words. It is as if all the maltreated backsides are waiting for their hour of revenge in the
rnear future, when everything will again be falling flat on its arse. The feeling f? time is generally one of the special strengths of arses, for very early on they de- velop a feeling for what has to be done immediately, for what can be postponed,
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
at
is really a political art that today is called timing and that has its roots in a praxis
e even children's arses learn, namely, to perform what has to be at the right tim >
not too early and not too late.
and for what a well-padded behind can wait out patiently until doomsday. Th
CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 149
. . . howEulenspiegelshatinabathroominHannoverandclaimeditwasahouse of purity. Woodcut illustration from a popular book, 1515.
The arse triumphs secretly, conscious that without it nothing works. Being there precedes being such and such; first existence, then qualities; first reality, then good and evil, above and below. Thus arses are, in addition to their dialectical-materialist inclinations, also the first existentialists. They practice the existential dialectic in advance: Should one decide in favor of what has to be in any case, or does one choose to revolt against the unavoidable? Even those who decide to let things take their course have decided, as Sartre says, not to decide. Freedom surrenders to necessity. One can, however, also decide against it --not, of course, against the fact that one must, but against the fact that the must can do anything at all with one. One can struggle against it and hold back what has to be; then one becomes, following Camus, the person in revolt. Nobody must must, says Lessing's Nathan, and the popular saying adds: Dying and shitting are the only things one must do. That remains the kynical a priori. The arse is thus, of all bodily organs, the one closest to the dialectical relation of freedom and necessity. It is no accident that psychoanalysis--a thoroughly kynically inspired discipline--devotes subtle investigations to it and names a fundamental anthropo- logical stage, the anal phase, after the experiences and vicissitudes of the arse. Its themes are Can and Cannot, Must and Must not, Have and Hold Back. The Principle of achievement is contained in it. To understand the arse would be there- fore the best preparatory study for philosophy, the somatic propaedeutic. How
? ? 150 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
many constipated theories we would be spared! Again we meet up with Diogenes He was the first European philosopher who, instead of employing a lot of words in the Athenian market, performed his urgent business. Naturalia non sunt turpia In nature, he says, we find nothing about which we would have to be ashamed Real bestiality and perverted spirits are found where the arrogance of morality and the imbroglio of culture begin. The heads, however, did not want to recog- nize that this was an early climax of reason, a moment in which philosophy had found a balance with the principle of nature. For a moment, it was beyond good and evil and beyond turning up its nose. Respectable thinkers, on the other hand insist on their view; according to them, it can only have been a joke or a provoca- tive dirty trick. They refuse to conjecture that there could be a truth-producing meaning in such a manifestation.
Fart
The theme cannot be excused; indeed, it will get worse. I regret this for all sensi- tive readers, but the fart, even if not emitted, cannot be omitted. Those who do not want to talk about it would also have to have kept silent about the arse. The subject matter demands it, and after we have spoken about oral matters, our presentation, for better or for worse, must go through its anal phase before we come to the genitals. To speak of the fart is not difficult insofar as it represents a sound that always means something in social situations. Witnesses of a fart in- evitably interpret the sound. All in all, the semantics of the fart is a rather compli- cated problem, a problem that is seriously neglected by linguistics and communi- cation research. The scale of meaning stretches from awkwardness to contempt, from humorous intentions to lack of respect. Teachers, professors, speakers, and conference participants all know the torture of having to stifle a fart because such a sound expresses something that, in reality, one does not want to say. Could it aid our empathy with politicians if, in listening to their speeches, we were to think more often that they are possibly at that very moment concentrating on subduing a fart that has been wanting to interrupt their talk? The art of the vague statement is related to the art of unobtrusive flatulence: Both are diplomacy.
Semiotically, we assign the fart to the group of signals, that is, of signs, which neither symbolize nor depict something but rather point to a situation. When the locomotive whistles, it warns about its approach and possible danger. The fan conceived as a signal shows that the lower body is in full action, and in situations where any reference to such regions is absolutely undesirable, this can have ta consequences. Ernst Jiinger noted in his Paris Diary about his reading ot tn historian Flavius Josephus's Jewish War:
Here I again came upon a passage in which the beginning of unrest in Jerusalem under Cumanus is described (II, 12). While the Jews
CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 151
gathered for the festival of unleavened bread, the Romans positioned a cohort above the hall of columns in the temple to keep an eye on the crowd. One of the soldiers in the cohort pulled up his coat, and with a mocking bow turned his
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behind to the Jews and "let forth an indecent sound corresponding to his position. " That triggered a clash that cost ten thousand lives, so that one can speak of the most fateful fart in world history. (Strahlungen, vol. II, pp. 188-89)
The cynicism of the Roman soldier, whose fart was a political provocation and
4a"blasphemy"inthetemple, findsacounterpartinJiinger'scommentary,which
5Here we come to the whole of the matter. As children of an anal culture, we all have a more or less disturbed relation to our own shit. The splitting off of our consciousness from our own shit is the deepest training in order; it tells us what must happen privately and under wraps. The relation that is drummed into people with regard to their own excretions provides the model for their behavior with
all sorts of refuse in their lives. Hitherto, refuse was systematically ignored. Only under the sign of modern ecological thinking do we find ourselves forced to be- come conscious again of our refuse. High theory discovers the category "shit";
a new stage of the philosophy of nature thereby comes due, a critique of the hu- man being as a hyperproductive shit-accumulating industry-animal. Diogenes is the only Western philosopher who we know consciously and publicly performed his animal business, and there are reasons to interpret this as a component of a pantomimic theory. It hints at a consciousness of nature that assigns positive values to the animal side of human beings and does not allow any dissociation of what is low or embarrassing. Those who do not want to admit that they produce refuse and that they cannot choose to do anything else risk suffocating one day
in their own shit. Everything suggests that Diogenes of Sinope should be admitted to the Ancestral Gallery of Ecological Consciousness. The grand act of ecology
lr
> the history of ideas that will have an impact as far as philosophy, ethics, and Politics are concerned will be to transform the phenomenon of refuse into a "high" heme. From now on it is no longer an onerous secondary phenomenon but is recognized as a basic principle. With this, the last hidden positions of idealism and dualism are really broken down. Shit has to be encountered in another way.
]s now necessary to rethink the usefulness of the unuseful, the productivity of
le
te and to recognize our responsibility also for what is unintended. Kynical phil- 6 sophersarethosewhodonotgetnauseated. Inthistheyarerelatedtochildren, crosses over into the area of theoretical cynicism.
Shit, Refuse
unproductive, philosophically speaking: to unlock the positivity of the nega-
0do not yet know anything about the negativity of their excrement.
152 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
? ? ? The Scepter. What we conjecture where we don't see anything, that rules the world.
Genitals
These are the geniuses among the organs of the lower half of the body. When they have collected enough experience, they can tell fine stories about how things really are in the big and the small world. They are like the wire pullers in the dark the shark song in the Threepenny Opera says cannot be seen. But in their hands all threads finally come together. In the beginning, Freudian psychoanalysis was accused, among other things, of cynicism because it taught that everything human beings do can be reduced in the final analysis to sexual impulses and their detor mations. This is, of course, a malicious misunderstanding even though it has grain of truth. In fact, psychoanalysis does adopt something of the kynical im pulse in its theoretical procedure, namely, a resoluteness not to let the naked tru that hides behind cultural disguises elude it. As long as it was customary to se
CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST ? 153
omething low and dirty in sexuality, it was also only a small step to confusing the kynical drive in psychoanalysis toward truth with cynicism, which tries to re- duce everything "higher" to the lowest denominator. Then cynicism would
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be just
variant of nihilism, and Freud would have preached a materialism that unduly
7emphasizes the animal in human beings. However, insofar as psychoanalysis
constitutes a theory supportive of life and humanity, it is not at all cynical but tries, in the spirit of Diogenes (and even more, of Epicure), to heal those fissures that idealistic taboos have opened up in carnal pleasures. If today the figure of Freud is virtually overgrown with objections and doubts about his theory and his person, it should nevertheless not be forgotten how great the liberation is that has emanated from him.
However, after the "sexual revolution" things have not gotten any simpler, and it is precisely enlightened genitals that often have an unhappy consciousness. They now live in the twilight of freedom and have learned that sexual adventures and the art of loving are not the same thing. After the "mutual use of the sexual organs"-as Immanuel Kant, in good enlightened fashion, described the marriage contract-the question often remains: Is that all? And if that is everything, why make such a fuss about it?
Out of liberal sexual roaming, a cynicism easily results for which everything is a matter of indifference. The longer the game lasts, the stronger the impression becomes that what we are really looking for does not exist in this world. In their own way, the genitals know, once they have gone through the school of capa- ciousness, about the modern "frosts of freedom. " They begin to get scared of ex- aggerations. The suspicion grows that they too are on the best path toward becom- ing respectable, if respectability means a mixture of reasonableness, cynicism, and resignation.
Enlightenment disillusions, and where disillusionment becomes widespread,
self-experience in the ecstasy that shows us in clear moments who we can really
be dies. This is the most sensitive point in advanced civilization. The more ideals
disintegrate and the positing of meaning from "above" fails, the more we will be
forced to listen to the life energies that bear us along. Whether they can carry us,
'hat is the question, for they can only do so when they flow without obstruction.
0-eling" described by Romain Rolland as the basis of religious consciousness and they flow? Does life live? Are orgasms really our signposts to that "oceanic
that our great theoretician of the libido, Sigmund Freud, refused to acknowledge e cause he had not directly experienced it? Notes
? borrow this concept from Ivan Illich and transfer it to the area of epistemology.
? [A progressive children's theater group in Berlin-Trans. ]
? Napoleon Bonaparte, who was admired by many because of his realistic cynicism (see chapter
aed
' * 'n his sarcastic New Year's Day speech in 1814: "What is a throne anyway? Four pieces
154 ? CONCERNING THE PSYCHOSOMATICS OF THE ZEITGEIST
of gilded timber and a shred of velvet? -No, the throne is a man, and I am this man. " The langua? of a cynic, who behaves like an upstart, i. e. , awkwardly matter-of-fact, toward ceremony ("fuss"i and legitimacy ("paper").
4. Later (see chapter 8) I explain blasphemy as a phenomenon related to religious cynicism 5. See on this point the sixth cardinal cynicism (chapter 8).
6. Here we see that cynicism arises from a reversal of kynicism. The cynic feels nauseated in prjn
ciple: for him, everything is shit; his overdisappointed superego does not see the good in the shit Hence his nausee.
7. The connections between psychoanalysis and cynicism will be touched on in three places it this book; in chapter 8 ("Sexual Cynicism" and "The Cynicism of Knowledge") and in chapter 13 Excursus 2 ("The Ice Dogs: On the Psychoanalysis of the Cynic").
Chapter 7
The Cabinet of Cynics
In the cabinet of cynics, there are no individualized personalities but rather types, that is, social characters and characters of a period. When we examine them, it does no harm to imagine them as dolls in a cabinet of wax figures where promi- nent historical personages meet. On our tour we also encounter literary figures who can be used to demonstrate archetypal features of cynical consciousness. Only the first two we find exhibited here--both figures of antiquity--actually lived: Diogenes of Sinope, the ancestral father of the species, and Lucian of Samosata on the Euphrates. The two modern figures, Goethe's Mephistopheles and Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, are by contrast figures created by poets out of the material of cynical experience. In plasticity, they have everything the historical personalities have. As pure types there is something impersonal, im- mortal, about them, and in this they resemble
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Diogenes and Lucian, of whom we likewise possess only silhouettes with none of the details that distinguish real in- dividuals from their types. At the end of this series, we find, as representative of the present, a quite faceless figure that resembles everybody and nobody. It is called Anyone (das Man); Martin Heidegger has polished and abstracted it. It reminds one a little of the figures of the painter De Chirico, mannequins with empty, round heads and artificial limbs, geometrically shaped, which look like human beings, but only "look like" because they lack "authenticity.
