Uber die Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten
industriellen
Revolution (Munich, 1956).
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason
Raddatz gave his enthusiastic com- mentary on Gunther Kunert's morbid Abtotungsverfahren (Procedures for killing, 1980) the title "Happiness--The Ultimate Crime?
" Perhaps better: "Happiness- The Ultimate Impudence!
" Herein lies the cardinal point of all principled cheeki- ness.
Those who still want to claim to be enlighteners must be able to be so
But with moralism one sur-
Where does our readiness to be
'IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS" ? 127
cheeky, so impudent. It is no longer so much our heads on which enlightenment has to perform its labor, it is the gloomy egoisms, the frozen identities.
It may be telling for the demoralized state of critical intelligence that for the entire spectrum of biophilia and self-affirmation, it knows scarcely any word other than "narcissism. " If this concept already in itself is a dubious construction, in the hands of conservatives it becomes a cudgel for a psychologizing counteren- lightenment with which social tendencies toward critical self-reflection are sup- posed to be quelled. Just as the phenomenon of narcissism as sickness and uncon- scious tic is interesting and welcome, it is equally suspect as a healthy condition. As a general sickness it functions like a psychological dynamo for society, which requires people who are full of self-doubt, affirmation-seeking, ambitious, greedy for consumption, selfish, and moralistically zealous in their intent on being better than others. As a healthy condition, "narcissistic" self-affirmation would laugh in the face of the impudent demands of such morose societies.
Gray is the basic color of an age that, for a long time, has again been dreaming secretly about the colorful big bang. What necessitates and inspires such dreams is a sum of vital incapacities. The well-behaved sociopsychological enlighten- ment thought the problem lay in the "incapacity to mourn. " But this is not the sole factor. It is even more the incapacity to have the right rage at the right time, the incapacity to express, the incapacity to explode the climate of care, the incapacity to celebrate, the incapacity to let go. Among all these atrophies, one capacity has remained that unerringly sets its sights on what a life grants to itself in the end, a life that no longer sees a way out of such relations: the capacity, under respecta- ble pretenses, to work toward circumstances in which, unavoidably, everything will be blown to smithereens with the greatest possible spectacle without anyone feeling to blame. The catastrophe warms people up and in it, the barren ego comes to its last feast that melts long-lost passions and impulses together in the final burn-up.
A short time ago, the leader of the English punk group, The Stranglers, celebrated the neutron bomb in a frivolous interview because it is what can set a nuclear war into motion. "Miss Neutron, I love you. " Here he had found the point where the kynicism of protesters coincides with the brazen-faced master cynicism of the strategists. What did he want to say? Look how wicked I can be? His smile was coquettish, nauseated, and ironically egoistic; he could not look the reporter in the face. As in a dream, he spoke past the camera for those who will understand him, the little, beautifully wicked punk devil who causes the world to rattle with unthinkable words. That is the language of a consciousness that earlier perhaps did not mean to be so wicked. But now, since the show de- mands it, not only is it unhappy, it also wants to be unhappy. In this way misery can be outdone. The last act of freedom is used to will what is terrifying. In this act is a grand gesture, a pathos of ugliness-desperate cheekiness that gives off a spark of independence. In the last instance they can pretend to be innocent, and
128 ? "IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS"
the war, the great big shitty mess, is caused by the others anyway. They, the beau- tiful self-mutilators, know enough to scream out against the conspiracy of silence of the respectable. Everything is shit, "Miss Neutron, I love you. " There is still something of one's own in willed self-destruction, a symbolic shock. That is what can be enjoyed in them. In intellectual trash, in the cynical show, in the hysterical uprising, and in the crazy parade, the suffocating armor around the well-behaved wild ego loosens up: Rocky Horror Picture Show, the hot-cold hissing death drive of the hunger for oneself.
Meditation on the Bomb
Here we have to think ahead--assuming further that fringe and middle correspond more deeply to one another than seems obvious at first glance. On the surface, the life-style of the punks and that of the establishment seem to be irreconcilable. But at bottom they are very close. Cynical eruptions are catapulted out of the catastrophile masses of civilization. For that reason the philosophical, the com- prehending approach to phenomena must not limit itself to subjective excesses, but must begin with the objective excesses.
Objective excess is nothing other than the excess of structural unrest that characterizes our form of life, even in its saturated phases and in the intervals be- tween wars. At the end of the Second World War, the earth's weapon potential sufficed for a multiple extinction of every citizen on earth. As we approach the Third, the extermination factor has been multiplied by hundreds, even thousands. The overkill atmosphere becomes denser by the minute. The factor grows monthly and its growth is, in the final analysis, the determining agent of our his- tory. The overkill structures have become the actual subject of current develop- ments. In the First as well as in the Second World, an enormous proportion of social labor flows into these structures. At the moment preparations are being made for a renewed escalation, but this is not our theme here.
In view of these "hard facts," the task of philosophy is to pose child's questions like the following: Why don't people get along with each other? What compels them to prepare for their mutual atomization? Philosophers are those who can put aside the hardened, habituated, and cynically versed contemporary in themselves --who, without further ado, can make clear to that contemporary in two or three sentences why everything is the way it is and why it cannot be changed with good intentions. The philosopher must give a chance to that inner child who "does not yet understand" all this. Those who "do not yet understand it" can perhaps pose the right questions.
All wars are, at root, the consequence of the principle of self-preservation. In the competition among political groups, war has been an age-old means of estab- lishing and defending the existence, identity, and form of life of a given society against the pressure of a rival. Since time immemorial, realists assume a natural
'IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS" ? 129
right to self-preservation of the individual group and to military self-defense of the group attacked. The morality that legitimates the suspension of morality in war is that of self-preservation. Those who fight for their own life and its social forms stand, according to the conviction of all previous realistic mentalities, be- yond the ethics of peace.
When one's own identity is threatened; the prohibition of killing is suspended. That which constitutes the basic taboo in times of peace becomes a duty in times of war; indeed, a maximum of killing is even honored as a particularly worthy achievement.
All modern military ethics, however, have abolished the image of the aggres- sive hero because it would interfere with the defensive justification for war. Mod- ern heroes all want to be mere defenders, heroes of self-defense. One's own primarily aggressive component is uniformly denied: All professional soldiers see themselves as protectors of peace, and attack is solely a strategic alternative to defense. The latter remains the first priority over all military modes of be- havior. Defense is nothing more than the military counterpart of what is called self-preservation in philosophy. This cynical self-denial of every morality is guided by the principle of self-preservation, which anticipates the "moment of truth" and arms itself with a free-style ethics without illusions.
If we look at today's world from this perspective, boundless proliferation of the principle of defense strikes us. East and West, both armed to the teeth, con- front one another as giants of self-defense. In order to be able to "defend" itself, each party has produced instruments of destruction that suffice for the absolute annihilation of human, animal, and even plant life. In the shadow of atomic weapons, even the deadly specialties of war biologists and chemists are usually overlooked. In the name of self-preservation a reckless sadism disguised as de- fense has flourished in the minds of the researchers of destruction; an old oriental master of torture would have an inferiority complex by comparison.
However, we do not want to impute unusually evil motives to any party or any of those in charge. Everyone probably does what he can within the realm of the possible. However, this realm itself has its malicious peculiarities. It seems that a certain form of realism has come close to its immanent limits, namely, that real- ism that adopted war as ultima ratio of political self-preservation in its mode of reckoning. This realism should not be retrospectively condemned; it has had its time and done its work, for the good perhaps, for evil certainly. It must be ob- served, however, that this ultima ratio realism is bankrupt.
Today's "politics of disarmament" has only apparently grasped this. That be- hind it there is no real insight is revealed by the fact that the negotiating nations are playing a double game. While they talk, they frantically build up stockpiles; the question, as mad as it seems, is basically whether "only" armament should be
13
solution will never be found. Following this way, the arms race can only end in
pursued or whether armament plus talking is better.
In this way, I maintain, a
130 ? "IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS
war. The wild proliferation of the principle of defense precludes all other possi- bilities.
The ultimate war has truly become an "internal matter" of armed humanity. In it, it is a matter of breaking through the principle of harsh self-preservation with its archaic and modern ultima ratio of war. For this unforeseen struggle on the inner front against the deadly realism of political self-defense, the strongest allies are truly needed. On this front, overpowering weapons, fear-inducing strategies, and cunning maneuvers are required. In this respect we are not without hope, the arsenals are full. Among the weapons now being made ready for use are collected all imaginable monstrosities: nerve gases, microbe armies, gas clouds, bacteria squadrons, psychedelic grenades, astrocannons, and death rays. We do not want to undervalue the accomplishments of these means. But the phi- losopher is drawn again and again by an old dependency back to the H-bomb be- cause its nuclear mode of operation challenges contemplation most of all. Nuclear fission is in any case a phenomenon that invites meditation, and even the nuclear bomb gives the philosopher the feeling of here also really touching on the nucleus of what is human. Thus, the bomb basically embodies the last, most energetic en- lightener. It teaches an understanding of the essence of splitting; it makes com- pletely clear what it means to set up a Me against a You, an Us against a Them to the point of a readiness to kill. At the summit of the principle of self- preservation it teaches how to end and conquer dualisms. The bomb carries the last hope and task of Western philosophy, but its pedagogical procedure still seems unusual to us. It is so cynically crass and so suprapersonally hard that one is reminded of Eastern Zen masters who do not hesitate to punch their pupils in the face if that helps their progress toward enlightenment.
The atomic bomb is the real Buddha of the West, a perfect, sovereign appara- tus without bonds. It rests unmoving in its silos, purest reality and purest possibil- ity. It is the epitome of cosmic energies and human participation in these, the highest achievement of human beings and their destroyer, the triumph of techni- cal rationality and its sublation (Aufhebung) into the para-gnostical. With it we leave the realm of practical reason where ends are pursued through appropriate means. The bomb has long since ceased to be a means to an end, for it is the
14
boundless means that exceeds every possible end.
longer be a means to an end, it must become a medium of self-experience. It is an anthropological event, an extreme objedification of the spirit of power that works behind the drive to self-preservation. Although we built it to "defend" our- selves it has, in fact, yielded for us a defenselessness without parallel. It is a con- summation of the human in its "evil" aspect. We cannot get any more evil, intelli- gent, or defensive.
The bomb is really the only Buddha that Western reason could understand. Its calm and its irony are infinite. It makes no difference to it how it fulfills its mis- sion, whether in mute waiting or as firecloud; for it, the change of aggregate cir-
:
However, since it can no
'IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEK1NESS" ? 131
? John Heartfield. The arms industry's choir. "A Mighty Fortress Is Our Geneva. " Photomontage, 1934.
cumstances has no relevance. As with Buddha, everything that could be said is
said through its mere existence. The bomb is not one bit more evil than reality
and not one bit more destructive than we are. It is merely our unfolding, a mate-
rial representation of our essence. It is already embodied as something whole,
whereas we, in relation to it, are still split. Confronted by such a machine, strate-
gic considerations are not appropriate but a heightened attentiveness is. The bomb
demands of us neither struggle nor resignation, but self-experience. We are it.
In
it, the Western "subject" is consummated. Our most extreme armament makes s defenseless to the point of weakness, weak to the point of reason, reasonable to the point of fear. The only question that remains is whether we choose the ex-
u
132 D "IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS"
ternal path or the inner path --whether insight will come from critical reflection or from the fireballs over the earth.
All external paths, no matter how "well intended" they may be, come together, as our experience shows, again and again in the irresistible flow toward arma- ment. All "inner paths," even when they appear awfully unrealistic, flow together in the single tendency that furthers real pacification. The modern world process led to a point beyond which the most external path, politics, and the most inner path, meditation, speak the same language; both revolve around the principle that only a ''relaxation of tensions" can help us along. All secrets lie in the art of con- ceding, of not resisting. Meditation and disarmament discover a strategic com- mon interest. If that's not an ironic result of modernity! Grand politics today is, in the final analysis, meditation on the bomb and deep meditation seeks the urge to build bombs in us. Meditation works gently on everything that has solidified internally as the crust of a so-called identity. It dissolves the armor behind which an ego sits that feels itself to be the defender of its "basic values. " (The strategists of armament say: "We have the better values! ") The bomb is a damned ironic ma- chine that is "good" for nothing and yet produces the most powerful effects. Even though it may be our Buddha, it nevertheless has the sarcastic devil within itself. One must have put oneself in its interior in order to feel what it means to explode into the cosmos with a complete dissolution of the self. It can do this at any time. A similar pandemonium and laughter reigns at the core of the igniting explosive mass as in the interior of suns. To know that one has such a possibility at one's disposal gives a unique superiority. Deep down, the human spirit knows itself to be in solidarity with its eerie and ironic sun machine.
Those who look very carefully can observe every now and then how the bombs seem to smile mockingly to themselves. If we were only alert enough to perceive this smile something would have to happen that the world has never experienced: It could become fearless and feel how relaxation loosens the archaic cramps of defense. "Good morning, Miss Neutron, how are you? " The bombs become the night watchmen of our destructiveness. If we awake, then, like the entreating voices at the end of Hermann Broch's Schlafwandler (Sleepwalkers), the thousand bombs will talk to us, for "it is the voice of humanity and of the people, the voice of solace and of hope and of the immediate good: "Don't do yourself any harm, for we are all still here! "
Notes
1, I treat Diogenes, as well as the other kynical and cynical figures, in the present tense, not historically, from a distance. The present tense creates the possibility of a general typification of kyni- cal and cynical themes.
2. See the portrait of Diogenes in chapter 7. I show there also the sociocritical, political side of the kynical impulse. This side explains why kynicism fits present-day potentials for social resis- tance "to a T. "
'IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS" ? 133
3. Willy Hochkeppel, Mit zynischem Lacheln. Uber die Hippies der Antike, in gehort gelesen (Dec. 1980):89ff.
4. Especially subdued and diverted through the Stoa.
5. See the chapter entitled "Zur Logik der Representation. Selbstdarstellung als Tateinheit von Publizieren und Verallgemeinern," pp. 305ff (On the Logic of Representation. Self-presentation as Unity of Action in Publishing and Generalization) in my book Literatur und Lebenserfahrung. 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, 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
1
has 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.
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 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 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
c
ynic, 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,
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
s n
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
2
the 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.
But with moralism one sur-
Where does our readiness to be
'IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS" ? 127
cheeky, so impudent. It is no longer so much our heads on which enlightenment has to perform its labor, it is the gloomy egoisms, the frozen identities.
It may be telling for the demoralized state of critical intelligence that for the entire spectrum of biophilia and self-affirmation, it knows scarcely any word other than "narcissism. " If this concept already in itself is a dubious construction, in the hands of conservatives it becomes a cudgel for a psychologizing counteren- lightenment with which social tendencies toward critical self-reflection are sup- posed to be quelled. Just as the phenomenon of narcissism as sickness and uncon- scious tic is interesting and welcome, it is equally suspect as a healthy condition. As a general sickness it functions like a psychological dynamo for society, which requires people who are full of self-doubt, affirmation-seeking, ambitious, greedy for consumption, selfish, and moralistically zealous in their intent on being better than others. As a healthy condition, "narcissistic" self-affirmation would laugh in the face of the impudent demands of such morose societies.
Gray is the basic color of an age that, for a long time, has again been dreaming secretly about the colorful big bang. What necessitates and inspires such dreams is a sum of vital incapacities. The well-behaved sociopsychological enlighten- ment thought the problem lay in the "incapacity to mourn. " But this is not the sole factor. It is even more the incapacity to have the right rage at the right time, the incapacity to express, the incapacity to explode the climate of care, the incapacity to celebrate, the incapacity to let go. Among all these atrophies, one capacity has remained that unerringly sets its sights on what a life grants to itself in the end, a life that no longer sees a way out of such relations: the capacity, under respecta- ble pretenses, to work toward circumstances in which, unavoidably, everything will be blown to smithereens with the greatest possible spectacle without anyone feeling to blame. The catastrophe warms people up and in it, the barren ego comes to its last feast that melts long-lost passions and impulses together in the final burn-up.
A short time ago, the leader of the English punk group, The Stranglers, celebrated the neutron bomb in a frivolous interview because it is what can set a nuclear war into motion. "Miss Neutron, I love you. " Here he had found the point where the kynicism of protesters coincides with the brazen-faced master cynicism of the strategists. What did he want to say? Look how wicked I can be? His smile was coquettish, nauseated, and ironically egoistic; he could not look the reporter in the face. As in a dream, he spoke past the camera for those who will understand him, the little, beautifully wicked punk devil who causes the world to rattle with unthinkable words. That is the language of a consciousness that earlier perhaps did not mean to be so wicked. But now, since the show de- mands it, not only is it unhappy, it also wants to be unhappy. In this way misery can be outdone. The last act of freedom is used to will what is terrifying. In this act is a grand gesture, a pathos of ugliness-desperate cheekiness that gives off a spark of independence. In the last instance they can pretend to be innocent, and
128 ? "IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS"
the war, the great big shitty mess, is caused by the others anyway. They, the beau- tiful self-mutilators, know enough to scream out against the conspiracy of silence of the respectable. Everything is shit, "Miss Neutron, I love you. " There is still something of one's own in willed self-destruction, a symbolic shock. That is what can be enjoyed in them. In intellectual trash, in the cynical show, in the hysterical uprising, and in the crazy parade, the suffocating armor around the well-behaved wild ego loosens up: Rocky Horror Picture Show, the hot-cold hissing death drive of the hunger for oneself.
Meditation on the Bomb
Here we have to think ahead--assuming further that fringe and middle correspond more deeply to one another than seems obvious at first glance. On the surface, the life-style of the punks and that of the establishment seem to be irreconcilable. But at bottom they are very close. Cynical eruptions are catapulted out of the catastrophile masses of civilization. For that reason the philosophical, the com- prehending approach to phenomena must not limit itself to subjective excesses, but must begin with the objective excesses.
Objective excess is nothing other than the excess of structural unrest that characterizes our form of life, even in its saturated phases and in the intervals be- tween wars. At the end of the Second World War, the earth's weapon potential sufficed for a multiple extinction of every citizen on earth. As we approach the Third, the extermination factor has been multiplied by hundreds, even thousands. The overkill atmosphere becomes denser by the minute. The factor grows monthly and its growth is, in the final analysis, the determining agent of our his- tory. The overkill structures have become the actual subject of current develop- ments. In the First as well as in the Second World, an enormous proportion of social labor flows into these structures. At the moment preparations are being made for a renewed escalation, but this is not our theme here.
In view of these "hard facts," the task of philosophy is to pose child's questions like the following: Why don't people get along with each other? What compels them to prepare for their mutual atomization? Philosophers are those who can put aside the hardened, habituated, and cynically versed contemporary in themselves --who, without further ado, can make clear to that contemporary in two or three sentences why everything is the way it is and why it cannot be changed with good intentions. The philosopher must give a chance to that inner child who "does not yet understand" all this. Those who "do not yet understand it" can perhaps pose the right questions.
All wars are, at root, the consequence of the principle of self-preservation. In the competition among political groups, war has been an age-old means of estab- lishing and defending the existence, identity, and form of life of a given society against the pressure of a rival. Since time immemorial, realists assume a natural
'IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS" ? 129
right to self-preservation of the individual group and to military self-defense of the group attacked. The morality that legitimates the suspension of morality in war is that of self-preservation. Those who fight for their own life and its social forms stand, according to the conviction of all previous realistic mentalities, be- yond the ethics of peace.
When one's own identity is threatened; the prohibition of killing is suspended. That which constitutes the basic taboo in times of peace becomes a duty in times of war; indeed, a maximum of killing is even honored as a particularly worthy achievement.
All modern military ethics, however, have abolished the image of the aggres- sive hero because it would interfere with the defensive justification for war. Mod- ern heroes all want to be mere defenders, heroes of self-defense. One's own primarily aggressive component is uniformly denied: All professional soldiers see themselves as protectors of peace, and attack is solely a strategic alternative to defense. The latter remains the first priority over all military modes of be- havior. Defense is nothing more than the military counterpart of what is called self-preservation in philosophy. This cynical self-denial of every morality is guided by the principle of self-preservation, which anticipates the "moment of truth" and arms itself with a free-style ethics without illusions.
If we look at today's world from this perspective, boundless proliferation of the principle of defense strikes us. East and West, both armed to the teeth, con- front one another as giants of self-defense. In order to be able to "defend" itself, each party has produced instruments of destruction that suffice for the absolute annihilation of human, animal, and even plant life. In the shadow of atomic weapons, even the deadly specialties of war biologists and chemists are usually overlooked. In the name of self-preservation a reckless sadism disguised as de- fense has flourished in the minds of the researchers of destruction; an old oriental master of torture would have an inferiority complex by comparison.
However, we do not want to impute unusually evil motives to any party or any of those in charge. Everyone probably does what he can within the realm of the possible. However, this realm itself has its malicious peculiarities. It seems that a certain form of realism has come close to its immanent limits, namely, that real- ism that adopted war as ultima ratio of political self-preservation in its mode of reckoning. This realism should not be retrospectively condemned; it has had its time and done its work, for the good perhaps, for evil certainly. It must be ob- served, however, that this ultima ratio realism is bankrupt.
Today's "politics of disarmament" has only apparently grasped this. That be- hind it there is no real insight is revealed by the fact that the negotiating nations are playing a double game. While they talk, they frantically build up stockpiles; the question, as mad as it seems, is basically whether "only" armament should be
13
solution will never be found. Following this way, the arms race can only end in
pursued or whether armament plus talking is better.
In this way, I maintain, a
130 ? "IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS
war. The wild proliferation of the principle of defense precludes all other possi- bilities.
The ultimate war has truly become an "internal matter" of armed humanity. In it, it is a matter of breaking through the principle of harsh self-preservation with its archaic and modern ultima ratio of war. For this unforeseen struggle on the inner front against the deadly realism of political self-defense, the strongest allies are truly needed. On this front, overpowering weapons, fear-inducing strategies, and cunning maneuvers are required. In this respect we are not without hope, the arsenals are full. Among the weapons now being made ready for use are collected all imaginable monstrosities: nerve gases, microbe armies, gas clouds, bacteria squadrons, psychedelic grenades, astrocannons, and death rays. We do not want to undervalue the accomplishments of these means. But the phi- losopher is drawn again and again by an old dependency back to the H-bomb be- cause its nuclear mode of operation challenges contemplation most of all. Nuclear fission is in any case a phenomenon that invites meditation, and even the nuclear bomb gives the philosopher the feeling of here also really touching on the nucleus of what is human. Thus, the bomb basically embodies the last, most energetic en- lightener. It teaches an understanding of the essence of splitting; it makes com- pletely clear what it means to set up a Me against a You, an Us against a Them to the point of a readiness to kill. At the summit of the principle of self- preservation it teaches how to end and conquer dualisms. The bomb carries the last hope and task of Western philosophy, but its pedagogical procedure still seems unusual to us. It is so cynically crass and so suprapersonally hard that one is reminded of Eastern Zen masters who do not hesitate to punch their pupils in the face if that helps their progress toward enlightenment.
The atomic bomb is the real Buddha of the West, a perfect, sovereign appara- tus without bonds. It rests unmoving in its silos, purest reality and purest possibil- ity. It is the epitome of cosmic energies and human participation in these, the highest achievement of human beings and their destroyer, the triumph of techni- cal rationality and its sublation (Aufhebung) into the para-gnostical. With it we leave the realm of practical reason where ends are pursued through appropriate means. The bomb has long since ceased to be a means to an end, for it is the
14
boundless means that exceeds every possible end.
longer be a means to an end, it must become a medium of self-experience. It is an anthropological event, an extreme objedification of the spirit of power that works behind the drive to self-preservation. Although we built it to "defend" our- selves it has, in fact, yielded for us a defenselessness without parallel. It is a con- summation of the human in its "evil" aspect. We cannot get any more evil, intelli- gent, or defensive.
The bomb is really the only Buddha that Western reason could understand. Its calm and its irony are infinite. It makes no difference to it how it fulfills its mis- sion, whether in mute waiting or as firecloud; for it, the change of aggregate cir-
:
However, since it can no
'IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEK1NESS" ? 131
? John Heartfield. The arms industry's choir. "A Mighty Fortress Is Our Geneva. " Photomontage, 1934.
cumstances has no relevance. As with Buddha, everything that could be said is
said through its mere existence. The bomb is not one bit more evil than reality
and not one bit more destructive than we are. It is merely our unfolding, a mate-
rial representation of our essence. It is already embodied as something whole,
whereas we, in relation to it, are still split. Confronted by such a machine, strate-
gic considerations are not appropriate but a heightened attentiveness is. The bomb
demands of us neither struggle nor resignation, but self-experience. We are it.
In
it, the Western "subject" is consummated. Our most extreme armament makes s defenseless to the point of weakness, weak to the point of reason, reasonable to the point of fear. The only question that remains is whether we choose the ex-
u
132 D "IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS"
ternal path or the inner path --whether insight will come from critical reflection or from the fireballs over the earth.
All external paths, no matter how "well intended" they may be, come together, as our experience shows, again and again in the irresistible flow toward arma- ment. All "inner paths," even when they appear awfully unrealistic, flow together in the single tendency that furthers real pacification. The modern world process led to a point beyond which the most external path, politics, and the most inner path, meditation, speak the same language; both revolve around the principle that only a ''relaxation of tensions" can help us along. All secrets lie in the art of con- ceding, of not resisting. Meditation and disarmament discover a strategic com- mon interest. If that's not an ironic result of modernity! Grand politics today is, in the final analysis, meditation on the bomb and deep meditation seeks the urge to build bombs in us. Meditation works gently on everything that has solidified internally as the crust of a so-called identity. It dissolves the armor behind which an ego sits that feels itself to be the defender of its "basic values. " (The strategists of armament say: "We have the better values! ") The bomb is a damned ironic ma- chine that is "good" for nothing and yet produces the most powerful effects. Even though it may be our Buddha, it nevertheless has the sarcastic devil within itself. One must have put oneself in its interior in order to feel what it means to explode into the cosmos with a complete dissolution of the self. It can do this at any time. A similar pandemonium and laughter reigns at the core of the igniting explosive mass as in the interior of suns. To know that one has such a possibility at one's disposal gives a unique superiority. Deep down, the human spirit knows itself to be in solidarity with its eerie and ironic sun machine.
Those who look very carefully can observe every now and then how the bombs seem to smile mockingly to themselves. If we were only alert enough to perceive this smile something would have to happen that the world has never experienced: It could become fearless and feel how relaxation loosens the archaic cramps of defense. "Good morning, Miss Neutron, how are you? " The bombs become the night watchmen of our destructiveness. If we awake, then, like the entreating voices at the end of Hermann Broch's Schlafwandler (Sleepwalkers), the thousand bombs will talk to us, for "it is the voice of humanity and of the people, the voice of solace and of hope and of the immediate good: "Don't do yourself any harm, for we are all still here! "
Notes
1, I treat Diogenes, as well as the other kynical and cynical figures, in the present tense, not historically, from a distance. The present tense creates the possibility of a general typification of kyni- cal and cynical themes.
2. See the portrait of Diogenes in chapter 7. I show there also the sociocritical, political side of the kynical impulse. This side explains why kynicism fits present-day potentials for social resis- tance "to a T. "
'IN SEARCH OF LOST CHEEKINESS" ? 133
3. Willy Hochkeppel, Mit zynischem Lacheln. Uber die Hippies der Antike, in gehort gelesen (Dec. 1980):89ff.
4. Especially subdued and diverted through the Stoa.
5. See the chapter entitled "Zur Logik der Representation. Selbstdarstellung als Tateinheit von Publizieren und Verallgemeinern," pp. 305ff (On the Logic of Representation. Self-presentation as Unity of Action in Publishing and Generalization) in my book Literatur und Lebenserfahrung. 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, 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
1
has 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.
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 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'
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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 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
c
ynic, 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
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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,
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
s n
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
2
the 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.
