The Philology of Existence, the Dramaturgy of Force
"Gradually, it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious ?
"Gradually, it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious ?
Sloterdijk - Thinker on Stage
It would above all else be an unjust abbreviation to explain Nietzsche's impulse as representing only an oscillating balancing with the immoralistic de- restraining tendencies of advanced capitalism that are produced in advance, whether this might also exhibit what belonged to the image of an active nihilism together with its ?
"excluding," "exterminating" determinations of ?
One would be much more likely to do justice to Nietzsche if one could conceive of his work as a play in the ?
twilight of the idols of meta- physics and the collapse of idealisms.
This would be appropriate to the emergent
? ? ? 86 ? PAIN AND JUSTICE
movement of the excluded physical and dramatic forces. After having been wounded, banished into the darkness, and forgotten, the bodies that have all too long been abused as incarnation machines press toward the light; they make use of modern exonerations, authorizations, and symbolic constructs to prepare ? a new intervention by the lower elements ? a new presence of the
which cunningly and as a rule behaves as if it wanted something in particular
as if it were fighting for a place in the sun of subjectivities, while at bottom it is always only looking for a chance to once again become aesthetic and appear in the arena of absolute
But whereas, among these basis movements, the proletarian and feminist movements are more easily caught by the traps of subjectivity of abstract indi- vidualism, the emergent movement of the ? in its ego-psycho- logical reversal and its therapeutic ? the most promising man- ifestation of the three. The depth psychologies, which for two hundred years have increasingly left their mark on the physiognomy of intellectual Europe, are the characteristic impulse in the history here described as
They conceal the most important reasoning potential of an enlightenment that is not only instrumental and strategic: only they are prepared to consider properly the reality of the drama under the conditions of modernity. Wherever they remain true to their authentic impulse, they reject the deliberate indolence of rationalism and decline to cooperate with the abstract individualism that is only the psychic- legal form in which the universal domination of a nature-exploiting theoretical- moralistic subject wants to prevail. The depth psychologies are, as it were, the thinking heart of the ? which must beat during the epochal history of re- fusing light to the physis if all bodies are not to atrophy into intersubjectivized fighting machines and self-consciously cold legal entities. This heart thinks in the center of Dionysian passion ? the memory of the ecology of suffering, among which are included even the reason of exonerations and the construction of what is ? It is the living memorial that the history of the wounding of civilization has accumulated within itself, along with all of what must be consol- idated of induration and obscuration in order to bring forth the dominant degree of intellectual armament and the armoring of the body.
Admittedly, this all sounds a trace too dark to satisfy the need for understand- ing, in case one anyway and of one's own accord does not know what could be meant. Is the author here making a game, following the example of the more recent French authors, of cultivating darkness as a genre of the beaux arts? Or is it plausible that the veil over these references to a depth-psychological drama of knowledge should not be understood as a malicious component of a literary nature but instead illuminated as a ways and means by which the "thing itself" is there for us? How could our thinking, if it questions the limitations of its per- formance, circumvent the insight that it cannot render everything transparent? With the acknowledgment that the rational world is situated before an
? ? ? ? ? ? AND JUSTICE ? 87
tional" background and that transparency is able to unfold only before the massif of what is ? enlightenment can leave behind it the arena of an om- nipotent illuminating infantilism and reach the level of a maturity that can criti- cize
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
reason. What ? has observed of the ? he car- ries with him a shadow that "signifies more than the factual absence of potential
be applied on the whole to enlightenment.
What does this all mean? It is easier to say what if does not mean. It does not
mean, for instance, that something like a depth-psychology-related enlighten- ment of society should be undertaken immediately; it does not mean that we should make something of the insight into the dramatic, dark structure of sub- jectivity, something like a psychotherapy in the spirit of the production of indi- viduals who are simultaneously Dionysian and socially functional. It also does not mean that it is high time to shift over into a loving interaction after centuries of organized ? These negations do not intend to posit anything against loving interaction, psychotherapy, or the spirit of enterprise. What is being ne-
at least interrupted and ceased in its impulse ? the indisputably false
reflexes that direct our behavior toward
These reflexes, which are all supported by the myths of procedures for problem solving and the ideologies of engagement.
No other phenomenon illustrates this more clearly than the dramatic
piece of modern ? against which even the depth psychologies have been defined. For depth-psychological processes define them in Nietzsche's
these are the drama, tragedy, and according to the type of their occurrence, precisely that into which no production process or business enterprise can reach. They are the ontological model for what, because of its own form of being, for us, cannot be achieved, induced, or produced in accordance with a method. They stand ? the dominant rationalism of availa-
monuments to the unavailability of what is most real. This remains always something that happens or does not happen beyond the subjectivities that are in operation: passionate love, spontaneous memory, phenomenological in- sight, pure success, a happy synchronicity, a clarifying failure, timely separation, the bursting forth of primordial pain ? of this paraphrases an area in which the Will is not able to have its way. We cannot be silent about the fact that, in any case, even depth-psychological consciousness has almost no defense against its attempts to establish itself in the form of technical praxis and to accept
tocratic social activism.
Here the recollection of Nietzsche's theory of the drama can once again prove For Nietzsche clearly realized at the beginning before he set out on the trail to power as the universal formula of nihilistic the sort of tragedy in which mere calculating subjects play themselves is no longer possible: the "show" of the individual is the end of theater (one is reminded here of Nietzsche's critique of ? The overpowering drama unfurls wherever in-
? ? ? ? ? and
precede modern
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 88 ? PAIN AND JUSTICE
dividuals are not actors on their own but are rather conduits for a phe- nomenon that is older than their awareness of The authentic drama is consummated as a Dionysian passion of the physis, which phenomenologically reminds itself of its ? its "destiny," and its "future. " Accordingly, drama is by its very nature ? psychodrama, however, is the unity of memory and phenomenon, of knowledge and destiny. Therefore, enlightenment commands an indissoluble relationship to ? though the modern orga- nization of knowledge tends to reformulate all problems of enlightenment into questions pertaining to the power to dispose of information. Knowledge, how- ever, is the phenomenon of all phenomena and the destiny of all ? It con- tinually has the character of a psychonautical process that is spun out on the Ariadne's web of the terrible truth. We must remind ourselves that the search of the ? conqueror and patient of ? as a flight from the terrible truth; it can become a discovery if it leads to the conscious acceptance of the truth that has occurred and is occurring. On its spiritual journey, the subject is a nondivine nonsufferer searching for a divine patience ? is only another way of expressing the Dionysian integrity of life within the unity of lust, pain, and knowledge. Thus Dionysian wisdom does not teach a release from suffering; it does not believe in an evasive movement that leads upward. To a much greater extent, it gives us an understanding that at least frees us from suffering on ac- count of our
Would it then follow that a therapeutics that is tragic, in Nietzsche's sense, would be the guiding light for an enlightened enlightenment? Would it provide the model for that understanding that could not be compelled by any procedure or rendered controllable by any method? One would not have to hesitate for a moment to write down this observation if a profession of a dramatic therapeutics were not once again being misunderstood by the activistically tainted Zeitgeist as a declaration of a position with a view to practicality. Thus ? more el- evated, enlightenment must begin with a hesitancy: an enlightened hesitancy is the glimmer of meditation and of epic patience that has more to do with the psy- chonautical
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
adventure than would be revealed at first glance. For psychoanalysis in the current sense of the term can occur only if the subject is set aside so that its history, its drama, can be told. The term "psychoanalysis" here of course refers not to the compromised Freudian undertaking but rather to the whole of psycho- nautics, that is, of depth-psychological enlightenment occurrences that, for ap- proximately two hundred years, have concerned themselves with the postreli- gious absorption of the subject into the space between aesthetics, therapeutics, and Dionysian reflection. To attribute such a high place value to depth-psycho- logical dramaturgy within the process of enlightenment is in no way intended to channel water toward the mills of therapeutic ? The psychonautical phe- nomena of modernity are not directed toward guidelines for action: their process is eventful enough in and of itself.
? ? ? PAIN AND JUSTICE ? 89
We have in any case few models before us as suggestive of the fact that it is not rational action but rather a rational willingness to allow things to happen that can become the prerequisite for knowledge and enlightenment. He who knows from experience what this formulation "means" will perhaps be able to judge what elements are at stake in such speculations on the relationship between doing and permitting. It is a matter of nothing less than a sensible division of reason between the poles of subject and process; this is what must be characterized as postmetaphysical learning processes. A therapeutic drama at the level of univer- sal civilization, which would be carried out without anyone authorizing or order- ing it, would be a learning process that could bring to an end the assault of active nihilism, with its assignments of value, constructive measures, establishment of levels, and eliminations. Heidegger probably indirectly had something of this sort in mind when he cited ? "But wherever danger resides, there also grows ? A planetary therapeutics that would occur without having a new central subject positioned above it seems to be the only thing that could bring the race for the salvation of subjectivities to a halt on their own account. Any activity in this ? if it were the kind of "trust-building measures" that seem to have come directly from the vocabulary of ? ? would have to prove themselves as mere continuation, and in the meantime even chil- dren have learned that the great abysses of the present are all located as they were before on the straight line of ? Whether the name of the therapeutics of ? here the term takes on a fatal ring ? be "catastrophe" under any circumstances is the question of our age, if it is expressed in thought. One must let the thousand lesser devils for whom this is no longer a ? but rather a ? have their poor malevolent fun.
Our reading of Nietzsche's book on tragedy leads to a sort of guideline for Diony- sian learning, a term for which one could also say "therapeutics," "psycho- nautics," or ? ? yes, even "politics," insofar as one understands the expression in accordance with the concept of night elucidated earlier. Diony- sian learning intends the flaring of insight to the point of danger, to a knowledge at the razor's edge: it characterizes thought on that stage from which there is no running away, because it is reality itself. Life is the trap that is a stage, and the stage that is a trap.
It is precisely within Dionysian learning, however, that Apollonian safety measures are necessary. The dramatic impulses of the actors may not be trans- lated directly from the aesthetic (realm) to the political; Walter Benjamin's warn- ings on this point are still valid today. They must first be subjected to an Apol- lonian intervention that regulates the political ecology of suffering. Under today's conditions, a political act would have to slip all too rapidly from impulsiveness into fascism.
90 ? PAIN AND JUSTICE
Let me put it this way: during the plunge from the body of the mother into late capitalism, the pain of individuation accumulates for which late capitalism as such cannot be held ? close this reflex may be and as nu- merous as the discourses may be that tell us, in the course of the instinctive search for the guilty party, where he can be found. To process this pain, which belongs not to the realm of social information but rather to the cycle of a subpolitical level, a self-aware antipolitical therapeutics is required ? to de- politicize individuals, but to deneuroticize politics, to protect the political from psychodynamic movements and Dionysian short ? By therapeutics I mean, of course, not only the operation of psychologizing subcultures, but all
rites, and games that contribute to the pleasure/pain ecology of social paths of conscious life and all lines of psychonautics. If mythological, poetic, shamanistic, and neoreligious lines now increasingly appear among
these, this does not indicate ? least from a functional viewpoint ? insult to the modern by a new irrationalism, but instead speaks to a well-meaning release of politics from the suspicion that it could be immediately responsible for the
and the sufferings caused by individuation in individual lives.
Within the new multiplicity of psychonautics, a mature sense of the distribu- tion of responsibilities is revealed. One's misery thus consists not so much in one's sufferings as in the inability to be responsible for ? inability to want to be responsible for them. The will to accept one's own responsibility -- which is, as it were, the psychonautical variant of the amor ? nei- ther narcissistic hubris nor fatalistic ? but rather the courage and the composure to accept one's own life in all its reality and potentiality. He who wants to be responsible for himself stops searching for guilty parties: he ceases to live theoretically and to constitute himself on missing origins and supposed causes. Through the drama, he himself
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
becomes the hero of ? pa- tient of truth. If enlightenment is carried out in this sense, it lea'ds to a Dionysian autonomy: this is as far removed from the autonomy of the subject of idealistic modernity as the embodied existence is from the illusion of "overcoming" ex-
The Dionysian therapeutics that has been spreading from European soil into the planetary standard for two hundred years contains the most pointed challenge to the dominant forms of pseudoenlightenment, which is continually searching for causes and other "guilty parties" in order to finally establish itself, driven by the dream of becoming a subject or a god, as ideal successor in the place of the guilty. Who can wonder that, in the course of this pseudoenlightenment, the ac- count books of suffering of humankind and nature are bulging to the point of
He who senses the ruinous element in this uncontrolled pseudoenlightenment will recognize that Nietzsche ? spite of his unpredictable deviations and his
? ? ? ? ? ? ? PAIN AND JUSTICE ? 91
malevolent tones ? not preach a counterenlightenment; to a much greater degree he, like no one else among the greater figures of modernity, set about to understand the concept of enlightenment as adventurous thinking to the very limits of pain. Almost one hundred years after the onset of his illness, Nietzsche can finally be read as he deserves to be: as one of those who, because of a Diony- sian consciousness, raise their voices against the universal conspiracy of active indolence so that they can report to us on the loneliness and the "heavy, heavy happiness" of the unloved animal who says " I . " Even he, together with his hopeless hardness and his sad battle of separation, can be read as someone in whom the tender empire of the body wanted to learn to speak once again. With his pathos of integrity, his feeling for ? and his intellectual ? he is not so far from the "reciprocal ? ? take up ? ? beautiful formulation ? which those who were born later are able, with a little com- municative luck, to give their existence a better turn. It remains futile to ask what would have become of Nietzsche if he had unraveled the thread of Ariadne that led to her, the mistress of the ? His stage was from the very beginning constructed as a labyrinth, from which there was no escape to another. In his dra- matic coming out of himself before the eyes of everyone and no one, however, he burrowed through, turned around, pushed to the pinnacle, and brought to an end an entire system of values, an entire civilization, an entire era. Those who live after him have an easier time of it. He has warned them of the three unforgivable original sins of consciousness: idealism, moralism, and
But nothing in Nietzsche's writing can have as great a continuing effect as his own refutation of his theory of the will to power. His whole life contradicts it and testifies to a stimulating fragility that is turned toward us like the hardly disguised interior of the terrible truth. Wherever he is wounded, endangered, and ingenu- ous, it is there that he is still among us; wherever his icy abundance buries him alive, it is there that he anticipates the fate of all later individualisms. Wherever he walks with transparent optimism over abysses, it is there that he demonstrates what it means today to be contemporary. And wherever he affirms the course of the world that is crushing him to death so that he can thus create a space for his self-affirmation, it is there that he is a witness to the happiness of those who are without hope.
? r
? Notes
? citations from The Birth of Tragedy ? are taken from Walter ? standard translation (The Birth of ? and the Case of Wagner, translated and with commentary by Walter
[New York: Vintage Press, ? Wherever possible, quotations from other works by Nietzsche are taken from known translations, for which bibliographic information is included. Translated quo- tations that include only a reference to the German edition and are not cited in the notes are my
1. Centauric Literature
Letter from ? translated and quoted by Walter Kaufmann in his introduction to The Por- Nietzsche (New York: Viking Press. ? pp. 7-8. Notes for all subsequent quotations from
this volume will give the title of Nietzsche's text, PN, and pertinent page numbers.
2. "Homer's Contest," PN, p. 37.
3. Letter to Erwin Rohde, in Nietzsche: A Self-Portrait from His Letters, ed. and trans. Peter Fuss
and Henry Shapiro (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 10.
2.
The Philology of Existence, the Dramaturgy of Force
"Gradually, it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious ? Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966). p. 13.
2. This is not a simple "violation of self," as the psychologizing subjectivism of a popular critical mode of thinking would have it. It is at best an active acceptance of a "thrownness"
into a state of ? ? With this, something is being outlined that belongs characteristically to the psycho-ontologicial
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
phenomenon of masculinity. A very stimulating work on this theme is ? Schulte's ? ? euch
Nietzsches ? der ? ? des ? (Frankfurt/Paris: ? 1982). 3. The following comment betrays the extent to which Nietzsche consciously dealt with the his-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 95
? ? 96 NOTES
parallelism between Wagnerian modernity and Dionysian antiquity: "For me, the phenomenon of Wagner viewed in the flesh initially negatively illustrated the fact that we have up to now not yet understood the Greek world and, vice versa, that it is therein that we will ? the only analogies to our phenomenon of Wagner" ? Gesamtausgo. be Werke, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino ? [Berlin: W. de Gruyter, ? 9, p. 232. Hereafter cited as Werke. )
4. I combine this statement with a question mark behind ? thesis, in accordance with which the postmodern condition is characterized by a radical loss of belief in all historical narratives," i. e. , all philosophies of history. But what if the philosophy of history possessed
at least no apparent -- narrative form? Perhaps history is not an epic phenomenon, but rather a the- atrical one, comparable not to the novel but to the commedia ? in which the plot is carried along from scene to scene thanks to the improvisational powers of an ensemble of actors. If this were true, the usual polemic against any sort of historical- philosophical tension would be reduced to the level of a battle with critical windmills.
? ? ? ? ? ? 5. Lou Andreas-Salome places my opinion,
self at the center of her psychological portrait of Friedrich
6. Manfred Frank, Der kommende Gott: Vorlesungen 1982).
impulse toward release from the
in seinen Werken.
die Neue (Frankfurt:
? ? ? ? ? 7. Here 1 mean the languages/voices of a secular inwardness that was cultivated from the eigh- teenth through the twentieth ? symbolic space that extends from The Magic Flute to The Magic Mountain.
8. A twofold cultural defense mechanism can be perceived in Nietzsche"s Dionysian discourse. Specifically, the romantic aesthetic of genius and the psychology of an inner duality symbolically conceal an actual state of psychic disruption. In general, the establishment of the symbolic register regulates the real unchaining of Dionysian forces in a manner that is culturally acceptable. Only through this powerful symbolic guarding are the ? processes of emergence and release from inhibitions in their entirety possible, processes that characterize the modern psychologies. Since the eighteenth century, an enormous thrust toward the breaking down of barriers, toward loosening and unchaining, has been set in motion within the bourgeois revolution in ? under the protection of new, intensive, civilizing defense thrust whose unfolding we cur- rently discuss under the misleading rubric of postmodernism.
9. "The ? ? ? votary of Dionysus is understood only by his peers. With what astonishment must the Apollonian Greek have beheld ? With an astonishment that was all the greater the more it was mingled with the shuddering suspicion that all this was actually not so very alien to him after all, in fact, that it was only his Apollonian consciousness which, like a veil, hid his Dionysian world from his vision" (BT, p. 67).
10. At the end of Chapter 4 I will make several observations on the incarnation/psychosis prob- lematic in Nietzsche's "endgame. "
3. Cave ? or, Danger, Terrible Truth!
seems at present inevitable that, when we turn away from the vocabulary of the old Euro- pean metaphysics, we ? back on concepts whose awkwardly physicalistic or old-fashioned undertones will elude no one. That will happen ? faute de ? as well ? the assumption that
? ? ? ? ? it might be possible to use old and
thinking through a surplus of
of the old physicalistic concepts of energy,
the intellectual side of metaphysical dualism in a material, process-related and textual ? that
stricto unsuitable words in a new way. It comes down to and information-related instances within the context of now including what has traditionally belonged on
? ? ? ? ? ? 2. Nietzsche, Kritische ? ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, ? 6, p. 323. Hereafter cited as
? ? ? NOTES 97
There are within the psyche processes that are blatantly analogous to those that are involved in the accumulation of ? not just in a metaphorical sense. Producing subjects have to a great extent been organized in the form of subjective capital or learning ? machinery; subjective cap- italism is the psychic reality of intellectual subcultures. Perhaps this is the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
source of the desolate lack of solidarity perceived by those who try to communicate with the intellectual public in a language that remains ? in the face of the compulsions toward accumulation and self-armament character- istic of combative and ? intellects.
4. This is true at least for the public, didactic, and rhetorical aspect of his reflection. In his inti- mate observations, however, Nietzsche saw through the "will to power" as the manifestation of an esoteric comedy of subjectivity.
5. Hans Ebeling offers a reflection on occasional motives in a weakened theory of subjectivity in his study, ? ? ? ? ? ? 1983).
4. Dionysus Meets Diogenes; or, The Adventures of the Embodied Intellect
Sloterdijk's text here reads auf der Suche nach the title of the German translation of Proust's ? la recherche perdu is Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit. This would translate into English as "The Search for Lost Time," a more accurate equivalent of the French than Remembrance of Things
2. We should not overlook the fact that, during the initial phase of ? structural scholar- the Pythagoreans -- a conscious awareness of the necessary intersection between abstrac- tion and ecstasy, theory and celebration (Festlichkeit), and mathematics and enthusiasm was still
dominant, an awareness that resounds in authentic Platonisms and in an erotics of knowledge. Nietzsche recounts the matter as follows: "The severest ? that can be leveled against Socrates was made by a dream image. As he told his friends in prison, Socrates was visited repeatedly by the same dream, which always relayed the same message: ? make ? But to his last days Socrates had contented himself with the opinion that philosophy was the highest form of music. Finally he realized while in prison, in order to unburden his conscience, that he had to make a music as well. He actually set several prosaic fables that he knew to music, but 1 still do
not believe he reconciled the muses with these metric exercises" (Socrates ? die ? KSA, p. 544).
4. Even as profound a student of Nietzsche as Giorgio Colli was disinclined to follow up on Nietzsche's "kynical" discovery. Colli was not prepared to understand the difference between cyni- cism as the infamy of the powerful and "kynicism" as the nobility (noblesse) of the powerless. For this reason he saw only the suspect satisfaction of the cynic at the collapse of the great men of whom he believed a priori that they were good for nothing. Colli correctly observed that "this was not Nietzsche's nature. " He then incorrectly added the following: "It is therefore surprising to hear of him in Ecce Homo that he has here and there attained in his books the highest thing that can be achieved on ? ? (Nach Nietzsche ? ? 1983], p. 70). Here we can see the result of a minor inattention on the part of the ? always wrote ? -- along with the indifference of the Italian language to the distinction between "kynicism" and cynicism. ? surprise would be quickly dispelled if he were to place Nietzsche's literalization of philosophy into the proper context with the "cynical" form of speaking the truth. The editor should not forget Nietzsche's statement that "great subjects demand that one either keep silent about them or speak of them in great terms; by great I mean with
p. 535).
5. See Syllogismen der Bitterkeit (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969), p. 32.
6. See Nietzsche's posthumous aphorism in the sketch, From the War Academy ofLife: "Those who are deeply wounded possess an Olympic laughter; one has only what one needs" ? 13, p. 531). More pointedly: "At that time I learned to give myself to art cheerfully, objectively, with cu- riosity, above all with health and ? for a sick person, it seems to me, this is his
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 98 NOTES
A more perceptive and sympathetic eye will not miss what perhaps constitutes the
? ?
? ? ? 86 ? PAIN AND JUSTICE
movement of the excluded physical and dramatic forces. After having been wounded, banished into the darkness, and forgotten, the bodies that have all too long been abused as incarnation machines press toward the light; they make use of modern exonerations, authorizations, and symbolic constructs to prepare ? a new intervention by the lower elements ? a new presence of the
which cunningly and as a rule behaves as if it wanted something in particular
as if it were fighting for a place in the sun of subjectivities, while at bottom it is always only looking for a chance to once again become aesthetic and appear in the arena of absolute
But whereas, among these basis movements, the proletarian and feminist movements are more easily caught by the traps of subjectivity of abstract indi- vidualism, the emergent movement of the ? in its ego-psycho- logical reversal and its therapeutic ? the most promising man- ifestation of the three. The depth psychologies, which for two hundred years have increasingly left their mark on the physiognomy of intellectual Europe, are the characteristic impulse in the history here described as
They conceal the most important reasoning potential of an enlightenment that is not only instrumental and strategic: only they are prepared to consider properly the reality of the drama under the conditions of modernity. Wherever they remain true to their authentic impulse, they reject the deliberate indolence of rationalism and decline to cooperate with the abstract individualism that is only the psychic- legal form in which the universal domination of a nature-exploiting theoretical- moralistic subject wants to prevail. The depth psychologies are, as it were, the thinking heart of the ? which must beat during the epochal history of re- fusing light to the physis if all bodies are not to atrophy into intersubjectivized fighting machines and self-consciously cold legal entities. This heart thinks in the center of Dionysian passion ? the memory of the ecology of suffering, among which are included even the reason of exonerations and the construction of what is ? It is the living memorial that the history of the wounding of civilization has accumulated within itself, along with all of what must be consol- idated of induration and obscuration in order to bring forth the dominant degree of intellectual armament and the armoring of the body.
Admittedly, this all sounds a trace too dark to satisfy the need for understand- ing, in case one anyway and of one's own accord does not know what could be meant. Is the author here making a game, following the example of the more recent French authors, of cultivating darkness as a genre of the beaux arts? Or is it plausible that the veil over these references to a depth-psychological drama of knowledge should not be understood as a malicious component of a literary nature but instead illuminated as a ways and means by which the "thing itself" is there for us? How could our thinking, if it questions the limitations of its per- formance, circumvent the insight that it cannot render everything transparent? With the acknowledgment that the rational world is situated before an
? ? ? ? ? ? AND JUSTICE ? 87
tional" background and that transparency is able to unfold only before the massif of what is ? enlightenment can leave behind it the arena of an om- nipotent illuminating infantilism and reach the level of a maturity that can criti- cize
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
reason. What ? has observed of the ? he car- ries with him a shadow that "signifies more than the factual absence of potential
be applied on the whole to enlightenment.
What does this all mean? It is easier to say what if does not mean. It does not
mean, for instance, that something like a depth-psychology-related enlighten- ment of society should be undertaken immediately; it does not mean that we should make something of the insight into the dramatic, dark structure of sub- jectivity, something like a psychotherapy in the spirit of the production of indi- viduals who are simultaneously Dionysian and socially functional. It also does not mean that it is high time to shift over into a loving interaction after centuries of organized ? These negations do not intend to posit anything against loving interaction, psychotherapy, or the spirit of enterprise. What is being ne-
at least interrupted and ceased in its impulse ? the indisputably false
reflexes that direct our behavior toward
These reflexes, which are all supported by the myths of procedures for problem solving and the ideologies of engagement.
No other phenomenon illustrates this more clearly than the dramatic
piece of modern ? against which even the depth psychologies have been defined. For depth-psychological processes define them in Nietzsche's
these are the drama, tragedy, and according to the type of their occurrence, precisely that into which no production process or business enterprise can reach. They are the ontological model for what, because of its own form of being, for us, cannot be achieved, induced, or produced in accordance with a method. They stand ? the dominant rationalism of availa-
monuments to the unavailability of what is most real. This remains always something that happens or does not happen beyond the subjectivities that are in operation: passionate love, spontaneous memory, phenomenological in- sight, pure success, a happy synchronicity, a clarifying failure, timely separation, the bursting forth of primordial pain ? of this paraphrases an area in which the Will is not able to have its way. We cannot be silent about the fact that, in any case, even depth-psychological consciousness has almost no defense against its attempts to establish itself in the form of technical praxis and to accept
tocratic social activism.
Here the recollection of Nietzsche's theory of the drama can once again prove For Nietzsche clearly realized at the beginning before he set out on the trail to power as the universal formula of nihilistic the sort of tragedy in which mere calculating subjects play themselves is no longer possible: the "show" of the individual is the end of theater (one is reminded here of Nietzsche's critique of ? The overpowering drama unfurls wherever in-
? ? ? ? ? and
precede modern
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 88 ? PAIN AND JUSTICE
dividuals are not actors on their own but are rather conduits for a phe- nomenon that is older than their awareness of The authentic drama is consummated as a Dionysian passion of the physis, which phenomenologically reminds itself of its ? its "destiny," and its "future. " Accordingly, drama is by its very nature ? psychodrama, however, is the unity of memory and phenomenon, of knowledge and destiny. Therefore, enlightenment commands an indissoluble relationship to ? though the modern orga- nization of knowledge tends to reformulate all problems of enlightenment into questions pertaining to the power to dispose of information. Knowledge, how- ever, is the phenomenon of all phenomena and the destiny of all ? It con- tinually has the character of a psychonautical process that is spun out on the Ariadne's web of the terrible truth. We must remind ourselves that the search of the ? conqueror and patient of ? as a flight from the terrible truth; it can become a discovery if it leads to the conscious acceptance of the truth that has occurred and is occurring. On its spiritual journey, the subject is a nondivine nonsufferer searching for a divine patience ? is only another way of expressing the Dionysian integrity of life within the unity of lust, pain, and knowledge. Thus Dionysian wisdom does not teach a release from suffering; it does not believe in an evasive movement that leads upward. To a much greater extent, it gives us an understanding that at least frees us from suffering on ac- count of our
Would it then follow that a therapeutics that is tragic, in Nietzsche's sense, would be the guiding light for an enlightened enlightenment? Would it provide the model for that understanding that could not be compelled by any procedure or rendered controllable by any method? One would not have to hesitate for a moment to write down this observation if a profession of a dramatic therapeutics were not once again being misunderstood by the activistically tainted Zeitgeist as a declaration of a position with a view to practicality. Thus ? more el- evated, enlightenment must begin with a hesitancy: an enlightened hesitancy is the glimmer of meditation and of epic patience that has more to do with the psy- chonautical
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adventure than would be revealed at first glance. For psychoanalysis in the current sense of the term can occur only if the subject is set aside so that its history, its drama, can be told. The term "psychoanalysis" here of course refers not to the compromised Freudian undertaking but rather to the whole of psycho- nautics, that is, of depth-psychological enlightenment occurrences that, for ap- proximately two hundred years, have concerned themselves with the postreli- gious absorption of the subject into the space between aesthetics, therapeutics, and Dionysian reflection. To attribute such a high place value to depth-psycho- logical dramaturgy within the process of enlightenment is in no way intended to channel water toward the mills of therapeutic ? The psychonautical phe- nomena of modernity are not directed toward guidelines for action: their process is eventful enough in and of itself.
? ? ? PAIN AND JUSTICE ? 89
We have in any case few models before us as suggestive of the fact that it is not rational action but rather a rational willingness to allow things to happen that can become the prerequisite for knowledge and enlightenment. He who knows from experience what this formulation "means" will perhaps be able to judge what elements are at stake in such speculations on the relationship between doing and permitting. It is a matter of nothing less than a sensible division of reason between the poles of subject and process; this is what must be characterized as postmetaphysical learning processes. A therapeutic drama at the level of univer- sal civilization, which would be carried out without anyone authorizing or order- ing it, would be a learning process that could bring to an end the assault of active nihilism, with its assignments of value, constructive measures, establishment of levels, and eliminations. Heidegger probably indirectly had something of this sort in mind when he cited ? "But wherever danger resides, there also grows ? A planetary therapeutics that would occur without having a new central subject positioned above it seems to be the only thing that could bring the race for the salvation of subjectivities to a halt on their own account. Any activity in this ? if it were the kind of "trust-building measures" that seem to have come directly from the vocabulary of ? ? would have to prove themselves as mere continuation, and in the meantime even chil- dren have learned that the great abysses of the present are all located as they were before on the straight line of ? Whether the name of the therapeutics of ? here the term takes on a fatal ring ? be "catastrophe" under any circumstances is the question of our age, if it is expressed in thought. One must let the thousand lesser devils for whom this is no longer a ? but rather a ? have their poor malevolent fun.
Our reading of Nietzsche's book on tragedy leads to a sort of guideline for Diony- sian learning, a term for which one could also say "therapeutics," "psycho- nautics," or ? ? yes, even "politics," insofar as one understands the expression in accordance with the concept of night elucidated earlier. Diony- sian learning intends the flaring of insight to the point of danger, to a knowledge at the razor's edge: it characterizes thought on that stage from which there is no running away, because it is reality itself. Life is the trap that is a stage, and the stage that is a trap.
It is precisely within Dionysian learning, however, that Apollonian safety measures are necessary. The dramatic impulses of the actors may not be trans- lated directly from the aesthetic (realm) to the political; Walter Benjamin's warn- ings on this point are still valid today. They must first be subjected to an Apol- lonian intervention that regulates the political ecology of suffering. Under today's conditions, a political act would have to slip all too rapidly from impulsiveness into fascism.
90 ? PAIN AND JUSTICE
Let me put it this way: during the plunge from the body of the mother into late capitalism, the pain of individuation accumulates for which late capitalism as such cannot be held ? close this reflex may be and as nu- merous as the discourses may be that tell us, in the course of the instinctive search for the guilty party, where he can be found. To process this pain, which belongs not to the realm of social information but rather to the cycle of a subpolitical level, a self-aware antipolitical therapeutics is required ? to de- politicize individuals, but to deneuroticize politics, to protect the political from psychodynamic movements and Dionysian short ? By therapeutics I mean, of course, not only the operation of psychologizing subcultures, but all
rites, and games that contribute to the pleasure/pain ecology of social paths of conscious life and all lines of psychonautics. If mythological, poetic, shamanistic, and neoreligious lines now increasingly appear among
these, this does not indicate ? least from a functional viewpoint ? insult to the modern by a new irrationalism, but instead speaks to a well-meaning release of politics from the suspicion that it could be immediately responsible for the
and the sufferings caused by individuation in individual lives.
Within the new multiplicity of psychonautics, a mature sense of the distribu- tion of responsibilities is revealed. One's misery thus consists not so much in one's sufferings as in the inability to be responsible for ? inability to want to be responsible for them. The will to accept one's own responsibility -- which is, as it were, the psychonautical variant of the amor ? nei- ther narcissistic hubris nor fatalistic ? but rather the courage and the composure to accept one's own life in all its reality and potentiality. He who wants to be responsible for himself stops searching for guilty parties: he ceases to live theoretically and to constitute himself on missing origins and supposed causes. Through the drama, he himself
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becomes the hero of ? pa- tient of truth. If enlightenment is carried out in this sense, it lea'ds to a Dionysian autonomy: this is as far removed from the autonomy of the subject of idealistic modernity as the embodied existence is from the illusion of "overcoming" ex-
The Dionysian therapeutics that has been spreading from European soil into the planetary standard for two hundred years contains the most pointed challenge to the dominant forms of pseudoenlightenment, which is continually searching for causes and other "guilty parties" in order to finally establish itself, driven by the dream of becoming a subject or a god, as ideal successor in the place of the guilty. Who can wonder that, in the course of this pseudoenlightenment, the ac- count books of suffering of humankind and nature are bulging to the point of
He who senses the ruinous element in this uncontrolled pseudoenlightenment will recognize that Nietzsche ? spite of his unpredictable deviations and his
? ? ? ? ? ? ? PAIN AND JUSTICE ? 91
malevolent tones ? not preach a counterenlightenment; to a much greater degree he, like no one else among the greater figures of modernity, set about to understand the concept of enlightenment as adventurous thinking to the very limits of pain. Almost one hundred years after the onset of his illness, Nietzsche can finally be read as he deserves to be: as one of those who, because of a Diony- sian consciousness, raise their voices against the universal conspiracy of active indolence so that they can report to us on the loneliness and the "heavy, heavy happiness" of the unloved animal who says " I . " Even he, together with his hopeless hardness and his sad battle of separation, can be read as someone in whom the tender empire of the body wanted to learn to speak once again. With his pathos of integrity, his feeling for ? and his intellectual ? he is not so far from the "reciprocal ? ? take up ? ? beautiful formulation ? which those who were born later are able, with a little com- municative luck, to give their existence a better turn. It remains futile to ask what would have become of Nietzsche if he had unraveled the thread of Ariadne that led to her, the mistress of the ? His stage was from the very beginning constructed as a labyrinth, from which there was no escape to another. In his dra- matic coming out of himself before the eyes of everyone and no one, however, he burrowed through, turned around, pushed to the pinnacle, and brought to an end an entire system of values, an entire civilization, an entire era. Those who live after him have an easier time of it. He has warned them of the three unforgivable original sins of consciousness: idealism, moralism, and
But nothing in Nietzsche's writing can have as great a continuing effect as his own refutation of his theory of the will to power. His whole life contradicts it and testifies to a stimulating fragility that is turned toward us like the hardly disguised interior of the terrible truth. Wherever he is wounded, endangered, and ingenu- ous, it is there that he is still among us; wherever his icy abundance buries him alive, it is there that he anticipates the fate of all later individualisms. Wherever he walks with transparent optimism over abysses, it is there that he demonstrates what it means today to be contemporary. And wherever he affirms the course of the world that is crushing him to death so that he can thus create a space for his self-affirmation, it is there that he is a witness to the happiness of those who are without hope.
? r
? Notes
? citations from The Birth of Tragedy ? are taken from Walter ? standard translation (The Birth of ? and the Case of Wagner, translated and with commentary by Walter
[New York: Vintage Press, ? Wherever possible, quotations from other works by Nietzsche are taken from known translations, for which bibliographic information is included. Translated quo- tations that include only a reference to the German edition and are not cited in the notes are my
1. Centauric Literature
Letter from ? translated and quoted by Walter Kaufmann in his introduction to The Por- Nietzsche (New York: Viking Press. ? pp. 7-8. Notes for all subsequent quotations from
this volume will give the title of Nietzsche's text, PN, and pertinent page numbers.
2. "Homer's Contest," PN, p. 37.
3. Letter to Erwin Rohde, in Nietzsche: A Self-Portrait from His Letters, ed. and trans. Peter Fuss
and Henry Shapiro (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 10.
2.
The Philology of Existence, the Dramaturgy of Force
"Gradually, it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious ? Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966). p. 13.
2. This is not a simple "violation of self," as the psychologizing subjectivism of a popular critical mode of thinking would have it. It is at best an active acceptance of a "thrownness"
into a state of ? ? With this, something is being outlined that belongs characteristically to the psycho-ontologicial
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phenomenon of masculinity. A very stimulating work on this theme is ? Schulte's ? ? euch
Nietzsches ? der ? ? des ? (Frankfurt/Paris: ? 1982). 3. The following comment betrays the extent to which Nietzsche consciously dealt with the his-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 95
? ? 96 NOTES
parallelism between Wagnerian modernity and Dionysian antiquity: "For me, the phenomenon of Wagner viewed in the flesh initially negatively illustrated the fact that we have up to now not yet understood the Greek world and, vice versa, that it is therein that we will ? the only analogies to our phenomenon of Wagner" ? Gesamtausgo. be Werke, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino ? [Berlin: W. de Gruyter, ? 9, p. 232. Hereafter cited as Werke. )
4. I combine this statement with a question mark behind ? thesis, in accordance with which the postmodern condition is characterized by a radical loss of belief in all historical narratives," i. e. , all philosophies of history. But what if the philosophy of history possessed
at least no apparent -- narrative form? Perhaps history is not an epic phenomenon, but rather a the- atrical one, comparable not to the novel but to the commedia ? in which the plot is carried along from scene to scene thanks to the improvisational powers of an ensemble of actors. If this were true, the usual polemic against any sort of historical- philosophical tension would be reduced to the level of a battle with critical windmills.
? ? ? ? ? ? 5. Lou Andreas-Salome places my opinion,
self at the center of her psychological portrait of Friedrich
6. Manfred Frank, Der kommende Gott: Vorlesungen 1982).
impulse toward release from the
in seinen Werken.
die Neue (Frankfurt:
? ? ? ? ? 7. Here 1 mean the languages/voices of a secular inwardness that was cultivated from the eigh- teenth through the twentieth ? symbolic space that extends from The Magic Flute to The Magic Mountain.
8. A twofold cultural defense mechanism can be perceived in Nietzsche"s Dionysian discourse. Specifically, the romantic aesthetic of genius and the psychology of an inner duality symbolically conceal an actual state of psychic disruption. In general, the establishment of the symbolic register regulates the real unchaining of Dionysian forces in a manner that is culturally acceptable. Only through this powerful symbolic guarding are the ? processes of emergence and release from inhibitions in their entirety possible, processes that characterize the modern psychologies. Since the eighteenth century, an enormous thrust toward the breaking down of barriers, toward loosening and unchaining, has been set in motion within the bourgeois revolution in ? under the protection of new, intensive, civilizing defense thrust whose unfolding we cur- rently discuss under the misleading rubric of postmodernism.
9. "The ? ? ? votary of Dionysus is understood only by his peers. With what astonishment must the Apollonian Greek have beheld ? With an astonishment that was all the greater the more it was mingled with the shuddering suspicion that all this was actually not so very alien to him after all, in fact, that it was only his Apollonian consciousness which, like a veil, hid his Dionysian world from his vision" (BT, p. 67).
10. At the end of Chapter 4 I will make several observations on the incarnation/psychosis prob- lematic in Nietzsche's "endgame. "
3. Cave ? or, Danger, Terrible Truth!
seems at present inevitable that, when we turn away from the vocabulary of the old Euro- pean metaphysics, we ? back on concepts whose awkwardly physicalistic or old-fashioned undertones will elude no one. That will happen ? faute de ? as well ? the assumption that
? ? ? ? ? it might be possible to use old and
thinking through a surplus of
of the old physicalistic concepts of energy,
the intellectual side of metaphysical dualism in a material, process-related and textual ? that
stricto unsuitable words in a new way. It comes down to and information-related instances within the context of now including what has traditionally belonged on
? ? ? ? ? ? 2. Nietzsche, Kritische ? ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, ? 6, p. 323. Hereafter cited as
? ? ? NOTES 97
There are within the psyche processes that are blatantly analogous to those that are involved in the accumulation of ? not just in a metaphorical sense. Producing subjects have to a great extent been organized in the form of subjective capital or learning ? machinery; subjective cap- italism is the psychic reality of intellectual subcultures. Perhaps this is the
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source of the desolate lack of solidarity perceived by those who try to communicate with the intellectual public in a language that remains ? in the face of the compulsions toward accumulation and self-armament character- istic of combative and ? intellects.
4. This is true at least for the public, didactic, and rhetorical aspect of his reflection. In his inti- mate observations, however, Nietzsche saw through the "will to power" as the manifestation of an esoteric comedy of subjectivity.
5. Hans Ebeling offers a reflection on occasional motives in a weakened theory of subjectivity in his study, ? ? ? ? ? ? 1983).
4. Dionysus Meets Diogenes; or, The Adventures of the Embodied Intellect
Sloterdijk's text here reads auf der Suche nach the title of the German translation of Proust's ? la recherche perdu is Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit. This would translate into English as "The Search for Lost Time," a more accurate equivalent of the French than Remembrance of Things
2. We should not overlook the fact that, during the initial phase of ? structural scholar- the Pythagoreans -- a conscious awareness of the necessary intersection between abstrac- tion and ecstasy, theory and celebration (Festlichkeit), and mathematics and enthusiasm was still
dominant, an awareness that resounds in authentic Platonisms and in an erotics of knowledge. Nietzsche recounts the matter as follows: "The severest ? that can be leveled against Socrates was made by a dream image. As he told his friends in prison, Socrates was visited repeatedly by the same dream, which always relayed the same message: ? make ? But to his last days Socrates had contented himself with the opinion that philosophy was the highest form of music. Finally he realized while in prison, in order to unburden his conscience, that he had to make a music as well. He actually set several prosaic fables that he knew to music, but 1 still do
not believe he reconciled the muses with these metric exercises" (Socrates ? die ? KSA, p. 544).
4. Even as profound a student of Nietzsche as Giorgio Colli was disinclined to follow up on Nietzsche's "kynical" discovery. Colli was not prepared to understand the difference between cyni- cism as the infamy of the powerful and "kynicism" as the nobility (noblesse) of the powerless. For this reason he saw only the suspect satisfaction of the cynic at the collapse of the great men of whom he believed a priori that they were good for nothing. Colli correctly observed that "this was not Nietzsche's nature. " He then incorrectly added the following: "It is therefore surprising to hear of him in Ecce Homo that he has here and there attained in his books the highest thing that can be achieved on ? ? (Nach Nietzsche ? ? 1983], p. 70). Here we can see the result of a minor inattention on the part of the ? always wrote ? -- along with the indifference of the Italian language to the distinction between "kynicism" and cynicism. ? surprise would be quickly dispelled if he were to place Nietzsche's literalization of philosophy into the proper context with the "cynical" form of speaking the truth. The editor should not forget Nietzsche's statement that "great subjects demand that one either keep silent about them or speak of them in great terms; by great I mean with
p. 535).
5. See Syllogismen der Bitterkeit (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969), p. 32.
6. See Nietzsche's posthumous aphorism in the sketch, From the War Academy ofLife: "Those who are deeply wounded possess an Olympic laughter; one has only what one needs" ? 13, p. 531). More pointedly: "At that time I learned to give myself to art cheerfully, objectively, with cu- riosity, above all with health and ? for a sick person, it seems to me, this is his
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 98 NOTES
A more perceptive and sympathetic eye will not miss what perhaps constitutes the
? ?
