David Pavett (London:
Lawrence
& Wishart, 1975).
Sloterdijk - You Must Change Your Life
, p.
35.
32 Ibid. , p. 103.
33 Eliade, Yoga, p. 296.
34 See Niklas Luhmann, 'Die Autopoiesis
des Bewusstseins', Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis: Bekenntnis und Gestandnis, ed.
Alois Hahn and Volker Knapp (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987), pp. 64L
35 Thomas of Celano, First and Second Life of Saint Francis, with Selections from the Treatise 011 the Miracles o f Blessed Francis, trans. Placid Hermann
(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1963), p. 84.
36 Critics of the miracle of stigmata have formulated the taboo-breaking ques-
tion of why the wounds in the hands of Francis and his imitators appeared in the palms rather than the historically accurate place, namely the wrist bones. Their reply: because Francis was himself imitating the painted and sculpted crucifixes of his time, in which nails through the palms had long since become the norm. This does not answer the question of whether the wounds came about through pious deception, self-harm, or some physiolog- ically inexplicable autoplastic achievement of the holy body. The first option is espoused with regard to Francis of Assisi by Christoph Tiircke, who con- siders the saint the greatest actor, or most determined faker, of the Middle Ages: see Tiircke, 'Askese und Performance: Franziskus als Regisseur und Hauptdarsteller seiner selbst', Neue Rundschau 4 (2000), pp. 3St By analogy, the Indian mystic Ramakrishna, a worshipper of the Great Mother, claimed that she gave him the gift of menstruation as a sign of grace.
467
I I I
NOTES TO PP. 243-57
37 Regula Benedicti 7, 67.
38 Ibid. , 7, 5.
39 That is why the Regula Benedicti contains such formulations as 'hasten to
the perfection of the monastic ways' (73,2) and 'hurrying forward to your
heavenly fatherland' (ad patriam caelestem festinare) (73, 8).
40 Peter Sloterdijk, Rage and Time, trans. Mario Wenning (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 69f.
41 In the later mystical theology of Gregor of Nyssa, this dynamized mimesis
is pushed further to the thesis that Christian desire, because it follows a boundless object, can never rest, only lead into a paradoxical unity of move- ment and standstill.
42 See pp. 272f.
43 Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 66, 9. Crescere posse imperfectae rei signum
est.
44 See Peter Sloterdijk, Spharen II. Globen, Makrospharologie (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1999), pp. 326-39 (Excursus 1, 'Spater sterben im Amphitheater:
Uber den Aufschub, romisch').
45 Epistolae morales ad Luci/ium, 71, 25.
46 Ibid. , 71, 26. Scit se esse oneri ferendo.
47 Ibid. , 71, 27.
48 Ibid. , 71, 37.
49 Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 71, 11. While Stoic doctrine can only con-
ceive of a perfection that is static and satisfying, Christian mysticism opened up the perspective of a perfection without a loss of desire. Thus Karl Rahner states in his summary of Gregory of Nyssa's mysticism of ascent: 'The only true sight of God is that which does not offer a final satisfaction of longing. ' See Marcel Viller and Karl Rahner, Aszese und Mystik in der Vaterzeit: Ein Abriss der fruhchristlichen Spiritualitat (Freiburg: Herder, 1989), p. 144.
50 See Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis, pp. 12f.
51 The last example of an existence under the star of completion is provided by
the autobiography of Jean-Paul Sartre, Les mots (1964), where the young Sartre's flight into the artist's career is deconstructed a priori as a neurotic fabrication.
52 Regula Benedicti 73, 2.
53 Ibid. , 7, 7.
54 Ibid. , 7, 66.
55 Concerning the monk's silence, see Regula Benedicti 6,1-8 and 7, 9-11.
56 The similarities between the early asketeria (i. e. the monastic training camp)
and a military facility are discussed by Marcel Viller and Karl Rahner in their work Aszese und Mystic in der Vaterzeit, pp. 92f. This leads to a second derivation of the ideal of obedience from religiously overcoded sol- diership. A third derivation would address imperial and ecclesiastical func- tionary ethics; concerning the ecclesiastical side, see Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2011), and on the impe- rial side, see Sloterdijk, Spharen II, pp. 729f.
57 S. Joannis Abbatis vulgo Climaci opera Omnia editore et interpreto Mattheo Radero (1633), in Patrologiae Cursus Competus, ed. Jean-Paul Migne, Series Graeca 88 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), col. 1152. In the fol- lowing, I shall use both the Greek original and the Latin translation.
468
58 59 60 61
62
63
col, 1147.
coL 663. Ibid. , col. 674.
Hugo Ball, Byzantinisches Christentum: Drei Heiligenleben, ed. Bernd Wacker (G6ttingen: Wallstein, 2010), p. 28.
At the same time, the monastic psychagogues knew the difference between the false tears of self-pity and the true ones of remorse or devotion. By analogy, see The Questions of King Milinda, trans. T. W. Rhys Davies, ed. F. Max Muller (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2001).
All' halos ho palaios anthropos hamartia kaleitai. Non enim unum est
NOTES PP. 25
peccatum, sed totus vetus homo peccatum appellatur (col. 78112). 64 Joannis Climaci, Scala Paradisi, col. 782.
65 Ibid. , col. 1149150.
66 Galatians 2:20.
67 Joannis Climaci, coL 1153/4.
68 Ibid. , col. 1157/8.
69 See Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, trans. David Ratmoko (Palo
Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009).
70 The corresponding literature certainly pays lip service to the possibility of
'perfection outside of monasticism', but if one sees how quickly even authors such as Viller and Rahner, the Jesuits cited several times above, get through the subject in their outline of early Christian spirituality (§36), the truth of the matter is clear enough. Before the start of devotio moderna, what applies in practice is this: nulla salus outside the order.
71 Lowith's commentary on this is still central: Karl L6with, Meaning in History (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1957).
72 See Jacques Ie Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1984).
73 Quoted (as a motto) in ibid. , p. v.
74 In his book La vie de Ramakrishna (1929), Romain Rolland points to the
moment of demographic parity between 300 million gods and the same
number of living Indians.
75 See pp. 231£ above.
76 Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India, ed. Joseph Campbell (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 41.
77 William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 5, Scene 2.
78 Mysore Hiriyanna, Essentials of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Diamond
Pocket Books, 1996), p. 102.
79 Huineng, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, ed. and trans. P. B.
Yampolsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 137.
80 See the comprehensive commentary of B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga
Sutras ofPatanjali (London: Thorsons, 2002).
81 See Digha Nikaya, 9.
82 See Eliade, Yoga, pp. 169-73.
83 A. M. Podznejev, Dhyana und Samadhi im mongolischen Lamaismus
(Hanover: Lafaire, 1927).
84 See Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds. ), Making Things Public:
Atmospheres of Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), ch. 4,
'From Objects to Things', pp. 250-95.
85 See pp. 119f above.
469
86
92 93
94 95
96 97
98
99
100
101
102 103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110 111
the Marxist educational theorist and psychologist Lucien Seve, L'Ecole et la Nation (October 1964).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust II, I. 7488.
TN: in German, the equivalent of 'school desk' (especially in its metonymic sense) is Schulbank, which actually translates as 'school bench'.
There is also no shortage of mocking journalists: see Gita Mehta, Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East (New York: Vintage, 1994).
See the chapter 'The Salvation of Identifications' in Axel Michaels, Hinduism: Past and Present, trans. Barbara Harshav (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 325-44.
See Michael von Bruck, Einfiihrung in den Buddhismus (Frankfurt: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2007), pp. 188f.
See the collection of statements by Kodo Sawake (1880-1965), one of the most striking Zen masters of recent times: Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of 'Homeless Kodo' (Kyoto: Kyoto Zen Center, 1999).
See pp. 308f below.
Regula Benedicti 2, 24: miscens temporibus tempora, terroribus blandi- menta, dirum magistri, pium patris ostendat affectum.
Pierre Hadot, 'The Figure of Socrates', in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 147-78.
Slavoj Zizek, Liebe dein Symptom wie dich selbst! Jacques Lacans Psychoanalyse und die Medien (Berlin: Merve, 1991).
See pp. 200f above.
A contemporary exception to this is the Socratic performance philosopher Bazan Brock; see Peter Sloterdijk, 'Der Jahrhundertmensch', in Bazan Brock, Lustmarsch durchs Theoriegelande: Musealisiert Euchl (Cologne: DuMont, 2008), pp. 6-24.
See Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 34.
Ibid. , 35.
Ibid. , 33.
The same tendency appears in some younger schools of Buddhism. Concerning the complex of Sophistic paideia as training for universal ability, see Thomas Buchheim, Die Sophistik als Avantgarde des normalen Lebens (Hamburg: Meiner, 1968), pp. 108-27; concerning the Sophists' approach to kairos, see pp. 82f.
Ibid. , p. 114.
Concerning the history of the piano recital and its increasingly sterile char- acter, see Kenneth Hamilton, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and
TO
trans. J. 1997), p. 37.
87 See Bruno Snell, The
Literature, trans. T. G. Rosenmeyer (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1982), ch. 1, 'Homer's View of Man', pp. 1-22.
88 John 14:6.
89 John 10:30.
90 Maitreya Upanishad III-I, 4.
91 A symptomatic example of this is the essay 'Les "dons" n'existent pas' by
470
in Greek Philosophy and
lvlodern and New York: Oxford
112 See pp. 54ft above.
113 The most successful athlete in antiquity, Milo of Croton (c. 556-510 Be),
managed to remain undefeated for over a quarter of a century, from the
sixtieth to the sixty-seventh Olympiad (540-512 Be).
114 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (London: Allen Lane, 2008).
115 Ibid. , p. 20.
116 Ibid. , pp. 59ff.
117 This function of 'craftsmanly' and factory-work activity, which in turn
affects the practising-producing person, had already been grasped by Lucien Seve in his studies towards a Marxist personality theory, though he made them virtually unrecognizabJe through a one-sided productivistic terminol- ogy. See Lucien Seve, Marxism and the Theory of Human Personality, trans.
David Pavett (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975). The essay also contains notable ideas for a theory of subjective capital and the 'rise in the organic composition of the personality'.
118 Sennett, The Craftsman, p. 57.
119 See Robert E. Cushman, John Wesley's Experimental Divinity: Studies in
Methodist Doctrinal Standards (Nashville: Kingswood, 1989).
120 Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy),
trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage, 1973), p. 104.
121 Ibid. , p. 51. Marx emphasizes in the same context that there is 'a devil of a difference' between uncivilized Russian slaves who allow themselves to be used for anything and 'civilized people who apply themselves to everything' (p. 105). This is the difference that, according to Marx, one cannot under- stand without having grasped the entire development of abstract labour in
the system of capital.
122 The doctrine of the Alexandrine presbyter Arius (c. 260-336) was con-
demned as heresy by the First Council of Nicaea in 325. It claimed that Christ was begotten, and subordinate to God the Father; some of his succes- sors derived the theory of the purely human, albeit illuminated nature of Christ from this.
123 See Res Publica Litteraria: Die Il1stitutionen der Gelehrsamkeit der fruhen Neuzeit, ed. Sebastian Neumeister, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1989).
124 The former sacrifices belong to the universe of older religions of equilib- rium, which strive for 'theocosmic' balance; in them, the totality of the world is at once the first immune system (hence the barely suppressible interest of 'worldlings' in a 'perfect world'); the second belong to the reli- gions of imbalance, which call for an abandonment of the imperfect world for the sake of saving the soul; in them, the refuge of the soul forms the highest immune alliance with God. One recognizes these theocentrists and their successors, the agents of 'critical consciousness', not least by their striving to make the very idea of a 'perfect world' seem ridiculous at all
costs.
125 See Peter Sloterdijk, 'Absturz und Kehre: Rede tiber Heideggers Denken in
der Bewegung', in Nicht gerettet: Versuche nach Heidegger (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 2001), pp. 12-81.
126 Plato, Republic, trans. John Llewelyn Davies and David James Vaughan
(Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1997), p. 229. 471
128
129
130
131 132 133
134
135
136
137
138 139 140
1
2 3
4
Pierre 'Conversion', in Exercices et Etudes Augustiniennes, 1 p. 1
See Peter Sioterdijk, Sphiiren III. Plurale Sphiirologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2004), pp. 261ff. : 'Nicht Vertrag, nicht Gewachs. Anniiherung an die Raum-Vielheuten, die bedauerlicherweise Gesellschaften genannt werden'; for arguments towards a critique of political holism, see in par- ticular pp. 277£.
Concerning the difference between epistrophe and metanoia, see Hadot, 'Conversion', and Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981-1982, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Concerning a generalized concept of decorum, see Heiner Mlihlmann, The Nature of Cultures: A Blueprint for a Theory of Culture Genetics, trans. R. Payne (Vienna and New York: Springer, 1996). On metanoia from a political perspective, see also Peter Sloterdijk, Theorie der Nachkriegszeiten: Bemerkungen zu den deztsch-franzosischen Beziehungen nach 1945 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2008).
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 157-209.
See Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003).
Oswald Spengler, The Decline o f the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Knopf, 1939), pp. 345f.
James, The Varieties ofReligious Experience, pp. 139£.
See p. 246 above.
Concerning the reversal of uti (to use) and frui (to enjoy) in Augustine, see Augustinus-Lexikon, ed. Cornelius Mayer, vol. 3, fasc. 112 (BasIe: Schwabe, 2004), col. 70-5.
Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 61.
Thomas of Celano, First and Second Life ofSaint Francis, p. 143.
Ibid. , pp. 201£.
Peter Sioterdijk, 1m Weltinnenraum des Kapitals: Fur eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), ch. 11, 'Die Erfindung der Subjektivitiit - Die primiire Enthemmung und ihre Ratgeber', pp. 93f.
III THE EXERCISES OF THE MODERNS
Maiora einem post omnia anteacta saecula et sperandi et tentandi tempus est. J. A. Comenius, A Reformation of Schooles, 1642 (Menston: Scolar, 1969), p. 22.
Quoted in Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 103.
Leon Trotsky in a speech given to representatives of a Danish student organization on 27 November 1932: In Defense ofthe Russian Revolution (New York: Pioneer Press, 1933), p. 40.
L'homme en est venu atraiter l'humanite comme une matiere. Quoted in Lucien Gauthier, Von Montaigne bis Valery: Der geistige Weg Frankreichs (Reutlingen: Continental, 1949), p. xxvi.
472
5
6
7
8 9
10 11
12 13
14
15
16 17
18 19
A number of authors Paracelsus have been identified as sources of Comenius' the authors of the Rosicrucian manifestos, Johann Heinrich Alsted, Theologia Naturalis (1615), as well as Benedictus Figuius, Pandora Magllalium Naturalium (Strasbourg: Zetzner, 1608). See Comenius, The Way of Light, trans. E. T. Campagnac (Liverpool and London: Liverpool University Press/Hodder & Stoughton, 1938). Regarding Comenius' pedagogical metaphysics in the run-up to the Enlightenment, see also pp. 350f below.
Comenius' impatience can be attributed to the apocalyptic expectations of the late Reformation; that of his successors already presupposed the shift from the apocalypse to the philosophy of history, and hence both the bour- geoisification of apocalypticism and its revolutionary defusing, while the ideologues of revolution preached neo-apocalyptic escalation.
TN: the original French title of Foucault's Discipline and Punish is Surveiller et punir - 'Supervise and Punish', rendered accurately in the book's German title Oberwachen und Strafen, which Sloterdijk echoes here.
Concerning the formative effects of craftsmanly and instrumental exercises, see pp. 292f above.
See pp. 148f above. The tendency to associate the concept of discipline with despotism is not, incidentally, unique to the post-1945 or post-1968 zeit- geist. It is already evident in the work of Johann Friedrich Herbart, Kant's successor in Konigsberg, who discarded the term 'discipline' used in so carefree a manner by Kant, only to choose an even more problematic replacement like 'government', a suggestion that recalls Foucault's idea of self-government. See Christopher Korn, Bildung und Disziplin: Problemgeschichtlich-systematische Untersuchung zum Begriffder Disziplin in Erziehung und Unterricht (Frankfurt: Lang, 2003), pp. 105f.
Galatians 6:15 and 5:24.
Augustine, Confessiones, book IV, ch. 5; Confessions, trans. Francis Joseph Sheed, ed. Michael P. Foley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), p. 60.
Hamilton Club Speech, Chicago, 10 April 1899.
Peter Sloterdijk, 1m Weltinnenraum des Kapitals: Fur eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), p. 79.
As late as the nineteenth century, spokesmen for popular hygienic and gym- nastic systems stirred up the fear of exhaustion and overtaxing (fatigue, surmenage) through excessive exercises - not only because of their bias towards notions of equilibrium, but also because they did not yet under- stand the principle of supercompensation. See Philipp Sarasin, Reizbare Maschinen: Eine Geschichte des Korpers 1765-1914 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001), pp. 317f.
See Peter Sloterdijk, 'Die Farbung der Burger', in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds. ), Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
Matthew 25:29.
See Peter Nicki, Ordnung der Gefuhle: Studien zum Begriff des habitus (Hamburg: Meiner, 2005), pp. 48f.
See Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), pp. 113-23.
S0ren Kierkegaard, Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs, trans. M. G. Piety (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 4.
NOTES TO PI>.
473
NOTE'} TO
Sartre contradicts this with his thesis that there are no because
habits are inertias and thus bad per se.
21 See pp. 272£ above.
22 This can be seen most clearly in one of the most influential works of moral
philosophy in recent decades: Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). The author has often been praised for a beneficially corrective return to a neo- Aristotelian ethics of virtue - which, it is argued, is a welcome development amidst the moral confusion of modern societies. If one takes MacIntyre's closing statement into account, however, where he asserts the necessity of unifying St Benedict and Trotsky in a single person in order to find a new guideline, it becomes clear that one is dealing here with anything but an over- coming of confusion; neither Benedict nor Trotsky can make any contribu- tion to a return to virtues. Both are subject to the eros of the impossible: the first in the mode of holiness, the second in the mode of political crimes in the service of good. One must be grateful to MacIntyre for revealing that behind the neo-Aristotelian juste milieu discourse, the ethics of holy excess from early Catholicism is still in effect. No figure could expose modern indecision more clearly: the Benedict-Trotsky hybrid would never be able to decide whether it should work on self-improvement in the monastery or strive to better the world through terrorist activities. The constructive impulse of MacIntyre's reflections, therefore, cannot be absorbed into a restorative ethics of virtue. What is on the agenda is rather a training ethics in response to the sublime metanoetic imperative of our time. See pp. 442f below.
23 Concerning the transitions between the monastic and the humanistic spheres in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Harald Mi. iller, Habit ulld Habitus: Monche und Humallisten im Dialog (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck,2006).
24 The term also appears in English-language sociology, where some authors refer to embedding, disembedding and re-embedding in the relationship between the individual and traditional life forms. See in particular Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1990).
25 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 'Dine zu Coblenz im Sommer 1774', in Siimtliche Gedichte (Frankfurt: Insel, 2007), p. 326.
26 TN: 'habit' here refers exclusively to the monk's attire; no double meaning is intended.
27
28 29
Concerning the foundation of non-monetary banking phenomena, see Peter Sloterdijk, Rage and Time, trans. Mario Wenning (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 135£. On the philosophical deduction of the idea of the world museum, see Beat Wyss, Trauer der Vollendung: Von der Asthetik des Deutschen Idealismus zur Kulturkritik an der Moderlle (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 1985); on the metaphysics of the archive, see Boris Groys! Thomas Knoefel, Politik der Unsterblichkeit (Munich: Hanser, 2002); on the transformation of immortality into a practical idea, see the references to Nikolai Fedorov on pp. 353 and 395£ below.
'Bent am I and humbled', Regula Benedicti 7, 66-70.
Concerning the triad of habits, passions and mental inertias (also known as 'opinions') and their overcoming through the first ethical distinction, see p. 167 above.
474
30
whv their all relate to conditions
as by 'Hesiod, whereas modern civilization must
mrjprotn. rvi as a second Silver Age; this poses other questions and searches for other answers.
31 See Ulrich Brockling, Das unternehmerische Selbst: Soziologie einer Subjektivierungs(orm (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007).
32 Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, trans. Joseph Jacobs (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1993), p. 171.
33 Ibid. , p. 1.
34 The word superhomo (from the Greek hyperanthropos) first appeared in a
papal document from the late thirteenth century, the canonization bull for
Louis IX issued by Boniface VIII in 1297.
35 Only Luhmann's systems theory, thanks to its metabiological approach,
integrated the immunological imperative into its foundations. See Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, trans. John Bednarz Jr. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 369£.
36 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book (or Everyone and Nobody, trans. Graham Parkes (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 13.
37 See Heinz-Theo Homann, Das funktionale Argument: Konzepte und Kritik funktionslogischer Religionsbegrundung (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1997).
38 Concerning Christian surrealism, see pp. 205£ above.
39 Trotsky took up this motif to explain the intended direction of socialist
technology: 'Faith merely promises to move mountains; but technology, which takes nothing "on faith," is actually able to cut down mountains and
move them [. . . J according to a general industrial and artistic plan. ' Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, ed. William Keach, trans. Rose Trunsky (Chicago: Haymarket, 2005), p. 204.
40 The word, which can be traced back to the 1820s, caused (along with its object) a furore from the mid-nineteenth century on (in French entraine- ment, in German usually the same word as in English, though initially also Trainirung on occasion).
41 Concerning the kinship between abstract labour and abstract fitness, see the Marxian thesis (cited in part II, n. 120 above) on the difference between slavery and jobbing. The author sees in this difference a historical move- ment whose interpretation requires the entire apparatus of a critique of production conditions; to understand the emergence of abstract fitness requires no less than a comprehensive reconstruction of practice conditions.
42 See Manfred Osten, 'Konfuzius oder Chinas neue Kulturrevolution', in China: Insel-Almanach auf das Jahr 2009 (Frankfurt: Insel, 2009), pp. 266-97.
43 Concerning the antagonistic alliance of state and school, see pp. 348£ below.
44 TN: the author uses the English word in this context.
45 The current state of the enhancement debate is described from a pragmatic
perspective by Bernward Gesang in Perfektionierung des Menschen (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 2007).
46 TN: the double meaning of 'putting on' is intended.
47 See Barbara Vinken, Fashion Zeitgeist: Trends and Cycles in the Fashion
System, trans. Mark Hewson (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005). 475
48
49
Concerning the connection between the symbolic order of 'society' and the theatricization of law, see Pierre Legendre, La fabrique de l'homme occi- dental (Paris: Mille et une nuits, 1996).
Joseph de Maistre, Petersburg Dialogues, Or , Conversations on the Temporal Government ofProvidence, trans. Richard A. Lebrun (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993), p. 19.
32 Ibid. , p. 103.
33 Eliade, Yoga, p. 296.
34 See Niklas Luhmann, 'Die Autopoiesis
des Bewusstseins', Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis: Bekenntnis und Gestandnis, ed.
Alois Hahn and Volker Knapp (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987), pp. 64L
35 Thomas of Celano, First and Second Life of Saint Francis, with Selections from the Treatise 011 the Miracles o f Blessed Francis, trans. Placid Hermann
(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1963), p. 84.
36 Critics of the miracle of stigmata have formulated the taboo-breaking ques-
tion of why the wounds in the hands of Francis and his imitators appeared in the palms rather than the historically accurate place, namely the wrist bones. Their reply: because Francis was himself imitating the painted and sculpted crucifixes of his time, in which nails through the palms had long since become the norm. This does not answer the question of whether the wounds came about through pious deception, self-harm, or some physiolog- ically inexplicable autoplastic achievement of the holy body. The first option is espoused with regard to Francis of Assisi by Christoph Tiircke, who con- siders the saint the greatest actor, or most determined faker, of the Middle Ages: see Tiircke, 'Askese und Performance: Franziskus als Regisseur und Hauptdarsteller seiner selbst', Neue Rundschau 4 (2000), pp. 3St By analogy, the Indian mystic Ramakrishna, a worshipper of the Great Mother, claimed that she gave him the gift of menstruation as a sign of grace.
467
I I I
NOTES TO PP. 243-57
37 Regula Benedicti 7, 67.
38 Ibid. , 7, 5.
39 That is why the Regula Benedicti contains such formulations as 'hasten to
the perfection of the monastic ways' (73,2) and 'hurrying forward to your
heavenly fatherland' (ad patriam caelestem festinare) (73, 8).
40 Peter Sloterdijk, Rage and Time, trans. Mario Wenning (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 69f.
41 In the later mystical theology of Gregor of Nyssa, this dynamized mimesis
is pushed further to the thesis that Christian desire, because it follows a boundless object, can never rest, only lead into a paradoxical unity of move- ment and standstill.
42 See pp. 272f.
43 Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 66, 9. Crescere posse imperfectae rei signum
est.
44 See Peter Sloterdijk, Spharen II. Globen, Makrospharologie (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1999), pp. 326-39 (Excursus 1, 'Spater sterben im Amphitheater:
Uber den Aufschub, romisch').
45 Epistolae morales ad Luci/ium, 71, 25.
46 Ibid. , 71, 26. Scit se esse oneri ferendo.
47 Ibid. , 71, 27.
48 Ibid. , 71, 37.
49 Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 71, 11. While Stoic doctrine can only con-
ceive of a perfection that is static and satisfying, Christian mysticism opened up the perspective of a perfection without a loss of desire. Thus Karl Rahner states in his summary of Gregory of Nyssa's mysticism of ascent: 'The only true sight of God is that which does not offer a final satisfaction of longing. ' See Marcel Viller and Karl Rahner, Aszese und Mystik in der Vaterzeit: Ein Abriss der fruhchristlichen Spiritualitat (Freiburg: Herder, 1989), p. 144.
50 See Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis, pp. 12f.
51 The last example of an existence under the star of completion is provided by
the autobiography of Jean-Paul Sartre, Les mots (1964), where the young Sartre's flight into the artist's career is deconstructed a priori as a neurotic fabrication.
52 Regula Benedicti 73, 2.
53 Ibid. , 7, 7.
54 Ibid. , 7, 66.
55 Concerning the monk's silence, see Regula Benedicti 6,1-8 and 7, 9-11.
56 The similarities between the early asketeria (i. e. the monastic training camp)
and a military facility are discussed by Marcel Viller and Karl Rahner in their work Aszese und Mystic in der Vaterzeit, pp. 92f. This leads to a second derivation of the ideal of obedience from religiously overcoded sol- diership. A third derivation would address imperial and ecclesiastical func- tionary ethics; concerning the ecclesiastical side, see Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2011), and on the impe- rial side, see Sloterdijk, Spharen II, pp. 729f.
57 S. Joannis Abbatis vulgo Climaci opera Omnia editore et interpreto Mattheo Radero (1633), in Patrologiae Cursus Competus, ed. Jean-Paul Migne, Series Graeca 88 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), col. 1152. In the fol- lowing, I shall use both the Greek original and the Latin translation.
468
58 59 60 61
62
63
col, 1147.
coL 663. Ibid. , col. 674.
Hugo Ball, Byzantinisches Christentum: Drei Heiligenleben, ed. Bernd Wacker (G6ttingen: Wallstein, 2010), p. 28.
At the same time, the monastic psychagogues knew the difference between the false tears of self-pity and the true ones of remorse or devotion. By analogy, see The Questions of King Milinda, trans. T. W. Rhys Davies, ed. F. Max Muller (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2001).
All' halos ho palaios anthropos hamartia kaleitai. Non enim unum est
NOTES PP. 25
peccatum, sed totus vetus homo peccatum appellatur (col. 78112). 64 Joannis Climaci, Scala Paradisi, col. 782.
65 Ibid. , col. 1149150.
66 Galatians 2:20.
67 Joannis Climaci, coL 1153/4.
68 Ibid. , col. 1157/8.
69 See Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, trans. David Ratmoko (Palo
Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009).
70 The corresponding literature certainly pays lip service to the possibility of
'perfection outside of monasticism', but if one sees how quickly even authors such as Viller and Rahner, the Jesuits cited several times above, get through the subject in their outline of early Christian spirituality (§36), the truth of the matter is clear enough. Before the start of devotio moderna, what applies in practice is this: nulla salus outside the order.
71 Lowith's commentary on this is still central: Karl L6with, Meaning in History (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1957).
72 See Jacques Ie Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1984).
73 Quoted (as a motto) in ibid. , p. v.
74 In his book La vie de Ramakrishna (1929), Romain Rolland points to the
moment of demographic parity between 300 million gods and the same
number of living Indians.
75 See pp. 231£ above.
76 Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India, ed. Joseph Campbell (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 41.
77 William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 5, Scene 2.
78 Mysore Hiriyanna, Essentials of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Diamond
Pocket Books, 1996), p. 102.
79 Huineng, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, ed. and trans. P. B.
Yampolsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 137.
80 See the comprehensive commentary of B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga
Sutras ofPatanjali (London: Thorsons, 2002).
81 See Digha Nikaya, 9.
82 See Eliade, Yoga, pp. 169-73.
83 A. M. Podznejev, Dhyana und Samadhi im mongolischen Lamaismus
(Hanover: Lafaire, 1927).
84 See Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds. ), Making Things Public:
Atmospheres of Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), ch. 4,
'From Objects to Things', pp. 250-95.
85 See pp. 119f above.
469
86
92 93
94 95
96 97
98
99
100
101
102 103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110 111
the Marxist educational theorist and psychologist Lucien Seve, L'Ecole et la Nation (October 1964).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust II, I. 7488.
TN: in German, the equivalent of 'school desk' (especially in its metonymic sense) is Schulbank, which actually translates as 'school bench'.
There is also no shortage of mocking journalists: see Gita Mehta, Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East (New York: Vintage, 1994).
See the chapter 'The Salvation of Identifications' in Axel Michaels, Hinduism: Past and Present, trans. Barbara Harshav (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 325-44.
See Michael von Bruck, Einfiihrung in den Buddhismus (Frankfurt: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2007), pp. 188f.
See the collection of statements by Kodo Sawake (1880-1965), one of the most striking Zen masters of recent times: Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of 'Homeless Kodo' (Kyoto: Kyoto Zen Center, 1999).
See pp. 308f below.
Regula Benedicti 2, 24: miscens temporibus tempora, terroribus blandi- menta, dirum magistri, pium patris ostendat affectum.
Pierre Hadot, 'The Figure of Socrates', in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 147-78.
Slavoj Zizek, Liebe dein Symptom wie dich selbst! Jacques Lacans Psychoanalyse und die Medien (Berlin: Merve, 1991).
See pp. 200f above.
A contemporary exception to this is the Socratic performance philosopher Bazan Brock; see Peter Sloterdijk, 'Der Jahrhundertmensch', in Bazan Brock, Lustmarsch durchs Theoriegelande: Musealisiert Euchl (Cologne: DuMont, 2008), pp. 6-24.
See Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 34.
Ibid. , 35.
Ibid. , 33.
The same tendency appears in some younger schools of Buddhism. Concerning the complex of Sophistic paideia as training for universal ability, see Thomas Buchheim, Die Sophistik als Avantgarde des normalen Lebens (Hamburg: Meiner, 1968), pp. 108-27; concerning the Sophists' approach to kairos, see pp. 82f.
Ibid. , p. 114.
Concerning the history of the piano recital and its increasingly sterile char- acter, see Kenneth Hamilton, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and
TO
trans. J. 1997), p. 37.
87 See Bruno Snell, The
Literature, trans. T. G. Rosenmeyer (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1982), ch. 1, 'Homer's View of Man', pp. 1-22.
88 John 14:6.
89 John 10:30.
90 Maitreya Upanishad III-I, 4.
91 A symptomatic example of this is the essay 'Les "dons" n'existent pas' by
470
in Greek Philosophy and
lvlodern and New York: Oxford
112 See pp. 54ft above.
113 The most successful athlete in antiquity, Milo of Croton (c. 556-510 Be),
managed to remain undefeated for over a quarter of a century, from the
sixtieth to the sixty-seventh Olympiad (540-512 Be).
114 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (London: Allen Lane, 2008).
115 Ibid. , p. 20.
116 Ibid. , pp. 59ff.
117 This function of 'craftsmanly' and factory-work activity, which in turn
affects the practising-producing person, had already been grasped by Lucien Seve in his studies towards a Marxist personality theory, though he made them virtually unrecognizabJe through a one-sided productivistic terminol- ogy. See Lucien Seve, Marxism and the Theory of Human Personality, trans.
David Pavett (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975). The essay also contains notable ideas for a theory of subjective capital and the 'rise in the organic composition of the personality'.
118 Sennett, The Craftsman, p. 57.
119 See Robert E. Cushman, John Wesley's Experimental Divinity: Studies in
Methodist Doctrinal Standards (Nashville: Kingswood, 1989).
120 Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy),
trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage, 1973), p. 104.
121 Ibid. , p. 51. Marx emphasizes in the same context that there is 'a devil of a difference' between uncivilized Russian slaves who allow themselves to be used for anything and 'civilized people who apply themselves to everything' (p. 105). This is the difference that, according to Marx, one cannot under- stand without having grasped the entire development of abstract labour in
the system of capital.
122 The doctrine of the Alexandrine presbyter Arius (c. 260-336) was con-
demned as heresy by the First Council of Nicaea in 325. It claimed that Christ was begotten, and subordinate to God the Father; some of his succes- sors derived the theory of the purely human, albeit illuminated nature of Christ from this.
123 See Res Publica Litteraria: Die Il1stitutionen der Gelehrsamkeit der fruhen Neuzeit, ed. Sebastian Neumeister, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1989).
124 The former sacrifices belong to the universe of older religions of equilib- rium, which strive for 'theocosmic' balance; in them, the totality of the world is at once the first immune system (hence the barely suppressible interest of 'worldlings' in a 'perfect world'); the second belong to the reli- gions of imbalance, which call for an abandonment of the imperfect world for the sake of saving the soul; in them, the refuge of the soul forms the highest immune alliance with God. One recognizes these theocentrists and their successors, the agents of 'critical consciousness', not least by their striving to make the very idea of a 'perfect world' seem ridiculous at all
costs.
125 See Peter Sloterdijk, 'Absturz und Kehre: Rede tiber Heideggers Denken in
der Bewegung', in Nicht gerettet: Versuche nach Heidegger (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 2001), pp. 12-81.
126 Plato, Republic, trans. John Llewelyn Davies and David James Vaughan
(Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1997), p. 229. 471
128
129
130
131 132 133
134
135
136
137
138 139 140
1
2 3
4
Pierre 'Conversion', in Exercices et Etudes Augustiniennes, 1 p. 1
See Peter Sioterdijk, Sphiiren III. Plurale Sphiirologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2004), pp. 261ff. : 'Nicht Vertrag, nicht Gewachs. Anniiherung an die Raum-Vielheuten, die bedauerlicherweise Gesellschaften genannt werden'; for arguments towards a critique of political holism, see in par- ticular pp. 277£.
Concerning the difference between epistrophe and metanoia, see Hadot, 'Conversion', and Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981-1982, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Concerning a generalized concept of decorum, see Heiner Mlihlmann, The Nature of Cultures: A Blueprint for a Theory of Culture Genetics, trans. R. Payne (Vienna and New York: Springer, 1996). On metanoia from a political perspective, see also Peter Sloterdijk, Theorie der Nachkriegszeiten: Bemerkungen zu den deztsch-franzosischen Beziehungen nach 1945 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2008).
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 157-209.
See Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003).
Oswald Spengler, The Decline o f the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Knopf, 1939), pp. 345f.
James, The Varieties ofReligious Experience, pp. 139£.
See p. 246 above.
Concerning the reversal of uti (to use) and frui (to enjoy) in Augustine, see Augustinus-Lexikon, ed. Cornelius Mayer, vol. 3, fasc. 112 (BasIe: Schwabe, 2004), col. 70-5.
Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 61.
Thomas of Celano, First and Second Life ofSaint Francis, p. 143.
Ibid. , pp. 201£.
Peter Sioterdijk, 1m Weltinnenraum des Kapitals: Fur eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), ch. 11, 'Die Erfindung der Subjektivitiit - Die primiire Enthemmung und ihre Ratgeber', pp. 93f.
III THE EXERCISES OF THE MODERNS
Maiora einem post omnia anteacta saecula et sperandi et tentandi tempus est. J. A. Comenius, A Reformation of Schooles, 1642 (Menston: Scolar, 1969), p. 22.
Quoted in Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 103.
Leon Trotsky in a speech given to representatives of a Danish student organization on 27 November 1932: In Defense ofthe Russian Revolution (New York: Pioneer Press, 1933), p. 40.
L'homme en est venu atraiter l'humanite comme une matiere. Quoted in Lucien Gauthier, Von Montaigne bis Valery: Der geistige Weg Frankreichs (Reutlingen: Continental, 1949), p. xxvi.
472
5
6
7
8 9
10 11
12 13
14
15
16 17
18 19
A number of authors Paracelsus have been identified as sources of Comenius' the authors of the Rosicrucian manifestos, Johann Heinrich Alsted, Theologia Naturalis (1615), as well as Benedictus Figuius, Pandora Magllalium Naturalium (Strasbourg: Zetzner, 1608). See Comenius, The Way of Light, trans. E. T. Campagnac (Liverpool and London: Liverpool University Press/Hodder & Stoughton, 1938). Regarding Comenius' pedagogical metaphysics in the run-up to the Enlightenment, see also pp. 350f below.
Comenius' impatience can be attributed to the apocalyptic expectations of the late Reformation; that of his successors already presupposed the shift from the apocalypse to the philosophy of history, and hence both the bour- geoisification of apocalypticism and its revolutionary defusing, while the ideologues of revolution preached neo-apocalyptic escalation.
TN: the original French title of Foucault's Discipline and Punish is Surveiller et punir - 'Supervise and Punish', rendered accurately in the book's German title Oberwachen und Strafen, which Sloterdijk echoes here.
Concerning the formative effects of craftsmanly and instrumental exercises, see pp. 292f above.
See pp. 148f above. The tendency to associate the concept of discipline with despotism is not, incidentally, unique to the post-1945 or post-1968 zeit- geist. It is already evident in the work of Johann Friedrich Herbart, Kant's successor in Konigsberg, who discarded the term 'discipline' used in so carefree a manner by Kant, only to choose an even more problematic replacement like 'government', a suggestion that recalls Foucault's idea of self-government. See Christopher Korn, Bildung und Disziplin: Problemgeschichtlich-systematische Untersuchung zum Begriffder Disziplin in Erziehung und Unterricht (Frankfurt: Lang, 2003), pp. 105f.
Galatians 6:15 and 5:24.
Augustine, Confessiones, book IV, ch. 5; Confessions, trans. Francis Joseph Sheed, ed. Michael P. Foley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), p. 60.
Hamilton Club Speech, Chicago, 10 April 1899.
Peter Sloterdijk, 1m Weltinnenraum des Kapitals: Fur eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), p. 79.
As late as the nineteenth century, spokesmen for popular hygienic and gym- nastic systems stirred up the fear of exhaustion and overtaxing (fatigue, surmenage) through excessive exercises - not only because of their bias towards notions of equilibrium, but also because they did not yet under- stand the principle of supercompensation. See Philipp Sarasin, Reizbare Maschinen: Eine Geschichte des Korpers 1765-1914 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001), pp. 317f.
See Peter Sloterdijk, 'Die Farbung der Burger', in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds. ), Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
Matthew 25:29.
See Peter Nicki, Ordnung der Gefuhle: Studien zum Begriff des habitus (Hamburg: Meiner, 2005), pp. 48f.
See Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), pp. 113-23.
S0ren Kierkegaard, Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs, trans. M. G. Piety (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 4.
NOTES TO PI>.
473
NOTE'} TO
Sartre contradicts this with his thesis that there are no because
habits are inertias and thus bad per se.
21 See pp. 272£ above.
22 This can be seen most clearly in one of the most influential works of moral
philosophy in recent decades: Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). The author has often been praised for a beneficially corrective return to a neo- Aristotelian ethics of virtue - which, it is argued, is a welcome development amidst the moral confusion of modern societies. If one takes MacIntyre's closing statement into account, however, where he asserts the necessity of unifying St Benedict and Trotsky in a single person in order to find a new guideline, it becomes clear that one is dealing here with anything but an over- coming of confusion; neither Benedict nor Trotsky can make any contribu- tion to a return to virtues. Both are subject to the eros of the impossible: the first in the mode of holiness, the second in the mode of political crimes in the service of good. One must be grateful to MacIntyre for revealing that behind the neo-Aristotelian juste milieu discourse, the ethics of holy excess from early Catholicism is still in effect. No figure could expose modern indecision more clearly: the Benedict-Trotsky hybrid would never be able to decide whether it should work on self-improvement in the monastery or strive to better the world through terrorist activities. The constructive impulse of MacIntyre's reflections, therefore, cannot be absorbed into a restorative ethics of virtue. What is on the agenda is rather a training ethics in response to the sublime metanoetic imperative of our time. See pp. 442f below.
23 Concerning the transitions between the monastic and the humanistic spheres in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Harald Mi. iller, Habit ulld Habitus: Monche und Humallisten im Dialog (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck,2006).
24 The term also appears in English-language sociology, where some authors refer to embedding, disembedding and re-embedding in the relationship between the individual and traditional life forms. See in particular Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1990).
25 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 'Dine zu Coblenz im Sommer 1774', in Siimtliche Gedichte (Frankfurt: Insel, 2007), p. 326.
26 TN: 'habit' here refers exclusively to the monk's attire; no double meaning is intended.
27
28 29
Concerning the foundation of non-monetary banking phenomena, see Peter Sloterdijk, Rage and Time, trans. Mario Wenning (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 135£. On the philosophical deduction of the idea of the world museum, see Beat Wyss, Trauer der Vollendung: Von der Asthetik des Deutschen Idealismus zur Kulturkritik an der Moderlle (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 1985); on the metaphysics of the archive, see Boris Groys! Thomas Knoefel, Politik der Unsterblichkeit (Munich: Hanser, 2002); on the transformation of immortality into a practical idea, see the references to Nikolai Fedorov on pp. 353 and 395£ below.
'Bent am I and humbled', Regula Benedicti 7, 66-70.
Concerning the triad of habits, passions and mental inertias (also known as 'opinions') and their overcoming through the first ethical distinction, see p. 167 above.
474
30
whv their all relate to conditions
as by 'Hesiod, whereas modern civilization must
mrjprotn. rvi as a second Silver Age; this poses other questions and searches for other answers.
31 See Ulrich Brockling, Das unternehmerische Selbst: Soziologie einer Subjektivierungs(orm (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007).
32 Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, trans. Joseph Jacobs (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1993), p. 171.
33 Ibid. , p. 1.
34 The word superhomo (from the Greek hyperanthropos) first appeared in a
papal document from the late thirteenth century, the canonization bull for
Louis IX issued by Boniface VIII in 1297.
35 Only Luhmann's systems theory, thanks to its metabiological approach,
integrated the immunological imperative into its foundations. See Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, trans. John Bednarz Jr. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 369£.
36 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book (or Everyone and Nobody, trans. Graham Parkes (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 13.
37 See Heinz-Theo Homann, Das funktionale Argument: Konzepte und Kritik funktionslogischer Religionsbegrundung (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1997).
38 Concerning Christian surrealism, see pp. 205£ above.
39 Trotsky took up this motif to explain the intended direction of socialist
technology: 'Faith merely promises to move mountains; but technology, which takes nothing "on faith," is actually able to cut down mountains and
move them [. . . J according to a general industrial and artistic plan. ' Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, ed. William Keach, trans. Rose Trunsky (Chicago: Haymarket, 2005), p. 204.
40 The word, which can be traced back to the 1820s, caused (along with its object) a furore from the mid-nineteenth century on (in French entraine- ment, in German usually the same word as in English, though initially also Trainirung on occasion).
41 Concerning the kinship between abstract labour and abstract fitness, see the Marxian thesis (cited in part II, n. 120 above) on the difference between slavery and jobbing. The author sees in this difference a historical move- ment whose interpretation requires the entire apparatus of a critique of production conditions; to understand the emergence of abstract fitness requires no less than a comprehensive reconstruction of practice conditions.
42 See Manfred Osten, 'Konfuzius oder Chinas neue Kulturrevolution', in China: Insel-Almanach auf das Jahr 2009 (Frankfurt: Insel, 2009), pp. 266-97.
43 Concerning the antagonistic alliance of state and school, see pp. 348£ below.
44 TN: the author uses the English word in this context.
45 The current state of the enhancement debate is described from a pragmatic
perspective by Bernward Gesang in Perfektionierung des Menschen (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 2007).
46 TN: the double meaning of 'putting on' is intended.
47 See Barbara Vinken, Fashion Zeitgeist: Trends and Cycles in the Fashion
System, trans. Mark Hewson (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005). 475
48
49
Concerning the connection between the symbolic order of 'society' and the theatricization of law, see Pierre Legendre, La fabrique de l'homme occi- dental (Paris: Mille et une nuits, 1996).
Joseph de Maistre, Petersburg Dialogues, Or , Conversations on the Temporal Government ofProvidence, trans. Richard A. Lebrun (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993), p. 19.
