According to Habermas, Nietzsche's
valorization
of the Dionysian over the Apollonian is an early, ?
Sloterdijk - Thinker on Stage
Theory and History of Literature
? ? Edited by
Volume 56. Volume
V olume 54. Volume Volume Volume
V olume 50. V olume 49. V olume 48. V olume V olume 46. V olume 45. V olume 44.
V olume
V olume 42. V olume
V olume 40. V olume 39.
V olume 38. V olume Volume 36.
V olume 35. V olume 34. V olume Volume 32.
V olume
V olume 30.
Volume 29. V olume
Godzich and Jochen
Peter Sloterdijk Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche's Materialism Paul Smith Discerning the Subject
The Barthes Effect Cros Theory and Practice of
Philippe Lejeune On Autobiography
Thierry de Duve The Readymade: Marcel Duchamp, Painting
and Modernity
Luiz Costa Lima Control of the Imaginary
Jameson The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971-1986, 2 Fredric Jameson The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971-1986,
1Eugene Vance From Topic to Tale: Logic and Narrativity in the Middle Ages
Lyotard The Manfred Frank What Is
Daniel ? Social Figures: George Eliot, Social History, and Literary Representation
Michael Nerlich The Ideology of Adventure, Volume 2 Michael Nerlich The Ideology of Adventure, Volume 1 Denis Hollier The College of Sociology Peter Sloterdijk Critique of Cynical Reason
von ? Romantic Vision, Ethical Context: Novalis and Artistic Autonomy
Algirdas Julien Greimas On Meaning: Selected Writings in Semiotic Theory
Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok The Wolf Man's Magic Word: A Cryptonymy
Alice Yaeger Kaplan Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life
Denis Hollier The Politics of Prose
Geoffrey ? The Unremarkable Wordsworth
Paul de Man The Resistance to Theory
Djelal Kadir Questing Fictions: Latin America's Family
Romance
Samuel Weber Institution and Interpretation
Gilles Deleuze and Felix ? Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature
Peter Szondi Theory of the Modern Drama
Edited by Jonathan Arac Postmodernism and Politics
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? For other books in the series, see p. 107
? ? Thinker on
Materialism
Peter Sloterdijk
Translation by Jamie Owen Daniel Foreword by Jochen
Theory and History of Volume 56
? ? ? University of Minnesota ? Minneapolis
Copyright ? ? by the Regents of the University of Minnesota Originally published as Der Denker ? Buhne: ? ? ? ? Copyright ? ? by
Frankfurt
? am
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo- copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis, MN 55414. Published simultaneously in Canada
by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited,
Printed in the United States of America.
? ? Library of Congress
Data
Sloterdijk, Peter, 1947-
[Denker auf der Buhne. English]
Thinker on stage ? Nietzsche's materialism ? Peter Sloterdijk;
translation by Jamie Owen Daniel; foreword by Jochen
p. and history of literature ? v. 56) Translation of: Der Denker auf der Buhne. Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
? ? ? ? ISBN
I S B N 0-8166-1765-1 1. Nietzsche,
(pbk. )
? ? ? 1844-1900.
I.
? Series. B3317. S5813 1983-dc20
1989
89-31941
? The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
? ? ? For
affectionate solidarity
"By no means," said ? "You have made danger your vocation; there is nothing contemptible in that. Now you perish of your vocation: for that I will bury you with my own hands.
Prologue
? ? ? Contents
? Foreword: Nietzsche's Theoretical Resistance Jochen Preface x x v
Literature 3
2. The Philosophy of Existence, the Dramaturgy of Force 15 3. Cave ? or, Danger, Terrible Truth! 33
4. Dionysus Meets Diogenes; or, The Adventures of the
Embodied Intellect 50
Pain and Justice 74 Notes 95
Index 103
? ? ? vii
? ? Foreword: Theoretical Resistance
Jochen
? ? At first glance, ? book merely offers a rereading of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music ? However, since the author takes this text to be one of the basic, central texts of modernity, his reading quickly reaches a point where it goes beyond being solely a commentary on Nietzsche's early treatise. It offers a rereading and a rethinking of some basic features of modernity as reflected and thought through in ? ? In par- ticular, Nietzsche's ? misunderstood terminological opposition "Dionysian" versus ? art (which turns out not to be an
proves to be an important facet in Sloterdijk's rethinking of modernity.
Not very far into his essay, Sloterdijk feels compelled to reiterate a question usually associated with Max Weber and, more recently, with ? Habermas: "Has not the division of the labor of talent that characterizes our times led to the tendential opposition of the psychic attitudes that capacitate scientifically ori- ented knowledge to the expression of the self, while those that accommodate self-expression betray a propensity that is hostile to knowledge? Are not the cults of science and aesthetics the prototypical ? idiots' of modernity? " (S ? The answers to these questions are well known. Essentially, both Weber and ? the factual existence of the divisions induced by the process of ? these divisions as progress. They perceive the adversity of instrumental knowledge and aesthetic self-expression not as hostility but as the result of a functional differentiation of
? ? ix
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
? ? x FOREWORD
social practices that should be evaluated positively as long as each and every one of the functionally differentiated social practices does not overstep the bound- aries of its range. Habermas accuses Nietzsche of doing precisely the latter, namely, of elaborating upon strategies of intervention that, if widely adopted, would lead to a breakdown of the balanced system of functionally differentiated realms in modern societies. According to Habermas, Nietzsche's valorization of the Dionysian over the Apollonian is an early, ? expression of the so-called postmodern project, which tries to rupture the delicate balance of the system of modernity. Within this system ? organizational mode Weber and
as cultural ? set out to defend against the alleged opposition of intellectual subverters like Nietzsche -- the Other of reason is deferred to a de- limited and relatively autonomous aesthetic realm. To be more precise, the aes- thetic as the Other of reason is made to eschew its radical otherness and turn itself into reason's supplement. Thus, when Habermas charges postmodernism with hypostatizing "the aesthetic, as the gate to the Dionysian, as the Other of
he presupposes that the Dionysian, once integrated into the functional differentiation of modernity and delimited within its own subsystem, can be turned into a necessary complement of reason or rationality, thus stabilizing the overall structure of the
subjects is suspended in favor of a "destruction of the principium
40). From a perspective affirming the social and psychic structures of modernity, the danger inherent in the Dionysian principle is apparent in any val- orization of the Dionysian, even if the latter is delimited within the realm of art. That is to say, even if Dionysian reality is institutionally sealed ? aesthetic a gulf of forgetting from the world of theoretical comprehension and moral activity (i. e. , from everyday life), Dionysian art allows entry into a
world of ecstasy -- at the price of a painful un-differentiation or dissolution individual, ? internal and external melting into amorphous By ? ? its complementary functional role as a "pendant [Gege- to reason, ? the Dionysian mode of aesthetic experience, according to Habermas, assists in the practical and effective "self-unveiling of a decentered ? ? ? ? ? affirmative perception of modernity, Nietzsche amplifies the Romantic contamination of the theoretical and moral with the ? How is such a contamination conceivable, and what are the premises of such a critique? From the viewpoint of modernity and its accom- panying conception of individuality, subjectivity has to be constituted as a con- tained, agonistic ? valorization of the "Dionysian," however, is alleged to express and stress the opposite principle, that is, the dissolution of ego At first ? such a statement seems to be more than ? For Nietzsche holds that as ? in ? ? ev- subjective vanishes into complete ? (N 36). In the Dionysian ego transgression, the agonistic individuality of competitive According to critic of
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? FOREWORD xi
form of subjectivity freed from all the limits of cognition and purpose, from all the imperatives of usefulness and ? ? Habermas articulates anxieties that are widespread in contemporary Western cultures; he shares them with neolibe-
and conservatives alike, fearing a dissolution of the psychic armor and moral centeredness of Western individuality. Contrary to popular belief, however, a simple valorization of the Dionysian over the Apollonian takes place nowhere in Nietzsche. As as art
the Dionysian is always tamed or at ? ? ? vocable ne- cessity of representing itself. ? however, is always already Apol- lonian in ? As explains: "The orgiastic musical element is never in danger of breaking through the Apollonian barriers, for the stage itself, the tragic space ? Nietzsche constructed it ?
According to Habermas, Nietzsche's valorization of the Dionysian over the Apollonian is an early, ? expression of the so-called postmodern project, which tries to rupture the delicate balance of the system of modernity. Within this system ? organizational mode Weber and
as cultural ? set out to defend against the alleged opposition of intellectual subverters like Nietzsche -- the Other of reason is deferred to a de- limited and relatively autonomous aesthetic realm. To be more precise, the aes- thetic as the Other of reason is made to eschew its radical otherness and turn itself into reason's supplement. Thus, when Habermas charges postmodernism with hypostatizing "the aesthetic, as the gate to the Dionysian, as the Other of
he presupposes that the Dionysian, once integrated into the functional differentiation of modernity and delimited within its own subsystem, can be turned into a necessary complement of reason or rationality, thus stabilizing the overall structure of the
subjects is suspended in favor of a "destruction of the principium
40). From a perspective affirming the social and psychic structures of modernity, the danger inherent in the Dionysian principle is apparent in any val- orization of the Dionysian, even if the latter is delimited within the realm of art. That is to say, even if Dionysian reality is institutionally sealed ? aesthetic a gulf of forgetting from the world of theoretical comprehension and moral activity (i. e. , from everyday life), Dionysian art allows entry into a
world of ecstasy -- at the price of a painful un-differentiation or dissolution individual, ? internal and external melting into amorphous By ? ? its complementary functional role as a "pendant [Gege- to reason, ? the Dionysian mode of aesthetic experience, according to Habermas, assists in the practical and effective "self-unveiling of a decentered ? ? ? ? ? affirmative perception of modernity, Nietzsche amplifies the Romantic contamination of the theoretical and moral with the ? How is such a contamination conceivable, and what are the premises of such a critique? From the viewpoint of modernity and its accom- panying conception of individuality, subjectivity has to be constituted as a con- tained, agonistic ? valorization of the "Dionysian," however, is alleged to express and stress the opposite principle, that is, the dissolution of ego At first ? such a statement seems to be more than ? For Nietzsche holds that as ? in ? ? ev- subjective vanishes into complete ? (N 36). In the Dionysian ego transgression, the agonistic individuality of competitive According to critic of
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? FOREWORD xi
form of subjectivity freed from all the limits of cognition and purpose, from all the imperatives of usefulness and ? ? Habermas articulates anxieties that are widespread in contemporary Western cultures; he shares them with neolibe-
and conservatives alike, fearing a dissolution of the psychic armor and moral centeredness of Western individuality. Contrary to popular belief, however, a simple valorization of the Dionysian over the Apollonian takes place nowhere in Nietzsche. As as art
the Dionysian is always tamed or at ? ? ? vocable ne- cessity of representing itself. ? however, is always already Apol- lonian in ? As explains: "The orgiastic musical element is never in danger of breaking through the Apollonian barriers, for the stage itself, the tragic space ? Nietzsche constructed it ? in keeping with his overall plan, nothing other than a sort of Apollonian catch mechanism that ensures that no orgy will result from the orgiastic song of the chorus. The music of the singing he-goats is a Dionysian paroxism set apart in Apollonian quotation marks ? In
the polarity between Apollo and Dionysus is not a turbulent opposition that vacillates freely between the two extremes ? ? ? The Apollonian Unified Subject makes certain, through the mechanism of the silently established axiom of bal-
ance, that the Dionysian Other never comes into play as itself, but only as the dialectical or symmetrical Other to the Unified ? An Apollonian principle governs the antagonism between the Apollonian and the Dionysian" (S 24-25).
The modernist's view of Nietzsche's discussion of the Dionysian principle, marred as it is by anxieties of dissolution, overlooks the fact that Nietzsche set out to think a form of interventionist reflexivity or reflexive resistance that tries to attune itself to the fact that subjectivity is not constituted as a ? entity in "modernity. " Nietzsche's thinking of the Dionysian has to be placed in the
that conceives ? reason as a force able to resist the
talization of reason and its influence on social interaction. However, Nietzsche does ? the vein of the early Romantics, for ? the subject, as a unified epistemological center, opposite an object designed to be "reflected, be the latter other subjects, society as a whole, or nature. Rather, he follows the traces of the process of modernization within subjectivity and discovers in the process that resistance, if at all possible, has to begin by reflecting the split sub- jectivity of modern individuals. The most essential aspect of his argument is his insistence on the dialectical relationship between what he
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
calls the Apollonian and structurally desire of individu-
transgress and fortify their ego boundaries.
Paradoxically, the dialectical conception of this relationship leads Nietzsche to
a much more cogent and conclusive understanding of the basic division of knowl- edge and self-expression in modernity than is possible within the framework of a sociology of modernity shaped by a fundamental acceptance of modernity's de- sired mode of social organization. The affirmative reading of that organization
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? xii FOREWORD
has never been able to grasp the constant deferment that occurs when modern individuals strive for a unified ? deferment that generates a desire that can never be satisfied and that, in the form of permanent projections of ful- filled ? ruptures the very structure posited as homogeneous in prevalent philosophies of modernity. Nietzsche, on the other hand, tries to foreground and reflect precisely this very conflict inscribed in modern subjectivity. He does so by hiding behind a reading of antiquity and by narrating a myth, that is, by turn- ing the conflict into one "between two deities who interact with each other like impulse and constraint, passion and control, release and moderation, movement and ? compulsion and vision, music and image, will and represen- tation" (S 25). Social philosophies conceived in the ? tra- dition labor to repress this conflict by detemporalizing the desire underlying the conflict and by projecting or unfolding it spatially into different institutional realms. The repressed, however, returns in the form of psychic structures whose split constitution is barely and compulsively covered up by gestures of exclusion and identification. Furthermore, any affirmation of the project of modernity that is at the center of these philosophies must lead, if politically successful, to cog- nitive ? into "metaphysical comfort," as Nietzsche circum- scribed the modern tendency to arrest desire in sentimental projections of unity: for him, every affirmative perception of modernity's desired mode of organiza- tion must end in a consoling romanticism; Romantics, according to Nietzsche, tend to end ? ? as it is written, in spite of all self-education for seri- ousness and terror, ? ? sum ? as
(N 26)
The tendency of an art integrated into the system of modernity is to comfort and to compensate for a lack experienced in other realms of social interaction; this tendency led Nietzsche to believe that the thrust of his argument cannot be understood by one who feels compelled to view modern history as progress. In his Preface to Richard Wagner, with which he introduced his Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche thus maintains that "readers will find it offensive that an aesthetic problem should be taken so seriously," since "they are unable to consider art more than a pleasant a readily dispensable tinkling of bells that accom-
the of ? ? (N 31). Because of the structural appropriation of the aesthetic in modernity, Nietzsche attempts to rethink aesthetic culture as a culture of resistance. However, he never posits a different aesthetic culture; rather, he simply connects features of modernity's aesthetic culture with the split constitution of subjectivity he observed in a different reading of that culture. In his view, the aesthetic as the traditional medium in which ? expresses itself, may serve, if conceived differently, as a medium in which subjects reflect their own structural makeup. He attempts to shortcircuit aesthetic culture with theory. The conception and institutionalization of autonomous art as comfort do not allow for a radical reflexivity. The conception of such a radical reflexivity,
? ? ? ? ? ? FOREWORD xiii
which, as I will argue in detail here, is at the center of Nietzsche's Birth of Trag- edy, had to position Nietzsche in the eyes of social modernists in the camp of modernity's enemies.
nNietzsche's (and Sloterdijk's) renewed effort to uncover the basic conflicts and tensions in modernity leads to a reassessment of the dialectic of enlightenment. Habermas has also recently dealt with this issue by staging a rereading of Hork-
and ? Dialectic of Enlightenment. Here, he denies that the basic (dialectical)tension of rationality and myth characteristic of modernity is insur- mountable. His ? of the dialectic of enlightenment essentially con- tends that the functional differentiation of modernity defuses and deactivates such tensions to the benefit of society, thus changing their dialectical
terdijk, on the other hand, insists with Nietzsche that the dialectic of enlighten- ment may be repressed but never overcome; he tries to recuperate an
overlooked aspect of the project of enlightenment ? idea of an enlightenment that resists repression and stresses the necessity for a stage on which the drama of the conflict is portrayed and worked through. As stated earlier, the principle that governs the tension between the Apollonian and the Dionysian and that guaran- tees the primacy of the former is that of the necessity of representation or bolization. What determines the nature of aesthetic representation in modernity most strongly is the fact that a mode of representation enlightened by the basic tension between the Dionysian and the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
Apollonian can no longer claim to be a mimetic one. A split subjectivity can even less be "imitated," (i. e. , objectively portrayed for an individual) than ? since the relationship between sub- ject and artistic object can no longer be one of an encounter with beauty; rather, the artistic object serves as a mirror in whose image the subject reflects his or her own constitution ? constitution that by definition cannot be " h a d " in a unified image. The existence of the tension between the Dionysian and the Apollonian forces aesthetic representations to incorporate into their being a reflection upon their nonspatial and nontemporal relationship. "Thus, Apollo is the calculating subject who enters into a daring game with his own dissolution" (S ? Since a reflection, in the medium of the aesthetic, on the nature of this contradictory re- lationship introduces the only possibility of initiating awareness of the strictures of the system, Nietzsche can contend, in Sloterdijk's words, that through the "el- evation into the ? the world becomes more than it ? The substitution
superior to what it replaces; what has arisen from the original surpasses it" (S 30).
It should be obvious at this point that Sloterdijk reads Nietzsche as Lyotard reads Kant. The Dionysian and the sublime are both unrepresentable, at least not without being ? changed by ? Lyo-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? xiv FOREWORD
notion of the sublime, although never mentioned by Sloterdijk, seems to be an important point of reference in Sloterdijk's discourse. For both Lyotard, in his reading of Kant, and Sloterdijk, in his reading of Nietzsche, emphasize the im- possibility of symbolically representing an "other" space that is located outside reality ? representation that would enable us, by making a thinking of "oth- erness" possible, to intervene in reality. As a result, both Lyotard and Sloterdijk are concerned with the possibility of resistance after it has been acknowledged once and for all that it is impossible to represent a Utopia. The belief in the pos- sibility of such representations moved, as one will recall, the Enlightenment to hope that individuals and society ? the help of such and through rational debates and actions based on such debates ? be led to a better future. In this sense, enlightenment and its philosophies of history have become "impossible" for both authors. However, ? as Sloterdijk reads him, insists that this is an impoverished notion of enlightenment that tends to deflate the concept of critique as well as that of
Sloterdijk's reading of Nietzsche is an uncustomary one. In order to assess the validity of this reading and to grasp the nature and importance of the aesthetic state of radical reflexivity that Sloterdijk sees expressed in Nietzsche's book, I will turn to Nietzsche's text for a while and add my own reading of Nietzsche as a critic of modernity. As I will try to show, Nietzsche is a surprisingly structura- listic reader of modernity, an aspect somewhat neglected in Sloterdijk's restating of Nietzsche's project.
I already indicated that Nietzsche's reading of modernity, taken as a practice of structuralistic analysis, hides itself behind two rhetorical devices: first, behind the figures of Dionysus, Apollo, and Socrates, thus disguising its analytic force as a mythical narrative, and, second, behind a (pseudoscholarly) reading of an- tiquity. At first glance, Socrates' attitude toward Dionysus seems designed to i l - lustrate and narrate the relationship between the functionally differentiated realms of the ? ? and ? on the one hand, and the aes- thetic, on the other. Seen as a one-dimensional tension between two structurally unfolded realms, the aesthetic and the theoretical complement each other. The longing for ego transgression is, thus, the product of a structural factor. "The idyllic shepherd of modern man is merely a counterfeit of the sum of cultural illusions that are allegedly nature" (N 62). Idyllic scenes address "the abstract man, untutored by myth" and burdened by "abstract education; abstract moral- ity; abstract law; the abstract state" (N ? They are an expression of the " d i - version-craven luxuriousness" of modern individuals (N ? Speaking about the opera, which he sees as the "thoroughly modern variety of art," Nietzsche maintains that modern ? ? ? responds to a powerful need, but it is a nonaes-
? ? ? ? ? ? FOREWORD xv
thetic need: the yearning for the idyllic, the faith in the primordial existence of artistic and ? man" (N ? In light of his appraisal of the opera as the genre of compensatory art, he calls the historical emergence of opera, seemingly contradicting his earlier reading of Socrates as the paradigmatic figure of theoretical culture, "the birth of the theoretical man" (N ? Yet
Nietzsche is never interested in following a chronology or telling a
since every story is necessarily entangled in a nondialectical notion of enlight- enment. Both Socrates and the opera are mere figures in whose images he strives to understand a structure without falling into the trap of a linear diachronic and synchronic thinking. "The [theoretical] man incapable of art creates for himself a kind of art precisely because he is the inartistic man as such" (N ? thus compensating the one-sidedness of his theoretical existence. Like opera, the fea- tures of compensatory art "do not by any means exhibit the elegiac sorrow of an eternal loss, but rather the cheerfulness of eternal rediscovery, the comfortable delight in an idyllic reality which one can at least always imagine as real" (N Nietzsche's attack on such art could be and has been understood as an attack on the sentimentality of ? opposed to genuine art. Yet such a reading would not do justice to Nietzsche's argument; on the contrary, it would com- pletely
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
remain within the framework of modern "theoretical" culture, thus ally- ing and implicating itself with that ? In such a ? a fully domesticated and structurally integrated art "rises like a sweetishly seductive column of vapor from the depth of the Socratic world view" (N ?
? ? Edited by
Volume 56. Volume
V olume 54. Volume Volume Volume
V olume 50. V olume 49. V olume 48. V olume V olume 46. V olume 45. V olume 44.
V olume
V olume 42. V olume
V olume 40. V olume 39.
V olume 38. V olume Volume 36.
V olume 35. V olume 34. V olume Volume 32.
V olume
V olume 30.
Volume 29. V olume
Godzich and Jochen
Peter Sloterdijk Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche's Materialism Paul Smith Discerning the Subject
The Barthes Effect Cros Theory and Practice of
Philippe Lejeune On Autobiography
Thierry de Duve The Readymade: Marcel Duchamp, Painting
and Modernity
Luiz Costa Lima Control of the Imaginary
Jameson The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971-1986, 2 Fredric Jameson The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971-1986,
1Eugene Vance From Topic to Tale: Logic and Narrativity in the Middle Ages
Lyotard The Manfred Frank What Is
Daniel ? Social Figures: George Eliot, Social History, and Literary Representation
Michael Nerlich The Ideology of Adventure, Volume 2 Michael Nerlich The Ideology of Adventure, Volume 1 Denis Hollier The College of Sociology Peter Sloterdijk Critique of Cynical Reason
von ? Romantic Vision, Ethical Context: Novalis and Artistic Autonomy
Algirdas Julien Greimas On Meaning: Selected Writings in Semiotic Theory
Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok The Wolf Man's Magic Word: A Cryptonymy
Alice Yaeger Kaplan Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life
Denis Hollier The Politics of Prose
Geoffrey ? The Unremarkable Wordsworth
Paul de Man The Resistance to Theory
Djelal Kadir Questing Fictions: Latin America's Family
Romance
Samuel Weber Institution and Interpretation
Gilles Deleuze and Felix ? Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature
Peter Szondi Theory of the Modern Drama
Edited by Jonathan Arac Postmodernism and Politics
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? For other books in the series, see p. 107
? ? Thinker on
Materialism
Peter Sloterdijk
Translation by Jamie Owen Daniel Foreword by Jochen
Theory and History of Volume 56
? ? ? University of Minnesota ? Minneapolis
Copyright ? ? by the Regents of the University of Minnesota Originally published as Der Denker ? Buhne: ? ? ? ? Copyright ? ? by
Frankfurt
? am
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo- copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis, MN 55414. Published simultaneously in Canada
by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited,
Printed in the United States of America.
? ? Library of Congress
Data
Sloterdijk, Peter, 1947-
[Denker auf der Buhne. English]
Thinker on stage ? Nietzsche's materialism ? Peter Sloterdijk;
translation by Jamie Owen Daniel; foreword by Jochen
p. and history of literature ? v. 56) Translation of: Der Denker auf der Buhne. Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
? ? ? ? ISBN
I S B N 0-8166-1765-1 1. Nietzsche,
(pbk. )
? ? ? 1844-1900.
I.
? Series. B3317. S5813 1983-dc20
1989
89-31941
? The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
? ? ? For
affectionate solidarity
"By no means," said ? "You have made danger your vocation; there is nothing contemptible in that. Now you perish of your vocation: for that I will bury you with my own hands.
Prologue
? ? ? Contents
? Foreword: Nietzsche's Theoretical Resistance Jochen Preface x x v
Literature 3
2. The Philosophy of Existence, the Dramaturgy of Force 15 3. Cave ? or, Danger, Terrible Truth! 33
4. Dionysus Meets Diogenes; or, The Adventures of the
Embodied Intellect 50
Pain and Justice 74 Notes 95
Index 103
? ? ? vii
? ? Foreword: Theoretical Resistance
Jochen
? ? At first glance, ? book merely offers a rereading of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music ? However, since the author takes this text to be one of the basic, central texts of modernity, his reading quickly reaches a point where it goes beyond being solely a commentary on Nietzsche's early treatise. It offers a rereading and a rethinking of some basic features of modernity as reflected and thought through in ? ? In par- ticular, Nietzsche's ? misunderstood terminological opposition "Dionysian" versus ? art (which turns out not to be an
proves to be an important facet in Sloterdijk's rethinking of modernity.
Not very far into his essay, Sloterdijk feels compelled to reiterate a question usually associated with Max Weber and, more recently, with ? Habermas: "Has not the division of the labor of talent that characterizes our times led to the tendential opposition of the psychic attitudes that capacitate scientifically ori- ented knowledge to the expression of the self, while those that accommodate self-expression betray a propensity that is hostile to knowledge? Are not the cults of science and aesthetics the prototypical ? idiots' of modernity? " (S ? The answers to these questions are well known. Essentially, both Weber and ? the factual existence of the divisions induced by the process of ? these divisions as progress. They perceive the adversity of instrumental knowledge and aesthetic self-expression not as hostility but as the result of a functional differentiation of
? ? ix
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
? ? x FOREWORD
social practices that should be evaluated positively as long as each and every one of the functionally differentiated social practices does not overstep the bound- aries of its range. Habermas accuses Nietzsche of doing precisely the latter, namely, of elaborating upon strategies of intervention that, if widely adopted, would lead to a breakdown of the balanced system of functionally differentiated realms in modern societies. According to Habermas, Nietzsche's valorization of the Dionysian over the Apollonian is an early, ? expression of the so-called postmodern project, which tries to rupture the delicate balance of the system of modernity. Within this system ? organizational mode Weber and
as cultural ? set out to defend against the alleged opposition of intellectual subverters like Nietzsche -- the Other of reason is deferred to a de- limited and relatively autonomous aesthetic realm. To be more precise, the aes- thetic as the Other of reason is made to eschew its radical otherness and turn itself into reason's supplement. Thus, when Habermas charges postmodernism with hypostatizing "the aesthetic, as the gate to the Dionysian, as the Other of
he presupposes that the Dionysian, once integrated into the functional differentiation of modernity and delimited within its own subsystem, can be turned into a necessary complement of reason or rationality, thus stabilizing the overall structure of the
subjects is suspended in favor of a "destruction of the principium
40). From a perspective affirming the social and psychic structures of modernity, the danger inherent in the Dionysian principle is apparent in any val- orization of the Dionysian, even if the latter is delimited within the realm of art. That is to say, even if Dionysian reality is institutionally sealed ? aesthetic a gulf of forgetting from the world of theoretical comprehension and moral activity (i. e. , from everyday life), Dionysian art allows entry into a
world of ecstasy -- at the price of a painful un-differentiation or dissolution individual, ? internal and external melting into amorphous By ? ? its complementary functional role as a "pendant [Gege- to reason, ? the Dionysian mode of aesthetic experience, according to Habermas, assists in the practical and effective "self-unveiling of a decentered ? ? ? ? ? affirmative perception of modernity, Nietzsche amplifies the Romantic contamination of the theoretical and moral with the ? How is such a contamination conceivable, and what are the premises of such a critique? From the viewpoint of modernity and its accom- panying conception of individuality, subjectivity has to be constituted as a con- tained, agonistic ? valorization of the "Dionysian," however, is alleged to express and stress the opposite principle, that is, the dissolution of ego At first ? such a statement seems to be more than ? For Nietzsche holds that as ? in ? ? ev- subjective vanishes into complete ? (N 36). In the Dionysian ego transgression, the agonistic individuality of competitive According to critic of
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? FOREWORD xi
form of subjectivity freed from all the limits of cognition and purpose, from all the imperatives of usefulness and ? ? Habermas articulates anxieties that are widespread in contemporary Western cultures; he shares them with neolibe-
and conservatives alike, fearing a dissolution of the psychic armor and moral centeredness of Western individuality. Contrary to popular belief, however, a simple valorization of the Dionysian over the Apollonian takes place nowhere in Nietzsche. As as art
the Dionysian is always tamed or at ? ? ? vocable ne- cessity of representing itself. ? however, is always already Apol- lonian in ? As explains: "The orgiastic musical element is never in danger of breaking through the Apollonian barriers, for the stage itself, the tragic space ? Nietzsche constructed it ?
According to Habermas, Nietzsche's valorization of the Dionysian over the Apollonian is an early, ? expression of the so-called postmodern project, which tries to rupture the delicate balance of the system of modernity. Within this system ? organizational mode Weber and
as cultural ? set out to defend against the alleged opposition of intellectual subverters like Nietzsche -- the Other of reason is deferred to a de- limited and relatively autonomous aesthetic realm. To be more precise, the aes- thetic as the Other of reason is made to eschew its radical otherness and turn itself into reason's supplement. Thus, when Habermas charges postmodernism with hypostatizing "the aesthetic, as the gate to the Dionysian, as the Other of
he presupposes that the Dionysian, once integrated into the functional differentiation of modernity and delimited within its own subsystem, can be turned into a necessary complement of reason or rationality, thus stabilizing the overall structure of the
subjects is suspended in favor of a "destruction of the principium
40). From a perspective affirming the social and psychic structures of modernity, the danger inherent in the Dionysian principle is apparent in any val- orization of the Dionysian, even if the latter is delimited within the realm of art. That is to say, even if Dionysian reality is institutionally sealed ? aesthetic a gulf of forgetting from the world of theoretical comprehension and moral activity (i. e. , from everyday life), Dionysian art allows entry into a
world of ecstasy -- at the price of a painful un-differentiation or dissolution individual, ? internal and external melting into amorphous By ? ? its complementary functional role as a "pendant [Gege- to reason, ? the Dionysian mode of aesthetic experience, according to Habermas, assists in the practical and effective "self-unveiling of a decentered ? ? ? ? ? affirmative perception of modernity, Nietzsche amplifies the Romantic contamination of the theoretical and moral with the ? How is such a contamination conceivable, and what are the premises of such a critique? From the viewpoint of modernity and its accom- panying conception of individuality, subjectivity has to be constituted as a con- tained, agonistic ? valorization of the "Dionysian," however, is alleged to express and stress the opposite principle, that is, the dissolution of ego At first ? such a statement seems to be more than ? For Nietzsche holds that as ? in ? ? ev- subjective vanishes into complete ? (N 36). In the Dionysian ego transgression, the agonistic individuality of competitive According to critic of
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? FOREWORD xi
form of subjectivity freed from all the limits of cognition and purpose, from all the imperatives of usefulness and ? ? Habermas articulates anxieties that are widespread in contemporary Western cultures; he shares them with neolibe-
and conservatives alike, fearing a dissolution of the psychic armor and moral centeredness of Western individuality. Contrary to popular belief, however, a simple valorization of the Dionysian over the Apollonian takes place nowhere in Nietzsche. As as art
the Dionysian is always tamed or at ? ? ? vocable ne- cessity of representing itself. ? however, is always already Apol- lonian in ? As explains: "The orgiastic musical element is never in danger of breaking through the Apollonian barriers, for the stage itself, the tragic space ? Nietzsche constructed it ? in keeping with his overall plan, nothing other than a sort of Apollonian catch mechanism that ensures that no orgy will result from the orgiastic song of the chorus. The music of the singing he-goats is a Dionysian paroxism set apart in Apollonian quotation marks ? In
the polarity between Apollo and Dionysus is not a turbulent opposition that vacillates freely between the two extremes ? ? ? The Apollonian Unified Subject makes certain, through the mechanism of the silently established axiom of bal-
ance, that the Dionysian Other never comes into play as itself, but only as the dialectical or symmetrical Other to the Unified ? An Apollonian principle governs the antagonism between the Apollonian and the Dionysian" (S 24-25).
The modernist's view of Nietzsche's discussion of the Dionysian principle, marred as it is by anxieties of dissolution, overlooks the fact that Nietzsche set out to think a form of interventionist reflexivity or reflexive resistance that tries to attune itself to the fact that subjectivity is not constituted as a ? entity in "modernity. " Nietzsche's thinking of the Dionysian has to be placed in the
that conceives ? reason as a force able to resist the
talization of reason and its influence on social interaction. However, Nietzsche does ? the vein of the early Romantics, for ? the subject, as a unified epistemological center, opposite an object designed to be "reflected, be the latter other subjects, society as a whole, or nature. Rather, he follows the traces of the process of modernization within subjectivity and discovers in the process that resistance, if at all possible, has to begin by reflecting the split sub- jectivity of modern individuals. The most essential aspect of his argument is his insistence on the dialectical relationship between what he
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
calls the Apollonian and structurally desire of individu-
transgress and fortify their ego boundaries.
Paradoxically, the dialectical conception of this relationship leads Nietzsche to
a much more cogent and conclusive understanding of the basic division of knowl- edge and self-expression in modernity than is possible within the framework of a sociology of modernity shaped by a fundamental acceptance of modernity's de- sired mode of social organization. The affirmative reading of that organization
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? xii FOREWORD
has never been able to grasp the constant deferment that occurs when modern individuals strive for a unified ? deferment that generates a desire that can never be satisfied and that, in the form of permanent projections of ful- filled ? ruptures the very structure posited as homogeneous in prevalent philosophies of modernity. Nietzsche, on the other hand, tries to foreground and reflect precisely this very conflict inscribed in modern subjectivity. He does so by hiding behind a reading of antiquity and by narrating a myth, that is, by turn- ing the conflict into one "between two deities who interact with each other like impulse and constraint, passion and control, release and moderation, movement and ? compulsion and vision, music and image, will and represen- tation" (S 25). Social philosophies conceived in the ? tra- dition labor to repress this conflict by detemporalizing the desire underlying the conflict and by projecting or unfolding it spatially into different institutional realms. The repressed, however, returns in the form of psychic structures whose split constitution is barely and compulsively covered up by gestures of exclusion and identification. Furthermore, any affirmation of the project of modernity that is at the center of these philosophies must lead, if politically successful, to cog- nitive ? into "metaphysical comfort," as Nietzsche circum- scribed the modern tendency to arrest desire in sentimental projections of unity: for him, every affirmative perception of modernity's desired mode of organiza- tion must end in a consoling romanticism; Romantics, according to Nietzsche, tend to end ? ? as it is written, in spite of all self-education for seri- ousness and terror, ? ? sum ? as
(N 26)
The tendency of an art integrated into the system of modernity is to comfort and to compensate for a lack experienced in other realms of social interaction; this tendency led Nietzsche to believe that the thrust of his argument cannot be understood by one who feels compelled to view modern history as progress. In his Preface to Richard Wagner, with which he introduced his Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche thus maintains that "readers will find it offensive that an aesthetic problem should be taken so seriously," since "they are unable to consider art more than a pleasant a readily dispensable tinkling of bells that accom-
the of ? ? (N 31). Because of the structural appropriation of the aesthetic in modernity, Nietzsche attempts to rethink aesthetic culture as a culture of resistance. However, he never posits a different aesthetic culture; rather, he simply connects features of modernity's aesthetic culture with the split constitution of subjectivity he observed in a different reading of that culture. In his view, the aesthetic as the traditional medium in which ? expresses itself, may serve, if conceived differently, as a medium in which subjects reflect their own structural makeup. He attempts to shortcircuit aesthetic culture with theory. The conception and institutionalization of autonomous art as comfort do not allow for a radical reflexivity. The conception of such a radical reflexivity,
? ? ? ? ? ? FOREWORD xiii
which, as I will argue in detail here, is at the center of Nietzsche's Birth of Trag- edy, had to position Nietzsche in the eyes of social modernists in the camp of modernity's enemies.
nNietzsche's (and Sloterdijk's) renewed effort to uncover the basic conflicts and tensions in modernity leads to a reassessment of the dialectic of enlightenment. Habermas has also recently dealt with this issue by staging a rereading of Hork-
and ? Dialectic of Enlightenment. Here, he denies that the basic (dialectical)tension of rationality and myth characteristic of modernity is insur- mountable. His ? of the dialectic of enlightenment essentially con- tends that the functional differentiation of modernity defuses and deactivates such tensions to the benefit of society, thus changing their dialectical
terdijk, on the other hand, insists with Nietzsche that the dialectic of enlighten- ment may be repressed but never overcome; he tries to recuperate an
overlooked aspect of the project of enlightenment ? idea of an enlightenment that resists repression and stresses the necessity for a stage on which the drama of the conflict is portrayed and worked through. As stated earlier, the principle that governs the tension between the Apollonian and the Dionysian and that guaran- tees the primacy of the former is that of the necessity of representation or bolization. What determines the nature of aesthetic representation in modernity most strongly is the fact that a mode of representation enlightened by the basic tension between the Dionysian and the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
Apollonian can no longer claim to be a mimetic one. A split subjectivity can even less be "imitated," (i. e. , objectively portrayed for an individual) than ? since the relationship between sub- ject and artistic object can no longer be one of an encounter with beauty; rather, the artistic object serves as a mirror in whose image the subject reflects his or her own constitution ? constitution that by definition cannot be " h a d " in a unified image. The existence of the tension between the Dionysian and the Apollonian forces aesthetic representations to incorporate into their being a reflection upon their nonspatial and nontemporal relationship. "Thus, Apollo is the calculating subject who enters into a daring game with his own dissolution" (S ? Since a reflection, in the medium of the aesthetic, on the nature of this contradictory re- lationship introduces the only possibility of initiating awareness of the strictures of the system, Nietzsche can contend, in Sloterdijk's words, that through the "el- evation into the ? the world becomes more than it ? The substitution
superior to what it replaces; what has arisen from the original surpasses it" (S 30).
It should be obvious at this point that Sloterdijk reads Nietzsche as Lyotard reads Kant. The Dionysian and the sublime are both unrepresentable, at least not without being ? changed by ? Lyo-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? xiv FOREWORD
notion of the sublime, although never mentioned by Sloterdijk, seems to be an important point of reference in Sloterdijk's discourse. For both Lyotard, in his reading of Kant, and Sloterdijk, in his reading of Nietzsche, emphasize the im- possibility of symbolically representing an "other" space that is located outside reality ? representation that would enable us, by making a thinking of "oth- erness" possible, to intervene in reality. As a result, both Lyotard and Sloterdijk are concerned with the possibility of resistance after it has been acknowledged once and for all that it is impossible to represent a Utopia. The belief in the pos- sibility of such representations moved, as one will recall, the Enlightenment to hope that individuals and society ? the help of such and through rational debates and actions based on such debates ? be led to a better future. In this sense, enlightenment and its philosophies of history have become "impossible" for both authors. However, ? as Sloterdijk reads him, insists that this is an impoverished notion of enlightenment that tends to deflate the concept of critique as well as that of
Sloterdijk's reading of Nietzsche is an uncustomary one. In order to assess the validity of this reading and to grasp the nature and importance of the aesthetic state of radical reflexivity that Sloterdijk sees expressed in Nietzsche's book, I will turn to Nietzsche's text for a while and add my own reading of Nietzsche as a critic of modernity. As I will try to show, Nietzsche is a surprisingly structura- listic reader of modernity, an aspect somewhat neglected in Sloterdijk's restating of Nietzsche's project.
I already indicated that Nietzsche's reading of modernity, taken as a practice of structuralistic analysis, hides itself behind two rhetorical devices: first, behind the figures of Dionysus, Apollo, and Socrates, thus disguising its analytic force as a mythical narrative, and, second, behind a (pseudoscholarly) reading of an- tiquity. At first glance, Socrates' attitude toward Dionysus seems designed to i l - lustrate and narrate the relationship between the functionally differentiated realms of the ? ? and ? on the one hand, and the aes- thetic, on the other. Seen as a one-dimensional tension between two structurally unfolded realms, the aesthetic and the theoretical complement each other. The longing for ego transgression is, thus, the product of a structural factor. "The idyllic shepherd of modern man is merely a counterfeit of the sum of cultural illusions that are allegedly nature" (N 62). Idyllic scenes address "the abstract man, untutored by myth" and burdened by "abstract education; abstract moral- ity; abstract law; the abstract state" (N ? They are an expression of the " d i - version-craven luxuriousness" of modern individuals (N ? Speaking about the opera, which he sees as the "thoroughly modern variety of art," Nietzsche maintains that modern ? ? ? responds to a powerful need, but it is a nonaes-
? ? ? ? ? ? FOREWORD xv
thetic need: the yearning for the idyllic, the faith in the primordial existence of artistic and ? man" (N ? In light of his appraisal of the opera as the genre of compensatory art, he calls the historical emergence of opera, seemingly contradicting his earlier reading of Socrates as the paradigmatic figure of theoretical culture, "the birth of the theoretical man" (N ? Yet
Nietzsche is never interested in following a chronology or telling a
since every story is necessarily entangled in a nondialectical notion of enlight- enment. Both Socrates and the opera are mere figures in whose images he strives to understand a structure without falling into the trap of a linear diachronic and synchronic thinking. "The [theoretical] man incapable of art creates for himself a kind of art precisely because he is the inartistic man as such" (N ? thus compensating the one-sidedness of his theoretical existence. Like opera, the fea- tures of compensatory art "do not by any means exhibit the elegiac sorrow of an eternal loss, but rather the cheerfulness of eternal rediscovery, the comfortable delight in an idyllic reality which one can at least always imagine as real" (N Nietzsche's attack on such art could be and has been understood as an attack on the sentimentality of ? opposed to genuine art. Yet such a reading would not do justice to Nietzsche's argument; on the contrary, it would com- pletely
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
remain within the framework of modern "theoretical" culture, thus ally- ing and implicating itself with that ? In such a ? a fully domesticated and structurally integrated art "rises like a sweetishly seductive column of vapor from the depth of the Socratic world view" (N ?
