but rather becomes appar- ent as the fundamental
phenomenon
that, from time immemorial, has also en- compassed the "word becoming ?
Sloterdijk - Thinker on Stage
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
62 ?
DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
dreams a conformist's dream, and wishes it were the dream of a critical con- sciousness. He who really thinks is condemned to an isolation that compels him to begin anew and to fulfill himself; henceforth, there will no longer be any "tra-
but only a rediscovery of himself in affinities and constellations. During his "kynical," ? knowledge-criticizing years, Nietz- sche forged ahead into an isolation that was constitutive of a mode of thought oriented toward the terrible truth. Only through the discovery of a positive and liberating isolation could the pleasurable-painful (lustschmerzlich) prophecy of the Dionysian ? free itself from its involvement in the idealistic fraud of the Wagner cult. Because isolation exonerated him from all consider- ations, Nietzsche was quickly able to free himself from the false classicist man- nerisms that still cling to his book on tragedy. Redemption from the idols created space for the implementation of harder, purer values. From now on, it was a matter of Voltaire versus Wagner, romantic esprit versus a deep-rooted Teutonic clumsiness, the freethinker versus the religious fanatic, a serene nihilism versus a neoidealist self-indulgence in higher worlds, the malicious tongue versus a beautiful foaming at the mouth, the shadowless phenomena of the south versus the northern lights of cynicism, the "cynical" music of Carmen versus Wagner's oppressive Venusberg, the truth of the small energetic stab versus the lie of great
style.
One thing cannot be denied: Nietzsche was profound in his descent into the isolation of his new precision. From this
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
point on we have known more about the consanguinity of cruelty and profundity, but also more about that of the precision of good ? precision nota bene of musicians and artists, not of admin- istrators of knowledge and those who count mistakes, who confuse devotion to their inhibitions with precision.
He who shoots off theorems like arrows and gives out bites like statements must believe that he can rely on what he is saying having an effect on the pain/pleasure scale, index veri, for the author as well as for the public. Nietzsche practiced this belief as only a true believer can; his credo demanded that there should be no pronouncements of truth without consequences -- and if these consisted of the perishing of the perceiver because of that through which his will to truth had overextended ? fiat Veritas, pereat vita. This outlook on the possible adver- sity inherent in the correspondence between knowledge and effect explains why Nietzsche's credo suggests more than merely an overblown artist's concern for effect, and certainly not a reduction of philosophy to rhetoric.
Nietzsche's concept of style is based on a condensation of all speech into the pleasurable/painful physical foundation of knowledge. In his pronouncements on the truth itself begins to become concrete ? in Lenin's sense, which ultimately confused truth with grenades and allowed its concreteness to atrophy into a strategic brutality called ? Rather, it is concrete in the sense of a
? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 63
aesthetic ? return of the true into what can be perceived as true, a re- newed and deepened investigation of knowledge and sensuality. Nietzsche's writ- ing provides the prototype for a modern philosophical orality. What increasingly takes the upper hand in his pronouncements on truth ? in addition to the musical character of his lecture in general, the bittersweet pleasure he finds in taking the
into his mouth ? der Welt) as something he both loves and hates; the wild joy in biting and being bitten without which the Diony- sians of this divination would not possess a physical foundation in the body. One can also say that, in Nietzsche, the sense of taste once again takes on a philo- sophical dimension as the most intimate of the universal senses. Philosophy reaches back into its somatic sources; the world is initially experienced through the
For this reason, Nietzsche's critique of knowledge and psychology
larly that of the middle ? not comprise a soul-soothing theory, even though it does borrow from the grammatical structure and philosophical vocab- ulary of such a theory. His "theory" is an oral guerrilla campaign (guerilla). It is true that his philosophical, psychocritical writings are presented in a glittering Apollonian prose that, with its malicious simplicity, feigns contempt for any merely theoretical complexity. But these writings, with their forced rationalism and positivistic ? should be read as oral Dionyses in They are the bites, screams, and leaps ? into language ? a psyche com- pelled to communicate its cool state of delirium alongside the constant arrival
of the world.
Nietzsche is trying out a way of speaking that gushes forth from the speaker so
quickly, so precisely, so dryly, so ? and so fatally that, for a moment, the difference between life and speech seems to have disappeared. In the mo- ments of the highest oral intensity, that which is said is consumed in the act of saying it; all representations are reduced to ashes in the act of being expressed. There are no longer any semantics, only gesticulations; no longer any ideas, only tropes of energy; no longer any higher meaning, only temporal stimulation; no logos, only orality. There is no longer anything holy, only heartbeats; no longer any spirit, only breath; no longer a god, only the movements of a
Who can wonder at the fact that, up until this day, this language has been in search of those who understand it? It is the language of the postmetaphyical human being, and perhaps only a sort of children's language as ? return to a joyful orality at the heights of culture?
A hundred years after Nietzsche, it now and again seems as if an almost popular coming to terms with this singular philosopher were possible. Perhaps a majority of the aesthetic successes and the important philosophical self- representations of the present day are only the fulfillment of what was announced in his work. One indication of this among countless many is the excessive corroboration that
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 64 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
Nietzsche's verdict on the "cynical" Carmen has found among the mass public today. In addition, we could also count the return of opera, the renaissance of pathos, the discovery of a second misfortune ? a general obsession
the physical, the wholesale renunciation of ? apparitions, the irresistible privileging of taste over ethics, and the unnerving vacillation of souls between isolation and consolidation ? between the effort to separate and the desire to unify, between the hell of difference and that of identity. A l l of these are Nietzsche's landscapes, and we inhabit these landscapes, not because we "also" share his problems, but because his problems and the language in which he deals with them increasingly guide and overshadow our own problematizing.
Taste instead of ? will it lead? What is taste, anyway? How can such an unfathomable quantity take on meaning in
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
intellectual terms? And what if this is not the proper way to phrase the question? What if all systems of signi- fication ? have always been merely systems of
ways and means of translating the aroma of the world into linguistic articula- tions? Could it not be that all metaphysical doctrines have only served to coat the bitter pill of life in the sweet confection of an assigned meaning? ? ? you tell me, friends, that there is no disputing of taste and tasting? But all of life is a dispute of taste and tasting" ? ? Zarathustra, "On Those Who Are
Have not all the great methods for organizing the world been merely manipulations of taste (it is no coincidence that the words "cosmology" and "cosmetics" have the same root), and all philosophical statements only per- fumed attempts to stifle the unbearable fumes of the universal sewer in the effort involved in conceptualization? Psychology tells us that taste is the most intimate, the most universal sense of ? and Heidegger tells us that moods explain the world. The preacher Salomonis went into greater detail: woman is bitter, he said, and Nietzsche shared in this taste ? questioning the authority of his biblical predecessor.
Nietzsche's exceptional position among the modern philosophical authors is grounded above all, in my opinion, on the fact that, like almost no other thinker before him, he focused his reflections exclusively on the interplay between mood and taste. He was a philosophizing stylist because he consciously adapted his writing to the modi of orality. Speaking with an extraordinary intensity of moods, keys, variations of taste, levels of volume and tempi, he was the first philosopher to grasp that language itself, style itself, and expression itself ? nothing other than lifeless pseudo- Platonisms, from which the remains of life were fleeing. As a consequence, the expression of truth in itself came to a halt for him. How truths were expressed was from then on their own affair, and was relative to the mood (Stimmung) of the instrument upon which they were ? excitable body. The reverse side of this insight would read as follows: Eliminate the excitability of the body, and you will win one "truth. "
? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 65
Wearing the mask of Zarathustra, Nietzsche was the one who, as the first modernist and without having been a ? came upon a truth that wanted to be danced. He was also the one who knew that truth could be expressed in laughter. A truth- through-tears (Wahr-Weinen) had also confided in him in moments of Dionysian emotion, without taking into consideration the soldier in him, who preferred to find the truth contained in "holding fast" and standing his ground.
And what could be said about the ? ? that presented itself as an accompanying symptom of the severe ? headaches that plagued the flayed body of the writer who had so little flair for lying?
Nietzsche developed two modes for expressing the truth to a greater extent than any of the others: truth-through-biting ? and truth-through- singing ? both of which are the ultimate stagings of an oral truth that has been mediated by taste and mood. Truth-through-biting is the prototyp- ical gesture of a psychological writing of the "kynical" type of unmasking, which oscillates between a biting to death that causes him to
through ("The cattle among my friends, mere Germans, by your leave ? ? ? ? or through deprivation (did he not refer to Lou Salome, after the "disappointment," as that "withered, dirty, foul-smelling little ape, with her false ? ? the desirously precise, cruel and tender nibbling at subjects with which mere contemplation would accomplish nothing in the face of a sen- sual hunger for knowledge. Nietzsche knew truth-through-singing as a gesture that legitimately appeared with anyone who had learned, through great suffering, to cherish the value of good moments. "Singing is for those who are convalesc- ing; the healthy man prefers to A man who had to bite through entire worlds of constraints and deficiencies ? man who was too sensitive, who wanted too much, but who was also like an eternal convalescent, so happy to be able to celebrate in song a few great recoveries, Nietzsche exercised in his work a body of writing that brought to light, between the small bite and the great
between laconism and the dithyramb, an unmistakable individuality.
This wonderfully mobile and well-trained body of language executed "leaps and handstands" (letter of January 25, 1882), which even today could not be performed by anyone who was theoretically motionless and on ice, even if he published fat-bodied theories of aesthetic experience. But Nietzsche's capers would be fundamentally misrepresented if we were to see in them only vigorous asides to serious questions of truth. In them was ? as it was
his flights of pathos ? Dionysian subversion of the esprit de serieux, with which the modern world, with its theoretical and moralistic dominions of senti- is leadenly weighed down. In his physicality of language (Sprachkbrper- he wanted to announce a new ethics (Phooey! But do we still react this today? ) of thought. Nietzsche's holy lesson in behavior is recommended as be a hygienic or dietetic ? a sort of intellectual and spjritual musical ? as a mental gymnastics course for practicing a new pyschophy-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 66 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
ethics of intensity. Nietzsche knew that there was nothing more improper than a lack of energy that appears disguised as a ? He sensed that there was nothing more suspect than a fear of the truth that passed itself off as a critical
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
consciousness, and nothing more perverse than an inability to recognize that which confused itself with ? Above ? Nietzsche developed a thoroughly volatile sense for the obscenity of the so-called communication of subjects who are not sufficiently daring in how they express themselves; how he hated the phenomenon which George Grosz later caricatured in his Republican
functionaries of their own selves, these display-window mannequins of their own ? He uncovered the vampirism inherent not only
in the Christian ethic but, to an even greater extent, in that of a retical culture.
I am certain that, in the long run, this will prove to be the more important of Nietzsche's reassessments of values. The "unmasking" of Christianity as movement of ressentiment and as an epochal deadly assault may prove insignif- icant when compared to the uncovering of the physicality of thought. This is not a mode of thought that concentrates on the body, and not a ? of the physical against the intellectual; rather, it is a physical intellectuality in which the drama of a postmetaphysics appears. Therefore it is always an intelligence "on the verge" of something ? intelligence in transit, on stage, in the mood. It does not cling to the subject as if it were private property, but thrusts it
like a provocation and a revelation. Perhaps in this context the limitations of the old dumbstruck Enlightenment will become blindingly ? clear as repre- senting those of an attempt to limit intelligence like an active subjective property to a defined center of a ? risk-free character, instead of an understanding that comes into play only as a dramatic and procedural quantity ? the illusion of the propertied individual that has distorted every aspect of life in modernity. Nietzsche recognized intelligence as the virtue of the wanderer and "psycho-
and as a component at work in the makeup of the seafarer, of whom he wrote:
Indeed, we philosophers and "free spirits" feel, when we hear the news that "the old god is dead," as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with ? amazement, ? expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an "open
In each of these cases, it is a way of thinking that, in its fundamental concepts and basic operations, still utilizes dramatic ? it is a phenomenon that can only still fulfill itself in categories that exist because of their analogy to ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 67
drama. Tragoedia facta est quod ? ? W ithin this dramaturgy of the spirit, no statements are valid, only scenes; no "ideas," only plot lines; no dis- courses, only provocations. Thinking is the phenomenon of thought: the adven- ture of the perceiver, the drama of
Nietzsche encircles this phenomenal cleverness with a ring of sparkling met- aphors: metaphors of sea journeys, tightrope walking, flight; alpine or nomadic metaphors; metaphors of fragrance, sound, trembling, and surging
of gushing forth, rupturing, rolling forth from oneself, overflowing, ejaculation and ? A l l of these images reveal a phenomenal intellect that is search- ing, creative, testing in nature logos polytropos, which signifies nothing other than a brightness of the body on its great journey out of the earth and around the world.
It is most important to stress here that, in ? in all postmetaphysians of the Dionysian type in general -- it is never a matter of organizing a compen- satory ? We cannot permit ourselves to be caught up in Nietzsche's rhetoric on this point: his self-awareness of his creation of epochs did not have real his- torical-philosophical ? What this author is doing does not constitute a pure enthronement of sensuality, which was supposed to be helped back to its proper place after the theoretical ascetic excesses of the Western ratio. taphysical reflection is not intended to be a balancing mechanism against an excess of anything ? intelligible as opposed to something sensitive
It is also not a new beginning after something has ended, such as the return of the body after an era of disembodiment has run its course, and it is also not the sunrise of great honesty after an age of hypocrisy.
What is it ? if it is not any of these? It is the constantly
deepening of subjectivity of the universally open in the body's process of becom- ing more linguistic and more universally yielding, which is enriched in the course of its conscientious composition of self with increases in cohesion. Does this mean that the relationship between body and intellect has been reversed
ingly contrary to all metaphysical principles? In the place of logos being made
it would seem that now physis has become language. But even this formu- lation is incorrect, for this does not occur in its ?
but rather becomes appar- ent as the fundamental phenomenon that, from time immemorial, has also en- compassed the "word becoming ? The process of the physis becoming illuminated and lingual is much older than the descent of logos into the body -- both older and more historically powerful. What we call incarnation (and in doing so we unhesitatingly think of Christian ? and its modern surrogate manifestations) is merely an episode within the eternal linguistic and spiritual re- splendence (Aufleuchten) of the physis, which has been going on forever.
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
Presumably, in the dawn of advanced culture, the impression must have oc- curred that there existed an autonomous sphere of ideas, ? deities, and
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 68 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
which would have to descend into the physical world in order to accomplish its work ? opus operandum -- within it. "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us": this hymnus of Christian Platonism is at the same time the motto of advanced cultures that eo ipso represent programs for moralizing, ? education, and excarnation. Therefore, ad- vanced cultures must also always constantly appear as cultures that represent the inner war waged by a mobilizing and conquering intellect against a languid and suffering flesh. There is at work within them, in addition to the external violence of war and domination ? as the strongest characteristic ? the incarnate violence of the word, which entered the body in order to elevate its sorrow, desire, indolence, and self-will into a radiant
A more patient analysis, however, will reveal that this is a false description -- or at least an inadequate ? which mistakes only half of the phenomenon for the whole. For speech itself is always older than the logos of advanced culture; from the very bodies have spoken their ? their ? and their
before an empowering word could dictate to them what they were to say or incarnate. Since human existence depends on sharing ? and com- municating ? because of older somatic fundamentals, no real founda- tion exists for a logos that would prefer to cut itself away from its physical foun- dation in order to tyranically monopolize it. Logos is merely the parasite of an older linguistic predilection that responds only secondarily and in a highly cul- tured way to the violence and catastrophic conditions of the civilizing process; logos always creeps upward along the unendurability of a universal condition within which life appears as something that must be overcome, and, if not as this, then at least as something that is meant to be observed from above: thus the old affinity between spiritualization and mortification, both of which are symptoms of the logopathology ? of advanced culture. But even the excesses of logofication are only the bifurcations of the primary of the living, which still has the capacity to recognize itself in its abuses.
Does Nietzsche's own work corroborate these observations? I believe he is one of the few thinkers to ? in an exemplary manner and from a modern perspec- tive, the tendency to become language, which is inherent in physis. He was a genius of correspondences; he survived the experience of universal arrival and
of excitation and ? of phenomenon and ? in a overwhelming way. Looking back on the ecstasies he experienced during the writing of Zarathustra, he found astonishing formulations for the surplus of words that were available for expressing the factual matter of life:
Here all things come caressingly to your speech and flatter you, for they want to ride on your ? ? all being wants to become word
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 69
all that is in the process of becoming wants to learn to speak from you. 6, p. 340)
Shortly before the beginning of the twentieth century ? is the linguistic century ? linguistic phenomenon occurred that no linguist could ever have imagined. How did Nietzsche transcribe it?
With the very least residue of superstition within oneself, one could hardly know how to rid oneself of the idea that one is mere incarnation, merely a mouthpiece, merely a medium for powerful forces. (KSA, 6, p. 339)
One would have to extinguish even the final remainders of superstition in order to one's way back through the metaphysical fog to the truth of what was most evident: the fact that here no higher meaning was being ? a physis was expressing itself to the limits of overexposure ? In this borderline area, there is no active difference between expression in and of itself and expressing something. At the edges of language, the difference between ex- istence and speech is extinguished in the unavoidable fulfillment of absolute ex- pression. That a maximum of physical well-being was added to these precondi- tions indicates that Nietzsche could find the rhythm of a successful life only if he freed himself from the compulsion to incarnate, so as to be able to yield to ex-
pression before language:
My muscular ease was always greatest whenever my creative powers were most active. The body is enraptured; we can leave the "soul" out of our discussion. (KSA, 6, p. 341)
Nevertheless, his idea of being a medium, of performing the function of a mouthpiece, is not merely a superstitious mistake. It is tantamount to the insight that, in advanced culture's bathing of the body with the radiation of language, a compulsion and seduction are at work that do not stem from the speaker
and which cause him to say things that he does not say of his own accord (von sich aus) in the most precise sense. The spoken language is, indeed, not my own, or at least not entirely my own; it is always the others who have made me speak and listen to a language. Real speaking always occurs only in relation to hear-
all, to having been heard. These inspired verbal emotions (Worter- result in the effect, as strange as it is ? that, through the speaker, the Other only now, as it begins to ? We call these strange episodes of linguistic life in which the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
designations and inscrip- tions that logos has left behind within the individual begin to resound against the instrument of the body as if they were our own property. Within the context of aesthetic inspiration we observe how physis embraces, surpasses, dances around and appeases the logos; in such moments the impression suggests itself that a sort
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 70 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
of music is the mother tongue tongue of life. (According to ? Hebbel, "Prior to becoming human, ? heard ? Within such inspired speech, the maternal and paternal tongues resound through the mouthpiece of the child of this world. The forebears make use of this child as a sign (Zeichen) for the ex- pressions that could not be expressed during their ? It is the dumb desire to be one of the Others that inscribes the hyperplastic linguistic body of the child so that this body might express what it is incapable of expressing itself. "Every- thing that is in the process of becoming wants to learn to speak from ? In the very name used to designate the child (infans, "the one who does not speak"), a process that aims toward making it a being who does speak comes into play, a process that is identical to the last detail to that of incarnation. Without the in- carnation of logos, the subject would not enter into advanced ? and with- out violation, there would be no incarnation of ? Violation and logos belong together because only through violation can the speaker be compelled to say things that are directed against the vital interests of the infans. To speak in ac- cordance with a logos means to speak the language of those who can make use of me only as someone who is obedient and deadened; logos is the epitome of values and words in the name of which we take part in partial and total self-mor-
tification.
But how could we define a culture that would be successful in positive terms? Must culture inevitably be reduced to a subtle program of ? and By no means, for even if culture always has violence as part of its inheritance, it is free to release alert participants in the civilizing process from violation into creative play, the conscious endurance of what is ? and hu- moristic subversion to the highest purposes. Every speaker who investigates the matter can attempt to bring the violence he has inherited to life in positive terms through partially obsequious, partially insurrectional analogies to its incarnatio- duties ? in order to express again what is its own after being released from the cultural curriculum that has been demanded by logos. To express what is its own, however, means being able, in a cheerful way, to say
nothing more; it means getting behind the logos and reuniting with the older municativity of the living. Thus, a risk- laden drama is plotted out within every psyche in advanced ? wrestling match between the reason of the body and the madness of its incarnations. Within advanced culture, every subject is pregnant with
In Nietzsche, a drama of madness results whenever Dionysus meets Diogenes. In the preceding discussion we have played with the question of which
thustrian mask would remain available to this thinker after he played himself out in the impossible role of the nonreligious originator to the very limits of what is humanly possible. Now it becomes clear that this question has been incorrectly phrased: a subsequent mask would have been inconceivable on the stage upon
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
the drama has been carried out up to this point. ? the countenances that belong to the speaker's program for incarnation can appear upon this stage. After this, only one decision remains: whether to demolish the stage, an act that is tan- tamount to the suspension of the attempt at incarnation; or to escape into the madness of a final embodiment, the fatal process of becoming a god.
Whenever Dionysus encounters Diogenes, this decision comes into play. It is the final performance of civilization ? within the fragile body of an individual upon whom is thrust what he ? never permitted to ? the col- lision of Apollo and Dionysus, of logos and physis, of metaphysics and
wisdom. Here Diogenes stands for the playful body of an individual who would have saved his irresponsible sovereign expressiveness in that he suf- fuses all missions with ? results in his "language" sticking out its tongue at logos. If he stops to think properly, he does not have such terribly im- portant things to say: he makes use of all languages to show how one is ultimately unable to say anything with them. Thus, Sokrates ? and the music- making Socrates are ultimately one and the same. On the other hand, Nietzsche's Dionysus represents the phantasm of a body that wants to incarnate a divine logos, a body that is now only an instrument and speaks worlds, very nearly breaking the chains of individuation and the final indolence of the flesh so that it can unite the painful celebration of birth with that of life in a delirium of proph- ecy.
For an empirical individual, however, this incarnation of Dionysus is the unendurable pure and simple ? to the manifestations of the unendur- able, away from which all paths of culture lead toward what is endurable. No one, without having been prepared by something that is beyond the imaginable, can endure the shock effects of Dionysian radiation, and almost no one survives being immersed in what is unimaginable and
Nietzsche's metaphysical thesis on art provides the most impressive explana- tion for this: the compulsion toward art permeates existence at all levels. The unendurable must redeem itself into what can be endured; the irreparable must
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
allow itself to be replaced; the unimaginable must allow itself to be represented; the irresponsible must accept responsibility for itself; what is immediately in- communicable must be communicated, and the indivisible must be broken up -- so that it can endure itself. The presence must be brought back into the represen- tation, because pure ? from the unavailable exception of the mys-
synonymous with the unendurable for human beings within the status
quo.
This is where Diogenes makes his ? crazy man who announces
the deaths of god, logos, the empowered word, morality. He is the Dionysian savior from what is all too Dionysian. Because he has made it his business to experience the ? he has alerted himself to the possibility of adventuring
the intermediate ? Held up before the backdrop of the ? banality
? ? ? ? ? ? 72 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
begins to shine abysmally enough, and wherever this shining appears to be most life-enhancing, there sits Diogenes in his sunlight, lazy and deep, wary and happy, the personified denial of explosion, the illuminated prophylaxis against deadly radiation, the protector of the everyday, and the thinker of a Dionysian endurability. Diogenes warns the Dionysian philosopher against being ensnared in the trap of incarnation; he reminds him that there is no logos that would have authorized us to embody ? ingenious corporeality of life itself al- ready is ? and every duplication of this primary corporeality through the embodiment of an imaginary Dionysus could only lead to madness. Diogenes helps the Dionysian thinker to resist embodying "god" directly and being de- stroyed by the horror of the extraordinary. He protects him from burning too quickly. Thus, Diogenes to a certain extent incarnates the ? he demonstrates his contented state of having nothing to say, and lives an existence that playfully withdraws from all duty. He practices, with the greatest presence of mind, the art of winning away from the empowered word a meaning that was intended by the powers themselves; he is the master of the art of subversion through humor. Diogenes opposes the pseudo-Platonic (as well as spiritual-Chris- tian and modern-moralistic) hysteria of incarnation to the body's a priori attitude of "Leave me in peace," which in itself already speaks enough.
The question as to the composition of Nietzsche's mask is, at base, a question as to the possibility of bringing the moralistic theater of incarnation of European metaphysics to an end. According to Nietzsche's response to this question, ev- erything that has played a part in the fate of this thinker, even if only remotely, is remembered as horrible ? ? among other ? no one who has glanced even briefly behind the curtain of Western rationality can still pretend that Nietzsche's descent into madness was a private affair. This descent was, on the contrary, the individual recapitulation of an entire an exemplary sacrifice that, next to the death of Socrates and the slaughter ? Jesus, represents a third unforgettable statement on the relationship between the empowered word and the expression of life within Western culture. "Not only the reason of mil- lennia, but their madness too, breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir"
Spoke Zarathustra, "On the Gift-Giving
In his Dionysian farewell performance, Nietzsche sought reasons with which he could, in spite of everything, affirm his tormented life ? incarnation of the impossible. What would he not have given for the chance to breathe a sigh of relief within the context of an everyday existence that would have allowed him to let the matter of god auf sich rest and no longer violate his body, the miserable carriage ? He longed, because of the confusion of his compulsion toward incarnation, for an ultimate nakedness and simplicity: it is not least of all because of this that the word "cynicism" so frequently haunts the writings of his last conscious ? Perhaps, then, even a professorship in Basel would have been ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 73
good for something, as a form of being, and the naked existence of a god would not have been as trying and ? He would have had no more cul- tural gold in his body, which would have had to be exchanged for acknowledg- ment as a royal ? and given away because of the collapse of the ? He would have done something that was his own ? could have given culture its due, taken a fragment of unavoidable logos upon himself, and at the same time fulfilled his task of incarnation honestly and artfully. Only then would he have been able to release himself to what he was: not a word become flesh, which irritated the dry masculine body with hopeless ? not a hysterical idea that dragged the body behind it as a melancholy ? but a silent, spiritually rich, playful physis, a concrete individuality beyond missions and resignations.
A ? moment awaits an individual such as this who has returned from the battlefields of the drama of individuation to that which can be endured. If the partiality of circumstances opposes it, it may experience being as a suc- cessful and unsurpassable recognizability. It encounters the great moments in which existence, corporeality, and knowledge are conceived of as a unified whole. From this point forward, everything is comedy ? war is over, research has come to an ? In every second of its existence the world would be acknowl- edged as being enough. Now a thought that leaves no shadow blossoms forth without need for transcendent worlds, without reduction, without imputation, supported only by
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
a perception that is free from the weight ? of the researching ego, without interference and without the necessity of indulgence, immaculately looking the obvious in the eye. It is the midday of being, the calm lull of obligation (Solleri). The weight of the world has been lifted; there is in- corrigibility wherever we look. Dionysus is philosophizing. ?
dreams a conformist's dream, and wishes it were the dream of a critical con- sciousness. He who really thinks is condemned to an isolation that compels him to begin anew and to fulfill himself; henceforth, there will no longer be any "tra-
but only a rediscovery of himself in affinities and constellations. During his "kynical," ? knowledge-criticizing years, Nietz- sche forged ahead into an isolation that was constitutive of a mode of thought oriented toward the terrible truth. Only through the discovery of a positive and liberating isolation could the pleasurable-painful (lustschmerzlich) prophecy of the Dionysian ? free itself from its involvement in the idealistic fraud of the Wagner cult. Because isolation exonerated him from all consider- ations, Nietzsche was quickly able to free himself from the false classicist man- nerisms that still cling to his book on tragedy. Redemption from the idols created space for the implementation of harder, purer values. From now on, it was a matter of Voltaire versus Wagner, romantic esprit versus a deep-rooted Teutonic clumsiness, the freethinker versus the religious fanatic, a serene nihilism versus a neoidealist self-indulgence in higher worlds, the malicious tongue versus a beautiful foaming at the mouth, the shadowless phenomena of the south versus the northern lights of cynicism, the "cynical" music of Carmen versus Wagner's oppressive Venusberg, the truth of the small energetic stab versus the lie of great
style.
One thing cannot be denied: Nietzsche was profound in his descent into the isolation of his new precision. From this
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
point on we have known more about the consanguinity of cruelty and profundity, but also more about that of the precision of good ? precision nota bene of musicians and artists, not of admin- istrators of knowledge and those who count mistakes, who confuse devotion to their inhibitions with precision.
He who shoots off theorems like arrows and gives out bites like statements must believe that he can rely on what he is saying having an effect on the pain/pleasure scale, index veri, for the author as well as for the public. Nietzsche practiced this belief as only a true believer can; his credo demanded that there should be no pronouncements of truth without consequences -- and if these consisted of the perishing of the perceiver because of that through which his will to truth had overextended ? fiat Veritas, pereat vita. This outlook on the possible adver- sity inherent in the correspondence between knowledge and effect explains why Nietzsche's credo suggests more than merely an overblown artist's concern for effect, and certainly not a reduction of philosophy to rhetoric.
Nietzsche's concept of style is based on a condensation of all speech into the pleasurable/painful physical foundation of knowledge. In his pronouncements on the truth itself begins to become concrete ? in Lenin's sense, which ultimately confused truth with grenades and allowed its concreteness to atrophy into a strategic brutality called ? Rather, it is concrete in the sense of a
? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 63
aesthetic ? return of the true into what can be perceived as true, a re- newed and deepened investigation of knowledge and sensuality. Nietzsche's writ- ing provides the prototype for a modern philosophical orality. What increasingly takes the upper hand in his pronouncements on truth ? in addition to the musical character of his lecture in general, the bittersweet pleasure he finds in taking the
into his mouth ? der Welt) as something he both loves and hates; the wild joy in biting and being bitten without which the Diony- sians of this divination would not possess a physical foundation in the body. One can also say that, in Nietzsche, the sense of taste once again takes on a philo- sophical dimension as the most intimate of the universal senses. Philosophy reaches back into its somatic sources; the world is initially experienced through the
For this reason, Nietzsche's critique of knowledge and psychology
larly that of the middle ? not comprise a soul-soothing theory, even though it does borrow from the grammatical structure and philosophical vocab- ulary of such a theory. His "theory" is an oral guerrilla campaign (guerilla). It is true that his philosophical, psychocritical writings are presented in a glittering Apollonian prose that, with its malicious simplicity, feigns contempt for any merely theoretical complexity. But these writings, with their forced rationalism and positivistic ? should be read as oral Dionyses in They are the bites, screams, and leaps ? into language ? a psyche com- pelled to communicate its cool state of delirium alongside the constant arrival
of the world.
Nietzsche is trying out a way of speaking that gushes forth from the speaker so
quickly, so precisely, so dryly, so ? and so fatally that, for a moment, the difference between life and speech seems to have disappeared. In the mo- ments of the highest oral intensity, that which is said is consumed in the act of saying it; all representations are reduced to ashes in the act of being expressed. There are no longer any semantics, only gesticulations; no longer any ideas, only tropes of energy; no longer any higher meaning, only temporal stimulation; no logos, only orality. There is no longer anything holy, only heartbeats; no longer any spirit, only breath; no longer a god, only the movements of a
Who can wonder at the fact that, up until this day, this language has been in search of those who understand it? It is the language of the postmetaphyical human being, and perhaps only a sort of children's language as ? return to a joyful orality at the heights of culture?
A hundred years after Nietzsche, it now and again seems as if an almost popular coming to terms with this singular philosopher were possible. Perhaps a majority of the aesthetic successes and the important philosophical self- representations of the present day are only the fulfillment of what was announced in his work. One indication of this among countless many is the excessive corroboration that
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 64 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
Nietzsche's verdict on the "cynical" Carmen has found among the mass public today. In addition, we could also count the return of opera, the renaissance of pathos, the discovery of a second misfortune ? a general obsession
the physical, the wholesale renunciation of ? apparitions, the irresistible privileging of taste over ethics, and the unnerving vacillation of souls between isolation and consolidation ? between the effort to separate and the desire to unify, between the hell of difference and that of identity. A l l of these are Nietzsche's landscapes, and we inhabit these landscapes, not because we "also" share his problems, but because his problems and the language in which he deals with them increasingly guide and overshadow our own problematizing.
Taste instead of ? will it lead? What is taste, anyway? How can such an unfathomable quantity take on meaning in
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
intellectual terms? And what if this is not the proper way to phrase the question? What if all systems of signi- fication ? have always been merely systems of
ways and means of translating the aroma of the world into linguistic articula- tions? Could it not be that all metaphysical doctrines have only served to coat the bitter pill of life in the sweet confection of an assigned meaning? ? ? you tell me, friends, that there is no disputing of taste and tasting? But all of life is a dispute of taste and tasting" ? ? Zarathustra, "On Those Who Are
Have not all the great methods for organizing the world been merely manipulations of taste (it is no coincidence that the words "cosmology" and "cosmetics" have the same root), and all philosophical statements only per- fumed attempts to stifle the unbearable fumes of the universal sewer in the effort involved in conceptualization? Psychology tells us that taste is the most intimate, the most universal sense of ? and Heidegger tells us that moods explain the world. The preacher Salomonis went into greater detail: woman is bitter, he said, and Nietzsche shared in this taste ? questioning the authority of his biblical predecessor.
Nietzsche's exceptional position among the modern philosophical authors is grounded above all, in my opinion, on the fact that, like almost no other thinker before him, he focused his reflections exclusively on the interplay between mood and taste. He was a philosophizing stylist because he consciously adapted his writing to the modi of orality. Speaking with an extraordinary intensity of moods, keys, variations of taste, levels of volume and tempi, he was the first philosopher to grasp that language itself, style itself, and expression itself ? nothing other than lifeless pseudo- Platonisms, from which the remains of life were fleeing. As a consequence, the expression of truth in itself came to a halt for him. How truths were expressed was from then on their own affair, and was relative to the mood (Stimmung) of the instrument upon which they were ? excitable body. The reverse side of this insight would read as follows: Eliminate the excitability of the body, and you will win one "truth. "
? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 65
Wearing the mask of Zarathustra, Nietzsche was the one who, as the first modernist and without having been a ? came upon a truth that wanted to be danced. He was also the one who knew that truth could be expressed in laughter. A truth- through-tears (Wahr-Weinen) had also confided in him in moments of Dionysian emotion, without taking into consideration the soldier in him, who preferred to find the truth contained in "holding fast" and standing his ground.
And what could be said about the ? ? that presented itself as an accompanying symptom of the severe ? headaches that plagued the flayed body of the writer who had so little flair for lying?
Nietzsche developed two modes for expressing the truth to a greater extent than any of the others: truth-through-biting ? and truth-through- singing ? both of which are the ultimate stagings of an oral truth that has been mediated by taste and mood. Truth-through-biting is the prototyp- ical gesture of a psychological writing of the "kynical" type of unmasking, which oscillates between a biting to death that causes him to
through ("The cattle among my friends, mere Germans, by your leave ? ? ? ? or through deprivation (did he not refer to Lou Salome, after the "disappointment," as that "withered, dirty, foul-smelling little ape, with her false ? ? the desirously precise, cruel and tender nibbling at subjects with which mere contemplation would accomplish nothing in the face of a sen- sual hunger for knowledge. Nietzsche knew truth-through-singing as a gesture that legitimately appeared with anyone who had learned, through great suffering, to cherish the value of good moments. "Singing is for those who are convalesc- ing; the healthy man prefers to A man who had to bite through entire worlds of constraints and deficiencies ? man who was too sensitive, who wanted too much, but who was also like an eternal convalescent, so happy to be able to celebrate in song a few great recoveries, Nietzsche exercised in his work a body of writing that brought to light, between the small bite and the great
between laconism and the dithyramb, an unmistakable individuality.
This wonderfully mobile and well-trained body of language executed "leaps and handstands" (letter of January 25, 1882), which even today could not be performed by anyone who was theoretically motionless and on ice, even if he published fat-bodied theories of aesthetic experience. But Nietzsche's capers would be fundamentally misrepresented if we were to see in them only vigorous asides to serious questions of truth. In them was ? as it was
his flights of pathos ? Dionysian subversion of the esprit de serieux, with which the modern world, with its theoretical and moralistic dominions of senti- is leadenly weighed down. In his physicality of language (Sprachkbrper- he wanted to announce a new ethics (Phooey! But do we still react this today? ) of thought. Nietzsche's holy lesson in behavior is recommended as be a hygienic or dietetic ? a sort of intellectual and spjritual musical ? as a mental gymnastics course for practicing a new pyschophy-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 66 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
ethics of intensity. Nietzsche knew that there was nothing more improper than a lack of energy that appears disguised as a ? He sensed that there was nothing more suspect than a fear of the truth that passed itself off as a critical
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
consciousness, and nothing more perverse than an inability to recognize that which confused itself with ? Above ? Nietzsche developed a thoroughly volatile sense for the obscenity of the so-called communication of subjects who are not sufficiently daring in how they express themselves; how he hated the phenomenon which George Grosz later caricatured in his Republican
functionaries of their own selves, these display-window mannequins of their own ? He uncovered the vampirism inherent not only
in the Christian ethic but, to an even greater extent, in that of a retical culture.
I am certain that, in the long run, this will prove to be the more important of Nietzsche's reassessments of values. The "unmasking" of Christianity as movement of ressentiment and as an epochal deadly assault may prove insignif- icant when compared to the uncovering of the physicality of thought. This is not a mode of thought that concentrates on the body, and not a ? of the physical against the intellectual; rather, it is a physical intellectuality in which the drama of a postmetaphysics appears. Therefore it is always an intelligence "on the verge" of something ? intelligence in transit, on stage, in the mood. It does not cling to the subject as if it were private property, but thrusts it
like a provocation and a revelation. Perhaps in this context the limitations of the old dumbstruck Enlightenment will become blindingly ? clear as repre- senting those of an attempt to limit intelligence like an active subjective property to a defined center of a ? risk-free character, instead of an understanding that comes into play only as a dramatic and procedural quantity ? the illusion of the propertied individual that has distorted every aspect of life in modernity. Nietzsche recognized intelligence as the virtue of the wanderer and "psycho-
and as a component at work in the makeup of the seafarer, of whom he wrote:
Indeed, we philosophers and "free spirits" feel, when we hear the news that "the old god is dead," as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with ? amazement, ? expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an "open
In each of these cases, it is a way of thinking that, in its fundamental concepts and basic operations, still utilizes dramatic ? it is a phenomenon that can only still fulfill itself in categories that exist because of their analogy to ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 67
drama. Tragoedia facta est quod ? ? W ithin this dramaturgy of the spirit, no statements are valid, only scenes; no "ideas," only plot lines; no dis- courses, only provocations. Thinking is the phenomenon of thought: the adven- ture of the perceiver, the drama of
Nietzsche encircles this phenomenal cleverness with a ring of sparkling met- aphors: metaphors of sea journeys, tightrope walking, flight; alpine or nomadic metaphors; metaphors of fragrance, sound, trembling, and surging
of gushing forth, rupturing, rolling forth from oneself, overflowing, ejaculation and ? A l l of these images reveal a phenomenal intellect that is search- ing, creative, testing in nature logos polytropos, which signifies nothing other than a brightness of the body on its great journey out of the earth and around the world.
It is most important to stress here that, in ? in all postmetaphysians of the Dionysian type in general -- it is never a matter of organizing a compen- satory ? We cannot permit ourselves to be caught up in Nietzsche's rhetoric on this point: his self-awareness of his creation of epochs did not have real his- torical-philosophical ? What this author is doing does not constitute a pure enthronement of sensuality, which was supposed to be helped back to its proper place after the theoretical ascetic excesses of the Western ratio. taphysical reflection is not intended to be a balancing mechanism against an excess of anything ? intelligible as opposed to something sensitive
It is also not a new beginning after something has ended, such as the return of the body after an era of disembodiment has run its course, and it is also not the sunrise of great honesty after an age of hypocrisy.
What is it ? if it is not any of these? It is the constantly
deepening of subjectivity of the universally open in the body's process of becom- ing more linguistic and more universally yielding, which is enriched in the course of its conscientious composition of self with increases in cohesion. Does this mean that the relationship between body and intellect has been reversed
ingly contrary to all metaphysical principles? In the place of logos being made
it would seem that now physis has become language. But even this formu- lation is incorrect, for this does not occur in its ?
but rather becomes appar- ent as the fundamental phenomenon that, from time immemorial, has also en- compassed the "word becoming ? The process of the physis becoming illuminated and lingual is much older than the descent of logos into the body -- both older and more historically powerful. What we call incarnation (and in doing so we unhesitatingly think of Christian ? and its modern surrogate manifestations) is merely an episode within the eternal linguistic and spiritual re- splendence (Aufleuchten) of the physis, which has been going on forever.
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
Presumably, in the dawn of advanced culture, the impression must have oc- curred that there existed an autonomous sphere of ideas, ? deities, and
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 68 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
which would have to descend into the physical world in order to accomplish its work ? opus operandum -- within it. "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us": this hymnus of Christian Platonism is at the same time the motto of advanced cultures that eo ipso represent programs for moralizing, ? education, and excarnation. Therefore, ad- vanced cultures must also always constantly appear as cultures that represent the inner war waged by a mobilizing and conquering intellect against a languid and suffering flesh. There is at work within them, in addition to the external violence of war and domination ? as the strongest characteristic ? the incarnate violence of the word, which entered the body in order to elevate its sorrow, desire, indolence, and self-will into a radiant
A more patient analysis, however, will reveal that this is a false description -- or at least an inadequate ? which mistakes only half of the phenomenon for the whole. For speech itself is always older than the logos of advanced culture; from the very bodies have spoken their ? their ? and their
before an empowering word could dictate to them what they were to say or incarnate. Since human existence depends on sharing ? and com- municating ? because of older somatic fundamentals, no real founda- tion exists for a logos that would prefer to cut itself away from its physical foun- dation in order to tyranically monopolize it. Logos is merely the parasite of an older linguistic predilection that responds only secondarily and in a highly cul- tured way to the violence and catastrophic conditions of the civilizing process; logos always creeps upward along the unendurability of a universal condition within which life appears as something that must be overcome, and, if not as this, then at least as something that is meant to be observed from above: thus the old affinity between spiritualization and mortification, both of which are symptoms of the logopathology ? of advanced culture. But even the excesses of logofication are only the bifurcations of the primary of the living, which still has the capacity to recognize itself in its abuses.
Does Nietzsche's own work corroborate these observations? I believe he is one of the few thinkers to ? in an exemplary manner and from a modern perspec- tive, the tendency to become language, which is inherent in physis. He was a genius of correspondences; he survived the experience of universal arrival and
of excitation and ? of phenomenon and ? in a overwhelming way. Looking back on the ecstasies he experienced during the writing of Zarathustra, he found astonishing formulations for the surplus of words that were available for expressing the factual matter of life:
Here all things come caressingly to your speech and flatter you, for they want to ride on your ? ? all being wants to become word
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 69
all that is in the process of becoming wants to learn to speak from you. 6, p. 340)
Shortly before the beginning of the twentieth century ? is the linguistic century ? linguistic phenomenon occurred that no linguist could ever have imagined. How did Nietzsche transcribe it?
With the very least residue of superstition within oneself, one could hardly know how to rid oneself of the idea that one is mere incarnation, merely a mouthpiece, merely a medium for powerful forces. (KSA, 6, p. 339)
One would have to extinguish even the final remainders of superstition in order to one's way back through the metaphysical fog to the truth of what was most evident: the fact that here no higher meaning was being ? a physis was expressing itself to the limits of overexposure ? In this borderline area, there is no active difference between expression in and of itself and expressing something. At the edges of language, the difference between ex- istence and speech is extinguished in the unavoidable fulfillment of absolute ex- pression. That a maximum of physical well-being was added to these precondi- tions indicates that Nietzsche could find the rhythm of a successful life only if he freed himself from the compulsion to incarnate, so as to be able to yield to ex-
pression before language:
My muscular ease was always greatest whenever my creative powers were most active. The body is enraptured; we can leave the "soul" out of our discussion. (KSA, 6, p. 341)
Nevertheless, his idea of being a medium, of performing the function of a mouthpiece, is not merely a superstitious mistake. It is tantamount to the insight that, in advanced culture's bathing of the body with the radiation of language, a compulsion and seduction are at work that do not stem from the speaker
and which cause him to say things that he does not say of his own accord (von sich aus) in the most precise sense. The spoken language is, indeed, not my own, or at least not entirely my own; it is always the others who have made me speak and listen to a language. Real speaking always occurs only in relation to hear-
all, to having been heard. These inspired verbal emotions (Worter- result in the effect, as strange as it is ? that, through the speaker, the Other only now, as it begins to ? We call these strange episodes of linguistic life in which the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
designations and inscrip- tions that logos has left behind within the individual begin to resound against the instrument of the body as if they were our own property. Within the context of aesthetic inspiration we observe how physis embraces, surpasses, dances around and appeases the logos; in such moments the impression suggests itself that a sort
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 70 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
of music is the mother tongue tongue of life. (According to ? Hebbel, "Prior to becoming human, ? heard ? Within such inspired speech, the maternal and paternal tongues resound through the mouthpiece of the child of this world. The forebears make use of this child as a sign (Zeichen) for the ex- pressions that could not be expressed during their ? It is the dumb desire to be one of the Others that inscribes the hyperplastic linguistic body of the child so that this body might express what it is incapable of expressing itself. "Every- thing that is in the process of becoming wants to learn to speak from ? In the very name used to designate the child (infans, "the one who does not speak"), a process that aims toward making it a being who does speak comes into play, a process that is identical to the last detail to that of incarnation. Without the in- carnation of logos, the subject would not enter into advanced ? and with- out violation, there would be no incarnation of ? Violation and logos belong together because only through violation can the speaker be compelled to say things that are directed against the vital interests of the infans. To speak in ac- cordance with a logos means to speak the language of those who can make use of me only as someone who is obedient and deadened; logos is the epitome of values and words in the name of which we take part in partial and total self-mor-
tification.
But how could we define a culture that would be successful in positive terms? Must culture inevitably be reduced to a subtle program of ? and By no means, for even if culture always has violence as part of its inheritance, it is free to release alert participants in the civilizing process from violation into creative play, the conscious endurance of what is ? and hu- moristic subversion to the highest purposes. Every speaker who investigates the matter can attempt to bring the violence he has inherited to life in positive terms through partially obsequious, partially insurrectional analogies to its incarnatio- duties ? in order to express again what is its own after being released from the cultural curriculum that has been demanded by logos. To express what is its own, however, means being able, in a cheerful way, to say
nothing more; it means getting behind the logos and reuniting with the older municativity of the living. Thus, a risk- laden drama is plotted out within every psyche in advanced ? wrestling match between the reason of the body and the madness of its incarnations. Within advanced culture, every subject is pregnant with
In Nietzsche, a drama of madness results whenever Dionysus meets Diogenes. In the preceding discussion we have played with the question of which
thustrian mask would remain available to this thinker after he played himself out in the impossible role of the nonreligious originator to the very limits of what is humanly possible. Now it becomes clear that this question has been incorrectly phrased: a subsequent mask would have been inconceivable on the stage upon
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
the drama has been carried out up to this point. ? the countenances that belong to the speaker's program for incarnation can appear upon this stage. After this, only one decision remains: whether to demolish the stage, an act that is tan- tamount to the suspension of the attempt at incarnation; or to escape into the madness of a final embodiment, the fatal process of becoming a god.
Whenever Dionysus encounters Diogenes, this decision comes into play. It is the final performance of civilization ? within the fragile body of an individual upon whom is thrust what he ? never permitted to ? the col- lision of Apollo and Dionysus, of logos and physis, of metaphysics and
wisdom. Here Diogenes stands for the playful body of an individual who would have saved his irresponsible sovereign expressiveness in that he suf- fuses all missions with ? results in his "language" sticking out its tongue at logos. If he stops to think properly, he does not have such terribly im- portant things to say: he makes use of all languages to show how one is ultimately unable to say anything with them. Thus, Sokrates ? and the music- making Socrates are ultimately one and the same. On the other hand, Nietzsche's Dionysus represents the phantasm of a body that wants to incarnate a divine logos, a body that is now only an instrument and speaks worlds, very nearly breaking the chains of individuation and the final indolence of the flesh so that it can unite the painful celebration of birth with that of life in a delirium of proph- ecy.
For an empirical individual, however, this incarnation of Dionysus is the unendurable pure and simple ? to the manifestations of the unendur- able, away from which all paths of culture lead toward what is endurable. No one, without having been prepared by something that is beyond the imaginable, can endure the shock effects of Dionysian radiation, and almost no one survives being immersed in what is unimaginable and
Nietzsche's metaphysical thesis on art provides the most impressive explana- tion for this: the compulsion toward art permeates existence at all levels. The unendurable must redeem itself into what can be endured; the irreparable must
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
allow itself to be replaced; the unimaginable must allow itself to be represented; the irresponsible must accept responsibility for itself; what is immediately in- communicable must be communicated, and the indivisible must be broken up -- so that it can endure itself. The presence must be brought back into the represen- tation, because pure ? from the unavailable exception of the mys-
synonymous with the unendurable for human beings within the status
quo.
This is where Diogenes makes his ? crazy man who announces
the deaths of god, logos, the empowered word, morality. He is the Dionysian savior from what is all too Dionysian. Because he has made it his business to experience the ? he has alerted himself to the possibility of adventuring
the intermediate ? Held up before the backdrop of the ? banality
? ? ? ? ? ? 72 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
begins to shine abysmally enough, and wherever this shining appears to be most life-enhancing, there sits Diogenes in his sunlight, lazy and deep, wary and happy, the personified denial of explosion, the illuminated prophylaxis against deadly radiation, the protector of the everyday, and the thinker of a Dionysian endurability. Diogenes warns the Dionysian philosopher against being ensnared in the trap of incarnation; he reminds him that there is no logos that would have authorized us to embody ? ingenious corporeality of life itself al- ready is ? and every duplication of this primary corporeality through the embodiment of an imaginary Dionysus could only lead to madness. Diogenes helps the Dionysian thinker to resist embodying "god" directly and being de- stroyed by the horror of the extraordinary. He protects him from burning too quickly. Thus, Diogenes to a certain extent incarnates the ? he demonstrates his contented state of having nothing to say, and lives an existence that playfully withdraws from all duty. He practices, with the greatest presence of mind, the art of winning away from the empowered word a meaning that was intended by the powers themselves; he is the master of the art of subversion through humor. Diogenes opposes the pseudo-Platonic (as well as spiritual-Chris- tian and modern-moralistic) hysteria of incarnation to the body's a priori attitude of "Leave me in peace," which in itself already speaks enough.
The question as to the composition of Nietzsche's mask is, at base, a question as to the possibility of bringing the moralistic theater of incarnation of European metaphysics to an end. According to Nietzsche's response to this question, ev- erything that has played a part in the fate of this thinker, even if only remotely, is remembered as horrible ? ? among other ? no one who has glanced even briefly behind the curtain of Western rationality can still pretend that Nietzsche's descent into madness was a private affair. This descent was, on the contrary, the individual recapitulation of an entire an exemplary sacrifice that, next to the death of Socrates and the slaughter ? Jesus, represents a third unforgettable statement on the relationship between the empowered word and the expression of life within Western culture. "Not only the reason of mil- lennia, but their madness too, breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir"
Spoke Zarathustra, "On the Gift-Giving
In his Dionysian farewell performance, Nietzsche sought reasons with which he could, in spite of everything, affirm his tormented life ? incarnation of the impossible. What would he not have given for the chance to breathe a sigh of relief within the context of an everyday existence that would have allowed him to let the matter of god auf sich rest and no longer violate his body, the miserable carriage ? He longed, because of the confusion of his compulsion toward incarnation, for an ultimate nakedness and simplicity: it is not least of all because of this that the word "cynicism" so frequently haunts the writings of his last conscious ? Perhaps, then, even a professorship in Basel would have been ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 73
good for something, as a form of being, and the naked existence of a god would not have been as trying and ? He would have had no more cul- tural gold in his body, which would have had to be exchanged for acknowledg- ment as a royal ? and given away because of the collapse of the ? He would have done something that was his own ? could have given culture its due, taken a fragment of unavoidable logos upon himself, and at the same time fulfilled his task of incarnation honestly and artfully. Only then would he have been able to release himself to what he was: not a word become flesh, which irritated the dry masculine body with hopeless ? not a hysterical idea that dragged the body behind it as a melancholy ? but a silent, spiritually rich, playful physis, a concrete individuality beyond missions and resignations.
A ? moment awaits an individual such as this who has returned from the battlefields of the drama of individuation to that which can be endured. If the partiality of circumstances opposes it, it may experience being as a suc- cessful and unsurpassable recognizability. It encounters the great moments in which existence, corporeality, and knowledge are conceived of as a unified whole. From this point forward, everything is comedy ? war is over, research has come to an ? In every second of its existence the world would be acknowl- edged as being enough. Now a thought that leaves no shadow blossoms forth without need for transcendent worlds, without reduction, without imputation, supported only by
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
a perception that is free from the weight ? of the researching ego, without interference and without the necessity of indulgence, immaculately looking the obvious in the eye. It is the midday of being, the calm lull of obligation (Solleri). The weight of the world has been lifted; there is in- corrigibility wherever we look. Dionysus is philosophizing. ?
