Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London: Chicago
University
Press, 1984).
Sloterdijk - You Must Change Your Life
In the light of this analysis, the Christian mass appears as a double conditioning form: on the one hand a constantly repeated killing drama, and on the other hand a rehearsing of the blood sacrifice's replacement by the symbolic game.
This is the inversion of Seneca's satirical statement non vitae, sed scholae discirnus [we are learning not for life, but for the school] (Epistolae rnorales ad Lucilium 106, 12), with which he declares that the decadence of the school constitutes the system of learning. The true school programme, the learning of the divine, must therefore be copied onto other media, for example the philosopher's correspondence with a younger friend. It is there- fore likely that Seneca was inverting an older, undocumented saying - which would make the return of the medieval schoolmasters to the version non scholae sed vitae discimus entirely justified.
Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, erito, and Phaedo, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Millis, MA: Agora, 2005), p. 62.
Klaus Berger, Theologiegeschichte des Urchristenturns: Theologie des Neuen Testarnents (Tubingen and Basle: Francke, 1994), p. 661.
111
112
113
465
NOTES TO PP.
Alexander Leben: 350
G eschich ten
115 Tertullian, Disciplinary. Moral and trans. Rudolph
Arbesmann, Sister Emily Joseph Daly and Edwin A. Quain (Washington,
DC; CUA Press, 1959), p. 20. 116 Ibid. , p. 23.
117 118 119 120
1
2 3
4
5 6
7 8 9
10
11
12 13
14 15
16
Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ, trans. Peter Holmes (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2004), p. 12.
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Emma Crawford and Marion von der Ruhr (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).
See Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post- Christian Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).
Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 84e.
/I EXAGGERATION PROCEDURES
See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1998). For a critical response to this from a student of Arendt, see Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (London: Allen Lane, 2008); see also p. 292 below.
See pp. 163f. above.
Paul Rabbow, Seelenfuhrung: Methodik der Exerzitien in der Antike (Munich: Kosel, 1954), based on Epictetus, The Enchiridion, 3. One finds the same motif in Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations, book 11, ch. 34. Albert Schweitzer, Indian Thought and Its Development, trans. Mrs Charles E. B. Russell (Boston: Beacon, 1960), p. 110.
Patanjaii, Yoga Surra II, 41.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), p. 245.
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), p. 124.
See Jiirgen Hasse, Ubersehene Riiume: Zur Kulturgeschichte und Heterotopologie des Parkhauses (Bielefeld: transcript, 2007).
See Peter Sloterdijk, 'Strong Observation: For a Space Station Philosophy', in Native Land, Stop Eject, ed. Raymond Depardon and Paul Virilio (ArIes: Actes Sud, 2010), pp. 29-36.
Digha Nikaya 5.
In this context one should recall Petrarch's well-known letter of 26 April 1336, in which he claims to have been reading a pocket edition of Augustine's Confessions at the summit of Mont Ventoux.
See Rabbow, Seelenfuhrung, p. 93.
Epictetus, The Enchiridion, III, 3, 14; quoted in Rabbow, Seelenfuhrung, p. 135.
Augustine, De vera religione, XXXIX, 72.
One possible version of the philosophical counter-movement to the age of objectivism and the illusion of the outside world is presented in my Spheres trilogy (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998-2003). In English so far: Spheres, vol. 1: Bubbles, trans. Wieland Hoban (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2011). Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations, p. 90.
466
and New
Marcus Aurelius, The lV lt'U H U lt'U I
trans. Iv! . p. 60.
PP.
See p. 266 below.
This is treated in greater detail in ch. 8, pp. 277-84.
Horace, Epistles I, 6, 1.
This could be shown especially clearly using the evolution of Buddhism and the adaptation of the arhat ideal of the Hinayana to the bodhisattva ideal of the Mahayana.
23 On 'riddle language' or 'intentional language' in Tantrism, see Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 249.
24 In the first part of The Vocation of Man (1800), Johann Gottlieb Fichte demonstrated the deterministic-fatalistic position with a perfect simulation in order to evoke the despair that drives us forwards to practical idealism.
25 Quoted in Eliade, Yoga, p. 189.
26 In this respect, Buddha is 'simultaneous' with Greek Sophism, which, in
terms of its overall direction, must be viewed above all as a humanistic exercise programme. It views a helpless letting-oneself-go as the worst form of behaviour and fatalism as an assault on arete, the willingness to self-help.
27 Thomas Macho, 'Mit sich allein: Einsamkeit als Kulturtechnik', in Aleida and Jan Assmann (eds. ), Einsamkeit (Archaologie der literarischen Kommunikation VI) (Munich: Fink, 2000), pp. 27-44.
28 Regula Benedicti 7, 13 and 7, 28.
29 Kierkegaard, A Literary Review, trans. Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin,
2001).
30 The Meditations, p. 78.
31 Ibid. , p. 35.
32 Ibid. , p. 103.
33 Eliade, Yoga, p. 296.
34 See Niklas Luhmann, 'Die Autopoiesis
des Bewusstseins', Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis: Bekenntnis und Gestandnis, ed.
Alois Hahn and Volker Knapp (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987), pp. 64L
35 Thomas of Celano, First and Second Life of Saint Francis, with Selections from the Treatise 011 the Miracles o f Blessed Francis, trans. Placid Hermann
(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1963), p. 84.
36 Critics of the miracle of stigmata have formulated the taboo-breaking ques-
tion of why the wounds in the hands of Francis and his imitators appeared in the palms rather than the historically accurate place, namely the wrist bones. Their reply: because Francis was himself imitating the painted and sculpted crucifixes of his time, in which nails through the palms had long since become the norm. This does not answer the question of whether the wounds came about through pious deception, self-harm, or some physiolog- ically inexplicable autoplastic achievement of the holy body. The first option is espoused with regard to Francis of Assisi by Christoph Tiircke, who con- siders the saint the greatest actor, or most determined faker, of the Middle Ages: see Tiircke, 'Askese und Performance: Franziskus als Regisseur und Hauptdarsteller seiner selbst', Neue Rundschau 4 (2000), pp. 3St By analogy, the Indian mystic Ramakrishna, a worshipper of the Great Mother, claimed that she gave him the gift of menstruation as a sign of grace.
467
I I I
NOTES TO PP. 243-57
37 Regula Benedicti 7, 67.
38 Ibid. , 7, 5.
39 That is why the Regula Benedicti contains such formulations as 'hasten to
the perfection of the monastic ways' (73,2) and 'hurrying forward to your
heavenly fatherland' (ad patriam caelestem festinare) (73, 8).
40 Peter Sloterdijk, Rage and Time, trans. Mario Wenning (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 69f.
41 In the later mystical theology of Gregor of Nyssa, this dynamized mimesis
is pushed further to the thesis that Christian desire, because it follows a boundless object, can never rest, only lead into a paradoxical unity of move- ment and standstill.
42 See pp. 272f.
43 Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 66, 9. Crescere posse imperfectae rei signum
est.
44 See Peter Sloterdijk, Spharen II. Globen, Makrospharologie (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1999), pp. 326-39 (Excursus 1, 'Spater sterben im Amphitheater:
Uber den Aufschub, romisch').
45 Epistolae morales ad Luci/ium, 71, 25.
46 Ibid. , 71, 26. Scit se esse oneri ferendo.
47 Ibid. , 71, 27.
48 Ibid. , 71, 37.
49 Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 71, 11. While Stoic doctrine can only con-
ceive of a perfection that is static and satisfying, Christian mysticism opened up the perspective of a perfection without a loss of desire. Thus Karl Rahner states in his summary of Gregory of Nyssa's mysticism of ascent: 'The only true sight of God is that which does not offer a final satisfaction of longing. ' See Marcel Viller and Karl Rahner, Aszese und Mystik in der Vaterzeit: Ein Abriss der fruhchristlichen Spiritualitat (Freiburg: Herder, 1989), p. 144.
50 See Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis, pp. 12f.
51 The last example of an existence under the star of completion is provided by
the autobiography of Jean-Paul Sartre, Les mots (1964), where the young Sartre's flight into the artist's career is deconstructed a priori as a neurotic fabrication.
52 Regula Benedicti 73, 2.
53 Ibid. , 7, 7.
54 Ibid. , 7, 66.
55 Concerning the monk's silence, see Regula Benedicti 6,1-8 and 7, 9-11.
56 The similarities between the early asketeria (i. e. the monastic training camp)
and a military facility are discussed by Marcel Viller and Karl Rahner in their work Aszese und Mystic in der Vaterzeit, pp. 92f. This leads to a second derivation of the ideal of obedience from religiously overcoded sol- diership. A third derivation would address imperial and ecclesiastical func- tionary ethics; concerning the ecclesiastical side, see Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2011), and on the impe- rial side, see Sloterdijk, Spharen II, pp. 729f.
57 S. Joannis Abbatis vulgo Climaci opera Omnia editore et interpreto Mattheo Radero (1633), in Patrologiae Cursus Competus, ed. Jean-Paul Migne, Series Graeca 88 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), col. 1152. In the fol- lowing, I shall use both the Greek original and the Latin translation.
468
58 59 60 61
62
63
col, 1147.
coL 663. Ibid. , col. 674.
Hugo Ball, Byzantinisches Christentum: Drei Heiligenleben, ed. Bernd Wacker (G6ttingen: Wallstein, 2010), p. 28.
At the same time, the monastic psychagogues knew the difference between the false tears of self-pity and the true ones of remorse or devotion. By analogy, see The Questions of King Milinda, trans. T. W. Rhys Davies, ed. F. Max Muller (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2001).
All' halos ho palaios anthropos hamartia kaleitai. Non enim unum est
NOTES PP. 25
peccatum, sed totus vetus homo peccatum appellatur (col. 78112). 64 Joannis Climaci, Scala Paradisi, col. 782.
65 Ibid. , col. 1149150.
66 Galatians 2:20.
67 Joannis Climaci, coL 1153/4.
68 Ibid. , col. 1157/8.
69 See Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, trans. David Ratmoko (Palo
Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009).
70 The corresponding literature certainly pays lip service to the possibility of
'perfection outside of monasticism', but if one sees how quickly even authors such as Viller and Rahner, the Jesuits cited several times above, get through the subject in their outline of early Christian spirituality (§36), the truth of the matter is clear enough. Before the start of devotio moderna, what applies in practice is this: nulla salus outside the order.
71 Lowith's commentary on this is still central: Karl L6with, Meaning in History (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1957).
72 See Jacques Ie Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans.
Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1984).
73 Quoted (as a motto) in ibid. , p. v.
74 In his book La vie de Ramakrishna (1929), Romain Rolland points to the
moment of demographic parity between 300 million gods and the same
number of living Indians.
75 See pp. 231£ above.
76 Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India, ed. Joseph Campbell (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 41.
77 William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 5, Scene 2.
78 Mysore Hiriyanna, Essentials of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Diamond
Pocket Books, 1996), p. 102.
79 Huineng, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, ed. and trans. P. B.
Yampolsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 137.
80 See the comprehensive commentary of B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga
Sutras ofPatanjali (London: Thorsons, 2002).
81 See Digha Nikaya, 9.
82 See Eliade, Yoga, pp. 169-73.
83 A. M. Podznejev, Dhyana und Samadhi im mongolischen Lamaismus
(Hanover: Lafaire, 1927).
84 See Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds. ), Making Things Public:
Atmospheres of Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), ch. 4,
'From Objects to Things', pp. 250-95.
85 See pp. 119f above.
469
86
92 93
94 95
96 97
98
99
100
101
102 103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110 111
the Marxist educational theorist and psychologist Lucien Seve, L'Ecole et la Nation (October 1964).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust II, I. 7488.
TN: in German, the equivalent of 'school desk' (especially in its metonymic sense) is Schulbank, which actually translates as 'school bench'.
There is also no shortage of mocking journalists: see Gita Mehta, Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East (New York: Vintage, 1994).
See the chapter 'The Salvation of Identifications' in Axel Michaels, Hinduism: Past and Present, trans. Barbara Harshav (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 325-44.
See Michael von Bruck, Einfiihrung in den Buddhismus (Frankfurt: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2007), pp. 188f.
See the collection of statements by Kodo Sawake (1880-1965), one of the most striking Zen masters of recent times: Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of 'Homeless Kodo' (Kyoto: Kyoto Zen Center, 1999).
See pp. 308f below.
Regula Benedicti 2, 24: miscens temporibus tempora, terroribus blandi- menta, dirum magistri, pium patris ostendat affectum.
Pierre Hadot, 'The Figure of Socrates', in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 147-78.
Slavoj Zizek, Liebe dein Symptom wie dich selbst! Jacques Lacans Psychoanalyse und die Medien (Berlin: Merve, 1991).
See pp. 200f above.
A contemporary exception to this is the Socratic performance philosopher Bazan Brock; see Peter Sloterdijk, 'Der Jahrhundertmensch', in Bazan Brock, Lustmarsch durchs Theoriegelande: Musealisiert Euchl (Cologne: DuMont, 2008), pp. 6-24.
See Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 34.
Ibid. , 35.
Ibid. , 33.
The same tendency appears in some younger schools of Buddhism. Concerning the complex of Sophistic paideia as training for universal ability, see Thomas Buchheim, Die Sophistik als Avantgarde des normalen Lebens (Hamburg: Meiner, 1968), pp. 108-27; concerning the Sophists' approach to kairos, see pp. 82f.
Ibid. , p. 114.
Concerning the history of the piano recital and its increasingly sterile char- acter, see Kenneth Hamilton, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and
TO
trans. J. 1997), p. 37.
87 See Bruno Snell, The
Literature, trans. T. G. Rosenmeyer (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1982), ch. 1, 'Homer's View of Man', pp. 1-22.
88 John 14:6.
89 John 10:30.
90 Maitreya Upanishad III-I, 4.
91 A symptomatic example of this is the essay 'Les "dons" n'existent pas' by
470
in Greek Philosophy and
lvlodern and New York: Oxford
112 See pp. 54ft above.
113 The most successful athlete in antiquity, Milo of Croton (c. 556-510 Be),
managed to remain undefeated for over a quarter of a century, from the
sixtieth to the sixty-seventh Olympiad (540-512 Be).
114 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (London: Allen Lane, 2008).
115 Ibid. , p. 20.
116 Ibid. , pp. 59ff.
117 This function of 'craftsmanly' and factory-work activity, which in turn
affects the practising-producing person, had already been grasped by Lucien Seve in his studies towards a Marxist personality theory, though he made them virtually unrecognizabJe through a one-sided productivistic terminol- ogy. See Lucien Seve, Marxism and the Theory of Human Personality, trans. David Pavett (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975). The essay also contains notable ideas for a theory of subjective capital and the 'rise in the organic composition of the personality'.
118 Sennett, The Craftsman, p. 57.
119 See Robert E. Cushman, John Wesley's Experimental Divinity: Studies in
Methodist Doctrinal Standards (Nashville: Kingswood, 1989).
120 Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy),
trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage, 1973), p. 104.
121 Ibid. , p. 51. Marx emphasizes in the same context that there is 'a devil of a difference' between uncivilized Russian slaves who allow themselves to be used for anything and 'civilized people who apply themselves to everything' (p. 105). This is the difference that, according to Marx, one cannot under- stand without having grasped the entire development of abstract labour in
the system of capital.
122 The doctrine of the Alexandrine presbyter Arius (c. 260-336) was con-
demned as heresy by the First Council of Nicaea in 325. It claimed that Christ was begotten, and subordinate to God the Father; some of his succes- sors derived the theory of the purely human, albeit illuminated nature of Christ from this.
123 See Res Publica Litteraria: Die Il1stitutionen der Gelehrsamkeit der fruhen Neuzeit, ed. Sebastian Neumeister, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1989).
124 The former sacrifices belong to the universe of older religions of equilib- rium, which strive for 'theocosmic' balance; in them, the totality of the world is at once the first immune system (hence the barely suppressible interest of 'worldlings' in a 'perfect world'); the second belong to the reli- gions of imbalance, which call for an abandonment of the imperfect world for the sake of saving the soul; in them, the refuge of the soul forms the highest immune alliance with God. One recognizes these theocentrists and their successors, the agents of 'critical consciousness', not least by their striving to make the very idea of a 'perfect world' seem ridiculous at all
costs.
125 See Peter Sloterdijk, 'Absturz und Kehre: Rede tiber Heideggers Denken in
der Bewegung', in Nicht gerettet: Versuche nach Heidegger (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 2001), pp. 12-81.
126 Plato, Republic, trans. John Llewelyn Davies and David James Vaughan
(Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1997), p. 229. 471
128
129
130
131 132 133
134
135
136
137
138 139 140
1
2 3
4
Pierre 'Conversion', in Exercices et Etudes Augustiniennes, 1 p. 1
See Peter Sioterdijk, Sphiiren III. Plurale Sphiirologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2004), pp. 261ff. : 'Nicht Vertrag, nicht Gewachs. Anniiherung an die Raum-Vielheuten, die bedauerlicherweise Gesellschaften genannt werden'; for arguments towards a critique of political holism, see in par- ticular pp. 277£.
Concerning the difference between epistrophe and metanoia, see Hadot, 'Conversion', and Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981-1982, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Concerning a generalized concept of decorum, see Heiner Mlihlmann, The Nature of Cultures: A Blueprint for a Theory of Culture Genetics, trans. R. Payne (Vienna and New York: Springer, 1996). On metanoia from a political perspective, see also Peter Sloterdijk, Theorie der Nachkriegszeiten: Bemerkungen zu den deztsch-franzosischen Beziehungen nach 1945 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2008).
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 157-209.
See Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003).
Oswald Spengler, The Decline o f the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Knopf, 1939), pp. 345f.
James, The Varieties ofReligious Experience, pp. 139£.
See p. 246 above.
Concerning the reversal of uti (to use) and frui (to enjoy) in Augustine, see Augustinus-Lexikon, ed. Cornelius Mayer, vol. 3, fasc. 112 (BasIe: Schwabe, 2004), col. 70-5.
Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 61.
Thomas of Celano, First and Second Life ofSaint Francis, p. 143.
Ibid. , pp. 201£.
Peter Sioterdijk, 1m Weltinnenraum des Kapitals: Fur eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), ch. 11, 'Die Erfindung der Subjektivitiit - Die primiire Enthemmung und ihre Ratgeber', pp. 93f.
III THE EXERCISES OF THE MODERNS
Maiora einem post omnia anteacta saecula et sperandi et tentandi tempus est. J. A. Comenius, A Reformation of Schooles, 1642 (Menston: Scolar, 1969), p. 22.
Quoted in Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 103.
Leon Trotsky in a speech given to representatives of a Danish student organization on 27 November 1932: In Defense ofthe Russian Revolution (New York: Pioneer Press, 1933), p. 40.
L'homme en est venu atraiter l'humanite comme une matiere. Quoted in Lucien Gauthier, Von Montaigne bis Valery: Der geistige Weg Frankreichs (Reutlingen: Continental, 1949), p. xxvi.
472
5
6
7
8 9
10 11
12 13
14
15
16 17
18 19
A number of authors Paracelsus have been identified as sources of Comenius' the authors of the Rosicrucian manifestos, Johann Heinrich Alsted, Theologia Naturalis (1615), as well as Benedictus Figuius, Pandora Magllalium Naturalium (Strasbourg: Zetzner, 1608). See Comenius, The Way of Light, trans. E. T. Campagnac (Liverpool and London: Liverpool University Press/Hodder & Stoughton, 1938). Regarding Comenius' pedagogical metaphysics in the run-up to the Enlightenment, see also pp. 350f below.
Comenius' impatience can be attributed to the apocalyptic expectations of the late Reformation; that of his successors already presupposed the shift from the apocalypse to the philosophy of history, and hence both the bour- geoisification of apocalypticism and its revolutionary defusing, while the ideologues of revolution preached neo-apocalyptic escalation.
TN: the original French title of Foucault's Discipline and Punish is Surveiller et punir - 'Supervise and Punish', rendered accurately in the book's German title Oberwachen und Strafen, which Sloterdijk echoes here.
Concerning the formative effects of craftsmanly and instrumental exercises, see pp. 292f above.
See pp. 148f above. The tendency to associate the concept of discipline with despotism is not, incidentally, unique to the post-1945 or post-1968 zeit- geist. It is already evident in the work of Johann Friedrich Herbart, Kant's successor in Konigsberg, who discarded the term 'discipline' used in so carefree a manner by Kant, only to choose an even more problematic replacement like 'government', a suggestion that recalls Foucault's idea of self-government. See Christopher Korn, Bildung und Disziplin: Problemgeschichtlich-systematische Untersuchung zum Begriffder Disziplin in Erziehung und Unterricht (Frankfurt: Lang, 2003), pp. 105f.
Galatians 6:15 and 5:24.
Augustine, Confessiones, book IV, ch. 5; Confessions, trans. Francis Joseph Sheed, ed.
This is the inversion of Seneca's satirical statement non vitae, sed scholae discirnus [we are learning not for life, but for the school] (Epistolae rnorales ad Lucilium 106, 12), with which he declares that the decadence of the school constitutes the system of learning. The true school programme, the learning of the divine, must therefore be copied onto other media, for example the philosopher's correspondence with a younger friend. It is there- fore likely that Seneca was inverting an older, undocumented saying - which would make the return of the medieval schoolmasters to the version non scholae sed vitae discimus entirely justified.
Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, erito, and Phaedo, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Millis, MA: Agora, 2005), p. 62.
Klaus Berger, Theologiegeschichte des Urchristenturns: Theologie des Neuen Testarnents (Tubingen and Basle: Francke, 1994), p. 661.
111
112
113
465
NOTES TO PP.
Alexander Leben: 350
G eschich ten
115 Tertullian, Disciplinary. Moral and trans. Rudolph
Arbesmann, Sister Emily Joseph Daly and Edwin A. Quain (Washington,
DC; CUA Press, 1959), p. 20. 116 Ibid. , p. 23.
117 118 119 120
1
2 3
4
5 6
7 8 9
10
11
12 13
14 15
16
Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ, trans. Peter Holmes (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2004), p. 12.
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Emma Crawford and Marion von der Ruhr (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).
See Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post- Christian Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).
Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 84e.
/I EXAGGERATION PROCEDURES
See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1998). For a critical response to this from a student of Arendt, see Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (London: Allen Lane, 2008); see also p. 292 below.
See pp. 163f. above.
Paul Rabbow, Seelenfuhrung: Methodik der Exerzitien in der Antike (Munich: Kosel, 1954), based on Epictetus, The Enchiridion, 3. One finds the same motif in Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations, book 11, ch. 34. Albert Schweitzer, Indian Thought and Its Development, trans. Mrs Charles E. B. Russell (Boston: Beacon, 1960), p. 110.
Patanjaii, Yoga Surra II, 41.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), p. 245.
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), p. 124.
See Jiirgen Hasse, Ubersehene Riiume: Zur Kulturgeschichte und Heterotopologie des Parkhauses (Bielefeld: transcript, 2007).
See Peter Sloterdijk, 'Strong Observation: For a Space Station Philosophy', in Native Land, Stop Eject, ed. Raymond Depardon and Paul Virilio (ArIes: Actes Sud, 2010), pp. 29-36.
Digha Nikaya 5.
In this context one should recall Petrarch's well-known letter of 26 April 1336, in which he claims to have been reading a pocket edition of Augustine's Confessions at the summit of Mont Ventoux.
See Rabbow, Seelenfuhrung, p. 93.
Epictetus, The Enchiridion, III, 3, 14; quoted in Rabbow, Seelenfuhrung, p. 135.
Augustine, De vera religione, XXXIX, 72.
One possible version of the philosophical counter-movement to the age of objectivism and the illusion of the outside world is presented in my Spheres trilogy (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998-2003). In English so far: Spheres, vol. 1: Bubbles, trans. Wieland Hoban (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2011). Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations, p. 90.
466
and New
Marcus Aurelius, The lV lt'U H U lt'U I
trans. Iv! . p. 60.
PP.
See p. 266 below.
This is treated in greater detail in ch. 8, pp. 277-84.
Horace, Epistles I, 6, 1.
This could be shown especially clearly using the evolution of Buddhism and the adaptation of the arhat ideal of the Hinayana to the bodhisattva ideal of the Mahayana.
23 On 'riddle language' or 'intentional language' in Tantrism, see Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 249.
24 In the first part of The Vocation of Man (1800), Johann Gottlieb Fichte demonstrated the deterministic-fatalistic position with a perfect simulation in order to evoke the despair that drives us forwards to practical idealism.
25 Quoted in Eliade, Yoga, p. 189.
26 In this respect, Buddha is 'simultaneous' with Greek Sophism, which, in
terms of its overall direction, must be viewed above all as a humanistic exercise programme. It views a helpless letting-oneself-go as the worst form of behaviour and fatalism as an assault on arete, the willingness to self-help.
27 Thomas Macho, 'Mit sich allein: Einsamkeit als Kulturtechnik', in Aleida and Jan Assmann (eds. ), Einsamkeit (Archaologie der literarischen Kommunikation VI) (Munich: Fink, 2000), pp. 27-44.
28 Regula Benedicti 7, 13 and 7, 28.
29 Kierkegaard, A Literary Review, trans. Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin,
2001).
30 The Meditations, p. 78.
31 Ibid. , p. 35.
32 Ibid. , p. 103.
33 Eliade, Yoga, p. 296.
34 See Niklas Luhmann, 'Die Autopoiesis
des Bewusstseins', Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis: Bekenntnis und Gestandnis, ed.
Alois Hahn and Volker Knapp (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987), pp. 64L
35 Thomas of Celano, First and Second Life of Saint Francis, with Selections from the Treatise 011 the Miracles o f Blessed Francis, trans. Placid Hermann
(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1963), p. 84.
36 Critics of the miracle of stigmata have formulated the taboo-breaking ques-
tion of why the wounds in the hands of Francis and his imitators appeared in the palms rather than the historically accurate place, namely the wrist bones. Their reply: because Francis was himself imitating the painted and sculpted crucifixes of his time, in which nails through the palms had long since become the norm. This does not answer the question of whether the wounds came about through pious deception, self-harm, or some physiolog- ically inexplicable autoplastic achievement of the holy body. The first option is espoused with regard to Francis of Assisi by Christoph Tiircke, who con- siders the saint the greatest actor, or most determined faker, of the Middle Ages: see Tiircke, 'Askese und Performance: Franziskus als Regisseur und Hauptdarsteller seiner selbst', Neue Rundschau 4 (2000), pp. 3St By analogy, the Indian mystic Ramakrishna, a worshipper of the Great Mother, claimed that she gave him the gift of menstruation as a sign of grace.
467
I I I
NOTES TO PP. 243-57
37 Regula Benedicti 7, 67.
38 Ibid. , 7, 5.
39 That is why the Regula Benedicti contains such formulations as 'hasten to
the perfection of the monastic ways' (73,2) and 'hurrying forward to your
heavenly fatherland' (ad patriam caelestem festinare) (73, 8).
40 Peter Sloterdijk, Rage and Time, trans. Mario Wenning (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 69f.
41 In the later mystical theology of Gregor of Nyssa, this dynamized mimesis
is pushed further to the thesis that Christian desire, because it follows a boundless object, can never rest, only lead into a paradoxical unity of move- ment and standstill.
42 See pp. 272f.
43 Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 66, 9. Crescere posse imperfectae rei signum
est.
44 See Peter Sloterdijk, Spharen II. Globen, Makrospharologie (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1999), pp. 326-39 (Excursus 1, 'Spater sterben im Amphitheater:
Uber den Aufschub, romisch').
45 Epistolae morales ad Luci/ium, 71, 25.
46 Ibid. , 71, 26. Scit se esse oneri ferendo.
47 Ibid. , 71, 27.
48 Ibid. , 71, 37.
49 Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 71, 11. While Stoic doctrine can only con-
ceive of a perfection that is static and satisfying, Christian mysticism opened up the perspective of a perfection without a loss of desire. Thus Karl Rahner states in his summary of Gregory of Nyssa's mysticism of ascent: 'The only true sight of God is that which does not offer a final satisfaction of longing. ' See Marcel Viller and Karl Rahner, Aszese und Mystik in der Vaterzeit: Ein Abriss der fruhchristlichen Spiritualitat (Freiburg: Herder, 1989), p. 144.
50 See Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis, pp. 12f.
51 The last example of an existence under the star of completion is provided by
the autobiography of Jean-Paul Sartre, Les mots (1964), where the young Sartre's flight into the artist's career is deconstructed a priori as a neurotic fabrication.
52 Regula Benedicti 73, 2.
53 Ibid. , 7, 7.
54 Ibid. , 7, 66.
55 Concerning the monk's silence, see Regula Benedicti 6,1-8 and 7, 9-11.
56 The similarities between the early asketeria (i. e. the monastic training camp)
and a military facility are discussed by Marcel Viller and Karl Rahner in their work Aszese und Mystic in der Vaterzeit, pp. 92f. This leads to a second derivation of the ideal of obedience from religiously overcoded sol- diership. A third derivation would address imperial and ecclesiastical func- tionary ethics; concerning the ecclesiastical side, see Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2011), and on the impe- rial side, see Sloterdijk, Spharen II, pp. 729f.
57 S. Joannis Abbatis vulgo Climaci opera Omnia editore et interpreto Mattheo Radero (1633), in Patrologiae Cursus Competus, ed. Jean-Paul Migne, Series Graeca 88 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), col. 1152. In the fol- lowing, I shall use both the Greek original and the Latin translation.
468
58 59 60 61
62
63
col, 1147.
coL 663. Ibid. , col. 674.
Hugo Ball, Byzantinisches Christentum: Drei Heiligenleben, ed. Bernd Wacker (G6ttingen: Wallstein, 2010), p. 28.
At the same time, the monastic psychagogues knew the difference between the false tears of self-pity and the true ones of remorse or devotion. By analogy, see The Questions of King Milinda, trans. T. W. Rhys Davies, ed. F. Max Muller (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2001).
All' halos ho palaios anthropos hamartia kaleitai. Non enim unum est
NOTES PP. 25
peccatum, sed totus vetus homo peccatum appellatur (col. 78112). 64 Joannis Climaci, Scala Paradisi, col. 782.
65 Ibid. , col. 1149150.
66 Galatians 2:20.
67 Joannis Climaci, coL 1153/4.
68 Ibid. , col. 1157/8.
69 See Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, trans. David Ratmoko (Palo
Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009).
70 The corresponding literature certainly pays lip service to the possibility of
'perfection outside of monasticism', but if one sees how quickly even authors such as Viller and Rahner, the Jesuits cited several times above, get through the subject in their outline of early Christian spirituality (§36), the truth of the matter is clear enough. Before the start of devotio moderna, what applies in practice is this: nulla salus outside the order.
71 Lowith's commentary on this is still central: Karl L6with, Meaning in History (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1957).
72 See Jacques Ie Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans.
Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1984).
73 Quoted (as a motto) in ibid. , p. v.
74 In his book La vie de Ramakrishna (1929), Romain Rolland points to the
moment of demographic parity between 300 million gods and the same
number of living Indians.
75 See pp. 231£ above.
76 Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India, ed. Joseph Campbell (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 41.
77 William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 5, Scene 2.
78 Mysore Hiriyanna, Essentials of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Diamond
Pocket Books, 1996), p. 102.
79 Huineng, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, ed. and trans. P. B.
Yampolsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 137.
80 See the comprehensive commentary of B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga
Sutras ofPatanjali (London: Thorsons, 2002).
81 See Digha Nikaya, 9.
82 See Eliade, Yoga, pp. 169-73.
83 A. M. Podznejev, Dhyana und Samadhi im mongolischen Lamaismus
(Hanover: Lafaire, 1927).
84 See Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds. ), Making Things Public:
Atmospheres of Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), ch. 4,
'From Objects to Things', pp. 250-95.
85 See pp. 119f above.
469
86
92 93
94 95
96 97
98
99
100
101
102 103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110 111
the Marxist educational theorist and psychologist Lucien Seve, L'Ecole et la Nation (October 1964).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust II, I. 7488.
TN: in German, the equivalent of 'school desk' (especially in its metonymic sense) is Schulbank, which actually translates as 'school bench'.
There is also no shortage of mocking journalists: see Gita Mehta, Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East (New York: Vintage, 1994).
See the chapter 'The Salvation of Identifications' in Axel Michaels, Hinduism: Past and Present, trans. Barbara Harshav (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 325-44.
See Michael von Bruck, Einfiihrung in den Buddhismus (Frankfurt: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2007), pp. 188f.
See the collection of statements by Kodo Sawake (1880-1965), one of the most striking Zen masters of recent times: Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of 'Homeless Kodo' (Kyoto: Kyoto Zen Center, 1999).
See pp. 308f below.
Regula Benedicti 2, 24: miscens temporibus tempora, terroribus blandi- menta, dirum magistri, pium patris ostendat affectum.
Pierre Hadot, 'The Figure of Socrates', in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 147-78.
Slavoj Zizek, Liebe dein Symptom wie dich selbst! Jacques Lacans Psychoanalyse und die Medien (Berlin: Merve, 1991).
See pp. 200f above.
A contemporary exception to this is the Socratic performance philosopher Bazan Brock; see Peter Sloterdijk, 'Der Jahrhundertmensch', in Bazan Brock, Lustmarsch durchs Theoriegelande: Musealisiert Euchl (Cologne: DuMont, 2008), pp. 6-24.
See Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 34.
Ibid. , 35.
Ibid. , 33.
The same tendency appears in some younger schools of Buddhism. Concerning the complex of Sophistic paideia as training for universal ability, see Thomas Buchheim, Die Sophistik als Avantgarde des normalen Lebens (Hamburg: Meiner, 1968), pp. 108-27; concerning the Sophists' approach to kairos, see pp. 82f.
Ibid. , p. 114.
Concerning the history of the piano recital and its increasingly sterile char- acter, see Kenneth Hamilton, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and
TO
trans. J. 1997), p. 37.
87 See Bruno Snell, The
Literature, trans. T. G. Rosenmeyer (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1982), ch. 1, 'Homer's View of Man', pp. 1-22.
88 John 14:6.
89 John 10:30.
90 Maitreya Upanishad III-I, 4.
91 A symptomatic example of this is the essay 'Les "dons" n'existent pas' by
470
in Greek Philosophy and
lvlodern and New York: Oxford
112 See pp. 54ft above.
113 The most successful athlete in antiquity, Milo of Croton (c. 556-510 Be),
managed to remain undefeated for over a quarter of a century, from the
sixtieth to the sixty-seventh Olympiad (540-512 Be).
114 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (London: Allen Lane, 2008).
115 Ibid. , p. 20.
116 Ibid. , pp. 59ff.
117 This function of 'craftsmanly' and factory-work activity, which in turn
affects the practising-producing person, had already been grasped by Lucien Seve in his studies towards a Marxist personality theory, though he made them virtually unrecognizabJe through a one-sided productivistic terminol- ogy. See Lucien Seve, Marxism and the Theory of Human Personality, trans. David Pavett (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975). The essay also contains notable ideas for a theory of subjective capital and the 'rise in the organic composition of the personality'.
118 Sennett, The Craftsman, p. 57.
119 See Robert E. Cushman, John Wesley's Experimental Divinity: Studies in
Methodist Doctrinal Standards (Nashville: Kingswood, 1989).
120 Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy),
trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage, 1973), p. 104.
121 Ibid. , p. 51. Marx emphasizes in the same context that there is 'a devil of a difference' between uncivilized Russian slaves who allow themselves to be used for anything and 'civilized people who apply themselves to everything' (p. 105). This is the difference that, according to Marx, one cannot under- stand without having grasped the entire development of abstract labour in
the system of capital.
122 The doctrine of the Alexandrine presbyter Arius (c. 260-336) was con-
demned as heresy by the First Council of Nicaea in 325. It claimed that Christ was begotten, and subordinate to God the Father; some of his succes- sors derived the theory of the purely human, albeit illuminated nature of Christ from this.
123 See Res Publica Litteraria: Die Il1stitutionen der Gelehrsamkeit der fruhen Neuzeit, ed. Sebastian Neumeister, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1989).
124 The former sacrifices belong to the universe of older religions of equilib- rium, which strive for 'theocosmic' balance; in them, the totality of the world is at once the first immune system (hence the barely suppressible interest of 'worldlings' in a 'perfect world'); the second belong to the reli- gions of imbalance, which call for an abandonment of the imperfect world for the sake of saving the soul; in them, the refuge of the soul forms the highest immune alliance with God. One recognizes these theocentrists and their successors, the agents of 'critical consciousness', not least by their striving to make the very idea of a 'perfect world' seem ridiculous at all
costs.
125 See Peter Sloterdijk, 'Absturz und Kehre: Rede tiber Heideggers Denken in
der Bewegung', in Nicht gerettet: Versuche nach Heidegger (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 2001), pp. 12-81.
126 Plato, Republic, trans. John Llewelyn Davies and David James Vaughan
(Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1997), p. 229. 471
128
129
130
131 132 133
134
135
136
137
138 139 140
1
2 3
4
Pierre 'Conversion', in Exercices et Etudes Augustiniennes, 1 p. 1
See Peter Sioterdijk, Sphiiren III. Plurale Sphiirologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2004), pp. 261ff. : 'Nicht Vertrag, nicht Gewachs. Anniiherung an die Raum-Vielheuten, die bedauerlicherweise Gesellschaften genannt werden'; for arguments towards a critique of political holism, see in par- ticular pp. 277£.
Concerning the difference between epistrophe and metanoia, see Hadot, 'Conversion', and Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981-1982, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Concerning a generalized concept of decorum, see Heiner Mlihlmann, The Nature of Cultures: A Blueprint for a Theory of Culture Genetics, trans. R. Payne (Vienna and New York: Springer, 1996). On metanoia from a political perspective, see also Peter Sloterdijk, Theorie der Nachkriegszeiten: Bemerkungen zu den deztsch-franzosischen Beziehungen nach 1945 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2008).
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 157-209.
See Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003).
Oswald Spengler, The Decline o f the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Knopf, 1939), pp. 345f.
James, The Varieties ofReligious Experience, pp. 139£.
See p. 246 above.
Concerning the reversal of uti (to use) and frui (to enjoy) in Augustine, see Augustinus-Lexikon, ed. Cornelius Mayer, vol. 3, fasc. 112 (BasIe: Schwabe, 2004), col. 70-5.
Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, 61.
Thomas of Celano, First and Second Life ofSaint Francis, p. 143.
Ibid. , pp. 201£.
Peter Sioterdijk, 1m Weltinnenraum des Kapitals: Fur eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), ch. 11, 'Die Erfindung der Subjektivitiit - Die primiire Enthemmung und ihre Ratgeber', pp. 93f.
III THE EXERCISES OF THE MODERNS
Maiora einem post omnia anteacta saecula et sperandi et tentandi tempus est. J. A. Comenius, A Reformation of Schooles, 1642 (Menston: Scolar, 1969), p. 22.
Quoted in Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 103.
Leon Trotsky in a speech given to representatives of a Danish student organization on 27 November 1932: In Defense ofthe Russian Revolution (New York: Pioneer Press, 1933), p. 40.
L'homme en est venu atraiter l'humanite comme une matiere. Quoted in Lucien Gauthier, Von Montaigne bis Valery: Der geistige Weg Frankreichs (Reutlingen: Continental, 1949), p. xxvi.
472
5
6
7
8 9
10 11
12 13
14
15
16 17
18 19
A number of authors Paracelsus have been identified as sources of Comenius' the authors of the Rosicrucian manifestos, Johann Heinrich Alsted, Theologia Naturalis (1615), as well as Benedictus Figuius, Pandora Magllalium Naturalium (Strasbourg: Zetzner, 1608). See Comenius, The Way of Light, trans. E. T. Campagnac (Liverpool and London: Liverpool University Press/Hodder & Stoughton, 1938). Regarding Comenius' pedagogical metaphysics in the run-up to the Enlightenment, see also pp. 350f below.
Comenius' impatience can be attributed to the apocalyptic expectations of the late Reformation; that of his successors already presupposed the shift from the apocalypse to the philosophy of history, and hence both the bour- geoisification of apocalypticism and its revolutionary defusing, while the ideologues of revolution preached neo-apocalyptic escalation.
TN: the original French title of Foucault's Discipline and Punish is Surveiller et punir - 'Supervise and Punish', rendered accurately in the book's German title Oberwachen und Strafen, which Sloterdijk echoes here.
Concerning the formative effects of craftsmanly and instrumental exercises, see pp. 292f above.
See pp. 148f above. The tendency to associate the concept of discipline with despotism is not, incidentally, unique to the post-1945 or post-1968 zeit- geist. It is already evident in the work of Johann Friedrich Herbart, Kant's successor in Konigsberg, who discarded the term 'discipline' used in so carefree a manner by Kant, only to choose an even more problematic replacement like 'government', a suggestion that recalls Foucault's idea of self-government. See Christopher Korn, Bildung und Disziplin: Problemgeschichtlich-systematische Untersuchung zum Begriffder Disziplin in Erziehung und Unterricht (Frankfurt: Lang, 2003), pp. 105f.
Galatians 6:15 and 5:24.
Augustine, Confessiones, book IV, ch. 5; Confessions, trans. Francis Joseph Sheed, ed.
