If I do not have
anything
historical to counter the claim that Christ himself rose from the dead, must I therefore accept as true that pre- cisely this resurrected Christ was the son of God?
Sloterdijk -Critique of Cynical Reason
Because they do not want to talk with us, we have to talk about them.
But as in every combative attitude, the oppo- nents are from then on thought of not as egos but as apparatuses in which, partly openly, partly secretly, a mechanism of resistance is at work that renders them unfree and leads them to errors and illusions.
Ideology critique means the polemical continuation of the miscarried dialogue through other means. It declares a war on consciousness, even when it pretends to be so serious and "nonpolemical. " The rules for peace are in substance res- cinded. At this point it becomes clear that there is no intersubjectivity that could not equally well be interobjectivity. In hitting and being hit, both parties become subjective objects for each other. Strictly speaking, ideology critique wants not merely to "hit," but to operate with precision, in the surgical and military sense: to outflank and expose opponents, to reveal the opponents' intentions. Exposing implies laying out the mechanism of false and unfree consciousness.
In principle, enlightenment knows only two grounds for falsity: error and /// will. At best, only the latter can possess the dignity of a subject, for only when opponents consciously lie does the "wrong opinion" possess an ego. If one as- sumes error, the wrong opinion rests not on an ego but on a mechanism that fal- sifies the right opinion. Only a lie bears responsibility for itself, whereas an error, because it is mechanical, remains in relative "innocence. " Error, however, quickly splits into two different phenomena: the simple error (which is based on logical or perceptual delusion and can be corrected relatively easily) and the per- sistent, systematic error (which clings to its own conditions of existence and is called ideology). Thus arise the classic series of forms of false consciousness: lie, error, ideology.
bvery struggle leads necessarily to a reciprocal reification of subjects. Because -niightenment cannot give up its claim of imposing better insights against a self- structing consciousness, it must basically "operate" behind the opponent's con- - lousness. Thus, ideology critique acquires a cruel aspect that, if it ever really mits to being cruel, claims to be nothing more than a reaction to the cruelties
16 ? ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
? Matthias Greutzer, Model of Vanity (the second picture shows the view with raised skirt), 1596.
of "ideology. " Here it becomes clearer than anywhere else that "philosophical" ideology critique is truly the heir of a great satirical tradition, in which the motif of unmasking, exposing, baring has served for aeons now as a weapon. But mod- ern ideology critique--according to our thesis has ominously cut itself off from the powerful traditions of laughter in satirical knowledge, which have their roots in ancient kynicism. Recent ideology critique already appears in respectable garb, and in Marxism and especially in psychoanalysis it has even put on suit and tie so as to completely assume an air of bourgeois respectability. It has given up its life as satire, in order to win its position in books as "theory. " From the lively form of heated polemic it has retreated to those positions taken in a cold war of consciousness. Heinrich Heine was one of the last authors of classical enlighten- ment who literarily defended, in open satire, the rights of ideology critique to "just atrocities'; here, the public has not followed him. The bourgeois transforma- tion of satire into ideology critique was as inevitable as the bourgeois transforma- tion of society, in general, together with its oppositional forces.
Ideology critique, having become respectable, imitates surgical procedure: Cut open the patient with the critical scalpel and operate under impeccably sterile conditions. The opponent is cut open in front of everyone, until the mechanism of his error is laid bare. The outer skin of delusion and the nerve endings of "ac- tual" motives are hygienically separated and prepared. From then on, enlighten- ment is not satisfied, of course, but it is better armed in its insistence on its own claims for the distant future. Ideology critique is now interested not in winning over the vivisected opponent but in focusing on the "corpse," the critical extract
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE D 17
Graffitti on the Berlin Wall. "We are born to be free. " Ideology critique as inscrip- tion on the other's defense.
of its ideas, which lie in the libraries of enlighteners and in which one can easily read about their grave falsity. Obviously one does not get any closer to the oppo- nent in this way. Those who previously did not want to engage in enlightenment will want to do so even less now that they have been dissected and exposed by the opponent. Of course, according to the logic of the game, the enlightener will at least be victorious: Sooner or later, the opponent will be
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
forced to respond apologetically.
Irritated by the attacks and "unmaskings," the counterenlighteners will one day begin to conduct their own "enlightenment" on the enlighteners, in order to de- nounce them as human beings and to associate them socially with criminals. They are then usually called "elements. " The word is unintentionally well chosen, since wanting to fight the elements does not sound very promising. Eventually, it can- not be avoided; the hegemonic powers begin to talk indiscreetly. Then, increas- ingly irritated, they reveal something of their secrets; universally acknowledged cultural ideals are thereby cunningly retracted. In the compulsion of the weakened hegemonic powers to confess, as remains to be shown, lies one of the roots of the modern cynical structure.
Without wanting to, "dissatisfied enlightenment" has, in turn, entrenched itself on this front. Threatened by its own fatigue and undermined by the need for seri- ousness, it often remains content with having wrung involuntary confessions from its opponent. In fact, in time, the experienced eye will see "confessions" every- where, and even when the hegemonic power shoots instead of negotiating, it will not be difficult to interpret bullets as the revelations of a fundamental weakness- that is how those powers express themselves that have no imagination and that'
? 18 D" ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
in order to save themselves, cling to nothing more than their strong nerves and executive organs.
Arguing behind the back and through the head of the opponent has become common practice in modern critique. The gesture of exposure characterizes the style of argumentation of ideology critique, from the critique of religion in the eighteenth century to the critique of fascism in the twentieth. Everywhere, one discovers extrarational mechanisms of opinion: interests, passions, fixations, il- lusions. That helps a bit to mitigate the scandalous contradiction between the postulated unity of truth and the factual plurality of opinions--since it cannot be eliminated. Under these assumptions, a true theory would be one that not only grounds its own theses best, but also knows how to defuse all significant and per- sistent counterpositions through ideology critique. In this point, as one can easily see, official Marxism has the greatest ambition, since the major part of its theoret- ical energy is dedicated to outdoing all non-Marxist theories and exposing them as "bourgeois ideologies. " Only by continually outdoing the others, can ideolo- gists succeed in "living" with the plurality of ideologies. De facto, the critique of ideology implies the attempt to construct a hierarchy between unmasking and un- masked theory. In the war of consciousness, getting on top, that is, achieving a synthesis of claims to power and better insights, is crucial.
Since, in the business of critique, contrary to academic custom, ad hominem arguments are used unhesitatingly, universities have, probably deliberately, moved cautiously toward the procedures of ideology critique. For the attack from the flank, the argumentum ad personam, is strongly disapproved of in the "aca- demic community. " Respectable critique meets its opponent in its best form; cri- tique honors itself when it overwhelms its rival in the full armor of its rationality. For as long as possible, the learned collegium has tried to defend its integrity against the close combat of ideologico-critical exposures. Do not unmask, lest you yourself be unmasked could be the unspoken rule. It is no accident that the great representatives of critique--the French moralists, the Encyclopedists, the socialists, and especially Heine, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud--remain outsiders to the scholarly domain. In all of them there is a satirical, polemical component that can scarcely be hidden under the mask of scholarly respectability. These sig- nals of a holy nonseriousness, which remains one of the sure indexes of truth, can be employed as signposts to the critique of cynical reason. We will find a reliably unreliable traveling companion in Heinrich Heine, who displayed a knack, unsurpassed to the present day, for combining theory and satire, cognition and entertainment. Here, following in his tracks, we want to try to reunite the capacities for truth in literature, satire, and art with those of "scholarly dis- course. "
The right of ideology critique to use ad hominem arguments was indirectly ac- knowledged even by the strictest absolutist of reason, J. G. Fichte, whom Heine aptly compared to Napoleon when he said that the kind of philosophy one chooses
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 19
depends on the kind of person one is. This critique intrudes into the conditions under which human beings form opinions with either compassionate serenity or cruel seriousness. It seizes error from behind and tears at its roots in practical life. This procedure is not exactly modest, but its immodesty is excused with a reference to the principle of the unity of truth. What is brought to light by the vivisecting approach is the everlasting embarrassment of ideas confronted by the interests underlying them: human, all too human; egoisms, class privileges, resentments, steadfastness of hegemonic powers. Under such illumination, the opposing subject appears not only psychologically but also sociologically and po- litically undermined. Accordingly, its standpoint can be understood only if one adds to its self- portrayals what is, in fact, hidden behind and below them. In this way, ideology critique raises a claim that it shares with hermeneutics, namely, the claim to understand an "author" better than he understands himself. What at first sounds arrogant about this claim can be methodologically justified. Others often really do perceive things about me that escape
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
my attention--and con- versely. They possess the advantage of distance, which I can profit from only retrospectively through dialogic mirroring. This, of course, would presuppose a functioning dialogue, which is precisely what does not take place in the process of ideology critique.
An ideology critique that does not clearly accept its identity as satire can, how- ever, easily be transformed from an instrument in the search for truth into one of dogmatism. All too often, it interferes with the capacity for dialogue instead of opening up new paths for it. This explains, leaving general antischolastic and antiintellectual feelings aside, a part of the current dissatisfaction with the critique of ideology.
Thus it happens that an ideology critique that presents itself as science, because it is not allowed to be satire, gets more and more entangled in serious radical solu- tions. One of these is its striking tendency to seek refuge in psychopathology. False consciousness appears first of all as sick consciousness. Almost all impor- tant works of the twentieth century on the phenomenon of ideology do the same thing-from Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich to R. D. Laing and David Cooper, not to mention Joseph Gabel, who has pushed the analogy between ideol- ogy and schizophrenia furthest. Those stances are suspected of being sick that loudly proclaim themselves to be the healthiest, most normal, and natural. The reliance of critique on psychopathology, although probably well justified, risks alienating the opponent more and more deeply; it reifies and diminishes the other's reality. In the end, the critic of ideology stands before the opposing con- sciousness like one of those modern, highly specialized pathologists who can, of course, say precisely what kind of pathological disturbance the patient is suffering
rom but knows nothing about appropriate therapies because that is not his spe- cialty. Such critics, like some medicos corrupted by their profession, are in- terested in the diseases, not in the patients.
20 ? ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
The most humorless reification of every opposing consciousness has grown out of the ideology critique that bases itself on Marx (I will not go into whether this is proper use or misuse of Marx). The radical reification of the opponent is in any case of factual consequence of the politico-economic realism characteristic of Marxian theory. However, here an additional motif comes into play: If all other exposures trace false consciousness back to seamy features of the human totality (lies, nastiness, egoism, repression, split consciousness, illusion, wishful thinking, etc. ), the Marxian exposure runs up against the nonsubjective, the laws of the politico-economic process as a whole. When ideologies are criticized from a politico-economic perspective, one never really gets down to "human weak- nesses. " Rather, one hits on an abstract social mechanism in which individual per- sons, as members of classes, have distinct functions: as capitalist, as proletarian, as intermediate functionary, as theoretical hack for the system. However, neither in the head nor in the components of the system is there any clarity about the na- ture of the whole. Each of its members is mystified in a way corresponding to its position. Even the capitalist, in spite of practical experience with capital, finds no true image of the total structure, but remains a necessarily deceived epiphenomenon of the process of capital.
It is here that a second offshoot of modern cynicism grows. As soon as I as- sume, in Marx's formulation, a "necessarily false consciousness," the spiral of reification is turned even further. There would then be in the minds of human be- ings precisely those errors that have to be in them so that the system can function--toward its collapse. In the gaze of the Marxist system-critic, there glit- ters an irony that is a priori condemned to cynicism. For the critic admits that ideologies, which from an external point of view are false consciousness, are, seen from the inside, precisely the right consciousness. Ideologies appear simply as the appropriate errors in the corresponding minds: the "correct false conscious- ness. " This echoes the definition of cynicism given in the first preliminary reflec- tion (chapter 1). The difference is that the Marxist critic gives "correct false con- sciousness" the chance to enlighten itself or to be enlightened --through Marxism. Then, in the critic's opinion, it would have become true consciousness, not "en- lightened false consciousness," as the formula for cynicism says. Theoretically, the perspective of emancipation is kept open.
Any sociological system theory that treats "truth" functionalistically-I say this in advance --carries an immense potential for cynicism. And since every contem- porary intellect is caught up in the process of such sociological theories, it inevita- bly is implicated in the latent or overt master cynicism of these forms of thinking. Marxism, in its origins, at least maintained an ambivalence between reifying and emancipative perspectives. Non-Marxist system theories of society drop even the last trace of sensitivity. In alliance with neoconservative currents, they proclaim that useful members of human society have to internalize certain "correct illu- sions" once and for all, because without them nothing functions properly. The
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 21
3naivete of the others should be planned, "capital fix being man himself. " It is al-
ways a good investment to mobilize the naive will to work, for whatever reason. System theoreticians and maintenance
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
strategists are from the start beyond naive belief. But for those who should believe in it, the aphorism holds: Stop reflecting and maintain values.
Those who make the means of liberating reflection available and invite others to use them appear to conservatives as unscrupulous and power-hungry good-for- nothings who are reproached with "Others do the work. " Very well, but for whom?
Notes
1. [This is a variation of Habermas's formulation of the "zwanglose Zwang des besseren Argu- ments. "-Trans. ]
2. In this book I designate consistently any power that dominates as hegemonic power to indicate that this power never is or has power by itself, but always "rides," so to speak, on the back of an op- positional power. In a realistic theory of power, omnipotence and impotence occur only as quasi- "mathematical" ideas of power, as the infinitely great and the infinitely small in power. Omnipotence and impotence cannot confront each other, but hegemonic power and oppositional power can. What "exists" possesses power, a positive quantum of energy, that is centered in conscious bodies and ex- tends itself to appropriate tools and weapons. For this reason, the logic of all-or-nothing is dangerous, indeed fatal, in politics. In Si^yes's statement-"What is the Third Estate? Nothing. What does it want to become? Everything"--a disastrous self-characterization of the oppositional power comes into be- ing, a false logical treatment (Logisierung) of political struggle through which the part wants to make itself into the whole. In substance, this false all- or-nothing logic is repeated in Marxism, which wanted to make the proletariat "everything. " Is this inverted concept of power a universal legacy of leftist opposition? Even the French New Philosophy, straying into old ways of thinking, comes to grief on this concept by confusing omnipotence with hegemonic power and imposing a Manichaean ontology of an evil state power.
3. [This phrase is taken from Marx, who in turn quotes the French term for fixed capital. -- Trans. ]
Chapter 3
Eight Unmaskings:
A Review of Critiques
In the following I sketch eight cases of the enlightenment critique of ideology and critique-through-unmasking whose polemical modes of procedure have become paradigmatic. We will be concerned with the historically most successful figures of demasking --successful, however, not in the sense that the critique had really "finished off' what it criticized. The effects of critique are generally different from those that were intended. Social hegemonic powers intent on sustaining them- selves prove capable of learning when they are on the defensive and all else fails. A social history of enlightenment must devote attention to the learning processes of defensive hegemonic powers. A cardinal problem in the history of ideology is the backlog of "false consciousnesses" that first learn from their critics what suspicion and exposure, cynicism and "finesse" are.
Our review of critique will show enlightenment en marche in an imperturbable and relentless drive against illusions, old and new. That the critique, in its strug- gle with its opponents, cannot "clean up" (with them) remains to be shown. We want to see how, here and there, in the critique itself, the germs of new dog- matisms are formed. Enlightenment does not penetrate into social consciousness simply as an unproblematic bringer of light. Where it has an effect, a twilight arises, a deep ambivalence. We will characterize this ambivalence as the at- mosphere in which, in the middle of a snarl of factual self-preservation with moral self-denial, cynicism crystallizes.
22
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 23
? Heinrich Hoerle, Masks, 1929. (Reproduced by permission of the Museum Lud- wig, Cologne. )
Critique of Revelation
What? The miracle merely an error of interpretation? A lack of philology?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
For Christian civilization, Holy Scripture has paramount value by virtue of the idea that it is a work of divine dictation. Human understanding should submit to it, just as the senses should yield to the sight of a "miracle" that happens before one's very eyes. Dressed in the various mother tongues, the "voice" of the divine (theologically, the Holy Spirit) speaks out of the holy text.
The Bible appears "holy" as a text rooted in the Absolute. Accordingly, no in- terpretation would be adequate enough to exhaust its overabundance of meaning that renews itself through the epochs of humanity. Exegesis can be nothing other than the vain but necessary attempt to fill the tiny spoon of our understanding with this ocean of meaning. However, all interpretations and applications must remain m the last instance merely human and useless without the assumption that the text Uself is divinely inspired. Only this belief raises scripture to its unique position. ^ a word, it is the belief in the revelatory nature of the Bible that makes it the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
? ly Book pure and simple. This belief manifests itself in a very naive and radical
Wa
y in the doctrine of "verbal inspiration," according to which the Holy Spirit stated directly into the pen of the human scribes, without taking a detour
24 ? EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
through their finite consciousness. Theology begins with automatic writing. The "private" religious opinions of a Matthew or a Paul would be at best interesting, but not binding; they would remain exhaustible and limited human stances of con- sciousness. Only theological hypostasis, the elevation to the voice of the Holy Spirit dictating to Matthew or Paul, places the text at the source of unlimited meaning.
Enlightenment inquires precisely into this claim. It asks, innocently and sub- versively, for proofs, sources, and evidence. At the beginning it solemnly avers that it would willingly believe everything, if only it could find someone to con- vince it. Here it becomes clear that the biblical texts, taken philologically, remain themselves their only witness. Their revelatory character is their own claim, and it can be believed or not; the church, which elevates this revelatory character to the status of a grand dogma, itself plays only the role of an interpreter.
With his radical biblicism, Luther rejected the church's claim to authority. This repudiation then repeats itself on the higher level through biblicism itself. For text remains text, and every assertion that it is divinely inspired can, in turn, be only a human, fallible assertion. With every attempt to grasp the absolute source, critique comes up against relative, historical sources that only ever assert the Absolute. The miracles spoken about in the Bible to legitimate God's power are only reports of miracles for which there are no longer any means of verifica- tion. The revelatory claim is stuck in a philological circle.
In his defense of the Reimarus writings in 1777 (On the Proof of the Spirit and of the Power), Lessing unmasked in a classic manner the revelatory claim as a mere assertion. The main thesis reads: "Accidental historical truths can never be- come the proof of necessary truths of reason. " His argumentation:
Consequently, if I do not have anything historical to counter the claim that Christ awakened a dead person, must I therefore accept as true that God has a son who is of the same essence? What is the connection be- tween my incapacity to counter anything substantial against the evidence of the former and my commitment to believe something my reason resists?
If I do not have anything historical to counter the claim that Christ himself rose from the dead, must I therefore accept as true that pre- cisely this resurrected Christ was the son of God?
That Christ, against whose resurrection I have nothing of importance historically to counter, presented himself as the son of God so that his followers for this reason held him to be so; all that I believe with my whole heart. For these truths, as truths of one and the same class, fol- low quite naturally from one another.
But now to jump with this historical truth over into a completely different class of truths and demand of me that I should restructure all my metaphysical and moral concepts accordingly, to expect of me, be-
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 25
cause I cannot counter the resurrection of Christ with credible evidence, that I alter all my basic ideas about the essence of divinity accordingly; if that is not a transition to another logical category (metdbasis eis alio genos), then I do not know what Aristotle understood by this desig- nation.
One says, of course: But precisely that Christ, about whom you must historically allow to be true that he raised the dead, that he himself rose from the dead, has himself said that God has a son of the same essence and that he is this son.
That would be quite good. If only it were historically certain also that Christ in fact said this.
If one wanted to pursue me and say: "But indeed! That is more than historically certain; for inspired chronologists, who cannot err, assure us of it": But again it is unfortunately only historically certain that these chronologists were inspired and could not err.
That, that is the terrifyingly wide gap over which I cannot come, no matter how often and how earnestly I have attempted to leap over it. If someone can help me over it, then do so! I ask him, I beg him. He would earn a divine reward through me.
Human knowledge is forced to retreat into the limits of historiography, philol- ogy, and logic. Something of this painful retreat appears in Lessing, who does not disingenuously aver that his heart would willingly remain more credulous than his reason allows. With the question "How can one know that? ", enlighten- ment severs the roots of revelatory knowledge quite elegantly, without being par- ticularly aggressive. With the best will, human reason cannot find anything in the sacred text but historical, human-made assumptions. With a simple philological query, the claim of absoluteness made by tradition is annihilated.
No matter how convincing the historical-philological critique of the Bible may be, the confessional absolutism of
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
organized religion does not want to ac- knowledge that according to the rules of the art, it is suspended. Its absolutism simply continues to "exist," not, to be sure, as if this suspension and this exposure had never happened, but as if there were no consequences to be drawn from them, except one; namely that one must study and excommunicate the critics. Only after the fundamental critique of modern times does theology completely board the ship of fools of so-called belief and drift farther and farther from the banks of literal critique. In the nineteenth century, the churches gave the signal for merg- mg postcritical irrationalism with political reaction. Like all institutions imbued with the will to survive, they knew how to weather the "dissolution" of their foun-
ations. From now on, the concept of 'existence' stinks of the cadaveric poison ? t Christianity, of the rotting after-life, of what, in spite of critique, has been criti- -ized. Since then, theologians have had an additional trait in common with ynics: the sense for naked self-preservation. They have made themselves com-
26 D EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
fortably at home in the tub of a dogmatics riddled with holes until the Day of Judgment. Critique of Religious Illusion
Deception always goes further than suspicion.
La Rochefoucauld
In a strategically clever move, enlightenment's critique of the religious phenome- non concentrates on God's attributes; only secondarily does it tackle the sticky "question of existence. " Whether God "exists" is not the basic problem; what is essential is what people mean when they maintain that he exists and that his will is thus and thus.
Initially, then, it is important to find out what they pretend to know of God besides his existence. Religious traditions provide the material for this. Because God is not "empirically" observable, the assignment of divine attributes to human experience plays the decisive role in the critique. Religious doctrine can, under no circumstances, evade this point, except by opting for a radical cult theology or, more consistently, for the mystical thesis of an unnameable God. This logi- cally consistent consequence for a philosophy of religion would offer adequate protection against enlightenment's detectivelike inquiries into human fantasies about God that shine through in the attributes. However, with mystical renuncia- tion, religion cannot become a social institution; it lives from the fact that it presents established narratives (myths) and standardized attributes (names and images), as well as stereotyped ways of behaving toward the holy (rituals), in reliably recurring forms.
One thus has only to examine these presentations more closely to track down the secret of their fabrication. The Bible provides the critic of religion with the decisive reference. Genesis 1:27: "And God created Man according to His image, in the image of God created He him. " Without doubt, this "image" relation can also be interpreted the other way around. From then on it is no mystery where the images come from; humans and their experiences are the material from which the official dreams about God are made. The religious eye projects earthly images into heaven.
One of these primary projections (how could it be otherwise? ) comes from the realm of images related to family and procreation. In polytheistic religions one finds intricate, often downright frivolous family sagas and affairs involving the procreation of deities --which one can readily study in Greek, Egyptian, and Hindu gods. That the human power of imagination proceeded too discreetly in picturing the heavenly populations will be maintained by no one. Even the sub- lime and theologically ambitious Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not free of family and procreation fantasies. Its particular refinement, however, has Mary
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 27
getting pregnant by the Holy Ghost. Satire has recognized this challenge. The doctrine is intended to avoid the idea that a sexually constituted bond exists be- tween father and son. The Christian God may well "procreate," but he does not copulate; for this reason the Creed says, with true subtlety: genitum, non factum.
Closely related to the idea of procreation is that of authorship, of Creation, which is attributed particularly to the superior and monotheistic gods. Here, hu- man experience is mixed in with production, rooted in agrarian and artisanal ac- tivity. In their labor, human beings experienced themselves prototypically as cre- ators, as authors of a new, previously nonexisting effect. The more the world became mechanized, the more the idea of God was transferred from the biological conception of procreation to that of production. Accordingly, the procreating God became increasingly a world manufacturer, the original producer.
The third primary projection is that of succor, among the constitutive images of religious life perhaps the most important. The greater part of religious pleas are addressed to God as helper in the distress of life and death. Because, however, God's succor presupposes his power over worldly events, the fantasy of the helper is blended with human experiences in protecting, caring, and ruling. The popular image of Christ shows him as the Good Shepherd. In the course of the history of religion, the gods have been assigned jurisdictions and responsibilities, whether in the form of sectoral sovereignty over a natural element such as sea, river, wind, forest, and grain, or in the form of general rule over
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
the created world. Political experiences obviously permeate these projections. The power of God is analogous to the functions of chiefs and kings. The religion of feudal soci- ety is the most open with its political projection of God in that it unhesitatingly institutes God as the highest feudal lord and addresses him with the feudal title of "Lord. " In English, one still says "My Lord. " Anthropomorphism or sociomor- phism is revealed most naively where pictorial representations of the gods were attempted. For this reason, religions and theologies that have reflected on this have promulgated a strict prohibition of images: They recognized the danger of reification. Judaism, Islam, and also certain "iconoclastic" factions of Christianity have, on this point, exercised an intelligent continence. Enlightenment satire amused itself over African deities, for whom a black skin was just as self-evident as were slanted eyes for Asiatic idols. It entertained itself with the thought of how ? ions, camels, and penguins would probably imagine their dear God: as
lion, camel, and penguin.
With this discovery of projective mechanisms, critique of religion provided enlightenment with a sharp weapon. Without great trouble it can be shown that the mechanism of projection is basically always the same, whether it is a matter ? r sensual naive notions like slanted eyes and white, grandfatherly beards or of subtle attributes such as personality, original authorship, permanence, or fore- knowledge. In all this, consistent critique of religion leaves the question of the
existence of God" untouched. Part of its rational tact is not to go beyond the area
28 ? EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
defined by the question, "What can I know? " The critique first suffered a dogmatic regression when it itself jumped over the limits of knowledge with its own nega- tively metaphysical statements and began to profess a clumsy atheism. From then on, representatives of organized religion could point with satisfaction to an ap- proximation between the "atheistic Weltanschauung" and the theological; for where a frontal contradiction comes to a standstill, there is no progress beyond the limits of both positions -- and institutions interested, above all, in self- preservation do not need anything more.
Besides the anthropological exposure of God projections, enlightenment has used, since the eighteenth century, a subversive second strategy, in which we dis- cover the germ of modern theory of cynicism. It is known as the theory of priests' deception. Here enlightenment approaches religion through an instrumentalist perspective by asking, Whom does religion serve, and what function does it serve in the life of society? The enlighteners were not at a loss for the-- apparently simple--answer. In any case, they only needed to look back on a thousand years of Christian religious politics, from Charlemagne to Richelieu, to read the answer from the bloody tracks of religiously tinged violence.
All religions are erected on the ground of fear. Gales, thunder,
storms . . . are the cause of this fear. Human beings, who felt impo- tent in the face of such natural events, sought refuge in beings who were stronger than themselves. Only later did ambitious men, artful
politicians and philosophers begin to take advantage of the people's gul- libility. For this purpose they invented a multitude of equally fantastic and cruel gods, who served no other purpose than to consolidate and maintain their power over people. In this way various cult forms arose that ultimately aimed only at stamping a kind of transcendental legality on an existing social order. . . . The basis of all cult forms consisted in the sacrifice the individual had to make for the well-being of the community. . . . So it is no wonder that, in the name of
God, . . . the great majority of human beings are oppressed by a small group of people who have made religious fear into an effective ally. (Therese Philosophe, Ein Sittenbild aus dem 18. Jahrhundert, ver-
fasst von dem intimen Freund Friedrichs des Grossen, dem Marquis d'Argens [A picture of morals in the eighteenth century, written by the intimate friend of Frederick the Great, the Marquis d'Argens]; trans. J. Fiirstenauer (Darmstadt, no date); the authorship remains unclear, since it is based only on a remark of the Marquis de Sade; quotation from pp. lllff. )
This is an instrumentalist theory of religion that is quite blunt. Admittedly, it too attributes the genesis of religions to human helplessness (projection of the helper). What is significant about it, however, is that we find in it the break- through to an openly reflective instrumentalist logic. Questioning the function and
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES d 29
application of religion is the future dynamite of ideology critique, the seeds of the crystallization of modern, self- reflective cynicism.
For the enlightener, it is easy to say why religion exists: first, to cope with ex- istential fears, and second, to legitimate oppressive social orders. At the same time, this implies historical sequence, as the text explicitly emphasizes: "Only later . . . " The exploiters and users of religion must be of a different caliber than the simple and fearful believers. The text chooses its expressions accordingly: It talks of "ambitious men" and "artful politicians and philosophers. " The expression "artful" cannot be taken seriously enough. It tries to capture an areligious con- sciousness that uses religion
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
as an instrument of domination. Religion has the sole task of establishing a permanent, mute willingness to sacrifice in the hearts of the subjugated.
The enlightener presumes that the rulers know this and let it work to their ad- vantage with conscious calculation. Artfulness (Raffinesse, finesse) expresses just that: "refinement" in the knowledge of domination. The consciousness of those in power has grown out of religious self-deception; it lets the deception go on working, but to its advantage. It does not believe, but it lets others believe. There have to be many fools so that the few can remain the clever ones.
I maintain that this enlightenment theory of religion represents the first logical
2construction of modern, self-reflective master cynicism. However, this theory
was not able to explicate its own structure and implications and, in the course of theoretical development, it perished. In general, the prevailing opinion is that ideology critique did not find its valid form until Marx and that the systems of Nietzsche, Freud, and others continued to elaborate that form. The textbook opinion about the theory of priests' deception says that the approach was inade- quate and was justifiably superseded by the more "mature" forms of sociological and psychological critique of consciousness. That is only partially true. It can be shown that this theory includes a dimension that sociological and psychological critiques not only failed to grasp, but to which they remained completely blind when it began to manifest itself within their own domain: the "artful dimension. "
The theory of deception is, in its reflective aspect, more complex than the politico-economic and the depth- psychological exposure theory. Both theories lo- cate the mechanism of deception behind false consciousness: It is deceived, it de- ceives itself. The deception theory, by contrast, assumes that one can view the mechanism of error along two axes. It is possible that one can suffer a delusion and also, undeluded, use it against others. This is precisely what the thinkers of the rococo and the Enlightenment had in mind-of whom, by the way, not a few had occupied themselves with ancient kynicism (e. g. , Diderot, Christoph Wie- land). They call this structure, for lack of a more developed terminology, "artful- ness" (Raffinesse), which is allied with "ambition. " Both are qualities that were common in descriptions of human nature in the courtly and urban spheres of that time. In fact, this deception theory entails a great logical discovery --a break-
30 ? EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
through in ideology critique to the concept of a self-reflective ideology. All other ideology critique possesses a striking tendency to patronize the "false conscious- ness" of others and to regard it as a kind of blindness. The deception theory, by contrast, develops a level of critique that concedes that the opponent is at least equally intelligent. It views the opposing consciousness as a serious rival, instead of commenting on it condescendingly. Thus, since the late eighteenth century, philosophy holds in its hands the beginnings of the thread of a multidimensional ideology critique.
To portray the opponent as an alert, reflecting deceiver, as an artful "politi- cian," is both naive and cunning. In this way one gets at the construction of an artful consciousness by an even more artful consciousness. The enlightener out- does the deceiver by rethinking and unmasking (entlarveri) the latter's maneuvers. If the deceiving priest or ruler has an artful mind, that is, if he is a modern ruler- cynic, then, in relation to him, the enlightener is a metacynic, an ironist, a satirist. The enlightener can masterfully reconstruct the machinations of the deception in the opponent's mind and explode them with laughter: "You don't want to take us for suckers, do you? " This is scarcely possible unless there is a certain reflective tight spot in which the consciousnesses are a good match for each other. In this climate, enlightenment leads to a training in mistrust that strives to outdo decep- tion through suspicion.
The artful contesting of deception with suspicion can also be demonstrated in the passage quoted earlier. Its special irony becomes recognizable only when one knows who is speaking. The speaker is an enlightened priest, one of those modern and skillful abbots of the eighteenth century who embellish the amatory novels of the time with their erotic adventures and rational small talk. As an expert in false consciousness by profession so to speak, he blabs indiscreetly. The scene is set up as if this cleric, in his critique of the clergy, forgets that he is also speak- ing of himself. The (probably) aristocratic author speaks all the more through him. He remains blind to his own cynicism. He has joined sides with reason, primarily because reason does not raise any objections to his sexual desires. The setting for the spicy statements criticizing religion is the love nest he has just shared with the alluring Madame C. And all of us, the narrator Therese, the recip- ient of her confidential sketches, and the intimate public, stand behind the bed curtains and see and hear the whisperings of enlightenment: all of this is enough to make you lose your mind--of course, as Heinrich Mann said in his Henri Quatre, "to the great advantage of the remaining senses. "
The point of the abbot's reflections is to clear away the religious hindrances to "lust. " The charming lady has just teased him: "Very well, my dear, what about religion? It forbids us the joys of lust very decisively, except in the state of mar- riage. " One part of the abbot's reply is given in the preceding quotation. For his own sensuousness, he makes use of the exposure of religious prohibitions --
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 31
? Secret with amorous observer. Detail from an engraving after a painting by Bau- douin, around 1780.
however, with the reservation of strict discretion. Here, in the superartful argu- ment of the enlightener, his own naivete emerges. The monologue turns into the following dialogue:
"You see, my dear, there you have my sermon on the chapter of reli- gion. It is the fruit of no less than twenty years of observation and reflection. I have always tried to separate truth from lie, as prescribed by reason. We should conclude from this, I believe, that the pleasure that binds us to each other so tenderly, my friend, is pure and innocent. Does not the discretion with which we surrender ourselves to it guaran- tee that it does not injure God or humanity? Of course, without this dis- cretion such pleasures could cause a dreadful scandal. . . . Our exam- ple could, after all, confuse unsuspecting young souls and mislead them so that they would neglect their duties to society. "
"But," the lady objected justifiably, it seemed to me, "if our plea- sures are so innocent, as I would like to believe they are, why shouldn't we let them be known to all the world? What harm could there be in sharing the golden fruits of sensual pleasure with our fellow human be- ings? Didn't you yourself tell me repeatedly that there is no greater hap- piness for human beings than to make others happy? "
"Indeed, I said that, my dear," the abbot admitted. "But that doesn't mean that we are allowed to disclose such secrets to the rabble. Don't you realize that the minds of these people are vulgar enough to misuse what seems so sacred to us? You cannot compare them to those who
32 ? EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
? Punished Curiosity.
Ideology critique means the polemical continuation of the miscarried dialogue through other means. It declares a war on consciousness, even when it pretends to be so serious and "nonpolemical. " The rules for peace are in substance res- cinded. At this point it becomes clear that there is no intersubjectivity that could not equally well be interobjectivity. In hitting and being hit, both parties become subjective objects for each other. Strictly speaking, ideology critique wants not merely to "hit," but to operate with precision, in the surgical and military sense: to outflank and expose opponents, to reveal the opponents' intentions. Exposing implies laying out the mechanism of false and unfree consciousness.
In principle, enlightenment knows only two grounds for falsity: error and /// will. At best, only the latter can possess the dignity of a subject, for only when opponents consciously lie does the "wrong opinion" possess an ego. If one as- sumes error, the wrong opinion rests not on an ego but on a mechanism that fal- sifies the right opinion. Only a lie bears responsibility for itself, whereas an error, because it is mechanical, remains in relative "innocence. " Error, however, quickly splits into two different phenomena: the simple error (which is based on logical or perceptual delusion and can be corrected relatively easily) and the per- sistent, systematic error (which clings to its own conditions of existence and is called ideology). Thus arise the classic series of forms of false consciousness: lie, error, ideology.
bvery struggle leads necessarily to a reciprocal reification of subjects. Because -niightenment cannot give up its claim of imposing better insights against a self- structing consciousness, it must basically "operate" behind the opponent's con- - lousness. Thus, ideology critique acquires a cruel aspect that, if it ever really mits to being cruel, claims to be nothing more than a reaction to the cruelties
16 ? ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
? Matthias Greutzer, Model of Vanity (the second picture shows the view with raised skirt), 1596.
of "ideology. " Here it becomes clearer than anywhere else that "philosophical" ideology critique is truly the heir of a great satirical tradition, in which the motif of unmasking, exposing, baring has served for aeons now as a weapon. But mod- ern ideology critique--according to our thesis has ominously cut itself off from the powerful traditions of laughter in satirical knowledge, which have their roots in ancient kynicism. Recent ideology critique already appears in respectable garb, and in Marxism and especially in psychoanalysis it has even put on suit and tie so as to completely assume an air of bourgeois respectability. It has given up its life as satire, in order to win its position in books as "theory. " From the lively form of heated polemic it has retreated to those positions taken in a cold war of consciousness. Heinrich Heine was one of the last authors of classical enlighten- ment who literarily defended, in open satire, the rights of ideology critique to "just atrocities'; here, the public has not followed him. The bourgeois transforma- tion of satire into ideology critique was as inevitable as the bourgeois transforma- tion of society, in general, together with its oppositional forces.
Ideology critique, having become respectable, imitates surgical procedure: Cut open the patient with the critical scalpel and operate under impeccably sterile conditions. The opponent is cut open in front of everyone, until the mechanism of his error is laid bare. The outer skin of delusion and the nerve endings of "ac- tual" motives are hygienically separated and prepared. From then on, enlighten- ment is not satisfied, of course, but it is better armed in its insistence on its own claims for the distant future. Ideology critique is now interested not in winning over the vivisected opponent but in focusing on the "corpse," the critical extract
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE D 17
Graffitti on the Berlin Wall. "We are born to be free. " Ideology critique as inscrip- tion on the other's defense.
of its ideas, which lie in the libraries of enlighteners and in which one can easily read about their grave falsity. Obviously one does not get any closer to the oppo- nent in this way. Those who previously did not want to engage in enlightenment will want to do so even less now that they have been dissected and exposed by the opponent. Of course, according to the logic of the game, the enlightener will at least be victorious: Sooner or later, the opponent will be
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
forced to respond apologetically.
Irritated by the attacks and "unmaskings," the counterenlighteners will one day begin to conduct their own "enlightenment" on the enlighteners, in order to de- nounce them as human beings and to associate them socially with criminals. They are then usually called "elements. " The word is unintentionally well chosen, since wanting to fight the elements does not sound very promising. Eventually, it can- not be avoided; the hegemonic powers begin to talk indiscreetly. Then, increas- ingly irritated, they reveal something of their secrets; universally acknowledged cultural ideals are thereby cunningly retracted. In the compulsion of the weakened hegemonic powers to confess, as remains to be shown, lies one of the roots of the modern cynical structure.
Without wanting to, "dissatisfied enlightenment" has, in turn, entrenched itself on this front. Threatened by its own fatigue and undermined by the need for seri- ousness, it often remains content with having wrung involuntary confessions from its opponent. In fact, in time, the experienced eye will see "confessions" every- where, and even when the hegemonic power shoots instead of negotiating, it will not be difficult to interpret bullets as the revelations of a fundamental weakness- that is how those powers express themselves that have no imagination and that'
? 18 D" ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
in order to save themselves, cling to nothing more than their strong nerves and executive organs.
Arguing behind the back and through the head of the opponent has become common practice in modern critique. The gesture of exposure characterizes the style of argumentation of ideology critique, from the critique of religion in the eighteenth century to the critique of fascism in the twentieth. Everywhere, one discovers extrarational mechanisms of opinion: interests, passions, fixations, il- lusions. That helps a bit to mitigate the scandalous contradiction between the postulated unity of truth and the factual plurality of opinions--since it cannot be eliminated. Under these assumptions, a true theory would be one that not only grounds its own theses best, but also knows how to defuse all significant and per- sistent counterpositions through ideology critique. In this point, as one can easily see, official Marxism has the greatest ambition, since the major part of its theoret- ical energy is dedicated to outdoing all non-Marxist theories and exposing them as "bourgeois ideologies. " Only by continually outdoing the others, can ideolo- gists succeed in "living" with the plurality of ideologies. De facto, the critique of ideology implies the attempt to construct a hierarchy between unmasking and un- masked theory. In the war of consciousness, getting on top, that is, achieving a synthesis of claims to power and better insights, is crucial.
Since, in the business of critique, contrary to academic custom, ad hominem arguments are used unhesitatingly, universities have, probably deliberately, moved cautiously toward the procedures of ideology critique. For the attack from the flank, the argumentum ad personam, is strongly disapproved of in the "aca- demic community. " Respectable critique meets its opponent in its best form; cri- tique honors itself when it overwhelms its rival in the full armor of its rationality. For as long as possible, the learned collegium has tried to defend its integrity against the close combat of ideologico-critical exposures. Do not unmask, lest you yourself be unmasked could be the unspoken rule. It is no accident that the great representatives of critique--the French moralists, the Encyclopedists, the socialists, and especially Heine, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud--remain outsiders to the scholarly domain. In all of them there is a satirical, polemical component that can scarcely be hidden under the mask of scholarly respectability. These sig- nals of a holy nonseriousness, which remains one of the sure indexes of truth, can be employed as signposts to the critique of cynical reason. We will find a reliably unreliable traveling companion in Heinrich Heine, who displayed a knack, unsurpassed to the present day, for combining theory and satire, cognition and entertainment. Here, following in his tracks, we want to try to reunite the capacities for truth in literature, satire, and art with those of "scholarly dis- course. "
The right of ideology critique to use ad hominem arguments was indirectly ac- knowledged even by the strictest absolutist of reason, J. G. Fichte, whom Heine aptly compared to Napoleon when he said that the kind of philosophy one chooses
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 19
depends on the kind of person one is. This critique intrudes into the conditions under which human beings form opinions with either compassionate serenity or cruel seriousness. It seizes error from behind and tears at its roots in practical life. This procedure is not exactly modest, but its immodesty is excused with a reference to the principle of the unity of truth. What is brought to light by the vivisecting approach is the everlasting embarrassment of ideas confronted by the interests underlying them: human, all too human; egoisms, class privileges, resentments, steadfastness of hegemonic powers. Under such illumination, the opposing subject appears not only psychologically but also sociologically and po- litically undermined. Accordingly, its standpoint can be understood only if one adds to its self- portrayals what is, in fact, hidden behind and below them. In this way, ideology critique raises a claim that it shares with hermeneutics, namely, the claim to understand an "author" better than he understands himself. What at first sounds arrogant about this claim can be methodologically justified. Others often really do perceive things about me that escape
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
my attention--and con- versely. They possess the advantage of distance, which I can profit from only retrospectively through dialogic mirroring. This, of course, would presuppose a functioning dialogue, which is precisely what does not take place in the process of ideology critique.
An ideology critique that does not clearly accept its identity as satire can, how- ever, easily be transformed from an instrument in the search for truth into one of dogmatism. All too often, it interferes with the capacity for dialogue instead of opening up new paths for it. This explains, leaving general antischolastic and antiintellectual feelings aside, a part of the current dissatisfaction with the critique of ideology.
Thus it happens that an ideology critique that presents itself as science, because it is not allowed to be satire, gets more and more entangled in serious radical solu- tions. One of these is its striking tendency to seek refuge in psychopathology. False consciousness appears first of all as sick consciousness. Almost all impor- tant works of the twentieth century on the phenomenon of ideology do the same thing-from Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich to R. D. Laing and David Cooper, not to mention Joseph Gabel, who has pushed the analogy between ideol- ogy and schizophrenia furthest. Those stances are suspected of being sick that loudly proclaim themselves to be the healthiest, most normal, and natural. The reliance of critique on psychopathology, although probably well justified, risks alienating the opponent more and more deeply; it reifies and diminishes the other's reality. In the end, the critic of ideology stands before the opposing con- sciousness like one of those modern, highly specialized pathologists who can, of course, say precisely what kind of pathological disturbance the patient is suffering
rom but knows nothing about appropriate therapies because that is not his spe- cialty. Such critics, like some medicos corrupted by their profession, are in- terested in the diseases, not in the patients.
20 ? ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE
The most humorless reification of every opposing consciousness has grown out of the ideology critique that bases itself on Marx (I will not go into whether this is proper use or misuse of Marx). The radical reification of the opponent is in any case of factual consequence of the politico-economic realism characteristic of Marxian theory. However, here an additional motif comes into play: If all other exposures trace false consciousness back to seamy features of the human totality (lies, nastiness, egoism, repression, split consciousness, illusion, wishful thinking, etc. ), the Marxian exposure runs up against the nonsubjective, the laws of the politico-economic process as a whole. When ideologies are criticized from a politico-economic perspective, one never really gets down to "human weak- nesses. " Rather, one hits on an abstract social mechanism in which individual per- sons, as members of classes, have distinct functions: as capitalist, as proletarian, as intermediate functionary, as theoretical hack for the system. However, neither in the head nor in the components of the system is there any clarity about the na- ture of the whole. Each of its members is mystified in a way corresponding to its position. Even the capitalist, in spite of practical experience with capital, finds no true image of the total structure, but remains a necessarily deceived epiphenomenon of the process of capital.
It is here that a second offshoot of modern cynicism grows. As soon as I as- sume, in Marx's formulation, a "necessarily false consciousness," the spiral of reification is turned even further. There would then be in the minds of human be- ings precisely those errors that have to be in them so that the system can function--toward its collapse. In the gaze of the Marxist system-critic, there glit- ters an irony that is a priori condemned to cynicism. For the critic admits that ideologies, which from an external point of view are false consciousness, are, seen from the inside, precisely the right consciousness. Ideologies appear simply as the appropriate errors in the corresponding minds: the "correct false conscious- ness. " This echoes the definition of cynicism given in the first preliminary reflec- tion (chapter 1). The difference is that the Marxist critic gives "correct false con- sciousness" the chance to enlighten itself or to be enlightened --through Marxism. Then, in the critic's opinion, it would have become true consciousness, not "en- lightened false consciousness," as the formula for cynicism says. Theoretically, the perspective of emancipation is kept open.
Any sociological system theory that treats "truth" functionalistically-I say this in advance --carries an immense potential for cynicism. And since every contem- porary intellect is caught up in the process of such sociological theories, it inevita- bly is implicated in the latent or overt master cynicism of these forms of thinking. Marxism, in its origins, at least maintained an ambivalence between reifying and emancipative perspectives. Non-Marxist system theories of society drop even the last trace of sensitivity. In alliance with neoconservative currents, they proclaim that useful members of human society have to internalize certain "correct illu- sions" once and for all, because without them nothing functions properly. The
ENLIGHTENMENT AS DIALOGUE ? 21
3naivete of the others should be planned, "capital fix being man himself. " It is al-
ways a good investment to mobilize the naive will to work, for whatever reason. System theoreticians and maintenance
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
strategists are from the start beyond naive belief. But for those who should believe in it, the aphorism holds: Stop reflecting and maintain values.
Those who make the means of liberating reflection available and invite others to use them appear to conservatives as unscrupulous and power-hungry good-for- nothings who are reproached with "Others do the work. " Very well, but for whom?
Notes
1. [This is a variation of Habermas's formulation of the "zwanglose Zwang des besseren Argu- ments. "-Trans. ]
2. In this book I designate consistently any power that dominates as hegemonic power to indicate that this power never is or has power by itself, but always "rides," so to speak, on the back of an op- positional power. In a realistic theory of power, omnipotence and impotence occur only as quasi- "mathematical" ideas of power, as the infinitely great and the infinitely small in power. Omnipotence and impotence cannot confront each other, but hegemonic power and oppositional power can. What "exists" possesses power, a positive quantum of energy, that is centered in conscious bodies and ex- tends itself to appropriate tools and weapons. For this reason, the logic of all-or-nothing is dangerous, indeed fatal, in politics. In Si^yes's statement-"What is the Third Estate? Nothing. What does it want to become? Everything"--a disastrous self-characterization of the oppositional power comes into be- ing, a false logical treatment (Logisierung) of political struggle through which the part wants to make itself into the whole. In substance, this false all- or-nothing logic is repeated in Marxism, which wanted to make the proletariat "everything. " Is this inverted concept of power a universal legacy of leftist opposition? Even the French New Philosophy, straying into old ways of thinking, comes to grief on this concept by confusing omnipotence with hegemonic power and imposing a Manichaean ontology of an evil state power.
3. [This phrase is taken from Marx, who in turn quotes the French term for fixed capital. -- Trans. ]
Chapter 3
Eight Unmaskings:
A Review of Critiques
In the following I sketch eight cases of the enlightenment critique of ideology and critique-through-unmasking whose polemical modes of procedure have become paradigmatic. We will be concerned with the historically most successful figures of demasking --successful, however, not in the sense that the critique had really "finished off' what it criticized. The effects of critique are generally different from those that were intended. Social hegemonic powers intent on sustaining them- selves prove capable of learning when they are on the defensive and all else fails. A social history of enlightenment must devote attention to the learning processes of defensive hegemonic powers. A cardinal problem in the history of ideology is the backlog of "false consciousnesses" that first learn from their critics what suspicion and exposure, cynicism and "finesse" are.
Our review of critique will show enlightenment en marche in an imperturbable and relentless drive against illusions, old and new. That the critique, in its strug- gle with its opponents, cannot "clean up" (with them) remains to be shown. We want to see how, here and there, in the critique itself, the germs of new dog- matisms are formed. Enlightenment does not penetrate into social consciousness simply as an unproblematic bringer of light. Where it has an effect, a twilight arises, a deep ambivalence. We will characterize this ambivalence as the at- mosphere in which, in the middle of a snarl of factual self-preservation with moral self-denial, cynicism crystallizes.
22
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 23
? Heinrich Hoerle, Masks, 1929. (Reproduced by permission of the Museum Lud- wig, Cologne. )
Critique of Revelation
What? The miracle merely an error of interpretation? A lack of philology?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
For Christian civilization, Holy Scripture has paramount value by virtue of the idea that it is a work of divine dictation. Human understanding should submit to it, just as the senses should yield to the sight of a "miracle" that happens before one's very eyes. Dressed in the various mother tongues, the "voice" of the divine (theologically, the Holy Spirit) speaks out of the holy text.
The Bible appears "holy" as a text rooted in the Absolute. Accordingly, no in- terpretation would be adequate enough to exhaust its overabundance of meaning that renews itself through the epochs of humanity. Exegesis can be nothing other than the vain but necessary attempt to fill the tiny spoon of our understanding with this ocean of meaning. However, all interpretations and applications must remain m the last instance merely human and useless without the assumption that the text Uself is divinely inspired. Only this belief raises scripture to its unique position. ^ a word, it is the belief in the revelatory nature of the Bible that makes it the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
? ly Book pure and simple. This belief manifests itself in a very naive and radical
Wa
y in the doctrine of "verbal inspiration," according to which the Holy Spirit stated directly into the pen of the human scribes, without taking a detour
24 ? EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
through their finite consciousness. Theology begins with automatic writing. The "private" religious opinions of a Matthew or a Paul would be at best interesting, but not binding; they would remain exhaustible and limited human stances of con- sciousness. Only theological hypostasis, the elevation to the voice of the Holy Spirit dictating to Matthew or Paul, places the text at the source of unlimited meaning.
Enlightenment inquires precisely into this claim. It asks, innocently and sub- versively, for proofs, sources, and evidence. At the beginning it solemnly avers that it would willingly believe everything, if only it could find someone to con- vince it. Here it becomes clear that the biblical texts, taken philologically, remain themselves their only witness. Their revelatory character is their own claim, and it can be believed or not; the church, which elevates this revelatory character to the status of a grand dogma, itself plays only the role of an interpreter.
With his radical biblicism, Luther rejected the church's claim to authority. This repudiation then repeats itself on the higher level through biblicism itself. For text remains text, and every assertion that it is divinely inspired can, in turn, be only a human, fallible assertion. With every attempt to grasp the absolute source, critique comes up against relative, historical sources that only ever assert the Absolute. The miracles spoken about in the Bible to legitimate God's power are only reports of miracles for which there are no longer any means of verifica- tion. The revelatory claim is stuck in a philological circle.
In his defense of the Reimarus writings in 1777 (On the Proof of the Spirit and of the Power), Lessing unmasked in a classic manner the revelatory claim as a mere assertion. The main thesis reads: "Accidental historical truths can never be- come the proof of necessary truths of reason. " His argumentation:
Consequently, if I do not have anything historical to counter the claim that Christ awakened a dead person, must I therefore accept as true that God has a son who is of the same essence? What is the connection be- tween my incapacity to counter anything substantial against the evidence of the former and my commitment to believe something my reason resists?
If I do not have anything historical to counter the claim that Christ himself rose from the dead, must I therefore accept as true that pre- cisely this resurrected Christ was the son of God?
That Christ, against whose resurrection I have nothing of importance historically to counter, presented himself as the son of God so that his followers for this reason held him to be so; all that I believe with my whole heart. For these truths, as truths of one and the same class, fol- low quite naturally from one another.
But now to jump with this historical truth over into a completely different class of truths and demand of me that I should restructure all my metaphysical and moral concepts accordingly, to expect of me, be-
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 25
cause I cannot counter the resurrection of Christ with credible evidence, that I alter all my basic ideas about the essence of divinity accordingly; if that is not a transition to another logical category (metdbasis eis alio genos), then I do not know what Aristotle understood by this desig- nation.
One says, of course: But precisely that Christ, about whom you must historically allow to be true that he raised the dead, that he himself rose from the dead, has himself said that God has a son of the same essence and that he is this son.
That would be quite good. If only it were historically certain also that Christ in fact said this.
If one wanted to pursue me and say: "But indeed! That is more than historically certain; for inspired chronologists, who cannot err, assure us of it": But again it is unfortunately only historically certain that these chronologists were inspired and could not err.
That, that is the terrifyingly wide gap over which I cannot come, no matter how often and how earnestly I have attempted to leap over it. If someone can help me over it, then do so! I ask him, I beg him. He would earn a divine reward through me.
Human knowledge is forced to retreat into the limits of historiography, philol- ogy, and logic. Something of this painful retreat appears in Lessing, who does not disingenuously aver that his heart would willingly remain more credulous than his reason allows. With the question "How can one know that? ", enlighten- ment severs the roots of revelatory knowledge quite elegantly, without being par- ticularly aggressive. With the best will, human reason cannot find anything in the sacred text but historical, human-made assumptions. With a simple philological query, the claim of absoluteness made by tradition is annihilated.
No matter how convincing the historical-philological critique of the Bible may be, the confessional absolutism of
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
organized religion does not want to ac- knowledge that according to the rules of the art, it is suspended. Its absolutism simply continues to "exist," not, to be sure, as if this suspension and this exposure had never happened, but as if there were no consequences to be drawn from them, except one; namely that one must study and excommunicate the critics. Only after the fundamental critique of modern times does theology completely board the ship of fools of so-called belief and drift farther and farther from the banks of literal critique. In the nineteenth century, the churches gave the signal for merg- mg postcritical irrationalism with political reaction. Like all institutions imbued with the will to survive, they knew how to weather the "dissolution" of their foun-
ations. From now on, the concept of 'existence' stinks of the cadaveric poison ? t Christianity, of the rotting after-life, of what, in spite of critique, has been criti- -ized. Since then, theologians have had an additional trait in common with ynics: the sense for naked self-preservation. They have made themselves com-
26 D EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
fortably at home in the tub of a dogmatics riddled with holes until the Day of Judgment. Critique of Religious Illusion
Deception always goes further than suspicion.
La Rochefoucauld
In a strategically clever move, enlightenment's critique of the religious phenome- non concentrates on God's attributes; only secondarily does it tackle the sticky "question of existence. " Whether God "exists" is not the basic problem; what is essential is what people mean when they maintain that he exists and that his will is thus and thus.
Initially, then, it is important to find out what they pretend to know of God besides his existence. Religious traditions provide the material for this. Because God is not "empirically" observable, the assignment of divine attributes to human experience plays the decisive role in the critique. Religious doctrine can, under no circumstances, evade this point, except by opting for a radical cult theology or, more consistently, for the mystical thesis of an unnameable God. This logi- cally consistent consequence for a philosophy of religion would offer adequate protection against enlightenment's detectivelike inquiries into human fantasies about God that shine through in the attributes. However, with mystical renuncia- tion, religion cannot become a social institution; it lives from the fact that it presents established narratives (myths) and standardized attributes (names and images), as well as stereotyped ways of behaving toward the holy (rituals), in reliably recurring forms.
One thus has only to examine these presentations more closely to track down the secret of their fabrication. The Bible provides the critic of religion with the decisive reference. Genesis 1:27: "And God created Man according to His image, in the image of God created He him. " Without doubt, this "image" relation can also be interpreted the other way around. From then on it is no mystery where the images come from; humans and their experiences are the material from which the official dreams about God are made. The religious eye projects earthly images into heaven.
One of these primary projections (how could it be otherwise? ) comes from the realm of images related to family and procreation. In polytheistic religions one finds intricate, often downright frivolous family sagas and affairs involving the procreation of deities --which one can readily study in Greek, Egyptian, and Hindu gods. That the human power of imagination proceeded too discreetly in picturing the heavenly populations will be maintained by no one. Even the sub- lime and theologically ambitious Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not free of family and procreation fantasies. Its particular refinement, however, has Mary
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 27
getting pregnant by the Holy Ghost. Satire has recognized this challenge. The doctrine is intended to avoid the idea that a sexually constituted bond exists be- tween father and son. The Christian God may well "procreate," but he does not copulate; for this reason the Creed says, with true subtlety: genitum, non factum.
Closely related to the idea of procreation is that of authorship, of Creation, which is attributed particularly to the superior and monotheistic gods. Here, hu- man experience is mixed in with production, rooted in agrarian and artisanal ac- tivity. In their labor, human beings experienced themselves prototypically as cre- ators, as authors of a new, previously nonexisting effect. The more the world became mechanized, the more the idea of God was transferred from the biological conception of procreation to that of production. Accordingly, the procreating God became increasingly a world manufacturer, the original producer.
The third primary projection is that of succor, among the constitutive images of religious life perhaps the most important. The greater part of religious pleas are addressed to God as helper in the distress of life and death. Because, however, God's succor presupposes his power over worldly events, the fantasy of the helper is blended with human experiences in protecting, caring, and ruling. The popular image of Christ shows him as the Good Shepherd. In the course of the history of religion, the gods have been assigned jurisdictions and responsibilities, whether in the form of sectoral sovereignty over a natural element such as sea, river, wind, forest, and grain, or in the form of general rule over
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
the created world. Political experiences obviously permeate these projections. The power of God is analogous to the functions of chiefs and kings. The religion of feudal soci- ety is the most open with its political projection of God in that it unhesitatingly institutes God as the highest feudal lord and addresses him with the feudal title of "Lord. " In English, one still says "My Lord. " Anthropomorphism or sociomor- phism is revealed most naively where pictorial representations of the gods were attempted. For this reason, religions and theologies that have reflected on this have promulgated a strict prohibition of images: They recognized the danger of reification. Judaism, Islam, and also certain "iconoclastic" factions of Christianity have, on this point, exercised an intelligent continence. Enlightenment satire amused itself over African deities, for whom a black skin was just as self-evident as were slanted eyes for Asiatic idols. It entertained itself with the thought of how ? ions, camels, and penguins would probably imagine their dear God: as
lion, camel, and penguin.
With this discovery of projective mechanisms, critique of religion provided enlightenment with a sharp weapon. Without great trouble it can be shown that the mechanism of projection is basically always the same, whether it is a matter ? r sensual naive notions like slanted eyes and white, grandfatherly beards or of subtle attributes such as personality, original authorship, permanence, or fore- knowledge. In all this, consistent critique of religion leaves the question of the
existence of God" untouched. Part of its rational tact is not to go beyond the area
28 ? EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
defined by the question, "What can I know? " The critique first suffered a dogmatic regression when it itself jumped over the limits of knowledge with its own nega- tively metaphysical statements and began to profess a clumsy atheism. From then on, representatives of organized religion could point with satisfaction to an ap- proximation between the "atheistic Weltanschauung" and the theological; for where a frontal contradiction comes to a standstill, there is no progress beyond the limits of both positions -- and institutions interested, above all, in self- preservation do not need anything more.
Besides the anthropological exposure of God projections, enlightenment has used, since the eighteenth century, a subversive second strategy, in which we dis- cover the germ of modern theory of cynicism. It is known as the theory of priests' deception. Here enlightenment approaches religion through an instrumentalist perspective by asking, Whom does religion serve, and what function does it serve in the life of society? The enlighteners were not at a loss for the-- apparently simple--answer. In any case, they only needed to look back on a thousand years of Christian religious politics, from Charlemagne to Richelieu, to read the answer from the bloody tracks of religiously tinged violence.
All religions are erected on the ground of fear. Gales, thunder,
storms . . . are the cause of this fear. Human beings, who felt impo- tent in the face of such natural events, sought refuge in beings who were stronger than themselves. Only later did ambitious men, artful
politicians and philosophers begin to take advantage of the people's gul- libility. For this purpose they invented a multitude of equally fantastic and cruel gods, who served no other purpose than to consolidate and maintain their power over people. In this way various cult forms arose that ultimately aimed only at stamping a kind of transcendental legality on an existing social order. . . . The basis of all cult forms consisted in the sacrifice the individual had to make for the well-being of the community. . . . So it is no wonder that, in the name of
God, . . . the great majority of human beings are oppressed by a small group of people who have made religious fear into an effective ally. (Therese Philosophe, Ein Sittenbild aus dem 18. Jahrhundert, ver-
fasst von dem intimen Freund Friedrichs des Grossen, dem Marquis d'Argens [A picture of morals in the eighteenth century, written by the intimate friend of Frederick the Great, the Marquis d'Argens]; trans. J. Fiirstenauer (Darmstadt, no date); the authorship remains unclear, since it is based only on a remark of the Marquis de Sade; quotation from pp. lllff. )
This is an instrumentalist theory of religion that is quite blunt. Admittedly, it too attributes the genesis of religions to human helplessness (projection of the helper). What is significant about it, however, is that we find in it the break- through to an openly reflective instrumentalist logic. Questioning the function and
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES d 29
application of religion is the future dynamite of ideology critique, the seeds of the crystallization of modern, self- reflective cynicism.
For the enlightener, it is easy to say why religion exists: first, to cope with ex- istential fears, and second, to legitimate oppressive social orders. At the same time, this implies historical sequence, as the text explicitly emphasizes: "Only later . . . " The exploiters and users of religion must be of a different caliber than the simple and fearful believers. The text chooses its expressions accordingly: It talks of "ambitious men" and "artful politicians and philosophers. " The expression "artful" cannot be taken seriously enough. It tries to capture an areligious con- sciousness that uses religion
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
as an instrument of domination. Religion has the sole task of establishing a permanent, mute willingness to sacrifice in the hearts of the subjugated.
The enlightener presumes that the rulers know this and let it work to their ad- vantage with conscious calculation. Artfulness (Raffinesse, finesse) expresses just that: "refinement" in the knowledge of domination. The consciousness of those in power has grown out of religious self-deception; it lets the deception go on working, but to its advantage. It does not believe, but it lets others believe. There have to be many fools so that the few can remain the clever ones.
I maintain that this enlightenment theory of religion represents the first logical
2construction of modern, self-reflective master cynicism. However, this theory
was not able to explicate its own structure and implications and, in the course of theoretical development, it perished. In general, the prevailing opinion is that ideology critique did not find its valid form until Marx and that the systems of Nietzsche, Freud, and others continued to elaborate that form. The textbook opinion about the theory of priests' deception says that the approach was inade- quate and was justifiably superseded by the more "mature" forms of sociological and psychological critique of consciousness. That is only partially true. It can be shown that this theory includes a dimension that sociological and psychological critiques not only failed to grasp, but to which they remained completely blind when it began to manifest itself within their own domain: the "artful dimension. "
The theory of deception is, in its reflective aspect, more complex than the politico-economic and the depth- psychological exposure theory. Both theories lo- cate the mechanism of deception behind false consciousness: It is deceived, it de- ceives itself. The deception theory, by contrast, assumes that one can view the mechanism of error along two axes. It is possible that one can suffer a delusion and also, undeluded, use it against others. This is precisely what the thinkers of the rococo and the Enlightenment had in mind-of whom, by the way, not a few had occupied themselves with ancient kynicism (e. g. , Diderot, Christoph Wie- land). They call this structure, for lack of a more developed terminology, "artful- ness" (Raffinesse), which is allied with "ambition. " Both are qualities that were common in descriptions of human nature in the courtly and urban spheres of that time. In fact, this deception theory entails a great logical discovery --a break-
30 ? EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
through in ideology critique to the concept of a self-reflective ideology. All other ideology critique possesses a striking tendency to patronize the "false conscious- ness" of others and to regard it as a kind of blindness. The deception theory, by contrast, develops a level of critique that concedes that the opponent is at least equally intelligent. It views the opposing consciousness as a serious rival, instead of commenting on it condescendingly. Thus, since the late eighteenth century, philosophy holds in its hands the beginnings of the thread of a multidimensional ideology critique.
To portray the opponent as an alert, reflecting deceiver, as an artful "politi- cian," is both naive and cunning. In this way one gets at the construction of an artful consciousness by an even more artful consciousness. The enlightener out- does the deceiver by rethinking and unmasking (entlarveri) the latter's maneuvers. If the deceiving priest or ruler has an artful mind, that is, if he is a modern ruler- cynic, then, in relation to him, the enlightener is a metacynic, an ironist, a satirist. The enlightener can masterfully reconstruct the machinations of the deception in the opponent's mind and explode them with laughter: "You don't want to take us for suckers, do you? " This is scarcely possible unless there is a certain reflective tight spot in which the consciousnesses are a good match for each other. In this climate, enlightenment leads to a training in mistrust that strives to outdo decep- tion through suspicion.
The artful contesting of deception with suspicion can also be demonstrated in the passage quoted earlier. Its special irony becomes recognizable only when one knows who is speaking. The speaker is an enlightened priest, one of those modern and skillful abbots of the eighteenth century who embellish the amatory novels of the time with their erotic adventures and rational small talk. As an expert in false consciousness by profession so to speak, he blabs indiscreetly. The scene is set up as if this cleric, in his critique of the clergy, forgets that he is also speak- ing of himself. The (probably) aristocratic author speaks all the more through him. He remains blind to his own cynicism. He has joined sides with reason, primarily because reason does not raise any objections to his sexual desires. The setting for the spicy statements criticizing religion is the love nest he has just shared with the alluring Madame C. And all of us, the narrator Therese, the recip- ient of her confidential sketches, and the intimate public, stand behind the bed curtains and see and hear the whisperings of enlightenment: all of this is enough to make you lose your mind--of course, as Heinrich Mann said in his Henri Quatre, "to the great advantage of the remaining senses. "
The point of the abbot's reflections is to clear away the religious hindrances to "lust. " The charming lady has just teased him: "Very well, my dear, what about religion? It forbids us the joys of lust very decisively, except in the state of mar- riage. " One part of the abbot's reply is given in the preceding quotation. For his own sensuousness, he makes use of the exposure of religious prohibitions --
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES ? 31
? Secret with amorous observer. Detail from an engraving after a painting by Bau- douin, around 1780.
however, with the reservation of strict discretion. Here, in the superartful argu- ment of the enlightener, his own naivete emerges. The monologue turns into the following dialogue:
"You see, my dear, there you have my sermon on the chapter of reli- gion. It is the fruit of no less than twenty years of observation and reflection. I have always tried to separate truth from lie, as prescribed by reason. We should conclude from this, I believe, that the pleasure that binds us to each other so tenderly, my friend, is pure and innocent. Does not the discretion with which we surrender ourselves to it guaran- tee that it does not injure God or humanity? Of course, without this dis- cretion such pleasures could cause a dreadful scandal. . . . Our exam- ple could, after all, confuse unsuspecting young souls and mislead them so that they would neglect their duties to society. "
"But," the lady objected justifiably, it seemed to me, "if our plea- sures are so innocent, as I would like to believe they are, why shouldn't we let them be known to all the world? What harm could there be in sharing the golden fruits of sensual pleasure with our fellow human be- ings? Didn't you yourself tell me repeatedly that there is no greater hap- piness for human beings than to make others happy? "
"Indeed, I said that, my dear," the abbot admitted. "But that doesn't mean that we are allowed to disclose such secrets to the rabble. Don't you realize that the minds of these people are vulgar enough to misuse what seems so sacred to us? You cannot compare them to those who
32 ? EIGHT UNMASKINGS: A REVIEW OF CRITIQUES
? Punished Curiosity.
