This descent was, on the contrary, the individual recapitulation of an entire an exemplary sacrifice that, next to the death of
Socrates
and the slaughter ?
Sloterdijk - Thinker on Stage
risk-free character, instead of an understanding that comes into play only as a dramatic and procedural quantity ?
the illusion of the propertied individual that has distorted every aspect of life in modernity.
Nietzsche recognized intelligence as the virtue of the wanderer and "psycho-
and as a component at work in the makeup of the seafarer, of whom he wrote:
Indeed, we philosophers and "free spirits" feel, when we hear the news that "the old god is dead," as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with ? amazement, ? expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an "open
In each of these cases, it is a way of thinking that, in its fundamental concepts and basic operations, still utilizes dramatic ? it is a phenomenon that can only still fulfill itself in categories that exist because of their analogy to ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 67
drama. Tragoedia facta est quod ? ? W ithin this dramaturgy of the spirit, no statements are valid, only scenes; no "ideas," only plot lines; no dis- courses, only provocations. Thinking is the phenomenon of thought: the adven- ture of the perceiver, the drama of
Nietzsche encircles this phenomenal cleverness with a ring of sparkling met- aphors: metaphors of sea journeys, tightrope walking, flight; alpine or nomadic metaphors; metaphors of fragrance, sound, trembling, and surging
of gushing forth, rupturing, rolling forth from oneself, overflowing, ejaculation and ? A l l of these images reveal a phenomenal intellect that is search- ing, creative, testing in nature logos polytropos, which signifies nothing other than a brightness of the body on its great journey out of the earth and around the world.
It is most important to stress here that, in ? in all postmetaphysians of the Dionysian type in general -- it is never a matter of organizing a compen- satory ? We cannot permit ourselves to be caught up in Nietzsche's rhetoric on this point: his self-awareness of his creation of epochs did not have real his- torical-philosophical ? What this author is doing does not constitute a pure enthronement of sensuality, which was supposed to be helped back to its proper place after the theoretical ascetic excesses of the Western ratio. taphysical reflection is not intended to be a balancing mechanism against an excess of anything ? intelligible as opposed to something sensitive
It is also not a new beginning after something has ended, such as the return of the body after an era of disembodiment has run its course, and it is also not the sunrise of great honesty after an age of hypocrisy.
What is it ? if it is not any of these? It is the constantly
deepening of subjectivity of the universally open in the body's process of becom- ing more linguistic and more universally yielding, which is enriched in the course of its conscientious composition of self with increases in cohesion. Does this mean that the relationship between body and intellect has been reversed
ingly contrary to all metaphysical principles? In the place of logos being made
it would seem that now physis has become language. But even this formu- lation is incorrect, for this does not occur in its ? but rather becomes appar- ent as the fundamental phenomenon that, from time immemorial, has also en- compassed the "word becoming ? The process of the physis becoming illuminated and lingual is much older than the descent of logos into the body -- both older and more historically powerful. What we call incarnation (and in doing so we unhesitatingly think of Christian ? and its modern surrogate manifestations) is merely an episode within the eternal linguistic and spiritual re- splendence (Aufleuchten) of the physis, which has been going on forever.
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
Presumably, in the dawn of advanced culture, the impression must have oc- curred that there existed an autonomous sphere of ideas, ? deities, and
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 68 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
which would have to descend into the physical world in order to accomplish its work ? opus operandum -- within it. "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us": this hymnus of Christian Platonism is at the same time the motto of advanced cultures that eo ipso represent programs for moralizing, ? education, and excarnation. Therefore, ad- vanced cultures must also always constantly appear as cultures that represent the inner war waged by a mobilizing and conquering intellect against a languid and suffering flesh. There is at work within them, in addition to the external violence of war and domination ? as the strongest characteristic ? the incarnate violence of the word, which entered the body in order to elevate its sorrow, desire, indolence, and self-will into a radiant
A more patient analysis, however, will reveal that this is a false description -- or at least an inadequate ? which mistakes only half of the phenomenon for the whole. For speech itself is always older than the logos of advanced culture; from the very bodies have spoken their ? their ? and their
before an empowering word could dictate to them what they were to say or incarnate. Since human existence depends on sharing ? and com- municating ? because of older somatic fundamentals, no real founda- tion exists for a logos that would prefer to cut itself away from its physical foun- dation in order to tyranically monopolize it. Logos is merely the parasite of an older linguistic predilection that responds only secondarily and in a highly cul- tured way to the violence and catastrophic conditions of the civilizing process; logos always creeps upward along the unendurability of a universal condition within which life appears as something that must be overcome, and, if not as this, then at least as something that is meant to be observed from above: thus the old affinity between spiritualization and mortification, both of which are symptoms of the logopathology ? of advanced culture. But even the excesses of logofication are only the bifurcations of the primary of the living, which still has the capacity to recognize itself in its abuses.
Does Nietzsche's own work corroborate these observations? I believe he is one of the few thinkers to ? in an exemplary manner and from a modern perspec- tive, the tendency to become language, which is inherent in physis. He was a genius of correspondences; he survived the experience of universal arrival and
of excitation and ? of phenomenon and ? in a overwhelming way. Looking back on the ecstasies he experienced during the writing of Zarathustra, he found astonishing formulations for the surplus of words that were available for expressing the factual matter of life:
Here all things come caressingly to your speech and flatter you, for they want to ride on your ? ? all being wants to become word
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 69
all that is in the process of becoming wants to learn to speak from you. 6, p. 340)
Shortly before the beginning of the twentieth century ? is the linguistic century ? linguistic phenomenon occurred that no linguist could ever have imagined. How did Nietzsche transcribe it?
With the very least residue of superstition within oneself, one could hardly know how to rid oneself of the idea that one is mere incarnation, merely a mouthpiece, merely a medium for powerful forces. (KSA, 6, p. 339)
One would have to extinguish even the final remainders of superstition in order to one's way back through the metaphysical fog to the truth of what was most evident: the fact that here no higher meaning was being ? a physis was expressing itself to the limits of overexposure ? In this borderline area, there is no active difference between expression in and of itself and expressing something. At the edges of language, the difference between ex- istence and speech is extinguished in the unavoidable fulfillment of absolute ex- pression. That a maximum of physical well-being was added to these precondi- tions indicates that Nietzsche could find the rhythm of a successful life only if he freed himself from the compulsion to incarnate, so as to be able to yield to ex-
pression before language:
My muscular ease was always greatest whenever my creative powers were most active. The body is enraptured; we can leave the "soul" out of our discussion. (KSA, 6, p. 341)
Nevertheless, his idea of being a medium, of performing the function of a mouthpiece, is not merely a superstitious mistake. It is tantamount to the insight that, in advanced culture's bathing of the body with the radiation of language, a compulsion and seduction are at work that do not stem from the speaker
and which cause him to say things that he does not say of his own accord (von sich aus) in the most precise sense. The spoken language is, indeed, not my own, or at least not entirely my own; it is always the others who have made me speak and listen to a language. Real speaking always occurs only in relation to hear-
all, to having been heard. These inspired verbal emotions (Worter- result in the effect, as strange as it is ? that, through the speaker, the Other only now, as it begins to ? We call these strange episodes of linguistic life in which the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
designations and inscrip- tions that logos has left behind within the individual begin to resound against the instrument of the body as if they were our own property. Within the context of aesthetic inspiration we observe how physis embraces, surpasses, dances around and appeases the logos; in such moments the impression suggests itself that a sort
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 70 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
of music is the mother tongue tongue of life. (According to ? Hebbel, "Prior to becoming human, ? heard ? Within such inspired speech, the maternal and paternal tongues resound through the mouthpiece of the child of this world. The forebears make use of this child as a sign (Zeichen) for the ex- pressions that could not be expressed during their ? It is the dumb desire to be one of the Others that inscribes the hyperplastic linguistic body of the child so that this body might express what it is incapable of expressing itself. "Every- thing that is in the process of becoming wants to learn to speak from ? In the very name used to designate the child (infans, "the one who does not speak"), a process that aims toward making it a being who does speak comes into play, a process that is identical to the last detail to that of incarnation. Without the in- carnation of logos, the subject would not enter into advanced ? and with- out violation, there would be no incarnation of ? Violation and logos belong together because only through violation can the speaker be compelled to say things that are directed against the vital interests of the infans. To speak in ac- cordance with a logos means to speak the language of those who can make use of me only as someone who is obedient and deadened; logos is the epitome of values and words in the name of which we take part in partial and total self-mor-
tification.
But how could we define a culture that would be successful in positive terms? Must culture inevitably be reduced to a subtle program of ? and By no means, for even if culture always has violence as part of its inheritance, it is free to release alert participants in the civilizing process from violation into creative play, the conscious endurance of what is ? and hu- moristic subversion to the highest purposes. Every speaker who investigates the matter can attempt to bring the violence he has inherited to life in positive terms through partially obsequious, partially insurrectional analogies to its incarnatio- duties ? in order to express again what is its own after being released from the cultural curriculum that has been demanded by logos. To express what is its own, however, means being able, in a cheerful way, to say
nothing more; it means getting behind the logos and reuniting with the older municativity of the living. Thus, a risk- laden drama is plotted out within every psyche in advanced ? wrestling match between the reason of the body and the madness of its incarnations. Within advanced culture, every subject is pregnant with
In Nietzsche, a drama of madness results whenever Dionysus meets Diogenes. In the preceding discussion we have played with the question of which
thustrian mask would remain available to this thinker after he played himself out in the impossible role of the nonreligious originator to the very limits of what is humanly possible. Now it becomes clear that this question has been incorrectly phrased: a subsequent mask would have been inconceivable on the stage upon
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
the drama has been carried out up to this point. ? the countenances that belong to the speaker's program for incarnation can appear upon this stage. After this, only one decision remains: whether to demolish the stage, an act that is tan- tamount to the suspension of the attempt at incarnation; or to escape into the madness of a final embodiment, the fatal process of becoming a god.
Whenever Dionysus encounters Diogenes, this decision comes into play. It is the final performance of civilization ? within the fragile body of an individual upon whom is thrust what he ? never permitted to ? the col- lision of Apollo and Dionysus, of logos and physis, of metaphysics and
wisdom. Here Diogenes stands for the playful body of an individual who would have saved his irresponsible sovereign expressiveness in that he suf- fuses all missions with ? results in his "language" sticking out its tongue at logos. If he stops to think properly, he does not have such terribly im- portant things to say: he makes use of all languages to show how one is ultimately unable to say anything with them. Thus, Sokrates ? and the music- making Socrates are ultimately one and the same. On the other hand, Nietzsche's Dionysus represents the phantasm of a body that wants to incarnate a divine logos, a body that is now only an instrument and speaks worlds, very nearly breaking the chains of individuation and the final indolence of the flesh so that it can unite the painful celebration of birth with that of life in a delirium of proph- ecy.
For an empirical individual, however, this incarnation of Dionysus is the unendurable pure and simple ? to the manifestations of the unendur- able, away from which all paths of culture lead toward what is endurable. No one, without having been prepared by something that is beyond the imaginable, can endure the shock effects of Dionysian radiation, and almost no one survives being immersed in what is unimaginable and
Nietzsche's metaphysical thesis on art provides the most impressive explana- tion for this: the compulsion toward art permeates existence at all levels. The unendurable must redeem itself into what can be endured; the irreparable must
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
allow itself to be replaced; the unimaginable must allow itself to be represented; the irresponsible must accept responsibility for itself; what is immediately in- communicable must be communicated, and the indivisible must be broken up -- so that it can endure itself. The presence must be brought back into the represen- tation, because pure ? from the unavailable exception of the mys-
synonymous with the unendurable for human beings within the status
quo.
This is where Diogenes makes his ? crazy man who announces
the deaths of god, logos, the empowered word, morality. He is the Dionysian savior from what is all too Dionysian. Because he has made it his business to experience the ? he has alerted himself to the possibility of adventuring
the intermediate ? Held up before the backdrop of the ? banality
? ? ? ? ? ? 72 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
begins to shine abysmally enough, and wherever this shining appears to be most life-enhancing, there sits Diogenes in his sunlight, lazy and deep, wary and happy, the personified denial of explosion, the illuminated prophylaxis against deadly radiation, the protector of the everyday, and the thinker of a Dionysian endurability. Diogenes warns the Dionysian philosopher against being ensnared in the trap of incarnation; he reminds him that there is no logos that would have authorized us to embody ? ingenious corporeality of life itself al- ready is ? and every duplication of this primary corporeality through the embodiment of an imaginary Dionysus could only lead to madness. Diogenes helps the Dionysian thinker to resist embodying "god" directly and being de- stroyed by the horror of the extraordinary. He protects him from burning too quickly. Thus, Diogenes to a certain extent incarnates the ? he demonstrates his contented state of having nothing to say, and lives an existence that playfully withdraws from all duty. He practices, with the greatest presence of mind, the art of winning away from the empowered word a meaning that was intended by the powers themselves; he is the master of the art of subversion through humor. Diogenes opposes the pseudo-Platonic (as well as spiritual-Chris- tian and modern-moralistic) hysteria of incarnation to the body's a priori attitude of "Leave me in peace," which in itself already speaks enough.
The question as to the composition of Nietzsche's mask is, at base, a question as to the possibility of bringing the moralistic theater of incarnation of European metaphysics to an end. According to Nietzsche's response to this question, ev- erything that has played a part in the fate of this thinker, even if only remotely, is remembered as horrible ? ? among other ? no one who has glanced even briefly behind the curtain of Western rationality can still pretend that Nietzsche's descent into madness was a private affair.
This descent was, on the contrary, the individual recapitulation of an entire an exemplary sacrifice that, next to the death of Socrates and the slaughter ? Jesus, represents a third unforgettable statement on the relationship between the empowered word and the expression of life within Western culture. "Not only the reason of mil- lennia, but their madness too, breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir"
Spoke Zarathustra, "On the Gift-Giving
In his Dionysian farewell performance, Nietzsche sought reasons with which he could, in spite of everything, affirm his tormented life ? incarnation of the impossible. What would he not have given for the chance to breathe a sigh of relief within the context of an everyday existence that would have allowed him to let the matter of god auf sich rest and no longer violate his body, the miserable carriage ? He longed, because of the confusion of his compulsion toward incarnation, for an ultimate nakedness and simplicity: it is not least of all because of this that the word "cynicism" so frequently haunts the writings of his last conscious ? Perhaps, then, even a professorship in Basel would have been ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 73
good for something, as a form of being, and the naked existence of a god would not have been as trying and ? He would have had no more cul- tural gold in his body, which would have had to be exchanged for acknowledg- ment as a royal ? and given away because of the collapse of the ? He would have done something that was his own ? could have given culture its due, taken a fragment of unavoidable logos upon himself, and at the same time fulfilled his task of incarnation honestly and artfully. Only then would he have been able to release himself to what he was: not a word become flesh, which irritated the dry masculine body with hopeless ? not a hysterical idea that dragged the body behind it as a melancholy ? but a silent, spiritually rich, playful physis, a concrete individuality beyond missions and resignations.
A ? moment awaits an individual such as this who has returned from the battlefields of the drama of individuation to that which can be endured. If the partiality of circumstances opposes it, it may experience being as a suc- cessful and unsurpassable recognizability. It encounters the great moments in which existence, corporeality, and knowledge are conceived of as a unified whole. From this point forward, everything is comedy ? war is over, research has come to an ? In every second of its existence the world would be acknowl- edged as being enough. Now a thought that leaves no shadow blossoms forth without need for transcendent worlds, without reduction, without imputation, supported only by
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
a perception that is free from the weight ? of the researching ego, without interference and without the necessity of indulgence, immaculately looking the obvious in the eye. It is the midday of being, the calm lull of obligation (Solleri). The weight of the world has been lifted; there is in- corrigibility wherever we look. Dionysus is philosophizing. ? Chapter 5
Pain and Justice
There are many good ? on earth, some useful, some pleasing: for their sake, the earth is to be loved.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
"On Old and New Tablets"
So, would a raving individualism be Nietzsche's last word? Did he leave behind for us nothing but the incentive for the production of ecstatic freethinkers in their reckless physicality, their amoral intensity, and their suspicious second inno- cence?
We might ask: Where is the ? ? Nietzsche? Are your ecstasies still grounded on the constitution? Doesn't your commonplace conceal the landmines of anarchy? What do you have to say about the problems of the ? will you limit yourself to a reference to the discrepancy between isolated knowledge and collective banter? Is all that we can expect of you a subjectivity without a subject, which, if thought out further as a general principle, cannot produce any- thing more than a postmodern colloquium, entitled: "The Autumn Salon of Van- ities, upon Which Intensities Collapse into Each Other, in a Manner That is Guar- anteed to Be Meaning-Free and Polylogical"? Only bodies remaining, without worlds? Only actors remaining, with no engagement? Only adventurers, with no retirement insurance? Only projects of antiquity without the realism of late italism? Only the new vehemence without diplomacy and the social state? Do you intend to invite us into chaos with your young conservative romanticism of conflict and your Dionysian prowess in the art of breaking ? Don't your cult of the moment and your worship of the exception bring the sociopolitical premises of democracy to ruin, that is, the capacities to engage oneself
nicably, to engage in long-term thinking, and to feel within the context of the institution? Isn't there inherent within every individualistic agitation a playing with fire, an impulse toward the relaxation of restraint, which encourages bru- ? ? 74
? PAIN AND JUSTICE ? 75
tality and intimidates caution, which defends a loss of control and robs the breath of responsibility? Isn't any emphasis of the singular at the same time a pillaging of the general, which thus contributes to an increase in tension between narcis- sism and the ? You will become a danger to political culture, Herr
if you don't cease seducing those who are most sensitive into political resignation -- not to mention those hardened types who borrow risque doctrines from your writings so that they can carry out their brutality with a clear con- science. Which brand of politics was it, then, that thought it had found in your energetic romanticism a permit to start swinging? Do we have to make it any clearer?
What these questions allude to, assuming a minimal recall of political ideas, is clear enough. Their bluntness, however, stems from perceptions that are them- selves imprecise: it stems from a definition of the world that is fundamentally false and that disintegrates into radical ambiguities as soon as this definition has been discredited. It presumes that, in a normal society, it is simply a matter of bringing together individuals who have grown up exhibiting an average sense of good will for the purpose of solving their common problems cooperatively. Who- ever withdraws from this kind of cooperation because he wants something differ- ent falls under suspicion of being someone who is running away from some other type of irresponsible ? conceals his blindness for the social behind therapeutic and private ideologies of retreat, and who, in the worst cases, makes excuses for himself with Nietzsche's formulation of the aesthetic exoneration of life.
This opinion, which probably considers itself the healthy one, disintegrates under the first alert gaze into fragments, each of which is
with the pseudo-ontological concept of normality, moving on to the trivially mor- alistic postulate of goodwill, and continuing all the way to the
inflated, block that, in the form of the bipartite illusion of the individual here and society stands in the way of any deeper understanding, and ultimately is summarized in the vulgar-political compulsive idea of the "common ? Only "common values" are lacking here as ontological catchalls. One cannot, of course, permit the use of the term "deeper understand- ing" with its educated-bourgeois ? he who moves on from the word to the matter itself ? is pulled into a dramatic phenomenon in whose wake the vulgar-ontological block to a Dionysian understanding melts away. It is little wonder, ? that critical identities rebel against an understanding of this kind as they would against something that mortally endangered the ? Because "truth" indicates something terrible for the subjects of the status quo, it is only natural that they would defend themselves from behind their block against the enlightening ? the drama; they react
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
critically because they really do not want to find what they purport to be seeking.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 76 ? PAIN AND JUSTICE
This much can be made plausible without any great effort: for the person who experiences existence as a drama that takes place above the Dionysian foundation of pain and pleasure (and who is the alert individual who would not approach such an experience ? moral and social facts must appear as subor- dinate quantities, however much they try to force themselves into the discourses of the institution as realities of the first order. Nietzsche's theory of truth explains to us in the most impressive terms that what calls itself reality within the context of institutional discourse can be nothing other than a reality in place of a reality, an Apollonian explanation, and institutionalization of the founda- tion of the world in accordance with the criteria of endurability and predictability. But in the alert ? this ? can never become exclusive: the individual is always standing at the crossroads; he is always alive only to the extent that he is a meeting point between the Dionysian and the Apollonian, ? that he occupies the position wherein reality, in its in- capacity to be represented, encounters the institutional "reality in the place of.
that can be
It could therefore be that individuals who are alert to Dionysus are most cidedly not trying to dodge reality, but are rather the only ones who are able to survive in the vicinity of pain and pleasure all the ramifications of this survival for a metabolic exchange between the individual and nature, life and society, while, conversely, the completely politicized, completely socialized, and thoroughly moralized subjects would be the very ones who were most successful in their organized flight from the terrible truth. It is conceivable that no one is more translucent, authentic, more incorporated, or more life-en- hancing in their involvement in what is real than these Dionysian
these types who are ? oversensitive, apolitical, or parapolitical. Per- haps it is they who engage themselves in an ecology of pain and pleasure that precedes any of the usual politics. Perhaps they are the real ? as opposed to those who have specialized in "politics" with a capital P and those who, in the style of traditional activists, endlessly force their game as the admin- istrators of abuses and as the agents of a shifting of suffering onto others.
Here a crack blatantly forms in the concept of the political itself. It will be necessary to supplement an everyday concept of the political ? the plane of combative and discursive interests along with their discourses, weapons, and in-
a darker, nighttime concept of the political that casts its gaze on the hidden ecology of universal pain. While politics, according to its everyday conceptualization, belongs to the Apollonian world of visibility and unfolds before our eyes as a reality in place of a reality, the dark side of the political falls on the side of the ? nonconcrete energetic of a prototypical foun- dation of pain and pleasure, which is a prerequisite to all everyday political action and reaction. Within this dark conceptualization, the most sensitive prob- lematic of modernity is announced; we are inquiring into the relationship be-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? PAIN AND JUSTICE ? 77
modern-day constructions of what is socially endurable, on the one hand, and the unendurable proliferation of suffering brought about by precisely such constructions of what can be endured, on the other. With this sort of dark inquiry, only one thing is obvious: wherever thought of this kind takes place, the logic of politology ? from Machiavelli to Marx and from Hobbes to Ho Chi Minh has already been superseded by a Dionysian politology of passions.
This is dangerous ? else could it be defined? Is it the usual an- archic-romantic flirtation with the abyss, the well-known playing with fire, which leads to the potential for conflict within the masses, a literary sharpening of an asocial explosive that every socialized subject carries within him? These are imputations with which any thinking in this area will have to reckon. I do believe, however, that one of the fundamental impulses of modernity is continued through such questions. In its best moments, enlightenment was always a phe- nomenon in the spirit of a Dionysian politology. Authentic modernity accom- plished an immeasurable departure from the feudal ontology of misere, which was grounded in the fact that the very fewest had permitted the greatest number to ? departure in which liberalism, Marxism, anarchism, social democ- racy, and political Catholicism by and large have come to terms with each other. The modern pain-ecological the great majority will not allow themselves to be made to suffer by the minority the smallest common denominator for all the positions available within the fissured landscapes of mo- dernity. Modernization has been accomplished for the most part as a mass en- trance on the part of suffering subjects into what has been rendered newly en-
alleviations, authorizations, and enrichments that, when measured against traditional standards, were so overpowering that one was for a long time at a loss even to pose the question as to the ecology of their unburdening
This inability to pose the question has been coming to an end within the con- text of a dramatic awakening that has taken place over the last several decades. With spectacular speed, the feeling has spread that modernity cannot be satisfied with an exoneration of life from the ethos of technical improvement, political par- ticipation, and economic enrichment, but that it also longs for a Dionysian ex- oneration of life in the sense of an ? ? feeling is the epochal basis
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
for Nietzsche's new currency. As we see, the religious question has survived the end of religions. It now appears, insofar as it is articulated at the heights of moder- nity, as the question of the possibility of an aesthetic exoneration of life.
Of course, this question ultimately ties in with doubts as to the value and lon- gevity of any improvements and the possibility of realizing general participation, doubts that have taken on epidemic proportions; in addition to this, these ques- tions have their foundation in a skepticism vis-a-vis the ? of sociopoli- tical modernity that is rapidly becoming radicalized. This skepticism allows us to ask whether, in the moralism of the Enlightenment, the legitimate voice of wounded life that is demanding its restitution can really be heard, or whether the
? ? ? ? ? ? 78 ? PAIN AND JUSTICE
syndrome of moralizing social activism has not long since unwillingly become part and parcel of the tendencies that, from behind the pretext of further improve- ment and humanitarian ? lead to an unprecedented proliferation of suf-
In a situation such as this, what could be more suggestive than Nietzsche's doctrine of the aesthetic exoneration of life? Whoever takes the aesthetic into consideration as an exonerating force has broken through the spell of the moral- istic concept of exculpation that clings to the Protestant wing of modernity in particular and has burdened us with libraries full of dyspeptic moral discourses. W ith its assertions in this respect, Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy has won a philo- sophical breadth that exceeds everything debated prior to it. For, with a reckless- ness that is still astonishing today, Nietzsche cut through the moral knots of mo- dernity. He naturalistically reversed the relationship between morality and life: instead of finding fault with life from the perspective of an eternally dissatisfied morality, he began by observing morality from the perspective of an eternally unimprovable life. This reversal provides the "suggestive statement" that "the existence of the world can be justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon" with its penetrating ? explains why it is unacceptable for those who even today maintain the primacy of the moral.
On the question of ? the intellectuals are divided. Actually, we are dealing with two diametrically opposed definitions of what constitutes the pain of life. The moral-political definition, which -- unjustly and for too ? wanted to be perceived as the only legitimate voice of enlightenment, recognizes in almost all pain a variation of injustice and derives from it a program for its redress that expands into
Moralistic-theoretical modernity wants to respond to the question of algodicy with a progressive universal analgesic in which pain can only find acknowledg- ment of its own potential abolition as an ontological motif. That this is an un- contemptible view that becomes apparent as reasonable within an intermediate area does not require confirmation: a great majority of therapeutic action has been grounded on its plausibility. He who has suffered and found release knows how to evaluate its truth content. Was it not also Nietzsche who most clearly ex- pressed what grief had to say about itself?
Accordingly, Nietzsche's algodicy stands in direct opposition to a program of moral abrogation. In a manner that is completely antiquated, it pits our memory of the ethos of the affirmative resistance against the modern idea of an abolishing negation. Because it conceives of life, in a radically immanent fashion, as the play acted out upon the foundation of pleasure and pain that cannot be overcome, it negates any metaphysics of redemption ? its modern manifestations in programs for the elimination of pain and therapy. Would this imply that Nietz- sche was a stoic in the wrong century? Or does an irredeemable Christ want to
? ? ? ? ? PAIN AND JUSTICE ? 79
throw the promises of the Christian age, with neoclassical gestures, onto the wreckage?
Dionysus versus "the ? you have the opposition. It is not a difference with respect to martyrdom ? has a different meaning. Life itself, its eternal fertility and return, requires agony, destruction, the will to ? ? On the other hand, suffering, "the crucified one as the innocent," functions as an objection to this life, as a formula for condemning it. One guesses: the problem is that of the meaning of suffering, whether this be a Christian meaning, or a tragic meaning. ? In the former case, it is meant to be the path to a divine being; in the latter, being is considered divine enough to vindicate a monstrous amount of suffering. The tragic human being still affirms the harshest suffering. ? ? ? The Christian will negate even the happiest destiny on earth; the god on the cross is a curse upon ? a cue to redeem oneself from it; the Dionysus who has been cut to pieces is a promise of life: it is eternally reborn and brought back from destruction.
15, p. 490)
Nietzsche's doctrine of the aesthetic exoneration of life reveals itself as the opposite of a cynical aestheticism: it is grounded in an algodicy that attempts to draw pain into the immanence of a life that no longer requires redemption as an element of the Dionysian passion. Within the Dionysian passion, which forms the basis for every alert life, there occurs, paradoxically, that which we have characterized as the endurance of the unendurable. But this endurance is not without its digressions; rather, it has two indispensable assistants in the form of intoxication and the ? oldest of drugs for elevating the psyche. They contribute to the formation of those intermediate worlds and realms of endura- bility that we need to keep ourselves from perishing of immediacy.
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
Here the thesis that The Birth of Tragedy must be read as Apollonian in its dramaturgical effect again becomes important. The book had shown how Diony- sian passion has been instructed by means of an Apollonian translation into something that can be looked at, imagined, and endured. In this book, Nietzsche professes culture, the compulsion to symbolize, representation. That this profes- sion has a double base was made just as ? if culture then wanted to belong in general to the world of illusion, it would be a matter of an illusion that does not permit anyone to look through it because it is the true lie of life itself. Accordingly, culture would be the fiction that we ourselves are; we exist as self- inventions of the living being that has been brought forth from the unendurability of the immediate Dionysian passion into a state of endurability and mediation. Life itself owes its spontaneous elevation to culture to a dialectic of what can be endured and what is unendurable, a dialectic from which the process of self-rep- resentation has sprung. From this,
an ethics can be conceptualized from Nietz- sche's basic assertions that is commensurate with the universal experience of mo-
?
and as a component at work in the makeup of the seafarer, of whom he wrote:
Indeed, we philosophers and "free spirits" feel, when we hear the news that "the old god is dead," as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with ? amazement, ? expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an "open
In each of these cases, it is a way of thinking that, in its fundamental concepts and basic operations, still utilizes dramatic ? it is a phenomenon that can only still fulfill itself in categories that exist because of their analogy to ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 67
drama. Tragoedia facta est quod ? ? W ithin this dramaturgy of the spirit, no statements are valid, only scenes; no "ideas," only plot lines; no dis- courses, only provocations. Thinking is the phenomenon of thought: the adven- ture of the perceiver, the drama of
Nietzsche encircles this phenomenal cleverness with a ring of sparkling met- aphors: metaphors of sea journeys, tightrope walking, flight; alpine or nomadic metaphors; metaphors of fragrance, sound, trembling, and surging
of gushing forth, rupturing, rolling forth from oneself, overflowing, ejaculation and ? A l l of these images reveal a phenomenal intellect that is search- ing, creative, testing in nature logos polytropos, which signifies nothing other than a brightness of the body on its great journey out of the earth and around the world.
It is most important to stress here that, in ? in all postmetaphysians of the Dionysian type in general -- it is never a matter of organizing a compen- satory ? We cannot permit ourselves to be caught up in Nietzsche's rhetoric on this point: his self-awareness of his creation of epochs did not have real his- torical-philosophical ? What this author is doing does not constitute a pure enthronement of sensuality, which was supposed to be helped back to its proper place after the theoretical ascetic excesses of the Western ratio. taphysical reflection is not intended to be a balancing mechanism against an excess of anything ? intelligible as opposed to something sensitive
It is also not a new beginning after something has ended, such as the return of the body after an era of disembodiment has run its course, and it is also not the sunrise of great honesty after an age of hypocrisy.
What is it ? if it is not any of these? It is the constantly
deepening of subjectivity of the universally open in the body's process of becom- ing more linguistic and more universally yielding, which is enriched in the course of its conscientious composition of self with increases in cohesion. Does this mean that the relationship between body and intellect has been reversed
ingly contrary to all metaphysical principles? In the place of logos being made
it would seem that now physis has become language. But even this formu- lation is incorrect, for this does not occur in its ? but rather becomes appar- ent as the fundamental phenomenon that, from time immemorial, has also en- compassed the "word becoming ? The process of the physis becoming illuminated and lingual is much older than the descent of logos into the body -- both older and more historically powerful. What we call incarnation (and in doing so we unhesitatingly think of Christian ? and its modern surrogate manifestations) is merely an episode within the eternal linguistic and spiritual re- splendence (Aufleuchten) of the physis, which has been going on forever.
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
Presumably, in the dawn of advanced culture, the impression must have oc- curred that there existed an autonomous sphere of ideas, ? deities, and
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 68 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
which would have to descend into the physical world in order to accomplish its work ? opus operandum -- within it. "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us": this hymnus of Christian Platonism is at the same time the motto of advanced cultures that eo ipso represent programs for moralizing, ? education, and excarnation. Therefore, ad- vanced cultures must also always constantly appear as cultures that represent the inner war waged by a mobilizing and conquering intellect against a languid and suffering flesh. There is at work within them, in addition to the external violence of war and domination ? as the strongest characteristic ? the incarnate violence of the word, which entered the body in order to elevate its sorrow, desire, indolence, and self-will into a radiant
A more patient analysis, however, will reveal that this is a false description -- or at least an inadequate ? which mistakes only half of the phenomenon for the whole. For speech itself is always older than the logos of advanced culture; from the very bodies have spoken their ? their ? and their
before an empowering word could dictate to them what they were to say or incarnate. Since human existence depends on sharing ? and com- municating ? because of older somatic fundamentals, no real founda- tion exists for a logos that would prefer to cut itself away from its physical foun- dation in order to tyranically monopolize it. Logos is merely the parasite of an older linguistic predilection that responds only secondarily and in a highly cul- tured way to the violence and catastrophic conditions of the civilizing process; logos always creeps upward along the unendurability of a universal condition within which life appears as something that must be overcome, and, if not as this, then at least as something that is meant to be observed from above: thus the old affinity between spiritualization and mortification, both of which are symptoms of the logopathology ? of advanced culture. But even the excesses of logofication are only the bifurcations of the primary of the living, which still has the capacity to recognize itself in its abuses.
Does Nietzsche's own work corroborate these observations? I believe he is one of the few thinkers to ? in an exemplary manner and from a modern perspec- tive, the tendency to become language, which is inherent in physis. He was a genius of correspondences; he survived the experience of universal arrival and
of excitation and ? of phenomenon and ? in a overwhelming way. Looking back on the ecstasies he experienced during the writing of Zarathustra, he found astonishing formulations for the surplus of words that were available for expressing the factual matter of life:
Here all things come caressingly to your speech and flatter you, for they want to ride on your ? ? all being wants to become word
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 69
all that is in the process of becoming wants to learn to speak from you. 6, p. 340)
Shortly before the beginning of the twentieth century ? is the linguistic century ? linguistic phenomenon occurred that no linguist could ever have imagined. How did Nietzsche transcribe it?
With the very least residue of superstition within oneself, one could hardly know how to rid oneself of the idea that one is mere incarnation, merely a mouthpiece, merely a medium for powerful forces. (KSA, 6, p. 339)
One would have to extinguish even the final remainders of superstition in order to one's way back through the metaphysical fog to the truth of what was most evident: the fact that here no higher meaning was being ? a physis was expressing itself to the limits of overexposure ? In this borderline area, there is no active difference between expression in and of itself and expressing something. At the edges of language, the difference between ex- istence and speech is extinguished in the unavoidable fulfillment of absolute ex- pression. That a maximum of physical well-being was added to these precondi- tions indicates that Nietzsche could find the rhythm of a successful life only if he freed himself from the compulsion to incarnate, so as to be able to yield to ex-
pression before language:
My muscular ease was always greatest whenever my creative powers were most active. The body is enraptured; we can leave the "soul" out of our discussion. (KSA, 6, p. 341)
Nevertheless, his idea of being a medium, of performing the function of a mouthpiece, is not merely a superstitious mistake. It is tantamount to the insight that, in advanced culture's bathing of the body with the radiation of language, a compulsion and seduction are at work that do not stem from the speaker
and which cause him to say things that he does not say of his own accord (von sich aus) in the most precise sense. The spoken language is, indeed, not my own, or at least not entirely my own; it is always the others who have made me speak and listen to a language. Real speaking always occurs only in relation to hear-
all, to having been heard. These inspired verbal emotions (Worter- result in the effect, as strange as it is ? that, through the speaker, the Other only now, as it begins to ? We call these strange episodes of linguistic life in which the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
designations and inscrip- tions that logos has left behind within the individual begin to resound against the instrument of the body as if they were our own property. Within the context of aesthetic inspiration we observe how physis embraces, surpasses, dances around and appeases the logos; in such moments the impression suggests itself that a sort
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 70 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
of music is the mother tongue tongue of life. (According to ? Hebbel, "Prior to becoming human, ? heard ? Within such inspired speech, the maternal and paternal tongues resound through the mouthpiece of the child of this world. The forebears make use of this child as a sign (Zeichen) for the ex- pressions that could not be expressed during their ? It is the dumb desire to be one of the Others that inscribes the hyperplastic linguistic body of the child so that this body might express what it is incapable of expressing itself. "Every- thing that is in the process of becoming wants to learn to speak from ? In the very name used to designate the child (infans, "the one who does not speak"), a process that aims toward making it a being who does speak comes into play, a process that is identical to the last detail to that of incarnation. Without the in- carnation of logos, the subject would not enter into advanced ? and with- out violation, there would be no incarnation of ? Violation and logos belong together because only through violation can the speaker be compelled to say things that are directed against the vital interests of the infans. To speak in ac- cordance with a logos means to speak the language of those who can make use of me only as someone who is obedient and deadened; logos is the epitome of values and words in the name of which we take part in partial and total self-mor-
tification.
But how could we define a culture that would be successful in positive terms? Must culture inevitably be reduced to a subtle program of ? and By no means, for even if culture always has violence as part of its inheritance, it is free to release alert participants in the civilizing process from violation into creative play, the conscious endurance of what is ? and hu- moristic subversion to the highest purposes. Every speaker who investigates the matter can attempt to bring the violence he has inherited to life in positive terms through partially obsequious, partially insurrectional analogies to its incarnatio- duties ? in order to express again what is its own after being released from the cultural curriculum that has been demanded by logos. To express what is its own, however, means being able, in a cheerful way, to say
nothing more; it means getting behind the logos and reuniting with the older municativity of the living. Thus, a risk- laden drama is plotted out within every psyche in advanced ? wrestling match between the reason of the body and the madness of its incarnations. Within advanced culture, every subject is pregnant with
In Nietzsche, a drama of madness results whenever Dionysus meets Diogenes. In the preceding discussion we have played with the question of which
thustrian mask would remain available to this thinker after he played himself out in the impossible role of the nonreligious originator to the very limits of what is humanly possible. Now it becomes clear that this question has been incorrectly phrased: a subsequent mask would have been inconceivable on the stage upon
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
the drama has been carried out up to this point. ? the countenances that belong to the speaker's program for incarnation can appear upon this stage. After this, only one decision remains: whether to demolish the stage, an act that is tan- tamount to the suspension of the attempt at incarnation; or to escape into the madness of a final embodiment, the fatal process of becoming a god.
Whenever Dionysus encounters Diogenes, this decision comes into play. It is the final performance of civilization ? within the fragile body of an individual upon whom is thrust what he ? never permitted to ? the col- lision of Apollo and Dionysus, of logos and physis, of metaphysics and
wisdom. Here Diogenes stands for the playful body of an individual who would have saved his irresponsible sovereign expressiveness in that he suf- fuses all missions with ? results in his "language" sticking out its tongue at logos. If he stops to think properly, he does not have such terribly im- portant things to say: he makes use of all languages to show how one is ultimately unable to say anything with them. Thus, Sokrates ? and the music- making Socrates are ultimately one and the same. On the other hand, Nietzsche's Dionysus represents the phantasm of a body that wants to incarnate a divine logos, a body that is now only an instrument and speaks worlds, very nearly breaking the chains of individuation and the final indolence of the flesh so that it can unite the painful celebration of birth with that of life in a delirium of proph- ecy.
For an empirical individual, however, this incarnation of Dionysus is the unendurable pure and simple ? to the manifestations of the unendur- able, away from which all paths of culture lead toward what is endurable. No one, without having been prepared by something that is beyond the imaginable, can endure the shock effects of Dionysian radiation, and almost no one survives being immersed in what is unimaginable and
Nietzsche's metaphysical thesis on art provides the most impressive explana- tion for this: the compulsion toward art permeates existence at all levels. The unendurable must redeem itself into what can be endured; the irreparable must
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
allow itself to be replaced; the unimaginable must allow itself to be represented; the irresponsible must accept responsibility for itself; what is immediately in- communicable must be communicated, and the indivisible must be broken up -- so that it can endure itself. The presence must be brought back into the represen- tation, because pure ? from the unavailable exception of the mys-
synonymous with the unendurable for human beings within the status
quo.
This is where Diogenes makes his ? crazy man who announces
the deaths of god, logos, the empowered word, morality. He is the Dionysian savior from what is all too Dionysian. Because he has made it his business to experience the ? he has alerted himself to the possibility of adventuring
the intermediate ? Held up before the backdrop of the ? banality
? ? ? ? ? ? 72 ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES
begins to shine abysmally enough, and wherever this shining appears to be most life-enhancing, there sits Diogenes in his sunlight, lazy and deep, wary and happy, the personified denial of explosion, the illuminated prophylaxis against deadly radiation, the protector of the everyday, and the thinker of a Dionysian endurability. Diogenes warns the Dionysian philosopher against being ensnared in the trap of incarnation; he reminds him that there is no logos that would have authorized us to embody ? ingenious corporeality of life itself al- ready is ? and every duplication of this primary corporeality through the embodiment of an imaginary Dionysus could only lead to madness. Diogenes helps the Dionysian thinker to resist embodying "god" directly and being de- stroyed by the horror of the extraordinary. He protects him from burning too quickly. Thus, Diogenes to a certain extent incarnates the ? he demonstrates his contented state of having nothing to say, and lives an existence that playfully withdraws from all duty. He practices, with the greatest presence of mind, the art of winning away from the empowered word a meaning that was intended by the powers themselves; he is the master of the art of subversion through humor. Diogenes opposes the pseudo-Platonic (as well as spiritual-Chris- tian and modern-moralistic) hysteria of incarnation to the body's a priori attitude of "Leave me in peace," which in itself already speaks enough.
The question as to the composition of Nietzsche's mask is, at base, a question as to the possibility of bringing the moralistic theater of incarnation of European metaphysics to an end. According to Nietzsche's response to this question, ev- erything that has played a part in the fate of this thinker, even if only remotely, is remembered as horrible ? ? among other ? no one who has glanced even briefly behind the curtain of Western rationality can still pretend that Nietzsche's descent into madness was a private affair.
This descent was, on the contrary, the individual recapitulation of an entire an exemplary sacrifice that, next to the death of Socrates and the slaughter ? Jesus, represents a third unforgettable statement on the relationship between the empowered word and the expression of life within Western culture. "Not only the reason of mil- lennia, but their madness too, breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir"
Spoke Zarathustra, "On the Gift-Giving
In his Dionysian farewell performance, Nietzsche sought reasons with which he could, in spite of everything, affirm his tormented life ? incarnation of the impossible. What would he not have given for the chance to breathe a sigh of relief within the context of an everyday existence that would have allowed him to let the matter of god auf sich rest and no longer violate his body, the miserable carriage ? He longed, because of the confusion of his compulsion toward incarnation, for an ultimate nakedness and simplicity: it is not least of all because of this that the word "cynicism" so frequently haunts the writings of his last conscious ? Perhaps, then, even a professorship in Basel would have been ? ? ? ? DIONYSUS MEETS DIOGENES ? 73
good for something, as a form of being, and the naked existence of a god would not have been as trying and ? He would have had no more cul- tural gold in his body, which would have had to be exchanged for acknowledg- ment as a royal ? and given away because of the collapse of the ? He would have done something that was his own ? could have given culture its due, taken a fragment of unavoidable logos upon himself, and at the same time fulfilled his task of incarnation honestly and artfully. Only then would he have been able to release himself to what he was: not a word become flesh, which irritated the dry masculine body with hopeless ? not a hysterical idea that dragged the body behind it as a melancholy ? but a silent, spiritually rich, playful physis, a concrete individuality beyond missions and resignations.
A ? moment awaits an individual such as this who has returned from the battlefields of the drama of individuation to that which can be endured. If the partiality of circumstances opposes it, it may experience being as a suc- cessful and unsurpassable recognizability. It encounters the great moments in which existence, corporeality, and knowledge are conceived of as a unified whole. From this point forward, everything is comedy ? war is over, research has come to an ? In every second of its existence the world would be acknowl- edged as being enough. Now a thought that leaves no shadow blossoms forth without need for transcendent worlds, without reduction, without imputation, supported only by
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
a perception that is free from the weight ? of the researching ego, without interference and without the necessity of indulgence, immaculately looking the obvious in the eye. It is the midday of being, the calm lull of obligation (Solleri). The weight of the world has been lifted; there is in- corrigibility wherever we look. Dionysus is philosophizing. ? Chapter 5
Pain and Justice
There are many good ? on earth, some useful, some pleasing: for their sake, the earth is to be loved.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
"On Old and New Tablets"
So, would a raving individualism be Nietzsche's last word? Did he leave behind for us nothing but the incentive for the production of ecstatic freethinkers in their reckless physicality, their amoral intensity, and their suspicious second inno- cence?
We might ask: Where is the ? ? Nietzsche? Are your ecstasies still grounded on the constitution? Doesn't your commonplace conceal the landmines of anarchy? What do you have to say about the problems of the ? will you limit yourself to a reference to the discrepancy between isolated knowledge and collective banter? Is all that we can expect of you a subjectivity without a subject, which, if thought out further as a general principle, cannot produce any- thing more than a postmodern colloquium, entitled: "The Autumn Salon of Van- ities, upon Which Intensities Collapse into Each Other, in a Manner That is Guar- anteed to Be Meaning-Free and Polylogical"? Only bodies remaining, without worlds? Only actors remaining, with no engagement? Only adventurers, with no retirement insurance? Only projects of antiquity without the realism of late italism? Only the new vehemence without diplomacy and the social state? Do you intend to invite us into chaos with your young conservative romanticism of conflict and your Dionysian prowess in the art of breaking ? Don't your cult of the moment and your worship of the exception bring the sociopolitical premises of democracy to ruin, that is, the capacities to engage oneself
nicably, to engage in long-term thinking, and to feel within the context of the institution? Isn't there inherent within every individualistic agitation a playing with fire, an impulse toward the relaxation of restraint, which encourages bru- ? ? 74
? PAIN AND JUSTICE ? 75
tality and intimidates caution, which defends a loss of control and robs the breath of responsibility? Isn't any emphasis of the singular at the same time a pillaging of the general, which thus contributes to an increase in tension between narcis- sism and the ? You will become a danger to political culture, Herr
if you don't cease seducing those who are most sensitive into political resignation -- not to mention those hardened types who borrow risque doctrines from your writings so that they can carry out their brutality with a clear con- science. Which brand of politics was it, then, that thought it had found in your energetic romanticism a permit to start swinging? Do we have to make it any clearer?
What these questions allude to, assuming a minimal recall of political ideas, is clear enough. Their bluntness, however, stems from perceptions that are them- selves imprecise: it stems from a definition of the world that is fundamentally false and that disintegrates into radical ambiguities as soon as this definition has been discredited. It presumes that, in a normal society, it is simply a matter of bringing together individuals who have grown up exhibiting an average sense of good will for the purpose of solving their common problems cooperatively. Who- ever withdraws from this kind of cooperation because he wants something differ- ent falls under suspicion of being someone who is running away from some other type of irresponsible ? conceals his blindness for the social behind therapeutic and private ideologies of retreat, and who, in the worst cases, makes excuses for himself with Nietzsche's formulation of the aesthetic exoneration of life.
This opinion, which probably considers itself the healthy one, disintegrates under the first alert gaze into fragments, each of which is
with the pseudo-ontological concept of normality, moving on to the trivially mor- alistic postulate of goodwill, and continuing all the way to the
inflated, block that, in the form of the bipartite illusion of the individual here and society stands in the way of any deeper understanding, and ultimately is summarized in the vulgar-political compulsive idea of the "common ? Only "common values" are lacking here as ontological catchalls. One cannot, of course, permit the use of the term "deeper understand- ing" with its educated-bourgeois ? he who moves on from the word to the matter itself ? is pulled into a dramatic phenomenon in whose wake the vulgar-ontological block to a Dionysian understanding melts away. It is little wonder, ? that critical identities rebel against an understanding of this kind as they would against something that mortally endangered the ? Because "truth" indicates something terrible for the subjects of the status quo, it is only natural that they would defend themselves from behind their block against the enlightening ? the drama; they react
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
critically because they really do not want to find what they purport to be seeking.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 76 ? PAIN AND JUSTICE
This much can be made plausible without any great effort: for the person who experiences existence as a drama that takes place above the Dionysian foundation of pain and pleasure (and who is the alert individual who would not approach such an experience ? moral and social facts must appear as subor- dinate quantities, however much they try to force themselves into the discourses of the institution as realities of the first order. Nietzsche's theory of truth explains to us in the most impressive terms that what calls itself reality within the context of institutional discourse can be nothing other than a reality in place of a reality, an Apollonian explanation, and institutionalization of the founda- tion of the world in accordance with the criteria of endurability and predictability. But in the alert ? this ? can never become exclusive: the individual is always standing at the crossroads; he is always alive only to the extent that he is a meeting point between the Dionysian and the Apollonian, ? that he occupies the position wherein reality, in its in- capacity to be represented, encounters the institutional "reality in the place of.
that can be
It could therefore be that individuals who are alert to Dionysus are most cidedly not trying to dodge reality, but are rather the only ones who are able to survive in the vicinity of pain and pleasure all the ramifications of this survival for a metabolic exchange between the individual and nature, life and society, while, conversely, the completely politicized, completely socialized, and thoroughly moralized subjects would be the very ones who were most successful in their organized flight from the terrible truth. It is conceivable that no one is more translucent, authentic, more incorporated, or more life-en- hancing in their involvement in what is real than these Dionysian
these types who are ? oversensitive, apolitical, or parapolitical. Per- haps it is they who engage themselves in an ecology of pain and pleasure that precedes any of the usual politics. Perhaps they are the real ? as opposed to those who have specialized in "politics" with a capital P and those who, in the style of traditional activists, endlessly force their game as the admin- istrators of abuses and as the agents of a shifting of suffering onto others.
Here a crack blatantly forms in the concept of the political itself. It will be necessary to supplement an everyday concept of the political ? the plane of combative and discursive interests along with their discourses, weapons, and in-
a darker, nighttime concept of the political that casts its gaze on the hidden ecology of universal pain. While politics, according to its everyday conceptualization, belongs to the Apollonian world of visibility and unfolds before our eyes as a reality in place of a reality, the dark side of the political falls on the side of the ? nonconcrete energetic of a prototypical foun- dation of pain and pleasure, which is a prerequisite to all everyday political action and reaction. Within this dark conceptualization, the most sensitive prob- lematic of modernity is announced; we are inquiring into the relationship be-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? PAIN AND JUSTICE ? 77
modern-day constructions of what is socially endurable, on the one hand, and the unendurable proliferation of suffering brought about by precisely such constructions of what can be endured, on the other. With this sort of dark inquiry, only one thing is obvious: wherever thought of this kind takes place, the logic of politology ? from Machiavelli to Marx and from Hobbes to Ho Chi Minh has already been superseded by a Dionysian politology of passions.
This is dangerous ? else could it be defined? Is it the usual an- archic-romantic flirtation with the abyss, the well-known playing with fire, which leads to the potential for conflict within the masses, a literary sharpening of an asocial explosive that every socialized subject carries within him? These are imputations with which any thinking in this area will have to reckon. I do believe, however, that one of the fundamental impulses of modernity is continued through such questions. In its best moments, enlightenment was always a phe- nomenon in the spirit of a Dionysian politology. Authentic modernity accom- plished an immeasurable departure from the feudal ontology of misere, which was grounded in the fact that the very fewest had permitted the greatest number to ? departure in which liberalism, Marxism, anarchism, social democ- racy, and political Catholicism by and large have come to terms with each other. The modern pain-ecological the great majority will not allow themselves to be made to suffer by the minority the smallest common denominator for all the positions available within the fissured landscapes of mo- dernity. Modernization has been accomplished for the most part as a mass en- trance on the part of suffering subjects into what has been rendered newly en-
alleviations, authorizations, and enrichments that, when measured against traditional standards, were so overpowering that one was for a long time at a loss even to pose the question as to the ecology of their unburdening
This inability to pose the question has been coming to an end within the con- text of a dramatic awakening that has taken place over the last several decades. With spectacular speed, the feeling has spread that modernity cannot be satisfied with an exoneration of life from the ethos of technical improvement, political par- ticipation, and economic enrichment, but that it also longs for a Dionysian ex- oneration of life in the sense of an ? ? feeling is the epochal basis
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
for Nietzsche's new currency. As we see, the religious question has survived the end of religions. It now appears, insofar as it is articulated at the heights of moder- nity, as the question of the possibility of an aesthetic exoneration of life.
Of course, this question ultimately ties in with doubts as to the value and lon- gevity of any improvements and the possibility of realizing general participation, doubts that have taken on epidemic proportions; in addition to this, these ques- tions have their foundation in a skepticism vis-a-vis the ? of sociopoli- tical modernity that is rapidly becoming radicalized. This skepticism allows us to ask whether, in the moralism of the Enlightenment, the legitimate voice of wounded life that is demanding its restitution can really be heard, or whether the
? ? ? ? ? ? 78 ? PAIN AND JUSTICE
syndrome of moralizing social activism has not long since unwillingly become part and parcel of the tendencies that, from behind the pretext of further improve- ment and humanitarian ? lead to an unprecedented proliferation of suf-
In a situation such as this, what could be more suggestive than Nietzsche's doctrine of the aesthetic exoneration of life? Whoever takes the aesthetic into consideration as an exonerating force has broken through the spell of the moral- istic concept of exculpation that clings to the Protestant wing of modernity in particular and has burdened us with libraries full of dyspeptic moral discourses. W ith its assertions in this respect, Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy has won a philo- sophical breadth that exceeds everything debated prior to it. For, with a reckless- ness that is still astonishing today, Nietzsche cut through the moral knots of mo- dernity. He naturalistically reversed the relationship between morality and life: instead of finding fault with life from the perspective of an eternally dissatisfied morality, he began by observing morality from the perspective of an eternally unimprovable life. This reversal provides the "suggestive statement" that "the existence of the world can be justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon" with its penetrating ? explains why it is unacceptable for those who even today maintain the primacy of the moral.
On the question of ? the intellectuals are divided. Actually, we are dealing with two diametrically opposed definitions of what constitutes the pain of life. The moral-political definition, which -- unjustly and for too ? wanted to be perceived as the only legitimate voice of enlightenment, recognizes in almost all pain a variation of injustice and derives from it a program for its redress that expands into
Moralistic-theoretical modernity wants to respond to the question of algodicy with a progressive universal analgesic in which pain can only find acknowledg- ment of its own potential abolition as an ontological motif. That this is an un- contemptible view that becomes apparent as reasonable within an intermediate area does not require confirmation: a great majority of therapeutic action has been grounded on its plausibility. He who has suffered and found release knows how to evaluate its truth content. Was it not also Nietzsche who most clearly ex- pressed what grief had to say about itself?
Accordingly, Nietzsche's algodicy stands in direct opposition to a program of moral abrogation. In a manner that is completely antiquated, it pits our memory of the ethos of the affirmative resistance against the modern idea of an abolishing negation. Because it conceives of life, in a radically immanent fashion, as the play acted out upon the foundation of pleasure and pain that cannot be overcome, it negates any metaphysics of redemption ? its modern manifestations in programs for the elimination of pain and therapy. Would this imply that Nietz- sche was a stoic in the wrong century? Or does an irredeemable Christ want to
? ? ? ? ? PAIN AND JUSTICE ? 79
throw the promises of the Christian age, with neoclassical gestures, onto the wreckage?
Dionysus versus "the ? you have the opposition. It is not a difference with respect to martyrdom ? has a different meaning. Life itself, its eternal fertility and return, requires agony, destruction, the will to ? ? On the other hand, suffering, "the crucified one as the innocent," functions as an objection to this life, as a formula for condemning it. One guesses: the problem is that of the meaning of suffering, whether this be a Christian meaning, or a tragic meaning. ? In the former case, it is meant to be the path to a divine being; in the latter, being is considered divine enough to vindicate a monstrous amount of suffering. The tragic human being still affirms the harshest suffering. ? ? ? The Christian will negate even the happiest destiny on earth; the god on the cross is a curse upon ? a cue to redeem oneself from it; the Dionysus who has been cut to pieces is a promise of life: it is eternally reborn and brought back from destruction.
15, p. 490)
Nietzsche's doctrine of the aesthetic exoneration of life reveals itself as the opposite of a cynical aestheticism: it is grounded in an algodicy that attempts to draw pain into the immanence of a life that no longer requires redemption as an element of the Dionysian passion. Within the Dionysian passion, which forms the basis for every alert life, there occurs, paradoxically, that which we have characterized as the endurance of the unendurable. But this endurance is not without its digressions; rather, it has two indispensable assistants in the form of intoxication and the ? oldest of drugs for elevating the psyche. They contribute to the formation of those intermediate worlds and realms of endura- bility that we need to keep ourselves from perishing of immediacy.
Peter-Sloterdijk-Thinker-on-Stage. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:20 AM]
Here the thesis that The Birth of Tragedy must be read as Apollonian in its dramaturgical effect again becomes important. The book had shown how Diony- sian passion has been instructed by means of an Apollonian translation into something that can be looked at, imagined, and endured. In this book, Nietzsche professes culture, the compulsion to symbolize, representation. That this profes- sion has a double base was made just as ? if culture then wanted to belong in general to the world of illusion, it would be a matter of an illusion that does not permit anyone to look through it because it is the true lie of life itself. Accordingly, culture would be the fiction that we ourselves are; we exist as self- inventions of the living being that has been brought forth from the unendurability of the immediate Dionysian passion into a state of endurability and mediation. Life itself owes its spontaneous elevation to culture to a dialectic of what can be endured and what is unendurable, a dialectic from which the process of self-rep- resentation has sprung. From this,
an ethics can be conceptualized from Nietz- sche's basic assertions that is commensurate with the universal experience of mo-
?
