Politics
is that activity in which one has to be ready for anything.
Sloterdijk -Critique of Cynical Reason
J.
Caraglio after Parmigianino, Diogenes with the "Platonic human,"around 1530-40.
that, in the last analysis, they cannot enjoy any more than what is enjoyed in the elementary pleasures of the kynical philosopher as a daily recurring matter of course: lying in the sun, observing the goings-on in the world, being glad, and having nothing to wait for.
Since Diogenes was one of those philosophers of life for whom life is more
important than writing, it is understandable why not a single authentic line from
him has been preserved. Instead, a garland of anecdotes lives on around him that
say more about his influence than any writing could do. Whether he really com-
posed some writings, such as a Politics and the seven tragedy-parodies, as
claimed by tradition, is left aside here. In any case, his significance does not lie
ln
became a mythical figure. Witty and instructive stories buzz around him, as they
writings. His existence is absorbed in the anecdotes he provoked. In them he
160 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
do around his colleague, Mullah Nasrudin, in the Sufian satire. Precisely that proves his real existence. The most vital people thrust themselves on their con- temporaries and even more on posterity as projection-figures and attract a definite direction of fantasy and thinking to themselves. They stimulate people's curiosity as to what it would be like to be in the skin of such a philosopher. Thereby they not only gain pupils but also attract people who carry their living impulse further. This curiosity with regard to Diogenes' existence seized even the greatest military hero of antiquity, Alexander of Macedonia, who is reputed to have said that he would want to be Diogenes if he were not Alexander. This shows the heights, both
5political and existential, to which the philosopher's influence reached.
In the attempt to express Diogenes' intentions in modern language, we auto- matically approach existential philosophy. However, Diogenes does not talk about existence, decision, absurdity, atheism, and such key words of modern ex-
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
istentialism. The ancient Diogenes is ironic about his philosopher colleagues, poking fun not only at how they torture themselves with problems but also at their credulity regarding concepts. His existentialism does not go primarily through the head; he experiences the world as neither tragic nor absurd. There is not the slightest trace of the melancholy around him, which clings to all modern existen- tialism. His weapon is not so much analysis as laughter. He uses his philosophical
competence to mock his serious colleagues. As anti-theoretician, anti-dogmatist, anti-scholar, he emits an impulse that resounds everywhere where thinkers strive for a "knowledge for free people," free also from the strictures of a school, and with this he begins a series in which names like Montaigne, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Feyerabend, and others appear. It is a line of philosophizing that suspends the es- prit de serieux. How Diogenes' existentialism is to be understood is still best shown in the anecdotes. The danger of underestimating the philosophical content of kynicism, precisely because it has been handed down "only" anecdotally, is great. That even great spirits of the caliber of Hegel and Schopenhauer have fallen into this trap can be gleaned from their presentations of the history of philosophy. Hegel above all was blind to the theoretical content of a philosophy that finds ulti- mate wisdom precisely in not having a theory for the decisive things in life and that teaches instead to undertake the risk of existence consciously and serenely-
1. Legend has it that the young Alexander of Macedonia one day sought out Diogenes, whose fame had made him curious. He found him taking a sunbath, lying lazily on his back, perhaps close to an Athenian sportsfield; others say he was gluing books. The young sovereign, in an effort to prove his generosity- granted the philosopher a wish. Diogenes' answer is supposed to have been: "Stop
7blocking my sun! " That is perhaps the most well known philosophical anecdote
from Greek antiquity, and not without justice. It demonstrates in one stroke wha antiquity understands by philosophical wisdom -- not so much a theoretical knowl- edge but rather an unerring, sovereign spirit. The wise man of long ago knew bes
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 161
? ? Johannes Platner, Diogenes and Alexander, 1780.
of all the dangers of knowledge that lie in the addictive character of theory. All too easily they draw intellectuals into the ambitious stream where they succumb to intellectual reflexes instead of exercising autonomy. The fascination of this anecdote lies in the fact that it shows the emancipation of the philosopher from the politician. Here, the wise man is not, like the modern intellectual, an accom- plice of the powerful, but turns his back on the subjective principle of power, am-
8bition, and the urge to be recognized. He is the first one who is uninhibited
enough to say the truth to the prince. Diogenes' answer negates not only the desire for power, but the power of desire as such. It can be interpreted as an abridgment ? f a theory of social needs. Socialized human beings lost their freedom when their educators succeeded in instilling wishes, projects, and ambitions in them. These
atter separate them from their inner time, which knows only the Now, and draw them into expectations and memories. Alexander, whose hunger for power drove him to the borders of India, found his master in an outwardly insignificant, indeed, a down-and-out philosopher. In
eality, life js n o t t0 ^ found with the activists or in the mentality of security.
re
, the Alexander anecdote comes close to Jesus' simile about the birds in the avens who neither sow nor harvest yet live as the freest creatures under God's
-? ',
162 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
heaven. Diogenes and Jesus are united in their irony directed at social labor that exceeds the necessary measure and merely serves to extend power. What for Je- sus was taught by the birds was for Diogenes taught by a mouse; it became his
9 model for self-sufficiency.
2. Just as the Alexander anecdote highlights the philosopher's attitude toward
the powerful and the insatiable, the famous episode with the lantern illustrates his
stance vis-a-vis his fellow citizens in Athens. One day, in broad daylight, the phi-
losopher lit a lamp and, as he was asked on his way through the town what he
was doing, his answer was, Tm looking for people. " This episode provides the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
masterpiece of his pantomimic philosophy. The seeker of people with his lantern does not couch his doctrine in a complicated, cultivated language. Seen in this light, Diogenes would certainly be the most humanitarian philosopher of our tra- dition, popular, graphic, exoteric, and plebeian, to a certain extent the great
10
Grock
didactic procedure, just as biting --indeed, misanthropic --do his ethics turn against the inhabitants of the polis. Laertius emphasizes the special talent of our philosopher to show contempt--a sure sign of a strong, morally critical irritabil- ity. He pursues an idea of humanity that he scarcely finds realized in his fellow human beings. If true human beings are those who remain in control of their desires and live rationally in harmony with nature, it is obvious that urbanized, social human beings behave irrationally and inhumanely. They indeed require the philosopher's light even in daylight to orient themselves in the world. As a moral- ist, Diogenes appears in the role of the doctor of society. His harshness and roughness since that time have been interpreted ambiguously, either as poisons or as medicine. Where the philosopher appears as therapist, he inevitably encoun-
? of antiquity. However, as affably as Diogenes behaves in his existential
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 163
? 9iu&ro tHompfies
G. Ehinger after Johann Heinrich Schonfeld, Quaero homines, first third of the
eighteenth century.
ters resistance from those who refuse his help, or, even more likely, denounce him as a troublemaker or as the one who really needs to be healed --a structure that can be observed everywhere today where therapists confront the disease- producing relations of their society. In a way that inevitably reminds one of Rous- seau, the philosopher with the lantern declares his fellow citizens to be social crip- ples, misformed, addicted beings who in no way correspond to the image of the autonomous, self-controlled, and free individual according to which the philoso- pher tries to shape his own life. This is the therapeutic foil to social unreason. In its exaggeration there is a misanthropic side, just as its practical effect may be to balance and humanize. This ambivalence cannot be resolved theoretically, and whether Diogenes as a person was more misanthrope than philanthrope, whether m his satire there was more cynicism than humor, more aggression than cheerful-
164 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
ness, can in any case no longer be decided from our historical distance. I believe everything points toward underscoring in the figure of Diogenes the sovereign, humorous philosopher of life who, in Erich Fromm's words, is driven by a bi- ophilic disposition to sarcastically take human stupidities to task. Enlightenment in antiquity tends to manifest itself in quarrelsome figures who are capable of reacting in an uncivil way to the spectacle of false living.
Diogenes appears in the period of the decay of the Athenian urban community. It is the eve of Macedonian rule with which the transition to Hellenism begins. The old, small-scale, patriotic ethos of the polis is caught in its own dissolution, which loosens the bonds of individuals to their citizenship. What was earlier the only conceivable place for sensible life now shows its obverse side. The city now becomes a melting pot of absurd customs, a hollow political mechanism whose functioning can now, all at once, be seen through as if from the outside. All but the blind must recognize that a new ethos and a new anthropology are now needed. One is no longer a narrow-minded citizen of a random city-community but must understand oneself as an individual in an extended cosmos. To this ex- tended cosmos corresponds, geographically the new, broad trading network of the dawning Macedonian world empire; culturally, the Hellenistic civilization around the eastern Mediterranean; existentially, the experience of emigration, of migration, of being an outsider. Of Diogenes it is said: "Asked about his hometown, he answered: 'I am a citizen of the world! ' " (Diogenes Laertius, vol. VI, p. 63). This grandiose new concept contains the boldest answer in antiquity to its most unsettling experience: reason's becoming homeless in the social world and the separation of the idea of true living from the empirical communities. Where socialization for the philosopher becomes synonymous with the un- reasonable demand to be satisfied with the partial reason of one's own random cul- ture and to join in the collective irrationality of one's society, there, the kynic's refusal has a Utopian significance. With their demand for a rational vitality, those who refuse shut themselves in against objective absurdities. The kynic thus sa- crifices his social identity and forgoes the psychic comfort of unquestioned mem- bership in a political group in order to save his existential and cosmic identity. He individualistically defends the universal against the--at best--half-rational collective particular that we call state and society. In the concept of citizen of the world, ancient kynicism passes on its most valuable gift to world culture. "The only true order of state I find is in the cosmos" (Diogenes Laertius, vol. VI, P- 72). Cosmopolitan sages as bearers of living reason will accordingly only be able to integrate themselves unreservedly into a society when it has become a
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
world- polis. Until then, their role is inevitably that of subversives; they remain the biting conscience of every dominating self-satisfaction and the affliction of every local narrowing.
ic tures, further reports that our philosopher, in order to prove his autonomy, made
3. The legend of Diogenes, which also provides us with all kinds of funny p
'
vsl
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 165
his home in a vat or a tub, whether that sounds like a fairy tale or not. The expla-
nation that possibly it was not a vat in our sense of the word but rather a cistern
or a walled container for water or grain hardly detracts from this story. For no
matter how the ominous vat was shaped, what is important here is not its appear-
ance but what it signifies when, in the middle of the world-city, Athens, a man
who was held to be wise decided to "live" in it. (He is also said to have slept under
the roof of the hall of columns of Zeus, ironically remarking that the Athenians
had probably erected the building especially for him as an abode. ) Alexander the
Great is said to have stood before the philosopher's residential container and cried
out with admiration: "O vat full of wisdom! " What Diogenes demonstrates to his
fellow citizens through his life-style would be designated now as a "regression
to the level of an animal. " Because of this, the Athenians (or perhaps it was the
Corinthians) derogatorily called him "dog," for Diogenes had reduced his re-
quirements to the living standards of a domestic pet. In doing so, he had freed
himself from civilization's chain of needs. He thus also turned the Athenians'
nickname around against them and accepted the insult as the name of his phi-
11
losophy.
One must recall this when one hears the quintessence Diogenes is supposed
to have drawn from his doctrine: "To the question of what gain philosophy had
brought him, he said, if nothing else, then at least, to be prepared for every vicis-
situde" (DiogenesLaertius, vol. VI, p. 63). Sages show that they can live literally
anywhere because, in any place, they are in harmony with themselves and the
"laws of nature. " To the present day, this is the decisive attack against the ideol-
ogy of "Home Beautiful" and comfortable estrangement. This does not necessar-
ily mean that Diogenes would have to nourish resentment against comfort and
cosy homes. However, those who want to be "prepared for every vicissitude"
would understand comfort as a passing episode, like any other situation. That the
philosopher was serious about this view, he could, of course, prove to his fellow
citizens only in the tub because a comfortably situated Diogenes would never
have had as great an impact as this impoverished, declassed wiseman at the nadir
of architecture. In the later Stoa, where in matters of possession kynical princi-
ples were cited absolutely {habere ut non: have as if you did not have), one often
dw w
consciousness, as later, on Christian soil, the Franciscans first were able to do ^gain. In a modern language, what in Diogenes upset his contemporaries could
be
id not know how it was really intended, for one indeed "had" and, seen on the hole, Stoicism was a philosophy of the comfortable. Diogenes, however, really as without possessions and he could convincingly shake his contemporaries' expressed succinctly: "rejection of the superstructure" (Uberbau- Vetr n
weigerung) . Superstructure in this sense would be what civilization offers
way of comfortable seductions to entice people to serve its ends: ideals, ideas
? ut duty, promises of redemption, hopes for immortality, goals for ambition,
tions of power, careers, arts, riches. From a kynical perspective, they are all
166 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
? Francisco de Goya, You Will Not Find Him.
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
compensations for something a Diogenes does not let himself be robbed of in the first place: freedom, awareness, joy in living. The fascination of the kynical mode of life is its astounding, indeed almost unbelievable serenity. Those who have subjected themselves to the "reality principle" watch, perplexed and annoyed at the same time, but also fascinated, the activities of those who, so it seems, have taken the shorter path to authentic life and who avoid the long detour of culture to the satisfaction of needs. "Like Diogenes, who used to say, it is divine not ? need anything, and semidivine to only need little" (Diogenes Laertius, vol. * ' p. 105). The pleasure principle functions for the wise in a way similar to that normal mortals, however, not because they get pleasure from the possession
THE CABINET OF CYNICS D 167
biects, but because they realize how dispensable objects are, and thus they re-
main in the continuum of vital contentedness. With Diogenes, this pleasure
nvraniid, in which one only surrenders a lower form of pleasure in favor of a
higher form, is evident. Yet here lies also the easily misunderstood point in kyni-
13
cal ethics: It easily finds followers among masochistically inclined people who,
through asceticism, get a chance to express their resentment against what is living (lebendig)- This ambivalence will mark out the further course of kynical sects. With Diogenes, kynical serenity still speaks for itself. It is the riddle on which those who suffer under an all-too-well-known "discontent in the culture" labor, including Sigmund Freud, who went so far as to claim that happiness was not provided for in the plan of creation. Would not Diogenes, the protokynic, be the most appropriate person to stand as a living witness against the great psycholo- gist's resignation (a mild variant of cynicism? )?
4. The political barb of the kynical offensive only reveals itself in a last group of anecdotes about Diogenes the shameless, Diogenes the "political animal. " Now, this has nothing to do with what Aristotle understands by zoon politikon, the human being as a social entity that can only experience its individuality in rela- tion to society. The expression "animal" is to be taken more literally than the translation of zoon as "living being" allows. The emphasis is on animality, the ani- mal side and animal basis of human existence. "Political animal": This term out-
14
lines the platform of an existential anti-politics.
cal animal, loves life and demands a natural, not an exaggerated, but an honorable place for the animal side. Where the animal side is neither suppressed nor exces- sively elevated, a "discontent in the culture" becomes impossible. Life energy must rise from below and flow unobstructedly, even in the wise. For the person who loves life, like Diogenes, the "reality principle" takes on a different form. Ordinary realism stems from fearfulness and a peevish putting up with necessities
15
that the "system of needs"
tion, Diogenes lived to a ripe old age, more than ninety years. For a philosopher who was a student of ethics and regarded only embodiment as valid, this fact func-
16
gnawing on the raw bone of an ox; this is surely the version told by his opponents,
what Diogenes extended the critical spark against civilization even to eating cus- oms, playing off the raw against the cooked, and therefore could have been a ? rerunner of the modern proponents of raw foods and natural diet. According
0>ch, of course, would be an excellent proof of his superiority in living as in dying.
Diogenes' shamelessness cannot be understood at first glance. Although it ms to be explained on the one hand by a philosophy of nature (naturalia non
tions like a proof in his favor.
Some say that Diogenes poisoned himself by
ho maliciously emphasize the risks of a simple life. Perhaps they reveal thereby
,ee
the version disseminated by his pupils, Diogenes died by holding his breath,
Diogenes, the shameless politi-
prescribes for socialized beings. According to tradi-
168 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
sunt turpia), its real point lies in the political, sociotheoretical arena. Shame is the most intimate social fetter, which binds us, before all concrete rules of con- science, to universal standards of behavior. Existential philosophers, however cannot remain satisfied with the socially prescribed conditioning in shame. They return once more to the beginning of the process. What a person really has to be ashamed of is by no means settled by social conventions, especially because soci-
17
ety itself is suspected of being based on perversions and irrationalities.
kynic thus serves notice on being led by the nose by deeply engrained command- ments regarding shame. The customs, including those dealing with shame, could after all be perverted. Only an examination following the principles of nature and reason can give them a secure foundation. The political animal breaks through the politics of ashamedness. It demonstrates that people as a rule are ashamed for the wrong reasons, for their physis, their animal sides (which, in fact, are inno- cent), while they remain unmoved by their irrational and ugly practices, their greed, unfairness, cruelty, vanity, prejudice, and blindness. Diogenes turns the tables. He literally shits on the perverted norms. Before the eyes of the Athenian market public, he used to do "what concerns not only Demeter but also Aphrodite" {Diogenes Laertius, vol. VI, p. 69) --translated: shitting, pissing, masturbating (possibly fornicating too). The later Platonic and Christianized tradition, which suffocated the body under shame, of course, could see only scandal in this, and centuries of secularization were necessary before the philosophical core of sig- nificance in these gestures could be approached. Psychoanalysis has done its bit for this rediscovery by inventing a language in which anal and genital "phenomena" can be spoken about in public. Precisely this, on a pantomimic level, was demonstrated by Diogenes for the first time. If wise persons are eman- cipated beings, they must have dissolved the internal instances of oppression in themselves. Shame is a main factor in social conformisms, the switch point where external controls are transformed into internal controls. With his public mastur- bation, Diogenes committed a shamelessness by means of which he set himself in opposition to the political training in virtue of all systems. It was a frontal attack on all politics of the family, the core of all conservatism. Because, as tradition ashamedly has it, he sang his wedding song with his own hands, he was not sub- ject to the compulsion to get married to satisfy his sexual needs. Diogenes taught masturbation by practical example, as cultural progress, mind you, not as regres- sion to the animalistic. According to the wiseman, one should let the animal live, insofar as it is a condition of the human. The serene masturbator ("If only one could also drive away hunger by rubbing the belly") breaks through the conserva- tive sexual economy without vital losses. Sexual independence remains one of tn
18
rinC1
Diogenes, the political animal, raises existential presence of mind to a p
pie that finds its most concise expression in the phrase "Be prepared for anything- In a world of incalculable risks, where accidents and changes make it too difticu
most important conditions of emancipation.
The
? ,
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 169
to plan
ophilic individual is left with scarcely any other way out than this streamlined phrase.
Politics is that activity in which one has to be ready for anything. Social life is not so much a safe retreat as the source of all dangers.
Presence of mind then becomes the secret of survival. Those who need little can maneuver against political fate when they have to live in times in which poli- tics determines our fate. Politics is also the sphere in which people beat each other over the head because of the competition for nonessentials. The full repercussions of kynical anti-politics first become clear in times of crisis.
If we now pass on to the next figure in our cabinet of cynics, we will see how things become complicated as soon as the philosophers, or better, the intellec- tuals, no longer keep to kynical abstinence but seek bourgeois comfort and, at the same time, try to reserve the prestige of the philosopher for themselves. Di- ogenes, who embodies his doctrine, is still an archaic figure; "modernity" begins with splits, inconsistencies, and ironies.
Lucian the Mocker, or: Critique Changes Sides
You are very much mistaken if you believe that there are antiq- uities. Antiquity is only now beginning to emerge. Novalis
We encounter this man from Samosata on the Euphrates, a Syrian by birth, who has a place of honor in the history of evil tongues --half a millenium later --in a thoroughly transformed cultural setting. On his life in brief:
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
After an unsuccessful attempt at sculpturing, Lucian (born about 120 A. D. ) became a rhetorician, a profession that scarcely has a parallel in our time and that has been not inappropriately translated as "concert speaker. " Thus, like Poseidonius and Paulus a great traveller and wan- derer, he moved across the country, through the entire Mediterranean region as far as Gaul, making showy and pompous speeches; and al- though he did not speak Greek without an accent, he had considerable success. But he was too clever, too restless, and intellectually not mod- est enough to be content with success on the podium and the applause of the elegant world. Thus, in his fortieth year, he turned to varied sa- tirical writing, or, as we would say, moralistic essays. It is they, of his life and works, that have stood the test of time. In later years he ac- cepted a position as public servant of the Roman Empire in Egypt, thereby letting himself in for something he himself had mocked not a little, namely, a secure salary and domiciled settledness. The last date
ar|
d where the old order can no longer deal with the new events, the bi-
ln
Aurelius (17 March 180 A. D. ). It is surmised, since it is not known
his life that can be fixed is the death of the emperor, Marcus
170 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
precisely, that he died soon after. (Otto Seel, afterword to Lukian, Gesprache der Gotter und Meergotter, der Toten und der Hetdren [Stuttgart, 1956], pp. 241-42)
It could be contended that in Lucian's time, the seed of the protokynic germi- nated in a puzzling way. An author during the middle period of the Roman em-
19
perors, a contemporary of the Stoic emperor, Marcus Aurelius,
important, though the most malicious, witness of the fact that one of the most powerful impulses in Western philosophy had issued from the apparent satyrical play of the kynical polemic against civilization. Indeed, after a good half a millenium, kynicism for the first time had found within the Roman Empire a truly ideal soil, a situation of flourishing alienation in which it inevitably expanded in all directions. The "dogs" had begun to howl in large packs, and moralistic resis- tance against the social and human circumstances in the empire had swelled to a powerful spiritual current. The kynicism of the time of the emperors has been called the hippie and escapist movement of antiquity (Hochkeppel). To the extent the empire transformed itself into a colossal bureaucratic apparatus whose inner and outer workings an individual could not fathom or influence, its ideological power to integrate and its capacity to rouse feelings of citizenship and commit- ment to the state had to dissipate. The administration's inaccessibility to the citizens, the despised extortion of taxes by the military and civil Moloch, the citizens' aversion to military service are all unmistakable signs of an advanced so- cial crisis. The Roman world order was long since no longer that res publico that had once grown naturally out of the life of societas. Rather, the imperial state ap-
paratus weighed on its citizens like a leaden foreign body. In such periods it was natural that the schools of philosophy, once the province of a few, received a mas- sive influx that assumed symptomatic proportions. The need for individualistic self-assertion against coercive society became a psychopolitical reality of the first order. Because no one could any longer cherish the illusion that he led his "own" life in this political system, innumerable people had to feel the impulse to reestab- lish their authenticity in areas free from the state, namely, in the form of philosophies of life and new religions. This explains the enormous success ot
as
Christianity, too, was at first only one of many forms of late-Roman exoticism and orientalism. Already at that time, not only the light but also the attractive darkness of mysteries came from the East. From the Greeks the Romans adopte their cultural decor and the doctrine of humanitas as well as those critical, i dividualistic forces from Attic sources that had been active as "moral moles ready during the disintegration of the Greek polis. This individualistic ferm again released its energies in the alienation of the Roman bureaucratic state, no however, in such mass forms that the individualistic impulse had to be qua! '
philosophical sects, mostly of Greek origin--to which the kynics also belong- well as of the new religious cults whose origins were in Asia Minor.
he is the most
eTHE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 171
tjvely transformed. The many individual cases resulted in a new quality of forma- tion of stereotypes. Among the educated there was a certain abhorrence of the sects with their vagabonds, preachers, moralists, cults, and communities, which
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
20
for centuries formed part of the image of the time of the emperors. humanistic, high individualism of cultivated Romans looked contemptuously on the new and in part asocial energy of individualists. At that time, people turned up their noses just as much at the Christians as at the kynics. One of the older, ironically cultivated, conservative voices of this time is that of Lucian, as we can hear in his merciless satire on the voluntary death of the kynical sect leader, Peregrinus,
known as Proteus. We want to concentrate on this text. It is the para- digm of a new cynical tone of voice that intellectuals of more advanced times as- sume as soon as their contempt is provoked. The parallels to the present are so obvious that it is not necessary to pursue the issue. It is worthwhile to look into Lucian's ancient kynical mirror so as to recognize the fresh, cynical present in it.
What is it about? In his satire, Lucian deals with a spectacular incident that
is supposed to have happened on Olympus during the games, before a considera-
ble audience: The same Peregrinus had decided to burn himself publicly on a
large pyre in order to give the world the spectacle of a tragic and heroic voluntary
death, thereby increasing the stature of his sect and, as Lucian emphasizes, satis-
fying his own aspirations for fame. This plan, which was announced in advance
by the main actor in order to ensure a fitting resonance, was actually carried out.
The public gesture was consciously planned and designed to make an impression
on the crowd. Of course, as a model there was only Socrates, who had left behind
the greatest example of philosophical resoluteness through his voluntary death.
There were possibly also the Indian Brahmans of that time, whose self-chosen
death by fire had been heard about in the West since the days of Alexander's cam-
paign. Lucian claims to have witnessed the incident. The tone of the description
is so scornful that it is advisable to read it as more of a document on the witnesses'
critical view of things than as a factual report on the incidents mentioned. The
only thing that can be believed with some degree of certainty from this report is
that the kynicism of a Peregrinus must have had almost nothing in common with
Diogenes' kynicism except the name and some ascetic superficialities. The roles
appear to be reversed between Peregrinus and Lucian since, for Diogenes, a
Pathetic gesture such as a heroic self-chosen death would have been unthinkable.
e-clared it to be crazy because the kynic's concern, literarily speaking, is comedy, not tragedy; satire, not the serious myth. This reveals a profound struc-
ral change in kynical philosophy. Diogenes' existence drew its inspiration from
""elation to Athenian comedy. It is rooted in an urban, humorous culture, unshed by a mentality that is open to jokes, quick repartee, mockery, and a ny contempt for stupidity. Its existentialism is based on a satirical founda- ? Late-Roman kynicism is completely different. In it, the kynical impulse has
can be certain that Diogenes, agreeing with Lucian on this point, would have
The old-
172 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
obviously been split-in an existential direction and in a satirical-intellectual direction. Laughing becomes a function of literature, and living remains a deadly
21
serious business.
selves a program of life without needs, preparedness-for-anything, and auton- omy, but they had succumbed to their role as moralists, often with deadly serious- ness. The motif of laughter, which had called Athenian kynicism to life, had expired in late-Roman kynicism. The sect gathered around itself the unstable and resentful, bums and moral zealots, outsiders and narcissistic people needing something to hold on to rather than laughing individualists.
The best among them were probably moralists with an ascetic, independent bent, or gentle adepts at life, who traveled around as moral psychotherapists, wel- comed by those willing to experience something new; but for self-confident con- servatives, they were suspect, if not despised.
In relation to these people it is now Lucian who assumes the position of the satirist and humorist previously held by them. However, he no longer exercises the kynical mockery of the uncultivated sage on the representatives of vain knowl- edge. Rather, his satire is a cultivated attack on the uncultivated beggar-moralists and wailers, that is, a kind of
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
master's satire on the intellectual simpletons of his
22
The sect kynics, it is true, had zealously prescribed for them-
time. Group dynamics probably plays a greater role than "theory"
pears in antiquity as a philosophical-moral dispute; there is some evidence for the view that Lucian comes down so hard on the kynics because they want the same thing he does. They direct themselves at a similar public and work over the same field, even though with other, more radical means. They too are wanderers, street orators, dependent on public attention, and a sort of intellectual recipient of alms. It is just possible that Lucian hates himself in them, to the extent that similarities exist. If the kynics are the world despisers of their epoch, Lucian is the despiser of the despisers, the moralist of the moralists. Himself all too well versed in such matters, he recognizes in his adversaries the tendency to supercilious, naive, pompous, gushing fanaticism, in which vanity and masochistic martyrlike char- acteristics may have played a role. This gives Lucian's satire its psychological background. What the kynic Peregrinus, who is eager to die, presents to his spec- tators as an example of wisdom and the heroic contempt for death is for Lucian nothing other than an aberration of a laughable mania for glory. If Peregrinus aims at self-deification in the eyes of his disciples and their contemporaries, u>> self-evident that Lucian must expose this plan as vanity. But we should bear in mind that in judging others, people employ the standards of their own frame o reference and therefore ultimately speak "about themselves" when they judg others. That the thirst for glory was the frame of reference in which a good pa of Lucian's existence had moved can hardly be doubted, given everything that 1 known about him. Whether it is by their frame of reference that we can best un derstand the kynical movement is doubtful. Let us follow Lucian's account.
in what ap-
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 173
Lucian's exposition says nothing good at all about its victim. At the beginning, T ucian sees a eulogist of Peregrinus enter, whom he, the very picture of his nraised master, portrays as a big-mouth, blubberer, virtuous poser, quack, and sentimental buffoon who tells the wildest stories as he sweats and breaks out in crocodile tears. The following speaker, by contrast, unfolds Peregrinus's life story and sketches a devastating picture of the man who wants to burn himself to death. There is no doubt that Lucian has put his own version in the mouth of this speaker --according to which the master is a criminal, charlatan, and megalomaniac. Peregrinus's life reads like the biography of a criminal whose stages consist entirely of profligacy: from adultery, after which, when he was caught, a radish was ignominiously stuck in his anus to pederasty and bribery, to the apex of heinous crimes, patricide. After that--forced to flee from his hometown, Parium--he was ripe for a career as traveling con man. Forthwith, Peregrinus joined a Christian(! ) congregation where he quickly moved up on the basis of his rhetorical stunts. The disciples of the "crucified Sophist" from Pales- tine are portrayed as naive people who can be duped into just about anything by a cunning mind. From the Christians then, or, as Lucian calls them, "Chris- tianers," he went over to the kynics, let a long philosopher's beard grow, took up the knapsack of the wandering preacher, staff and coat, and got as far as Egypt on his journeys. There he created a stir through public self-flagellations and by shaving half of his head, which was supposed to be a "completely new and ad- mirable kind of exercise of virtue. " Having arrived in Italy, he indulged in dia- tribes against the emperor, was thus expelled from Rome, and as a result gained the reputation of someone unjustly persecuted. In his puffed-up vanity he finally got the idea into his head of burning himself at the Olympic Games with great pomp.
After this presentation of the main actor, Lucian turns to a critique of the pyric act. He reviews it as a theater critic would a bad play.
In my view it would be more fitting to await death with composure, not, like a fleeing slave, to run from life. If, however, he is so firmly determined to die, why does it have to be by fire and with a pomp fit for a tragedy? What is the point of this way of dying when he could nave chosen a thousand other ways? (Lukian, Werke in drei Banden [Berlin and Weimar, 1974], vol. II, pp. 31. 38).
ecording to Lucian, in truth, complete justice was done him with this act of self-
re
wiself, and the only thing wrong with the act was the time he chose since it
^ould have been better for Peregrinus to have killed himself much earlier. Be-
n? d this, Lucian's laughing critic also objects that for this drama a more uncom- mation; it was nothing more than deserved punishment that he executed on
nPen one's mouth one time in order to die on the spot. Moreover, Lucian's speaker able death would have been appropriate; in self-cremation one only has to
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
174 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
encourages all Peregrinus's disciples to follow their master by throwing them- selves as quickly as possible into the flames so that the specter of kynicism might come to an end.
These passages make clear the meaning of the phrase: Critique changes sides. Earlier we defined cynicism as a cheekiness that has changed sides. Lucian is talk- ing here as a cynical ideologue who denounces the critics of power to the powerful and cultivated as ambitious lunatics. His critic activities have turned into oppor- tunism trimmed to the irony of those in power, who want to make fun of their existential critics. Only this can explain how Lucian's speaker can come up with the idea that such examples of kynical contempt for death are dangerous for the state because, through lack of deterrence, they remove the last source of restraint from criminals threatened by the death penalty. It is a joyless laughter with which a sect of moralists is exhorted to commit mass suicide by fire or by smoke; Tens and hundreds of thousands of religious "dissidents" were yet to perish in the arenas and on the pyres of the Roman Empire.
The cynical fearlessness with which Lucian comments on the act of self- cremation is astounding. After Peregrinus himself had held a sort of corpse's speech and, "greedy for glory," had over and over again delayed the final moment of the burning, the moment finally came when the pyre was ignited by two disci- ples and the master jumped into it, invoking the paternal and maternal spirits. That provokes Lucian's laughter once more, as he recalls the story of the patri- cide. He called on those standing around to leave the dismal place: "It is truly not a charming sight to view a fried- up old manikin and, in doing so, to breathe in the foul fat-vapors. " (I quote here the juicier translation of Bernay in Lucian und die Kyniker [1879]. )
Of course, we must not judge Lucian solely on the basis of this scene. We have probably come upon him in his weakest moment, in the middle of a group-
23
dynamic wrangle with a rival, on whom he projects all of his contempt.
scene is important for us because in it the leap of the kynical impulse from a ple- beian, humorous culture-critique to a cynical ruler's satire can be observed. Lu- cian's laughter remains a nuance too shrill to be serene; it reveals more hate than sovereignty. In it there is the sarcasm of someone who feels himself put on the spot. When the kynics attacked the Roman state, Hellenic civilization, and the psychology of ambitious and comfortable citizens, they shook the social founda- tions on which the existence of the highly cultivated ironist also rested.
Mephistopheles, or: The Spirit that Always Denies and the Will to Knowledge
THE MASTER: I have never despised your kind. Of all spirits that deny,
The rogue weighs least heavily on my mind.
The
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 175
MEPH1STOPHELES: What, executioner! Of course, hands and feet And head and behind, they are yours.
Since Lucian's appearance as cynical satirist who jeers at the kynical sect, one and a half millennia have passed. Through all the changes in world history-the decline of the western Roman Empire, the Christianization of the Occident, the rise of feudalism, the age of chivalry, the Reformation, Renaissance, Absolutism, the rise of the bourgeoisie--the kynical impulse has continued in the most varied refractions and disguises. Goethe's famous theatrical devil meets us at the zenith of the Enlightenment, in that decade of the eighteenth century when the Sturm und Drang of the awakening bourgeois culture was at its most explosive. Mephistopheles appears in the stormy years of secularization that begin to liqui- date the thousand-year-old inheritance of Christianity. The essence of the bour- geois cultural revolution in the eighteenth century is characterized perhaps more than anything else by the fact that with the greatest poet of the age, it embodies itself in the figure of a devil that, like Satan, enjoys the freedom to say things "as they really are. " The Devil is the first post-Christian realist; his freedom to speak must still seem infernal to older contemporaries. When the Devil opens his mouth to say how it really is in the world, the old Christian metaphysics, theology, feu- dal morality are swept away. If his horns and claws are also taken away, there remains of Mephistopheles nothing more than a bourgeois philosopher: realist, antimetaphysicist, empiricist, positivist. Not by chance did Faust, the epitome of the modern researcher from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, seal a pact with a devil of this kind. Only from the Devil can one learn "how things really are. " Only he has an interest in making us take off the religious spectacles and see with our own eyes. In this way, the idea of "God the Father, Son, & Co. "
becomes superfluous.
Mephistopheles is a fluorescent being who lives entirely in his metamor- phoses. He emerges from a dog. For his first appearance, the Devil chooses the symbol of the kynical sect of philosophers. Recall that Faust, at the nadir of his "theoretical despair," had decided to kill himself. The choirs of Easter night hold him back from his intention at the very point when the ampoule of poison is al- ready touching his lips. He returns to life. On his Easter stroll, he meditates on
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
the dual nature of his soul. His thoughts on this can be read as the deep self- reflection of a bourgeois scientist: Within him there is struggle between realism and insatiability, the drive toward life and the longing for death, the "will to night" and the will to power, the sense for what is possible and the drive toward what is (still) impossible. In the dusk Faust sees a "black dog roaming through crop and stubble" that circles around the strollers in broad spiral movements. Faust imagines that he sees an inferno behind the animal; Wagner, however, re- mains blind to the magical manifestation. In the end, a black poodle lies before the scholar on its belly, tail wagging, well trained and apparently tame. In the
176 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
study, finally, the real metamorphosis of Satan begins, as the thinker is on the verge of translating the Evangelium of Saint John into German. As soon as Faust has found the correct translation for the Greek concept logos (Tat), the dog starts yowling. Curious changes of form begin: "How long and broad my poodle is be- coming. " In the end, the "traveling scholastic" appears as the "heart of the matter" [des Pudels Kern; literally, the poodle's kernel; --Trans. ] and gradually reveals the Devil's claws. The sequence of the scene graphically depicts the dialectic of master and servant. The Devil cowers at first in the role of a dog, then of a ser- vant, in order, so he thinks, to ultimately win complete domination over the schol- ar's soul.
The metamorphosis from dog to monster, from monster to traveling scholastic is only the beginning of a rather long series of transformations. Mephistopheles
24
is like a master of disguise, an impostor, or a spy
survival of evil in the post-Christian era is that it conceal itself behind the ap- propriate fashionable and socially accepted masks of innocuousness. The feudal personification of "evil" as corporeal Satan is, so to speak, annulled in Goethe's ironic drama. The point of Goethe's theatrical devil, namely, is its modernization to the worldly grand seigneur--a tendency continued by Thomas Mann in Doktor Faustus. The Devil becomes a figure of immanence, and evil even gains sympathy through its civility. In Goethe's drama, even the witches have to look twice to see through the dissolute squire, Junker Liederlich. On one occasion he appears as a worldly court figure with doublet and plume. On the next, in the student scene, he dons the costume of the great scholar, in order to parody the scholar's learned- ness in a satire inspired by a cynicism of knowledge -- the most malicious improvi- zation of a Gay Science before Nietzsche. Finally, he appears as an elegant gen-
tleman and magician who knows how to speak quick wittedly with procuresses, and as a fencing master, he instructs Faust on how he can expedite his lover's brother, who has become burdensome, into eternity. Impudent cheekiness and cold sarcasm belong inevitably to the attributes of the modern, "immanent" devil, just as much as cosmopolitanism, linguistic competence, cultivation, and legal understanding. (Contracts have to be made in writing. )
This modernization of evil does not arise from a poet's whim. Even though it is presented poetically-ironically, it rests on a solid logical basis. In the frame- work of modern forms of consciousness, art is in no way "merely" the locus or the beautiful and the amusing, but one of the most important points of access for research into what is traditionally called truth--truth in the sense of a perspective
was
on the whole, truth as understanding the essence of the world. "Great Art"
2always a pandemonic art that tried to capture the "theater of the world. "
is rooted the philosophical prominence of works of art such as Faust. At the point where traditional metaphysics fails -- in interpreting evil in the world--because the Christian background of these metaphysics with its optimism of salvation has faded, art jumps into the breach. Seen from the viewpoint of the history of ideas,
because the condition for the
Herein
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 177
? Gustav Grundgens in the role of Mephistophiles in Goethe's Faust.
Mephistopheles (whom I regard as a central figure of modern aesthetics) is a child of the idea of development, through which, in the eighteenth century, the age-old questions concerning the theodicy and the transience of phenomena can be posed in a new form and answered with a new logic. So much is certain: that from this time on, evil in the world--death, destruction, and negativities of all kinds-can no longer be interpreted as the punitive or testing interventions of God in human history, as was done by the centuries of Christianity.
that, in the last analysis, they cannot enjoy any more than what is enjoyed in the elementary pleasures of the kynical philosopher as a daily recurring matter of course: lying in the sun, observing the goings-on in the world, being glad, and having nothing to wait for.
Since Diogenes was one of those philosophers of life for whom life is more
important than writing, it is understandable why not a single authentic line from
him has been preserved. Instead, a garland of anecdotes lives on around him that
say more about his influence than any writing could do. Whether he really com-
posed some writings, such as a Politics and the seven tragedy-parodies, as
claimed by tradition, is left aside here. In any case, his significance does not lie
ln
became a mythical figure. Witty and instructive stories buzz around him, as they
writings. His existence is absorbed in the anecdotes he provoked. In them he
160 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
do around his colleague, Mullah Nasrudin, in the Sufian satire. Precisely that proves his real existence. The most vital people thrust themselves on their con- temporaries and even more on posterity as projection-figures and attract a definite direction of fantasy and thinking to themselves. They stimulate people's curiosity as to what it would be like to be in the skin of such a philosopher. Thereby they not only gain pupils but also attract people who carry their living impulse further. This curiosity with regard to Diogenes' existence seized even the greatest military hero of antiquity, Alexander of Macedonia, who is reputed to have said that he would want to be Diogenes if he were not Alexander. This shows the heights, both
5political and existential, to which the philosopher's influence reached.
In the attempt to express Diogenes' intentions in modern language, we auto- matically approach existential philosophy. However, Diogenes does not talk about existence, decision, absurdity, atheism, and such key words of modern ex-
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
istentialism. The ancient Diogenes is ironic about his philosopher colleagues, poking fun not only at how they torture themselves with problems but also at their credulity regarding concepts. His existentialism does not go primarily through the head; he experiences the world as neither tragic nor absurd. There is not the slightest trace of the melancholy around him, which clings to all modern existen- tialism. His weapon is not so much analysis as laughter. He uses his philosophical
competence to mock his serious colleagues. As anti-theoretician, anti-dogmatist, anti-scholar, he emits an impulse that resounds everywhere where thinkers strive for a "knowledge for free people," free also from the strictures of a school, and with this he begins a series in which names like Montaigne, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Feyerabend, and others appear. It is a line of philosophizing that suspends the es- prit de serieux. How Diogenes' existentialism is to be understood is still best shown in the anecdotes. The danger of underestimating the philosophical content of kynicism, precisely because it has been handed down "only" anecdotally, is great. That even great spirits of the caliber of Hegel and Schopenhauer have fallen into this trap can be gleaned from their presentations of the history of philosophy. Hegel above all was blind to the theoretical content of a philosophy that finds ulti- mate wisdom precisely in not having a theory for the decisive things in life and that teaches instead to undertake the risk of existence consciously and serenely-
1. Legend has it that the young Alexander of Macedonia one day sought out Diogenes, whose fame had made him curious. He found him taking a sunbath, lying lazily on his back, perhaps close to an Athenian sportsfield; others say he was gluing books. The young sovereign, in an effort to prove his generosity- granted the philosopher a wish. Diogenes' answer is supposed to have been: "Stop
7blocking my sun! " That is perhaps the most well known philosophical anecdote
from Greek antiquity, and not without justice. It demonstrates in one stroke wha antiquity understands by philosophical wisdom -- not so much a theoretical knowl- edge but rather an unerring, sovereign spirit. The wise man of long ago knew bes
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 161
? ? Johannes Platner, Diogenes and Alexander, 1780.
of all the dangers of knowledge that lie in the addictive character of theory. All too easily they draw intellectuals into the ambitious stream where they succumb to intellectual reflexes instead of exercising autonomy. The fascination of this anecdote lies in the fact that it shows the emancipation of the philosopher from the politician. Here, the wise man is not, like the modern intellectual, an accom- plice of the powerful, but turns his back on the subjective principle of power, am-
8bition, and the urge to be recognized. He is the first one who is uninhibited
enough to say the truth to the prince. Diogenes' answer negates not only the desire for power, but the power of desire as such. It can be interpreted as an abridgment ? f a theory of social needs. Socialized human beings lost their freedom when their educators succeeded in instilling wishes, projects, and ambitions in them. These
atter separate them from their inner time, which knows only the Now, and draw them into expectations and memories. Alexander, whose hunger for power drove him to the borders of India, found his master in an outwardly insignificant, indeed, a down-and-out philosopher. In
eality, life js n o t t0 ^ found with the activists or in the mentality of security.
re
, the Alexander anecdote comes close to Jesus' simile about the birds in the avens who neither sow nor harvest yet live as the freest creatures under God's
-? ',
162 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
heaven. Diogenes and Jesus are united in their irony directed at social labor that exceeds the necessary measure and merely serves to extend power. What for Je- sus was taught by the birds was for Diogenes taught by a mouse; it became his
9 model for self-sufficiency.
2. Just as the Alexander anecdote highlights the philosopher's attitude toward
the powerful and the insatiable, the famous episode with the lantern illustrates his
stance vis-a-vis his fellow citizens in Athens. One day, in broad daylight, the phi-
losopher lit a lamp and, as he was asked on his way through the town what he
was doing, his answer was, Tm looking for people. " This episode provides the
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
masterpiece of his pantomimic philosophy. The seeker of people with his lantern does not couch his doctrine in a complicated, cultivated language. Seen in this light, Diogenes would certainly be the most humanitarian philosopher of our tra- dition, popular, graphic, exoteric, and plebeian, to a certain extent the great
10
Grock
didactic procedure, just as biting --indeed, misanthropic --do his ethics turn against the inhabitants of the polis. Laertius emphasizes the special talent of our philosopher to show contempt--a sure sign of a strong, morally critical irritabil- ity. He pursues an idea of humanity that he scarcely finds realized in his fellow human beings. If true human beings are those who remain in control of their desires and live rationally in harmony with nature, it is obvious that urbanized, social human beings behave irrationally and inhumanely. They indeed require the philosopher's light even in daylight to orient themselves in the world. As a moral- ist, Diogenes appears in the role of the doctor of society. His harshness and roughness since that time have been interpreted ambiguously, either as poisons or as medicine. Where the philosopher appears as therapist, he inevitably encoun-
? of antiquity. However, as affably as Diogenes behaves in his existential
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 163
? 9iu&ro tHompfies
G. Ehinger after Johann Heinrich Schonfeld, Quaero homines, first third of the
eighteenth century.
ters resistance from those who refuse his help, or, even more likely, denounce him as a troublemaker or as the one who really needs to be healed --a structure that can be observed everywhere today where therapists confront the disease- producing relations of their society. In a way that inevitably reminds one of Rous- seau, the philosopher with the lantern declares his fellow citizens to be social crip- ples, misformed, addicted beings who in no way correspond to the image of the autonomous, self-controlled, and free individual according to which the philoso- pher tries to shape his own life. This is the therapeutic foil to social unreason. In its exaggeration there is a misanthropic side, just as its practical effect may be to balance and humanize. This ambivalence cannot be resolved theoretically, and whether Diogenes as a person was more misanthrope than philanthrope, whether m his satire there was more cynicism than humor, more aggression than cheerful-
164 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
ness, can in any case no longer be decided from our historical distance. I believe everything points toward underscoring in the figure of Diogenes the sovereign, humorous philosopher of life who, in Erich Fromm's words, is driven by a bi- ophilic disposition to sarcastically take human stupidities to task. Enlightenment in antiquity tends to manifest itself in quarrelsome figures who are capable of reacting in an uncivil way to the spectacle of false living.
Diogenes appears in the period of the decay of the Athenian urban community. It is the eve of Macedonian rule with which the transition to Hellenism begins. The old, small-scale, patriotic ethos of the polis is caught in its own dissolution, which loosens the bonds of individuals to their citizenship. What was earlier the only conceivable place for sensible life now shows its obverse side. The city now becomes a melting pot of absurd customs, a hollow political mechanism whose functioning can now, all at once, be seen through as if from the outside. All but the blind must recognize that a new ethos and a new anthropology are now needed. One is no longer a narrow-minded citizen of a random city-community but must understand oneself as an individual in an extended cosmos. To this ex- tended cosmos corresponds, geographically the new, broad trading network of the dawning Macedonian world empire; culturally, the Hellenistic civilization around the eastern Mediterranean; existentially, the experience of emigration, of migration, of being an outsider. Of Diogenes it is said: "Asked about his hometown, he answered: 'I am a citizen of the world! ' " (Diogenes Laertius, vol. VI, p. 63). This grandiose new concept contains the boldest answer in antiquity to its most unsettling experience: reason's becoming homeless in the social world and the separation of the idea of true living from the empirical communities. Where socialization for the philosopher becomes synonymous with the un- reasonable demand to be satisfied with the partial reason of one's own random cul- ture and to join in the collective irrationality of one's society, there, the kynic's refusal has a Utopian significance. With their demand for a rational vitality, those who refuse shut themselves in against objective absurdities. The kynic thus sa- crifices his social identity and forgoes the psychic comfort of unquestioned mem- bership in a political group in order to save his existential and cosmic identity. He individualistically defends the universal against the--at best--half-rational collective particular that we call state and society. In the concept of citizen of the world, ancient kynicism passes on its most valuable gift to world culture. "The only true order of state I find is in the cosmos" (Diogenes Laertius, vol. VI, P- 72). Cosmopolitan sages as bearers of living reason will accordingly only be able to integrate themselves unreservedly into a society when it has become a
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
world- polis. Until then, their role is inevitably that of subversives; they remain the biting conscience of every dominating self-satisfaction and the affliction of every local narrowing.
ic tures, further reports that our philosopher, in order to prove his autonomy, made
3. The legend of Diogenes, which also provides us with all kinds of funny p
'
vsl
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 165
his home in a vat or a tub, whether that sounds like a fairy tale or not. The expla-
nation that possibly it was not a vat in our sense of the word but rather a cistern
or a walled container for water or grain hardly detracts from this story. For no
matter how the ominous vat was shaped, what is important here is not its appear-
ance but what it signifies when, in the middle of the world-city, Athens, a man
who was held to be wise decided to "live" in it. (He is also said to have slept under
the roof of the hall of columns of Zeus, ironically remarking that the Athenians
had probably erected the building especially for him as an abode. ) Alexander the
Great is said to have stood before the philosopher's residential container and cried
out with admiration: "O vat full of wisdom! " What Diogenes demonstrates to his
fellow citizens through his life-style would be designated now as a "regression
to the level of an animal. " Because of this, the Athenians (or perhaps it was the
Corinthians) derogatorily called him "dog," for Diogenes had reduced his re-
quirements to the living standards of a domestic pet. In doing so, he had freed
himself from civilization's chain of needs. He thus also turned the Athenians'
nickname around against them and accepted the insult as the name of his phi-
11
losophy.
One must recall this when one hears the quintessence Diogenes is supposed
to have drawn from his doctrine: "To the question of what gain philosophy had
brought him, he said, if nothing else, then at least, to be prepared for every vicis-
situde" (DiogenesLaertius, vol. VI, p. 63). Sages show that they can live literally
anywhere because, in any place, they are in harmony with themselves and the
"laws of nature. " To the present day, this is the decisive attack against the ideol-
ogy of "Home Beautiful" and comfortable estrangement. This does not necessar-
ily mean that Diogenes would have to nourish resentment against comfort and
cosy homes. However, those who want to be "prepared for every vicissitude"
would understand comfort as a passing episode, like any other situation. That the
philosopher was serious about this view, he could, of course, prove to his fellow
citizens only in the tub because a comfortably situated Diogenes would never
have had as great an impact as this impoverished, declassed wiseman at the nadir
of architecture. In the later Stoa, where in matters of possession kynical princi-
ples were cited absolutely {habere ut non: have as if you did not have), one often
dw w
consciousness, as later, on Christian soil, the Franciscans first were able to do ^gain. In a modern language, what in Diogenes upset his contemporaries could
be
id not know how it was really intended, for one indeed "had" and, seen on the hole, Stoicism was a philosophy of the comfortable. Diogenes, however, really as without possessions and he could convincingly shake his contemporaries' expressed succinctly: "rejection of the superstructure" (Uberbau- Vetr n
weigerung) . Superstructure in this sense would be what civilization offers
way of comfortable seductions to entice people to serve its ends: ideals, ideas
? ut duty, promises of redemption, hopes for immortality, goals for ambition,
tions of power, careers, arts, riches. From a kynical perspective, they are all
166 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
? Francisco de Goya, You Will Not Find Him.
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
compensations for something a Diogenes does not let himself be robbed of in the first place: freedom, awareness, joy in living. The fascination of the kynical mode of life is its astounding, indeed almost unbelievable serenity. Those who have subjected themselves to the "reality principle" watch, perplexed and annoyed at the same time, but also fascinated, the activities of those who, so it seems, have taken the shorter path to authentic life and who avoid the long detour of culture to the satisfaction of needs. "Like Diogenes, who used to say, it is divine not ? need anything, and semidivine to only need little" (Diogenes Laertius, vol. * ' p. 105). The pleasure principle functions for the wise in a way similar to that normal mortals, however, not because they get pleasure from the possession
THE CABINET OF CYNICS D 167
biects, but because they realize how dispensable objects are, and thus they re-
main in the continuum of vital contentedness. With Diogenes, this pleasure
nvraniid, in which one only surrenders a lower form of pleasure in favor of a
higher form, is evident. Yet here lies also the easily misunderstood point in kyni-
13
cal ethics: It easily finds followers among masochistically inclined people who,
through asceticism, get a chance to express their resentment against what is living (lebendig)- This ambivalence will mark out the further course of kynical sects. With Diogenes, kynical serenity still speaks for itself. It is the riddle on which those who suffer under an all-too-well-known "discontent in the culture" labor, including Sigmund Freud, who went so far as to claim that happiness was not provided for in the plan of creation. Would not Diogenes, the protokynic, be the most appropriate person to stand as a living witness against the great psycholo- gist's resignation (a mild variant of cynicism? )?
4. The political barb of the kynical offensive only reveals itself in a last group of anecdotes about Diogenes the shameless, Diogenes the "political animal. " Now, this has nothing to do with what Aristotle understands by zoon politikon, the human being as a social entity that can only experience its individuality in rela- tion to society. The expression "animal" is to be taken more literally than the translation of zoon as "living being" allows. The emphasis is on animality, the ani- mal side and animal basis of human existence. "Political animal": This term out-
14
lines the platform of an existential anti-politics.
cal animal, loves life and demands a natural, not an exaggerated, but an honorable place for the animal side. Where the animal side is neither suppressed nor exces- sively elevated, a "discontent in the culture" becomes impossible. Life energy must rise from below and flow unobstructedly, even in the wise. For the person who loves life, like Diogenes, the "reality principle" takes on a different form. Ordinary realism stems from fearfulness and a peevish putting up with necessities
15
that the "system of needs"
tion, Diogenes lived to a ripe old age, more than ninety years. For a philosopher who was a student of ethics and regarded only embodiment as valid, this fact func-
16
gnawing on the raw bone of an ox; this is surely the version told by his opponents,
what Diogenes extended the critical spark against civilization even to eating cus- oms, playing off the raw against the cooked, and therefore could have been a ? rerunner of the modern proponents of raw foods and natural diet. According
0>ch, of course, would be an excellent proof of his superiority in living as in dying.
Diogenes' shamelessness cannot be understood at first glance. Although it ms to be explained on the one hand by a philosophy of nature (naturalia non
tions like a proof in his favor.
Some say that Diogenes poisoned himself by
ho maliciously emphasize the risks of a simple life. Perhaps they reveal thereby
,ee
the version disseminated by his pupils, Diogenes died by holding his breath,
Diogenes, the shameless politi-
prescribes for socialized beings. According to tradi-
168 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
sunt turpia), its real point lies in the political, sociotheoretical arena. Shame is the most intimate social fetter, which binds us, before all concrete rules of con- science, to universal standards of behavior. Existential philosophers, however cannot remain satisfied with the socially prescribed conditioning in shame. They return once more to the beginning of the process. What a person really has to be ashamed of is by no means settled by social conventions, especially because soci-
17
ety itself is suspected of being based on perversions and irrationalities.
kynic thus serves notice on being led by the nose by deeply engrained command- ments regarding shame. The customs, including those dealing with shame, could after all be perverted. Only an examination following the principles of nature and reason can give them a secure foundation. The political animal breaks through the politics of ashamedness. It demonstrates that people as a rule are ashamed for the wrong reasons, for their physis, their animal sides (which, in fact, are inno- cent), while they remain unmoved by their irrational and ugly practices, their greed, unfairness, cruelty, vanity, prejudice, and blindness. Diogenes turns the tables. He literally shits on the perverted norms. Before the eyes of the Athenian market public, he used to do "what concerns not only Demeter but also Aphrodite" {Diogenes Laertius, vol. VI, p. 69) --translated: shitting, pissing, masturbating (possibly fornicating too). The later Platonic and Christianized tradition, which suffocated the body under shame, of course, could see only scandal in this, and centuries of secularization were necessary before the philosophical core of sig- nificance in these gestures could be approached. Psychoanalysis has done its bit for this rediscovery by inventing a language in which anal and genital "phenomena" can be spoken about in public. Precisely this, on a pantomimic level, was demonstrated by Diogenes for the first time. If wise persons are eman- cipated beings, they must have dissolved the internal instances of oppression in themselves. Shame is a main factor in social conformisms, the switch point where external controls are transformed into internal controls. With his public mastur- bation, Diogenes committed a shamelessness by means of which he set himself in opposition to the political training in virtue of all systems. It was a frontal attack on all politics of the family, the core of all conservatism. Because, as tradition ashamedly has it, he sang his wedding song with his own hands, he was not sub- ject to the compulsion to get married to satisfy his sexual needs. Diogenes taught masturbation by practical example, as cultural progress, mind you, not as regres- sion to the animalistic. According to the wiseman, one should let the animal live, insofar as it is a condition of the human. The serene masturbator ("If only one could also drive away hunger by rubbing the belly") breaks through the conserva- tive sexual economy without vital losses. Sexual independence remains one of tn
18
rinC1
Diogenes, the political animal, raises existential presence of mind to a p
pie that finds its most concise expression in the phrase "Be prepared for anything- In a world of incalculable risks, where accidents and changes make it too difticu
most important conditions of emancipation.
The
? ,
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 169
to plan
ophilic individual is left with scarcely any other way out than this streamlined phrase.
Politics is that activity in which one has to be ready for anything. Social life is not so much a safe retreat as the source of all dangers.
Presence of mind then becomes the secret of survival. Those who need little can maneuver against political fate when they have to live in times in which poli- tics determines our fate. Politics is also the sphere in which people beat each other over the head because of the competition for nonessentials. The full repercussions of kynical anti-politics first become clear in times of crisis.
If we now pass on to the next figure in our cabinet of cynics, we will see how things become complicated as soon as the philosophers, or better, the intellec- tuals, no longer keep to kynical abstinence but seek bourgeois comfort and, at the same time, try to reserve the prestige of the philosopher for themselves. Di- ogenes, who embodies his doctrine, is still an archaic figure; "modernity" begins with splits, inconsistencies, and ironies.
Lucian the Mocker, or: Critique Changes Sides
You are very much mistaken if you believe that there are antiq- uities. Antiquity is only now beginning to emerge. Novalis
We encounter this man from Samosata on the Euphrates, a Syrian by birth, who has a place of honor in the history of evil tongues --half a millenium later --in a thoroughly transformed cultural setting. On his life in brief:
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
After an unsuccessful attempt at sculpturing, Lucian (born about 120 A. D. ) became a rhetorician, a profession that scarcely has a parallel in our time and that has been not inappropriately translated as "concert speaker. " Thus, like Poseidonius and Paulus a great traveller and wan- derer, he moved across the country, through the entire Mediterranean region as far as Gaul, making showy and pompous speeches; and al- though he did not speak Greek without an accent, he had considerable success. But he was too clever, too restless, and intellectually not mod- est enough to be content with success on the podium and the applause of the elegant world. Thus, in his fortieth year, he turned to varied sa- tirical writing, or, as we would say, moralistic essays. It is they, of his life and works, that have stood the test of time. In later years he ac- cepted a position as public servant of the Roman Empire in Egypt, thereby letting himself in for something he himself had mocked not a little, namely, a secure salary and domiciled settledness. The last date
ar|
d where the old order can no longer deal with the new events, the bi-
ln
Aurelius (17 March 180 A. D. ). It is surmised, since it is not known
his life that can be fixed is the death of the emperor, Marcus
170 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
precisely, that he died soon after. (Otto Seel, afterword to Lukian, Gesprache der Gotter und Meergotter, der Toten und der Hetdren [Stuttgart, 1956], pp. 241-42)
It could be contended that in Lucian's time, the seed of the protokynic germi- nated in a puzzling way. An author during the middle period of the Roman em-
19
perors, a contemporary of the Stoic emperor, Marcus Aurelius,
important, though the most malicious, witness of the fact that one of the most powerful impulses in Western philosophy had issued from the apparent satyrical play of the kynical polemic against civilization. Indeed, after a good half a millenium, kynicism for the first time had found within the Roman Empire a truly ideal soil, a situation of flourishing alienation in which it inevitably expanded in all directions. The "dogs" had begun to howl in large packs, and moralistic resis- tance against the social and human circumstances in the empire had swelled to a powerful spiritual current. The kynicism of the time of the emperors has been called the hippie and escapist movement of antiquity (Hochkeppel). To the extent the empire transformed itself into a colossal bureaucratic apparatus whose inner and outer workings an individual could not fathom or influence, its ideological power to integrate and its capacity to rouse feelings of citizenship and commit- ment to the state had to dissipate. The administration's inaccessibility to the citizens, the despised extortion of taxes by the military and civil Moloch, the citizens' aversion to military service are all unmistakable signs of an advanced so- cial crisis. The Roman world order was long since no longer that res publico that had once grown naturally out of the life of societas. Rather, the imperial state ap-
paratus weighed on its citizens like a leaden foreign body. In such periods it was natural that the schools of philosophy, once the province of a few, received a mas- sive influx that assumed symptomatic proportions. The need for individualistic self-assertion against coercive society became a psychopolitical reality of the first order. Because no one could any longer cherish the illusion that he led his "own" life in this political system, innumerable people had to feel the impulse to reestab- lish their authenticity in areas free from the state, namely, in the form of philosophies of life and new religions. This explains the enormous success ot
as
Christianity, too, was at first only one of many forms of late-Roman exoticism and orientalism. Already at that time, not only the light but also the attractive darkness of mysteries came from the East. From the Greeks the Romans adopte their cultural decor and the doctrine of humanitas as well as those critical, i dividualistic forces from Attic sources that had been active as "moral moles ready during the disintegration of the Greek polis. This individualistic ferm again released its energies in the alienation of the Roman bureaucratic state, no however, in such mass forms that the individualistic impulse had to be qua! '
philosophical sects, mostly of Greek origin--to which the kynics also belong- well as of the new religious cults whose origins were in Asia Minor.
he is the most
eTHE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 171
tjvely transformed. The many individual cases resulted in a new quality of forma- tion of stereotypes. Among the educated there was a certain abhorrence of the sects with their vagabonds, preachers, moralists, cults, and communities, which
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
20
for centuries formed part of the image of the time of the emperors. humanistic, high individualism of cultivated Romans looked contemptuously on the new and in part asocial energy of individualists. At that time, people turned up their noses just as much at the Christians as at the kynics. One of the older, ironically cultivated, conservative voices of this time is that of Lucian, as we can hear in his merciless satire on the voluntary death of the kynical sect leader, Peregrinus,
known as Proteus. We want to concentrate on this text. It is the para- digm of a new cynical tone of voice that intellectuals of more advanced times as- sume as soon as their contempt is provoked. The parallels to the present are so obvious that it is not necessary to pursue the issue. It is worthwhile to look into Lucian's ancient kynical mirror so as to recognize the fresh, cynical present in it.
What is it about? In his satire, Lucian deals with a spectacular incident that
is supposed to have happened on Olympus during the games, before a considera-
ble audience: The same Peregrinus had decided to burn himself publicly on a
large pyre in order to give the world the spectacle of a tragic and heroic voluntary
death, thereby increasing the stature of his sect and, as Lucian emphasizes, satis-
fying his own aspirations for fame. This plan, which was announced in advance
by the main actor in order to ensure a fitting resonance, was actually carried out.
The public gesture was consciously planned and designed to make an impression
on the crowd. Of course, as a model there was only Socrates, who had left behind
the greatest example of philosophical resoluteness through his voluntary death.
There were possibly also the Indian Brahmans of that time, whose self-chosen
death by fire had been heard about in the West since the days of Alexander's cam-
paign. Lucian claims to have witnessed the incident. The tone of the description
is so scornful that it is advisable to read it as more of a document on the witnesses'
critical view of things than as a factual report on the incidents mentioned. The
only thing that can be believed with some degree of certainty from this report is
that the kynicism of a Peregrinus must have had almost nothing in common with
Diogenes' kynicism except the name and some ascetic superficialities. The roles
appear to be reversed between Peregrinus and Lucian since, for Diogenes, a
Pathetic gesture such as a heroic self-chosen death would have been unthinkable.
e-clared it to be crazy because the kynic's concern, literarily speaking, is comedy, not tragedy; satire, not the serious myth. This reveals a profound struc-
ral change in kynical philosophy. Diogenes' existence drew its inspiration from
""elation to Athenian comedy. It is rooted in an urban, humorous culture, unshed by a mentality that is open to jokes, quick repartee, mockery, and a ny contempt for stupidity. Its existentialism is based on a satirical founda- ? Late-Roman kynicism is completely different. In it, the kynical impulse has
can be certain that Diogenes, agreeing with Lucian on this point, would have
The old-
172 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
obviously been split-in an existential direction and in a satirical-intellectual direction. Laughing becomes a function of literature, and living remains a deadly
21
serious business.
selves a program of life without needs, preparedness-for-anything, and auton- omy, but they had succumbed to their role as moralists, often with deadly serious- ness. The motif of laughter, which had called Athenian kynicism to life, had expired in late-Roman kynicism. The sect gathered around itself the unstable and resentful, bums and moral zealots, outsiders and narcissistic people needing something to hold on to rather than laughing individualists.
The best among them were probably moralists with an ascetic, independent bent, or gentle adepts at life, who traveled around as moral psychotherapists, wel- comed by those willing to experience something new; but for self-confident con- servatives, they were suspect, if not despised.
In relation to these people it is now Lucian who assumes the position of the satirist and humorist previously held by them. However, he no longer exercises the kynical mockery of the uncultivated sage on the representatives of vain knowl- edge. Rather, his satire is a cultivated attack on the uncultivated beggar-moralists and wailers, that is, a kind of
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
master's satire on the intellectual simpletons of his
22
The sect kynics, it is true, had zealously prescribed for them-
time. Group dynamics probably plays a greater role than "theory"
pears in antiquity as a philosophical-moral dispute; there is some evidence for the view that Lucian comes down so hard on the kynics because they want the same thing he does. They direct themselves at a similar public and work over the same field, even though with other, more radical means. They too are wanderers, street orators, dependent on public attention, and a sort of intellectual recipient of alms. It is just possible that Lucian hates himself in them, to the extent that similarities exist. If the kynics are the world despisers of their epoch, Lucian is the despiser of the despisers, the moralist of the moralists. Himself all too well versed in such matters, he recognizes in his adversaries the tendency to supercilious, naive, pompous, gushing fanaticism, in which vanity and masochistic martyrlike char- acteristics may have played a role. This gives Lucian's satire its psychological background. What the kynic Peregrinus, who is eager to die, presents to his spec- tators as an example of wisdom and the heroic contempt for death is for Lucian nothing other than an aberration of a laughable mania for glory. If Peregrinus aims at self-deification in the eyes of his disciples and their contemporaries, u>> self-evident that Lucian must expose this plan as vanity. But we should bear in mind that in judging others, people employ the standards of their own frame o reference and therefore ultimately speak "about themselves" when they judg others. That the thirst for glory was the frame of reference in which a good pa of Lucian's existence had moved can hardly be doubted, given everything that 1 known about him. Whether it is by their frame of reference that we can best un derstand the kynical movement is doubtful. Let us follow Lucian's account.
in what ap-
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 173
Lucian's exposition says nothing good at all about its victim. At the beginning, T ucian sees a eulogist of Peregrinus enter, whom he, the very picture of his nraised master, portrays as a big-mouth, blubberer, virtuous poser, quack, and sentimental buffoon who tells the wildest stories as he sweats and breaks out in crocodile tears. The following speaker, by contrast, unfolds Peregrinus's life story and sketches a devastating picture of the man who wants to burn himself to death. There is no doubt that Lucian has put his own version in the mouth of this speaker --according to which the master is a criminal, charlatan, and megalomaniac. Peregrinus's life reads like the biography of a criminal whose stages consist entirely of profligacy: from adultery, after which, when he was caught, a radish was ignominiously stuck in his anus to pederasty and bribery, to the apex of heinous crimes, patricide. After that--forced to flee from his hometown, Parium--he was ripe for a career as traveling con man. Forthwith, Peregrinus joined a Christian(! ) congregation where he quickly moved up on the basis of his rhetorical stunts. The disciples of the "crucified Sophist" from Pales- tine are portrayed as naive people who can be duped into just about anything by a cunning mind. From the Christians then, or, as Lucian calls them, "Chris- tianers," he went over to the kynics, let a long philosopher's beard grow, took up the knapsack of the wandering preacher, staff and coat, and got as far as Egypt on his journeys. There he created a stir through public self-flagellations and by shaving half of his head, which was supposed to be a "completely new and ad- mirable kind of exercise of virtue. " Having arrived in Italy, he indulged in dia- tribes against the emperor, was thus expelled from Rome, and as a result gained the reputation of someone unjustly persecuted. In his puffed-up vanity he finally got the idea into his head of burning himself at the Olympic Games with great pomp.
After this presentation of the main actor, Lucian turns to a critique of the pyric act. He reviews it as a theater critic would a bad play.
In my view it would be more fitting to await death with composure, not, like a fleeing slave, to run from life. If, however, he is so firmly determined to die, why does it have to be by fire and with a pomp fit for a tragedy? What is the point of this way of dying when he could nave chosen a thousand other ways? (Lukian, Werke in drei Banden [Berlin and Weimar, 1974], vol. II, pp. 31. 38).
ecording to Lucian, in truth, complete justice was done him with this act of self-
re
wiself, and the only thing wrong with the act was the time he chose since it
^ould have been better for Peregrinus to have killed himself much earlier. Be-
n? d this, Lucian's laughing critic also objects that for this drama a more uncom- mation; it was nothing more than deserved punishment that he executed on
nPen one's mouth one time in order to die on the spot. Moreover, Lucian's speaker able death would have been appropriate; in self-cremation one only has to
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
174 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
encourages all Peregrinus's disciples to follow their master by throwing them- selves as quickly as possible into the flames so that the specter of kynicism might come to an end.
These passages make clear the meaning of the phrase: Critique changes sides. Earlier we defined cynicism as a cheekiness that has changed sides. Lucian is talk- ing here as a cynical ideologue who denounces the critics of power to the powerful and cultivated as ambitious lunatics. His critic activities have turned into oppor- tunism trimmed to the irony of those in power, who want to make fun of their existential critics. Only this can explain how Lucian's speaker can come up with the idea that such examples of kynical contempt for death are dangerous for the state because, through lack of deterrence, they remove the last source of restraint from criminals threatened by the death penalty. It is a joyless laughter with which a sect of moralists is exhorted to commit mass suicide by fire or by smoke; Tens and hundreds of thousands of religious "dissidents" were yet to perish in the arenas and on the pyres of the Roman Empire.
The cynical fearlessness with which Lucian comments on the act of self- cremation is astounding. After Peregrinus himself had held a sort of corpse's speech and, "greedy for glory," had over and over again delayed the final moment of the burning, the moment finally came when the pyre was ignited by two disci- ples and the master jumped into it, invoking the paternal and maternal spirits. That provokes Lucian's laughter once more, as he recalls the story of the patri- cide. He called on those standing around to leave the dismal place: "It is truly not a charming sight to view a fried- up old manikin and, in doing so, to breathe in the foul fat-vapors. " (I quote here the juicier translation of Bernay in Lucian und die Kyniker [1879]. )
Of course, we must not judge Lucian solely on the basis of this scene. We have probably come upon him in his weakest moment, in the middle of a group-
23
dynamic wrangle with a rival, on whom he projects all of his contempt.
scene is important for us because in it the leap of the kynical impulse from a ple- beian, humorous culture-critique to a cynical ruler's satire can be observed. Lu- cian's laughter remains a nuance too shrill to be serene; it reveals more hate than sovereignty. In it there is the sarcasm of someone who feels himself put on the spot. When the kynics attacked the Roman state, Hellenic civilization, and the psychology of ambitious and comfortable citizens, they shook the social founda- tions on which the existence of the highly cultivated ironist also rested.
Mephistopheles, or: The Spirit that Always Denies and the Will to Knowledge
THE MASTER: I have never despised your kind. Of all spirits that deny,
The rogue weighs least heavily on my mind.
The
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 175
MEPH1STOPHELES: What, executioner! Of course, hands and feet And head and behind, they are yours.
Since Lucian's appearance as cynical satirist who jeers at the kynical sect, one and a half millennia have passed. Through all the changes in world history-the decline of the western Roman Empire, the Christianization of the Occident, the rise of feudalism, the age of chivalry, the Reformation, Renaissance, Absolutism, the rise of the bourgeoisie--the kynical impulse has continued in the most varied refractions and disguises. Goethe's famous theatrical devil meets us at the zenith of the Enlightenment, in that decade of the eighteenth century when the Sturm und Drang of the awakening bourgeois culture was at its most explosive. Mephistopheles appears in the stormy years of secularization that begin to liqui- date the thousand-year-old inheritance of Christianity. The essence of the bour- geois cultural revolution in the eighteenth century is characterized perhaps more than anything else by the fact that with the greatest poet of the age, it embodies itself in the figure of a devil that, like Satan, enjoys the freedom to say things "as they really are. " The Devil is the first post-Christian realist; his freedom to speak must still seem infernal to older contemporaries. When the Devil opens his mouth to say how it really is in the world, the old Christian metaphysics, theology, feu- dal morality are swept away. If his horns and claws are also taken away, there remains of Mephistopheles nothing more than a bourgeois philosopher: realist, antimetaphysicist, empiricist, positivist. Not by chance did Faust, the epitome of the modern researcher from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, seal a pact with a devil of this kind. Only from the Devil can one learn "how things really are. " Only he has an interest in making us take off the religious spectacles and see with our own eyes. In this way, the idea of "God the Father, Son, & Co. "
becomes superfluous.
Mephistopheles is a fluorescent being who lives entirely in his metamor- phoses. He emerges from a dog. For his first appearance, the Devil chooses the symbol of the kynical sect of philosophers. Recall that Faust, at the nadir of his "theoretical despair," had decided to kill himself. The choirs of Easter night hold him back from his intention at the very point when the ampoule of poison is al- ready touching his lips. He returns to life. On his Easter stroll, he meditates on
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason. txt[3/29/23, 1:19:16 AM]
the dual nature of his soul. His thoughts on this can be read as the deep self- reflection of a bourgeois scientist: Within him there is struggle between realism and insatiability, the drive toward life and the longing for death, the "will to night" and the will to power, the sense for what is possible and the drive toward what is (still) impossible. In the dusk Faust sees a "black dog roaming through crop and stubble" that circles around the strollers in broad spiral movements. Faust imagines that he sees an inferno behind the animal; Wagner, however, re- mains blind to the magical manifestation. In the end, a black poodle lies before the scholar on its belly, tail wagging, well trained and apparently tame. In the
176 ? THE CABINET OF CYNICS
study, finally, the real metamorphosis of Satan begins, as the thinker is on the verge of translating the Evangelium of Saint John into German. As soon as Faust has found the correct translation for the Greek concept logos (Tat), the dog starts yowling. Curious changes of form begin: "How long and broad my poodle is be- coming. " In the end, the "traveling scholastic" appears as the "heart of the matter" [des Pudels Kern; literally, the poodle's kernel; --Trans. ] and gradually reveals the Devil's claws. The sequence of the scene graphically depicts the dialectic of master and servant. The Devil cowers at first in the role of a dog, then of a ser- vant, in order, so he thinks, to ultimately win complete domination over the schol- ar's soul.
The metamorphosis from dog to monster, from monster to traveling scholastic is only the beginning of a rather long series of transformations. Mephistopheles
24
is like a master of disguise, an impostor, or a spy
survival of evil in the post-Christian era is that it conceal itself behind the ap- propriate fashionable and socially accepted masks of innocuousness. The feudal personification of "evil" as corporeal Satan is, so to speak, annulled in Goethe's ironic drama. The point of Goethe's theatrical devil, namely, is its modernization to the worldly grand seigneur--a tendency continued by Thomas Mann in Doktor Faustus. The Devil becomes a figure of immanence, and evil even gains sympathy through its civility. In Goethe's drama, even the witches have to look twice to see through the dissolute squire, Junker Liederlich. On one occasion he appears as a worldly court figure with doublet and plume. On the next, in the student scene, he dons the costume of the great scholar, in order to parody the scholar's learned- ness in a satire inspired by a cynicism of knowledge -- the most malicious improvi- zation of a Gay Science before Nietzsche. Finally, he appears as an elegant gen-
tleman and magician who knows how to speak quick wittedly with procuresses, and as a fencing master, he instructs Faust on how he can expedite his lover's brother, who has become burdensome, into eternity. Impudent cheekiness and cold sarcasm belong inevitably to the attributes of the modern, "immanent" devil, just as much as cosmopolitanism, linguistic competence, cultivation, and legal understanding. (Contracts have to be made in writing. )
This modernization of evil does not arise from a poet's whim. Even though it is presented poetically-ironically, it rests on a solid logical basis. In the frame- work of modern forms of consciousness, art is in no way "merely" the locus or the beautiful and the amusing, but one of the most important points of access for research into what is traditionally called truth--truth in the sense of a perspective
was
on the whole, truth as understanding the essence of the world. "Great Art"
2always a pandemonic art that tried to capture the "theater of the world. "
is rooted the philosophical prominence of works of art such as Faust. At the point where traditional metaphysics fails -- in interpreting evil in the world--because the Christian background of these metaphysics with its optimism of salvation has faded, art jumps into the breach. Seen from the viewpoint of the history of ideas,
because the condition for the
Herein
THE CABINET OF CYNICS ? 177
? Gustav Grundgens in the role of Mephistophiles in Goethe's Faust.
Mephistopheles (whom I regard as a central figure of modern aesthetics) is a child of the idea of development, through which, in the eighteenth century, the age-old questions concerning the theodicy and the transience of phenomena can be posed in a new form and answered with a new logic. So much is certain: that from this time on, evil in the world--death, destruction, and negativities of all kinds-can no longer be interpreted as the punitive or testing interventions of God in human history, as was done by the centuries of Christianity.
