8 ms·

Against Cynicism: A philosopher's brilliant reasons for living

83 points by 1337biz 13y ago

9h1d9j809s 13y ago
"[...] it is just one of the many provocative ideas that he develops and then drops in the course of the book, which reads less like a structured argument than a long prose poem. Sloterdijk’s strength and appeal come from the intuitive and metaphorical quality of his thought, his unconventional approaches to familiar problems, his willingness to scandalize." This sums up Sloterdijk pretty well. I highly recommend reading him.
jivatmanx 13y ago
I think it's possible to believe that a cause is lost, and yet still believe in the categorical imperative of fighting for it. Cicero is immortal as both the greatest and last defender of the Roman Republic.
- webnrrd2k 13y ago
  There is a saying I really like: "I may not have hope, but I do have determination". I'm not sure who said it, but it's true (for some things). People have faced many hopeless tasks and triumphed. They only seem inevitable after the fact. I'm sure it was difficult to expect the end of racism in South Africa, but it happened. It's not hard to think of many other examples. It's worth it to start working on a cause you believe in, and other people will join.
  - Goosey 13y ago
    Correct. There is no racism is South Africa.
    - webnrrd2k 13y ago
      I should have written "institutionalized racism" or maybe "overt state sponsored racism". I wasn't trying to imply that racism no longer exists in South Africa.
      - Goosey 13y ago
        Yeah, I realize my comment was overly sensitive. Sorry 'bout that. :)
gregw134 13y ago
Thanks for sharing this. I'm glad to see a secular author who has a real appreciation of religion--he doesn't treat it as something that makes dimwitted people happy, but as a training regimen designed for self-improvement, a struggle to develop good mental hygiene and psychologically safe communities, etc. If I read the article right, he is saying we need to develop these practices in a nonreligious context. I agree, but how can secular people and communities practice spirituality in a way that will cause these changes without sharing a common set of beliefs, practices and language?
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  It doesn't need to be called 'spirituality' - you hit it on the head before with 'self-improvement' It's possible for secular people to practice self-improvement, but why would we not share a common set of beliefs/practices/language? I think many self-improvement groups do just that - obvious ones like churches, but also non-obvious ones (book clubs, running clubs, etc).
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - rayiner 13y ago
    You can practice self improvement, but there is not really anything to tie people together in ordinary living in the absence of religion. Self improvement groups do not create the kind of bonds in a community that will cause people to make real sacrifices for their neighbors. As an atheist married to a practicing Christian I am acutely aware of the fact that my wife's church offers a level of community, tied together by common beliefs and practices, that I've never found outside a religious context. Book clubs don't give you a shared way of life, and political organizations are linked by a common fight not a common way of living ordinary life. I can't think of anything in my secular urban world that is quite like the barn raisings my wife tells me about from the small, Christian, town in Iowa where she grew up. The closest thing I guess would be some sort of Habitat for Humanity project, but that's very different: focused outward rather than inward; charity rather than reciprocity.
jdmitch 13y ago
While I wasn't previously familiar with Sloterdijk, I find it interesting that he takes exactly the opposite value from Christianity as Slavoj Zizek, the other great popular atheist apologist for Christianity (cf. Zizek's The Fragile Absolute: Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting for). "Sloterdijk’s ideal is not Pauline conversion but Trinitarian 'perichoresis,'" Unfortunately, I don't think Sloterdijk has understood the theological context of perichoresis which he goes on to define: "'Perichoresis means that the milieu of the persons is entirely the relationship itself,' he writes, envisioning love as a total mutual absorption." Perichoresis is literally "mutual interpenetration" and refers to the greek choros and their dances around (peri) each other in interlocking rings in the theatre. In the theological appropriation of this imagery, this has more to do with the depth and interdependence of the relationship than with the "milieu" - though it's not clear what he means by that.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
Though I heard the name so often I never read the man, I think have to rectify that. We need to recover, and give to one another, the trust that we once gave our placentas. Wow! It's so refreshing to hear something like that put so strongly. When discussing politics, people often say competition and struggle is normal and lets us have all the nice things, but I like this radically different outlook much more, man should not be predator to man. After all, we can also invent things because it makes ourselves and others happy, just as an expression of our creativity or intelligence... I would even say we can't avoid it. Competition is nice, sportsmanship and/or cooperation are nicer.
- zepolud 13y ago
  It's a lot less poetic if you consider that it wasn't "trust" that brought our placentas into being but a mutated retrovirus. More power to this guy if he helps people feel better about themselves and the world but he should refrain from entering public debates about "genetic engineering and economics" while presenting himself as somebody enlightened, knowledgeable or even adequately informed. It is unfair to judge him solely from this article without having read his books but what can be gathered from it and a cursory search suggests that his interest in modern science consists exclusively of surfing the current zeitgeist without actually being interested in science, or even the philosophy of science. If he indeed is "at the forefront of European intellectual life" it would be a pretty sad testament to the dismal state of contemporary philosophy.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    Fair enough ^^
javajosh 13y ago
This very long article is at once both thought-provoking and rather confused, like reading the beginning of a hundred interesting conversations, each interrupting the last before they get anywhere. I'm not really sure what to take away from it, other than "if you want to finish the conversation, buy the books." The title here gives a clue as to what someone else got out of it. "Against Cynicism: A philosopher's brilliant reasons for living." We might infer that this was about reasons for living, that they are brilliant, and that cynicism isn't part of those reasons. And yet, I'm not entirely sure that "reasons for living" are what Sloterdijk is even addressing. It seems more like he's addressing the concern of minimizing suffering in a culture that's largely given up God. He's an atheist who admits that religion in general and the belief in God in particular has utility, and he's exploring replacement therapies. An eminently reasonable thing to do. But this isn't a reason for living: for the vast majority of people, the "reason for living" is simply that the alternative, death, is petrifying.
- VLM 13y ago
  "for the vast majority of people, the "reason for living" is simply that the alternative, death, is petrifying." Perhaps I'm unusually happy, but my reason is to have the most fun, which pretty strongly implies helping those around me have fun, while being focused on long term. Some sociocultural rules from the other side of the planet three thousand years ago are interesting and all that, but don't float my boat or fit my needs.
  - javajosh 13y ago
    Let's say rather that the least common denominator reason for living is that, well, death sucks. Yes, of course are positive reasons to live, and while those are nice to have, they aren't as universal a motivator, I think, as simple fear of death.
    - SCAQTony 13y ago
      I have to agree. Shakespeare: "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come...?" Or as brilliantly stated by XKCD, you end up going back into the "Lego box" http://xkcd.com/659/ http://xkcd.com/659/ To define what sucks about death is the concept of complete non-existence and the the total erasure of everything you ever were and consequently destined to never exist again. Your atoms may change into different forms but you will never experience it. That to me makes even the worst of life experiences better than death sentence known as "...we owe god one death."
MWil 13y ago
I really enjoyed this phrase: ""brilliant at diagnosis and helpless at cure""
cousin_it 13y ago
I couldn't understand the article. Can someone summarize the new ideas?
- louwrentius 13y ago
  I don't understand it either. I didn't understand anything and I gave up after a few paragraphs. If we're dumb, we are at least not alone ;)
  - winfred 13y ago
    I understood it reasonably well. The article wasn't very good, randomly quoting from several books and the writer of the article added onto the already complex language with his own even more complex descriptions. Anyway Sloterdijk is apparently a borderline new-age post-existentialist, who hopes that (new, updated) religions can provide solace for the masses, in these books at least hasn't bothered to keep up with the technological changes of the last 20 years or so (although there is some mention of genetics, but that's old news by now).
milesf 13y ago
Provocative title, but in the end no message. Reminds me of watching the series "Lost", where the expectation was set from the beginning that there was a logical, rational explanation for the whole thing. In the end they producers basically lied, and it ended up being a big shaggy dog story. If anyone can extract the "brilliant reasons for living" from that article, please post them here. I don't expect much of a list.
- danbmil99 13y ago
  Haha, the plot of "Lost" is a great metaphor for studying philosophy.
n1ghtm4n 13y ago
1) obscurantist jargon. check. 2) banal observations once you finally figure out WTF they are talking about. check. 3) lauded for being the smartest, greatest, most brilliant intellectual of their age. check. 4) books with inscrutable titles like Bubbles: Spheres Volume I: Microspherology and Rage and Time. check. (LOL! How big do your balls have to be to give a book a title like that?) 5) constant name-dropping of fashionable intellectuals. check. Must be European philosophy! UPDATE: quote from Amazon description of Bubbles. Behold the enormity of Peter Sloterdijk's balls: "reinterprets the history of Western metaphysics as an inherently spatial and immunological project, from the discovery of self (bubble) to the exploration of world (globe) to the poetics of plurality (foam)." http://www.amazon.com/Bubbles-Spheres-Microspherology-Semiotext-Foreign/dp/1584351047/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374460081&sr=1-2 http://www.amazon.com/Bubbles-Spheres-Microspherology-Semiot...
thyrsus 13y ago
Call me cynical, but this exudes the intellectual aroma of Fuller's "Synergetics". In the words of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and remembering everything to which it referred): "Mostly harmless."

83 points by 1337biz 13y ago

"[...] it is just one of the many provocative ideas that he develops and then drops in the course of the book, which reads less like a structured argument than a long prose poem. Sloterdijk’s strength and appeal come from the intuitive and metaphorical quality of his thought, his unconventional approaches to familiar problems, his willingness to scandalize." This sums up Sloterdijk pretty well. I highly recommend reading him.

jivatmanx 13y ago

I think it's possible to believe that a cause is lost, and yet still believe in the categorical imperative of fighting for it. Cicero is immortal as both the greatest and last defender of the Roman Republic.

webnrrd2k 13y ago
There is a saying I really like: "I may not have hope, but I do have determination". I'm not sure who said it, but it's true (for some things). People have faced many hopeless tasks and triumphed. They only seem inevitable after the fact. I'm sure it was difficult to expect the end of racism in South Africa, but it happened. It's not hard to think of many other examples. It's worth it to start working on a cause you believe in, and other people will join.
- Goosey 13y ago
  Correct. There is no racism is South Africa.
  - webnrrd2k 13y ago
    I should have written "institutionalized racism" or maybe "overt state sponsored racism". I wasn't trying to imply that racism no longer exists in South Africa.
    - Goosey 13y ago
      Yeah, I realize my comment was overly sensitive. Sorry 'bout that. :)

gregw134 13y ago

Thanks for sharing this. I'm glad to see a secular author who has a real appreciation of religion--he doesn't treat it as something that makes dimwitted people happy, but as a training regimen designed for self-improvement, a struggle to develop good mental hygiene and psychologically safe communities, etc. If I read the article right, he is saying we need to develop these practices in a nonreligious context. I agree, but how can secular people and communities practice spirituality in a way that will cause these changes without sharing a common set of beliefs, practices and language?

mgkimsal 13y ago
It doesn't need to be called 'spirituality' - you hit it on the head before with 'self-improvement' It's possible for secular people to practice self-improvement, but why would we not share a common set of beliefs/practices/language? I think many self-improvement groups do just that - obvious ones like churches, but also non-obvious ones (book clubs, running clubs, etc).
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 13y ago
  You can practice self improvement, but there is not really anything to tie people together in ordinary living in the absence of religion. Self improvement groups do not create the kind of bonds in a community that will cause people to make real sacrifices for their neighbors. As an atheist married to a practicing Christian I am acutely aware of the fact that my wife's church offers a level of community, tied together by common beliefs and practices, that I've never found outside a religious context. Book clubs don't give you a shared way of life, and political organizations are linked by a common fight not a common way of living ordinary life. I can't think of anything in my secular urban world that is quite like the barn raisings my wife tells me about from the small, Christian, town in Iowa where she grew up. The closest thing I guess would be some sort of Habitat for Humanity project, but that's very different: focused outward rather than inward; charity rather than reciprocity.

jdmitch 13y ago

While I wasn't previously familiar with Sloterdijk, I find it interesting that he takes exactly the opposite value from Christianity as Slavoj Zizek, the other great popular atheist apologist for Christianity (cf. Zizek's The Fragile Absolute: Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting for). "Sloterdijk’s ideal is not Pauline conversion but Trinitarian 'perichoresis,'" Unfortunately, I don't think Sloterdijk has understood the theological context of perichoresis which he goes on to define: "'Perichoresis means that the milieu of the persons is entirely the relationship itself,' he writes, envisioning love as a total mutual absorption." Perichoresis is literally "mutual interpenetration" and refers to the greek choros and their dances around (peri) each other in interlocking rings in the theatre. In the theological appropriation of this imagery, this has more to do with the depth and interdependence of the relationship than with the "milieu" - though it's not clear what he means by that.

PavlovsCat 13y ago

Though I heard the name so often I never read the man, I think have to rectify that. We need to recover, and give to one another, the trust that we once gave our placentas. Wow! It's so refreshing to hear something like that put so strongly. When discussing politics, people often say competition and struggle is normal and lets us have all the nice things, but I like this radically different outlook much more, man should not be predator to man. After all, we can also invent things because it makes ourselves and others happy, just as an expression of our creativity or intelligence... I would even say we can't avoid it. Competition is nice, sportsmanship and/or cooperation are nicer.

zepolud 13y ago
It's a lot less poetic if you consider that it wasn't "trust" that brought our placentas into being but a mutated retrovirus. More power to this guy if he helps people feel better about themselves and the world but he should refrain from entering public debates about "genetic engineering and economics" while presenting himself as somebody enlightened, knowledgeable or even adequately informed. It is unfair to judge him solely from this article without having read his books but what can be gathered from it and a cursory search suggests that his interest in modern science consists exclusively of surfing the current zeitgeist without actually being interested in science, or even the philosophy of science. If he indeed is "at the forefront of European intellectual life" it would be a pretty sad testament to the dismal state of contemporary philosophy.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Fair enough ^^

javajosh 13y ago

This very long article is at once both thought-provoking and rather confused, like reading the beginning of a hundred interesting conversations, each interrupting the last before they get anywhere. I'm not really sure what to take away from it, other than "if you want to finish the conversation, buy the books." The title here gives a clue as to what someone else got out of it. "Against Cynicism: A philosopher's brilliant reasons for living." We might infer that this was about reasons for living, that they are brilliant, and that cynicism isn't part of those reasons. And yet, I'm not entirely sure that "reasons for living" are what Sloterdijk is even addressing. It seems more like he's addressing the concern of minimizing suffering in a culture that's largely given up God. He's an atheist who admits that religion in general and the belief in God in particular has utility, and he's exploring replacement therapies. An eminently reasonable thing to do. But this isn't a reason for living: for the vast majority of people, the "reason for living" is simply that the alternative, death, is petrifying.

VLM 13y ago
"for the vast majority of people, the "reason for living" is simply that the alternative, death, is petrifying." Perhaps I'm unusually happy, but my reason is to have the most fun, which pretty strongly implies helping those around me have fun, while being focused on long term. Some sociocultural rules from the other side of the planet three thousand years ago are interesting and all that, but don't float my boat or fit my needs.
- javajosh 13y ago
  Let's say rather that the least common denominator reason for living is that, well, death sucks. Yes, of course are positive reasons to live, and while those are nice to have, they aren't as universal a motivator, I think, as simple fear of death.
  - SCAQTony 13y ago
    I have to agree. Shakespeare: "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come...?" Or as brilliantly stated by XKCD, you end up going back into the "Lego box" http://xkcd.com/659/ http://xkcd.com/659/ To define what sucks about death is the concept of complete non-existence and the the total erasure of everything you ever were and consequently destined to never exist again. Your atoms may change into different forms but you will never experience it. That to me makes even the worst of life experiences better than death sentence known as "...we owe god one death."

MWil 13y ago

I really enjoyed this phrase: ""brilliant at diagnosis and helpless at cure""

cousin_it 13y ago

I couldn't understand the article. Can someone summarize the new ideas?

louwrentius 13y ago
I don't understand it either. I didn't understand anything and I gave up after a few paragraphs. If we're dumb, we are at least not alone ;)
- winfred 13y ago
  I understood it reasonably well. The article wasn't very good, randomly quoting from several books and the writer of the article added onto the already complex language with his own even more complex descriptions. Anyway Sloterdijk is apparently a borderline new-age post-existentialist, who hopes that (new, updated) religions can provide solace for the masses, in these books at least hasn't bothered to keep up with the technological changes of the last 20 years or so (although there is some mention of genetics, but that's old news by now).

milesf 13y ago

Provocative title, but in the end no message. Reminds me of watching the series "Lost", where the expectation was set from the beginning that there was a logical, rational explanation for the whole thing. In the end they producers basically lied, and it ended up being a big shaggy dog story. If anyone can extract the "brilliant reasons for living" from that article, please post them here. I don't expect much of a list.

danbmil99 13y ago
Haha, the plot of "Lost" is a great metaphor for studying philosophy.

n1ghtm4n 13y ago

1) obscurantist jargon. check. 2) banal observations once you finally figure out WTF they are talking about. check. 3) lauded for being the smartest, greatest, most brilliant intellectual of their age. check. 4) books with inscrutable titles like Bubbles: Spheres Volume I: Microspherology and Rage and Time. check. (LOL! How big do your balls have to be to give a book a title like that?) 5) constant name-dropping of fashionable intellectuals. check. Must be European philosophy! UPDATE: quote from Amazon description of Bubbles. Behold the enormity of Peter Sloterdijk's balls: "reinterprets the history of Western metaphysics as an inherently spatial and immunological project, from the discovery of self (bubble) to the exploration of world (globe) to the poetics of plurality (foam)." http://www.amazon.com/Bubbles-Spheres-Microspherology-Semiotext-Foreign/dp/1584351047/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374460081&sr=1-2 http://www.amazon.com/Bubbles-Spheres-Microspherology-Semiot...

thyrsus 13y ago

Call me cynical, but this exudes the intellectual aroma of Fuller's "Synergetics". In the words of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and remembering everything to which it referred): "Mostly harmless."