“Fatally, the term 'barbarian' is the password that opens up the archives of the twentieth century. It refers to the despiser of achievement, the vandal, the status denier, the iconoclast, who refuses to acknowledge any ranking rules or hierarchy. Whoever… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share Image
“Cultural criticism always attacks the mass media. I don't think that makes sense. We should look more closely at the work of deformation that starts deeper down, especially because it involves so much demoralization. Something gets destroyed there that should not be destroyed under any circumstances - THE AWARENESS THAT KNOWLEDGE IS BORN OUT OF EUPHORIA AND THAT INTELLIGENCE IS… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share
“A completely different aspect, however, the thoroughly incommensurable one, lies in the imposition of accepting that the torso sees me while I observe it - indeed, that it eyes me more sharply than I can look at it. The ability to perform the inner gesture with which one makes space for this improbability inside oneself most probably consists precisely in… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share
“In this book, we will naturally be dealing primarily with the manifestations of the third level of immunity. I gather material on the biography of Homo immunologicus, guided by the assumption that this is where to find the stuff from which the forms of anthropotechnics are made. By this I mean the methods of mental and physical practising by which… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share
“As in the days of the first Merovingian, who pledged allegiance to the cross because of a victorious battle, today's children of the banalized… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share Image
“In his treatise on the battles between the gods underlying ancient Dionysian theatre, the young Nietzsche notes: 'Alas! The magic of these struggles is such, that he who sees them must also take part in them.' Similarly, an anthropology of the practising life is infected by its subject. Dealing with practices, asceticisms and exercises, whether or not they are declared… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share
“It is not sufficient, he emphasized, to colour (colorare) the mind with wisdom; it must be pickled (macerare) in it, as it were, soaked… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share Image
“What appears in the former statue of Apollo, however, cannot simply be equated with the Olympian of the same name, who had to ensure light, contours, foreknowledge and security of form in his days of completeness. Rather, as the poem's title implies, he stands for something much older, something rising from prehistoric sources. He symbolizes a divine magma in which… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share
“This much should be clear by now: the term 'renaissance' can only remain fruitful and demanding as long as it refers to a far-reaching… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share Image
“As the following pages deal with the practising life, they lead - in accordance with their topic - to an expedition into the little-explored universe of human vertical tensions. The Platonic Socrates had opened up the phenomenon for occidental culture when he stated expressis verbis that man is a being potentially 'superior to himself'. I translate this remark into the… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share
“Something is indeed returning today - but the conventional wisdom that this is religion making its reappearance is insufficient to satisfy critical inquiries. Nor is it the return of a factor that had vanished, but, rather a shift of emphasis in a continuum that was never interrupted. The genuinely recurring element that would merit our full intellectual attention is more… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share
“Here we should quote especially those sections from Nietzsche's central morality-critical work The Genealogy of Morals that deal with their subject in a diction of Olympian clarity. In the decisive passage he discusses the practice forms of that life-denial or world-weariness which, according to Nietzsche, exemplifies the morphological circle of sick asceticisms in general: 'The ascetic [of the priestly-sick type]… — Peter Sloterdijk Copy Share
