A few posts back I wrote about L’incident D’antioche, a title by Columbia University Press (CUP) under their series INSURECTIONS: CRITICAL STUDIES IN RELIGION, POLITICS, AND CULTURE. Last month they added another to that great list: Philosophical Temperaments by Peter Sloterdijk.
Philosophical Temperaments is at first glance yet another history of thinkers, as the subtitle suggests – From Plato to Foucault – but it is not really that at all. I would like to refer to them as abstracts. Abstract in the normal sense, as in a summary of contents, etc. and then abstract as in the context of art. The former is self-explanatory; Sloterdijk gives a brief introduction to the given thinkers idea/s and impact, and so on (the longest one is Plato’s 13 page, most come in around 3 pages). The later form of abstract is where he makes this book interesting. These little vignettes read more like sketches drawn out or even better – an abstract painting. These are very colorful exacting prefaces to the thinker and abstract in that he paints their idea/s critically and purposefully through his own lens, and so this book ends up being more of an examination of Sloterdijk’s thinking than those he writes about. And by the way, if you don’t know of Peter Sloterdijk, he’s not boring.
The underlying current of thought in this ~100p volume is that Sloterdijk believes the current generations are in an “advancing technological remaking of all concepts” and he seems to be giving us here a users manual to guide us to the right (or rightly wrong) thinkers and ideas that can map us through this rift safely.
“There are many indications that the current generations will pass through a rupture in the shape of the world which – in profundity and momentousness – is at least as important as the one that gave rise to classical philosophy twenty-five hundred years ago. A study of that ancient rupture could therefore inspire an understanding of the present one.”
To think that we are going through such a shift is a bit frightening but I think it is self-evident that we are in such a shift. Technology has and will make sure of that. Technology does not grow in a linear way, nor does it take steps up a ladder. When a discovery is made, it makes leaps not only in the field it was found in, but in a sleuth of others as well. Technology grows exponentially and so the more we understand, the faster we are going to understand more. We are in a universe that is full of the unknown and undiscovered; this unknown expanse and the technological understanding we are gaining combine and act like combustion. We do need a user guide to help navigate this accelerating social landscape. Perhaps Sloterdijk can point us to part of it.
Comments are closed.