Alright let's talk about this New Yorker profile of Peter Sloterdijk and the temptations of being a "celebrity philosopher":
newyorker.com/magazine/2018/…
newyorker.com/magazine/2018/…
There's a lot going on in this piece. You get to learn Sloterdijk is good at biking and also that he thinks Hitler was a "degraded Papist" rather than the progeny of Luther. The profile really draws out the eccentric side of Sloterdijk in an effective way.
But I'm going to zero-in on two issues in particular: Sloterdijk's quasi-libertarian politics (which are awful) and his work in media theory (which is great).
First the politics. Here's the short of it. Sloterdijk opposes a strong distribution of wealth via the state, suggesting it creates resentment among the wealthy, and proposes instead that we should slash taxes and publicly praise the wealthy for their generosity.
This is proposed most memorably in a short article translated as "The Grasping Hand" (unsurprisingly hosted online at City Journal, a right-wing publication funded by the usual suspects like the Kochs and others). city-journal.org/html/grasping-…
In Germany, that article prompted a debate with Axel Honneth, a critical theorist in the same orbit as Jurgen Habermas. They're the somewhat self-appointed inheritors of the Frankfurt School, which is important, because Sloterdijk was heavily influenced by Frankfurt folks.
The exchange is admittedly ridiculous; Sloterdijk is essentially trolling the German political and philosophical establishment. But he's doing it from a very specific position: a thoroughgoing Nietzscheanism.
Nietzsche got picked up in a lot of weird ways after WWII, most notably in France, which tried to articulate a left-wing version of Nietzsche. Sloterdijk, however, is arguably the most faithful Nietzschean of the post-60s continental philosophers.
In this context, Nietzsche's hatred of the masses and praise of nobility is something Sloterdijk is taking incredibly seriously in light of the German welfare state. He thinks rather than doing politics out of resentment, we should praise nobility to spark a moment of generosity.
There are a lot of moving parts to this, but if you know your Nietzsche Sloterdijk's proposals are pretty unsurprising. In a variety of contexts, Sloterdijk explores what he calls a Nietzschean "liberalism," by which he means giving *liberally,* freely.
That kind of liberalism is different from your run-of-the-mill liberalism people love to hate online. But just because it's weirder doesn't mean it's better--it's important that, as the profile notes, Sloterdijk actually does support real policies among German libertarians.
(In 2016 I wrote a review essay of two books by Sloterdijk, one where he tries tries to articulate this Nietzschean liberalism. There I wondered how his generous liberalism is really all that different from boring liberalism or neoliberalism after all: jcrt.org/religioustheor… )
This is one weird thing about being a "celebrity philosopher." Philosophy is a laboratory for thinking. Some of that thinking is supposed to stay in the lab, but when people like Sloterdijk take that research to market (literally) it often ends up in very dangerous hands.
E.g. Sloterdijk's former/estranged student Marc Jongen, part of Germany's far-right AfD party. Sloterdijk has spent the last few years desperately trying to distance himself from Jongen because so many of Sloterdijk's ideas can be lazily appropriated for neofascism.
If you have to say things like "don't use my ideas, you don't really understand them, there's more to it," etc. to neofascists, then maybe your philosophy should stay in the lab.
There's no two ways about it when it comes to Sloterdijk's politics--they're poorly thought-through, and unnecessarily and unproductively provocative. Moreover, they're dangerous and give reactionaries the illusion of respectability.
That being said, Sloterdijk isn't reducible to his dumb politics, and, like most philosophers, he's best when he stays in his lane. In his case, that means phenomenology and media theory.
Sloterdijk is, by far, one of the most compelling post-Heideggarian thinkers writing today. He's taken the challenge of cybernetics and chastized, rightly, a sort of primitivist strand that is natural to phenomenology (think Heidegger in the Black Forest).
Also owing to his Nietzschean tendencies, Sloterdijk has a lot of interesting things to say about religion and media, specifically looking at how religious traditions shape human beings. Sloterdijk is sort of an updated Foucault on this score, in a very unique way.
And, strangely, Sloterdijk's libertarian politics don't easily square with the media insights he makes throughout his work, which constantly underline that humans need each other, are fragile, and have to maintain social bubbles delicately and intentionally.
Given all that, I think the temptation of celebrity philosophy has created a bifurcated Sloterdijk; the Sloterdijk in the lab is adventurous and creative, doing a lot of important experiments that yield important results.
The Sloterdijk on television and in the press, however, is self-important and naive (and not in a good Nietzschean way). Because he's good in the lab, it gives the impression that he's good elsewhere, but that's not true--he's actually really bad outside his natural habitat.
People sometimes ask me if they should read Sloterdijk. I wrote my MA on him, and I use him a lot in my dissertation. I usually say you shouldn't read him if you don't have to. But he's a celebrity philosopher, which means a lot of people feel they have to when they shouldn't.
Anyways, sorry to subject everyone to this wall of tweets, but it's my birthday so deal.
