Critique of Cynical Reason  

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Critique of Cynical Reason (1983, Kritik der zynischen Vernunft) is a book by German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. It discusses philosophical Cynicism and popular cynicism as a societal phenomenon in European history.

In the first volume of Critique of Cynical Reason, Sloterdijk discusses his philosophical premises. The second volume builds on these premises to construct a phenomenology of action that incorporates the many facets of cynicism as they appear in various forms of public discourse. In both volumes, the relationship between texts and images is an integral part of the philosophical discussion.

Repeatedly, Sloterdijk points to the etymological consonant shift from the "K" of the Greek term kunikos to the "C" of the modern cynic as support for his thesis: The original Greek school of philosophy established itself as a subversion of the Ancient Greek Academy and as an outlet for the disempowered general populace, whereas the Modern industrial and contemporary post-industrial system degrades the concept so it applies primarily to mercantile exchanges of tradable goods, including ideas. One illustration that Sloterdijk employs to make this point is the activity of agents and double-agents, which to him incorporates contemporary cynicism as an incarnation of tactical thinking, pragmatic maneuvering, silencing, and misspeaking. A true Enlightenment in the spirit of Immanuel Kant's essays What is Enlightenment? and Perpetual Peace never has existed, Sloterdijk concludes.

Content

Sloterdijk describes the evolution of middle and upper-class consciousness by employing negative examples, which he draws from European history and from the history of education. He describes World War II as a first climax of a "system of hollowing out the self" (namely, capitalism) that, "armed to the teeth, wants to live forever."

Sloterdijk's analysis of Dadaism as artists practiced it in Berlin accompanies his disclosing of the variations of irony and sarcasm that all the political camps of the time between the two World Wars employed (especially Dadaists, Social Democrats, National Socialists, Communists in their derisive attempts to incite their supporters against those of all other points of view). He analyzes Nazi texts that - Sloterdijk claims - intend to "rhetorically rescue" the Third Reich, and sets them against the "humanist authors" of the time, like Erich Kästner and Erich Maria Remarque, who - he says - stood in the midst of "a rancorous war of all against all." Passages from the works of these authors, Sloterdijk reveals, clearly point to the cynical atmosphere of their time, and take analyzable, predictable forms that can be fruitfully scrutinized.

Additionally, Sloterdijk attempts to trace the Reception History of Kant's three Critiques and their various interpretations up to contemporary times. He attempts to show that Kant's "critical trade" became instrumentalized via the premise of Francis Bacon's aphorism that "knowledge is power," and was finally subverted and neutered by it. Moreover, he uses the ancient Greek Cynicism as a foil for the contemporary, inhumane cynicism that evolved, so Sloterdijk claims, through a combination of middle-class semiologies and grand philosophical ambitions. Sloterdijk concludes that, unlike the ancient Greek version, Cynicism no longer stands for values of the natural and ethical kind that bind people beyond their religious and economically useful convictions. Rather, it has become a mode of thought that defines its actions in terms of a "final end" of a purely materialistic sort and reduces the "ought" to an economic strategy aimed at maximizing profit. This contemporary sort of Cynicism remains silent, however, when it comes to social, anthropogenous, and altruistic goals having to do with the "in" and "for" of the "good life" the original Cynics were seeking.

In the final chapter, Sloterdijk points out that he regards a "good life" not simply as an external fact, but as a "being embedded" in a "Whole" that constantly reorganizes itself and renews itself, and that human kind creates out of its own understanding and motivations. He concludes with a precise analysis of Martin Heidegger's magnum opus Being and Time and seeks out clarifications regarding particular acts of creating, especially as they apply to the events and the artistic activity of the time between the two World Wars.

Table of contents (English edition)

Foreword: The return of Diogenes as postmodern intellectual / Andreas Huyssen --

Preface --

Acknowledgments --

Part one.

Sightings: Five preliminary reflections. 1. Cynicism: the twilight of false consciousness ; 2. Enlightenment as dialogue: critique of ideology as continuation of the miscarried dialogue through other means ; 3. Eight unmaskings: a review of critiques ; 4. After the unmaskings: cynical twilight. Sketches for the self-repudiation of the ethos of enlightenment ; 5. "In search of lost cheekiness"

Part two. Cynicism in world progress

I. Physiognomic main text.

6. Concerning the psychosomatics of the zeitgeist ;

Tongue, Stuck Out; Mouth, Smiling Maliciously, Crooked; Mouth, Bitter, Tight Mouth, Laughing Loudly, Big-Mouthed Mouth, Serene, Still; Eye Gazes, Eye Blinkers; Breasts; Arses; Fart; Shit, Refuse; Genitals

7. The cabinet of cynics --

Diogenes of Sinope, Lucian, Goethe's Faust, The Grand Inquisitor, Heidegger's anyone.

II. Phenomenological main text. 8. The cardinal cynicisms ; 9. The secondary cynicisms --

III. Logical main text. Black empiricism: enlightenment as organization of polemical knowledge ; 11. Transcendental polemic: Heraclitian meditations --

IV. Historical main text. The Weimar symptom: models of consciousness in German modernity ;

12. Weimar crystallization: transition of a period from recollection into history ; 13. Dadaistic chaotology: semantic cynicisms ; 14. The republic-as-if. Political cynicisms I: The struggle goes on ; 15. The front and nothingness. Political cynicisms II: Populist dialectics and the dissolution of the front ; 16. Dead souls without testaments. Political cynicisms III: Looking after war graves in the empty interior ; 17. Conspirators and dissimulators. Political cynicisms IV: Conviction as disinhibition ; 18. Depersonalization and alienation. Functionalist cynicisms I ; 19. Artificial limbs. Functionalist cynicisms II: On the spirit of technology ; 20. Political algodicy: cynical cosmologies and the logic of pain ; 21. Asking for a Napoleon from within. Political cynicisms V: Training for fact people ; 22. "Bright hour": great confessions of a split consciousness ; 23. On the German Republic of impostors: the natural history of deception ; 24. Hey! Are we alive? New matter-of-Fact cynicisms and stories about the difficulties of life ; 25. Postcoital twilight: sexual cynicism and stories of intractable love ; 26. Weimar double decisions, or, Matter-of-factness unto death --

Epilogue. The pleural shock: on the archetype of Weimar laughter --

Conclusion. Under way toward a critique of subjective reason.

See also

• Bodily functions
• Critique
• Cynicism
• Psychosomatics