Peter Sloterdijk vs. Jurgen Habermas: A Society of Academic Spectacles?

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Sun Oct 17 09:54:48 PDT 1999


In message <v03130301b42f909e9cf2@[140.254.113.140]>, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> writes
>Does anyone know more about this? Ken, Kelley, and other Habermas
>watchers? Yoshie

On the specifics, only this report. But Slotterdijk's book Critique of Cynical Reason is a kind of postmodernism avant la lettre (first published in German 1983, in Britain in 1988). It anticipates lots of Foucauldian arguments, like thinking with the diaprhagm, and generally makes some caustically witty arguments against us hopeless mutts who still naively believe in social change.

Most pointedly its very anti-science and anti-Enlightenment. And its conclusion is a critique of the subject. (Now we know where such criticisms lead.)

On the front is a blurb

'Sloterdijk can hardly be surpassed in his imaginative and vivid description of the experiences of a generation...' Jurgen Habermas. -- Jim heartfield



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list