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In this essential early work, the preeminent European philosopher Peter Sloterdijk offers a cross-cultural and transdisciplinary meditation on humanity's tendency to refuse the world.
Developing the first seeds of his anthropotechnics, Sloterdijk theorizes consciousness as a medium, tuned and retuned over the course of technological and social history. His subject here is the "world-alien" (
Weltfremdheit) in man that was formerly institutionalized in religions, but is increasingly dealt with in modern times through practices of psychotherapy. Originally written in 1993, this almost clairvoyant work examines how humans seek escape from the world in cross-cultural and historical context, up to the mania and world-escapism of our cybernetic network culture. Chapters delve into artificial habitats and forms of intoxication, from early Christian desert monks to pharmaco-theology through psychedelics. In classic form, Sloterdijk recalibrates and reinvents concepts from the ancient Greeks to Heidegger to develop an astonishingly contemporary philosophical anthropology.
List of contents
Preliminary Note
1. Why is it happening to me?
Guesswork concerning the animal that stumbles upon itself, that makes great plans, that often does not move from the spot, and that sometimes is fed up with everything
2. Where do the monks go?
On world-flight from an anthropological perspective
3. What are drugs for?
On the dialectic of world-flight and world-addiction
4. How was the "death drive" discovered?
Toward a theory of the soul's end goals, with continual references to Socrates, Jesus, and Freud
5. Is the world negatable?
On Indian spirit and Occidental gnosis
6. What does it mean to take oneself over?
Experiment in affirmation
7. Where are we when we listen to music
8. How do we stir the sleep of the world?
Conjectures on awakening
About the author
Peter Sloterdijk is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Media Theory at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. His recent books include
Making the Heavens Speak (2022),
After God (2020), and
What Happened in the Twentieth Century? (2018).
