ABSTRACT
In 1983, a critical storm blew up in Germany, occasioned by the publication of a provocative text. Peter Sloterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reason drew both praise and dissent for its attempt to kick-start a stalling enlightenment. In 1988, the book’s publication in Britain and the US provoked little more than a yawn from The Academy. Yet Sloterdijk’s ambitions are huge, and his charge against contemporary critical individuals quite damning. ‘We are enlightened, we are apathetic’ he says, and if we are to escape our apparent fate of ‘not caring’ our way to the apocalypse then we must analyse and root out the cause of our current malaise. Such a project involves an excavation of the phenomenon of cynicism. In undertaking this task, Sloterdijk leads Critical Theory into its third generation, a journey which takes him by way of Nietzsche, skirting existentialism and turning left past Heidegger. This review is an X-ray of the text’s philosophical skeleton, and an evalution of Sloterdijk’s cheeky strategy.
