Introduction

The works of Peter Sloterdijk have become more readily available in recent years to the English-speaking world, and so too has the recognition that his thought represents a major contribution to the ongoing discussions about globalization and its discontents, some of which are becoming increasingly catastrophic, particularly at this moment in time. Anthropotechnics as a general ascetology thus paves the way for a historical analysis where “charioteers and scholars, wrestlers and church fathers, archers and rhapsodists come together, united by shared experiences on the way to the impossible”. The main coordinates of Sloterdijk’s anthropotechnical maneuver are thus delineated: the human, whose essence is technological, and whose technological essence impels it to transcend itself ascetically, is at the same time the subject who, through practice, must form the world it inhabits to shelter itself from the abyss of sheer exteriority.