ABSTRACT
The danger with an author as prolific as Sloterdijk is to give in to precipitation. Extension is not however a historical process: practice does not invade little by little all sectors of human life over the course of history, from the religious asceticism of the Middle Ages or even more remote epochs, starting not only with Plato, but even earlier with the pre-Socratics, who, sleepless in Ephesus, were already practicing the “art of philosophy,” to the contemporary culture of competition, sports, and coaching. No wonder that such an imperative, if there is one, is not quite ready to be put into practice. Hardly postmodern and barely aesthetic, it maintains the delusion of a global conservative curator, whose task and claim is to preserve in one fell swoop the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, and Antiquity.
