Infinite Mobilization. Peter Sloterdijk

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Premises

      The original German title of this book used the cumbersome and speculative word “Eurotaoism.”¹ Why was this necessary?

      There are three possible answers to this question. First, this could be an instance of those involuntary and nonsensical turns of phrase that I have been shown to let slip rather frequently; if this is true, we might as well assume that the book has already died of its own title as though from an overdose of profundity. Second, what we could have here is an example of combinatorial wit in the style of Friedrich Schlegel’s shotgun weddings of two vastly differing terms; but should such wit truly be in play, we had better leave it unexplained – wit that supplies its own discussion is no longer witty. However, since combinatorics is a tried and true early romanticist method for the discovery of structural analogues, a request for patience may be permitted in order to await the result. Third, “Eurotaoism” could be the heading above a missed opportunity. Such a title lends itself so easily to saying something groundbreaking about the play of polarities, the reunification of spirit and nature, and the opening of the heart chakra. All these things are of concern to us. I admit that it is a shame when an opportunity is missed to assure readers that they, too, have the divine within them. But denying the facts leads nowhere; there is nothing uplifting in what follows. This book and its title linger solely in problematic terrains – its appeal is exclusively aimed at the need to understand what drives the current course of the world in the direction it is going. Addressing the needs of intelligence in this way is still valid, even if we have to admit that the proposed exercises in comprehension seem like the gesticulations of a streetlamp lighter who wants to make himself useful in a city that has switched to neon lighting.

These answers will no doubt disappoint. Clearly, this is not so much about precise inquiries as an evasive maneuver in the face of embarrassment. But was an affirmative answer really to be expected? The Tao in the mouths of Western writers … is it not just a Joker card one plays when it comes to promising more than can be delivered? Oh, Taoism! Magic formula for immediate wholeness and lab-made safety, courtesy of atomic physics! The enigmatic syllable “Tao” has recently fallen into the category of kitsch, and those who henceforth commit themselves to its bright magic will be suspected of having joined the New Age choir singing holistic couplets. But I consider it a priori the very center of my work to make myself available for suspicion. After all, philosophers have previously only questioned the interpretation of the world made by other people – it is necessary to engage in it.

      “Eurotaoism” – to hint at a more serious answer – is also a title for the attempt to call attention to the peculiarity of the history-making continent in such an urgent way that a merely superficial critique of it can no longer become plausible. Even if we recognize Eastern wisdom as an impressive and singular greatness, Asian imports alone will not save the Western-mobilized world. The initiative of “Americotaoism” is just that – a response to the “crisis of the West” by importing holistic fast food from the Far East. Of course, this fast food sells itself as Nouvelle Cuisine; it relies on innovation as if it were an irresistible recipe, serves up planetary paradigm shifts like courses on a traditional menu, and earnestly promises that the raw fish course will be followed by a tender Aquarian chop-suey. But as one might fear, the scope of New Thinking amounts to nothing more than suggesting that we eat our ideas with chopsticks from now on – “you are what you eat.”

The present response concedes the validity of such Californian suggestions where they have their place. It serves to remind, however, as humbly as possible and as defiantly as necessary, that there are dishes – to stay with the metaphor – that would leave us hungry with chopsticks in our hand. And these are – literally speaking now – the large-scale phenomena which emerged from the Old European epistemic-messianic substance and became effective on a planetary scale: history, science, industry, mass communication, speed. Even if these are not a constant topic of discussion, the essays in this field constantly gravitate around them. They form the criteria for thought capable of thinking the present. In the face of such thorny phenomena, it may seem like mockery to quote the round world of ancient Chinese polarities. If the title of this book nevertheless does so, it is to recall the ironic scope of self-generated problems at the place where the launching pads of the modernizing expeditions were mounted. From there on out, one would have to be a Taoist to endure the insight that even Taoism can’t help us anymore.

      Why, then, Eurotaoism? In this strange word we hear the remaining echoes of the history-making discontent that drove the great revolutions of modernity. We also hear it chime astonishment that nothing better came out of the European uprisings into the new than the all too current drift towards catastrophe. As a picaresque term, it has something of that “jaded bitterness” from which the guiding intellectual forces of earlier times wanted to distill the knowledge of revolution. But wearing a jester’s hat, the word now heralds an alternative critique of modernity – a critique СКАЧАТЬ