Peter Sloterdijk

Peter Sloterdijk (Karlsruhe, June 26, 1947) is a German philosopher and professor at the Karlsruhe School of Art and Design.

Biography

Trained in the orbit of the followers of the Frankfurt School, he soon realized that the works of Adorno and others did not come out of what he called "melancholic science". His trip to India to study with a famous guru, Rajneesh (later called Osho), changed his attitude towards philosophy. His Critique of Cynical Reason , from 1983, was still in that style of critique of instrumental reason analyzed by his teachers, the works that followed are already imbued with the new transgressive spirit. However, two tendencies should be noted in Sloterdijk: the aforementioned rupturist with academic thought, and another that is inserted in his work as a university professor, and that leads him to a certain didacticism, not to say encyclopedicism. He held a famous debate with Jürgen Habermas on the concept and content of Humanism on the occasion of the ideas set forth in his work Norms for the human park . This controversy meant his entry into the media universe, with consequences that he had not foreseen. His fine analyzes of Nietzsche and Heidegger's legacy alternated with other more personal books, where he develops a phenomenology of space that he has called spherology: his most ambitious work to date is Spheres, a trilogy composed by Bubbles, Balloons and Foams.

Sloterdijk's interests are so broad and varied that they exceed many of his colleagues: music, psychoanalysis, poetry (especially French), the work of certain forgotten authors such as Gabriel Tarde, Gaston Bachelard or little known as Thomas Macho; contemporary art, anthropology, and a long etcetera. He has also been concerned with political issues, which he has developed both in works from long ago (In the same boat) and more recent ones (If Europe wakes up), where he shows supporter of a solid Europe and not subject to the drifts of external powers. Faced with the academicism of other thinkers, his commitment to the media or being a media philosopher , which he has studied for a long time and about which he also writes, has led to numerous criticisms. It is also distinguished from the rest by its highly stylized writing, even literary, which owes some features to the impulse of Ernst Bloch or certain Frenchmen like Gilles Deleuze, but adopting its own terminology and creation of risky neologisms such as spherology and its variants microspherology and macrospherology etc.

In 2005 he was awarded the Sigmund-Freud-Preis für wissenschaftliche Prose.

Works

Works translated into Spanish up to July 2010 in ascending order to their publication in German (compiled by Octavio Díaz Aldret):

• Criticism of cynical reason(trad. Miguel Ángel Vega); Madrid; Siruela; 2003 [published in German in 1983]
• The magical tree: the birth of psychoanalysis in 1785. Epic essay on the philosophy of psychology(Trad. Ana María de la Fuente); Barcelona; Seix Barral; 1986 (1a ed) and 2002 (2a ed) [published in German in 1985]
• The stage thinker. the materialism of Nietzsche(trad. Germán Cano); Valencia; Pre-Textos; 2000 [published in German in 1986]
• Come into the world, come to the language.(trad. Germán Cano); Valencia; Pre-texts; 2006 [published in German in 1988]
• Eurotaoism. Contributions to the Critique of Political Science(trad. Ana María de la Fuente); Barcelona; Seix Barral; 2001 [published in German in 1989]
• Extradition of the world(trad. Eduardo Gil Bera); Valencia; Pre-Textos; 1998 [published in German in 1993]
• On the same boat. Testing on hyperpolitics(Trad. Manuel Fontán del Junco); Madrid; Siruela; Madrid; 1994 [published in German in 1993]
• If Europe breaks down. Reflections on the agenda of a global power at the end of the era of its political absence(trad. Germán Cano); Valencia; Ed. Pre-Textos, 2004 [published in German in 1994]
• Sphere I: Bubbles. Microphysiology(trad. Isidoro Reguera, prol. Rüdiger Safranski); Madrid; Siruela; 2003 [published in German in 1998]
• Sphere II: Balloons. Macrosferology(trad. Isidoro Reguera, prol. Rüdiger Safranski); Madrid; Siruela; 2004 [published in German in 1999]
• Standards for the human park. An answer to Heidegger's 'Chart on Humanism'(trad. Teresa Rocha Barco); Madrid; Siruela; 2003 [published in German in 1999]
• Experiments with oneself. A conversation with Carlos Oliveira(trad, introd and notes Germán Cano); Valencia; Pre-texts; 2003 [published in German in 2000. COAUTOR Carlos Oliveira]
• The contempt of the masses. Rehearsal on the cultural struggles of modern society(trad. Germán Cano); Valencia; Pre-texts; 2002 [published in German in 2000]
• About the improvement of the Good News. The fifth 'Evangelio' according to Nietzsche. Speech delivered on 25 August 2000 in Weimar commemorating the centenary of the death of Friedrich Nietzsche(trad. Germán Cano); Madrid; Siruela; 2005 [published in German in 2001]
• The Sun and Death. Dialog investigations(trad. Germán Cano); Madrid; Siruela; 2004 [published in German in 2001. COAUTOR Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs]
• Without salvation: behind the footsteps of Heidegger(Trad Joaquín Chamorro Mielke); Madrid; Akal; 2011 [published in German in 2001]
• Air tremors. In the sources of terror(trad. Germán Cano; prol., photographic section Nicolás Sánchez Durá); Valencia; Pre-texts; 2003 [published in German in 2002]
• Sphere III: Spiumas. Plural science(trad. Isidoro Reguera, prol. Rüdiger Safranski); Madrid; Siruela; 2006 [published in German in 2004]
• The beats of the world. Dialogue(trad. de la ed. in French Heber Cardoso); Buenos Aires; Amorrrortu; 2008 [published in German in 2004. COAUTOR Alain Finkielkraut]
• In the inner world of capital. For a philosophical theory of globalization(trad. Isidoro Reguera, prol. Rüdiger Safranski); Madrid; Siruela; 2007 [published in German in 2005]
• Time and time. Psychopolitical essay(trad. Miguel Ángel Vega Cernuda and Elena Serrano Bertos); Madrid; Siruela; 2010 [published in German in 2006]
• Derrida, an Egyptian. The problem of the Jewish pyramid(trad. de la ed. in French Horacio Pons); Buenos Aires; Amorrortu, 2007 [published in German in 2007]
• Celo de Dios: about the struggle of the three monotheisms(trad. Isidoro Reguera Pérez); Madrid; Siruela; 2011 [published in German in 2007]
• The return of religion. A conversation(trad. Monica Sanchez, get in. Félix Duque); Oviedo; KRK; 2007 [published in German in 2007. COAUTOR Cardenal Walter Kasper]
• Philosophical Temperaments: from Plato to Foucault(Trad Jorge Seca Gil); Madrid; Siruela; 2011 [published in German in 2009]
• You must change your life. About anthropotechnical(trad Pedro Madrigal); Madrid; Pre-Textos; 2012 [published in German in 2009]
• Apparent death in thinking: about philosophy and science as exercise; Madrid; Siruela; 2013 [published in German in 2011]
• The Terrible Children of the Modern Age: About the Antigeneous Experiment of Modernity; Madrid; Siruela; 2015 [published in German in 2014]
• Stress and Freedom(trad. Paula Kuffer); Buenos Aires; Godot Editions, 2017. ISBN 978-987-4086-20-4 [published in German in 2011]
• What happened in the 20th century? Translated by Isidoro Reguera, Editorial Siruela, Collection Biblioteca de Ensayo, Serie mayor 94, Year of publication 2018.
• Political epidemics(trad. Nicole Narbebury); Buenos Aires; Godot Editions; 2020. ISBN 978-987-4086-97-6.