NOTES
ON: Sloterdijk, P. (1984) ‘Cynicism: the
twilight of false consciousness’ in New
German Critique 33: 190-206.
Cynicism
is the hallmark of modern culture.It
cannot be addressed by ideology critique.It
leads itself to naive ideologies, a ‘cunning
multifaceted realism’ which makes ideology
critique itself look naive.It is
general rather than individual, no longer
confined to, say, the great cynics of the past.It is
déclassé, affecting both city dwellers and the
upper classes, including statesman.The
extremes of social life meet in disregard for
the laws obeyed only by the stupid.
Massified
cynicism is new, and cynics are no longer
anonymous—cynicism is the only realistic way to
do things.It is melancholic and depressive, but
cynics are still able to function: indeed,
constant self doubt has become the key to
survival.This
is why cynicism becomes ‘enlightened false
consciousness’ (192).It is
enlightened enough, but no longer vulnerable to
a critique of ideology.Cynicism
is paradoxical but objective--we are without
illusion but we’re also ‘dragged down by the
“power of things”’ (193).
How did
the Enlightenment lead to this ‘modernization of
false consciousness’?The
Enlightenment did have an effect on its
heirs—for example, to be loyal to it is to be
disloyal to the heroes of the past.But
modern cynicism is more than this, it is an all
embracing rejection of new values, it means the
end of hope, it produces ‘listless egoism’ and
detached negativity.The
pressures to survive and to assert one’s self
produce a necessary accommodation [looking a bit
like the alienation of the intellectual
argument]—‘to be intelligent and to perform
one's work in spite of it, that is unhappy
consciousness in its modernized form’ (194).We
have become ‘ill with Enlightenment’.
We adopt a
privatized disposition and decline to be
noticeable.We are discreet, and this leads to the
end of personal critique as well.We
maintain a mournful detachment rather than
mounting critical attacks.We can
see the same trends in the Weimar Republic,
which produced both fascism and us.There
is an essential issue around the connections
between cynicism and fascism—fascism adds
‘military cynicism’ to the mix.Fascism
has been typically neglected by serious
philosophy, as has cynicism, but both deny the
ethics of high culture in favour of personal and
social survival.
We can see
Weimar as failed Enlightenment, overwhelmed by
anti-intellectual forces, authoritarian
ideologies, messianics and apocalyptics.These
tensions produced an irritable and arrogant
reaction from academics at the time.The
defeat of Enlightenment was also due to the
opponents refusing to be rational and to discuss
their differences, part of a long tradition of
denial of the validity of rational knowledge.What
makes Enlightenment values vulnerable is that
they are universal and democratic, meaning they
must enter into a relation with non rational
ideas and cannot simply deny or repress them.These
values were validated and supported by the great
achievements in the 18th and 19th
centuries in science, but also supported 20th
century perversions [Auschwitz] and have
produced pessimism.
The
Enlightenment must involve free consent and
reason, the pursuit of the better argument and
so on, and this shows it is actually based on an
‘original utopia, a beautiful and academic
vision’ (198).The loss of rational argument might be
bearable as the ‘price of commonality’, an
advantage for the ordinary consciousness, but it
leads to hegemony, class interests,
defensiveness, or repression and annihilation.The
only hope is for the Enlightenment to hold on,
against the reality, hoping for a moment when
philosophy will help life again, currently a
laughable notion, but to be maintained as a
‘healing fiction’ after the ‘hells of realism’
(199).
The
Enlightenment soon realized its difficulties,
after some early astonishment at resistance.It was
soon opposed by hegemonic powers, tradition and
common sense, all of which can be described as
prejudices.Obviously, there is no way to compel
dialogue [we do insist on attendance at
universities!].We can perform ideology critique on these
prejudices, but this is often done in the
absence of any real contact with the enemy, who
is rendered as a ‘case’.The
conflict takes the form of a ‘war of
consciousness’, and the opponent is objectified.
The
Enlightenment is able to expose errors and bad
faith, and errors can be personal or systematic.Ideology
is seen to operate behind the consciousness of
the subject. These critical activities are
really cruel and satirical, but are now
abstracted from laughter and classical cynicism
and have become serious, even respectable, as in
the forms of Marxism or psychoanalysis.Theory
has replaced satire, a ‘bourgeoisification of
satire’ (202).Ideology critique is therefore no longer
about winning over opponents but dissecting
them.It
does force opponents to speak, but they can also
avoid rationality and do counter-denunciations
instead.A
critique can force confessions, but critics are
wrong to see confessions of rational weakness as
the same as announcing political or military
weakness.Ideology
critique analyses rather than disarms.It can
take the form of a kind of one-upmanship, where
rivals are denounced or incorporated.
Personal
attacks are not welcomed in universities, which
produces a general dislike of unmasking.Outsiders
do it instead in the form of a ‘holy
non-seriousness, still one of the sure indices
of truth’ (204).Universities pursue unmasking in the name
of hermeneutic, attempting to understand the
opponent better than he does himself, or to show
the ‘everlasting embarrassment of ideas in the
face of underlying interests’ (204).This
can only be helpful if a dialogue ensues: too
often, there are simple claims to be right, to
be doing science rather than satire.This
scientific approach often leads to seeing
opponents as psychopathological, denying and
reifying reality.
The worst
offender is Marxism,, stressing abstract social
mechanisms rather than individuals and their
weaknesses.It analyses false consciousness, but
tends towards that which is predictable,
graspable and ‘correct’.In
this it is very close to cynicism, although it
still believes in emancipation.
Generally,
sociological relativism also leads to cynicism,
for example with the argument that ‘correct illusions’
are needed: ordinary people are seen as
naive and manipulable.This
has led to a ban on reflection, and an attack on
intellectuals [describes the current relation
between theorists and practitioners to a tee!]