Esferas II: Globos - Macrosferología

Sphären #2

by Peter Sloterdijk, Isidoro Reguera (Translator)

Si el primer volumen de la trilogía Esferas , titulado Burbujas , trata de las microsferas –de que el individuo desde el estadio de feto hasta la niñez nunca está solo, sino que siempre incluye al otro y se orienta de acuerdo con él–, con el segundo volumen de Esferas , titulado Globos , se recorre una historia del mundo político basada en las imágenes rectoras morfológicas de la esfera y del globo. Peter Sloterdijk muestra que todas las manifestaciones con respecto a la globalización están aquejadas hasta ahora de miopía. Para él, la globalización comienza con los griegos, quienes ya representaron el universo mediante la imagen de la esfera. Ésta también se encuentra en la base de las representaciones de orden de los imperios premodernos. Con el descubrimiento de América y las primeras circunvoluciones terrestres, aparece en su lugar el globo. Esta segunda globalización es sustituida por una tercera, dado que la virtualidad general de todas las relaciones conduce a una crisis de espacio. El autor narra, así, la verdadera historia de la globalizació desde la geometrización del cielo en Platón y Aristóteles hasta la circunvolución de la última esfera, la tierra, por barcos, capitales y señales. Peter Sloterdijk emprende aquí, por tanto, la tarea de poner al descubierto los fundamentos filosóficos de la historia política de los últimos dos milenios y medio.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Art, Theory

928 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Peter Sloterdijk is a German philosopher, cultural theorist, television host and columnist. He is a professor of philosophy and media theory at the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe.

Peter Sloterdijk studied philosophy, Germanistics and history at the University of Munich. In 1975 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg. Since 1980 he has published many philosophical works, including the Critique of Cynical Reason. In 2001 he was named president of the State Academy of Design, part of the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. In 2002 he began to co-host Das Philosophische Quartett, a show on the German ZDF television channel devoted to discussing key issues affecting present-day society.

The Kritik der Zynischen Vernunft (Critique of Cynical Reason), published by Suhrkamp in 1983, became the best-selling philosophical book in the German language since the Second World War and launched Sloterdijk's career as an author.

The trilogy Spheres is the philosopher's magnum opus. The first volume was published in 1998, the second in 1999, and the last in 2004.

Reviews

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

A montage of totality as the bubble of globalization bursts.

"And whoever is sitting before it will finally grasp what an intelligence resolved to examine is capable of. Here the world has become concept – from now on, its being consists in making space for the space, imaging the image, and measuring the measure. The image of the orb assists this process of becoming understood being" (p.23).

[Vladimir · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thousand pages, but it was worth it. I can't wait to read the third book of the trilogy.

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 5 out of 5]

Megalomanski filozofski sataraš.
Usfereni džinovski podvig.
(Monade u teretani!)
Apsorbovanje apsorbovanja: studija moći, antropologija emitovanja, ontologija globalizacije, sveopšta istorija sveta, hipertraktat o modernitetu, anatomija atmosfere...

Neobuhvatljivo, naduveno, helijumsko, neretko i uobraženo štivo jedne grozničave, razbarušene a disciplinovane svesti.

Sloterdijk je najčešće kompilator, ali veoma zabavan i vešt kompilator. Priroda njegove hermetičnosti je drukčija u odnosu na, na primer, poznatu plejadu francuskih poststrukturalista. On nije toliko zauman ili sklon samodopadljivim jezičkim igrarijama, koliko je energičan, prkosan, ciničan, ponekad nesređen, a ponekad istovremeno i otmen i vulgaran (BOG kao AUTOKOPROFAG (412)). Međutim, koliko god rasplinut bio, Sloterdijk poseduje jasan idejni tok. Njegov obim jeste ogroman (od papizma do klima-uređaja) ali u skladu je sa odabranom temom. Sfere jesu SVEre (= udaljeni prostori koji se razapinju usled zajedničkog stanovanja u njima (981)).

Globusi asociraju na totalitet, masu, moć, beskraj, obuhvat. Sloterdijk se opsesivno bavi oblicima moći otelovljenim u kugli - ogroman broj ilustracija o knjizi posvećen je upravo likovnom aspektu ovog fenomena. Neretko su ti prikazi najbolji podupirači za Sloterdijkove sferolike misaone konstrukcije. Štaviše, kada se slika upari sa tekstom, kao da dobijamo nekakav kolosalni tranepohalni postmodernistički roman. U njemu kao likovi figuriraju i: Amenofis IV (zanimljivo da ga primećuje u svojim memoarima i Milutin Milanković - u pitanju je faraon koji je hteo da celokupan egipatski panteon zameni kultom Sunca - Atonom - zato je i upamćen kao Ehnaton, tj. onaj koji svira Atonu (686), zatim Kristofor Kolumbo (stari egotripozni poluprepredenjak koji se čak potpisivao kao apostol (108), Dante (kod koga je "Pesnička supstancijalizacija pakla" dovela do "otkrića antisfere", odnosno "depresivnog prostora" gde je moguće da ljudsko biće bude uskraćeno sfere (592) - zanimljivo je stoga razmišljati i kako postoji detaljan prikaz Pakla, ali ne i "sudskog procesa" dolaska do njega - duše se plahovito sortiraju), Žil Vern (čija je poruka da "u tehnički zasićenoj civilizaciji nema više avantura već da postoje samo kašnjenja (813), kao i da je jedina veza između njegovog Fileasa Foga i predela kroz koje prolazi "zainteresovanost da se kroz njih prođe" (815) - dakle, Vern nam, u svojoj, kako Sloterdijk tvrdi "galopirajućoj površnosti" nudi novu novu poetiku saobraćaja - revoluciju putovanja (812), Herman Melvil (ah, kitolov!)... Ali kao lik figurira i miris - može se izdvojiti čitava knjiga-u-knjizi posvećena oflakrnoj ontologiji (Gerüchte naspram Gerüche, glasina naspram zadah (334) + smellscape (332)).
A govor o sferama je iznova dijalektike praforme i invencije - poroznost duha tačkastog (infinitezimalnog) decentriranog subjekta. (Geografska) otkrića preoblikuju poznati pejzaž,
domet/n (domen) moći. Pod njihovom upravom krčkaju se i zanimljive povesti o istoriji globusa, o izrabljivanju, ali se ukazuje i na pradavnost i nezaustavljivost globalizacije.

Sloterdijk bi rekao da je mistika "stečena imunoslabost regionalnih ontologija" koja se dobija "usled nezaštićenog ophođenja mišljenja sa intrigantnim pojmom beskonačnog" (535). Naravno da mu ne bi bilo milo da to zna - ali mislim da je i on sam mističar. Zarobio se u sopstvenoj mreži (pardon, sferi!).

Pošto ne mogu (niti želim) pobeći od svog svetonazora, istaći ću da je Makrosferologija meni posebno zanimljiva u svom neopipljivom svojstvu - inspirativna su mi bila razmišljanja o tome kako društva proizvode atmosferu, kao i dihotomija na pneumatsku i kosmološku ekologiju (416), jer upućuje na posebnu ekonomiju bivstvujućeg o kojoj nisam razmišljao.

(Za atmosferu: Definicija malih ljudi jeste da za njih politika i meteorološki fenomeni imaju isti rang (141). + Sam kraj Globusa posvećen je klima-uređaju i tome kako će "buduće kulture stanovanja" biti opsednute potrebom da se "proizvede unutrašnja klima pogodna za život" (979). Te dok ovo pišem razmišljam gde mi je daljinski za klimu, kao i gde ću da ostavim istrošene baterije. A mali sam čovek - vremenska prognoza mi je politika. I obratno.)

Svega je previše u ovoj knjizi! Svega. Ali svega je i nedovoljno.
Sloterdijk me iritira - grebulja mi mozak.
To je dragoceno.

[Miloš · Rating 5 out of 5]

ovo je onako, savršeno skoro.

[Silvio Weitzl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Von der Vollkommenheit der Kugel

Der zweite Band des Sloterdijkschen „Opus trinitarium“ (Globen) entpuppt sich als ein Mosaik, welches der Autor bereit ist vor uns auszubreiten. Er stellt den Menschen damit auf und in die Welt. Das Werk behandelt die terrestrische Globalisierung und singt eine Ode an das makelloseste, uns bekannte Symbol : den Kreis. Dieses ouroboreske Thema wird durch philosophische Insiderwitze aufgelockert und besticht mit der unvergleichlichen Informiertheit des Verfassers. Wenn man keinen Anstand besäße, könnte man glatt mit Neid auf die überaus intelligenten Gedankengänge Sloterdijks blicken.

[Alex Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This second volume was long. Sloterdijk goes through, again, centered on the concept of a Globe in order to highlight how this concept influenced philosophy and cultural aesthetics. I thought his section on ontotheology and Globes to be very interesting and highly applicable to our mental space today. Some of the other parts are less interesting.

I don't have much else to say, although at times Sloterdijk seems to stretch the concept a little too far. All in all this is interesting, although really like his first volume, this is little more than a list of meditations around a central concept.

[Licinius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qu’est ce que l’idée de sphère, de boule dans la société humaine ? Un espace de sécurité, préservant un intérieur contre un extérieur, en dehors de la sphère, c'est-à-dire l’inconnu, l’étranger, l’ennemi. C’est la ville et ses murs qui ont donné cette notion de boule, qui s’est réellement imprimé dans l’esprit de l’homme. La ville devenant un monde en elle-même, une arche de Noé. Bien sûr au cours du temps, cette notion a évolué de plus en plus. Jusqu’à finalement éclater complètement. Le modernisme n’a pas tué Dieu, il a tué la Boule (ce qui revient finalement un peu au même).
Sloterdijk pose donc le problème de la boule, de la sphère ainsi : Que doit devenir la boule dans une époque sans rois ou, que deviennent les rois dans une époque sans boule ? La boule est la représentation de la perfection, de ce qui n’a ni commencement, ni fin, échappe à la corruption du temps, symbolise le divin, un monde parfait où la nouveauté n’aurait pas sa place car synonyme forcément de dégradation. Pour nous modernes, cette représentation est morte. La culture d’innovation, la démocratie et l’Etre qui veut tout ont mis au bûcher la boule, qui ne sert plus à rien : la philosophie contemporaine a montré que l’homme est une créature lacunaire, qui n’arrivera pas à rencontrer l’Etre et qui préfère l’utilitarisme plutôt que le luxe de l’existence. Ce livre retrace la naissance, le développement (via l’Académie de Platon), l’apogée (à travers le Christianisme) et la lente désagrégation de la sphère dans l’espace européen. L’auteur nous emmène donc dans une véritable odyssée dans l’histoire des idées européenne, soit environ plus de 2000 ans à parcourir. C’est très intéressant, malgré quelques difficultés dans la conceptualisation de certains termes pour ma part. Je le recommande à tous ceux qui cherchent à comprendre les raisons du succès de l’impérialisme européen entre 1450 et 1945 mais aussi la mentalité d’un passé qui nous semble difficile à appréhender pour nous, modernes décentrés.

[Geoffreyjen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, I did like the book but found it longwinded in sections. Sloterdijk is more a philosophical painter than a deep thinker in the manner of Deleuze or Whitehead. The result is mot what one expects. Reading this in a group was a big help, though - see video conversations at infiniteconversations.com

[Helma]

Een heerlijke vorm van hersengymnastiek; aanteken-boekje erbij en geregeld weer in terug grijpen.

[Dionysius the Areopagite]

Who's Afraid of Muhammad?

A glaring, unspoken trend all honest men and women must come across is the seemingly infinite (I'm serious - they don't stop multiplying) number of 'Religious Critiques' that can be summed up as: 99% attack on Christianity, .4% reference(s) to Buddhism, .1% reference to Judaism, and a cumulative .5% of every single other religion, regardless of size, color, shape, or gender.

When dealing with Sloterdijk's 2,500 pseudo-tome-with-commercial-breaks-of-commendable-insight this becomes five times as glaringly obvious as any honest, unbiased reader of William James's Varieties notices less than a hundred pages in.

This fact can be taken in a number of ways. For the Christian, it is an irrefutable sign that Satan is at work, and that the End Times are near (When have they not been?). For the Western atheist, this is par for the course, as the texts serve as cannon fodder as post-teen and their doctor-gods brainstorm how to market next month's Trans 4 Sharia summer program.

Which brings us to a point that when mentioned, is never not beating around the bush like Moses at the advent of the fire-hose: Where is Islam in all of this? Is it never mentioned because the writer(s) don't want to live like Salmon Rushdie, or die en masse like the pedestrian French cartoonists?

At this point the astonishing nugget of truth brings out ravenous, otherwise-sedated-by-not-personally-knowing-anyone-murdered-by-suicide-bombing placard-wielding psychopaths whose suicidal optimism is the very reason for their ideological perishing, from which they have now at once been summoned. Halt, ye need not apply; the holy protest followed by electronic altar is that way!

So in other words, is Sloterdijk just another flash in the pan who will not even mention the religion creeping across his land in all directions, following in the footsteps of revered critics who would not even speak the truth from a formidable distance?

I would have something to gain were I looking for a philosophical berating of Islam. I would have material to pick up. I am not looking for that.

I am looking for the unbiased facts from the philosophical-historical point of view with equal thoroughness as Christianity is given. Why has no one done this? Why is no one now, in today's Europe, not writing this?

For a culture demanding tolerance and equality, rules fly out of the window for Islam. But you and I already knew this. My question is Why?

Is it, at the end of the day, because philosophers who tell the historical and present truth about Islam will die?

What kind of philosopher is afraid of death?

There are many questions here. I guarantee they will be met with antagonistic transcripts bound not in truth but digital dogma; that, and silence.

It is either unfounded rage or silence with Islam. Considering its over one billion adherents and growth in the Western World, this trend announces that we shall not, in reality, have a fair discussion, critique, of all major religions. We will just say we are going to, and then ignore Islam whilst lambasting Christianity in what is becoming the most cringe-worthy, odiously repetitive past-time of unoriginal thinkers.

So then that leaves me as the one to write, right, the modern philosophical tome willing to treat all major religions with accurate depth, brevity, and space. Life is too short to have 2,500 pages of recurring dissection of Jesus Christ without evening mentioning the vast history of Muhammad and his disciples.

The elephant in the room has turned out another one of Hannibal's, as thou art long removed from thy mountains.

[Christopher Timmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

"'Mankind' after globalization consists mostly of those left behind in their own skins, victims of the locational disadvantage of oneself."

Is God with us here on Earth, or in Heaven? Macrospherically, the effects of this question were never contained during the Middle Ages, the primary example being Dante's Inferno. God can only be where He is most removed from us, both out of our sin but also as supreme Creator, contains us. Satan, as such, resides in the center of Earth, whose archaic rebellion likewise has centered God's creation. Humanity at most can only be at the periphery of Satan's domain, which grants him authority in a metaphysical picture that Judaism never included. In this Christian representation, the center of God's creation is where Satan resides, perhaps moreso, is Satan himself.

The infernal state of ancient rebellion thus governs the heart of this planet, and God as such, sphereologically, must retreat from the world itself. This was in fact an early testament to the eventual rise of colonialism seen in the Renaissance and beyond. In the absence of Godly spaces in "savage" lands, it is imperative to the conquistador that the lands be taken, the maps drawn out. This is colonialism as an overactive immune system -- God as first defense, like skin, was far removed from the ligaments, tendons, and other deep tissues, even by the 16th century for Europeans. Anything that was unknown -- a people, a land -- was super-exposed. The white space on the map, or the white of the whale, had to be filled in or domesticated by Western man. Our crowning achievement is in taming vacuums and creating ones of our own -- our very own Moby Dicks in a jar, in Geneva and wherever labs may populate. It is our abhorrence of emptiness that made us realize early wherever God is absent, so too should we abhor that space. More aggro-mystically, if the "savage" can be emptied, Western man will necessarily have to occupy him or her.

However, to return to the first paragraph here, this preoccupation with vacuums will be our undoing. The savages have been tamed by sword and bank, but the Western being must now be occupied by its own superstructures in attempts to create a substitute God-skin. Individually, everyone must become a blister for this techno-corporate layering process -- a classic case of Earth needing to meet Heaven, but not vice-versa. It's not enough to be oneself anymore, because in the absence of a properly functioning metaphysical immune system, one can only be outside themselves if one wants to survive. The focus has shifted from being in the world to being where on the world(?). There is no place one can be themselves without feeling like a fraud, that it isn't enough. The land has been conquered, but your mental landscape hasn't been.

You are to be an alien, unknown to yourself, because you are still full of darkness (in the unconscious), a thing unknown to yourself. Yet, all aliens are explorers. To be a creator or consumer has become the same for the sake of inner exploration, and the strife produced by those who think differently is just the blistering of whatever remnants of God-skin is left to us. Your wounding in alienation can still prevent onset emptiness, which, if recognized as a shared condition, would make us mute. That's the talk of the town, at least. A good thing no one speaks otherwise.

[Volbet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading my way through the second layer of Peter Sloterdijk's balls, I've realized that the Spheres Trilogy is not really a "traditional" philosophical undertaking. Sloterdijk is certainly philosophical, and he manage to make some extremely persuasive arguments in favor of his thesis, but those arguments aren't structured and framed like most philosophy.
Rather, Sloterdijk writes like a man of aesthetics, painting the history of ideas with a broad brush and describing it in sweeping, poetic terms. As such, it's never important to consider the factuality of Sloterdijk's premisses or conclusions that matter, but rather the value that they bring to the overall picture that Sloterdijk is creating.
But most importantly, Sloterdijk managed something in this second volume of the trilogy to pain a coherent argument from the micro level to the macro level. And with this point, Sloterdijk has already surpassed most other philosophers writing in the same style.

Sloterdijk's sphereology is a really interesting way of framing the history of ideas, and in this volume Sloterdijk takes on the spheres framing the human spheres. Taking us from being-in to being-within, further exploring the phenomo-existential dimension of space on a super-individual level.
And like all good works of post-existential philosophy, Sloterdijk really does challenge you and makes you reconsider the way human society has been framed historically.

[daaltena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hoppa, we zijn door 1+2 (Bellen en Globen) heen. Het heeft wat inspanning gekost, terwijl het boek juist zo toegevend was, met de vele voorbeelden, zij het in woord of in beeld. Een complex van (westers beschavingselementaire) herinneringen die je door de moderniteit onaangeroerd lieten, gereanimeerd en opnieuw ontleed. Benieuwd naar het moderne tijdperk in deel #3 (Schuim). Irrudisie, eksooties en essoteeries. Bellen vullen de gaten. Globen als de vernislak. #1 Micro- #2 Macrosferologie. Wellicht oververhaast doorgenomen, door stressdruck van de leentermijn en de tentamijn. #1 in het Duytsch nog in de boekenkast, voor een reread na blablabla. Wat volgt komt in deze leesvolgorde: 1. Europa; 2. Gedaanteverandering of 'n metaforiese muizeval; 3. Savant Relics; 4. Last Action Hero (Tine); 5. Last Action Hero (Newman & Marsh). Algoeds.

[John Seeder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Take all your favorite theories. Toss them into the wind.

See what makes it back to you. There's a power in your blood, in your humanity that is good, that is natural, that is what you want to be.

And you have no control over it.

For good reason. It's not yours.

Not yourself, not you, not your feelings, not your thoughts, not your experiences.

Take all your favorite thoughts. Toss them into the wind.

See what happens.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The transition from religious attempts at globalism to precapitalist attempts at globalism as globalism breaks down and antiglobalism provides its own globalism. Don’t know why it had to take 1,000 pages, but I like his style of pulling up obscure medieval lit and using it to make guesses about the distant future.

[Bryan Boshoven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hoofdthesis in sferen 1 en 2 zijn zeer interessant, echter zijn de uitwerkingen hiervan soms all over the place en heel erg lang. Sloterdijk is op zijn best in de introductie van zijn voorbeelden, maar gaat vervolgens te lang door. Nogsteeds erg genoten, ben benieuwd wat er in het derde deel staat.

[Corneel Minne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lijp

[Daniël Mok]

Het extreme individualisme van onze tijd wordt hierin gevat in de metafoor van het schuim: de nieuwste verschijningsvorm van de sferen waarin de mens moet leven. [return][return]In Sferen (deel 2) vraagt Sloterdijk niet langer 'Wat is de mens?', maar 'Waar is de mens?' Mensen omhullen zich met ruimtelijke sferen om zich te beschermen tegen de anderen en tegen de wereld. Waar die sferen in het eerste historische deel nog immuunruimtes en onmetelijke globes waren, is voor de moderne mens het schuim het centrale beeld. De wereld valt in schuimbellen uiteen. Sloterdijk daagt ons uit na te denken over de plaats die we innemen op aarde.

[Ivo Moyersoen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Opmerkelijk werk. Voor niet filosofen een moeilijke klus die een filosofisch woordenboek vereist en tijd om sommige stukken te herlezen. Nu en dan zijn er litteraire hoogstandjes die het lezen vergemakkelijken en waarvan men overvloedig kan genieten.
Sloterdijk is zonder meer een van de belangrijkste filosofen van vandaag. Een aanrader.

[Erica Jones]

Note to self
For exploration of the archetype of the center, especially read the introduction and chapters 4 and 5. Sean Kelly states, "this is the most comprehensive and original treatment of the metaphysics and phenomenology of sphere and center."

[Annie]

can someone please translate all three volumes of this to english? thanks.

[Frans Heuvelmans · Rating 5 out of 5]

a benchmark in todays philosopy

[John Calvelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the great books, and trilogies, of today.