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Derrida, an Egyptian: On the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid
Shortly before his death in 2004, Jacques Derrida expressed two paradoxical convictions: he was certain that he would be forgotten the very day he died, yet at the same time certain that something of his work would survive in the cultural memory. This text by Peter Sloterdijk - one of the major figures of contemporary philosophy - makes a contribution of its own to the preservation and continuation of Derrida's unique and powerful work. In this brief but illuminating text, Sloterdijk offers a series of recontextualizations of Derrida's work by exploring the connections between Derrida and seven major thinkers, including Hegel, Freud and Thomas Mann. The leitmotif of this exploration is the role that Egypt and the Egyptian pyramid plays in the philosophical imagination of the West, from the exodus of Moses and the Jews to the conceptualization of the pyramid as the archetype of the cumbersome objects that cannot be taken along by the spirit on its return to itself.
'Egyptian' is the term for all constructs that can be subjected to deconstruction - except for the pyramind, that most Egyptian of edifices, which stands in its place, unshakeable for all time, because its form is the undeconstructible remainder of a construction that is built to look as it would after its own collapse.
'Egyptian' is the term for all constructs that can be subjected to deconstruction - except for the pyramind, that most Egyptian of edifices, which stands in its place, unshakeable for all time, because its form is the undeconstructible remainder of a construction that is built to look as it would after its own collapse.
80 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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202 people want to read
About the author
Peter Sloterdijk
130 books588 followersPeter 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
September 3, 2017
This is a curious homage, a series of placements, probing and portable. Sloterdjik situates Derrida adjacent to Luhmann, Freud, Thomas Mann, Franz Borkenau, Régis Debray, Hegel and Boris Groys. The thread is from Freud, his final work Moses and Monotheism contained a chapter-- Moses, an Egyptian--which poses the idea that Moses was for all purposes an Egyptian who was fascinated by monotheism and thus led the Hebrews out of Egypt to see if they would embrace his notion of a one true god and would solidify this with a ritual of circumcision which he borrowed form the Egyptians: this the rule of identity is taken from the excluded population. Mann's Joseph continues this artful trajectory with Derrida himself journeying from the periphery to the Castle and interpreting the dreams of the ruling class. Fascinating
December 12, 2018
In this lovely eulogy, Sloterdijk says farewell to Derrida, concluding with how he received the news of the latter’s death and “the noise in the hall was suddenly in a different world” (73).
The argument attempts to understand one of Derrida’s final statements, his premonition that he would “be forgotten as soon as he died” but also that “something of his work would survive” (viii); Sloterdijk regards this as “Derrida’s ‘fundamental position’ [Grundstellung] – if I might be allowed to apply that Heideggerian expression ad hominem” (ix). He suggests that Derrida’s “self-description” is “almost a metaphysical statement,” that he embodies “oppositions that are incapable of synthesis, and coexist despite being mutually exclusive” (id.). Sloterdijk undertakes to ‘desingularize’ Derrida and place this self-description in context, via contrasting analyses with seven other writers.
The first stop is Luhmann, from whom Derrida’s “differences […] could hardly be greater” (4). We don’t know if Derrida read Luhmann, but the latter thought of deconstruction “as an undertaking closely related to his own intentions, in the sense that he saw the same post-ontological energies at work” (6); Luhmann thought deconstruction to “presuppose the ‘catastrophe of modernity’ which should be thought of as a shift from the form of stability existing in traditional hierarchical-centralist society to the form of stability found in our modern, differentiated, multifocal society” (7). Sloterdijk thinks that Luhmann honors Derrida for solving the puzzle of the postmodern world: moving from a “stability through centering and solid foundations to stability through greater flexibility and decentering” (8). Luhmann: “‘deconstruction will survive its own deconstruction as the most relevant description of modern society’s self-description’” (id.), a formulation coded with “second-order observation,” wherein “one no longer attempts a direct description of the world, but rather re-describes and thus deconstructs” (7). The question accordingly becomes whether “the core impulse of deconstruction was to pursue a project of construction with the aim of creating an undeconstructible survival machine” (10).
The argument shifts to the later Freud, who in Moses and Monotheism developed the thesis that Moses was “in reality Egyptian by culture and nationality” and committed to the astrotheological monotheism of the Aten cult (12), needing thereby the Jewish slaves in order to develop heretical Egyptian ideas—which requires the displacement of both the slaves and the heresy: “the history of ideas takes the form of a massive game of displacement in which motifs from Egyptian universalism are acted out by non-Egyptian protagonists” (16); Sloterdijk suggests that this is a “self-correction of psychoanalysis at the last minute” (16): “ultimately it is not the unconscious that decides the fate of humans; what truly counts is the incognito that conceals the origin of the dominant ideas” (17).
In Thomas Mann’s able writings, the escape from Egypt becomes a matter of “wresting myth from the hands of intellectual fascism and remolding it in humanist form” (21), wherein “the career of Sigmund Freud, who, by suggesting a science of dream analysis, had succeeded in making the late feudal society of Habsburg Austro-Egyptians dependent on his interpretations” (24). Freud, or Joseph (or Derrida) “can only try his luck by subjecting the symbolic fabrications of the powerful to an analysis that is sufficiently fascinating to them” (25). Sloterdijk is quick to point out a second wave of dream interpretation, based in leftist messianism (Benjamin and Bloch, say), a “mass interpretation of dreams in whose course the proletarian and traditional dreams of a better life would be elevated to a political productive force” (25). Derrida is a “third wave of dream interpretation” (26) showing “how Egypt works in us”:
From there Sloterdijk invokes Debray’s work on mediology, wherein “the myth of exodus is tied to that of total mobilization” (47), so that the escaping Jewish slave population must “transform itself into a foreign, movable things that abducts itself”—which is a perfectly Nietzschean moment at which
It is this insight that triggers Sloterdijk’s final invocation, of Groys' work on “the burial chamber within it in which the mummy of the pharaoh is deposited” (66). For Groys, “one will never understand the artistic system of modern culture unless one observes how the pharaonic chamber is reused in it” (67), as it is “an archetype of a dead space that can be summoned and rebuilt elsewhere” (id.). We see it in museums, say, but generally in all “heterotopic locations in the midst of the modern ‘lifeworld’ where selected objects are mortified, defunctionalized, removed from all profane uses and offered up for reverent viewing” (id.).
No mention of the Thoth cover on the familiar edition of the Grammatology, but good times overall.
The argument attempts to understand one of Derrida’s final statements, his premonition that he would “be forgotten as soon as he died” but also that “something of his work would survive” (viii); Sloterdijk regards this as “Derrida’s ‘fundamental position’ [Grundstellung] – if I might be allowed to apply that Heideggerian expression ad hominem” (ix). He suggests that Derrida’s “self-description” is “almost a metaphysical statement,” that he embodies “oppositions that are incapable of synthesis, and coexist despite being mutually exclusive” (id.). Sloterdijk undertakes to ‘desingularize’ Derrida and place this self-description in context, via contrasting analyses with seven other writers.
The first stop is Luhmann, from whom Derrida’s “differences […] could hardly be greater” (4). We don’t know if Derrida read Luhmann, but the latter thought of deconstruction “as an undertaking closely related to his own intentions, in the sense that he saw the same post-ontological energies at work” (6); Luhmann thought deconstruction to “presuppose the ‘catastrophe of modernity’ which should be thought of as a shift from the form of stability existing in traditional hierarchical-centralist society to the form of stability found in our modern, differentiated, multifocal society” (7). Sloterdijk thinks that Luhmann honors Derrida for solving the puzzle of the postmodern world: moving from a “stability through centering and solid foundations to stability through greater flexibility and decentering” (8). Luhmann: “‘deconstruction will survive its own deconstruction as the most relevant description of modern society’s self-description’” (id.), a formulation coded with “second-order observation,” wherein “one no longer attempts a direct description of the world, but rather re-describes and thus deconstructs” (7). The question accordingly becomes whether “the core impulse of deconstruction was to pursue a project of construction with the aim of creating an undeconstructible survival machine” (10).
The argument shifts to the later Freud, who in Moses and Monotheism developed the thesis that Moses was “in reality Egyptian by culture and nationality” and committed to the astrotheological monotheism of the Aten cult (12), needing thereby the Jewish slaves in order to develop heretical Egyptian ideas—which requires the displacement of both the slaves and the heresy: “the history of ideas takes the form of a massive game of displacement in which motifs from Egyptian universalism are acted out by non-Egyptian protagonists” (16); Sloterdijk suggests that this is a “self-correction of psychoanalysis at the last minute” (16): “ultimately it is not the unconscious that decides the fate of humans; what truly counts is the incognito that conceals the origin of the dominant ideas” (17).
In Thomas Mann’s able writings, the escape from Egypt becomes a matter of “wresting myth from the hands of intellectual fascism and remolding it in humanist form” (21), wherein “the career of Sigmund Freud, who, by suggesting a science of dream analysis, had succeeded in making the late feudal society of Habsburg Austro-Egyptians dependent on his interpretations” (24). Freud, or Joseph (or Derrida) “can only try his luck by subjecting the symbolic fabrications of the powerful to an analysis that is sufficiently fascinating to them” (25). Sloterdijk is quick to point out a second wave of dream interpretation, based in leftist messianism (Benjamin and Bloch, say), a “mass interpretation of dreams in whose course the proletarian and traditional dreams of a better life would be elevated to a political productive force” (25). Derrida is a “third wave of dream interpretation” (26) showing “how Egypt works in us”:
'Egyptian’ is a term for all constructs that can be subjected to deconstruction – except for the pyramid, that most Egyptian of edifices. It stands in its place, unshakeable for all time, because its form is nothing other than the undeconstructible remainder of a construction that, following the plan of its architect, is built to look as it would after its own collapse. (27)As if that were not cool enough, the argument moves on to Borkenau, whose ‘antimony of death’ argument conceives of how “one type of culture rejects death and reacts to it with a doctrine of immortality” and another “accepts the fact of death and develops a culture of committed worldliness” (30). The Egyptians are the former, with their “construction of pyramids, mummifications, and extensive cartographies of the hereafter” (32). Reacting against this, a sort of parricide, are Jews and Greeks and Romans, who are credited with the “invention of the political” (id.). Medieval Christian “immortalism” is a child rebelling against antiquity, and the modern world of the Renaissance and after rebels against that and thereby oscillates back to Jerusalem and Athens (33 et seq.). Sloterdijk places Derrida “on the side of the modern extreme,” as deconstruction is “the most thorough semantic secularization – semiological materialism in action” (35). Derrida, however, is too complex for this, and “did not simply want to drive away the ghosts of the immortalist past” (37); he is not in a skeptic’s epoche, but rather a “fluctuation” relating to “the pre-philosophical choice of the antimony of death,” i.e., “the simultaneously necessary and impossible choice between metaphysics and non-metaphysics” (38). It is a “sovereign indecision” (39), wherein he awaits a burial in “the country he had inhabited critically” as well as “the colossal pyramid that he himself built in a lifetime’s work on the edge of the desert of letters” (40).
From there Sloterdijk invokes Debray’s work on mediology, wherein “the myth of exodus is tied to that of total mobilization” (47), so that the escaping Jewish slave population must “transform itself into a foreign, movable things that abducts itself”—which is a perfectly Nietzschean moment at which
all things are re-evaluated in terms of their transportability – at the risk of having to leave behind everything that is too heavy for human carriers. The first re-evaluation of all values therefore concerned weight. Its main victims were the heavy gods of the Egyptians, whose immovable stone bodies prevented them from travelling. The people of Israel were able to change into a theophoric entity from that point on, omnia sua secum portans in a literal sense, because it had succeeded in recoding God from the medium of stone to that of the scroll. (47)Full metal awesome. The argument turns then to Hegel, against whom Derrida had demonstrated “how the materiality, differentiality, temporality, and externality of signs obstruct the idea’s return to complete self-ownership” (54). Hegel provides the raw material for this objection in his metaphor that the pyramid is the “sign of all signs,” the body that houses the soul, just as the signifier houses the signified (55), a sort of premonition of Saussurean linguistics. Derrida for his part picks up on this, and, in noting that the pyramid is “brought back from Egypt” (61), regards it as “a transportable form” (62), the “secret of its transportability undoubtedly lies in its lightness through textualization” (id.).
It is this insight that triggers Sloterdijk’s final invocation, of Groys' work on “the burial chamber within it in which the mummy of the pharaoh is deposited” (66). For Groys, “one will never understand the artistic system of modern culture unless one observes how the pharaonic chamber is reused in it” (67), as it is “an archetype of a dead space that can be summoned and rebuilt elsewhere” (id.). We see it in museums, say, but generally in all “heterotopic locations in the midst of the modern ‘lifeworld’ where selected objects are mortified, defunctionalized, removed from all profane uses and offered up for reverent viewing” (id.).
No mention of the Thoth cover on the familiar edition of the Grammatology, but good times overall.
June 3, 2010
Assumes that you are already familiar with Derrida and deconstruction, but the familiarity it assumes you have is nothing you cannot have by looking up Derrida and deconstruction on Google. This is a fast read - and in 75 light pages Sloterdijk makes some original comparisons between Derrida and Freud, Luhmann, Hegel, Mann, and others - original because the observations are original, and also because these are, with the exceptions of Freud and Hegel, not thinkers Derrida is often compared with.
August 25, 2012
I grabbed this from the library shelf knowing nothing about it, and I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. It is a great companion to the final Derrida interview, and while it is too short to present full arguments, it sketches out a lot of great potential investigations.
It also made me want to learn more about Egypt and the history of circumcision.
It also made me want to learn more about Egypt and the history of circumcision.
August 14, 2015
Clever, as all Sloterdijk's books are. The combination of the slick Northerner contemplating the slippery Parisian is quite heady.
January 29, 2021
Homenagem de Sloterdijk a Derrida, o autor tece 7 inteligentes diálogos com pensadores como Freud, Hegel e Luhmann.
January 31, 2013
Ce livre est une élégie métaphysique-humoristique, un témoignage d'émerveillement et une réflexion sur l'éphémère et l'éternel. Dans "Derrida, un Egyptien", Sloterdijk comble l'absence de l'homme qui écrivait aux marges de la philosophie, en nous en donnant un portrait-collage à partir de contextualisations, en l’occurrence des vignettes de lecture de Luhmann, Freud, Thomas Mann, Franz Borkenau, Régis Debray, Hegel et Boris Groys. Derrida en émerge.
A l'annonce qui lui est donnée de la mort de Derrida, point de départ de ce poème philosophique, Sloterdijk se souvient de la phrase de ce dernier : dès ma mort je serai oublié, mais mon travail survivra dans la mémoire culturelle. Est-ce contradictoire, de même que le couple pyramide (la métaphysique) et mouvement?
Si "L’Être qui peut être compris est langage" (Gadamer), l'écriture de Derrida "vole en suspension entre les opinions", en constants déplacements par refus de l'unilatéralité. Impossible donc de positionner sur la carte cet "Egyptien" à la territorialisation incertaine. Où en effet localiser le phénomène Derrida dans la ménagerie cognitive post-moderne? Pour Luhmann, la "déconstruction", legs de Derrida, est sa machine à survivre, parce qu'elle aura su stabiliser la décentralisation multifocale qui re-décrit en déconstruisant.
"Egyptien" fait référence au Moïse égyptien du poético-blasphématoire "Moïse et le monothéisme" de Freud. Moïse y est un Egyptien, adorateur d'Aton, le Dieu unique. Lorsque les Egyptiens abandonnent Aton pour retourner à leurs anciens dieux, Moïse décide de partir adorer ce Dieu unique avec les Juifs comme croyants. Il devient hétéro-Egyptien, comme le seront Freud et Derrida.
La contextualisation qui suit sans transition nous emmène chez Thomas Mann, dans le roman "Joseph et ses frères". L'étranger marginal Joseph va interpréter les rêves de Pharaon qui demeurent opaques pour les autochtones. Il trouve ainsi le bonheur interprétatif dans le malheur matériel en Egypte où il est revendu comme esclave, après une première mise sur le marché par ses propres frères. Or Joseph n'aurait pu espérer mieux que la vie de l'élite des gardiens de moutons en demeurant chez lui. Cette image mérite quelques instants de réflexion, notamment au vu du succès américain de Derrida.
Les homo-Egyptiens garderont un profil très préoccupé d'immortalité, au point d'y épuiser leur énergie psychique, de sorte que le flambeau de la civilisation sera repris par les Grecs et les Juifs, plus soucieux de l'existence terrestre (Borkenau).
Question subsidaire posée avec la carte postale Debray : quel moyen de transport Dieu utilise-t-il pour se déplacer, si tant est que la religion est traitée par la science des transports. Le mobile peuple Juif est théophore à partir de l'Exode, notamment parce que chez les Juifs, Dieu est écrit et non pas sculpté dans la pierre (transcendance pétrifiée). Ainsi, les archivistes succèdent-ils aux architectes dans l'histoire religieuse.
D'ailleurs, la diaphane langue de l'Esprit hégélien est plus légère nous dit Sloterdijk, dès lors que Hegel ne s'embarrasse pas du poids des pyramides. Et pourtant, même sans la pondéralité des pyramides, la Phénoménologie du pharaon Hegel, si elle est transportable, n'est pas pour autant portable, même en édition opaque de poche.
Pharaons momifiés, spectres du marxisme, archivistes et curateurs de musées se retrouvent dans le cortège funéraire à l'aube de l'alliance nouvelle de la philosophie et de la littérature narrative, dont Groys croit déjà déceler la survenance. Dans ce nouveau monde, l'archive est un bâtiment intelligent aux murs fluides à la Dali, pour lequel les objets nouvellement créés sont collectionnables. C'est le tournant muséologique néo-Egyptien de la philosophie : dans les chambres mortuaires reposent les collections, éternelles. Ce qui reste dehors relève de l'éphémère.
A l'annonce qui lui est donnée de la mort de Derrida, point de départ de ce poème philosophique, Sloterdijk se souvient de la phrase de ce dernier : dès ma mort je serai oublié, mais mon travail survivra dans la mémoire culturelle. Est-ce contradictoire, de même que le couple pyramide (la métaphysique) et mouvement?
Si "L’Être qui peut être compris est langage" (Gadamer), l'écriture de Derrida "vole en suspension entre les opinions", en constants déplacements par refus de l'unilatéralité. Impossible donc de positionner sur la carte cet "Egyptien" à la territorialisation incertaine. Où en effet localiser le phénomène Derrida dans la ménagerie cognitive post-moderne? Pour Luhmann, la "déconstruction", legs de Derrida, est sa machine à survivre, parce qu'elle aura su stabiliser la décentralisation multifocale qui re-décrit en déconstruisant.
"Egyptien" fait référence au Moïse égyptien du poético-blasphématoire "Moïse et le monothéisme" de Freud. Moïse y est un Egyptien, adorateur d'Aton, le Dieu unique. Lorsque les Egyptiens abandonnent Aton pour retourner à leurs anciens dieux, Moïse décide de partir adorer ce Dieu unique avec les Juifs comme croyants. Il devient hétéro-Egyptien, comme le seront Freud et Derrida.
La contextualisation qui suit sans transition nous emmène chez Thomas Mann, dans le roman "Joseph et ses frères". L'étranger marginal Joseph va interpréter les rêves de Pharaon qui demeurent opaques pour les autochtones. Il trouve ainsi le bonheur interprétatif dans le malheur matériel en Egypte où il est revendu comme esclave, après une première mise sur le marché par ses propres frères. Or Joseph n'aurait pu espérer mieux que la vie de l'élite des gardiens de moutons en demeurant chez lui. Cette image mérite quelques instants de réflexion, notamment au vu du succès américain de Derrida.
Les homo-Egyptiens garderont un profil très préoccupé d'immortalité, au point d'y épuiser leur énergie psychique, de sorte que le flambeau de la civilisation sera repris par les Grecs et les Juifs, plus soucieux de l'existence terrestre (Borkenau).
Question subsidaire posée avec la carte postale Debray : quel moyen de transport Dieu utilise-t-il pour se déplacer, si tant est que la religion est traitée par la science des transports. Le mobile peuple Juif est théophore à partir de l'Exode, notamment parce que chez les Juifs, Dieu est écrit et non pas sculpté dans la pierre (transcendance pétrifiée). Ainsi, les archivistes succèdent-ils aux architectes dans l'histoire religieuse.
D'ailleurs, la diaphane langue de l'Esprit hégélien est plus légère nous dit Sloterdijk, dès lors que Hegel ne s'embarrasse pas du poids des pyramides. Et pourtant, même sans la pondéralité des pyramides, la Phénoménologie du pharaon Hegel, si elle est transportable, n'est pas pour autant portable, même en édition opaque de poche.
Pharaons momifiés, spectres du marxisme, archivistes et curateurs de musées se retrouvent dans le cortège funéraire à l'aube de l'alliance nouvelle de la philosophie et de la littérature narrative, dont Groys croit déjà déceler la survenance. Dans ce nouveau monde, l'archive est un bâtiment intelligent aux murs fluides à la Dali, pour lequel les objets nouvellement créés sont collectionnables. C'est le tournant muséologique néo-Egyptien de la philosophie : dans les chambres mortuaires reposent les collections, éternelles. Ce qui reste dehors relève de l'éphémère.
April 14, 2010
Vital on Derrida studies, German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk presents Derrida from a meaningful context of differance. Evaluating an aspect of Derrida's work through the reference to Hegelian and Derridian analysis of the concept of the un-deconstructable Egyptian Pyramid, differance is presented through the engagement of systems theorist Niklas Luhmann, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, novelist Thomas Mann, sociologist Franz Borkenau, media theorist Regis Debray and theorist Boris Groys.
June 11, 2010
Didn't really add much for me. Thought it was obvious and disappointing.
October 12, 2014
(arm)pit
January 2, 2022
Expresia admirației și respectului pentru Derrida, autorul conceptului de "deconstrucție", Peter Sloterdijk scrie această carte încercînd să judece cu distanțare, să contextualizeze concepțiile filozofului în raport cu cele ale unor nume mari ale filozofiei, și anume…
Niklas Luhmann - despre deconstrucție ca supraviețuitoare perpetuă a sieși;
Sigmund Freud - cu a sa explozie a istoriei iudaice prin "Moise, un egiptean", în care afirmă că exodul evreilor din Egipt a fost de fapt o continuare a egipțianismului, altfel și altundeva;
Thomas Mann - cu profeția fenomenului Derrida (evreul marginal cîștigîndu-și locul în centrul de putere spirituală, popular spus "găsirea norocului în nenoroc") întruchipat în postura lui Iosif (din romanul "Iosif și frații săi"), cel care gonit fiind de frați a ajuns expert în interpretarea viselor la curtea faraonului egiptean;
Franz Borkenau - istoric major al artelor, și interdisciplinar, cu al său model de generații de civilizații legate între ele prin alternarea credinței în imortalitate (antichitatea egipteană, creștinismul), cu negarea acesteia (antichitatea greacă-iudaică-romană, modernismul);
Regis Debray - creatorul, sau identificatorul, noului orizont de probleme ale gîndirii postfilozofice propunînd "mediul" în locul "scrisului" și lansînd interpretarea conform căreia poporul evreu l-a făcut pe Dumnezeu "transportabil", în secesiunea sa de lumea egipteană, dezlegîndu-l de monumentele de piatră cu care au rămas ceilalți zei și proiectîndu-l pe papirus;
Hegel - cea mai grea parte, cea mai importantă și cel mai greu de pătruns și exprimat altfel și, mai ales, pe scurt…
Boris Groys - cu schimbarea de direcție propusă într-o lume post-Derrida, de la fantome la mumii, de la construcții spirituale la suportul lor - teoria arhivelor, a muzeologiei, care rămîne de domeniul filozofiei.
Niklas Luhmann - despre deconstrucție ca supraviețuitoare perpetuă a sieși;
Sigmund Freud - cu a sa explozie a istoriei iudaice prin "Moise, un egiptean", în care afirmă că exodul evreilor din Egipt a fost de fapt o continuare a egipțianismului, altfel și altundeva;
Thomas Mann - cu profeția fenomenului Derrida (evreul marginal cîștigîndu-și locul în centrul de putere spirituală, popular spus "găsirea norocului în nenoroc") întruchipat în postura lui Iosif (din romanul "Iosif și frații săi"), cel care gonit fiind de frați a ajuns expert în interpretarea viselor la curtea faraonului egiptean;
Franz Borkenau - istoric major al artelor, și interdisciplinar, cu al său model de generații de civilizații legate între ele prin alternarea credinței în imortalitate (antichitatea egipteană, creștinismul), cu negarea acesteia (antichitatea greacă-iudaică-romană, modernismul);
Regis Debray - creatorul, sau identificatorul, noului orizont de probleme ale gîndirii postfilozofice propunînd "mediul" în locul "scrisului" și lansînd interpretarea conform căreia poporul evreu l-a făcut pe Dumnezeu "transportabil", în secesiunea sa de lumea egipteană, dezlegîndu-l de monumentele de piatră cu care au rămas ceilalți zei și proiectîndu-l pe papirus;
Hegel - cea mai grea parte, cea mai importantă și cel mai greu de pătruns și exprimat altfel și, mai ales, pe scurt…
Boris Groys - cu schimbarea de direcție propusă într-o lume post-Derrida, de la fantome la mumii, de la construcții spirituale la suportul lor - teoria arhivelor, a muzeologiei, care rămîne de domeniul filozofiei.
June 9, 2023
The title alone is what interested me enough to buy it. The book is the size of a stamp. Yet, Sloterdijk has managed to fit a handful of exciting propositions, such as the implications of the pyramid as an object in the shape of its collapse or the idea that Jewish dysphoria is the continuation of a forked ancient Egypt. This makes it even more unfortunate that Sloterdijk never approaches these thoughts beyond merely having them. As others have mentioned having an intimate familiarity with Derrida, Freud, Hegel, etc., is not required for the average peasant to enjoy as long as you have an internet connection.
February 21, 2025
Peter Sloterdijk's testimonial engages with the thought of Jacques Derrida, dissecting the derridean jargon into brief but brilliant recontexualisations, throught the thought of various thinkers such as Hegel and Freud.
The prose of Sloterdijk is a double-edged sword; on one hand it feels adventurous and charming, amply of that tasteful nietzschean hyperbole, on the other, when it overstays its welcome it distorts terribly the clarity of the text. The relentless abuse of many neologisms such as "hetero-egyptian" "Josephean position" or the bizarre statements "where there was grammatology,
there must now be museology" that seem conclusive but truly lack any susbantive reasoning. This idiom gives the text a whimsical and confident vibe but it also condemns it into self-indulged ambiguity. The shortness of the text suffocates many genuinely intruguing insights that definetely require more elaboration. (Unless its part of Sloterdijk? As a good philosopher he encourages the reader to take initiative and contemplate on arbiraty ideas)
Nevertheless, this text manages to be conceptually fruitfull and Sloterdijk's exaggeration despite its faults can be entertaining enough to commands further reading. To abandon my complaining the premise of Sloterdijk in this tesimonial, how it traces the links between the metaphor of pyramid and pharaoes, the deconstruction project, the problematics of semiotics the concepts of im/mortality, life and death, radiates such philosopical swagger that makes him worth of being a kind of Nietzsche's successor. Sloterdijk is one of the few thinkers that reignites my hopes for contemporary philosophy that these days can feel pretty stagnant and sterile.
The prose of Sloterdijk is a double-edged sword; on one hand it feels adventurous and charming, amply of that tasteful nietzschean hyperbole, on the other, when it overstays its welcome it distorts terribly the clarity of the text. The relentless abuse of many neologisms such as "hetero-egyptian" "Josephean position" or the bizarre statements "where there was grammatology,
there must now be museology" that seem conclusive but truly lack any susbantive reasoning. This idiom gives the text a whimsical and confident vibe but it also condemns it into self-indulged ambiguity. The shortness of the text suffocates many genuinely intruguing insights that definetely require more elaboration. (Unless its part of Sloterdijk? As a good philosopher he encourages the reader to take initiative and contemplate on arbiraty ideas)
Nevertheless, this text manages to be conceptually fruitfull and Sloterdijk's exaggeration despite its faults can be entertaining enough to commands further reading. To abandon my complaining the premise of Sloterdijk in this tesimonial, how it traces the links between the metaphor of pyramid and pharaoes, the deconstruction project, the problematics of semiotics the concepts of im/mortality, life and death, radiates such philosopical swagger that makes him worth of being a kind of Nietzsche's successor. Sloterdijk is one of the few thinkers that reignites my hopes for contemporary philosophy that these days can feel pretty stagnant and sterile.
September 22, 2021
Sloterdijk creates an inspired series of essays in homage to Derrida.
"As a radical partisan of non-one-sidedness, Derrida wanted to call the dream constructs of the immortalists to order through the reason of mortality; with his reminder of the politics of immortality, however, he also corrected the blind mortalism of merely pragmatic reason" (p.60).
"As a radical partisan of non-one-sidedness, Derrida wanted to call the dream constructs of the immortalists to order through the reason of mortality; with his reminder of the politics of immortality, however, he also corrected the blind mortalism of merely pragmatic reason" (p.60).
February 13, 2019
Honestly, I wasn’t completely sure what this was about, but, as far as I could tell, it was about comparing the cultural contradictions of Derrida to the cultural contradictions of the Biblical Joseph- and the fact that Derrida was all about making contradictions coexist.
November 17, 2020
it’s not actually bad, it’s just not really worth the time. too short to give generous readings of really any of the thinkers presented (though the Hegel / Derrida chapter is fun), and a pretty unconvincing engagement with Judaism // Freud’s “Moses, an Egyptian”
March 16, 2019
Uno de los libros de filosofía más hermosos que he leído.
November 30, 2020
Sloterdijk, bu kitabında Derrida'nın düşünceleri etrafında dolanıyor.
March 19, 2022
Amazingly cryptic in its density, and indeed: “it is still possible to marvel without reverting to childhood.”
November 12, 2025
This made me want to read more Boris Groys.
September 18, 2021
As reflexões que Derrida traz em Gramatologia sobre os hieróglifos e Hegel são interessantíssimas, portanto achei ótimo que Sloterdijk se propõe a explorar temas análogos.
A proposta do livro é muito interessante - promover encontros entre Derrida e outros pensadores, alguns bastante inusitados - e as análises são bem pertinentes.
O primeiro encontro - com Niklas Luhmann - é mais introdutório, mas põe uma questão interessante: a 'estabilidade' na flexibilização e no descentramento para a tarefa pós-moderna. Luhmann aposta que a desconstrução "sobreviverá" à sua própria desconstrução. Gosto também de como Sloterdijk os chama dos "os dois Hegel do século XX", por estarem ambos a beira da catástrofe dos aparelhos conceituais de seu tempo, assim como Hegel. Me parece interessante pensar Derrida como esse filósofo da margem, apesar de ter minhas incertezas em relação à empreitada derrideana frente a essa tarefa pós-moderna (adorei Gramatologia, mas tenho ainda não li o resto da obra gigantesca de Derrida, então não tenho como opinar - também tenho minhas dúvidas se essa seria realmente a tarefa a seguir).
O segundo encontro posiciona a tese de Freud do "Moisés egípcio" traçando um paralelo entre a "deformação" e a desconstrução derrideana. A territorialização incerta e a hauntologie dos espectros do Egito sobre a linha de fuga (inserção minha) do povo judeu garante ao êxodo a realização de um egipcismo radical por meios judaicos - heteroegipcismo. Aqui há ressonância com a exploração de D&G em Mil Platôs sobre a traição de Moisés e o regime pós-significante (uma leitura cruzada interessante).
O terceiro encontro (Thomas Mann) analisa a história de José enquanto intérprete dos sonhos do Faraó em sua hermenêutica heteroegípcia, relacionando Freud ao papel de intérpretes dos sonhos capaz de adentrar na simbologia e nas instituições faraônicas - desta vez encarnadas nos "austroegípcios". Há uma ponte interessante com Bloch e Benjamin (intérpretes marxistas do cristianismo), uma segunda interpretação dos sonhos - a interpretação messiânica e sua antecipação do comunismo, pondo Bloch e Benjamin na posição de intérpretes dos sonhos diurnos e utopias conscientes da modernidade. Enfim, em Derrida, há a terceira interpretação dos sonhos: uma semiologia radical que desconstrói a suposta plenitude do Ser.
No quarto encontro, com Borkenau - o antagonista de Splenger - temos uma análise curiosa sobre as antinomias da morte - uma aristocracia da imortalidade egípcia, a aceitação da morte pelos gregos e judeus, a universalização da imortalidade pelos cristãos e a universalização da mortalidade pelos modernos. Com isso, Sloterdijk traça as alianças de Derrida e aponta a desconstrução enquanto posição que não assume identidade entre tais escolhas doutrinárias, mas uma oscilação que busca reconhecer as associações entre os lados - as pontes entre a cidade moderna dos mortais e o imortalismo egípcio.
Nos encontramos então com Regis Debray (um dos pontos mais interessantes do livro) para refletir sobre a migração judaica do Deus-monumento para o Deus-pergaminho, a ruptura com o imobilismo da estátua e da pirâmide como meio de sobrevivência: o mortal torna-se veículo do imortal. A questão se orienta então sobre a transportabilidade da pirâmide: a opinião de Derrida será consultada em seu encontro com Hegel.
Certamente o encontro mais esperado da leitura, Sloterdijk se assenta em Margens da Filosofia para refletir sobre o poço e a pirâmide. Nessa exposição, o platonismo do signo de Hegel se relaciona com a "conservação" eterna dos signos na pirâmide, objeto por excelência da semiologia. Hegel busca então superar tanto a imobilidade da pirâmide quanto seu "leve" e frágil transporte, para garantir a plenitude do "ouvir-se falar do espírito", presença de si mesmo sem direcionamento. A crítica de Derrida já se encontra em Gramatologia em sua crítica ao logos, mas aqui há um outro ponto interessante exposto por Sloterdijk: a "pirâmide trazida" do deserto egípico, a possibilidade de transporte do "arquivo", que traz um enigma a ser decifrado. A passagem do poço à pirâmide já está traçada na história da metafísica, sendo preciso des-deformar a pirâmide para trazê-la de volta ao poço (onde ecoam as vozes-memórias no subterrâneo): integração do espectro do faraó. Aqui há um aprofundamento da questão da hauntologie.
A caminhada do Ocidente ao Oriente se encerra com o encontro com Groys, que vê a pirâmide transportadas nos arquivos museológicos, conservação-exposição da arte na modernidade (curador, e não intérprete dos sonhos como o filósofo franco-argelino). Para Sloterdijk, Derrida para Groys é como Hegel para Marx: Groys será aquele que supera a imitação e exegese, por reconhecer a nova forma da imortalidade na cidade moderna dos mortais, pirâmide deslocada.
A proposta do livro é muito interessante - promover encontros entre Derrida e outros pensadores, alguns bastante inusitados - e as análises são bem pertinentes.
O primeiro encontro - com Niklas Luhmann - é mais introdutório, mas põe uma questão interessante: a 'estabilidade' na flexibilização e no descentramento para a tarefa pós-moderna. Luhmann aposta que a desconstrução "sobreviverá" à sua própria desconstrução. Gosto também de como Sloterdijk os chama dos "os dois Hegel do século XX", por estarem ambos a beira da catástrofe dos aparelhos conceituais de seu tempo, assim como Hegel. Me parece interessante pensar Derrida como esse filósofo da margem, apesar de ter minhas incertezas em relação à empreitada derrideana frente a essa tarefa pós-moderna (adorei Gramatologia, mas tenho ainda não li o resto da obra gigantesca de Derrida, então não tenho como opinar - também tenho minhas dúvidas se essa seria realmente a tarefa a seguir).
O segundo encontro posiciona a tese de Freud do "Moisés egípcio" traçando um paralelo entre a "deformação" e a desconstrução derrideana. A territorialização incerta e a hauntologie dos espectros do Egito sobre a linha de fuga (inserção minha) do povo judeu garante ao êxodo a realização de um egipcismo radical por meios judaicos - heteroegipcismo. Aqui há ressonância com a exploração de D&G em Mil Platôs sobre a traição de Moisés e o regime pós-significante (uma leitura cruzada interessante).
O terceiro encontro (Thomas Mann) analisa a história de José enquanto intérprete dos sonhos do Faraó em sua hermenêutica heteroegípcia, relacionando Freud ao papel de intérpretes dos sonhos capaz de adentrar na simbologia e nas instituições faraônicas - desta vez encarnadas nos "austroegípcios". Há uma ponte interessante com Bloch e Benjamin (intérpretes marxistas do cristianismo), uma segunda interpretação dos sonhos - a interpretação messiânica e sua antecipação do comunismo, pondo Bloch e Benjamin na posição de intérpretes dos sonhos diurnos e utopias conscientes da modernidade. Enfim, em Derrida, há a terceira interpretação dos sonhos: uma semiologia radical que desconstrói a suposta plenitude do Ser.
No quarto encontro, com Borkenau - o antagonista de Splenger - temos uma análise curiosa sobre as antinomias da morte - uma aristocracia da imortalidade egípcia, a aceitação da morte pelos gregos e judeus, a universalização da imortalidade pelos cristãos e a universalização da mortalidade pelos modernos. Com isso, Sloterdijk traça as alianças de Derrida e aponta a desconstrução enquanto posição que não assume identidade entre tais escolhas doutrinárias, mas uma oscilação que busca reconhecer as associações entre os lados - as pontes entre a cidade moderna dos mortais e o imortalismo egípcio.
Nos encontramos então com Regis Debray (um dos pontos mais interessantes do livro) para refletir sobre a migração judaica do Deus-monumento para o Deus-pergaminho, a ruptura com o imobilismo da estátua e da pirâmide como meio de sobrevivência: o mortal torna-se veículo do imortal. A questão se orienta então sobre a transportabilidade da pirâmide: a opinião de Derrida será consultada em seu encontro com Hegel.
Certamente o encontro mais esperado da leitura, Sloterdijk se assenta em Margens da Filosofia para refletir sobre o poço e a pirâmide. Nessa exposição, o platonismo do signo de Hegel se relaciona com a "conservação" eterna dos signos na pirâmide, objeto por excelência da semiologia. Hegel busca então superar tanto a imobilidade da pirâmide quanto seu "leve" e frágil transporte, para garantir a plenitude do "ouvir-se falar do espírito", presença de si mesmo sem direcionamento. A crítica de Derrida já se encontra em Gramatologia em sua crítica ao logos, mas aqui há um outro ponto interessante exposto por Sloterdijk: a "pirâmide trazida" do deserto egípico, a possibilidade de transporte do "arquivo", que traz um enigma a ser decifrado. A passagem do poço à pirâmide já está traçada na história da metafísica, sendo preciso des-deformar a pirâmide para trazê-la de volta ao poço (onde ecoam as vozes-memórias no subterrâneo): integração do espectro do faraó. Aqui há um aprofundamento da questão da hauntologie.
A caminhada do Ocidente ao Oriente se encerra com o encontro com Groys, que vê a pirâmide transportadas nos arquivos museológicos, conservação-exposição da arte na modernidade (curador, e não intérprete dos sonhos como o filósofo franco-argelino). Para Sloterdijk, Derrida para Groys é como Hegel para Marx: Groys será aquele que supera a imitação e exegese, por reconhecer a nova forma da imortalidade na cidade moderna dos mortais, pirâmide deslocada.
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