Selected Exaggerations Quotes

“Cultural criticism always attacks the mass media. I don't think that makes sense. We should look more closely at the work of deformation that starts deeper down, especially because it involves so much demoralization. Something gets destroyed there that should not be destroyed under any circumstances - THE AWARENESS THAT KNOWLEDGE IS BORN OUT OF EUPHORIA AND THAT INTELLIGENCE IS A RELATIONSHIP OF THE HAPPY CONSCIOUSNESS WITH ITSELF. And that intelligence partly consists in the ability to find our own ways of overcoming the boredom that develops in an under-used brain. Across society as a whole, the most disturbing symptom is that people are no longer ambitious enough to plumb the limits of understanding within themselves. INTELLIGENCE IS THE LAST UTOPIAN POTENTIAL. THE ONLY TERRA INCOGNITA HUMANKIND STILL OWNS ARE THE GALAXIES OF THE BRAIN, THE MILKY WAYS OF INTELLIGENCE. And there is hardly any any convincing space travel in them. Incidentally, this internal astronautics is the only alternative to a consumerist perspective. It is the only thing that could explain to people in the future that their intelligence space is so immense that they can experiment with themselves for millennia without becoming exhausted. The really good news is that there is something breathtakingly great that is called intelligence and is uncharted. ARE YOU WILLING TO VOLUNTEER ?”
― Peter Sloterdijk, Selected Exaggerations: Conversations and Interviews 1993 - 2012

“If we extrapolate this position as a constant factor at work in the background character of twentieth-century culture, it is clear why a system like Steiner’s has always risked being marginalized. After all, in many ways it is the epitome of uncoolness. Coolness will have nothing to do with improving life and the world. As soon as a dogooder enters the room, the coolness enthusiasts leave. KRIES: Has that changed today? SLOTERDIJK: Today’s zeitgeist allows more scope to specific forms of uncoolness again. Many years ago I read Nietzsche’s Zarathustra with my American students. I was afraid it would be too full of pathos for them. But they simply read the whole thing right through like a rap. They didn’t find it at all bombastic and overblown. They had no trouble reading Nietzsche’s extreme flights of rhapsodic style, which are difficult for people educated in old Europe, straight off the page.”
― Peter Sloterdijk, Selected Exaggerations: Conversations and Interviews 1993 - 2012