“Cynicism is enlightened false consciousness. It is that modernized, unhappy consciousness, on which enlightenment has labored both successfully and in vain. It has learned its lessons in enlightenment, but it has not, and probably was not able to, put them into practice. Well-off and miserable at the same time, this consciousness no longer feels affected by any critique of ideology; its falseness is already reflexively buffered.”

— Peter Sloterdijk

Zynismus ist das aufgeklärte falsche Bewußtsein, an dem Aufklärung zugleich erfolgreich und vergeblich gearbeitet hat. Es hat seine Aufklärungselektion gelernt, aber nicht vollzogen und wohl nicht vollziehen können. Gutsituiert und miserabel zugleich fühlt sich dieses Bewußtsein von keiner Ideologiekritik mehr betroffen; seine Falschheit ist bereits reflexiv gefedert.
Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), pp. 5-6

Original

Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Cynicism is enlightened false consciousness. It is that modernized, unhappy consciousness, on which enlightenment has l…" by Peter Sloterdijk?

Peter Sloterdijk 49

German philosopher 1947

Related quotes

“Feeling which has not yet emerged into immediate consciousness is already affectible and already affected.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)
Context: Feeling which has not yet emerged into immediate consciousness is already affectible and already affected. In fact, this is habit, by virtue of which an idea is brought up into the present consciousness by a bond that has already been established between it and another idea while it was still in futuro.

“To be enlightened is to obliterate all self-consciousness. What need is there to make others understand? This shows precisely that he has not yet attained real awakening and final enlightenment.”

Zhiyanzhai

As quoted in Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature by Wai-yee Li (Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 221

“Enlightened humanity has sought in rational deﬁniteness its liberating refuge from the dominating inﬂuence of the merely authoritative. At the present time, however, this has for a large part been lost to consciousness, and to many people scientific validity that has to be acknowledged appears as an oppressing authority.”

Paul Bernays (1888–1977) Swiss mathematician

Bernays, Paul. " Comments on Ludwig Wittgenstein's Remarks on the foundations of mathematics http://www.phil.cmu.edu/projects/bernays/Pdf/wittgenstein.pdf." Ratio 2.1 (1959): 1-22.