“The only loyalty to enlightenment consists in disloyalty. This can be partly understood from the position of its heirs, who look back on the “heroic” times and are necessarily more skeptical of the results. To be an heir always carries a certain “status cynicism” with it, as is well known from stories about the inheritance of family capital.”

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 6

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 "The only loyalty to enlightenment consists in disloyalty. This can be partly understood from the position of its heirs,…" by Peter Sloterdijk?
Peter Sloterdijk photo
Peter Sloterdijk 49
German philosopher 1947

Related quotes

“For this creating to take place (as it does from time to time) words have to be accepted as heirs of their forebears, as we are of ours. And in each case, what exists is often only a bankrupt inheritance; or the hinterlands of the unspoken.”

Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) English poet and professor

A matter of timing: The Guardian, Saturday 21 September 2002 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/sep/21/featuresreviews.guardianreview28/print

Rosa Luxemburg photo
Adolf A. Berle photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo

“Ancient families became extinct and the Church became the heir of their lands and slaves and serfs.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 144
Context: When the machinery of [Roman] imperial administration broke down in the provinces under the invasion of the barbarians in the fifth century the machinery of the Church remained unbroken.... Ancient families became extinct and the Church became the heir of their lands and slaves and serfs. Small proprietors sought security by committing their lands to the Church and becoming its tenants.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Fascism presented itself not only as an alternative, but also as the heir to socialism.”

Jacob Talmon (1916–1980) Polish-born Israeli historian; Professor of Modern History; studied Cold War and totalitarianism; anti-Marx…

Source: The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization in the 20th Century, (1981), p. 501

John Dewey photo
Alexander Maclaren photo
David Cameron photo

“I am the heir to Blair.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Remarks to newspaper executives (3 October 2005), as quoted in "Horror as Cameron brandishes the B-word" by Andrew Pierce, in The Times (5 October 2005), page 9.
2000s, 2005

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The young are really the heirs to a generation of incompetence.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, Culture Is Our Business (1970)

Related topics