“Did not Nietzsche too warn of that “life-destroying enlightenment” that touches on our life-supporting self-delusions? Can we afford to shake up the “basic fictions” of privacy, personality, and identity? Be that as it may, in this question both old and new conservatives have come to the hard decision to take the “stance” of defending, against all the demands of reflection, their “unavoidable lies for living,” without which self-preservation would not be possible. That they are aided in this by the general fear of self-experience, which competes with curiosity about self-experience, does not have to be expressly emphasized. Thus the theater of respectable, closed egos goes on everywhere, even where the means have long been available to secure better knowledge. Crosswise to all political fronts, it is the “ego” in society that offers the most resolute resistance against the decisive enlightenment. Scarcely anyone will put up with radical self-reflection on this point, not even many of those who regard themselves as enlighteners.”

—  Peter Sloterdijk

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 60

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 "Did not Nietzsche too warn of that “life-destroying enlightenment” that touches on our life-supporting self-delusions? …" by Peter Sloterdijk?
Peter Sloterdijk photo
Peter Sloterdijk 49
German philosopher 1947

Related quotes

Michael Elmore-Meegan photo

“Vision without action which fails to touch the lives of the poor is not vision, but self delusion.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

Changing the World

Mark Satin photo

“By [refusing] to work for a traditional revolution we would not be "giving up the struggle". As we saw in the previous three chapters, we would be struggling – nonviolently – against the Prison [of consciousness] and its institutions, which are more responsible for the sterility of our lives (and our society) than "human nature" or "capitalism". But even if we can't do any more than embark on the stage of self-healing, even if we can't get a strong group together, or if all our group efforts fail to heal society, we would still be learning to preserve our worth as human beings. And that is an essential part of the political process today. For without life-oriented people… there can be no New Age evolution. And only New Age evolution can take us off of the production-consumption continuum and out of the Prison.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 201. The second word above was printed as "trying" in the second edition, but was printed as "refusing" in the first edition, page 78, and in the third edition, page 230. "Refusing" is consistent with Satin's argument.
New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (1978)

Mooji photo

“Self-inquiry begins by looking to discover whether the personal identity, with all its conditioning and idiosyncrasies, is who we truly are. And it ends as a mirror in which the timeless is reflected.”

Mooji (1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher

Greater than Sky, Vaster than Space, (2018), Part I

Umberto Eco photo

“How should we deal with intrusions of fiction into life, now that we have seen the historical impact that this phenomenon can have? … Reflecting on these complex relationships between reader and story, fiction and life, can constitute a form of therapy against the sleep of reason, which generates monsters.”

Umberto Eco book Six Walks in the Fictional Woods

Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (1994) Chapter Six: "Fictional Protocols"

John Gray photo

“Action preserves a sense of self-identity that reflection dispels. When we are at work in the world we have a seeming solidity. Action gives us consolation for our inexistence. It is not the idle dreamer who escapes from reality. It is practical men and women, who turn to a life of action as a refuge from insignificance.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

As it is: The consolation of action (p. 194)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Leon Trotsky photo

“It could and must, be explained that in the civil war we destroyed the White Guards in order that they should not destroy the workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the destruction of human life - a puzzle the dialectical secret of which was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient sages.”

Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism

Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), Chapter three, p. 53

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“Can I live a life, daily life, without sense of self-concern?”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

4th Public Talk, Saanen, Switzerland (25 July 1971)
1970s

“Today we have media … which actually specialize in the kind of obscenity which the cultivated, not the prurient, find repugnant. … It is contended that such material is the raw stuff of life, and that it is the duty of the organs of public information to leave no one deceived about the nature of the world. The assertion that this is the real world begs the most important question of all. The raw stuff of life is precisely what the civilized man desires to have refined, or presented in a humane framework, for which sentiment alone can afford the support. … One of the great conspiracies against philosophy and civilization, a conspiracy immensely aided by technology, is just this substitution of sensation for reflection.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), pp. 28-30.

Michael Francis Burbidge photo

“The stance against abortion is the pre-eminent priority. How could it not be? We have to get it right from the beginning. Our stance on life, that is our pre-eminent priority. We have to fight against this evil.”

Michael Francis Burbidge (1957) American Catholic bishop

The Walk Humbly Podcast - Episode 39: Protecting children online, priority of abortion, homelessness pilot project, and more! https://www.arlingtondiocese.org/bishop/walk-humbly-podcast/the-walk-humbly-podcast---episode-39/ (18 November 2019)

Related topics