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December 01, 2006
Peter Sloterdijk in The Critique of Cynical Reason calls cynical reason an "enlightened false consciousness". Sloterdijk writes:
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.
Sloterdijk wants to find out why the promises of the Enlightenment have failed. In the 18th and 19th century, rationalism and criticism promised a liberation of mankind from false idolatry, oppression and ignorance through the slogan “Knowledge is Power”. In the 20th century, however, this great project got stuck in mass destruction, disillusion, and cynicism, which especially prevailed among those who were optimists in the 1960s.
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